Duplex

by Orson Scott Card

  There was silence for a minute.

  “Well,” said Dr. Withunga, “not everybody who came out that night had a power that we thought had much chance of directly helping. Kinsey, what about you? Did you find anything?”

  “There weren’t any cats around close enough for me to sense them,” she said. “And it’s not as if I’ve ever been able to get a cat to do anything. Knowing what they want doesn’t mean I can influence what they want.”

  “It was fun to imagine a herd of cats flying out of the darkness to land on their heads,” said Dr. Withunga, “but cats do what cats do.”

  “So true,” said Cat Reader.

  Another girl said, “I always know whether the lights in my own house are on or off, but I can’t change their state, and I couldn’t tell anything about the lights in the duplex that day.”

  Ryan nodded his head. “That’s okay. I don’t know if it would have helped us to have lights blink on and off.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said On-Off Girl. “So I kind of didn’t try very hard.”

  “But you were there, lending strength,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “Look, that’s the thing I wanted to talk about,” said Ryan.

  Because he had been the hero of the hour, everybody seemed willing to defer to him.

  “I think you really did enhance my micropower. In past times, I’ve either been alone or I had Bizzy with me or near me. And so it was always the same. I saw a crisis, a danger to somebody I was responsible for. But before it even registered in my conscious mind, I was already taking action. Already reaching out to grab a bee, or leaping to punch a guy before he could kick my friend in the head. Like that. And I could control it enough that I never killed anybody. Not even the bee.”

  Everybody waited silently for him to go on.

  “But in the Horvats’ living room that evening, I saw the danger way before I could actually see it. I mean, I knew the fake cops were going for their guns before there was any physical sign of it. Not that I was aware of it consciously. I was kind of too quick. So the one fake cop was only just getting his hand on his gun in its holster when my own hand was in the perfect position to glide it out from under his hand and there it was in my hand, pointing at him, my finger on the trigger, and I still don’t know how. I just did it without knowing I was going to do it, without deciding.”

  A couple of low murmurs.

  “Are you saying we did that?” asked On-Off Girl.

  “No way,” said Ryan. “It was me. But my micropower was, like, supercharged. Moving too fast for me to know what it was going to do. I never decided to go for the gun because I’m not stupid. What kind of stupid person goes for somebody else’s gun and thinks he can get to it first? Only I did, and at some level I must have known I could do it. I was doing it, not anybody else, but I wasn’t doing it, not my conscious mind.”

  They were really quiet now.

  “Those fake cops—my micropower didn’t push me to kill them, like it had done a couple of times before. If it had, I don’t know if I could have stopped it, because it was the fastest it’s ever been. I aimed at the one cop’s shoulder and just shot, because I knew it wouldn’t kill him, but it would knock him down, and it did. So, fine. The other fake cop, he was raising his gun to shoot at me, and I was going to shoot him in the shoulder of his gun hand, and believe me, I wish that drop-things-in-the-dominant-hand thing had been working right then—”

  “I didn’t dare use it inside because I couldn’t tell who was who,” said the girl with the micropower. “I was afraid I’d disarm the good guys.”

  Wish you had, thought Ryan.

  “I’m not criticizing,” said Ryan. “We were all doing our best. But here’s the thing, I pointed my pistol at his gun-hand shoulder, but then I switched my aim to his other shoulder and shot that one, even though it wasn’t the arm with the gun.”

  “It’s still pretty distracting to get shot anywhere,” said Aaron Withunga.

  “I know, right?” said Ryan. “I knew that, because that actual thought went through my head after the guy dropped the gun and fell to the ground and started complaining about everything.”

  “Why did you change shoulders?” asked Dr. Withunga.

  “I was not conscious of any reason. My hand suddenly was aiming at the other shoulder. But right after, I realized that if my bullet had passed through his right shoulder, the bullet would have gone straight on to the center of the secret passage, right when some of you were almost certainly climbing down. I might have actually killed or wounded some of you.”

  The reaction was vocal. Some gasping, some sighing.

  “Look, maybe it was my unconscious mind, because my dad showed me where the passage was, and I knew what the wall unit around it looked like, I knew it was there, so maybe it was my unconscious mind doing it. But maybe not. Maybe that move came from you. Maybe the fact that you were there, you unconsciously sensed the danger I was putting you in, and maybe you caused me not to shoot in that direction. Could that be possible?” Ryan looked to Dr. Withunga for an answer.

  “I’m not going to say it’s impossible,” she said.

  “That’s a cool thing, if you can unconsciously protect yourself from other people’s micropowers, don’t you think?” asked Ryan.

  There was some assent, but many of the people still looked worried.

  “But here’s the big one. To me the big one, anyway. I turned to the door because loveks were coming through, and the first guy, he was yawning but trying to talk through it—thanks, Dahlia—”

  Several people applauded.

  “But without my being aware of deciding it, I pulled the trigger. I didn’t work at aiming, I didn’t think anything, I just shot and it got him right in the middle of the forehead, in mid yawn.”

  “I don’t know what the problem is,” said Hinge Boy. “He was armed, right? He was threatening you or other people in the room, right?”

  “I’m not asking about self-defense,” said Ryan. “My micropower doesn’t get me to do things that don’t qualify as self-defense or protecting others from immediate threat. That’s not what I’m thinking about. It’s that I don’t—”

  He couldn’t find words for a moment.

  “Look, when Bizzy’s mother accepted me as her . . . bodyguard. She asked me, would you die for her? But I knew soon after that her real question wasn’t do you love her enough to lay down your life for her, because a lot of people, the real heroes, they do that for complete strangers, and I was in love with her, so, duh. Yeah. Or at least I thought I would. But that wasn’t her real question. Her real question was—”

  Aaron Withunga interrupted. “Would you kill for her.”

  Ryan nodded. “And on that day, on two separate occasions, I found out the answer to that question. When the fake FBI guy was ushering us out the door of history class, I had a split-second opportunity, when he was in the door frame and I was just outside, to straight-arm him and bash his head into the doorjamb. I realized that while my hand was already flying out, all the strength of my arm and my upper body behind the blow, and I jammed his head into that metal doorframe so hard that his skull was crushed on that side, fragmented, so it was reshaped to fit the jamb. I didn’t know I was that strong. I didn’t think anybody was that strong. And the only micropot near me was Bizzy. That wasn’t your powers plus mine. That was mostly just mine.”

  “You don’t want to kill people,” said Aaron.

  “I don’t,” said Ryan. “I don’t want to enhance my power if that means I’ll kill people by reflex, without even thinking. Because that’s not a superpower. Or maybe it is, but it’s not the power of a superhero. I think my micropower makes me a supervillain.”

  Dead silence.

  “But,” somebody said, “you only killed bad guys.”

  “How did I know they were bad guys? I don’t know even now. They see
m to have been part of a group, or so Mrs. Horvat told me, a group that had devoted themselves to tracking down and destroying people with . . . well, with micropowers. Witches, people who could make things happen at a remove. Maybe they wouldn’t care about making other people wink, but making their joints work backward? Oh, I think they’d call that witchcraft.”

  “I think people like that would be pretty quick to call winkling other people a kind of witchcraft,” said Winking Girl.

  “They have no right to kill people, especially people who aren’t doing any harm with their micropowers, so please understand, I’m not saying they aren’t bad guys. But did they deserve to die, just because they knew micropowers existed and they were scared of them?”

  A murmur of quiet conversation among the micropots.

  “Here’s what I’ve decided. For me. I don’t know what any of you ought to do, because so far none of you has the power to kill anybody, and nobody else has a trail of corpses and mayhem behind them. Only me. What I’m doing is, I’m dropping out of GRUT. I don’t want to refine my powers any more.”

  “Not even to slow them down?” asked somebody.

  “How can I practice it?” asked Ryan. “Somebody has to be trying to harm somebody I feel responsible for. After this, maybe I’d feel responsible for every one of you, but how many of you want to be in a situation so dangerous that my micropower kicks in so I can save you?”

  A few people chuckled, but the consensus seemed to be no, thanks.

  “I can’t practice my micropower until and unless somebody I care about is in mortal danger.”

  “So you don’t want to study it or practice it,” said Aaron.

  “I have a father, a mother, a sister,” said Ryan. “One really dumb and completely brave and loyal friend. Before I met anybody from GRUT, before I met Bizzy and fell in love with her, that’s what I had. Bizzy has left town, she and her whole family, and I don’t expect to see her again. So I’m back down to my core group. And as far as I know, nobody except for a few random bees has ever tried, or would ever try, to kill anybody in my family. So if my family is careful, I will never need to harm anybody again, still less kill anybody, because that’s what my micropower is.”

  “You’re disarming,” said Aaron.

  “You found me, Aaron,” said Ryan, “and you were right, I needed to be in GRUT. I needed all of you, I needed to know that what was happening to me was real, and I needed your support that terrible day. So thank you. I owe you. And if any of you ever needs me, or thinks you might need me, I owe you protection, I really do. I’ll stay in touch with Dr. Withunga. If she calls on me, I’ll try to come through for you like you came through for me and Bizzy. But I’m not in that business. I’m not hoping to get better at it. I’m already as good as I ever want to get. So think of me as the GRUT of last resort. I’m not abandoning you. But I’m . . . taking early retirement.”

  Then Ryan realized he had said everything he had to say, so he walked from the lectern and sat down.

  Dr. Withunga was coming back to the lectern, but before she could say anything, the whole group started clapping. A lot of them stood up. It lasted about thirty seconds, that ovation. Ryan didn’t know what it was for. And when it ended, the meeting broke up. No final remarks after all. Nobody rushing up to talk to Ryan, though a few came up and clapped him on the shoulder, and a couple of girls gave him a hug, and one guy said, “The power to kill with your bare hands, and you’re giving it up. Dude.” It seemed to be a favorable “dude,” so Ryan took it as praise.

  On the way back to Charlottesville, when Ryan asked what the clapping had been about, Dr. Withunga said, “Could have been they knew you were through talking, and they wanted to applaud you for saving lives that day. And also for all the people your micropower wanted you to kill, that you didn’t kill.”

  “They were saying they were on your side,” said Aaron. “Your decision to try not to kill again. To stay out of the way of life-and-death defenses.”

  That left a silence in the car, while Ryan tried to digest it. Finally he said, “So they were applauding everything? The times I killed, the times I didn’t kill? Using my micropower, and now my not using it?”

  “Yep,” said Aaron. “That’s how it looked to me. Nobody was angry with you, nobody looked sad. Some a little awestruck, because face it, among micropots you’re kind of a rock star.”

  “Hope not,” said Ryan.

  Dr. Withunga answered him. “Come on, Ryan, almost all of them have told me at one time or another that they wish they didn’t have their micropower. Even the ones who’ve found a real use for it, a way to genuinely help other people, they still want to hide it, to protect themselves from their own micropower. But you, you’re the only one who has to work at not using it to help other people, because you hate the harm you do along the way. So they envy you the decision to walk away, and they also envy you the intensity and effectiveness of your micropower. Both at once.”

  Only when the car pulled up in front of the duplex did Ryan say what he assumed would be his last words to them. “Maybe I’ll hear from you again,” he said, “because I made a promise down there in Danville. But you won’t hear from me. So this is my last chance to say thank you, Aaron, for finding me and talking to me. And thank you, Dr. Withunga, for helping me understand what I am and what I can do. I think you’re doing good things, and whatever it means that micropowers are in the world, thank you for helping people find ways to use them and control them.”

  Dr. Withunga nodded. “I’m glad you see the value in the work.”

  “It’s had value for me, too. And, uh, thanks for the ride to Danville.”

  Aaron laughed.

  Ryan got out of the passenger seat and heard the car whoosh away almost the moment the door closed behind him. He didn’t look, because his eyes were on the front of the house.

  He had hated having two doors inside the front door, instead of one, when Dad first split the house. But then Bizzy. Knowing she lived behind the door on the right—that made it kind of like a magical fairy door in a tree in the park, a place he couldn’t go through but knew it held all the treasure that mattered in the world.

  But now it was a dark door. There was nothing behind that door. He wanted it to disappear. He wanted the house to go back the way it was.

  25

  As November went on, Dad was over at the house more often. He always started in the Horvats’ side of the house, getting furniture ready to return to the rental people; patching, spackling, and painting bullet holes; and doing other jobs that involved some hammering, some sawing, and a lot of drilling and screwing stuff in.

  And then Dad always sort of had something to do or check on in the Burke half of the house, too, before he left. It was almost always some kind of errand or fix-it job—the dishwasher not doing a good job of grinding up food left on plates, for instance, for which his first repair was to say to Dianne and Ryan, “Why are you putting dishes in the dishwasher with food on them anyway?”

  Dianne replied sweetly, “I read the manual, Father, and it says that we can because it has a marvelous food-grinding component that works even better than the average sink garbage disposal.”

  “And you believe that?” asked Father.

  “I believe that if you have to wash dishes before you can put them in the dishwasher,” said Dianne, “you don’t have a dishwasher.”

  “I thought your mother gave birth to two perfectly adequate dishwashers,” said Dad.

  “Are you going to repair it or not?” asked Ryan. “I’m fine either way. I just don’t need to be treated as if the defect in the dishwasher is somehow my fault for expecting it to work as advertised.”

  Dad looked at him for a long moment. “I already brought the part to fix it,” he said.

  “So the lecture to us about prewashing dishes, that was just a bonus?” asked Dianne.

  “Yes it was,
” said Father. “And you can expect a lot more of those lectures in the coming weeks and months.”

  “So you’re moving back in?” asked Dianne, in her most sarcastic voice.

  “Your mother and I have decided to give it a try. Thanksgiving, you know.”

  Which laid Ryan out, so to speak. That had not seemed possible, not after everything that had been said and done. Had Father actually forgiven Mom? Or had Mom actually—what did Dad want?—apologized in some particularly abject and sincere and non-Mother-like way?

  “So everything’s back to normal?” asked Dianne.

  “Nothing will ever be back to normal,” said Father, “if anything ever was normal.”

  “It was normal enough,” said Ryan.

  “This wall in the entryway is coming down. As of December first, this edifice will no longer be listed with the city as a duplex.”

  “Does that raise or lower the property taxes?” asked Ryan.

  “It lowers them, but so little that it won’t mean a rise in your allowance.”

  Ryan answered, “Since I don’t get an allowance . . .”

  “Since your mother and I both provide for your every need . . .”

  Ryan then asked, “If you’re back, can I go back to only taking garbage to the curb once a week?”

  “You can always do that. Or you can do nothing at all to help at home,” said Dad. “You’ve always had that option, though for the past couple of months you’ve chosen not to exercise it.”

  “I don’t actually want to quit garbage detail,” said Ryan. “I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t preempting a job you missed doing and wanted to have back.”

  Dianne got up from the table, where she was doing homework, and hugged her father long and hard.

  When the hug was over, Dianne sat back down. Ryan stayed sitting at the table, where he had been reading a book that he wasn’t enjoying much because it had been assigned for English class. Father took a step and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Since you aren’t walking anybody home from school,” said Dad, “I wonder if your schedule has opened up enough for you to come apprentice with one of my guys.”