Read Online The Changed Man by Orson Scott Card - Free Book Online

newsman stopped, and, breathing heavily, listened to something coming through his earphone.
    The newsman was breathing in perfect unison with all the people in the room.
    â€œDale,” Dr. Rumming said.
    Dale only breathed, feeling death poised above him in the sky.
    â€œDale, can you hear the breathing?”
    Dale heard the breathing.
    The newsman spoke again. “Denver is definitely the target. The missiles have already been launched. Please leave immediately. Do not stop for any reason. It is estimated that we have less than—less than three minutes. My God,” he said, and got up from his chair, breathing heavily, running out of the range of the camera. No one turned any equipment off in the station—the tube kept on showing the local news set, the empty chairs, the tables, the weather map.
    â€œWe can’t get out in time,” Dr. Rumming said to the inmates in the room. “We’re near the center of Denver. Our only hope is to lie on the floor. Try to get under tables and chairs as much as possible.” The inmates, terrified, complied with the voice of authority.
    â€œSo much for my cure,” Dale said, his voice trembling. Rumming managed a half-smile. They lay together in the middle of the floor, leaving the furniture for everyone else because they knew that the furniture would do no good at all.
    â€œYou definitely don’t belong here,” Rumming told him. “I never met a saner man in all my life.”
    Dale was distracted, however. Instead of his impending death he thought of Colly and Brian in their coffin. He imagined the earth being swept away in a huge wind, and the coffin being ashed immediately in
the white explosion from the sky. The barrier is coming down at last, Dale thought, and I will be with them as completely as it is possible to be. He thought of Brian learning to walk, crying when he fell; he remembered Colly saying, “Don’t pick him up every time he cries, or he’ll just learn that crying gets results.” And so for three days Dale had listened to Brian cry and cry, and never lifted a hand to help the boy. Brian learned to walk quite well, and quickly. But now, suddenly, Dale felt again that irresistible impulse to pick him up, to put his pathetically red and weeping face on his shoulder, to say, That’s all right, Daddy’s holding you.
    â€œThat’s all right, Daddy’s holding you,” Dale said aloud, softly. Then there was a flash of white so bright that it could be seen as easily through the walls as through the window, for there were no walls, and all the breath was drawn out of their bodies at once, their voices robbed from them so suddenly that they all involuntarily shouted and then, forever, were silent. Their shout was taken up in a violent wind that swept the sound, wrung from every throat in perfect unison, upward into the clouds forming over what had once been Denver.
    And in the last moment, as the shout was drawn from his lungs and the heat took his eyes out of his face, Dale realized that despite all his foreknowledge, the only life he had ever saved was that of a maitre d’hôtel, whose life, to Dale, didn’t mean a thing.

FAT FARM
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    T HE RECEPTIONIST WAS surprised that he was back so soon.
    â€œWhy, Mr. Barth, how glad I am to see you,” she said.
    â€œSurprised, you mean,” Barth answered. His voice rumbled from the rolls of fat under his chin.
    â€œDelighted.”
    â€œHow long has it been?” Barth asked.
    â€œThree years. How time flies.”
    The receptionist smiled, but Barth saw the awe and revulsion on her face as she glanced over his immense body. In her job she saw fat people every day. But Barth knew he was unusual. He was proud of being unusual.
    â€œBack to the fat farm,” he said, laughing.
    The effort of laughing made him short of breath, and he gasped for air as she pushed a button and said, “Mr. Barth is back.”
    He did