Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show (29 page)

Now that they were moving again, Edward seemed to be more like his old self. He had always preferred action to sitting still. That was probably why he had become a colonist in the first place, to avoid stagnation.

She looked down into his face, wondering how he was feeling. He avoided meeting her gaze. He knows that I’m the stronger one, and he can’t deal with that. Has he always known that?

The afternoon passed very slowly. There wasn’t anything to do but look at their doom drawing near. No time to stop and cook a meal, so there wasn’t anything to eat. The undru was very uncomfortable to ride, and at intervals Ann had to dismount and walk beside Edward. Then she would get out of breath and start to feel dizzy, and Edward would help her remount. Ann had been ill much of the pregnancy, and traveling so near to her time wasn’t helping matters at all. She wanted so desperately to just give up and lie in the sand, regardless of the consequences.

But I can’t do that. Not when I have a child who is relying on me.

In the evening, the pain started.

Ann didn’t notice at first because she hurt all over anyway, but by full dark she could no longer put it out of her mind: Her back was aching, deeply, and she was starting to feel contractions. Edward had been right. The babe would come early. She was afraid to tell Edward about it, though, for fear of his reaction. He had been so strange lately.

I don’t know if I can trust him to stay sane long enough to reach the cliffs anyway, much less if I tell him that his prediction came true. So with each contraction I’ll hold my breath and try not to show him my pain.

The hours continued to pass with agonizing slowness, Ann’s rhythmic pain the only thing marking the passage of time. At one point, she didn’t know when, she felt her waters stream down her leg and soak the blankets on the undru’s back. Ann had stopped thinking clearly a while before that. She hadn’t slept in two days now, and with labor on top of her exhaustion, there wasn’t much room in her mind for thoughts. She clutched the bony plate on the undru’s neck to keep her balance, and half dozed even through the pain.

Edward seemed oblivious to what she was suffering. He kept his head down, looking at the shells in the dim starlight, walking beside the undru.

At long last, the sun rose over the ocean. It brought a welcome sight: The cliffs were ahead. Ann could even make out the cave openings, very small. Safety was within reach. We’re going to make it.

Then she looked down at the ground. The shells were completely out of the sand now, and lay like fat upright fans on the ground, with a seam showing at the top of each one. The seams hadn’t been visible yesterday. That meant the hatching was soon, very soon.

“Edward?” The sound was faint coming from Ann’s throat. Her pain was suddenly very strong. She felt herself sliding off the back of the undru. Edward caught her and eased her to the ground. Ann clutched her belly and writhed, screaming. The contractions were unbearable, a continuous unrelenting agony. My mind is going to fracture. I can’t do this. Edward, I can’t do this. Help me.

She wasn’t speaking out loud, wasn’t even aware that she wasn’t. She dimly heard Edward, from a long way away, say, “Ann. Ann, listen to me. The baby is coming. I’ll help you with the baby, Ann. Can you hear me?” Yes. Edward. I hear you. But the words stuck in her throat as another contraction, the strongest of all, came. She could feel her child being born.

In a short time, or maybe a long time, Ann didn’t know, she was holding her bloody child in her arms, with Edward leaning over her. “It’s a boy, Ann,” he said. That part she heard. The baby cried, weakly. Then she heard something else. The undru were moaning.

The hatching was beginning.

Only a few feet away, Ann saw a scupp shell begin to rock back and forth. Everywhere the shells were moving. Edward jumped to his feet in terror.

“Oh God, Ann. We’re too late. It’s starting.”

The undru began to lower themselves onto their knees, their heads pulling in toward their chests.

“Edward. Edward, listen.” His eyes were wild, and she didn’t know if she had the strength to make him hear her. “The undru.”

“What about the undru? They’ll survive without my help. We’re the ones who will die, Ann. We didn’t make it after all. I was right!” He started laughing. It was not a sane sound.

“Edward. Take the baby. Hide inside the undru.” She pulled weakly at the knife on her belt.

Edward had one, too. At last he understood what she meant.

There was a moment that seemed to last an eternity in which Edward was obviously torn between making a run for the caves—so near!—leaving her and the baby to their fate, or staying to help his family, his flesh and blood. Ann held her breath and simply stared into his eyes, willing him to be a man, to do the right thing. Then he blinked and looked away from her, his decision made.

He whipped out his own knife and turned to the nearer of the two beasts. The undru were hooting and moaning, and trying to crunch into protective balls. The yoke was preventing them from completing their crouches. Edward was still able to get to the softer underbelly of the near one. Thank God his knife was sharpened recently. A large red gash appeared where Edward slashed at the animal. He dug his hands into the side of the undru, ignoring its bellows and struggles to get away from him. He pulled out handfuls of steaming innards, gagging and coughing at the stench and the sight of the animal’s viscera, then turned to Ann. As he picked her and the baby up, the shells opened, disgorging their contents in a violent spew toward the sun. He ran with her to the bleeding carcass, and began to pull open the tough side of the creature, to make a space for her. She tried to get him to take the baby and save himself, but he either didn’t understand her or chose to ignore her, continuing to open the belly of the undru.

All at once, the sky darkened with teeming untold numbers of flying discs. They began to land on Ann, on Edward, on everything. As soon as one landed, the disc sprouted claws and a mouth. Then it began to feed on any creature in its path. The bites were excruciating, and Ann found herself writhing around in an attempt to beat the scupps off her body and that of her son. They came off easily, but there were so many of them that she would be unable to hold them off for long.

Edward shoved Ann and the baby into the body of the animal. He barely got them in, Ann shielding her son with her body and trying to make sure the baby had air, before turning to the other undru, to slash its belly open and make room for himself. But he was too late. The undru had managed to complete its crouch, and now its scales were a defense against Edward’s knife, as much as against the scupps.

He was forced to turn back to the first undru and try to squeeze himself into the opening that was already a tight fit for Ann. He couldn’t get completely inside. The scupps began to feed on Edward’s unprotected back. She desperately tried to make room for him, but he couldn’t come any farther.

Edward bit his lips, but couldn’t keep from screaming with the pain. He forced his body to remain still, to block the opening, protecting Ann and the baby. He could have run, but he didn’t. Ann looked into his eyes. He hadn’t been a coward after all, at the end, when it mattered. She should be the one dying, the one protecting him. She was the strong one. But she couldn’t help feeling glad that she would live, despite her guilt at watching Edward die in her place.

“I love you, Edward.” She had said it before. She realized now that she meant it.

“Love. You. Ann.” The words were bitten out through the pain. Then one of the scupps burrowed into Edward’s spine, and he suddenly went limp. His body blocked the scupps from coming farther into the undru’s carcass and feeding on Ann as well, but that wouldn’t hold them for long. She had to think, to be strong still. Edward’s death was not enough.

Ann sobbed inside the undru, holding her son, looking at her husband, his now dead eyes staring unblinkingly back at her. She forced herself to burrow deeper into the beast, retching with the stench and hot closeness and blood. She was up behind the ribcage now, and she pressed against the lungs and heart of the beast. She found the windpipe and tore it free, letting a bit more air into the cramped space. The scupps were eating behind her; she could hear them everywhere.

Ann was nearly blinded by the darkness and the gore, but her sense of hearing was heightened. As she listened, the sound changed. The scupps were doing something different now. They were scraping against each other, shell on shell, rhythmically, hypnotically. The sounds of chewing stopped, changed to an odd vibrating hiss. The sound was frightening, but not as menacing as the chewing. She slid back down to Edward’s body, or what was left of it, and peered out.

The scupps were changing. The little discs were now completely unfurled and were more oblong than round, one side rough and shell-like, the other raw and unprotected. I must remember this and tell the others. When they are like this we can find a way to defeat them. As she watched, the scupps rubbed over and under each other, hissing, until two of them rubbed raw sides over each other and stopped, fastened together, with only the rough outsides exposed. Then others paired off, and more, until the ground was covered with very small versions of the large scupp shells, with only seams to show that what had once been two creatures was now one.

The scupp shells burrowed back into the earth, hiding themselves once more from view, as the cycle began anew.

Ann crawled carefully from the body of the undru. Its hide had protected her, but Edward had saved her. He was little more than a skeleton now, though his face had largely escaped the predations. He looked at peace to Ann. In fact, he looked strong.

She looked up at the cliff caves and saw people pouring out of them, running to meet her, now that the scupps were no longer a threat. She sat, grateful that her journey was at an end, nursing her son, waiting for them to come. The thought that life had come from so much death was soothing to her, and she rocked her son in her arms and crooned to him as she nursed.

Nathaniel was the first of the people to reach her.

“My God. What happened to Edward? How did you make it? We couldn’t quite see what was happening here. I wish we could have come to help you. We had no way to get past the scupps.”

He knelt beside her, concern on his face. The others examined the body of her husband, and that of the undru that had to die for her to live. The other undru was still alive, and trying to get up out of the crouch but was hampered by the yoke and the dead weight of its companion. Two of the men removed the yoke and helped the undru to its feet, then loaded Edward’s body carefully onto it, to take back to the cliffs for burial.

“Edward was very brave. In the end, when it mattered. He might have made it, if only he’d left me behind and run for it. But he stayed. He was strong for me. I was too weak. I wouldn’t have survived on my own.”

The others exchanged glances at this, probably wondering how to compare this new description of Edward with the way they had previously viewed him. Let them never know how he was during the journey. I will never shame his memory. His sacrifice is enough, his penance completed.

“We used the undru hide as protection. In future, we should all have hides with us to use as a shield, so we’re never caught like that again. I saw how the scupps mate. They’re vulnerable and soft on one side, just before they join together into new scupp shells. We can use that to our advantage. This planet can still be a good home for us, for our children.

“This is my son.” She held him up for everyone to see. The first child born on Respite. The hope of the future. The source of her strength. “His name is Edward.”

Afterword by Rachel Ann Dryden

“Respite” kept me from attending Uncle Orson’s Literary Bootcamp. At the time, I’d only finished one or two short stories and really had no clue what I was doing. Bootcamp would be a great way to light a fire under me, and OSC had been my favorite author since I first discovered him as a teenager. But I needed to come up with a one-page writing sample for my application. I recalled a disturbing dream I’d had a few months before in which I was on a wagon trying to outrun a menace that was about to hatch and devour everything in sight. The dream made such an impression that when I woke from it, I even sketched these creatures and their life cycle—and I can’t draw. I wrote only the first page and sent it off, so anxious about the application that I didn’t even finish writing the story. Then Mr. Card’s assistant, Kathleen Bellamy, called me one morning and said he wanted to read the whole thing. Could I send over the rest so he could read it that night?

“Sure!” I said, trying not to hyperventilate, and a frantic five hours followed. Amazingly, these two characters that began as mist in my mind came to life as soon as my fingers tapped the keyboard. I fell in love with them as I wrote, and I cried at the end. Without time for revisions, I e-mailed what I had.

The next morning Mr. Card called me in person and told me he wasn’t going to let me go to Bootcamp, since in his opinion I didn’t need the class, and he wanted to buy the story from me instead, for this new magazine he was starting. Mine was the first story purchased. Then he advised me to work on a novel next instead of more short stories. While I’ll always disagree with him about not needing the class, I’ve taken his advice to heart and at the time of this writing have almost completed
Outleaf.

One of my favorite aspects of writing speculative fiction is that established authors in the field are so willing to mentor the newcomers. Thank you to Mr. Card for giving me my start.

Yi Qin
came to visit Weng Hao’s Grand Carnival of Curiosities on a spring day, with the air sharp and clear. She was humbly dressed, not like an emissary of the Emperor at all, and she took her place in the line, and handed over her quarter-teng piece. She looked at the tigers, pacing back and forth in their cages. She watched the acrobats perform, tumbling and swooping and spinning. She listened to the storyteller, and laughed when he recounted the tale of the Little Fisherman and the Seven Foolish Demons.

She had not come, however, to see these things. They were diversions; amusing in their way, but no more than that. No; she had come, like everyone else, to see the Box of Beautiful Things.

But not for the same reason.

There was a long line. Even though the carnival was camped in the middle of a dusty plain, people had come from a hundred li in every direction, spurred on by rumor. Weng Hao himself was marshaling the customers. As Yi Qin waited for her turn (for no more than ten people at a time were allowed into the tent where the Box of Beautiful Things was kept), she studied him. He was a big man; bigger, almost, than his skin could withstand. His cheeks seemed distended, and his eyes were thin black slits that he could barely open. He had a long black mustache and wore gaudy silks.

His voice boomed out, from time to time. The wait is worth it, he would cry. Why, a wait of a Great Year would be worth it, to see the Box of Beautiful Things. Such things as you have never before seen. Such things as you could not even imagine! Gaze upon beauty, and let your heart lift, to know that there is still such wonder in the world!

Yi Qin had seen many wonders, and by no means all of them were beautiful. She shuffled forward as the line moved, and folded her hands together under her sleeves. Her thumb sought the point of one of the darts she kept hidden. Not yet, she told herself. Not until you can see the Box of Beautiful Things.

The sun
was low in the west by the time she reached the head of the line. She bowed politely to Weng Hao, who was still beaming, and whose eyes could still not be seen. The Seven Ways taught that the eyes were mirrors of the soul. Yi Qin wondered what she would have read, if she could have seen into his eyes.

She wondered, too, what he might be able to read in hers; and looked away.

Inside the tent, there were only two lanterns. Curtains hung, thick velvet, fringed with tassels. The Box of Beautiful Things was resting on some kind of platform. It was black, smooth and shiny, lacquered and inset with mother-of-pearl. It stood as tall as a man, as broad as a man’s reach. Its doors were open wide. And inside it…

Yi Qin pricked her thumb with the dart, and withdrew her hand. She smeared the blood onto her forehead, drawing the sign that was the Fourth Unspoken Word: The Word That Allows the Truth to Be Discerned.

There was nothing beautiful in the box.

There was nothing inside it at all.

In front of her, nine other people were marveling, and whispering to one another as they pointed out one beautiful thing after another. Yi Qin stood slightly apart from them, and looked into the empty box. When another woman asked her what she thought of the red cheongsam, with the silver dragon picked out in meticulous detail, she smiled politely and agreed that it was exquisite. When a man loudly declared he had never seen such fine goldwork—and he was a goldsmith himself, who could only dream of creating such beauty—she nodded with the others. And, after the others were drunk on beauty, and could endure no more of it, she filed out carefully behind them. She lifted a red cloth to her face, dabbing away the blood from her brow, under the pretense of mopping up tears that had been brought forth by unworldly beauty.

Then she sat down on a rock nearby, and waited for the fall of night.

A man came to her, as the sun was just dipping behind the western mountains.

“Your pardon, lady, but the carnival is closing. You must be away from here.”

“I was hoping,” she told him, “that I might speak with the estimable Weng Hao.”

“Master Weng Hao is a busy man,” he said. “I can bear him a message, perhaps. But it is not possible to speak with him.”

“I must insist,” she said, rising to her feet. “Perhaps, if you tell him what I have shown you, he will wish to talk?”

“You have not shown me anything, lady,” the man said.

In response, Yi Qin reached inside the bag she carried, and withdrew a tablet. The last rays of the setting sun caught the embossed symbols carved on it. The man bowed, very low.

“Your pardon, noble lady. Please, forgive me. I did not know you were an emissary of the Emperor.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” she told him, tucking the tablet back into her bag. “But you will tell Weng Hao that I wish to speak with him, concerning the Box of Beautiful Things?”

“I will tell him, noble lady,” the man said, and bowed again.

Yi Qin sat down again on her rock, and waited. The sun slid below the horizon; First Moon followed it down, while Third Moon shone big and pale in the eastern sky.

“I am honored,” a voice said from nearby. “An emissary of the Emperor himself, come to my humble carnival! Truly, this is a blessing. How may I be of service, noble lady?”

Yi Qin rose, and bowed toward Weng Hao, who was approaching, bearing a lantern.

“I would talk, Weng Hao,”

“By all means! I love to talk!” He laughed, expansively. “But this is no place for it. Come to my pavilion! I will offer you food, and rice wine, and listen eagerly to what you have to say.”

“I would prefer, Weng Hao, to talk here, under the eye of Third Moon.”

He bowed. “If that is what the Emperor’s Emissary wishes, then that is what shall be! As a loyal subject…”

“Are you a loyal subject of the Emperor?” Yi Qin asked, mildly.

Insofar as it was possible to tell, behind the smooth face and inflated cheeks, Weng Hao looked surprised. “Do you doubt it?”

“If I may speak frankly, Weng Hao; then yes, I doubt it. I have seen certain things, today, which give me cause to doubt that you are a loyal subject of the Emperor. Which make me doubt, even, whether your name is truly Weng Hao.”

“And why do you doubt these things, lady?”

“Because you are a charlatan, Weng Hao.”

“A charlatan? If so noble a person as the Emperor’s Emissary tells me, then it must be so; and yet, I do not understand. I would be grateful beyond measure if you could explain this to me.”

“A thousand people come to your carnival every day, Weng Hao. They come because you have a tent in which there is a Box of Beautiful Things. But the box is empty, Weng Hao. There is nothing beautiful in illusion; in conjuring.”

“In conjuring? And how, pray enlighten me, did you discern that the Box of Beautiful Things was empty?”

“By revealing the truth.”

“And this truth was revealed by what means? By conjuring, perhaps?”

“Just so,” she said, with a small tilt of the head. “But it is truth, nonetheless.”

“If only the truth were so simple. A thousand people came to my carnival today. All but one have left with gladness in their hearts. They will remember for many years all the beautiful and wonderful things that they have seen at my carnival.”

“That they believe they have seen.”

“And what is stronger than belief? Go to them, Emissary. Ask them what they saw. Tell them, if you wish, that it was but conjuring; a trick. They will not believe you. They believe what they have seen.”

“They believe a lie.”

“And the truth is so valuable? What is the virtue of truth, Emissary? Can you say that you have never told a lie, in all your life?”

“I have told many lies,” she admitted. “Where it has been necessary. You lie, sir, purely for your own convenience. You lie to draw people to your carnival. You have fine tigers, and nimble acrobats, and talented storytellers; but there are a dozen carnivals which can boast such things. It is trickery and illusion that draws people to come here, and to place a quarter-teng piece into a bowl. You are a wealthy man, Weng Hao, but your wealth has come from lies.”

“I am accounted a wealthy man by some,” he admitted. “But wealth is a relative thing. I force no one to come to my carnival. It is the word that brings people here, the word of mouth. People speak of the beauty they have seen. ‘You must go to Weng Hao’s Grand Carnival of Curiosities,’ they say. ‘You must see the Box of Beautiful Things. Such beauty, such wonderful things, as you cannot imagine!’ This is why they come, Emissary. They pay but a quarter teng to see things that they will remember for years to come; things they will tell even to their grandchildren. They buy beauty, and the memory of beauty.”

“They buy lies,” Yi Qin maintained.

Weng Hao shrugged. “If you say so. But I wonder, perhaps, if they see a truth that you cannot. You did not wish to see beauty, when you came here, did you? You wished only to uncover your truth; but your truth is a sad, mean-spirited thing. You would deprive the world of beauty, Emissary. You would steal its dreams.”

Yi Qin said nothing. The night folded itself around the carnival tents. Geckos barked to one another in the dusty plain.

“Show me the Box of Beautiful Things,” she said, eventually.

Weng Hao smiled. “But of course! Come, let me enumerate its wondrous contents.” He rose, and carried on speaking as they walked to the tent where the Box of Beautiful Things was kept. “There is the most magnificent gold filigree, jewelry that surpasses the work of even Grand Master Lin Fu! There is porcelain, so fine that it is translucent, so delicate that even the Emperor has none to equal it. And the silks…colors, my lady, that you have never seen; colors that only your dreams have ever held.”

“Please,” she said. “Do not recount these things. Let me see for myself.”

He ushered her through the opening of the tent, and followed her inside. The lamps had been extinguished; but he lifted the lantern he held, and its orange light spilled into the open box.

Yi Qin, her arms folded together under her sleeves, looked into the Box of Beautiful Things.

A necklace of gold filigree, delicate as a spiderweb, bright as the morning sun on Mount Yang. A jade dragon, smooth as water, cool as a blessing. Silks, as vivid as dreams. Porcelain, pale as milk. Pearls and rubies and feathers. Shapes and colors and textures that made her heart ache.

She knew none of it was real. Her thumb pressed, lightly, against the dart under her sleeve; but so lightly that it did not pierce the skin, and draw forth blood.

She looked into the Box of Beautiful Things for a long time.

Then she sighed, and pressed her thumb hard onto the point of the dart. With swift, precise movements, she withdrew her bloody hand, and reached forward, and inscribed the First Unspoken Word onto the beautiful black, lacquered wood.

The First Unspoken Word: The Word That Releases Hungry Flames.

Weng Hao shrieked, and flapped his sleeves in alarm, but there was nothing he could do. In a moment, the lacquered box was ablaze; spitting and crackling and consuming itself. Flames leapt to the heavy drapery, and in a moment the whole tent was alive with fire. Yi Qin walked, very calmly, out into the night air, and stood aside, watching the tent burn, watching Weng Hao’s men bustle uselessly around it, for there was not enough water, here in this dry place, to have the slightest hope of quenching the fire.

Weng Hao stood in front of Yi Qin and cried.

“Why have you done this? You have destroyed it! You have destroyed the box! You have destroyed my livelihood!”

“You have a carnival, Weng Hao,” she answered him, quiet and adamant against the torrent of his emotions. “You have a carnival like any other, with tigers, and acrobats, and storytellers. Settle for that, and make your living without the Box of Beautiful Things.”

She was sure that, if she had not been an Emissary of the Emperor, he would have killed her where she stood; or would, rather, have attempted it. Instead, he merely dropped to his knees. Tears spilled out onto his enormous cheeks.

“You have destroyed beauty,” he wailed. “You are wicked, Emissary. Wicked beyond measure! These are not just my tears! These are the tears of thousands, who will come to my carnival, because they have heard tales of the Box of Beautiful Things, and wish only to see it for themselves; and I must tell them that it is no more. That it was burnt. That the beauty is gone, forever.”

“Until you find another conjuror,” Yi Qin said, quietly, calmly, “who can work such magic for you. It is not, I think, as if you lack the money to pay for such a thing? But next time, Weng Hao; next time, I advise you this. Create a little less beauty. Create colors that are wondrous, but which people have seen before. Create jewelry that is no more than the equal of the work of Master Lin Fu. You have reached too high, Weng Hao. The Emperor does not care to think that, in all his realm, there is such beauty owned by another.”

Weng Hao stared at her.

“The Emperor is jealous? You have burnt my Box of Beautiful Things because the Emperor is jealous?”

Yi Qin said nothing. There was nothing she could say. She simply turned, and walked away into the night, and remembered beauty.

Afterword by Brian Dolton

1—The Title

Titles come from all kinds of places. There’s a Scottish singer-songwriter called Jackie Leven who has some really great song titles (and some really great songs, though the two don’t always match up). One song is called “Burning the Box of Beautiful Things” (which itself, I believe, is borrowed from a book by Alex Seago—see, we just get our ideas from other people!), which I just thought was a great image. I knew I wanted to write a story about the box. I just didn’t have a clue what the story was…

2—The Story

Online, I hang at a writing group called Liberty Hall, run by the wonderful Mike Munsil. The site features writing challenges; you get a trigger, which may be a word, a quotation, a picture…anything. And you get ninety minutes to write a story. Yep; a complete story in an hour and a half. It sounds absurdly daunting, but it’s a great way to get sat down, stop thinking about stuff, and actually
write.
Of course, it helps that I can dump between two and three thousand words onto a page in that time…