Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

by Edmund R. Schubert

  “Igraine’s son? You did not kill the boy?”

  “No, Arthur lives with me now, and follows me in my travels. In a year or two, he will learn his destiny,” Merlin said. “He will unite all of England and drive back the Saxons, and he will rule this stubborn realm with a gentle hand…” He hunched in the tall grass beside the pool, staring thoughtfully into water that reflected moon and stars.

  “So you helped seduce the Lady Igraine for a noble cause. But why did you bed my mother?”

  “For you!” Merlin said in surprise, as if it were obvious. “I saw that night that your mother had fey blood, and all of the omens were right. I saw that you would be wise and beautiful, and the thought came to me that Arthur would need a fair maiden by his side. The old blood is strong in you, both from me and your mother. If you marry Arthur Pendragon, perhaps together we can build a realm where the old gods are worshipped beside the new.”

  “Didn’t you think before you mounted her?” I asked. “Didn’t you think about how it would destroy her?”

  Merlin said, “I looked down the path of her future. She would have married a stableboy and borne him five fine sons and a brace of daughters. She would have been happier, perhaps—but she would not have had you!”

  “My mother died in torment because of you!” I shouted. “She died alone in the woods, because she feared letting anyone see me alive. She died friendless, because I was too young and silly to know how to save her. Her spirit is in torment still!”

  “Yes, yes,” Merlin cajoled as if I did not quite see some greater point, “I’m sure it all seems a tragedy. But you are here, are you not? You—”

  I saw then that he would not listen, that my mother’s suffering, her loneliness and shame, all meant nothing to him. She was but a pawn in his hand, a piece to be sacrificed for the sake of some greater game.

  I knew then that I hated him, and that I could never allow Merlin to use his powers against a woman this way again. And suddenly I glanced up at a shooting star, and I knew that I had the power, that the old blood was strong enough in me, that I could stop him.

  “Father,” I interrupted him, holding the lily high in my left hand. Merlin shut his mouth. “In the name of the Bright Lady I curse you: Though you shall love a woman fiercely, the greater your desire for her grows, the more lame shall be your groin. Never shall you sire a child again. Never shall you use a woman as your pawn, or your seed as a tool.”

  I stepped through the rushes to the side of the warm pool at Minerva’s failing temple, felt the living power of the goddess there as my toe touched the water.

  “No!” Merlin shouted and raised his hand with little finger and thumb splayed in a horn as he tried to ward off my spell.

  But either he was too late or the spell was too strong for him. In any case, I tossed the white lily into the still waters.

  As the wavelets rolled away from the lily, bouncing against the edges of the pool, Merlin screamed in agony and put his hands over his face.

  I believe that he was peering into his own bleak future as he cried in horror, “No! No! No!”

  I knelt and dipped my hand in the pool seven times, cupping the water and letting it run down my breasts and between my legs.

  Then I stood and merely walked away.

  Sometimes near dawn, I waken and think that I can still hear Merlin’s cries ringing in my ears. I listen then, and smile a fey smile.

  In time I made it back to my cottage in the woods, and I told the shade of my mother about all that had transpired. She seemed more at peace that night than ever before, and so before daybreak, I introduced her to the child Daffyth once again.

  I told Daffyth that she was his mother, and convinced my mother’s shade that Daffyth was a forgotten son, born from her love for a man named Andelin.

  In the still night I coaxed them to the edge of the woods, and let them go.

  When last I saw them, they were walking hand in hand on the road to Tintagel.

  As for me, I learned in time to praise the goddess for her goodness and for what I am and always hope to be—a mooncalfe, and no sorcerer’s pawn.

  Afterword by David Farland

  One day I happened to pick up a book on “extinct” English words, in which a linguist discussed words that had fallen out of use in our language. One of those words was “mooncalfe,” and the other was “bone fire,” and as I was reading, a brief image flashed through my mind of a young woman sending her prayers to heaven upon the smoke that rose from burning bones. I knew that she was a mooncalfe, and that she was twisted—but twisted in a way that left her with the unearthly beauty of a Faery on the outside and an unquenchable rage on the inside.

  At the time, I was thinking about some of the moral ambiguity in Arthurian legend. Arthur’s tale is, without a doubt, a classic “fairy tale,” in the sense that it was a cautionary tale devised to show good Christians the folly of becoming involved with fairies or taking their gifts.

  As we look at it today, we imagine that when Arthur pulls Excalibur from the stone, it is a great accomplishment. But a thousand years ago, our ancestors would have known that no good could come from such an unnatural thing. You can’t go about consorting with wizards and fairies and hope to come to a happy end. You can’t go about hoping to be more than what you are.

  So when Arthur pulls the sword from the stone, it is the beginning of his downfall, and we are left to watch him through the rest of his tale—a young Christian with a heart of gold—doggedly treading the road to ruin.

  Of course, over time, I’m sure, as Celtic beliefs were forgotten, the story changed. Arthur became a beloved hero, and Merlin was said to be a “prophet” and was twisted in such a way that Disney was able to show him as a harmless old tutor who only happened to have vast magical powers.

  But I’ve always been bothered by that disturbing genesis of Arthur’s story—where Merlin uses his shape-changing abilities to help an evil king rape a good man’s wife.

  And as the tale progresses, we see that no good can come from Merlin’s actions.

  I’ve often thought that it would be fun to rewrite the Arthur story in such a way that the modern audience would experience the sense of horror that it was meant to evoke. “The Mooncalfe,” I suppose, would be the first chapter of that story.

  Cheater

  BY ORSON SCOTT CARD

  Han Tzu was the bright and shining hope of his family. He wore a monitor embedded in the back of his skull, near the top of his spine. Once, when he was very little, his father held him between mirrors in the bathroom. He saw that a little red light glowed there. He asked his father why he had a light on him when he had never seen another child with a light.

  “Because you’re important,” said Father. “You will bring our family back to the position that was taken from us many years ago by the Communists.”

  Tzu was not sure how a little red light on his neck would raise his family up. Nor did he know what a Communist was. But he remembered the words, and when he learned to read, he tried to find stories about Communists or about the family Han or about children with little red lights. There were none to be found.

  His father played with him several times a day. He grew up with his father’s loving hands caressing him, cuffing him playfully; he grew up with his father’s smile. His father praised him whenever he learned something; it became Tzu’s endeavor every day to learn something so he could tell Father.

  “You spell my name Tzu,” said Tzu, “even though it’s pronounced just like the word ‘zi.’ T-Z-U is the old way of spelling, called…‘Wade-Giles.’ The new way is ‘pinyin.’”

  “Very good, my Tzu, my Little Master,” said Father.

  “There’s another way of writing even older than that, where each word has its own letter. It was very hard to learn and even harder to put on computer so the government changed all the books to pinyin.”

  “You are a brilliant little boy,” said Father.

  “So now people give their children names spe
lled the old Wade-Giles way because they don’t want to let go of the lost glories of ancient China.”

  Father stopped smiling. “Who told you that?”

  “It was in the book,” said Tzu. He was worried that somehow he had disappointed Father.

  “Well, it’s true. China has lost its glory. But someday it will have that glory back and all the world will see that we are still the Middle Kingdom. And do you know who will bring that glory back to China?”

  “Who, Father?”

  “My son, my Little Master, Han Tzu.”

  “Where did China’s glory go, so I can bring it back?”

  “China was the center of the world,” said Father. “We invented everything. All the barbarian kingdoms around China stole our ideas and turned them into terrible weapons. We left them in peace, but they would not leave us in peace, so they came and broke the power of the emperors. But still the Chinese resisted. Our glorious ancestor, Yuan Shikai, was the greatest general in the last age of the emperors.

  “The emperors were weak, and the revolutionaries were strong. Yuan Shikai could see that weak emperors could not protect China. So he took control of the government. He pretended to agree with the revolutionaries of Sun Yat-sen, but then destroyed them and seized the imperial throne. He started a new dynasty, but then he was poisoned by traitors and died, just as the Japanese invaded.

  “The Chinese people were punished for the death of Yuan Shikai. First the Japanese invaded China and many died. Then the Communists took over the government and ruled as evil emperors for a hundred years, growing rich from the slavery of the Chinese people. Oh how they yearned for the day of Yuan Shikai! Oh how they wished he had not been slain before he could unite China against the barbarians and the oppressors!”

  There was a light in Father’s eyes that made Tzu a little afraid and yet also very excited. “Why would they poison him if our glorious ancestor was so good for China?” he asked.

  “Because they wanted China to fail,” said Father. “They wanted China to be weak among the nations. They wanted China to be ruled by America and Russia, by India and Japan. But China always swallows up the barbarians and rises again, triumphant over all. Don’t you forget that.” Father tapped Tzu’s temples. “The hope of China is in there.”

  “In my head?”

  “To do what Yuan Shikai did, you must first become a great general. That’s why you have that monitor on the back of your neck.”

  Tzu touched the little black box. “Do great generals all have these?”

  “You are being watched. This monitor will protect you and keep you safe. I made sure you had the perfect mama to make you very, very smart. Someday they’ll give you tests. They’ll see that the blood of Yuan Shikai runs true in your veins.”

  “Where’s Mama?” asked Tzu, who at that age had no idea of what “tests” were or why someone else’s blood would be in his veins.

  “She’s at the university, of course, doing all the smart things she does. Your mother is one of the reasons that our city of Nanyang and our province of Henan are now leaders in Chinese manufacturing.”

  Tzu had heard of manufacturing. “Does she make cars?”

  “Your mother invented the process that allows almost half of the light of the sun to be converted directly to electricity. That’s why the air in Nanyang is always clean and our cars sell better than any others in the world.”

  “Then Mama should be emperor!” said Tzu.

  “But your father is very important, too,” said Father. “Because I worked hard when I was young, and I made a lot of money, and I used that money to pay for her research when nobody else thought it would lead to anything.”

  “Then you be emperor,” said Tzu.

  “I am one of the richest men in China,” said Father, “certainly the richest in Henan province. But being rich is not enough to be emperor. Neither is being smart. Though from your mother and me, you will grow up to be both.”

  “What does it take to be emperor?”

  “You must crush all your enemies and win the love and obedience of the people.”

  Tzu made a fist with his hand, as tight and strong a fist as he could. “I can crush bugs,” he said. “I crushed a beetle once.”

  “You’re very strong,” said Father. “I’m proud of you all the time.”

  Tzu got to his feet and went around the garden looking for things to crush. He tried a stone, but it wasn’t crushable. He broke a twig, but when he tried to crush the pieces, it hurt his hand. He crushed a worm and it made his hands smeary with ichor. The worm was dead. What good was a crushed worm? What was an enemy? Would it look like this when he crushed one?

  He hoped his enemies were softer than stone. He couldn’t crush stones at all. But it was messy and unpleasant to crush worms, too. It was much more fun to let them crawl across his hand.

  Tutors began to come to the house. None of them played with him for very long at a time, and each one had his own kind of games. Some of them were fun, and Tzu was very good at many of them. Children were also brought to him, boys who liked to wrestle and race, girls who wanted to play with dolls and dress up in adult clothing. “I don’t like to play with girls so much,” said Tzu to his father, but Father only answered, “You must know all kinds of people when you rule over them someday. Girls will show you what to care about. Boys will show you how to win.”

  So Tzu learned he should care about tending babies and bringing home things for the pretend mama to cook, though his own mama never cooked. He also learned to run as fast as he could and to wrestle hard and cleverly and never give up.

  When he was five years old, he read and did his numbers far better than the average for his age, and his tutors were well-satisfied with his progress. Each of them told him so.

  Then one day he had a new tutor. This tutor seemed to be more important than all the others. Tzu played with him five or six times a day, fifteen minutes at a time. And the games were new ones. There would be shapes. He would be given a red one that was eight small blocks stuck together, and then from a group of pictures of blocks he had to choose which one was the same shape. “Not the same color—it can be a different color. The same shape,” said the tutor. Soon Tzu was very good at finding that shape no matter how the picture was turned around and twisted, and no matter what color it was. Then the tutor would bring out a new shape, and they’d start over.

  He was also given logic questions that made him think for a long time, but soon he learned to find the classifications that were being used. All dogs have four legs. This animal has four legs. Is it a dog? Maybe. Only mammals have fur. This animal has fur. Is it a mammal? Yes. All dogs have four legs. This animal has three legs. Is it a dog? It might be an injured dog—some injured dogs have only three legs. But I said all dogs have four legs. And I said some dogs have only three legs because they’re broken but they’re still dogs! And the tutor smiled and agreed with him.

  Then there were the memorization tests. He learned to memorize longer and longer lists of things by putting them inside a toy cupboard the tutor told him to create in his mind, or by mentally stacking them on top of each other, or putting them inside each other. This was fun for a while, though pretty soon he got sick of having all kinds of meaningless lists perfectly memorized. It wasn’t funny after a while to have the ball come out of the fish which came out of the tree which came out of the car which came out of the briefcase, but he couldn’t get it out of his memory.

  Once he had played them often enough, Tzu became bored with all the games. That was when he realized that they were not games at all. “But you must go on,” the tutor would say. “Your father wants you to.”

  “He didn’t say so.”

  “He told me. That’s why he brought me here. So you would become very good at these games.”

  “I am very good at them.”

  “But we want you to be the best.”

  “Who is better? You?”

  “I’m an adult.”

  “How can I
be best if nobody is worst?”

  “We want you to be one of the best of all the five-year-old children in the world.”

  “Why?”

  The tutor paused, considering. Tzu knew that this meant he would probably tell a lie. “There are people who go around playing these games with children, and they give a prize to the best ones.”

  “What’s the prize?” asked Tzu suspiciously.

  “What do you want it to be?” asked the tutor playfully. Tzu hated it when he acted playful.

  “Mama to be home more. She never plays with me.”

  “Your mama is very busy. And that can’t be the prize because the people who give the prize aren’t your mama.”

  “That’s what I want.”

  “What if the prize was a ride in a spaceship?” said the tutor.

  “I don’t care about a ride in a spaceship,” said Tzu. “I saw the pictures. It’s just more stars out there, the same as you see from here in Nanyang. Only Earth is little and far away. I don’t want to be far away.”

  “Don’t worry,” said the tutor. “The prize will make you very happy and it will make your father very proud.”

  “If I win,” said Tzu. He thought of the times that other children beat him in races and wrestling. He usually won but not always. He tried to think how they would turn these games into a contest. Would he have to make shapes for the other child to guess, and the child would make shapes for him? He tried to think up logic questions and lists to memorize. Lists that you couldn’t put inside each other or stack up. Except that he could always imagine something going inside something else. He could imagine anything. He just ended up with more stupid lists he couldn’t forget.

  Life was getting dull. He wanted to go outside of the garden walls and walk around the noisy streets. He could hear cars and people and bicycles on the other side of the gate, and when he stuck his eye right up against the crack in the gate he could see them whiz by on the street. Most of the pedestrians were talking Chinese, like the servants, instead of Common, like Father and the tutors, but he understood both languages very well, and Father was proud of that, too. “Chinese is the language of emperors,” said Father, “but Common is the language that the rest of the world understands. You will be fluent in both.”