“We don’t have time for this right now. We’ve got to get going. If you aren’t going to help yourself, help your child. The baby needs you to not give up.”
“It won’t matter whether I give up or not. The end result is the same.”
“It will be the same if you don’t get moving. Help me, Edward.”
He said nothing, but his lips were once more in that tight line she had come to hate. He turned away. Ann finally let herself get angry. “All right. Stay here, then. I’m taking the undru. No reason for innocent creatures to die along with you. Good-bye.” And if the child is a boy, I’m not going to name him Edward.
She tugged on the reins of the undru she was riding, and it started plodding northward again, its companion rumbling forward with them. They were still yoked together. She had thought about leaving one behind for Edward, but the yoke was too heavy for her, and he hadn’t seemed to care enough to take it off himself.
“Wait. I’m coming.” Edward ran up beside the undru.
Ann was relieved. She really hadn’t wanted to leave him behind.
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.
The Box of Beautiful Things
BY BRIAN DOLTON
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 be
fore 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.
Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show Page 27
