Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, #9, July 2008

InterGalactic Medicine Show #9 for July, 2008, offers a mixed bag of work, but starts off strong with a gem by Peter Beagle, “The Tale of Junko and Sayuri.” With excellent control of tone, Beagle gives us the story of Junko, a poor man whose name (we learn) means “genuine,” “pure,” or “obedient.” As Chief Huntsman, serving one Lord Kuroda, Junko is out pursuing game when he accidentally wounds an otter with an arrow. Unaccountably drawn to the animal, he nurses it back to health rather than finishing it off, and he names it Sayuri. After a few days, Junko prepares to let the otter go but feels oddly reluctant to part with it. When the time comes, he finds that Sayuri the otter has turned into Sayuri the beautiful woman. As a reward for his kindness, she sleeps with Junko, and soon they marry.

Sayuri does not halt her transformations into various animals. She makes secretive excursions at night, and Junko grows used to not asking about them. This happy, if unusual, arrangement is tinged with the unsettling question of whether or not Sayuri is human—Junko doesn’t know, and neither does she. The story becomes fraught with more mystery and conflict when Junko reveals an ambition to replace a certain man at the lord’s castle, and then that man turns up dead, killed by a wolf.

While I’m tempted to relate the entire plot to further entice would-be readers, it’s better experienced firsthand. Despite being almost novella length, it reads as quickly as a short folk tale. I will say that one of the crowning moments of this piece is an ending that I couldn’t predict, but one that, in retrospect, could have happened no other way. Beagle explores the ambiguous nature of identity and how people struggle against their own limitations, not to mention dramatizing the fear that one’s true self, once it emerges, may be horrible.

Any number of pieces following “The Tale of Junko and Sayuri” would suffer by comparison, and “Cassie’s Story” by David B. Coe does indeed struggle in the magazine’s number two slot. Structured as a jail-cell interview, the story shows a journalist getting the facts in the case of his imprisoned former colleague and former one-night stand, Cassie. She has serially murdered men throughout the city as punishment for their various crimes against women ranging from abuse to rape. There’s a twist in this scenario that classifies it as fantasy rather than realistic crime fiction, but not one any reader would find novel. “Cassie’s Story” brushes against themes of the morality of vigilante justice and how it affects the one who metes out the punishment but, again, not in a way that hasn’t been addressed before (and better) in many other stories. I kept hoping the author would do more with his material, but it turns out to be a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“Red Road” by David Barr Kirtley fairs slightly better. Set in a world where intelligent mice live in a monarchical society, the story introduces us to a mouse named Benjamin whose pro-democracy pamphlet writing has landed him in jail for sedition. Benjamin is offered a chance of freedom in exchange for accompanying the young king on a dangerous mission to avenge his father’s death, and Benjamin agrees. Once the journey begins, Benjamin reluctantly grows to like the king, especially after His Highness saves his life. A brief discussion of monarchy versus democracy occurs between the two, although democracy suffers for being stuck with Benjamin as its defender. Besides a few quickly overcome dangers, the real menace is the mysterious, horrible beast that murdered the king’s father, a beast that lives on a black, empty land. (Given the story’s title, the author probably expects that readers will quickly reach a conclusion as to the nature of the beast.) I wish, however, that Kirtley had given himself more room to develop the relationship between the two mice and perhaps to add a few extra scenes of adventure. The work’s brevity is such that the premise can’t be done justice. “Red Road” is best read as a children’s story, one about how people may give up their ideals for the sake of power, although I would also venture that it could be interpreted as a celebration of the greater power of individual liberty.

“The God-Voices of Settler’s Rest” by Ken Scholes offers an interesting contemplation of the relationship between an age of enlightenment and an age dominated by religion and mysticism. Here people live on a world where the two ages rise and fall in centuries-long cycles, and the “Age of Unknowing,” as it is called, annihilates what the prior age of reason had erected. The beginning of a religious cycle is signaled when girls begin hearing voices, which speak to them of “coming home” and being loved. Groups of women in monastic orders contemplate what the voices say, seeking to understand them. The story centers on one of these women, Mother (Abigail) Holton, Settler Priestess of the First Home Temple. Far along in age, Mother Holton reflects on her sacrifice before turning to the order. Meanwhile, she considers one new girl in particular who has begun to hear the “God-Voices.” I found this to be a refreshingly quiet piece that gains its power from the slow unfurling of the details of the world.

Bradley P. Beaulieu takes a current political issue and molds it into an admirable story of the near-future in “No Viviremos Como Presos” (We Will Not Live as Prisoners). In a time of super-diseases, cyborg-like enhancements, holovision, and a violent battle over Mexican immigration, photojournalist Miguel Rivera stumbles into a mystery. On a visit to see his grandfather, Sandro, Miguel crosses paths with a suspicious lawyer whose visit to see Sandro goes unexplained. Then a large amount of money turns up in Sandro’s bank account. Next, Sandro disappears. These events draw Miguel into the molten center of the immigration war, right along the enormous border wall. More than a barrier, this wall is equipped to locate Mexicans that attempt to cross into America and to shoot them with radio-frequency identification tags that burrow into the body. Miguel eventually discovers what his grandfather is involved in, and he cannot avoid becoming entangled in the events that unfold. In the middle of this (well-executed) intrigue and suspense, Beaulieu still keeps his eye on the unspoken feelings and motivations that make up the characters’ relationship, and he directs us to the inner conflicts Sandro and Miguel face. Indeed, the central theme is a reminder that instead of getting carried away over the abstractions of an issue, we should listen to people’s stories and try to empathize with their lives.

If Peter Beagle’s story touches the heights of this issue, “Blood and Water” by Alethea Kontis scours the depths. In this mawkish story, a siren (who has become inhabited by a vague entity with the irritating habit of speaking in abstractions) journeys above water in search of a lost love. She’s brought aboard a pirate ship and ultimately cared for by Eddie Lawson. Lawson is a murderer and pillager of the sensitive sort who really wants to return to his life as a family man. In order to keep the siren nourished, Eddie tosses men into the siren’s quarters so she can suck their blood out—along with their souls and memories. Via this method, the siren learns that her long lost love is from the same area as pirate Eddie, and they set a course for home. Shortly thereafter, the plot muddily resolves itself.

“Blood and Water” has the unfortunate tendency to offer pseudo-profundities like “love is the reason for many a wonderful and horrible thing” and trades in clichés where people are described as having “sky blue eyes” and “mops of curls.” When I reached a line about the siren wherein “the rainbow” of a victim’s “soul filled her with love until the last drop,” I felt I was the victim of a literary crime. The characters don’t rise to a level much beyond that. The story does reach for something dark, something possibly more substantial, but that attempt is lost amid the sentimentality.