Mother Aegypt and Other Stories - Kage Baker

I do have another book in Baker’s “Company” series waiting, but I found this one a week and a half ago when I was trying to find something to read to distract myself from the fact I was sharing a 3 bedroom house with 15 other people for 4 days. Considering there wasn’t any place to walk for some peace and quiet, it was a potentially unpleasant set of circumstances for me.

The book has 13 of Baker’s short stories, originally published in other places. One of them, Mother Aegypt, is part of The Company series, though you wouldn’t know that if you weren’t familiar with those books. Which doesn’t detract from it, the story reads perfectly well. Like most of the other stories, it has a character who gets mixed up in things he doesn’t really understand, and plays this for a mixture of laughs and horror. The humor comes from either the absurdity of the circumstances; in this case, involving farmers angry about their giant chickens. The other side is that, if you mess around with something you don’t comprehend, you may end up with egg on your face, or it may be acid. In Baker’s works, the worlds are full of things people don’t understand or know about, or else they choose not to see it at all.

And Baker mixes it up. Sometimes the best response seems to be to not try to understand or look too closely. That, when confronted with something beyond their understanding, it’s wisest to avoid it, or, if that’s unavoidable, conclude whatever business they have with it quickly as possible, the fewer questions the better (Two Old Men being an example). There, the danger is in thinking they know what they’re up against, and they have it all figured out. That rarely works out well, and may leave Mr. Smarty-Pants scrambling to deal with the consequences (Desolation Rose).

But at other times, it’s necessary to face and deal with these other things. The character may or may not recognize what the thing they’re dealing with stands to gain, but they lack any better options (What The Tyger Told Her). In that case, the people who turn a blind eye are in the most danger, because they miss what’s happening around them. Though, their main mistake is that same arrogance of thinking they’re wiser than they are. The difference is the one between thinking they understand the players or the game, and not even recognizing the players as such. The threat is something they don’t even waste time considering, because it’s irrelevant. Until it kills them. Which is why I like What The Tyger Told Her so much, because everyone thinks they’re being so clever, that no one notices what they’re up to. Except all of them are missing the two seeing everything right in their midst, because those two are powerless. Weak, caged, ignored, taken for granted as a non-factor, and then all those assumptions are proven wrong.