Federations

Now she checks her position. Alarms sound. She is off course and hanging dead in space.

Reports and corrections flow through herself in a steady stream. Time passes. Scanners and medi-probes scrutinize those bodies still aboard ship. All are lifeless. The plan has been successful. All crew members having been exposed to the virus, all were expendable; she could not allow possible contagion to occur by bringing them home. To insure that, she sucked the virus spores into her air ducts, transferred them each time Kahr ordered an airlock opened, infected the food and water supply whenever possible.

A low rumbling begins, climbs to a piercing shriek as she starts her great Severs-stardrive engines. On the bridge the lights dance dizzily as she calculates the course to Earth and feeds corrections to Navigation. Rockets fire.

She moves—invulnerable, disease-free. Mother and mistress to the shuttlecraft which service her, Alecto returns to her old orbit.

SWANWATCH YOON HA LEE

Yoon Ha Lee’s work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, Ideomancer, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Farrago’s Wainscot, and Sybil’s Garage. She’s also appeared in the anthologies Twenty Epics, Year’s Best Fantasy #6, and Science Fiction: The Best of 2002. A new story is forthcoming in Electric Velocipede.

Lee says that she plays several instruments and composes as a hobby. Learning to use a piece of music software called Logic Studio gave her some ideas about how musicians in the future might compose, which helped in the development of this story. “Swanwatch” is about the intersection of life and music and black holes. In the story, Lee explores the notion of an interstellar society that holds suicide art in high esteem. And what could be more perfect for that purpose than a black hole?

Officially, the five exiles on the station were the Initiates of the Fermata. Unofficially, the Concert of Worlds called them the swanwatch.

The older exiles called themselves Dragon and Phoenix, Tiger and Tortoise, according to tradition based in an ancient civilization’s legends. The newest and youngest exile went by Swan. She was not a swan in the way of fairy tales. If so, she would have had a history sung across the galaxy’s billions of stars, of rapturous beauty or resolute virtue. She would have woven the hearts of dead stars into armor for the Concert’s soldiers and hushed novae to sleep so ships could safely pass. However, she was, as befitted the name they gave her, a musician.

Swan had been exiled to the station because she had offended the captain of a guestship from the scintillant core. In a moment of confusion, she had addressed him in the wrong language for the occasion. Through the convolutions of Concert politics, she wound up in the swanwatch.

The captain sent her a single expensive message across the vast space now separating them. It was because of the message that Swan first went to Dragon. Dragon was not the oldest and wisest of the swanwatch; that honor belonged to Tortoise. But Dragon loved oddments of knowledge, and he could read the calligraphy in which the captain had written his message.

“You have good taste in enemies,” Dragon commented, as though Swan had singled out the captain. Dragon was a lanky man with skin lighter than Swan’s, and he was always pacing, or whittling appallingly rare scraps of wood, or tapping earworm-rhythms upon his knee.

Swan bowed her head. I’d rather not be here, and be back with my family. She didn’t say so out loud, though. That would have implied a disregard for Dragon’s company, and she was already fond of Dragon. “Can you read it?” she asked.

“Of course I can read it, although it would help if you held the message right side up.”

Swan wasn’t illiterate, but there were many languages in the Concert of Worlds. “This way?” Swan asked, rotating the sheet.

Dragon nodded.

“What does it say?”