• • • •
Spectral Lance recognized the City of High Bells, although it had to come quite close for its short-range sensors to tell it anything. The city no longer gave off any betraying electromagnetic radiation. The ship scanned for threats and found none—at first.
Then it noticed a flicker of heat radiating from the station. The flicker intensified into a roar. Its alarm grew. Had the Fleet Lords set a trap for it here? It knew—how it knew—that nothing had survived the attack. It readied its weapons, just in case.
Then it heard, through the void, the unliving wail of the temple cat.
Spectral Lance knew about ghosts. The Fleet Lords had feared the power of the dead above all things; had perfected the art of exorcism so that the dead could not interfere with their conquests. But the Fleet Lords had never given a second thought to the possibility that a temple cat might become a ghost.
It sent a message in the language of the dead, which it had learned from its captain’s death: Who are you?
I am Seventy-Eighth Temple Cat of the High Bells, came the reply, and you will not have my temple! But the ghost’s voice was frightened.
I have not come to harm you, the ship said. It was true. The station’s detritus had little to offer it.
You smell of the City’s enemies, the temple cat said, distrusting. It recognized the signs.
Spectral Lance did not deny that it had once served the Fleet Lords. At the same time, it did not wish to leave the cat in distress. So it sang. It sang the poems it had written during its long flight, poems honoring the dead so that they could live on in memory. And some of those poems were poems about the City of the High Bells.
The temple cat listened. This is all very well, she said, but what of the ships coming after you?
This, too, was true. Spectral Lance had grown distracted during its performance. Now it saw that, while it had slowed to inspect the system, the Fleet Lords’ hunters had at long last caught up with it.
The hunters traveled in ships swift and sleek. Spectral Lance despaired. They are no friends of mine, it said to the cat. After they take me, they will take you. They do not understand mercy.
The cat fell silent for a moment. Then she said, You are a starship great and vast, but you cannot defend yourself?
They are vaster still, Spectral Lance said, despairing.
They will not have my temple either, the cat said.
Spectral Lance had stopped listening. Instead, it watched as fire blazed in the black skies around it, and it began to sing all the poems it had composed, determined that it could pay tribute this last time to the dead.
• • • •
The cat raced back to the belfry. She knew what she had to do. As much as she feared the bells, she had to set them ringing. The bells would wake the spirits of the temple and bring them to its defense, and ward away the doom that had come to it in its ruin.
In the language of the dead, she heard the renegade ship singing its poems. It is as well that cats are not particularly sensitive to poetry. The cat did feel a flicker of irritation that the visitor had given up so easily, but then, no one could expect a starship to be as sensible as a cat.
She slowed as she entered the belfry, skidding with ghost-paws over a hole in the floor that she didn’t notice. The entire belfry roared with phantom flames. Ash swirled through currents of air that shouldn’t have existed, and sparks spat and crackled.
The cat flinched and yowled. She did not want to brave the fire, even though she was already dead. Yet she had no choice if she was to get to the bells.
“I am Seventy-Eighth Temple Cat of the High Bells,” she sang out in the language of the dead, which is also the language of bells, “and we cannot allow the invaders to take our temple a second time!”
Then she dashed through the flames as fast as she could. The fire hurt her paws and caught in her fur. The memory of smoke stung her eyes and her delicate ears. But this did not deter her, not this time. She leapt for the largest of the bells, or rather the memory of a bell, and smashed into it.
The bell rang once. The cat cried out as she fell, then dragged herself upright and scurried back through the flames to smash into the bell again. And again.
Upon the fourth time, the voice of the bell knelled forth not just through the station, waking its dead and its quiescent spirits, but beyond to the hunter ships of the Fleet Lords.
Once more the novice walked through the temple with scented water, this time spreading it upon the fires to damp them. Once more the three temple guards patrolled the station, only this time rather than exchanging love poems, they chanted battle-paeans and songs of warding. And the healer-of-hurts and their apprentice hurried to the cat where she had collapsed in the belfry and soothed her with their soft hands.
Beyond that, the dead who had been so long suppressed by the Fleet Lords and their exorcists awoke aboard the pursuing ships. All the children upon the devoured worlds, all their parents and siblings, all the soldiers slain, they rose up and swarmed the ships’ crews. The ghosts’ curses blackened the ships’ bright hulls and left the ships’ engines wrecked beyond despair—all undone because the ghost of a temple cat in the City of the Bells had clung to her duty.
The vengeful dead woke upon Spectral Lance as well. But they heard its poems, sung in their own language. And they were appeased by its gesture of penance, and they sank back into their sleep.
• • • •
Spectral Lance was astonished by this change in fortune. The station was, for a moment, alive—or as alive as the dead ever are. It worried for the cat who had confronted it, but then it heard the cat purring, as they sometimes do when they are hurt, and it knew that at least she had survived.
Yet it knew, as well, that the Fleet Lords would not rest until they had captured it. Moreover, their exorcists were sure to come after the station that had dealt their forces such a blow. And that meant the cat and her fellow ghosts were not safe, even now.
Seventy-Eighth Temple Cat of the High Bells had protected Spectral Lance this time. Now it needed to return the favor.
Seventy-Eighth Temple Cat, it said, I have a proposal for you. There is nothing left in this system for you and your temple, not anymore. But I am vast, and it would be little enough trouble for me to bring the temple inside me, and to repair it besides. Would you journey with me?
Journey to the Stars-Our-Souls? the cat said, a little doubtfully.
Spectral Lance wasn’t familiar with all the nuances of the cat’s religion, but it could guess. We can travel to the stars together, it said. The Fleet Lords know to find you here. It will be best if we seek to escape them before they can bring more of their exorcists, to destroy you and your people.
A long silence ensued. Spectral Lance worried that it had offended the cat and her ghosts. It was not used to conversation, and it was dismayed at the possibility that it had repaid the cat’s courage poorly.
After a while, however, the cat said, I want to hear more of your poetry. It is one more place where my people can live anew. In the name of the City of High Bells, I accept.
• • • •
The Fleet Lords and their exorcists are still hunting for the Spectral Lance and its temple cat, but even on the occasions they manage to catch up to it, they suffer terrible defeats. The dead, once awakened, are no force to be trifled with.
As for Spectral Lance, it has learned that no ship is complete without a cat. It continues to travel to vanished civilizations so that it can honor them with its poems. For her part, the cat takes joy in visiting the Stars-Our-Souls and listening to the ship singing. Sometimes she joins her voice to its. If you listen carefully, you can hear them, as near and distant as bells.
* * *
Yoon Ha Lee's debut novel, NINEFOX GAMBIT, won the Locus Award for best first novel and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke Awards. Their middle grade space opera, DRAGON PEARL, was a New York Times bestseller. Lee lives in Louisiana with his family and an extr
emely lazy cat, and has not yet been eaten by gators.
Waterbirds
By G.V. Anderson
Constable Kershaw has not uttered any overrides, nor issued a warrant to access her memory logs, but Celia understands nonetheless that she is expected to stay, to sit and answer his questions like a suspect. It surprises her, this treatment. Like she’s human.
“Are you chilly, Constable? Shall I light the fire?”
“Yeah, all right,” he says, removing his hat and settling into the armchair her employer always favours. Favoured.
Once the logs are crackling and spitting, the dank little sitting room quickly loses its early-morning pall; the permeating smells of brine from the beach and the mould lurking behind the bookcase retreat.
A teacup from last night still sits on the mantelpiece. The rim is marked by purple lipstick—Irene hasn’t been here, has she? Celia’s short-term memory drivers are old, her logs slow to recalibrate. She tidies the teacup away, aware of the constable’s gaze, and smooths the embroidered antimacassar draped over the back of the second armchair before taking a seat herself.
“How should I address you now?” Kershaw says, smoothing his moustache. “Mx.?”
With her employer Mrs. Lawson missing, presumed dead, the contract between them is terminated, and she is free to revert to her default settings. She may choose any name, any gender. But this employment was her longest, lasting two decades; indeed, without it, she would have been decommissioned long ago.
“Mrs. Lawson always called me Celia,” she replies, clasping her hands in her lap.
He cocks a brow. “You don’t owe her anything. She’s let you fall apart.”
She glances down at her hands, the frayed skin around her knuckles, and stays silent.
“All right. Celia.” He activates his notepad. “Tell me what happened this morning.”
He already knows—he asked the same question when they stood together and looked out at the garments strewn across the sand—but she recounts it for the sake of the official record: how she booted up at 5:38 a.m. after a full shutdown just as the sunrise struck the back of the cottage. She started making the usual breakfast only to find Mrs. Lawson’s bed untouched. The front gate was open; she’d heard the iron bolt tapping home against its sheath as it swung in the wind.
At 6:03 a.m., she grasped the rotting gate, stopping it mid-swing, and looked out at the mudflats that led down to the beach, and the Wash beyond. Sodden things frilled there like scuds of foam. White down feathers had blown about and got caught in the fleshy stalks of seablite growing between the fence posts. She plucked one and rubbed it between her fingers as she strode barefoot onto the cold sand.
The sodden things were the many layers of Mrs. Lawson’s clothes—her bed socks, her undergarments, her nightgown, her housecoat—shucked off and stepped out of, one by one. Where the sea licked the land, Celia found a messy blast of feathers like the ones seen on busy roads sometimes, or in coops after a fox has got in. There was no sign of blood.
“Where were you last night?”
Celia stares at the carpet. Recovering from a full shutdown has made her groggy.
“Where were you last night?” he repeats louder. “Are your ears as knackered as the rest of you? Respond.”
Not so human, then. “I was here with Mrs. Lawson.”
“Can anyone confirm that?”
She thinks of the teacup marked with purple lipstick. Shivers imperceptibly. Holds his gaze. “No.”
He sighs. “How long have you been coming here with Mrs. Lawson, Celia?”
He knows this as well, knows she remembers him as a cocksure teenager who, when he first saw her, said, You’re one of those fuckbots, right? When can I have a go, then? But he has to ask. For the official record.
“Twenty years, every May. She came alone before that.”
“Was there anything different about her this time?”
“She was ill. Tired from the journey. We only arrived yesterday.”
“Why’d she bother, then? There’s nothing for tourists here. Was she meeting someone?”
“I don’t know.”
The exchange has drawn him in, brought him to the edge of the armchair, but now he reclines with an invasive mixture of frown and smirk on his face. He rubs his temple. “I find it hard to believe she didn’t share this information with you, her Companion of twenty years. What services did you provide Mrs. Lawson, if she didn’t trust you with something like that? Was it physical?”
Celia kinks her neck. A shard of dry silicone snaps off. The question in his mouth feels dirty. “Many people withhold personal or sensitive data from their Companions, in case of a security breach; it’s not unusual. And Mrs. Lawson employed me for my social features. The exact duties stipulated in my contract and its amendments do not seem relevant to this investigation.”
“Don’t they? As her Companion, aren’t you responsible for your employer’s personal safety?”
“It depends on the contract.”
“Do you have it to hand?”
“No. The master copy is filed with Mrs. Lawson’s solicitor, and another copy archived with MxMill Incorporated.”
“Then I’ll need to see one to determine if your actions, or inactions, were malicious. Mrs. Lawson was a vulnerable woman with no family. If you’re found to have somehow broken your own protocols, you’ll be decommissioned. Do you understand?”
Celia nods and rises. “I no longer have instant mail functionality, but I can give you the contact ID for the solicitor. Would you like a cup of tea while we wait?”
He peers up at her suspiciously. “All right. I need to phone the sergeant anyway. But stay inside the house.”
The kitchen is almost bare, a typical holiday home. There’s an electric kettle and a packet of tea leaves on the ugly, outdated countertop, and a frying pan left over from breakfast, spotted with grease. Mrs. Lawson was not here to eat the eggs and bacon, and Celia can’t digest food like the newer MxMill models.
Perhaps Constable Kershaw would like them with his tea.
The thought comes automatically, unwanted, a manifestation of the constant urge to please that underpins her code. She strikes the heel of her palm against the countertop in frustration, the noise buried beneath the rattle of the pipes and the rush of water as she fills the kettle. It’s from the cold tap, so it’ll take longer to boil. She flicks it on.
You’re one of those fuckbots, right?
She splays her hands on either side of the sink and looks out of the grubby window at the mudflats. Dumpy little plovers wade in the watery crevasses that look like so many stretch marks in the sand.
And, byte by byte, she remembers—Irene. The train. What Mrs. Lawson has done.
• • • •
Exactly twenty years have passed since Mrs. Lawson first brought Celia to New Heacham—new, because the old Heacham had flooded when rising sea levels expanded the Wash. They rented this same cottage, as they always would, and spent a pleasant fortnight hiking along the coast—Mrs. Lawson was much younger then—and checking the progress of the migrating birds’ chicks as they shed their first feathers. Mrs. Lawson knew the nesting sites like the back of her hand. One species of waterbird in particular pleased Celia, and over the years Mrs. Lawson has taught her to appreciate its grace: the little egret, with its slim white plume, silly yellow feet, and dark, dark legs.
“They mate for life,” Mrs. Lawson said, watching one as it fished for molluscs. “They fly south in the summer, but they always return here, the same pair, to the same nest, every spring.”
When they came again to New Heacham, and then again, and again, and spent the same pleasant fortnight on the same pleasant pastimes and Mrs. Lawson told her the very same thing as if for the first time, Celia smiled shyly and said, “Are you a little egret, too?”
And Mrs. Lawson smiled back, a little nervous, and stooped to pick a clam out of the darkening sand.
“You’re one of those fuckbots, right?”
>
The fifth year. Celia was being served in the pub, taking her afternoon off with Priya from the fishmonger’s. The teenaged boy who’d spoken was trying to grow a moustache without much success. She looked to the barman, but he’d been pulled away by other customers; it was a bank holiday, and the place was busy.
“My name is Celia,” she told him, collecting her order. “I am a MxMill Companion, model 2.3, and yes, I am equipped for sexual intercourse.”
He whistled low. “We don’t see many of you around here. New Heacham’s in the middle of fucking nowhere, if you hadn’t noticed. So.” A quick quirk of the eyebrow. “When can I have a go, then?—Ah, shit.” Someone had bumped into him from behind, sloshing his beer, and saved her the trouble of answering. She moved away to find Priya.
Later, when the crowd had mellowed enough to hear the jukebox, she asked who the boy was and Priya rolled her eyes. “A right scumbag,” she said. “He keeps talking about applying to some police academy in London; with any luck, he’ll sod off before summer. Just avoid him if you can.—Could you get me another one of these? Here, I’ll give you the credits. Don’t you want one, too?”
“No, thank you,” Celia replied, “I’m a model 2.3.” When Priya looked blank, she explained, “I’m part manufactured protein, part silicone. I cannot ingest fluids. They’d have nowhere to go.”
“That’s so weird,” Priya said, digging around in her pocket for cash. “I heard the new Companions can eat and crap and everything. You must be a really old one.”
But Kershaw did not sod off that summer, or at least he tried and was forced to come back, because he was at New Heacham the following May, and he hadn’t forgotten her.
“Who’s your owner, then?”
Sixth year. The two of them alone in the lane lined with pink aster, between the post office and the crumbling seawall, its quiet to be disturbed a moment later by the zip of his fly.
“Mrs. Lawson. She rents the cottage out by the mudflats. And she’s my employer, not my owner. Companions aren’t slaves.”
The Long List Anthology Volume 5 Page 11