The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women

by Alex Dally MacFarlane

  Anarchism being a heritable trait in bees, a number of the daughters of the new queen found themselves questioning the purpose of the monarchy. Two were taken by the wasps and taught to read and write. On one of their visits to the hive they spotted the history of their forefathers, and, being excellent scholars, soon figured out the translation.

  They found their sisters in the hive who were unquiet in soul and whispered to them the strange knowledge they had learned among the wasps: astronomy, military strategy, the state of the world beyond the farthest flights of the bees. Hitherto educated as dancers and architects, nurses and foragers, the bees were full of a new wonder, stranger even than the first day they flew from the hive and felt the sun on their backs.

  “Govern us,” they said to the two wasp-taught anarchists, but they refused.

  “A perfect society needs no rulers,” they said. “Knowledge and authority ought to be held in common. In order to imagine a new existence, we must free ourselves from the structures of both our failed government and the unjustifiable hegemony of the wasp nests. Hear what you can hear and learn what you can learn while we remain among them. But be ready.”

  It was the first summer in Yiwei without the immemorial hum of the cartographer wasps. In the orchards, though their skins split with sweetness, fallen fruit lay unmolested, and children played barefoot with impunity. One of the villagers’ daughters, in her third year at an agricultural college, came home in the back of a pickup truck at the end of July. She thumped her single suitcase against the gate before opening it, to scatter the chickens, then raised the latch and swung the iron aside, and was immediately wrapped in a flying hug.

  Once she disentangled herself from brother and parents and liberally distributed kisses, she listened to the news she’d missed: how the cows were dying from drinking stonecutters’ dust in the streams; how grain prices were falling everywhere, despite the drought; and how her brother, little fool that he was, had torn down a wasp nest and received a faceful of red and white lumps for it. One of the most detailed wasp’s maps had reached the capital, she was told, and a bureaucrat had arrived in a sleek black car. But because the wasps were all dead, he could report little more than a prank, a freak, or a miracle. There were no further inquiries.

  Her brother produced for her inspection the brittle, boiled bodies of several wasps in a glass jar, along with one of the smaller maps. She tickled him until he surrendered his trophies, promised him a basket of peaches in return, and let herself be fed to tautness. Then, to her family’s dismay, she wrote an urgent letter to the Academy of Sciences and packed a satchel with clothes and cash. If she could find one more nest of wasps, she said, it would make their fortune and her name. But it had to be done quickly.

  In the morning, before the cockerels woke and while the sky was still purple, she hopped onto her old bicycle and rode down the dusty path.

  Bees do not fly at night or lie to each other, but the anarchists had learned both from the wasps. On a warm, clear evening they left the hive at last, flying west in a small tight cloud. Around them swelled the voices of summer insects, strange and disquieting. Several miles west of the old hive and the wasp nest, in a lightning-scarred elm, the anarchists had built up a small stock of stolen honey sealed in wax and paper. They rested there for the night, in cells of clean white wax, and in the morning they arose to the building of their city.

  The first business of the new colony was the laying of eggs, which a number of workers set to, and provisions for winter. One egg from the old queen, brought from the hive in an anarchist’s jaws, was hatched and raised as a new mother. Uncrowned and unconcerned, she too laid mortar and wax, chewed wood to make paper, and fanned the storerooms with her wings.

  The anarchists labored secretly but rapidly, drones alongside workers, because the copper taste of autumn was in the air. None had seen a winter before, but the memory of the species is subtle and long, and in their hearts, despite the summer sun, they felt an imminent darkness.

  The flowers were fading in the fields. Every day the anarchists added to their coffers of warm gold and built their white walls higher. Every day the air grew a little crisper, the grass a little drier. They sang as they worked, sometimes ballads from the old hive, sometimes anthems of their own devising, and for a time they were happy. Too soon, the leaves turned flame colors and blew from the trees, and then there were no more flowers. The anarchists pressed down the lid on the last vat of honey and wondered what was coming.

  Four miles away, at the first touch of cold, the wasps licked shut their paper doors and slept in a tight knot around the foundress. In both beehives, the bees huddled together, awake and watchful, warming themselves with the thrumming of their wings. The anarchists murmured comfort to each other.

  “There will be more, after us. It will breed out again.”

  “We are only the beginning.”

  “There will be more.”

  Snow fell silently outside.

  The snow was ankle-deep and the river iced over when the girl from Yiwei reached up into the empty branches of an oak tree and plucked down the paper castle of a nest. The wasps within, drowsy with cold, murmured but did not stir. In their barracks the soldiers dreamed of the unexplored south and battles in strange cities, among strange peoples, and scouts dreamed of the corpses of starved and frozen deer. The cartographers dreamed of the changes that winter would work on the landscape, the diverted creeks and dead trees they would have to note down. They did not feel the burlap bag that settled around them, nor the crunch of tires on the frozen road.

  She had spent weeks tramping through the countryside, questioning beekeepers and villagers’ children, peering up into trees and into hives, before she found the last wasps from Yiwei. Then she had had to wait for winter and the anesthetizing cold. But now, back in the warmth of her own room, she broke open the soft pages of the nest and pushed aside the heaps of glistening wasps until she found the foundress herself, stumbling on uncertain legs.

  When it thawed, she would breed new foundresses among the village’s apricot trees. The letters she received indicated a great demand for them in the capital, particularly from army generals and the captains of scientific explorations. In years to come, the village of Yiwei would be known for its delicately inscribed maps, the legends almost too small to see, and not for its barley and oats, its velvet apricots and glassy pears.

  In the spring, the old beehive awoke to find the wasps gone, like a nightmare that evaporates by day. It was difficult to believe, but when not the slightest scrap of wasp paper could be found, the whole hive sang with delight. Even the queen, who had been coached from the pupa on the details of her client state and the conditions by which she ruled, and who had felt, perhaps, more sympathy for the wasps than she should have, cleared her throat and trilled once or twice. If she did not sing so loudly or so joyously as the rest, only a few noticed, and the winter had been a hard one, anyhow.

  The maps had vanished with the wasps. No more would be made. Those who had studied among the wasps began to draft memoranda and the first independent decrees of queen and council. To defend against future invasions, it was decided that a detachment of bees would fly the borders of their land and carry home reports of what they found.

  It was on one of these patrols that a small hive was discovered in the fork of an elm tree. Bees lay dead and brittle around it, no identifiable queen among them. Not a trace of honey remained in the storehouse; the dark wax of its walls had been gnawed to rags. Even the brood cells had been scraped clean. But in the last intact hexagons they found, curled and capped in wax, scrawled on page after page, words of revolution. They read in silence.

  Then—

  “Write,” one said to the other, and she did.

  THE DEATH OF SUGAR DADDY

  Toiya Kristen Finley

  Laffy Taffy – July 7

  “Quit digging, girl!”

  This was before all of the cryin, before that black hole started suckin me in, and my wri
st wasn’t so bad back then, neither.

  I didn’t mean to scratch that hard. Momma had her back to me, but she heard anyway. I pulled my sleeve over the bad spot on my wrist and went at it again. My nail wasn’t sharp enough through the dress, though.

  “Keisha.” This time Momma turned all the way around. Folded her arms. Ms. Bentley’s boyfriend watched Momma shuffle her hips and scratched under his chin.

  “You know how impetigo spreads?” Momma said. “Now stop picking at your wrist before it gets raw.”

  This wasn’t no mosquito bite, though. I couldn’t leave it alone, neither. But there was nuthin wrong with my wrist, far as I could see. I rubbed it down with lotion and put Vaseline on top of that. All that did was give me greasy skin. My wrist still itched. I wanted to get home so I could try alcohol like Momma used when I got chiggers on my legs, but Momma liked to hang around after weddings, even for people she didn’t know. This girl was the niece or granddaughter of somebody Grandmommy used to go to church with. That didn’t mean Grandmommy thought she had to come and drag me along. At least Momma wasn’t makin me wear them real lacy dresses no more. All the other eleven year olds – and some of the ten year olds, too – had relaxers, and they could run a comb through their hair without worryin about breakin any of it off. But I was stuck with twist ties and barrettes. Momma got the hint I wouldn’t bother with em no more at the last weddin when I kept shakin my head and clankin those dumb barrettes together. Today she finally pressed my hair.

  “It’s not here,” Ms. Bentley said. Her and Momma and Ms. Waters went through the Guestbook. The bride and groom had left the church about twenty minutes ago, and the front doors were wide open lettin the sticky and humidity in. Me and Ms. Bentley’s boyfriend, I mean companion, as Momma called him in her voice to make stuff sound more important than it was, me and Ms. Bentley’s companion stood in the doorway of the north ex, or whatever it’s called, so Momma and Ms. Bentley’d get a clue. He fiddled with his keys in his pocket, tryin real hard not to frown. But he mumbled stuff to himself and smiled at me when he caught me watchin. Momma taught me how to act, though. I could stand there ladylike all day without buttin into grown people’s business.

  “Well,” Ms. Waters said, “I guess not.” She raised her eyebrow cuz she didn’t believe it herself. Momma, Ms. Bentley, and Ms. Waters stood there and looked at each other for a second before Momma decided we could finally go.

  Martin Hughes (r) scored 25 points in Fisk’s 65–63 victory over the Tennessee State Tigers.

  I pushed the liver around on my plate so it wouldn’t touch the mashed potatoes. Then I wiped my fork on a napkin so the liver juice wouldn’t dirty my peas. I stuffed peas in my mouth, and Momma glared at me.

  “You better eat some of that meat, Keisha.”

  She didn’t expect me to eat all of it. She never expected me to eat all my liver, only a mouthful so I never got why she bothered to give it to me. Liver was all spongy, what brains might taste like, cept the liver holds all the stuff that makes puke, and that just makes it worse. Momma cut off a piece the size of my pinky. She shook the plate so hard my peas rolled into the brown streaks.

  “There. You can handle that … You know, we didn’t see Sugar Daddy today.”

  Grandmommy sucked her teeth and snorted. “You probably missed that trifling, dirty old man. He must have slipped out.”

  “No, Mom, his name wasn’t even in the Guestbook.”

  “Maybe he’s out of town.”

  “When did that fool ever miss a summer wedding?”

  “Can I git some more mashed potatoes?”

  Grandmommy looked at me sideways. “I don’t know. Can you git them? Who taught you to speak that way?”

  I opened my mouth real wide and spoke slow. “May. I. Get. Some. More. Mashed. Po. Ta. Toes?”

  “I still see that liver,” Momma said.

  I picked up the piece she cut off for me with my fingers and swallowed it whole.

  “Keisha …” Momma said.

  “I ate it!”

  “Everything else was very sweet. They took communion together, and I really do prefer string quartets to the organ, but it was weird not seeing that chocolate or olive-green polyester suit in the back.”

  “Womanizing antics,” Grandmommy mumbled. “They’ll survive Sugar Daddy not attending. I’m surprised he never hit on her.”

  “Mom, you know she’s too classy for him.”

  “Sugar Daddy?” I said.

  “I remember when he came to my wedding. I remember the gift.”

  “Went to mine, too,” Grandmommy said.

  Grandmommy always brought up something else whenever Momma mentioned anything to do with Daddy. Daddy had moved down to Alabama, so Grandmommy couldn’t keep an eye on him. But it was my fault I said I didn’t know I could walk five miles without gettin tired. That happened last summer, when Daddy still didn’t have enough for a car. I didn’t hear everything Grandmommy said over the phone, but she did tell Daddy she’d come down there after him with a shotgun if he dragged me across Mobile again.

  So, this summer I didn’t get to see him at all, and I was stuck here with Grandmommy making me speak proper.

  “May I be excused? I’ll be back before the light’s gone.”

  “You watch yourself with Tey and Marcus,” Momma said.

  Momma and Grandmommy don’t like Tey and Marcus much cuz of their father. Grandmommy swears their daddy sold coke or smack or one of them really bad drugs. He been in and out of jail so many times – he gotta be doin sumthin, Grandmommy said. Tey and Marcus’s grandmother lived next door to Grandmommy for years, and she couldn’t believe that woman would let her son turn into such a mess. (But at least she trusted their grandmother, which was the only reason I could play with Marcus and Tey.) I didn’t see their father all that much. When he did come around, he’d drive his blue Pinto up and down Jefferson Street at 70 MPH. Late at night, if I heard gears shift three or four times, then a loud screech, I knew he was back in town, back from wherever he was hangin out, at least. Bein in jail was bad, but Marcus and Tey weren’t too bad, so their own father couldna been, neither. I wonder if he was like Daddy. Daddy was fine til he got laid off. He spent all last summer lookin for a new job, but nobody bothered to hire him. He couldn’t pay for the water for a while, so I had to pee in a bucket (I still ain’t told Momma and Grandmommy bout that, and I ain’t gonna), but he got a job now. He probably had enough to get a new car. I coulda spent the summer with him, like I’m supposed to. If I just kept my dumb mouth shut.

  So, maybe Tey and Marcus’s father wasn’t so different. Maybe he lost his job and turned to dealin to take care of his two kids. Grandmommy figured he left em next door when he didn’t have enough to support em. They showed up at the weirdest times durin the school year and summer and left again sometimes before I could say bye. But they’re not bad kids. Not at all. The worst thing they did was sell bootlegs out the back of some dude’s car. They thought it was cool cuz they got connections to the music business. I could care less. Those CDs weren’t from no real rappers.

  “Oooooo, Keisha back in her girlie braids!”

  “Shut up, Tey!” Wasn’t my fault Momma did my hair right after the weddin. “It looked good. You wish your nappy head could!”

  “Your head nappier than mine,” Tey said. “Probably why you gotta hide them naps under braids.”

  I rolled my eyes and watched Marcus light a pagoda. He’d been waitin a while for some to arrive. We were all bored of firecrackers and rockets after the 4th. The pagoda didn’t get here in time. Tey smiled at me. I cut my eyes at him and folded my arms. The five stories spun in blues and reds and greens and yellows and whites. Like a water fountain should be, but all on fire and burnin bright. We could shoot fireworks all night if we wanted. Not too many cars came down our street.

  “Granny went to a funeral today,” Tey said. “How come there’re so many weddings and funerals in the summer? Weddings are good, right? Why you wanna celebrate
a good thing when everybody dies?”

  “Marriage is only good at first. It don’t end up that way,” Marcus said.

  “That still don’t tell me nuthin. Why so many people die in the summer anyway? Do heat just fry old people?”

  Marcus sucked his teeth. “That cat Granny went to see wasn’t old.”

  “Old,” Tey said, “but not old old. Forty something-or-other’s still up there.”

  “Can we do something else?” I said. Momma was somewhere round forty, and I had no idea how old Grandmommy was. It wasn’t never a good thing when a woman hid her age like that.

  Sometimes I forgot my wrist bothered me, like a quiet, annoyin sound I could get used to in a room. But it got to itchin before we passed Discount 4 Less. Momma and Grandmommy didn’t want me anywhere near the place. They’d be real pissed if they knew I was gettin candy right next door. Discount 4 Less on the corner used to be a Lee’s Chicken way back in the day. I loved Lee’s. Daddy used to get me a fish sandwich every Saturday at the one not far from where me and Daddy and Momma used to live. When Lee’s shut down, somebody tried to turn it into a fashion boutique. Then it was a Meat ’N’ Three. Didn’t nobody have success until these foreign cats started sellin beer and tobacco cheap.

  I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and clenched my teeth real tight. I held my hand hard against my leg and scratched and scratched and dug and dug. I breathed air through my teeth til I started makin hissy sounds. The skin burned, and I scraped some of it away. But underneath the hurt, it was still itchin. I put my wrist in my mouth and nibbled a bit.

  “Girl?” Marcus said.

  “What’s your problem?” Tey said.

  “It keep on botherin me.” I showed them where I clawed and the little red spots that popped up around it.

  “That’s what Vaseline’s for. If it help your crusty knees, I’m sure it’ll fix that.”