Category: Elizabeth Bear

Tideline by Elizabeth Bear

Posted on by Paul Fraser 1 Comment on Tideline by Elizabeth Bear

Tideline by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s SF, June 2007) opens with Chalcedony, a damaged combat vehicle, prospecting for “trash jewels” as it works its way along the beach in what eventually turns out to be a devastated future world. Then it meets a feral child called Belvedere. Belvedere asks the robot what it is doing, and Chalcedony tells him that it is gathering “shipwreck beads” to make necklaces. We later find out that it intends making 41 necklaces, one to commemorate each of the members of its combat unit, all of whom are now dead.
A relationship develops between the two, beginning with Belvedere picking up a chain with a Buddha figure on it and passing it up to the robot—Chalcedony has a damaged leg, which makes it difficult to stoop to ground level—and it reciprocates by microwaving a bag full of seashells and seaweed for the child. Chalcedony tells Belvedere to eat the seaweed too (“rich in nutrients”), the first instance of the robot mentoring and caring for the child over the following days and months (and which includes, at one point, the robot saving his life by killing two men who attack him). During this period Chalcedony also tells Belvedere stories about the members of its platoon.
Over the course of the story Chalcedony’s batteries run down—the solar charge it gets each day isn’t enough to keep it at full power—and it is also stuck between the cliff and the sea. The robot realises that it will not survive the approaching winter, so it works as quickly as it can on finishing its memorial necklaces before then.
The final part of the story (spoiler) sees the robot use some of the last of its precious energy reserves to save the life of an injured German Shepard found by Belvedere:

When the sun was up and the young dog was breathing comfortably, the gash along its haunch sewn closed and its bloodstream saturated with antibiotics, she turned back to the last necklace. She would have to work quickly, and Sergeant Patterson’s necklace contained the most fragile and beautiful beads, the ones Chalcedony had been most concerned with breaking and so had saved for last, when she would be most experienced.
Her motions grew slower as the day wore on, more laborious. The sun could not feed her enough to replace the expenditures of the night before. But bead linked into bead, and the necklace grew—bits of pewter, of pottery, of glass and mother of pearl. And the chalcedony Buddha, because Sergeant Patterson had been Chalcedony’s operator.

When Chalcedony wakes the next day after being recharged by the sun, the robot sees that Belvedere has finished assembling the necklace; Belvedere hands it over so Chalcedony can finish the job by hardening the links. Chalcedony then tasks Belvedere to go on an errantry, to find people to learn the platoon members’ stories and to wear the necklaces that commemorate them. When Belvedere asks what sort of people he should give them to, Chalcedony replies:

“People who would help a child,” she said. “Or a wounded dog. People like a platoon should be.”

This is a slow burn piece that is effectively done, but the degree of anthropomorphism in the story is both (a) its weak point (do we really believe a sentient war machine is a “she”, or would be grieving its comrades and making necklaces to remember them?1) and (b) its strength (this kind of sentimentality goes down big with SF readers in general and awards voters in particular2).
***+ (Good to Very Good). 4,400 words. Story link.

1. The more you consider the way Chalcedony behaves, the less likely it all seems.

2. This story won the 2008 Hugo, Sturgeon, and Asimov’s Reader’s Poll Awards. Of course.

A Blessing of Unicorns by Elizabeth Bear

Posted on by Paul Fraser

A Blessing of Unicorns by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s SF, September-October 2021) gets off to a promising start with Police Sub-Inspector Ferron getting stabbed in the foot by a mini-unicorn while she is investigating a missing person’s apartment with her colleague, Senior Constable Indrapramit:

Around Ferron’s foot clustered a dozen or so jewel-hued, cat-sized, bioprinted synthetic unicorns, stomping their cloven hooves and tossing their rapier-like horns. It was the sharp edge of one small hoof that had laid her flesh open. Now the toe was bleeding copiously, as foot injuries often do.
“Don’t just stand there. Bring me the first aid kit.”
Gingerly, Ferron set her sandal down. Blood slimed between her sole and the shoe.
The most ferocious of the miniature animals, a sparkly, butterscotch-colored stallion, snorted and arched his neck. He defecated a marble-sized poop to let everyone know he was the boss of everything.
Ferron, who had never had much to do with farm animals, even tiny ones, did not find this charming.  p. 160

After Ferron treats her foot they receive a video message from the police network and see the missing woman, a social media influencer called Bel Hinti, enter the deserted police station with a gun (all, or nearly all, of the city’s police force work at home or out in the field in this future world). Hinti eventually surrenders the firearm to the virtual assistant and tells it that someone is trying to kill her. Then, at the end of the video, Hinti scribbles something on a piece of paper before leaving the station.
So far, so good, but, after Ferron and Indrapramit complete their search and head out into the bright night (a supernova has appeared in the sky and there is mention of a dead alien civilization), Ferron heads home, and we get a four pages of description about her domestic circumstances. This involves, variously, what she has to eat, her interaction with Chairman Miaow and Smoke (her pet cat and fox), and her relationship problems with her extended family and mother (who has had her virtual reality budget cut off and is making Ferron suffer):

Ferron’s mother’s name was Madhuvanthi, and Ferron was used to seeing her only in virtual space, or as a body dressed in a black immersion suit, reclining on a chaise.
Ferron would never say it, but her mother was bedridden not because of illness, but because of self-neglect. She needed—had needed for years—treatment for depression, anxiety, and withdrawal syndrome. She obsessively archived her virtual memories, racking up huge storage bills that Ferron had, until recently, bankrupted herself to pay.
Ferron had long ago given up trying to talk her mother into treatment, and she had no leverage with which to force the issue. Her sisters pleaded poverty and unemployment, though Ferron knew at least two of them did pretty well on the gray market. The truth was, nobody really wanted to deal with Mom.
Madhuvanthi did not look at Ferron as Preeti pulled the omni away. Ferron made her tone exquisitely polite. “Hello, Amma. Hello, Preeti mausiji, Bijli mausiji. It’s good to see you out of bed, Amma.”
Madhuvanthi kept her face averted, and her hand went to the skinpet adhered just below her collarbone. Velvety fur rippled as she stroked it, her touch followed by the rumble of a purr.
“But look at this, Ferron,” Preeti said. “Look what we have done for you!”
The past tense increased Ferron’s apprehension to outright dread. She knew better than to say anything. She braced herself and accepted the omni.
It was a matrimonial ad, and Ferron was horrified to realize that it wasn’t some man that her family was going to try to force her to write to—or worse, had already written to on her behalf. This was an ad for her, seeking a groom. And it wasn’t a draft, either. It had already been posted.  pp. 169-170

This domestic soap opera (supposedly set in the 2070s or 2080s I think1) is a harbinger of what is to come in the rest of the story, which essentially devolves into a sequence of meals that Ferron has with or without Indrapramit, and tetchy encounters with her mother. This is punctuated with some light internet browsing and the odd trip out as the pair look for the missing woman. Eventually they find out (after a brief virtual reality episode) that another influencer from Hinti’s social media set is missing, which later leads them to suspect that a trustee or trustees of a fund the women belong to may be killing the beneficiaries to get control of the money.
The climax of the story comes after WhiteRabbit, a third influencer, (“Call me Rabbit”) turns up at Ferron’s house in the middle of the night, which prompts Ferron to meet Indrapramit at the station to look for the note that Hinti left but which no-one has been able to find . When they get there (spoiler), they see that someone has smashed the place up—and they are then held at gunpoint by Muhuli (the second of the missing woman), who is eventually shot by Ferron. Ferron then finds the note in the tea trolley, which identifies Muhuli as the villian—you cannot help but think that if the police search teams had done their job properly they could have saved Ferron and Indrapramit from a lot of eating and browsing. I’d also add that I would be surprised if any reader could work out that Muhuli was the murderer from the information provided.
By the way, Ferron suspects early on that Hinti’s body was dismembered and put through the bioprinter, turning the corpse into the unicorns found in Hinti’s apartment—but I can’t remember a CSI investigation for blood spatter, etc. when they can’t get DNA from the unicorns.
There is a very slight murder mystery story here, and it is buried under such a pile of extraneous description (food, pets, mothers, supernovas, aliens, etc.) that the piece eventually becomes do-not-finish tedious. Even though I, against my better earlier judgement, did, I had to take breaks and read it in three sessions.
Finally, I’d also suggest that, when most of a story is about the first three subjects in that list above (food, pets, mothers, etc.), you are looking at the work of someone who has burnt out as an SF writer.
* (Mediocre). 24,700 words. Story link.

1. Ferron is born in the years after 2042.