Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain

Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain

By Yoon Ha Lee

“Yes,” Kerang says. “I have been charged with preventing further assassinations. Arighan’s Chain is not a threat I can afford to ignore.”

“Why didn’t you come earlier, then?” Shiron says. “After all, the Chain might have lain dormant, but the others – “

“I’ve seen the Mercy and the Needle,” he sais, by which he means he’s copied data from those who have. “They’re beautiful.” He isn’t referring to beauty in the way of shadows fitting together into a woman’s profile, or beauty in the way of sun-colored liquor at the right temperature in a faceted glass. He means the beauty of logical strata, of the crescendo of axiom-axiom-corollary-proof, of quod erat demonstrandum.

“Any gun or shard of glass could do the same as the Mercy,” Shiron says, understanding him. “And drugs and dreamscalpels will do the Needle’s work, given time and expertise. But surely you could say the same of the Chain.”

She stands again and takes the painting of the mountain down and rolls it tightly. “I was born on that mountain,” she says. “Something lite it is still there, on a birthworld very like the one I knew. But I don’t think anyone paints in this style. Perhaps some art historian would recongnize its distant cousin. I am no artist, but I painted it myself, because no one else remembers the things I remember. And now you would have it start again.

Merci, Needle, Chain... No Flowers... Photo by Elena

“Now many bullets have you used?” Kerang asks.

It is not that the Flower requires special bullets – it adapts even to emptiness – it is that the number matters.

Shiron laughs, low, almost husky. She knows better than to trust Kerang, but she needs him to trust her. She pulls out the Flower and rests it in both palms so he can look at it.

Three petals fallen, a fourth about to follow. That’s not the number, but he doesn’t realize it. “You’ve guarded it so long,” he says, inspecting the maker’s mark without touching the gun.

“I will guard it until I’m nothing but ice,” Shiron says. “You may think that the Chain is a threat, but if I remove it, there is no guarantee that you will still exist…”

“It is not the Chain I want destroyed,” Kerang says gently. “It’s Arighan. Do you think I would have come to you for anything less?”

Shiron says into the awkward quiet, after a while, “So you tracked down descendants of Arighan line.” His silence is assent. “There must be many.”

(Read the full text in The Best Year’s Science Fiction Anthology 2011, edited by Gardner Dozois).