Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear Page B

that some astronomers considered a possible precursor to a nova event.
    The part of her brain that automatically built such parallels said: Andromeda. Contained within the span of Uttara Bhadrapada. The twentysixth nakshatra in Hindu astronomy, although she was not a sign of the Zodiac to the Greeks. Pegasus was also in Uttara Bhadrapada. Ferron devoted a few more cycles to wondering if there was any relationship other than coincidental between the legendary serpent Ahir Budhnya, the deity of Uttara Bhadrapada, and the sea monster Cetus, set to eat—devour, the Greeks were so melodramatic—the chained Andromeda.
    The whole thing fell under the influence of the god Aryaman, whose path was the Milky Way—the Heavenly Ganges.
    You’re overqualified, madam. Oh, she could have been the professor, the academic her mother had dreamed of making her, in all those long hours spent in virtual reproductions of myths the world around. She could have been. But if she’d really wanted to make her mother happy, she would have pursued Egyptology, too.
    But she wasn’t, and it was time she got her mind back on the job she did have.
    Ferron flicked on the feeds she’d shut off to attend the crime scene. She didn’t like to skin on the job: a homicide cop’s work depended heavily on unfiltered perceptions, and if you trimmed everything and everyone irritating or disagreeable out of reality, the odds were pretty good that you’d miss the truth behind a crime. But sometimes you had to make an exception.
    She linked up, turned up her spam filters and ad blockers, and sorted more Known Associates files. Speaking of her mother, that required ignoring all those lion-headed message-waiting icons blinking in a corner of her feed—and the pileup of news and personal messages in her assimilator.
    Lions. Bengaluru’s state capitol was topped with a statue of a fourheaded lion, guarding each of the cardinal directions. The ancient symbol of India was part of why Ferron’s mother chose that symbolism. But only part.
    She set the messages to hide, squirming with guilt as she did, and concentrated on the work-related mail.
    When she looked up, Indrapramit appeared to have finished both his sorting and his samosas. “All right, what have you got?”
    “Just this.” She dumped the interview files to his headspace.
    The Senior Constable blinked upon receipt. “Ugh. That’s even more than I thought.”
    First on Ferron’s interview list were the dead man’s coworkers, based on the simple logic that if anybody knew how to turn somebody inside out, it was likely to be another physicist. Indrapramit went back to the aptblock to continue interviewing more-or-less hysterical neighbors in a quest for the name of any potential lover or assignation from the night before.
    It was the task least likely to be any fun at all. But then, Ferron was the senior officer. Rank hath its privileges. Someday, Indrapramit would be making junior colleagues follow up horrible gutwork.
    The bus, it turned out, ran right from the corner where Coffin’s kinblock’s street intercepted the main road. Proximity made her choose it over the mag-lev Metro, but she soon regretted her decision, because it then wound in a drunken pattern through what seemed like the majority of Bengaluru.
    She was lucky enough to find a seat—it wasn’t a crowded hour. She registered her position with dispatch and settled down to wait and talk to the hyacinth cat, since it was more than sunny enough that no one needed to pedal. She waited it out for the transfer point anyway: that bus ran straight to the U District, where BioShell had its offices.
    Predictable. Handy for head-hunting, and an easy walk for any BioShell employee who might also teach classes. As it seemed, by the number of Professor So-and-sos on Ferron’s list, that many of them did.
    Her tech, a short wide-bellied man who went by the handle Ravindra, caught up with her while she was still leaned against the second bus’s