The Best of Michael Swanwick by Michael Swanwick

objective part of her knew that she was still in Clotho, the polymer chain being unraveled from her body, accelerated by a translator, passing through two black holes, and simultaneously being knit up by the spiders. It didn’t matter.
    She plunged into Ginungagap as effortlessly as if it were the film of a soap bubble.
    In—
    —and out.
    It was like being reversed in a mirror, or watching an entertainment run backward. She was instantly flying out the way she came. The sky was a mottled mass of violet light.
    The stars before her brightened from violet to blue. She craned her neck, looked back at Ginungagap, saw its disk-shaped nothingness recede, and screamed in frustration because it had escaped her. She spread her wings to slow her flight and—
    —was sitting in a dark place. Her hand reached out, touched metal, recognized the inside of a clamshell device.
    A hairlike crack of light looped over her, widened. The clamshell opened.
    Oceans of color bathed her face. Abigail straightened, and the act of doing so lifted her up gently. She stared through the transparent bubble at a phosphorescent foreverness of light.
    My God , she thought. The stars .
    The stars were thicker, more numerous than she was used to, large and bright and glittery-rich. She was probably someplace significant, a star cluster or the center of the galaxy; she couldn’t guess. She felt irrationally happy to simply be ; she took a deep breath, then laughed.
    “Abigail Vanderhoek.”
    She turned to face the voice and found that it came from a machine. Spiders crouched beside it, legs moving silently. Outside, in the hard vacuum, were more spiders.
    “We regret any pain this may cause,” the machine said.
    Then the spiders rushed forward. She had no time to react. Sharp mandibles loomed before her, then dipped to her neck. Impossibly swift, they sliced through her throat, severed her spine. A sudden jerk, and her head was separated from her body.
    It happened in an instant. She felt brief pain, and the dissociation of actually seeing her decapitated body just beginning to react. And then she died.
    ***
    A spark. A light. I’m alive , she thought. Consciousness returned like an ancient cathode tube warming up. Abigail stretched slowly, bobbing gently in the air, collecting her thoughts. She was in the sister-Clotho again, not in pain, her head and neck firmly on her shoulders. There were spiders on the platform, and a few floating outside.
    “Abigail Vanderhoek,” the machine said. “We are ready to begin negotiations.”
    Abigail said nothing.
    After a moment, the machine said, “Are you damaged? Are your thoughts impaired?” A pause, then, “Was your mind not protected during transit?”
    “Is that you waving the legs there? Outside the platform?”
    “Yes. It is important that you talk with the other humans. You must convey our questions. They will not communicate with us.”
    “I have a few questions of my own,” Abigail said. “I won’t cooperate until you answer them.”
    “We will answer any questions provided you neither garble nor garble.”
    “What do you take me for?” Abigail asked. “Of course I won’t.”
    ***
    Long hours later she spoke to Paul and Dominguez. At her request, the spiders had withdrawn, leaving her lone. Dominguez looked drawn and haggard. “I swear we had no idea the spiders would attack you,” Dominguez said. “We saw it on the screens. I was certain you’d been killed…” His voice trailed off.
    “Well, I’m alive, no thanks to you guys. Just what is this crap about an explosive substance in my bones, anyway?”
    “An explosive—I swear we know nothing of anything of the sort.”
    “A close relative to plastique,” Paul said. “I had a small editing device attached to Clotho’s translator. It altered roughly half the bone marrow in your sternum, pelvis and femurs in transmission. I’d hoped the spiders wouldn’t pick up on it so quickly.”
    “You actually did,” Abigail marveled.