My story “Lost Wax” is out in the August issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, available now in bookstores, from the Asimov’s site, and through most e-book sources, including iTunes and Amazon. Yeast-tech! Augur Bird! A visit to Ma’am Roenard’s Cuttlefish Cabaret! Here’s a sample:
There was a Bird there from Rakel, a test of the new wing design, and another from Sobette with a clipping out of the Evening Rebuke headlined “Auger Birds: Art or Insurrection?”
“It’s Augur with a ‘u’,” Nadin grumbled.
“Better to keep “you” out of it, and me,” Leena pointed out. The article described the Birds as “hatching from some unknown nest to become the latest craze among the artisans of the lower divisione.”
Nadin nodded glumly. “We’ve got to convince people to stop sending birds in the daytime. And not to waste them on useless messages. Sobette’s a dilettante.”
Leena said, “Sobette is brilliant with trans-yeasts and programmed cultures. And he’s been working against the ‘Chemists for decades.”
“Only because they kicked him out for being a reckless—”
They raised their heads together. They could hear the irregular clang and scrape of a golethe’s tread in the street and then the bubbling of its yeast and cultures, the churning of its pistons and bladders. They held still until it lumbered passed the studio door, heading west toward the river. Once it was quiet they got up and slipped out the door with the sudden shared need for human company. The air was rank with the golethe’s passing, the street slick where its tanks had overflowed.
They went a few blocks in silence and were almost to the cafe when Nadin said, “When did an idea that was too crazy and beautiful to possibly work turn into something serious?”
“The Birds are no more dangerous than your article for the Gazette.”
“Dangerous to the establishment or dangerous for us?”
“Exactly,” Leena said and put her hand on the brass knob of the door to the Argile Rouge but turned to Nadin before pulling it open. “That’s another thing the Rebuke got wrong. It’s never art or insurrrection.”