Fifth and last, E. Lily Yu’s “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” from Clarkesworld Magazine. Read it here.

A race of wasps common around the village of Yiwei is discovered to construct nests that unfold into beautiful colored maps of the surrounding country. Once this discovery is made, the nests are taken by the villagers to sell, nearly exterminating the wasp population, but one remaining population flees far enough away to elude the plunderers, and settles to rebuild their society. In adopting their new home, however, they have invaded the territory of a bee community (whose society is termed a “constitutional monarchy”). The wasps are ruthless to the bee ambassadors who arrive with less-than-deferential embassies to their ruling foundress. The choice they present to the bees is “enslavement or cooperation”–specifically, one-tenth of their honey production and one out of 100 of the larvae, who will live among the wasps and serve them. The bees capitulate without a struggle:

“War is out of the question,” another said.

“Their forces are vastly superior.”

“We outnumber them three hundred to one!”

“They are experienced fighters. Sixty of us would die for each of theirs.”

This talking-yourself-into-defeat counsel of the bees simply delights me, it is so wonderfully barbed. (Evidently, the bees lack a Winston Churchill.)

So the bees begin a new, joyless life of “cooperation.” But, in like wise as the wasps descended on the bees in an unforeseen catastrophe, so is a catastrophe in store for the wasps: a girl from Yiwei, ever since hearing about the cartographer wasps, has been dreaming of making her fortune and achieving fame. She finds the remaining nest in the winter, when the wasps are harmless from the cold, and takes it back to Yiwei, planning to breed more wasp colonies and profit from them. For the wasps, then, slavery to (or “cooperation” with) humans.

It’s a playful and satiric story, and I enjoyed it greatly. Another good contender for the Best Story Hugo.

By the way, I do not grasp the significance of the last line of the story.

“Write,” one said to the other, and she did.

Can anyone help me out? It’s always disappointing to reach the end and think “?” Writing is a skill the bees learned from the wasps, but I don’t think that’s the point here.