Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction

Niobium

92.9064

Woman of Stone

Niobe was one of those women. You've met them: Their children are

perfect: They learned violin by the Montessori method, and they eschew

candy to snack on raw broccoli. Their parents they address as "Mother"

and "Father," and they never, never, never get mud on their exquisite

clothing.

If Martha Stewart were a Mommy, this is what she would be like.

Moreover, due to her aristocratic lineage (she was daughter to Tantalus

and Dione, sister to Pelops and wife of Amphion of Thebes), Niobe had

excellent social connections. She hobnobbed with the gods on an almost

daily basis, and on those rare occasions when she did not, she made

certain you knew that she normally did.

Sooner or later, however, every social climber overreaches, and so with

Niobe. She was having tea with dark-robed Leto, Zeus's first wife (this

was before Hera came into the picture), and fell to bragging about not

just the quality but the quantity of her offspring. She had a full dozen,

six girls and six boys. What a pity, she said cattily, that Leto had only

two.

Leto turned pale. To be dissed as infertile by this ? this ? brood mare!

She was ever mild and gentle, for a goddess, but this was really too

much. With a moue of distaste, she flipped open her cellphone, and beeped

her children's pagers.

When Apollo and Artemis heard of the insult, they didn't hesitate. To

punish the affront, they slew with their arrows all twelve of Niobe's

children in their parents' Fifth Avenue penthouse.

For nine days the victims of this atrocity lay in their blood without

anybody to bury them, for whenever the city health officials turned up in

answer to complaints from the neighbors, the young gods turned them to

stone. On the tenth day, however, Apollo and Artemis relented and

restored to flesh everybody they had earlier petrified.

All save one. To this very day, Niobe stands in the window of the Coach

store on Park Avenue, surrounded by a display of fine handbags, with a

scattering of ferns at her stony feet thriftily placed so that they are

watered by her tears.

with apologies to Thomas Disch