Mass Effect

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Senna held up his three-fingered hand. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll go down to the hibernation deck, check everything out, and proceed from there. It’s just as likely that we’ll find everyone sleeping safe and sound and you won’t have to do anything.”

  I calculate the likelihood of zero fatalities at less than 1%.

  “You’re not helping,” Senna sighed, and disengaged from the public audio.

  An hour’s worth of gravity adjustments, humidity filters, airlocks, elevators, and security bypasses later, the three of them were staring down at a fully functional cryopod displaying excellent life signs.

  Inside, a female drell’s face contorted in frozen agony. Her eyes stared lifelessly at nothing. Frost coated small, hard sores on her neck frills and chest. Her tongue was swollen and black. Anax Therion clenched her jaw. She’d hoped, if they found a corpse, it would be one of the thousands of drell she didn’t know. Connections got in the way of clear analysis. Emotions were not data. They were a kind of encryption, obscuring the information, rendering it unreadable. But Anax Therion did know that frozen girl. Not well, but well enough to drink with. She was married to Osyat Raxios, a dissident Therion might actually, at a stretch, call a friend. The two of them had kept her up late so many nights on Hephaestus, talking politics like anything in the Milky Way would matter once the ark’s engines fired up in the dark.

  Yorrik breathed through a humidifying mask. The air in the drell sector was so dry it would desiccate his mucus membranes in a quarter of an hour. “Deep revulsion: She smells like usharet flowers. And wet volus.”

  “I don’t smell anything,” Senna said, puzzled.

  “With mild inter-species prejudice: Impossible. It reeks in here. Disdainfully: How do you even get out of bed in the morning with a nose like that?”

  “Well, maybe I’m clever enough not to go snuffling around dead bodies without a suit to protect me,” Senna snapped. His painkillers must be wearing off, thought Anax. Hers certainly were.

  “Condescending tone: Nonsense. Cryosleep maintains the body at a temperature far too low for any harmful bacteria to replicate or spread. Appropriate solemnity: Her death is her own.”

  Therion looked down at the corpse. She rubbed her second finger against the nail of her first and put their connection somewhere else in her mind where it could not contaminate her analysis. “An equipment malfunction does not present with sores and blacktongue. The most likely cause of death is poison.”

  The elcor droned: “Leaping to conclusions: We have been sabotaged.”

  “Or there may have been a malfunction in the cryopods, a completely accidental chemical contamination. Organic tissue does not play nicely with industrial coolants or power surges. These pods utilize modest mass-effect fields, and those sores could be a reaction to topical contamination from their waste products. Or,” Therion finished carefully, “it could be a pathogen. Which could have been acquired before stasis. Hephaestus Station was hardly a sterile environment. Of course, I’m not a doctor, but it’s far too early to assume sabotage. We have no data except the dead. I’m surprised at you, Yorrik. I thought elcor were supposed to be slow and deliberate?”

  “Uncontrollably manic: These are the most stims I’ve ever taken. My brain feels like a jet-fuel milkshake. Embarrassed: I will be quiet now.”

  Senna sighed unhappily. Anax sympathized. They had come so far in the dark without incident. They were so close. The quarian toggled his suit to broadcast again, to save time.

  “K, can you detect any toxic compounds, mass-effect field byproducts, or a measurable viral load in the cadaver currently occupying cryopod number…” Senna bent down to read the serial number off the lower ridge of the pod.

  “Soval Raxios,” Anax said softly. “That’s Soval Raxios.”

  “Cryopod number DL2458,” Senna finished.

  There is no cadaver in cryopod DL2458. The occupant, Soval Raxios, age thirty-four, shows a slightly elevated blood alcohol level. Turian brandy. She is otherwise in perfect health.

  Anax, Senna, and Yorrik blinked. They looked down at the frozen corpse in its canister. Her open mouth in its rictus of death.

  “Surprised understatement: She’s really not,” the elcor droned.

  Apologies, Commander Senna’Nir. I can only report what system scans show. I am not equipped for analysis. I understand your objection; however, Soval Raxios looks fine to me.

  “Soval, I am so sorry,” Anax Therion whispered. Her spine suddenly went rigid with a hard punch of memory.

  “Laughter like emerald bubbles,” she whispered. The others stared. She hated that they stared. She hated that she couldn’t stop the memory. “Eyes as clear as hope. Hephaestus; the night before. She dances in the tavern, faster, faster. Soval, who was a poet and a wife. Soval, who pours out brandy like light from one vessel to another and whispers her whiskey words: You’ll see, in Andromeda, everything will be perfect.” Anax’s milky lids withdrew, leaving her eyes black and wet. She relaxed, shaking. The drell put one hand over her mouth so as not to breathe the air of the dead and closed her friend’s eyes with the other. “May the goddess Kalahira bear you safe across the sea.”

  They moved down the rows of elegant rounded cryopods, but Anax no longer wondered what they would find there. The riddle was answered. The box remained sealed. The feline was dead.

  Excuse the intrusion, but while you have been speaking, I have detected pentamethylenediamine sublimation in five more cryopods.

  Anax Therion let out an involuntary cry of frustration.

  “Five more drell dead?” she growled. “What is happening?”

  Incorrect, Analyst Therion. Four drell and one hanar.

  Too bad, thought Anax Therion. Hanar can’t get Kepral’s Syndrome. Is that the sound of security coming back around to you, Commander? Not so cozy now.

  Senna’Nir vas Keelah Si’yah clenched and unclenched a three-fingered fist.

  “Initiate revival sequence for the rest of the Sleepwalker team, K,” he said. His voice only trembled a little. Anax wouldn’t have thought a commander’s voice would tremble at all. “Command passkey: alpha-iota-gamma-gamma-9.”

  The stars streamed by above them, reflecting in the glass hatches of three thousand cryopods whose displays showed identical, cheerful readings: All’s well, all’s well, all’s well.

  3. BINDING

  Commander, the remainder of your team is revived and en route.

  “Thank you, K,” said Senna’Nir, as he always did, even though he knew it was unnecessary.

  Senna had always felt affection toward virtual intelligences, sometimes more than he felt toward the wet, squishy, disorganized mess of organic intelligence. He could never tell anyone that, of course. Except his grandmother Liat, who never judged him. He wasn’t even sure if she had it in her, the old dear. Did any grandmother have it in her to condemn her only grandson? But to call Senna’s opinions on this subject blasphemy would be underselling the whole concept of blasphemy. Taking an ancestor’s name in vain was blasphemy. This… This was far worse. It was like saying he felt affection toward the… the thing that attacked the Citadel two years ago. The Reaper. If it had been a reaper. If reapers were something other than a particularly ugly fairy tale. He’d been there. He’d seen it. And he still didn’t know. All Senna could remember was a black shape as big as death itself, something part insect, part ship, part god, lasing the cool glassy corridors of the heart of civilization until they were molten slag, shattering them into corridors of fire. His Liveship, the Chayym, and two others, had left the Migrant Fleet in a holding pattern just outside Citadel space to dock for a month of desperately needed repairs, trade, and meetings between the Council, the Admiralty Board, and the Conclave. He’d loved every minute of it. His parents were busy all day and night, negotiating on behalf of the Conclave, the quarian civil government. He’d been completely free, and he’d taken advantage. Exploring every inch of the Lower Wards, standing in the green shade of real trees o
n the Presidium, haggling with hanar over whether a mint-condition Reegar Carbine was worth a tank of mindfish and an old set of contra-gravitic levitation packs for him to dissect in his own time. Senna had been sitting on a bench in the Presidium, outside the Embassy Lounges where his parents were in yet another closed session, debugging a complete volus enviro-suit pressurization valvework he’d gotten off a tech in Zakera Ward for hardly any of the mindfish at all. There was a keeper standing next to him, its pale-green insect body curled over a control panel, as mute and mysterious as those strange beings had always been. He looked up from his code and into the keeper’s faceted eyes, lit up with the artificial sunset. And then there’d been the sound, a sound like the death of hope, and that black shape hanging in space, and his mother and father. Running. Running past him.

  Running to beat the fire.

  Machines were the great love of Senna’s life. And that was his sin. He might as well say that he loved that thing that ended his world as he’d known it. But he couldn’t help it. He could open up to machines, and they never laughed. Machines had never ignored or neglected him because there was so much more important work to be done. Machines had never left him alone for days while they shouted and argued in the Conclave. Machines had never lied to him. Machines had never told him he was wasting his potential. Whenever he wanted to talk to a machine, the machine answered. Right away. Like they wanted to talk back. Late at night, with his emergency induction port sunk into a glass of turian brandy, he could even understand the geth. Yes, they had destroyed his people and stolen their homeworld, but they had their moments, their beauty, their logic. After all, what being anywhere wanted to be a slave?

  He envied the quarian Pathfinder, a stellar cartography specialist he’d known for years named Telem’Yered. It had been down to just the two of them in the end. He still didn’t know why the captain had chosen Telem, a lower-ranking officer. He didn’t think it was personal. All that business between them had been years ago, before the Citadel, and long before the Initiative. The captain had loved Senna once. He loved her still. She had done her Pilgrimage with the salarians, he with the elcor, and afterward, they’d been assigned to the same ship, a mid-range freighter called the Pallu’Kaziel. He’d always liked that, since he first saw his name next to it on the Great Roster. Pallu’Kaziel: Nevertheless, Justice Comes. It had pained him somewhat to remove it from his name when they finally committed to the Initiative project. To never again be Senna’Nir vas Pallu’Kaziel, and now and forever be Senna’Nir vas Keelah Si’yah. Senna and Qetsi had been happy on the Pallu’Kaziel. His grandmother had approved of her. At least, he thought she had. It was always hard to get much out of her when it came to that sort of thing. They’d been young and hormonal and political. They’d joined the Nedas movement together, a group of radical quarians who believed the endless quest to recapture Rannoch had doomed their species to an eternal hardscrabble homelessness, without a future, without a past, without a voice in the hallways of galactic power, for who bothered listening to a people without a planet? Nedas wanted to give up the battle and simply find a new world to settle on. Start over. Create something new. Senna remembered their initiation, in a tiny clean room on the Pallu’Kaziel that their friends in the movement had prepared for weeks so that they could share environments, the greatest intimacy possible among quarians. Side by side, giddy with ambition and rebelliousness and a frizz of fear at being outside their suits, their friend Malak’Rafa had tattooed the motto of the Nedas movement onto Qetsi’Olam’s and Senna’Nir’s biceps with a thrice-sanitized holo-gun: “Mered’vai Rannoch.” Forget Rannoch. No one else would ever see it under their protective patchwork suits, but they would always know it was there. She’d been so beautiful, behind her faceplate.

  But Qetsi’Olam had always been more serious than he. About everything. About nutrient paste, let alone the destiny of their race. She always saw the big picture, and the picture was always biggest when she described it. Details never mattered as much as the dream. And before the Citadel attack, he just couldn’t feel the same urgency she did. He could be happy on the Fleet, or on Rannoch, or on a new world. He’d drifted away from politics. She had not. Their unequal feelings had found a natural equilibrium. Until the Initiative had given her, and the Nedas movement, a way to achieve all their dreams with one gorgeous ship and one gorgeous pinprick on a star chart, six hundred light years away. Qetsi’Olam was finally a captain. And she would finally get her way, for the sake of any quarian who would follow her.

  After the Citadel, that ability to be happy in the sky or on a homeworld or in a clean room the size of a closet, asking a young punk quarian exactly how many times he had sanitized that holo-tattoo gun, was gone. And once it was gone, into what dark unknown would Senna’Nir not follow Qetsi’Olam?

  But it wasn’t like Qetsi to let emotional considerations, to let history, however complicated, get in the way of her decisions. And she must have known that for Senna, having the SAM installed would be a secret dream come true. Such an advanced synthetic intelligence coupled with him forever? Even if he’d only been allowed to carry the implant in his suit instead of in his skull like the others. Even if his SAM had to be shackled, hobbled, hard-coded never to become a true intelligence. No quarian would fly with a full, unshackled AI. Not after Rannoch. Not after everything. Not even Qetsi’Olam. As radical as she fancied herself, she was not that progressive. He did understand that, even if he didn’t agree. A true machine mind was like any other sentient creature: some were kind and good. Some were monsters. It was all in how they were raised. The quarians had been bad parents, there was really no denying that.

  Still. It would have been like having a new best friend. One who could never leave like everyone else did.

  And maybe, just maybe, those thoughts were exactly why the quarian Pathfinder was good, solid, upstanding, anti-geth hardliner Telem’Yered, sound asleep as he should be at 0517, thirty years before arrival, while Commander Senna’Nir was wide awake with the mother of all headaches and something terrible happening, quietly, slowly, all around him.

  His throat was dry. His suit immediately increased the humidity of his air supply, but it didn’t help at all. He took in fluid from the pipette near his mouth. The others were coming in. It would not impress anyone to have his voice cracking like a teenager.

  The hanar apothecary Ysses drifted up into its alcove, its huge wedge-shaped head nodding gracefully, long pink tentacles floating above the deck. Slowly, the squat, round volus design engineer called Irit Non trundled up and leaned against the glass for support. The eyes of her brown-and-white environmental suit flashed yellow in the ammonia fog of their zone. A confused batarian female took a seat near the clear glass barrier. She was old, but wiry. Three of her enormous black eyes were unfocused and bleary with the lingering effects of cryosleep. The fourth, her lower right, had been gouged out and badly healed. Her chartreuse skin had a sour teal slick to it in the dim running lights. She looked angry. But then, batarians always looked angry, and Borbala Ferank was the most perfect specimen of her species who ever lived. The ship’s manifest listed her as a former security officer. She was not, Senna knew, but it amused her to be listed as such. The irony was as endless as the voyage to Andromeda. Borbala had once been the matriarch of the greatest crime family on Khar’shan, the Queen of Smugglers, the Knife in the Dark. She was now, theoretically, retired. Though that ruined eye made it a bit more than theoretical.

  Sleepwalker Team Blue-7 was fully awake and assembled. It was no longer quiet in the Radial.

  A buzz of annoyed bewilderment filled the room. The three newcomers got busy sorting through the emotions Senna, Anax, and Yorrik had already processed. They were not due to arrive for another thirty years. The viewports conspicuously failed to show the cool white docking terminals of the Nexus, the massive station already built by the Initiative and waiting for them in the Andromeda galaxy. Yet here they were. Senna found himself unreasonably irritated by their slowness. Yes, ye
s, come on, catch up. All anyone was really saying or mumbling or growling or sneering, in various ways and combinations and with varying levels of profanity, was: What the hell is going on? And Senna had no time for a repeat performance of this particular pantomime.

  “Good morning, everyone,” announced Commander Senna’Nir.

  “Still not morning,” Anax Therion sighed.

  The quarian commander ignored her. “I hope you all slept well.”

  “Wry rejoinder: It is not the sleeping but the waking up that is hard,” Yorrik droned.

  On a ship of strangers, they were old friends. Senna had met the ancient, enormous Yorrik on his Pilgrimage on Ekuna, learning the elcor combat tech. Those great creatures carried sophisticated, backhump-mounted mobile VI systems into battle that ran constant simulations of every possible action-reaction-outcome triad. Before an elcor fought once, he fought a thousand times. As his final test, Senna’Nir had built one from scratch. Compared to the top-of-the-line models it was about as fast and lethal as a large hat, but it worked. Yorrik had taken him to see a live performance of their favorite play to celebrate, and afterwards, they’d gone on a bar crawl through New Elfaas City that would go down in the annals of interspecies history. He’d taken immuno-supplements and antivirals for weeks beforehand to prepare for just what exactly a shot of krogan ryncol would do to his insides. Senna had rather liked what it did to his insides in the end. Made him feel like he was made out of stained glass.

  When Qetsi’Olam had told Senna about Andromeda and the Keelah Si’yah, he’d contacted Yorrik at once and made the offer. Come with me. Let’s make that crawl stretch between galaxies. Yorrik had always had a sadness about him. Senna had known this long trip into the wild was just what his elephantine friend needed.

  Ysses pointed its soft triangular head toward the flower arrangement in the center of the Radial. The hanar, a massive, genderless jellyfish-like creature whose light home-zone gravity kept it floating upright without levitation packs, seemed displeased that the flowers had not died. Its long magenta tentacles quivered slightly.