Mass Effect

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “It’ll never be as good as a Fleet-clan suit,” Non sighed. “That’s just not what we make them for. They wear suits so nothing gets in. We wear them so we don’t get out. But I can install some basic medical shields, prophylactic reservoirs, contaminant stopgaps, and… hey, look, this is the best part.” Irit snapped her short fingers in Anax’s face. She had been putting the readout display through its paces, memorizing the facial tics that controlled the various options and menus. “Pay attention. I might start offering it as a featured upgrade when I open for business. If the suit detects aggressive foreign cell structures, like a virus, a virus which is most certainly not Yoqtan, you’ll see a little icon flash in the bottom-right corner of your corneal display. Like this.” And a bright-red circle with a cross inside had appeared in the gasket glass, blinking on and off. “It might also detect cigarette smoke or amorous pheromones or eezo or an oncoming thunderstorm, as well; I don’t exactly have time to make the sensor precise.”

  “Can we be sure its scans are working?” Anax asked. “Scans are proving unreliable around here.”

  Irit Non made a truly revolting half-snorting, half-gargling noise in the back of her throat, opened a heretofore-invisible sluice gate the size of a fingernail under her chin, and flung a spray of coppery-blue volus spit into Anax Therion’s face. The red icon flared up right where it should have. “None of my processors were ever connected to the Si’yah’s systems, and they aren’t now. Computer problems can’t just magically hop from machine to machine like organic problems. There has to be a packet exchange of some kind.” Non paused. “Still, probably best if you test it once in a while.”

  There was no ego in the statement. Neither shame nor arrogance. In everything else, Irit was proud. To an already irritating fault. But when it came to her suits, her only concern was that they did their work. Anax admired that. She felt the same. The volus opened a forearm cuff and jammed several wafer-thin discs between the layers of copper-brown mesh. She sealed it around Therion’s left wrist, which went numb for a moment as the gauntlet accessed her bloodstream.

  Irit spoke softly. She didn’t meet Anax’s eyes. “Yorrik said all this could still be an accident. The birth of a new life form. But you don’t think so, do you?”

  Anax Therion looked down at the volus. “Irit Non, I will tell you what the hanar who raised me told me. One misfortune may be chance; two might be divine punishment. Three is a plan.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “The virus and the system malfunctions leave us somewhere between divine punishment and a plan. Do you really think we will be spared a third?”

  “Ah. No. But then, I am a committed pessimist.”

  “I knew we would find common ground somewhere, Non,” Anax said with a soft smile, half concealed by her unfinished helmet.

  A long silence. Irit was clearly famous for good reason. Even now, under stress that would break a Spectre’s sense of professionalism, the volus had added flourishes and touches of style without even seeming to be conscious of doing it. “It wasn’t us,” she whispered. “I’m not angry at you for suspecting so. It’s natural to think of the ones in the suits, the ones with an immunity to Yoqtan from childhood, the ones who even know what Yoqtan is. But it wasn’t the volus.”

  “You can’t know that. There are three thousand of you on board.”

  The volus wheezed heavily and sat back on a box of eye-lenses. “Look,” she gulped through her air filter, “I know my people, just like you know yours. When you rise to the top of a society, you have an excellent vantage point on the people in it. Would you grant me that?”

  “Certainly,” Therion said. She wouldn’t, not really. In her experience, a seat at the top of a society afforded a view of nothing more than the top of that society. But the best way to get someone to keep talking was to agree with them, and that transcended species. Everyone wanted people to agree with them. It was, perhaps, all anyone wanted.

  Irit leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees, her large belly hanging between them. She did look up then.

  “This just isn’t our style, Anax. First of all, we have no quarrel with the Rakhana-clan. Or Kahje-clan, except that preachers are always extremely annoying, when they preach anything other than your own religion. In fact, we have a certain sympathy for you. The client relationship between turians and volus is not so different than the one between hanar and drell. Secondly… let me put it this way. If the volus were to strike out at the drell, we would much prefer to simply buy out their Compact with the hanar and take their place. To have a client species of our own would greatly increase our standing in the new galaxy. Forgive me for putting it bluntly, but if we wanted to get rid of you, we would far rather absorb you into the volus culture and benefit as the hanar have done for so long, or finesse the Fleet-clan or the Khar’shan-clan into declaring war on you. We long ago did away with waging war ourselves, of course. Wasteful. But we are very interested in other people’s wars. There is more money in war than anything save entertainment. We would never deny our munitions manufacturers such an opportunity. But this? There is no profit in a simple death, only expense. In disposing of bodies, in extra work to make up the lack of laborers, in concealing our involvement so as to avoid retaliation. No, a volus might shoot you directly in the face for money, but at least it will be direct. Biological weapons are messy. Unpredictable. We volus dislike unpredictability, in both markets and life.” Irit made a disgusted sound. “My father would say that is our great weakness as a people.”

  Irit Non stood up with a grunt and rummaged through her stock for more piecework. She strode around behind Therion and began the final lacing of the torso section.

  Target acquired. When in doubt, it’s always daddy issues. Therion trod carefully. “Your father?”

  Non yanked on a structural panel with unnecessary brutality. Therion gasped. She let herself gasp. It was what the suit designer wanted. To express a small domination over her. It cost Anax nothing to let her have it.

  “My father says a lot of things. In fact, you could say that all the fat old bastard does is say things. Professionally. My father is an invasive fungus in volus form. We do not get along. And yet…” Non fastened the other half of Therion’s faceplate into place. “And yet I am here. The miserable gasbag pissed off so many people so many times that the Vol Protectorate forced him into exile. Do you know how many writs of exile the Protectorate has issued in the history of civilization? Three, and two were for my father.”

  “Your father is Gaffno Yap? The terrorist?” She knew of Yap, of course. It was hardly possible not to. He was a regular feature in political satires across half the galaxy, a cartoonish villain among the volus, a violent criminal among the courts, a tragic figure among others. But this she had not known. A volus’s second name was not a surname; it indicated no genetic relationship, as they disliked the implication of families owning their offspring. Between this and the identical suits, it was very hard to piece together the shape of relationships between individual volus. She remembered Irit hissing furiously at Yap on the security vids.

  “Never proven!” snapped Non. “As if my father would lift a finger to do his own work. He is radical, yes. He is an agitator, yes. He is an anarcho-communist who preaches the abolition of currency and personal property to the volus, for fuck’s sake, yes. But he had nothing to do with those bombings. He just… inspires people. It’s not his fault those people invariably run off holding hands and skipping through the flowers to blow up banks and treasuries and any place where there might be a lot of money or influence or money and influence all together in one spot.”

  “People like your mother.”

  Irit did not take that bait. “I had to grow up with that voice whining in my ear, singing all property is theft, all money is blood money as a lullaby. He thought we should emulate the quarians, and give up the whole notion, not just of capital, but of trade itself. Revolting. To isolate us that way. To take away the lump of sugar that coaxes any species to take the risk o
f interacting with any other. And when I made a success of myself, he took it as a personal insult.”

  “Yet you came with him. You left your success behind.”

  Irit Non’s shoulders slumped a little. “He is old. He is not well. All his life he has had followers to manage his affairs. Now he is in disgrace. He has no one. They abandoned him once there was no more profit in writing tell-alls about spending a bit of their youths rubbing elbows with the intellectually dangerous. But Gaffno is an optimist to my pessimist. He actually thinks he can convince the volus on board to join him in creating a new society on whatever world the Pathfinders discover for us. I could not… let him be alone when he finally understands that they will not. I am weak, in that way. And that pill will be all the more bitter for him, now that his only other friend is dead.”

  “Oh?”

  “Kholai, the hanar. You must have heard it on Hephaestus. It was preaching day and night, with a throng of hanar hanging on every word. Kholai was the leader of a cult of some kind, or at least a sect. He and my father had much in common. There’s a group of hanar, fifty or so, who believe that only in Andromeda will they be able to practice their religion freely. The one with Yorrik in medbay is one of them.”

  “All hanar practice the same religion. There is no religious conflict on Kahje.”

  “Oh, they still worship the Enkindlers. They just think Kholai is their only true prophet. They call it the Enkindled One. They believe that the Enkindlers made a mistake in uplifting primitive life in the Milky Way. That we should not be. Because they erred in directing our evolution, all present organic life is tainted and trends toward chaos and wickedness.” Non sighed, as if she were reciting from a particularly annoying book. “The Enkindlers will one day return to punish the children of the galaxy for their impure way of life, for using their blessings improperly, for polluting themselves by intermixing with the cultures of others. On the ‘Day of Extinguishment’ the Enkindlers will return to destroy all those who have sinned against them and raise up those who have lived an immaculate life into a new paradise. The usual doomsday song. The Illuminated Primacy objected to their missionary work, spreading the idea that the Enkindlers were capable of error. So they hope for a new world where they can wait for the Day of Extinguishment without the temptation of outsiders. Sounds delightful, I know. Kholai is a very persuasive speaker. It has a beautiful voice. Had. There. I think you’re settled. I have a mirror, give me a moment.”

  The volus hauled out a mobile dressing-room unit from the rear of her cavernous crate. Therion looked herself over. The suit flowed naturally around the curves of her body as though drell had been wearing habitat suits for centuries. Stripes of white-and-brown titanium mesh divided by flexible structural boning defined her waist and conformed to the shape of Therion’s muscular legs, her arms, even her feet. The large round central processing unit rode on her solar plexus, blinking softly, all systems online. The air-exchange nozzle that gave the volus’s voices that trademark wheeze-and-suck sound covered her mouth and nose, breathing for her, with no effort of her own expended. The gloves transmitted textural information directly into her cerebral cortex and newly augmented visual display. She couldn’t feel things through the fabric, but she could instantly compute them, without the irritating inefficiency of physical contact. The drell hadn’t even known how badly she’d always wanted that until now.

  Anax Therion looked… disturbingly good. She had to admit it. The whole effect was utterly alien, extremely formidable, and wholly unsettling, even frightening. It was entirely possible that no one in the history of either galaxy had ever looked the way she looked standing in the hallway of a stranded ghost ship a hundred light years from anywhere.

  “I’m not going to sound like you, am I?” Anax said experimentally.

  She didn’t, not exactly. Her voice was suddenly very gravelly and rough and breathy, a nightclub singer after a three-day bender voice, but not quite as hard a wheeze as Irit’s. The air exchange didn’t actually have to exchange air for a drell, nor did the pressure panels have to hold her lungs together in an intolerably low-pressure environment.

  “Ungrateful,” the volus puffed. “Do you know what this kind of bespoke job would cost you back in the Milky Way? Your firstborn child wouldn’t even cover the down payment. I honestly don’t know why Rakhana-clan don’t suit up like the rest of us. You don’t see us stuffing the hospitals with Kepral’s corpses.” Her snout lifted thoughtfully. “I can feel a new profit vector in my kneecaps. By the gods, I hope we survive this.” Non reached up and gave Anax’s stomach a solid whack below the central processor unit. A dark stain in the shape of her fist spread over the mesh.

  “Feel that?”

  “Not a thing,” Anax answered.

  “Good. Unlike mass-produced ensembles, Irit suits all come standard with a patented pain-response dampening matrix. Your nervous system is shaped like an idiot child’s drawing compared to mine, but it seems to work.” The volus sucked in a long, bubbling swallow of air. “Your display will record impacts or breaches, but if you start feeling anything, you’re probably already dying.” The stain was fading as the matrix did its work, but slowly.

  Therion inclined her head. “You are an artist, Irit Non. I am grateful.”

  “Gah. Don’t say that word. You sound like my father.”

  “Grateful?”

  The volus shook her head. “Artist.”

  Therion smoothed the long white flaps that hung down slightly past her shoulders. “My people are reptilian,” she explained. “Our skin secretes a toxic compound that I am sure you know other species find highly intoxicating and even hallucinogenic. Normally, our sweat evaporates harmlessly. I estimate I can wear this suit for approximately thirty-five to forty-eight hours before my bloodstream has absorbed enough of my own venom to have degenerative cognitive effects. We could never live inside such suits for long periods, as you do. We would go quite, quite mad and suffocate in our own subcutaneous oils. For the next two days or so, however, it is an acceptable alternative to dying of your mutant volus pox.”

  Non scowled. Anax could tell, even in the suit. “It is not our pox, I told you. But your body makes it, how can it harm you?”

  “Your body makes many things,” Therion said with some amusement. “I doubt you would enjoy ingesting them.” A soft chime sounded in her ear. The suit was wired into all her personal devices. “The captain has transmitted directions to my shiny new quarters and interrogation room. Shall we?”

  “Right. Shall we discuss what you hope to beat out of this dumb quarian?” Irit wheezed as she moved about, re-securing the mess she had made of her cargo.

  Anax Therion placed her gloved palm against the wall of the crate. Her visual display immediately scrolled a metallurgic analysis, structural weak points, factory origin, and installation date across her peripheral field. Touching without touching. It was positively addictive. “Of the six members of Sleepwalker Team Yellow-9,” she mused, “two are dead and one is looking extremely poorly. Malak’Rafa is not.”

  “But only drell and hanar can get sick. So wake them all up. We’ll have a party. Why this one?”

  “Of the three remaining members of Yellow-9, he is the only one I can be certain poses no danger to us, nor we to him, because, even in cryostasis, he was wearing his own personal quarantine zone. And I suspect whatever happened on board our little ark happened first to Sleepwalker Team Yellow-9. The quarian on the other side of that door could be behind everything that’s happened. Or he could be the unluckiest bosh’tet this side of Rannoch.”

  “Him? A quarian? I know you’re meant to be some kind of detective, but only a brainless oddskull would think a quarian would voluntarily come within a thousand kilometers of a weaponized infection. It’s the batarian, Jolly Doll or whatever he calls himself. Why am I the only one with any sense?”

  Therion spread her fingers out over the metal of the crate, feeling everything about it. “Perhaps. Did it never once occur to you tha
t he might have been telling the truth? That his pod malfunctioned and woke him up? We are awake. Many systems have glitched. Is it so far from plausibility?” Irit Non’s muscles were so tense and tight Therion knew the unspoken answer was yes. “Well. However you feel about it, Non, if that poor, stupid batarian dies back there, we are in a world of problems far beyond the drell and the hanar. Our species have cohabited for eight centuries. It is at least plausible that we have developed some kind of immuno-exchange, much as humans and their livestock were able to pass smallpox between them. To then pass it to a batarian would be like an Earth cow suddenly infecting a sniper rifle with the ability to shoot milk.” Plausible, she thought. But also a terrible coincidence that it should affect the drell and the hanar only, when there were worshippers of entropy and decay on board. “But perhaps he is only cryosick, as Yorrik says.” Anax would eat her new volus suit if Jalosk Dal’Virra outlived a half-charged battery. But panic would not serve either of them now.

  Suddenly, Therion thought she heard a soft sound in the silence of the cargo hold. She whipped her head around. Nothing. All quiet.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “What? No. I hear you breathing like a damn nathak, is that what you mean?”

  It was not. But the suit had not registered anything. Perhaps the dark and the cold were getting to her. At least the suit helped with the latter.

  “Anax Therion,” Irit said, with uncharacteristic shyness. But Therion was too alert, listening for more of that hushing, sighing, almost inaudible sound, to pay the volus much attention.

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you come?” Irit Non asked. “Why are you here? I came for my father; my father came in exile. Kholai and Ysses came for its gods. Yorrik came to become someone else. The quarians came for a homeworld, the same as always, if not quite the exact same. Why are you going to Andromeda?”

  The drell snapped back to the moment before her. She trained her new mustard-colored lenses on the volus. She almost wanted to tell the truth. There was an intimacy to tailoring, one she supposed Irit had had many chances to exploit. It put you off guard. Perhaps Anax should consider taking up sewing herself. But the truth would not endear her to a volus. She chose something else. A guess. “I was once bonded to a hanar named Oleon, a smuggler wanted in twenty-one systems. My father sold me to Oleon when I was a child. I suppose I disappointed him.” Non’s hands balled into fists at her side. “But I never disappointed Oleon. I made it rich. I made it feared. I was a high-end weapon strapped to its tentacles. It cut my eyes just so that I could more easily understand the bioluminescent language of my masters. It performed the surgery itself, on a ship screaming out of the Skyllian Verge with a batarian cruiser on its tail. I was lucky it did not leave me blind. I was the first drell to receive a hanar soul name of my own. It was a strange life, a violent one. I was unhappy. But who is not?”