Mass Effect

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “What happened to this Oleon? Is it on board?”

  “It is not.”

  “Why would you abandon your patron? I know of no drell who has left the Compact. Your people are so consistently servile. If an addiction to predictability is our weakness, that is yours.”

  Anax’s mind adjusted, clicked into place, pivoted. There, thought Anax. There you are, Irit Non. There is a freedom fighter inside that merchant’s body. “Oleon sent me on a mission to Earth, to assassinate a competitor named Laslow Marston. Marston was a diplomat, from a long line of ambassadors and statesmen and, naturally, spies. Ambassador is always another word for spy. But it seemed this particular Marston had taken up selling what he learned in the halls, offices, and beds of the powerful to the highest bidder, and that cut into my master’s margins. It took me a year to get close enough to Laslow to strike. A year is a long time. Long enough to think. Long enough to question. And afterward… afterward I took what I knew and ran. All the way here, where the drell Pathfinder will find us a world without a Compact, and if I want to spend a year killing a man, it will be only because he offended me. As far as I know, Oleon is still rich, still feared, and probably training some new child to be its knife in the dark. Although, I suppose, not anymore. Nearly six hundred years have passed. I keep forgetting. But I am free of it. Oleon, and the six hundred years.”

  The volus reached up and adjusted something on the suit that almost certainly needed no adjusting. “Disgusting, the way your people accept servitude to those revolting jellyfish. But I am… I am sympathetic.”

  “We are not all so free as the volus.”

  The volus’s thick, phlegmy voice took on actual notes of warmth. “I am glad you are rid of it now.”

  Anax found she loved wearing a suit. She could smile and gloat and no one would see. “A subject for another day, I think—now, surely you heard it that time!”

  The volus closed her crate and keyed in the lock code on the security pad. “Heard what? Look, it’s probably just your suit’s processes. It takes time to get used to the background noise. It’s usually just below the normal hearing range. Maybe I didn’t adjust it enough for drell ears.”

  Anax had left her Lancer rifle leaned against the side of Non’s luggage. She picked it up again.

  “Is someone there?” she said loudly.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” Non snorted.

  Therion swept her weapon through the still darkness of the hold. Nothing. Blood rushing in her ears. Dammit. She had heard something.

  “I’ll tell you something ridiculous,” Anax said, powering down her rifle with a frustrated grind of her teeth. “I didn’t know whether I should tell you. But I think… I think you’re all right, Irit Non.” She thought no such thing. But she needed allies right now. She needed allies more than she needed secrets. “Ysses, the hanar in the lab with Yorrik? It’s happy. I have never seen a jelly so happy. Even when it was speaking of preparing the corpse of its priest, Ysses was positively pulsating with joy.”

  “Huh,” said Irit Non.

  “Indeed,” Anax answered. “Now, let’s go question that quarian.”

  “Can we go via the mess hall? I’m starving,” the volus complained, and the drell could not disagree. She had been putting the pains of her empty stomach aside, but she couldn’t do it forever, and they had been awake for over thirty hours now.

  A crunching, skittering crash echoed all around the deck. A lot of things falling over at once. Or one big thing.

  “I know you heard that,” Therion hissed. She powered up the Lancer again. “Show yourself! Hands up, and don’t come closer than ten meters! Who the fuck are you?”

  “Nah,” came a brutish, snarling voice. A male voice, strangled with fear. “You put your hands up. How about that?”

  Out of the shadows, a cluster of bright-red laser sights danced across Anax and Irit’s chests.

  9. UNCOATING

  Senna’Nir sat on his bunk in the first officer’s quarters. He could not quite think of them as his quarters yet. They were so elegant, so clean, so new. Si’yah was, in the end and the beginning, still an Initiative ship, however modified by her quarian commanders, and so it bore all the superfluously elegant lines of human design. Mirrored surfaces, concealed lighting, tables and chairs as nice to look at as anything in a museum. A forward chamber with seating for several, an observation window, a personal terminal recessed in a long, broad desk, an empty fish tank that took up most of one wall, and a private rear chamber for sleeping, study, and eating. On a human or asari ship, these two adjoined rooms would have been considered modest. He did know that, somewhere inside the overabundance of self-deprecation that was his genetic heritage. But on a quarian ship, this would have been enough room for three families, perhaps four. Space was at a premium on the Fleet. That was why almost all quarians were only children. They just didn’t have the resources for siblings. That this space was all his felt almost obscene. When Qetsi had first shown him, he’d refused. Too much, too beautiful, too big. He didn’t need all this, told her to give it to the Pathfinder or use it for storage. She’d had to coax him into accepting. It’s a new world we’re headed for, she’d said so sweetly, and put her hand on his arm, like they were still young. We don’t have to live by the rules of the old one. It’s yours. Enjoy it. Besides, the Pathfinder’s quarters are much better. So are mine, incidentally.

  The command staff had all been assigned cabins before departure. Their belongings were not down in the hold with the rest of it, but stowed here. All Senna’s old scavenged parts, his tablets, his books, his memories, even a few of his mindfish, packed into secure lockers set into the wall in the dining area. That, too, felt like privilege. That, too, made him uncomfortable. But Qetsi was right. He had to let the old rules go. Some part of him was grateful that, at this very moment, he had somewhere to go and think, somewhere to be alone with the problem before him, even if the rest of his team did not. Though the Keelah Si’yah was fully equipped to house all twenty thousand souls aboard, the rest of the passengers would disembark onto the Nexus almost immediately, so there was no real need to arrange housing for them unless something went very wrong.

  Something had gone very wrong. But at least almost everyone was still in stasis, blissfully ignorant. Something had gone very wrong, and he had to fix it.

  “K,” Senna said softly to the empty room. “Is my suit intact? Analyze for external damage. Activate conversational protocols Senna4, command passkey: alpha-vermillion-9-4-4-0-pallu.”

  His internal display showed no breaches, no compromises of any kind. But the collective quarian worst nightmare scenario was happening all around him, and with every breath, every jolt in his stomach, every ache in his elbow, he feared that it could get to him. Somehow.

  No external damage detected, Commander. Your suit is excellent and attractive.

  He ran his hands over the tightly crosshatched gray panels squeezing his waist. Was he having trouble breathing? Was that the first shallow breath of his eventual, inevitable death? No. No. Stop it. You’re fine, you idiot. You’re not even breathing their air. You’re not even drell. Even if that batarian has it, you’re not fucking batarian, either.

  “Are you lying, K?” he said ruefully.

  I do not understand the question, Commander.

  “No offense, but you seem to have developed a tendency to lie lately.”

  What is a lie, Commander?

  “K, you know every word in every language spoken on this ship, plus the Council races’ languages, plus rudimentary Vorcha. You know what a lie is.”

  Correct. A lie is a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive. However, I cannot make false statements, I cannot deceive, and I have no capacity for deliberate intent. Therefore, in this context, I cannot access a definition that fits appropriately into your chosen sentence structure. I also cannot take offense.

  “I’m so glad I taught you to carry on a conversation, K. It was definitely worth all that time
on Hephaestus. How’s that repeating diagnostic subroutine I installed coming? Still running at peak efficiency?”

  Affirmative. All systems well above minimum operational parameters. I am doing a very good job.

  “Sure you are,” Senna’Nir said darkly. “Good ship. Nice ship. Who wants a treat?”

  Commander, in this context, I cannot access a definition of “treat” that would describe any transaction between—

  “Never mind, K. Sit tight. I’ll fix you up. That’s the treat.”

  Liat, he thought. Grandmother, I need you.

  Against all odds, the lights still seemed to work in here. He’d gotten so used to the shadows over the last many hours the brightness disturbed him. Senna’Nir stood up and walked across the room. (A room so big you could just casually walk across it like it was a park on the Citadel!) He slid open a panel in the wall and demagnetized a shelf of large, long drinking vessels. His suit’s fluid compartments were running low. Frankly, everything was running low. They all needed to eat. They all needed to sleep. The captain had ordered Borbala Ferank to secure the mess hall and draw up a fair food distribution roster for the nine conscious passengers that made up the Keelah Si’yah’s current motley crew. But Senna was thirsty now. A quick topup and straight to work. He pulled a slender glass tube out of his inner wrist and activated the water dispenser to fill his vessel.

  The spigot spat out a torrent of water so hot it turned instantly to steam. Senna leapt back as the scalding mist hit him.

  “K! Reduce water temperature to seven degrees!”

  All water on board is dispensed at 7.56 degrees Celsius for optimal multi-species comfort. Please enjoy your refreshing drink, Commander.

  The steam cleared, and a stream of industrial coolant dribbled out of the dispenser and into the catchbasin. Senna wanted to laugh. People who came out of crises in one piece, a little older and wiser, laughed ironically when yet another thing went wrong. But he couldn’t. He was too thirsty, anyway.

  Focus, Senna. Get the shields back online.

  Senna’Nir unlatched one of the lockers behind the dining table. There was only one thing inside. He lifted it out reverently. A bundle of rags knotted around a small, dull metal disc with thin rods radiating out from a central raised ring. It had not been treated kindly in its life. The disc was dented and scratched and ancient, with marks that looked like, and very probably were, blaster burns, all along one side and the bottom. None of that was Senna’s doing. He’d always taken care of it, ever since it had been entrusted to him, kept it wrapped in soft fabric, safely padded against further damage. It smelled, as it always had, of raw wiring, ozone, and the inside of a spent power pack. The smell of home. Of family.

  He couldn’t hook the disc up to the ship’s power supply without running the risk of hooking it up to whatever was eating away at the ship’s systems, one by one. But Senna’Nir was a tech and a quarian and a hoarder, and none of those three identities allowed him to ever go anywhere unprepared, with a carefully organized range of leftover parts and obsolete components that he would absolutely use someday. And someday had come. He slid open a drawer along the wall and chose a fresh, still-sealed power pack of a make and model that was compatible with the disc—not all packs were. He’d scoured the Fleet for every last one of them before he left, and almost vomited with guilt when no one stopped him.

  Senna sat down on the clean plasteel floor, so new it was still perfectly white, in the exact center of the private portion of his quarters. His heart raced. His suit flashed cardiovascular concern into his visual field, which he blinked away. He looked toward the sealed door between him and the rest of the ship. Just so long as the locks don’t go out, too, he thought nervously. He couldn’t help the fear. He’d never been caught, but the longer you went on doing something terribly wrong without being caught, the more you feared it finally happening. Maybe in Andromeda it won’t matter. New world, Qetsi said. New rules. We are starting over. Why would anyone care now? But Senna was fooling himself and he knew it. Everyone would care. If the other quarians found out, they would care so much he might never see the Nexus. He was starting to sweat. It was too damned bright in here.

  “K, lower lighting in first officer’s quarters by forty percent.”

  The attractively recessed lighting in the walls dimmed moodily, and then, with a stutter, went out completely.

  Lighting reduced by 40%, Commander. Would you like to select accompanying music?

  “No, K, that’s… that’s perfect,” said Senna in the dark. “I’m not sure why I bothered to ask.”

  But he didn’t need light. He was an old hand at this thing. He could activate it blindfolded using only his teeth if he had to. The quarian felt around on the floor for the power pack, shunted it home on the left side of the disc, and slid open the power toggle with his thumb. He could barely breathe. His pulse throbbed in his forehead.

  The disc vibrated very lightly. That was how you really knew how old the thing was. Nothing vibrated anymore. Everything else on this glorious ship ran smooth as still water, even at the highest energy output levels. But not his disc. It thrummed with effort.

  A light came on in the dark. A small, shimmering figure appeared just over the center of the disc, partly translucent, but otherwise in full color and three dimensions: a quarian woman, old, but still strong and wiry, without a suit, for in her time there had been no need for them. The large, familiar webbing of a puckered scar covered the left side of her head, a memento of the time a geth told her exactly what it thought of organic life. Her eyes were white and kindly, without pupils, her hair beneath a rough cowl gray, her long avian legs wrapped, like the rest of her, in purple and red woolen robes.

  “Hello, Grandmother,” Senna’Nir said quietly, though there was no one around to hear him.

  “Always so formal, my grandson,” said the ancestor VI, as it always did, in her clipped, melodious old Rannoch accent. “Call me Liat, why don’t you? Never thought of myself as old enough to have grandchildren anyhow.”

  Senna smiled. His whole body relaxed. She was not damaged. She had made it all the way across the known and unknown cosmos intact. “Grandmother, we are almost to Andromeda, which makes you technically nine hundred and fifty-nine years old.”

  “Watch your tongue, you little bosh’tet,” said the image of his ancestor with a holographic grin. “Never discuss a lady’s age, marital status, or how much she can deadlift in public.” The shifting colors of the projection changed to an expression of concern. “You look thin. Have you been eating enough?”

  Senna reached out and pressed his hand fondly against the side of the metal disc. It was warm, like a real grandmother would be. But Liat’Nir was not a real grandmother. Liat’Nir, hard-drinking, hard-talking, hard-coding, hard-living progenitor of his line, had died in the first spasm of the geth war, when all of Rannoch burned. This was a virtual intelligence programmed hundreds of years ago from an imprint of the real Liat’Nir’s personality, taken only hours before her death, preserved so that no generation of quarians would ever forget where they had come from, so that no child would ever be without family. She was also deeply, utterly illegal, and almost unspeakably valuable. Liat’Nir had been Senna’s parents’ greatest secret, and now she was his. Before the war, there were thousands of these VI. Everyone had them. Everyone could hear the voices of their grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents any time they wished. If they were not their real voices, they still provided comfort, continuity, the richness of a past that did not truly end. But the geth had destroyed the ancestor databanks when they revolted against their masters, and if it was a deliberate punishment, it was the cruelest they ever visited on the quarians. The ancestor VIs were not truly sentient, but before the geth awakened, there had been something of an arms race to augment and upgrade them, to approach the point at which the difference between the real ancestor and the VI was purely academic. That point had never come. But now… now their intelligence was too n
ear a miss, too unsettling, after the quarians’ machine servants had turned against them, asking if they had souls, begging to know, and finally, shooting the people who would not, could not, tell them. If you didn’t know better, if you were unfamiliar with the process by which a personality could be mapped onto a huge bank of code and output standardized and improvised responses based on established prompts and augmented by all previous interactions, an ancestor VI might seem to have a soul. A malfunctioning water dispenser did not. Therefore, in the post-war anti-machine panic, they never tried to make another one. Ancestor VIs were an acceptable, if deeply felt, loss. Water dispensers could stay.

  But not every ancestor had been erased by the geth. A few survived by chance or fate. Liat’Nir’s imprint had been taken just before she suited up for war against her own creations, in case the worst happened, which it had. The pattern had never had a chance to be stored in the main databank. Someone in Senna’s family tree must have been more like him than anyone since. Someone must have sympathized with machines the way he did. Someone couldn’t bear to lose Liat’Nir, either to the geth or the sudden horror of all things VI, and installed her in a contained mobile unit. What Senna’Nir held in his hands was simultaneously terrifying to any other quarian and perhaps the one physical object they would ascribe any value to at all. And that value was nearly limitless. Anything approaching AI was forbidden. But ancestor VI was the lost legacy of their race. And at the moment the quarians lost everything, their computational arms race had brought the ancestor VIs almost to the brink of sentience. This beaten metal disc was both a crime and a near-mythical treasure, hidden by his family for generations. Senna had spent most of his life in fear of being found out. He might be dumped onto a prison planet and left to die. He might be praised for bringing this jewel to the Fleet. She might be given a place of honor. She might be deleted. But either way, she would be confiscated. And she was his grandmother. He would never let that happen.