Lightspeed: Year One
Page 62
Her face screwed up. I guess that wasn’t on her exam.
“I’ll find out,” she said, turning on her heel. “Don’t create an interspecies incident while I’m gone.”
She flounced away.
I turned back to the porthole, where Vosth-Menley had smooshed his nose up against the composite as well. I knocked my helmet against the door.
“Leave,” I told him. Them. It.
He stared, dead eyes unblinking, then slouched away.
I didn’t sleep that night. My brain played old-Earth zombie flicks whenever I closed my eyes, staffed by silver monstrosities instead of rotting corpses. Endria thought I’d create an interspecies incident; I thought about how many people would be trapped without e-suits if a Vosth infestation broke out. How many people would be screaming and convulsing and then just staggering around with dead silver eyes, soft hands pressing into portholes, skin teeming with parasites ready to crawl into anyone they saw.
I talked to the governor on duty the next day, who confirmed that the colony would “strongly prefer” if the Vosth weren’t allowed to walk around in naked fleshsuits inside the habitat. She even sent out a public memo.
Three days later, Endria came to give me crap about it. The way she walked into my lab, she looked like someone took one of the governors, shrunk them, and reworked their face to fit that impish craze back in the ’20s. She even had a datapad, and a button-up tunic under her hygienic jacket. “I’m not going to enjoy this, am I?” I asked.
“I came to interview you about civil law and the Vosth,” she said. “It’s for a primary certification in government apprenticeship. I’m going to be a governor by the time I’m sixteen.”
I stared at her.
“It’s part of a civics certification, so I can make you answer,” she added.
Wonderful. “After these titrations,” I told her.
Endria went to one of the counters and boosted herself onto it, dropped her datapad beside her, and reached into a pocket to pull out something colorful and probably fragrant and nutrient-scarce. “That’s okay. We can make small talk while you’re working. I know titration isn’t demanding on the linguistic portions of your brain.”
Excepting the Vosth, there was nothing I hated more than people who thought they knew more about my work than I did.
“Sit quietly,” I said. “I’ll be with you shortly.”
To my surprise, she actually sat quietly.
To my annoyance, that lasted through a total of one titration and a half.
“I’m going to interview you about the sentence passed on Ken Menley in colony record zero-zero-zero-three-zero-four,” she said. “According to my research, you were the youngest person there, as well as the only person there to meet Menley again. You have a unique perspective on Vosth-human interactions. After the incident a few nights ago I thought it would be a good idea to focus my paper on them.”
“My perspective,” I started to say, but thought better of calling the Vosth names usually reserved for human excrement. They were shit, they were horrifying, they were waiting out there to crawl inside us, and if Endria was going to be a governor by age sixteen she’d probably have the authority to rehabilitate me by sixteen and a half. I didn’t want her thinking I needed my opinions revised. “I have no perspective. I don’t deal with them.”
Endria rolled the candy around in her mouth. “I don’t think any of my friends are friends with you,” she said. “Isn’t it weird to go past two degrees of separation?”
“Wouldn’t know,” I said. My primary degrees of separation were limited to my supervisor and the quartermaster I requisitioned e-suits from. I wouldn’t call either of them friends.
Endria kicked her heels, tilting her head so far her ear rested on her shoulder. “Everyone thinks you’re a creep because you never take that e-suit off.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
“Are you afraid of the Vosth?” Endria asked. She said it like that was unreasonable.
“I have a healthy skepticism that they’re good neighbors,” I said.
“And that’s why you wear an e-suit?”
“No,” I said, “that’s why I’m active in colonial politics and took the civics track with an emphasis on interspecies diplomacy.” I set down the beaker I was working with. For irony.
Endria sucked on her teeth, then gave me a smile I couldn’t read. “You could go into Vosth research. It’s a promising new area of scientific inquiry.”
I pushed the beaker aside. “What new area? We’ve been here for a generation. Bureaucracy is slow, but it’s not that slow.”
“It’s a hard science, not sociological,” she said. “We couldn’t do that before. I don’t know much about it, but there’s all sorts of government appropriations earmarked for it. Don’t you read the public accounting?”
I turned to look at her. She was kicking her heels against the table.
“You should go into Vosth research, and you should use your experience with Menley to open up a line of inquiry. It’s probably xenobiology or something, but it might be fertile ground for new discoveries. Then you could be the colony’s expert on the Vosth. Interspecies relations are an important part of this colony. That’s why I’m writing a paper on them for my civics certification.”
“I’m not getting this titration done, am I?”
Endria smiled, and said the words most feared by common citizens interacting with civil law. “This will only take a minute.”
It wasn’t against the law to go outside the compound, and some people liked the sunlight. Some people—daredevils and risk-takers—even enjoyed the fresh air. As for me, I passed the front door every time I got off work and always felt like I was walking along the edge of a cliff. I’d tried taking different routes but that made it worse somehow, like if I didn’t keep my eye on it, the airlock would blow out and let these seething waves of silver flow in and I wouldn’t know until I got back to my shower or had to switch out my suit for cleaning. Or I’d be opening my faceplate for dinner and feel something else on my lips, and there would be the Vosth, crawling inside. I had trouble eating if I didn’t walk past the airlock to make sure it was closed.
Yeah, Menley made that worse.
I started staring at the airlock, expecting to see his face squashed up against it. Maybe he was just outside, seconds away from getting some idiot like Endria to let him in. People walked past me, and I could hear them talking in low tones while I watched the airlock, like maybe I’d gone into an absence seizure and they should get someone to haul me away. And then they could have me investigated for colonist’s dementia despite the fact that I’d been born here. And they could take me out to the Ocean of Starve . . .
After two nights I realized if I didn’t step outside to make sure the Vosth weren’t coming with a swarm, I was heading for a paranoid fugue.
Actually walking out took two more nights because I couldn’t stand to open the airlock myself. I finally saw a couple strolling out as I passed, e-suited hand in e-suited hand, and I fell in behind them.
The airlock and the outside were the only places I could be anonymous in my e-suit. The couple didn’t even cross to the other side of the enclosure as it cycled the air and opened the outer door.
The grass was teal-green. I hear it’s less blue on Earth, and the sky is less green, but I was just glad neither one was silver. The sunlight was strong and golden, the clouds were mercifully white, and there wasn’t a trace of fog to be seen. So that was good. For the moment.
The Ocean of Starve was a good ten-minute hike away, and I didn’t want to get near it. I walked around the habitat instead, eyeing the horizon in the Ocean’s direction. I’d made it about a half-kilometer around the periphery when I caught a flash of silver out of the corner of my eye and jumped, ready for it to be a trick of the light or a metal component on the eggshell exterior of the dome.
No. It was Menley.
I screamed.
The scream instinct isn’t one of evo
lution’s better moves. Actually, it’s a terrible idea. The instant sound left my mouth Menley turned and dragged himself toward me. I considered running, but I had this image of tripping, and either losing a boot or ripping a hole in my e-suit.
Menley staggered up and stared at me. I took a step back. Menley turned his head like he wasn’t sure which eye got a better view, and I stepped back again.
After about a minute of this, I said “You really want inside the compound, don’t you?”
The Vosth opened Menley’s mouth. His nostrils flared. I guess they were doing something like they did to the speakers in the audience booth—vibrating the equipment. The voice, if you wanted to call it that, was quiet and reedy. We are the Vosth.
“I know that,” I said, and took another step back from them. Him. Vosth-Menley.
You will let us inside? he asked, with an artificial rise to his voice. I guess the Vosth had to telegraph their questions. Maybe they weren’t used to asking.
“No,” I told him.
He shifted his weight forward and ignored my answer. The Vosth are allowed inside your partition shell?
“Look what you do to people,” I said. “No, you’re not allowed inside.”
This is natural, they said, and I had no idea if that was supposed to be an argument or agreement.
“What?”
Take off your suit, Vosth-Menley said.
“Hell no.”
The air creates a pleasurable sensation on human skin.
“And the Vosth create a pleasant infestation?”
We will promise not to take you.
If they had to tell me, I wasn’t trusting them. “Why do you want me to?”
Do you want to? the Vosth asked.
I checked the seal on my suit.
Take off your suit, Vosth-Menley said again.
“I’m going home now,” I answered, and ran for the compound door.
Endria was in the canteen, sitting on a table, watching a slow-wave newsfeed from Earth and nibbling on a finger sandwich, and I was annoyed to run into her there. I was also annoyed that it took me that long to run into her, after trying to run into her in the library, the courthouse auditorium, the promenade and my lab.
Endria just annoyed me.
I dodged a few people on their rest hours and walked up to her table, putting my hands down on it. I hadn’t sterilized them after being outside and was technically breaching a bylaw or two, but that didn’t occur to me. I guess I was lucky Endria didn’t perform a civilian arrest.
“One,” I said, “I don’t want anything to do with the Vosth in a lab, or outside of one, and two, in no more than thirty seconds, explain Vosth legal rights outside the colony compound.”
Endria jumped, kicking over the chair her feet were resting on, and looking agape at me in the middle of a bite of sandwich. Sweet schadenfreude: The first word out of her mouth was the none-too-smart: “Uh.”
Of course, she regrouped quickly.
“First of all, the Vosth don’t believe in civil or social law,” she said. “Just natural law. So the treaty we have isn’t really a treaty, just them explaining what they do so we had the option not to let them. We don’t have legal recourse. It’s like that inside the colony, too—we can adjust the air system to filter them out and kill them, so they know we’re in charge in here and don’t try to come inside. Except for Menley, but that’s weird, and that’s why I’m doing a paper. Did you find anything out?”
I ignored that. “And he doesn’t act like the other—how many other infested colonists are there?”
She shrugged. “A lot. Like, more than forty. A few of them were killed by panicked colonists, though. We don’t know much about them. In the last hundred records, Menley’s the only—”
“Vosth-Menley,” I corrected.
Endria rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that. Whatever. Vosth-Menley is the only one to make contact with us. There’s actually this theory that the rest are off building a civilization now that the Vosth have opposable thumbs. Even if it’s only, like, eighty opposable thumbs.”
The base of my neck itched. Fortunately, years in an envirosuit let me ignore that. “We lost forty colonists to the Vosth?”
“Oh, yeah!” she said. “And more when everyone panicked and there were riots and we thought there was going to be a war. That’s why so many Earth-shipped embryos were matured so fast. In fact, our colony has the highest per-capita percentage of in-vitro citizens. We’ve got sixty-three percent.”
“I’m one of them,” I said.
“I’ve got parents,” Endria responded.
I managed not to strangle her. “So there’s no law?”
“Not really,” Endria said. “But there’s a lot of unwritten stuff and assumed stuff. Like we just assume that if we wear e-suits out they won’t think they own the e-suits even though they touch the air, and we assume that if they did come in the compound they’d be nice.” She shot me a sharp look. “But I don’t think that’s an issue now, since you squealed to the governors.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I did not squeal. Endria just didn’t see what was wrong with having a sentient invasive disease wandering around your colony. “I’m going to go now.”
“I still want to complete our interview!” Endria said. “I think you have opinion data you’re holding back!”
“Later,” I said, gave a little wave, and headed off.
On the way out of the canteen I ran into one of the auxiliary governors, who pulled me aside and gave my envirosuit the usual look of disdain. “Citizen,” she said, “I need a thumbprint verification to confirm that your complaint to the colony council was resolved to your satisfaction. Your complaint about the infested colonist.”
I looked to the hall leading in the direction of the outside doors. “Right now?”
“It will only take a moment.”
I looked to the vents, and then back at Endria.
I hated thumbprint confirmations.
Quickly, I unsealed one glove, pulled my hand out, and pressed my thumb into the datapad sensor. The air drew little fingers along my palm, tested my wrist seal, tickled the back of my hand. “Thank you, citizen,” the auxiliary said, and wandered off.
I tucked my exposed hand under my other arm and hurried back toward my room to sterilize hand and glove and put my suit back together.
I went outside again. I don’t know why. Specialized insanity, maybe.
Actually, no. This was like those people on Mulciber who’d go outside in their hazard suits even though the Mulciber colony was on a patch of stable ground that didn’t extend much beyond the habitat, and they always ran the risk of falling into a magma chamber or having a glob of superheated rock smash their faceplate in. Some people find something terrifying and then just have to go out to stare it in the face. Another one of evolution’s less-than-brilliant moves.
Vosth-Menley was stretching his stolen muscles by the shore of the Starve. I could see the muscles moving under his skin. He laced his fingers together and pulled his hands above his head. He planted his feet and bent at the waist so far that his forehead almost touched the ground. I couldn’t do any of that.
I went through the usual colony-prescribed exercises every morning. The envirosuit pinched and chafed, but like hell I was going to show off my body any longer than I had to. Vosth-Menley didn’t have that problem. The Vosth could walk around naked, for all they cared, if they had a body to be naked.
The Vosth noticed me and Vosth-Menley turned around. He clomped his way over, and I tried not to back away.
The air is temperate at this time, at these coordinates, Vosth-Menley said.
I looked over the turbid water. It caught the turquoise of the sky and reflected slate, underlaid with silver. “Why do you call this the Ocean of Starve?”
Vosth-Menley turned back to the Ocean. His gaze ran over the surface, eyes moving in separate directions, and his mouth slacked open.
Our genetic structure was encoded in a meteorite, he said. We imp
acted this world long ago and altered the ecosystem. We adapted to rely on the heat of free volcanic activity, which was not this world’s stable state. When the world cooled our rate of starvation exceeded our rate of adaptation. Here, underwater vents provided heat to sustain our adaptation until we could survive.
My stomach turned. “Why do you take people over?”
Your bodies are warm and comfortable.
“Even though we proved sapience to you,” I said.
Vosth-Menley didn’t answer.
“What would you do if I took off my envirosuit?”
You would feel the air, Vosth-Menley said, like I wouldn’t notice that he hadn’t answered the question.
“I know that. What would you do? You, the Vosth?”
You would feel the gentle sun warming your skin.
I backed away. Nothing was stopping him from lunging and tearing off my suit. Not if what Endria said was true: that it was the law of the wild out here. Why didn’t he? “You don’t see anything wrong with that.”
I wished he would blink. Maybe gesture. Tapdance. Anything. You have been reacting to us with fear.
The conversation was an exercise in stating the useless and obvious. “I don’t want to end up like Menley,” I said. “Can’t you understand that? Would you want that to happen to you?”
We are the dominant species, the Vosth said. We would not be taken over.
“Empathy,” I muttered. I wasn’t expecting him to hear it. “Learn it.”
We are not averse to learning, the Vosth said. Do you engage in demonstration?
Demonstration? Empathy? I shook my head. “You don’t get what I’m saying.”
Would we be better if we understood? he asked, and stumbled forward with sudden intensity.
I jumped back, ready to fight him off, ready to run.
We want to understand.
[Can the Vosth change?] was the first thing I wrote to Endria when I sat down at my terminal. I don’t know why I kept asking her things. Maybe despite the fact that she was five years my junior and a pain in the rectum she was still less annoying than the diplomatic auditors. Maybe because she was the only person who didn’t look at me like they might have to call Security Response if I walked up. I didn’t really talk to anyone on my off hours.