She never wrote me back. Instead, she showed up at my door. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific.”
“Hello, Endria,” I said as I let her in. “Nice of you to stop by. You couldn’t have just written that out?”
She huffed. “You have a pretty nice room, you know that? The quarters I can get if I want to move out of our family’s allotment are all little closets.”
“Get a job,” I said. “Look, when you said the Vosth—”
“Don’t you ever take that suit off?” she interrupted. “I mean, we’re inside about five different air filtration systems and an airlock or two.”
I ran a hand around the collar of my envirosuit. “I like having it on.”
“How do you eat?”
“I open it to eat.” And shower, and piss, and I took it off to change into other suits and have the ones I’d been wearing cleaned. I just didn’t enjoy it. “Can you reason with the Vosth?”
Endria shook her head. “More specific.”
“Do they change their behavior?” I asked.
Endria wandered over to my couch and sat down, giving me a disparaging look. “Nice specifics. They adapt, if that’s what you mean. Didn’t you listen at your initiation? They came to this planet and couldn’t survive here so they adapted. Some people think that’s why we can negotiate with them at all.”
I didn’t follow. “What does that have to do with negotiation?”
“Well, it’s all theoretical,” she said, and tried to fish something out of her teeth with her pinky.
“Endria. Negotiation. Adaptation. What?”
“They adapt,” she said. “They fell out of the sky and almost died here and then they adapted and they became the dominant species. Then we landed, which is way better than falling, and we have all this technology they don’t have, and they can’t just read our minds, even if they take us over, so wouldn’t you negotiate for that? To stay the dominant species? I think they want to be more like us.”
Would we be better if we understood, the Vosth had asked. “They said they took over colonists because our bodies were comfortable,” I said.
Endria shrugged. “Maybe being dominant is comfortable for them.”
I ran a hand over my helmet. “Charming.”
“I mean, letting them be dominant sure isn’t comfortable for you.”
I glared. “What, it’s comfortable for you?”
“They’re not that bad,” Endria said. “I mean, they’re not territorial or anything. They just do their thing. When I’m a governor, I want to see if we can work together.”
“Yeah. Us and the body-snatchers.”
Endria tilted her head at me. “You know, I think it would be kinda neat, sharing your body with the Vosth. I mean, if it wasn’t a permanent thing. I bet you’d get all sorts of new perspectives.”
I gaped. I don’t think Endria saw my expression through the helmet, but it was disturbing enough that she didn’t share it. “It is a permanent thing! And you don’t share—you don’t get control. They take you over and you just die. There’s probably nothing left of you. Or if there is, you’re just stuck in your head, screaming.”
“And that’s why you’re asking if the Vosth can change?” Endria asked.
“I’m asking because—” I started, and then couldn’t finish that sentence.
Endria smiled. It was a nasty sort of hah-I-knew-it smile. “See?” she said, hopping off the couch and heading for the door. “You are interested in Vosth research.”
Twenty minutes later someone knocked on my door. I opened it, thinking it was Endria back to irritate me. No. In the corridor outside my room stood a wide-faced, high-collared balding man, with an expression like he’d been eating ascorbic acid and a badge on his lapel reading DIPLOMATIC AUDITOR in big bold letters.
He’d even brought a datapad.
“This is a notice, citizen,” he said. “You’re not authorized to engage in diplomatic action with the Vosth.”
“I’m not engaging in diplomatic action,” I said, shuffling through possible excuses. It’d be easier if I had any idea what I was doing. “I’m . . . engaging in research.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“Civil research,” I said, picking up a pen from my desk and wagging it at him like he should know better. “Helping Endria with her civics certification. Didn’t she fill out the right forms to make me one of her resources?”
There were no forms, as far as I knew. Still, if there were, I could probably shuffle off the responsibility onto Endria, and if there weren’t, the sourface in front of me would probably go and draft some up to mollify himself. Either way, I was off the hook for a moment.
He marked something down on his datapad. “I’m going to check into this,” he warned.
At which point he’d argue his case against Endria. Poor bastards, both of them.
“Expect further communication from a member of the governing commission,” he warned. Satisfied with that threat, he turned and went away.
For about a day, I decided work was safer. If I kept to the restricted-access parts of the waste reclamation facility I could cut down on Endria sightings, and I could work long hours. Surely the governors wouldn’t work late just to harass me.
It wasn’t a long-term solution. Still, I thought it’d be longer-term than one work shift.
I got back to my room and my terminal was blinking, and when I sat down it triggered an automatic callback and put me on standby for two minutes. Now, in theory automatic callbacks were only for high-priority colony business, which, considering I’d seen my supervisor not ten minutes ago and I wasn’t involved in anything important in governance, I expected to mean that Endria wanted something and they took civics certification courses way more seriously than I’d thought. I went to get a drink while it was trying to connect.
And I came back to a line of text on an encrypted channel, coming from the office of the Prime Governor.
Most of my water ended up on my boots.
[Sorry I’m doing this over text,] she wrote. [I just wanted an official record of our conversation.]
When a governor wants an official record of your conversation, you’re fucked.
[What can I do for you?] I typed back.
[Someone stopped by to talk to you,] she went on, the lines spooling out over the screen in real-time. [About your not being authorized to engage in diplomatic action.]
I had expected that to be defused, not to escalate. Escalating up to the Prime Governor had been right out. [I still believe that I wasn’t engaging in diplomatic—] I started, but she typed right over it.
[How would you like authorization?]
That hadn’t been on the list of possibilities, either.
[I’m sorry?] I typed. What I almost typed, and might have typed if I didn’t value my civil liberties, was I recycle shit for a living. My skillset is not what you’re looking for.
[You may be aware that we’re pioneering a new focus of study into the Vosth,] the Governor typed.
Vosth research. I wondered if Endria had recommended me upward. [Yes, ma’am,] I wrote.
[We now believe that we can reverse the effects of Vosth colonization of a human host.]
I looked at my water. I looked at my boots. After a moment, I typed [Ma’am?] and got up for another glass. I needed it.
I came back to a paragraph explaining [You’ve been in contact with one of the infested colonists. We’d like you to bring him back to the compound for experimentation.]
Okay. So long as I was just being asked to harvest test subjects. [You want to cure Menley?]
[We believe it unlikely that human consciousness would survive anywhere on the order of years,] she typed back, and my stomach twisted like it had talking to Menley. [This would be a proof of concept which could be applied to the more recently infected.]
And Menley wasn’t someone who’d be welcomed back into the colony, I read between the lines. I should’ve asked Endria who had sat on the c
ouncil that decided Menley’s sentence. Was this particular Prime Governor serving, back then? Why did I never remember these things? Why did I never think to ask?
[So, you would extract the Vosth,] I started, and was going to write leaving a corpse?, maybe hoping that we’d at least get a breathing body. She interrupted me again.
[The Vosth parasite organisms would not be extracted. They would die.]
My mouth was dry, but the idea of drinking water made me nauseous. It was like anyone or anything in Menley’s body was fair game for anyone.
[I want to be clear with you,] she said. Dammit. She could have just lied like they did in every dramatic work I’d ever read. Then, if the truth ever came out, I could be horrified but still secure in the knowledge that there was no way I could have known. No. I just got told to kidnap someone so the scientists could kill him. I wasn’t even saving anyone. Well, maybe in the future, if anyone got infested again.
Anyone the governors felt like curing, anyway.
Then she had to go and make it worse.
[We would not be in violation of any treaties or rules of conduct,] she wrote. [If we can develop a cure for or immunity to Vosth infestation, the de facto arrangement in place between our colony and the Vosth will be rendered null, and the restrictions imposed on our activities on the planet will become obsolete.]
I wished Endria was there. She could interpret this. [Isn’t this an act of war?]
[We’re confident that the Vosth will regard an unwarranted act of aggression as an expression of natural law,] the Governor explained.
That didn’t make me feel better, and I think it translated to yes. [I thought it was understood that things like that wouldn’t happen.]
[It was understood that the dominant species could, at any time, exercise their natural rights,] the Governor explained. [Perhaps it’s time they learned that they aren’t the dominant species any more.]
We believe the ambient temperature to be pleasant for human senses today, Vosth-Menley told me when I got to the Ocean of Starve. I was beginning to wonder whether his reassurances were predation or a mountain of culture skew.
“What is your obsession with me feeling the air?” I asked him. Them. The Vosth.
You would be safe, Vosth-Menley insisted.
I should have asked Endria if the Vosth could lie. I should have kept a running list of things I needed to ask. “Listen,” I said.
We would like to understand, Vosth-Menley said again.
I read a lot of Earth lit. I’d never seen a butterfly, but I knew the metaphor of kids who’d pull off their wings. Looking at Menley, I wondered if the Vosth were like children, oblivious to their own cruelty. “What would you do if someone could take you over?”
Our biology is not comparable to yours, Vosth-Menley said.
Bad hypothetical. “What would you do if someone tried to kill you?”
It is our perception of reality that species attempt to prolong their own existence, he said.
“Yeah.” I was having trouble following my own conversation. “Look, you’re a dominant species, and we’re supposed to have a reciprocal relationship, but you take people over and—look.” I’d gone past talking myself in circles and was talking myself in scatterplots.
The back of my neck itched, and I couldn’t ignore it.
“What if I do want to take off my suit?” I asked, and then scatterplotted, “Do you have any reason to lie to me?”
The Vosth considered. Yes.
Oh. Okay. Great.
Our present actions are concurrent with a different directive, he added. There is reason to establish honesty.
Nothing was stopping him from attacking. He could have torn off my suit or helmet by now. Even if it was a risk, and it was a risk, and even if I had a phobia the size of the meterorite the Vosth had ridden in . . .
I’d seen how many Vosth had swarmed over Menley’s whole body, and how long it had taken him to stop twitching. If it was just a few of them, I might be able to run back to the compound. Then, if the governors really had a cure, they could cure me. And I’d feel fine about tricking the Vosth into being test subjects if they’d tricked me into being a host. That’s what I told myself. I didn’t feel fine about anything.
I brought my gloves to the catch on my helmet.
Two minutes later I was still standing like that, with the catch still sealed, and Vosth-Menley was still staring.
“You could come back to the compound with me,” I said. “The governors would love to see you.”
We are curious as to the conditions of your constructed habitat, Vosth-Menley said.
Yeah, I thought, but are you coming back as a plague bearer or an experiment?
I squeezed my eyes shut, and pried my helmet off.
I’d lost way too many referents.
The outside air closed around my face with too many smells I couldn’t identify or describe, other than “nothing like sterile air” and “nothing like my room or my shower.” Every nerve on my head and neck screamed for broadcast time, registering the temperature of the air, the little breezes through the hairs on my nape, the warmth of direct sunlight. My heart was racing. I was breathing way too fast and even with my eyes shut I was overloaded on stimuli.
I waded my way through. It took time, but amidst the slog of what I was feeling, I eventually noticed something I wasn’t: Anything identifiable as Vosth infestation.
I opened my eyes.
Vosth-Menley was standing just where he had been, watching just as he had been. And I was breathing, with my skin touching the outside air.
Touching the air. That which touched the air belonged to the Vosth. I wasn’t belonging to the Vosth.
I looked toward the Ocean. Its silver underlayer was still there, calm beneath the surface.
I took a breath. I tasted the outside world, the gas balance, the smell of vegetation working its way from my nostrils to the back of my throat. This was a Vosth world, unless the governors made it a human world, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Looking back to Vosth-Menley, I didn’t know how he’d feel about it either.
“You came from beyond the shell of atmosphere,” I said. “Like we did, right?”
Vosth-Menley said, Our genetic predecessors came to this world on an meteorite.
“And you adapted, right?” I almost ran a hand over my helmet, but stopped before I touched my hair. I hadn’t sterilized my gloves. Never mind that my head wasn’t in a sterile environment anymore either. “Do you understand that we adapt?”
It is our perception of reality that living organisms adapt, he said.
That was a yes. Maybe. “Look, we don’t have to fight for dominance, do we?” I spread my hands. “Like, if you go off and re-invent technology now that you have hands to build things with, you don’t need to come back here and threaten us. We can have an equilibrium.”
His eyes were as dead as usual. I had no idea what understanding on a Vosth colonist would look like.
“We’d both be better.”
We are not averse to an equilibrium, Vosth-Menley said.
I swallowed. “Then you’ve gotta go now.” Then, when I thought he didn’t understand, “The governors are adapting a way to cure you. To kill you. Making us the dominant species. Look, I’m . . . telling you what will happen, and I’m giving you the option not to let us do it.”
Vosth-Menley watched me for a moment. Then he turned, and walked back toward the Ocean of Starve.
Interspecies incident, said a little voice at the corner of my mind. It sounded like Endria. Sterile or not, I sealed my helmet back onto my e-suit and walked back toward the colony at double-time.
That night I filed a report saying that I’d invited Vosth-Menley back, but he’d declined for reasons I couldn’t make sense of. Communications barrier. I thought of telling the Prime Governor that she should have sent a diplomatic auditor, but didn’t.
I didn’t hear anything until the next day when a survey buggy came back in, and its driver
hopped down and said that something strange happened at the Ocean of Starve. Far from being its usual murky silver, it was perfectly clear and reflecting the sky. He said it to a governor, but news spread fast. It came to me via Endria as I was walking out of my lab.
“The only thing that would cause that would be a mass migration of the Vosth, but that’s not something we’ve seen in their behavior before now!” She glared at me like I might know something, which, of course, I did.
A diplomatic auditor came by later to take a complete transcript of my last interaction with Vosth-Menley. I left most of it out.
Survey buggies kept going out. People walked down to the Ocean shore. Auditors flashed radio signals out of the communications booth, but no one answered. The Vosth had vanished, and that was all anyone could tell.
I stopped wearing my envirosuit.
The first day, stepping out of my door, I felt lightbodied, lightheaded, not entirely there. I felt like I’d walked out of my shower without getting dressed. I had to force myself to go forward instead of back, back to grab my envirosuit, to make myself decent.
I walked into the hall where every moment was the sensory overload of air on my skin, where my arms and legs felt loose, where everyone could see the expressions on my face. That was as frightening as the Vosth. I’d just left behind the environmental advantage I’d had since I was ten.
But I was adapting.
MANEKI NEKO
Bruce Sterling
“I can’t go on,” his brother said.
Tsuyoshi Shimizu looked thoughtfully into the screen of his pasokon. His older brother’s face was shiny with sweat from a late-night drinking bout.
“It’s only a career,” said Tsuyoshi, sitting up on his futon and adjusting his pajamas. “You worry too much.”
“All that overtime!” his brother whined. He was making the call from a bar somewhere in Shibuya. In the background, a middle-aged office lady was singing karaoke, badly. “And the examination hells. The manager training programs. The proficiency tests. I never have time to live!”
Lightspeed: Year One Page 63
