Mass Effect

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Irit Non had brought the child corpse. Hauled it over her shoulder like a sack of grain. The volus fashion designer stood next to him in the medbay now, panting, her suit covered in unspeakable stains and burns.

  “Self-pitying: I am glad you are here, Irit Non. But I wish you would stay outside where it is safe.”

  The volus made a disgusted noise. “Safe? Where is Ysses? Pretty safe, do you think? When I got here the door was wide open and you were snoring. What’s safe around here? No, it doesn’t matter now. Quarantine is well and truly broken. If we are exposed, we are exposed. And that”—she gestured at the dead girl in the helmet—“makes everyone,” she wheezed, her voice as emotionless as his had ever been.

  “Tentative overture: You know, my grandfather Verlaam believed that other species could greatly benefit from using the elcor speech technique in times of great stress,” he said flatly. “Many veterans of many wars came to him to learn it in his later days, for great trauma blunts emotions in all organic beings. Perhaps you should try it.”

  Irit Non turned her yellow eyes up to him. “Total fucking despair: Everyone has it. None of us are safe. How was that?”

  “Encouraging: Very good. With great confidence: But that quarian cannot have died of the Fortinbras virus. Their suits are excellent. It should have kept her perfectly safe. I am sure she died in some other way. Let us focus on the volus victim.”

  Irit shrugged. “Do you know where I found her? In Mess Hall 4. They turned it into a makeshift mausoleum. All the dead are there. All the dead anyone has time to collect. It’s cold enough for storage there. They’re piled in there like rations. Environmental zones hardly matter for them anymore. No one means any disrespect… they just have to go somewhere. I saw her while I was interring my father’s body under a cafeteria table. One quarian arm under all those hanar tentacles. And while I was carrying her through the decks, I thought about how it could possibly happen. The volus suits are one thing, not much in the way of disease filtration. But the quarians should be fine. They should have been fine. And I am not… a large person. It is hard for me to carry a dead body.” Irit Non’s voice grew thick. “Miserably: She was so heavy,” the volus whispered. “So much heavier than you’d think, for a child. It took a long time. So I tried to imagine how a quarian suit could be breached without the suit responding or the quarian inside knowing.”

  Yorrik saw the captain arrive out of the corner of his eye. She saw him notice her and raised a hand—no need to interrupt. Qetsi’Olam leaned against the far wall of the corridor and listened.

  “Do you know what Clanless suits are made of?” the volus went on, staring at the dead girl. “It sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it? Well, the answer sounds like a punchline: anything they can find. They’re made of whatever they can scavenge on the Fleet, from other ships, on planets where they make planetfall. It’s strictly patchwork crap, the strongest materials, but all pieced together like a quilt. It’s really a wonder they work as well as they do. Clanless engineering, I suppose. But… I can’t imagine they put ‘whatever can plausibly be interpreted as fabric’ through serious stress tests, can you? What I am trying to say is: I know the exact duration my suit can survive without structural failure in a vacuum. Exactly the pressures it can withstand, internal and external. At exactly what point it will breach if it comes into contact with dozens of known caustic substances. And precisely what temperatures it can take, high and… high and low. Do you see? Do you see, elcor? Perhaps the Clanless know all those things, too. They are a careful people. I’ve always admired that about them. But those numbers, those precious, life-supporting numbers, cannot possibly be the same for every square inch of their suit. Because it’s all patched together from the-gods-know-what.”

  “We do,” said the captain, softly but with the authority that all captains have the moment they take the rank. “Of course we stress-test them.”

  Irit turned to Qetsi. “Captain, I didn’t see you.”

  “It’s perfectly all right, Specialist Non. I rather enjoy listening to you speak. You have such a way. It’s comforting. I came to check on you, Yorrik. I have… I have seen your friend.”

  “Vain hope: Ysses?” Yorrik said. Where could that blasted hanar have gone? Why would it have gone? The elcor had wakened to Irit Non screaming at him, and his head felt so heavy, so heavy.

  “Yes. That one cornered me near the bridge. It grabbed me. Have you ever been grabbed by a hanar? I don’t recommend it. It wrapped me up in all of its tentacles and giggled and giggled and told me to let it happen, to let it all happen. Someone ripped it off me, and it floated away. And then that someone tried to stab me because I didn’t have any food. But I think… I think I am all right. The ship is lost, I’m afraid. There is no control anywhere.”

  The volus opened a panel in her thigh and drew out a small black device. “Captain, would you mind if I examined your suit? It could put all our minds at ease.”

  “My suit? I said I am all right. But… of course,” Qetsi’Olam demurred.

  The volus beckoned her closer and ran her device over the expanse of patchwork mesh that comprised the captain’s suit. A dim ultraviolet-colored light emanated from it. She ran it all over Qetsi’s body, and only at the end did a tiny ultraviolet-colored mark appear on the small of her back—and then a few more, and a few more, like cracks in ice.

  “Micro-tears,” sighed Irit Non. “No material can be stress-tested for six hundred years in a cryopod, at temperatures far below organic tolerance. I don’t believe the makers of those pods ever imagined that people like you and me would keep our suits on when we went to sleep for centuries at a time. You might have been all right if you hadn’t.”

  The captain might have looked horrified. You could never tell with quarians. But her posture looked as though you could knock her over with a breath. “We’ll sleep safe as engines as forward we fly, my self and my suit, my suit and I,” she whispered.

  “Yes, well, maybe just you next time,” the volus grunted.

  “I’ve been exposed,” Qetsi said faintly.

  “Wry humor: Join the club,” Yorrik droned. His limbs felt so thick. Like he was standing in a swamp. He could hardly think. He tried to focus his thoughts. “To be or not to be, that is the question, whether ’tis nobler in the minds of men to suffer the… suffer the…” What was it the old Dane was so worried about suffering?

  “How long is the incubation period?” Qetsi asked. “I don’t feel well. Do I? I don’t. I can’t tell.” She coughed experimentally.

  “Regretfully: I have not been able to observe a patient from the point of first contact, so I cannot provide that information,” Yorrik sighed. Who knew how long it had been since Jalosk was exposed?

  Anax Therion and Borbala Ferank made hardly a sound coming up the hall, despite carrying rather a large crate of electronic supplies between them.

  “Hullo, Yorrik, you great lump,” said the batarian. “How are you? We… eh. We’re going to need the microscope. And… And the fish tank, too. Whatever’s left of the CPU from the one we brought up to you. You don’t need them anymore, do you?”

  Anax took it all in and Yorrik watched her do it. What could possibly be said? The open door, the absence of Ysses, people wandering in and out of the medbay as though quarantine protocols had never been invented. She sighed. Yorrik sighed. It was a world of sighs and no solutions. How could he tell them? How could they not know? How could they not smell him? The smell of his own organs devouring themselves hung thick in the air, sweeter than flowers, almost like candy, sickening. But they did not seem to notice. He was so tired. So very tired.

  “Am I an unforgivable optimist if I ask about a cure, Yorrik?” ventured the captain.

  “Hopeless: I will forgive you. But I do not know what you think I can do without a working virology lab. You can identify a virus with toy parts. You can’t cure one.”

  The elcor stared down at the shredded, half-exploded volus. He tried again to focus on
something good, something solid, something that felt like love and life. “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right…”

  “Defeated: The trouble is the mutation. Fortinbras has had so long to evolve. Hundreds of years. And I am to murder it in a day? It is impossible, unless I could have as much time to evolve as it did.” Yorrik could not be sure his words had come out as well as they sounded in his head. But the others seemed to understand. He did not want to panic them. The patient could panic. The doctor, never.

  Anax Therion stopped him. “What do you mean, it had so much time?”

  “Who’s Fortinbras?” Borbala chimed in. They ignored her.

  Yorrik sighed and settled some of his weight onto his rear legs. “Exhausted explanation: We cannot know exactly how long the virus lived inside the people in cryostasis, but it was a long time. Years. Decades. Centuries perhaps. No virus in the history of the universe has had so long to replicate, even if it was slowed by the cold, without outside interference, or treatment, or the host dying. It got a doting childhood in their bloodstreams. Protected. Nurtured. It could grow up so strong. Find the perfect solution to a virus’s only problem: how to live and spread. Sorrowfully: I am babbling. I cannot help it. Deep depression: If I had eezo, that would at least be a start.”

  “Eezo?” asked the batarian sharply.

  “Glumly: It is a mutagen. If we had enough of it, which we do not, and we could find a person who was immune on board the Keelah Si’yah, which we have not yet, it might be possible to use the mutagen to engineer a retrovirus from the blood of the immune patient. Anyone who had come in contact with Fortinbras but survived would have viral markers in their blood, antibodies that had successfully fought off the virus. With a full gene-viral lab, which we also do not have, I could use eezo to ‘teach’ a copy of the original virus to infect the cells of others as normal, but then obliterate the virus within the same way the immune person’s body did. The retrovirus would unzip the original virus and leave it dormant at least, purged at best. But this is a recipe for which our larders are quite empty. We would need enough eezo, and we would need to test everyone on board who has been exposed. And we would need the Nexus, because the equipment in here is as useful in making a retrovirus as a rock in making an omelette. And you’re about to take my microscope, which is the only thing in here that gives sensible instructions on how to do anything.”

  Borbala Ferank was chewing mercilessly on the inside of her mouth. She kicked the floor with the toe of her boot.

  Irit Non spoke up. “There’s eezo in the engines,” she mused. “A lot of it.”

  Qetsi’Olam came to life. She had been listening, or not listening, pressing her hand against the micro-tears on the small of her back, as though her hand could save her, could rewind time and make her whole. She shook her head. “We’d be dead in the water. Gutting the engines of eezo would leave us a drifting hulk out here. We have no way of contacting the Nexus—”

  “Senna is making good progress,” Anax interrupted. “This is our third lot of supplies for him.”

  “That’s as may be, but even if he gets the long-range comms on again, and we can raise the Nexus, by the time anyone could get to us we’d all have starved to death out here. I’ve already set a distress message on all frequencies. There’s been no response yet. And you’d be asking them to bet years on a rescue. They’d rather just cut us loose. What difference would it make, really, if a bunch of quarians, drell, elcor, hanar, volus and bloody batarians never show up? Hell, they’d probably prefer it. Less messy.”

  “Protestation: It doesn’t matter. We do not know of a single immune specimen on board. It may be no one. A virus that can jump species like rope may have a fatality rate of 100%. You would have to get blood from everyone who is awake, and we would have to put it through Horatio for testing until we found someone. In any sufficiently large population, there should be a few people with natural immunity. But are we a sufficiently large population? It’s not a needle in a haystack, it’s a needle in a galaxy.”

  “What else are we supposed to do?” barked Irit Non. “Lie down and die? It’s the engines or death. A distress call is better than choking to death on your own fluids. Unless anyone has any red sand?” The horrendously addictive drug was packed with eezo, which was what made it feel so good—and what killed you, if you used it long enough. “I thought not. We were all starting with a clean slate, after all. Well done, us.”

  The captain popped her fist against a wall panel and opened a mainframe access port. Yorrik was surprised she knew the ship so well—but then, he had barely glanced at it. He had been rewriting Lady Macbeth’s last monologue in his head as he boarded, full of dreams, full of the idea of distant stars all applauding for him. A fool he had been. A motley fool. Qetsi twisted a few wires together, and then a few more. She interrupted the cycling broadcast they had all quickly learned to ignore and unhear and addressed the ship on the mercifully still-functional public address system.

  Attention, Keelah Si’yah. Hello, everyone. This is your captain… again. Please remain calm. Form an orderly group and proceed to medbay for treatment. I repeat: Please remain calm, form an orderly group, and proceed to medbay for treatment. Be patient, my friends, and we will see our new worlds yet.

  Yorrik groaned. He wished she hadn’t done that. It would not be orderly. Why did she have to use the word treatment? Why could they not go, leave him alone? The nausea was building in his stomachs. They could not see him succumb. They had to go. They had to go.

  Borbala Ferank looked up to the ceiling of the medbay and shook her head. Her three eyes blinked in succession, then all shut, as though she hated herself for what she was about to do.

  “You need eezo?” she mumbled. “I can make eezo happen.”

  15. RESOURCE EXHAUSTION

  “You’re a little liar,” said Borbala Ferank sweetly as they descended toward the cargo hold again. Which was to say, descended into pestilent hell again. “You lied to that quarian about Oleon. Or you lied to me. But either way, you’re the most beautiful little liar I’ve ever seen.”

  Anax Therion smiled faintly. “And you are the soul of truth?” she said archly.

  “But you do it so smoothly. When I lie I have ticks and tells all over the place, Grandfather always said so. But not you. It just pours out of you like honey.”

  “Hey,” a wheeze hissed out of the dark outside the cargo bay doors. “You sick?”

  A volus emerged from the shadows. The light of his turmeric-colored goggles illuminated a bloody handprint on the door. At least Anax thought it was blood. It could have been that black, awful vomit. It didn’t matter, she supposed.

  “If you’re sick, I got a cure. Six food rations, that’s all I ask, and you’ll be right as rain on Irune in the wintertime.”

  “Six?” scoffed the batarian. “The hanar were selling cures for four two hours ago.”

  “Four then!” the volus sputtered. “Hanar cures don’t work! Mine do. Guaranteed. I thought I was gonna die like a pyjak, popped a couple of these, and I’m as strong as… as…”

  “As a pyjak?” offered Anax.

  The little alien opened his brown three-fingered hand. Inside was the crushed remains of a few ignac cones from the Radial’s erstwhile flower arrangement.

  “You are a fucking pyjak,” Ferank snarled. “Get out of my way, you stinking merchant swine.” She shoved him aside and breached the door to the cargo hold.

  It reeked inside. Cloying, sweet, flowery, sugary smells made them both gag. The whole place smelled like a confection factory. It was horrible. Anax wondered, if she made it out of this alive, whether she would ever be able to smell something sweet again without retching. Her stomach was heaving as it was. But not, she thought, because of Fortinbras. Her skin crawled beneath the volus suit. Her mind was beginning to wobble as she soaked in her own subcutaneous oils. It was getting to her. She hadn’t been able to stop for hours upon days. Only to make the tiniest meal o
f a few food wafers in Mess Hall 2 with the others, but not to sleep, and not to strip out of this walking hallucinogenic sarcophagus. If she told the batarian, it was a vulnerability. Only Irit Non knew this weakness. If Ferank decided to turn on her, somehow, for some reason, all she would have to do would be to keep her from getting out of this suit, and eventually, it would kill her as dead as any Fortinbras victim. But perhaps, perhaps it was safe.

  “Borbala,” she half-wheezed through her air filters. “We get the eezo and then we go to my quarters.”

  “My my, Miss Therion, I had no idea!” trilled the batarian with an amused lilt. “You’ve quite swept me off my feet. Do you even have quarters? I suppose we’ll make the best of it…”

  “You are a fool with your mouth open or closed,” sighed the drell. “There are few enough drell both awake and alive that I can take any room in the Rakhana zone without issue. But not because I desire you. Because if I do not get this suit off, in an hour or two, I will be seeing three of you, as well as goblins climbing the walls, and undead cats taking blood samples from Ataulfo mangoes. I will, to put it gracefully, be out of my mind. This is why the drell do not wear suits, generally.”

  “All right, all right, calm down, my little romantic, you don’t have to make it sound quite so enticing. Straight shot to my eezo and then off to the bedroom. My head is spinning!”

  “Maybe you’re dying,” Anax said dryly. “Now, are you going to tell me why the hell you have eezo or am I meant to guess?”

  “You wouldn’t begrudge me my little nest egg, would you, darling?” said Borbala Ferank, as she had in front of that wall of fish, what seemed like a lifetime ago. But this time her voice was not so merry or arch. It was quiet and perhaps even a little ashamed. Anax Therion had no idea what to do with this batarian. She was nothing like the others. Nothing like the one that had called her mother of worms. The one who was dead in a stack in the mess hall now. Amonkira, Lord of Hunters, protect and defend me. All I wanted was a new life. I would settle to retain any life at all when this is done. “I… I am not so different as they took me for, my poor, stupid sons. What was I supposed to do in Andromeda, take up an honest living?” She repeated as she had before, but hollow now, and tired. “I am what I am. And what I am is a batarian, and a batarian is a smuggler and a schemer who ends up on top. I am, my dear, the Pirate King.” Borbala Ferank sang softly under her breath, a tune Anax did not know, but one that sounded somehow familiar.