Mass Effect

“In despair,” Yorrik droned. “Wonderful.”

Anax’s stifled voice came back: “Is there anything else you can think of that might be useful?”

As the last of his personalized stim cocktail worked its way through his bloodstream, Yorrik lost his patience, which is to say, he spoke as evenly and without intonation as he ever did, but much louder, and medbay suddenly smelled like a vicious grease fire on a lake of cheap black coffee as his pheromonal glands pumped his frustration into the air.

“With helpless fury: A MEDICAL SCAN. A MEDICAL SCAN WOULD BE USEFUL. IS THERE A MEDICAL SCAN IN THERE, ANAX THERION? Is there a diagnostic VI in that crate? What about a blood analyzer? Perhaps a full cellular regeneration cart?”

The hanar rippled with concern. “This one worries at this level of agitation and whether it is conducive to science. Although this one is greatly ignorant in the field of medicine—”

“Aren’t you supposed to be an apothecary?” Borbala interrupted over the open comm line.

“May the Enkindlers forgive the arrogance of this one in using such an august word to describe its profession. The words of the volus in the Radial came nearer to the truth of this one’s insignificant existence. This one possesses more experience in the provision of pleasant toxins than the expulsion of unpleasant ones, and in the holy realms of pharmaceutical medicine, can only make the gift of knowledge of such tonics and serums which confer side effects desirable to paying customers. However, this one does not wish to discuss its personal history, but to propose an alternate—”

“By the Pillars of Strength, is it still talking?” The batarian’s gravelly voice rolled through the empty medbay again. “I swear that we could all die and turn to dust before a hanar can get around to the damn point. Yorrik, my dear and darling member of the intellectual class.” Yorrik knew enough of batarian society to realize this was not a compliment to his intelligence, or a compliment at all. On Khar’shan, you were aristocracy, or you were meat. “With impatient emphasis: Is. There. Anything. Else. We. Can. Get. You.”

Yorrik stamped his left foot against the spotless, glassy medbay floor. “Explosive resentment: You do not understand. When there is something wrong with a patient, the doctor runs a scan. I am well trained to run a scan and prescribe treatment and say, ‘There’s a good boy or girl, here is a candy for being so brave.’ I am not well trained in communicating telepathically with blood cells, which is what you seem to expect me to do. Sarcastically: Hello, little blood cells, what seems to be the trouble today? Do you have a bit of a nasty cold? Poor little blood cells. Growing anger: Do you think Ekuna is some kind of backwater where we treat our sick and dying with sticks and the juices of berries?”

Anax Therion said, “Of course not,” but not loudly enough to drown out Borbala Ferank saying, “Is is not?” or Ysses meekly pleading, “Yes, but this one would like to point out—”

“None of us have a lot of options here, Yorrik,” the drell said gently. “But people are dying.”

“Stubborn resentment: Then you come up here and do it. Desperation: This medbay does not even have any petri dishes. Am I just supposed to grow cell cultures between my toes?” But even as the dull, emotionless words left his mouth flaps, his revved-up memory dredged up decades-old field medic training from the kindly ancient landfill of his mind. It was a deep landfill. Yorrik was three hundred and ninety-eight years old. Cell cultures. His grandfather Varlaam had grown cell cultures. During what New Elfassians called the Little Invasion. It hadn’t been enough of a crisis for the rest of Ekuna to call it anything. Gangs of outsiders overran the city defenses, and then the power arrays.

Not outsiders. Not just outsiders. Quarians. Yorrik did not like to remember it. He loved Senna’Nir vas Keelah Si’yah, and had loved him when he’d been Senna’Nir vas Chayyam. The great, gentle elcor tried to put those memories back, but they would not go. All those helmets like mirrors where you only ever saw your own face, never theirs. Those strong, quick legs bounding through ancient streets, sacred gardens. Those gray-and-purple figures in the night. They’d gone dark for weeks, then. Under siege. He understood now that they were not proper quarians. Fleet quarians. They were criminals, gangs of undesirables and anti-socials the Fleet could not adequately contain. They had been dumped on Ekuna, a harmless outlying world. A Fleet problem had been solved. An elcor problem had been created.

He’d been terribly young, only a hundred and twelve, and terribly sick. If Grandfather Varlaam had not known the old ways, he would have died. The old elcor had tried to teach his grandson, of course. With every twitch of his long toes and pulse of his musky, smoky, rich forest scent, Varlaam had told him how to heal without a medbay. You can’t call yourself a doctor if you need fancy machines to do the work for you, my boy. The machine can call itself a doctor, but not you.

But Yorrik had only half listened. He had never wanted to be a doctor in the first place.

Borbala’s gritty voice cut through his memories on the comm. “Uh, did you say dishes?”

“Hopelessly: Yes.”

“I can make dishes happen. May I interest you in the little girl’s tea party set? There’s at least… service for six here. Cups, bowls, saucers, and I think this is a Thessalian spice pot? Does it matter if they match? Because one of the cups is clearly from a human set. It has hearts and Earth butterflies on it. Gods, I can’t stand humans. So obsessed with their stupid world they even draw their insects on their belongings.”

“Why would it matter if they match?” the drell said, dumbfounded.

“Well, I don’t know, Anax, I’m not a scientist, that’s why I’m asking questions.”

Ysses interrupted in its friendly alto tone, only slightly strained by not being listened to in the slightest. Yorrik noted t

he change in smell: a tang of blood in the seawater, coppery and rich. “This one thanks the Enkindlers for their miraculous gifts of a microscope and petri dishes, as well as inspiring, in their wisdom, the quarians to equip this medbay with working laser scalpels which do not seem to be affected by the present technical difficulties. This one inquires with great love and respect for all beings who seek knowledge whether this is not enough to begin a rudimentary analysis.” The hanar seemed surprised that it managed to get through more than one sentence and pressed its luck. “Furthermore, this one deeply wishes to illuminate something—”

Yorrik, still half-sunk in his memories of the Little Invasion, ignored Ysses. “Pessimistically: Please remember that we do not know what we are looking for. We are merely hoping the most basic tests provide a result because we have no capability to pursue anything more than the minimum baseline analysis. Deferential callback: Anax, as you said, we are still at the first fork of the river. If; then. We must run a full-spectrum toxicology scan, in case it is chemical contamination or deliberate poisoning, and also analyze blood and tissue samples for the presence of any foreign virus, bacterial infection, or at least the presence of antibodies, in case a pathogen is responsible. If we are very, very lucky, it will be a bacterial infection, because we could see that with your baby krogan microscope. If we are not lucky, it will be a virus or a poison. Viruses are too small to be seen without real equipment. Experimental joke: And while toxins are perfectly visible, they do not wear nametags.”

How had Grandfather done it? Yorrik tried to remember their old house in the working-class district of New Elfaas, the warm clinic full of helpful substances and devices he did not have now. He tried to remember the smell of Varlaam’s lessons, not unlike the current smell of Ysses’s fickle body—saltwater, ozone, the ripe clean sweetness of fish ready to be eaten…

“Sudden realization: Anax Therion, is there anything in your quarian crate that glows in the dark?”

“Um… a few things, I suppose. Why?”

“Excited explanation: A long time ago, my home city had some trouble with… embittered euphemism: tourists. With growing confidence: While the battle raged on, my grandfather made us test whether our food was safe to eat. There are certain fluorescent dyes which undergo a chemical reaction in the presence of a wide variety of toxins. If the poison is there, they will glow. One color for this poison, another for that one. It will be very faint, even under the microscope, and they cannot detect every possible toxic compound like a proper scan would, but it would cover a lot of ground. Ashamed: I am foolish not to think of it sooner. Additionally, while viruses are too small to be seen under a microscope, they cannot absorb dye through the surface membrane, and therefore, in any given sample, the absence of dye should be very obvious.”

“Excellent, Yorrik, walk me through it. What am I looking for?”

“Self-denigrating frustration: I cannot remember. My grandfather told me to pay attention but my fever was very high and… and… miserable confession: I did not care. I thought I would be something more than Varlaam when I grew up. I thought I was too good for the family business.”

The bioluminescent film that hugged Ysses’s magenta body brightened in a series of quick pulses. “Please, friend Naumm, this one begs you to listen—”