Asimov's SF, October-November 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Boss stopped walking. Squishy had made her entire presentation while they examined the exterior of the Dignity Vessel. She had felt a bit uncomfortable, arguing that they should take a team into imperial space, with the mission of destroying stealth tech. She was half-hoping that Boss would take in a Dignity Vessel on a trial run, maybe even go in with the anacapa engaged, use the high-powered weaponry, and destroy the base that Squishy had discovered.

  But Boss was frowning, and that wasn't a good sign. “Why do you care? The Empire kills people in a variety of ways. We can't stop that. We're working to keep the balance of power in the sector, to keep the Empire from moving out here. That's more than enough.”

  Squishy swallowed. She had thought Boss would understand. But Squishy had forgotten how Boss could overlook disturbing things. She had done that on their first dives in a Dignity Vessel, ignoring Squishy's warning, and leading to the breach that had hurt their relationship for years.

  “People are dying because of me,” Squishy said.

  “Nonsense,” Boss said. “You haven't been part of stealth tech research for decades, at least not in the Empire.”

  “But I'm the one who took them down this path. I'm the one who started all these experiments. Everyone who died since then died because of me.”

  Boss shook her head.

  “Don't be dismissive,” Squishy snapped. “In the past, you've dismissed me and that was a mistake.”

  “One mistake,” Boss said. “A big one, I grant you. But just one. And I've apologized repeatedly. This is different.”

  “How is this different?” Squishy asked.

  “It's not personal, Squishy,” Boss said. “I know you think it is, but it's not. A lot of people can hold the blame for all those deaths, including the people who continue the experiments in light of the disasters they're causing. It's not about you.”

  Squishy straightened. “You don't understand—”

  “I do,” Boss said. “I've lost people because of mistakes I've made. I understand. But the worst thing we can do is go into the Empire.”

  “You did it,” Squishy said. “You went to Vaycehn, and found the Ivoire.”

  Boss nodded. “And it could have been a disaster. They didn't catch us that time, but they might this time. We're fugitives.”

  “Not all of us,” Squishy said. “I still get my military pension. It goes to my home in Vallevu.”

  Boss didn't say a word, but she was clearly struggling to remain silent.

  “I can go back in with a team,” Squishy said before Boss could say anything. “We can use the same explosives that I developed a few years ago. I did the research, Boss. The Empire has confined stealth tech to one gigantic base. We get rid of the base, we get rid of the tech.”

  “They're not stupid enough to keep all of the research on that one base,” Boss said. “It's backed up somewhere.”

  “And once we find where the backups are kept, we launch the mission. I could go back, revamp my credentials and work in the lab until we're ready to launch the attack. They wouldn't suspect anything.”

  Boss snorted. “You haven't worked in stealth tech in decades and then you return? How is that not suspicious?”

  “I would blame the leaked studies.” Squishy straightened. “I'm on the record—several legal records—protesting the way the experiments were conducted. That was decades ago. I would have complete credibility if I went back and stated that I wanted to return to correct the mistakes and make sure no one died.”

  “And they'd hire you?” Boss asked.

  “They asked me to rejoin when I brought them the first Dignity Vessel,” Squishy said. Squishy had claimed the vessel she had taken from Boss on that fateful trip for the imperial government to get it out of Boss's hands. It had been a reaction to Boss's high-handed decision-making on that trip. The decision-making that led to the “one mistake” that Boss had just mentioned.

  “And you said no,” Boss said. “That was years ago. Things change.”

  Squishy shook her head. “I'm still considered the godmother of stealth tech research. I'm mentioned in a ton of studies. I'd like to fix that.”

  “And what?” Boss asked. “Give them the anacapa drive?”

  “Make sure they can never catch us,” Squishy said. “Make sure that their research goes in a different direction.”

  “You can't control research,” Boss said. “You know that.”

  “But you can alter it,” Squishy said.

  “And if you get caught?” Boss asked. “What then? They'll get you to tell them about the anacapa drive.”

  Squishy shook her head. “I'd die first.”

  “Don't be melodramatic,” Boss said.

  Squishy sighed. “I still don't have a great working knowledge of the anacapa drive. It's vast and complex and I certainly couldn't build one from scratch. If the Empire catches me, the only thing they'd get from me is that the drive exists. They'd also learn how powerful it is. They'd learn that they're making a terrible mistake when they try to treat it as a cloak.”

  “And then they come after us,” Boss said.

  “They'll come after us eventually,” Squishy said.

  “No,” Boss said and walked away.

  Squishy scrambled to keep up. “People are dying, Boss.”

  “All over the Empire, for all kinds of reasons,” Boss said. “Hell, people are dying in the Nine Planets for all kinds of reasons, too. Some are too poor, some are too sick, some still live under repressive regimes. I'm not going in there to rescue those folks. Why should I rescue a bunch of scientists in the middle of the Empire? Scientists who specialize in weapons research, I might add.”

  Squishy was shaking. Her initial answers—there might be someone like me; they're important; they're scientists for fuck's sake—wouldn't be good enough for Boss.

  “You wouldn't go in,” Squishy said. “I would.”

  Boss stopped walking and turned around. “So I should send in the only one of us who isn't connected to the Ivoire who has any chance of understanding how an anacapa drive works.”

  “There are a lot of people here who understand it as well as I do,” Squishy said. “And they're not all connected to the Ivoire."

  “But they're not you,” Boss said softly. “So my answer stands. No.”

  She started walking again. Squishy began to follow, then stopped. Boss said no. She rarely revisited decisions, and only when faced with a great deal of evidence that her assumptions were wrong.

  Her assumptions weren't wrong here. She was right: this wasn't a Lost Souls mission.

  This was a personal mission.

  And it was one Squishy would complete. With or without the help of anyone else.

  * * * *

  Now

  Quint's words offended her. Squishy stood perfectly still, trying to control the anger.

  “I did not come to destroy you,” she said. “People who destroy things kill people.”

  “You killed Cloris,” he said.

  “I got everyone out of that facility,” Squishy snapped. “Cloris wasn't following orders.”

  “You didn't either,” he said.

  She stared at him. She was trembling. He was trembling too. He tried to be calm, but he wasn't. Maybe she was seeing him more clearly than she thought.

  “I didn't come to destroy you,” she said again. “I came to help you.”

  His face flushed. The wounds disappeared in the redness. He took a step away from her, moving his head at the same time so she couldn't see his eyes.

  “That's what I wanted to believe, Rose,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back. The posture looked terribly familiar. She did it all the time, and she realized, with a sinking feeling, she had learned it from him. “I wanted to believe that you could stop all of the deaths. Didn't you ever wonder how you got in so easily? Why no one cared that you'd been gone for so many years?”

  She had wondered, then chalked it up to the Empire's incompetence. She figured people were watching h
er, but it didn't matter. She had an entire team, she had a way to contact them if she needed to, and she had no actual work to do until she destroyed the research station. For six months, her work had been blameless, although she'd made a point of stopping those experiments, the ones that would have resulted in someone's death.

  He tilted his head back. “I believed in you, Rosealma. You're brilliant. I honestly thought you could fix it all.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. It all fit: how she'd got in, why he kept showing up, asking the occasional question, keeping an eye on her, telling her she was doing well. He had believed in her, and despite herself, she felt sad that she had disappointed him.

  “I'm your magic,” she said.

  He turned, a puzzled expression on his face. He didn't remember the conversation. Of course he didn't. That conversation about magic and beliefs had changed her life. It had just been a moment to him.

  “What?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “I did fix things, just not the way you wanted.”

  “You just set them back some, Rosealma. You didn't fix anything at all,” he said.

  She almost, almost told him about destroying the back-up research, but she didn't. The only thing her people hadn't destroyed was the scientists themselves. Someone destructive would have destroyed them, too. But she wasn't destructive. It would take the scientists years to reconstruct their work, and maybe by then, someone new would come in, someone to tell them about the folly of their ways.

  She could send them that researcher. She could send in moles who would direct them away from their own destruction and onto a path that would lead nowhere.

  If she ever got out of this.

  “What happened to you?” Quint asked softly. “You used to love this work, Rosealma. You didn't believe in destroying anything.”

  “What happened to me?” she asked. She couldn't believe he had said that.

  He didn't remember that either. Apparently, he had remembered all of the wrong things.

  * * * *

  Twenty Years Earlier

  Rosealma came out of the meeting room and crumpled onto a bench beside the door. She put a hand to her face.

  She was tired. She had been tired for more than a year, living and reliving the failed experiment, the problems, the attempted rescue, and finally the shutdown. She had testified and argued and fought. She had wondered if any of it was fair, particularly when the court decided to jail Hansen.

  He hadn't followed procedure. He hadn't listened, but he hadn't done anything criminal either. At least, not criminal enough to warrant the kind of punishment he received.

  She had argued about that too, although, if she was honest with herself, not as forcefully as she would have if no one had died.

  And a lot of people had died.

  The ironic thing—the sad thing—was that there was no accurate body count, because there were no bodies. Anyone who had gone missing that day was counted among the dead—by Rosealma, if not by Empire law

  For a while, she kept going back to Vallevu between cases, because that was where her off-site home with Quint was. But eventually she couldn't face it any longer.

  She stopped going home. She got an apartment near the courts and she stayed. At first she drank, because she needed her mind on something else. Then she realized if she kept doing that, she would go crazy, so she went back to school.

  Medicine provided a good penance. It wasn't stealth tech. It wasn't related to weapons work at all, and yet it appealed to her scientific mind. It kept her thinking about something else.

  She got to think about something else now. She was done. And it felt . . . odd.

  “Rosealma?”

  The voice belonged to Quint. She didn't want to face him now. But she could hear footsteps coming closer.

  She steeled her shoulders, rubbed a hand over her face, and stood.

  Quint had come down the hallway, but he was alone. “Did they take your recommendations?”

  “No,” she said. “But they offered me a job. They want me to be Director of Stealth Tech Research.”

  He came over to her and put his arm around her. Somehow it didn't feel comforting. “Good. You can make changes when you get back to the project. Sometimes the best changes are made from within anyway.”

  She stopped walking so suddenly that his arm pushed her forward. He dropped his arm, and had to take a step back to rejoin her.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I turned them down.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  She looked at his face, broad and familiar, and wondered how she had ever found it attractive.

  “I told you,” she said. “It isn't the methodology. There's something wrong with the way that we conduct the research itself. Our assumptions are flawed. We're playing with something so dangerous that it could destroy all of us if we're not careful.”

  “You're being melodramatic,” he said, and her breath caught.

  He was supposed to be the one who believed her. He was supposed to be the one who understood. He had been with her from the beginning. He knew she had changed the direction of the research and when she had done that, the deaths had started.

  Or, as the committee had said, the disappearances. No one knows if they're dead, Quintana, one of the generals said to her. You have simply made that assumption.

  They're dead to us, sir, Rosealma said. We'll never get them back.

  “No,” she said. “I'm not being ‘melodramatic.’ If we continue this research, many more good people will die. And that's something we could stop.”

  “The research is important, Rose. This technology will help all of the ships in the Empire.”

  He was giving her the company line, and that made her even more tired.

  “No, it won't,” she said. “It won't help any ship except military vessels. If we ever get the stealth tech to work, it'll just make the Empire stronger. It won't do any good at all.”

  He was frowning at her, as if he didn't understand her.

  “Quint, this technology, it's not worth all the lives. People shouldn't have to die because we're trying to recreate an old weapons system.”

  He studied her for a long moment. Then he said, “People die, Rose. They die for thousands of reasons, some good, some bad, some utterly stupid. They die in accidents and they die too young and they die because they went the wrong way or chose the wrong path. People die.”

  She was shaking. “Not because of something I developed.”

  “You didn't develop stealth tech,” he said.

  “I thought I understood it. I don't. And they're dying because of that. And those assholes in that room won't stop the research. They won't let us rethink our entire strategy. They say we've had too many breakthroughs.”

  “We've had more breakthroughs because of you than we ever had before,” Quint said.

  She was staring at him and wondering when he became a stranger. What was he arguing? That she continue?

  “The breakthroughs come at too high a cost,” she said.

  “You lose some lives to save others,” he said.

  “Stealth tech won't save lives!” Her raised voice shocked her. She had never yelled at Quint before. She cleared her throat. “Stealth tech, if it works, will cost lives. The Empire will use it to move into the Nine Planets Alliance.”

  “You don't know that,” Quint said, but as he spoke, he looked away. He knew it. He knew she was right, and he wasn't willing to say that to her.

  “It doesn't matter,” she said, walking around him. “They didn't listen to me.”

  “So you do what I said.” He kept pace with her. “Take the job. You change the experiment from within.”

  “Even if I had the stomach for it—which I don't,” she said, “I can't do it now.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I resigned my commission, Quint. I'm done with all of this.”

  He grabbed her arm so hard that it hurt. “Don't
do that, Rose. Go back in there. Tell them you made a mistake.”

  “I didn't make a mistake, Quint,” she said. “I did what I had to do.”

  He grabbed her other arm and pulled her toward him. He brought his face close to hers. “You can't do this, Rose. You're our best mind. You're the secret to stealth tech. You can't leave.”

  “I already have, Quint.” She tried to keep her voice calm, even though he was hurting her.

  “Those people, they don't matter,” he said. “They're expendable. You're not.”

  “What people?” she asked. “The ones who died? Or their loved ones who want to believe their dead relatives will come back?”

  “All of them,” he said. “You can't care about them. Your work is too important.”

  “Do you care about them?” she asked.

  “Hell, no,” he said. “Why should I?”

  She wrenched out of his grasp. Her upper arms ached where his hands had dug in. She lowered her head and walked away.

  “Rose, wait.”

  She didn't. She kept walking. He grabbed her one more time, and she tried to yank away, but he held her too tight.

  “Why should I care about them?” he asked.

  “Because science is supposed to be for the public good, Quint,” she said. “Not to help the Empire gain more power.”

  “There's nothing wrong with the Empire, Rose.” He sounded convinced.

  She looked down at his hand. “Let me go, Quint. You're hurting me.”

  He released her. She shook her arm, trying to get the circulation back.

  “And, for the record, Quint,” she said. “Any time a government believes that it can sacrifice people for the greater good, then there's something wrong with that government.”

  He frowned as if he was trying to understand. The look on his face hurt her more than anything. He hadn't understood. He hadn't understood from the beginning. And she should have realized it.

  She turned her back on him and walked away.

  And she hoped she would never ever see him again.

  * * * *

  Now

  “What happened to me,” she repeated. If she explained it to him, she would simply see that expression again, the one she had walked away from so long ago.

  So she decided to sidestep the question.