I’ve been preparing, and not just in my visits to the Room. I’ve spent most of my free time examining Riya’s device. I’ve run it through my computers, trying to find its origin, and cannot.
It is made of familiar materials, but they’re grafted onto a center that I do not recognize or understand. The materials in that center aren’t anything like what I found on the Dignity Vessel or here at the station, and for that I’m relieved.
It doesn’t seem to do much when it turns on—I get a small energy spike, and lights run along the edges of the device. But I don’t sense the bubble or see a momentary shimmer or something that would imply an actual shield going around me.
But a lot of things work without being obvious. And I’m not testing the device in zero-g. I’m testing in Earth normal, in full environment. I don’t want to test it outside the ship, in case I cause problems.
I wish I knew more about the device, but Riya can’t tell me much. She says she got the shield through her father’s connections.
She can tell me nothing else.
So I memorize the exterior dimensions of the Room, so that I can find the edges even if I can’t see them. And I try to ignore the music in my head, which seems to grow each and every day.
“Grow” isn’t exactly the right word. The music plays a little longer each time I “hear” it. It isn’t louder or any more insistent. It’s just harder to shut off.
I’m actually becoming used to it. In the past it would distract me and I would have to concentrate on anything outside myself while the voices sang. Now they’re a background accompaniment, and I wonder if I would actually notice them if I weren’t planning to go back inside the Room so soon.
The night before I go in, Karl calls me to his quarters. I haven’t been up to them since I assigned them. I’m startled to see that he’s blocked the view of the station but has left the portals that open to the space views clear.
He’s sitting near the clear portals, his back reflected in them. His eyes are wide, and for the first time since I’ve given him control, I worry that he’s not up to it.
Something has unsettled him.
“You okay?” I ask as I sit across from him. My back is to the station. Although the portals are opaqued against it, I can feel it looming, almost as if it’s a living entity, one that grows and changes and becomes something else.
“I’m a little uncomfortable,” he says, and shifts in his seat as if to prove the remark. “I’ve put this conversation off too long.”
I stiffen. One of the risks of giving him control is that he would keep it, that he would make the mission—and in some ways, the ship—his. I trusted him not to do that, but that trust suddenly feels fragile.
“What’s going on?” I ask, careful to keep my voice calm.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about tomorrow’s dive,” he says. “I don’t think you should do it.”
The words hang between us. I make myself breathe before responding.
“Have you seen something that makes the dive untenable?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “The dive is fine. I think we should go ahead with it. I just don’t think you should be the one to go in.”
My face heats. “That’s the whole point of this mission.”
“Going into the Room to recover Commander Trekov is the point of this mission—the central point, the one you and I agreed on. But this whole mission is larger than that, and we’re learning some great things. We wouldn’t have done that without you.”
He clearly planned that little speech. It sounds forced.
“Who’ll go in?” I ask.
“Me,” he says.
“Alone?” The word squeaks out. I’m surprised and can no longer hide it.
“I have the most dive experience next to you,” he says.
“Actually, that’s not true. Odette does.”
“All right, then,” he says. “You and I have the most diving experience on dangerous wrecks. She’s spent the last fifteen years on tourist runs.”
“Like me,” I say softly.
“You haven’t spent fifteen years at it, and if that were the only problem, I’d ignore it.”
I want to cross my arms and glare at him. But I don’t. I put him in charge for a reason. I’m going to hear him out.
“So what are the other problems?” I ask.
He takes a deep breath. “Your father, for one.”
“I don’t like him,” I say. “We have history. So what?”
“You have a shared history. And it has to do with the loss of your mother.” Karl folds his hands across his knee, then unfolds them. He’s clearly nervous.
“We discussed this,” I say. “That’s why you’re in charge.”
“I know,” he says. “But that loss is significant. It caused the rift between you two, and it changed both of your lives. I’ve heard your story about the Room, and you were entranced by that place.”
“I was happy to get out,” I say, repeating what my father told me.
“But you went in willingly. What if the Room causes some kind of hypnosis? What if you’re still susceptible to it? It’s irresponsible to send you in on the first dive.”
I’m about to protest when I register the word “first.”
“You think there will be more than one dive?” I ask.
“There has to be,” he says. “We do it by the book. We map and observe and then we discuss. If we’re going to remove something from the Room, we do so on the final dive.”
“So you want to do at least four dives,” I say.
He nods. “The problem is that we only have one device, so only one of us can go in at a time. You’ll be looking for your mother. You know you will—”
I’m shaking my head, but deep down, I know he’s right. Of course I’ll be looking for her. And for Commander Trekov, and the others trapped in that place.
“—and you won’t be focused on the small but necessary details. I will. I’ve made a point of not looking at your mother’s image or Commander Trekov’s. Even if I see them, I won’t recognize them. They’ll be part of the entire package. I won’t be tempted to move too quickly.”
I swallow hard. “Why not send someone else in? It’s a risky mission. You’re in charge. You should stay out here.”
“It is risky,” he says. “But you’ll be out here. And if I can’t survive with that device, no one else will be able to either. So you’ll abort and get everyone out of here.”
“We can make that decision together,” I say. “Send in another diver.”
“Who? Odette? Mikk? Who are you going to send in, knowing that most people who have gone inside that Room have died? Are you willing to risk their lives?”
I don’t say anything. We both know that I wasn’t when I hired them. I knew there was only one device and I would be the one to use it. Everyone else was brought in, initially, to help extract me from the Room, not to go in and explore.
“I’m not willing to risk yours either,” I say.
“You don’t get a choice.” He’s calmer now. His gaze meets mine. Those gray eyes reflect the darkness of the portals behind me. “You put me in charge.”
“But I still have the device,” I say. “And I’m not giving it to you.”
“No, you don’t have it,” he says. “That’s why I wanted to meet you here. I had it removed from your quarters.”
I feel so violated I have to prevent myself from lunging at him. No one goes in my cabin. No one even has access.
Except I gave him command. He has the codes.
He must have looked them up.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
My face is so hot that it feels inflamed. I’m gripping my chair, and it takes all of my energy to stay in one place. Fighting him will do neither of us any good.
In handing over command, I also gave him implicit rights to imprison me in my own ship. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.
“You know this is the right decision,” he says.
I’m not going to acknowledge that.
“You’re the one who taught me that emotion can be deadly to a dive,” he says.
I get up. I trust myself to walk to his door and to get out. But that’s all I trust.
Still, I stop. “You will never violate the sanctity of my cabin again.”
He nods. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I had Odette wear her recorders and keep them on. She knows if she touched anything other than the device I’ll have her hide.”
It isn’t the touching that bothers me. It’s the entering.
That is my private space. No one else belongs in there.
My quarters are so private they almost feel like an extension of myself.
I don’t say any more. I step into the hallway, wait until the door closes, and lean against the wall.
A part of my brain already acknowledges that his decision is sensible. I know that when I calm down, I’ll agree. Four dives into the Room is actually the minimum for a dangerous area.
Not one, like I’d been planning.
I’d been thinking like a survivor of a disaster, not like a wreck diver.
And Karl understands that.
He’s protecting me from myself, yes, but more than that, he’s doing his job.
He’s making sure the mission is a success.
And I hate him for it.
~ * ~
TWENTY-ONE
I
insist on being in the skip the next morning. Karl lets me on board, but he won’t let me pilot. I am strictly an observer.
Today’s pilot is Roderick. Karl’s diving partner—a misnomer, really, since Karl has to go in alone—is Mikk. I’ve brought my suit just in case, but Karl gives it a filthy look as I enter the skip.
He doesn’t want me entertaining any thoughts of diving the Room. I’m along for two reasons: as a courtesy to me, and so that we don’t have to explain our plan to my father or Riya.
They’ve proven more rigid than I could ever be. As time has progressed, they’ve complained more and more about the habitat dives. They want someone in the Room and they want it soon.
They don’t even know we’re going in today. In the last several meetings, Karl has not mentioned the diving rosters and locations until my father was gone.
Karl thought I would object to keeping Riya and my lather in the dark about the Room dive. But I don’t. I haven’t liked the access Karl has given them from the beginning. That’s more than I would have offered.
Roderick is good at flying the skip in enclosed spaces. We want the skip as close to the entry point as possible. That way, the divers don’t have to cover a lot of known ground before going into the important part of the dive. It saves time and could save lives if someone got into trouble.
In this case, the skip will have go into the destroyed habitats. It’s not as dangerous as it sounds. Most of the debris has been cleared by time or by scavengers. Roderick flies with the portals closed, which makes me feel blind.
But he focuses on instruments, and he’s so good with them that I don’t complain. Not that I have any right to, anyway.
Because the distance between the Room and the Business is so short, Karl has already put on his suit. It’s an upgrade from the days when we dove together, but it resembles the one he had before.
This suit is expensive and a little bulky. It has an internal environmental system, like all suits, but it also has an external one.
Karl used to carry only two extra breathers. Now he has four, and they’re larger than the ones he used to have. Apparently the Dignity Vessel experience has had a greater impact on him than he’s willing to admit.
Instead of a slew of weapons in the loops along his belt, he carries a few tools and his knife. I find myself staring at it throughout the short journey, wondering what he would use it on inside that Room.
Mikk has also suited up. He’ll go as far as the Room’s door and wait there—not the best assignment, especially for a young diver. But if Mikk doesn’t know patience by now, he’ll never learn it. And he swears he understands how long he might have to monitor that door.
Roderick anchors the skip to the remaining wall so that he won’t have to use thrust in the small space. He and I will wait on board and will monitor everything through the suit cameras that Karl and Mikk will wear. They’ll also have audio in their headpieces.
The dive will follow a strict schedule. Because Karl doesn’t have a lot of distance to traverse between the skip and the Room’s door, we decided on a two-hour dive—longer than I would have liked, and shorter than he wanted.
It’ll only take him five minutes to get inside and, theoretically, five minutes to get back. The rest of the time, he should be observing and mapping.
Provided his equipment works inside. To our knowledge, no one has filmed the interior of the Room, and we don’t know if that’s because they haven’t thought of it or if they didn’t succeed when they tried.
Just before he puts on his headpiece, he attaches the device to his belt. Since we don’t know much about how the device works, we don’t want it inside his suit. We want to give him as much protection as possible.
Then he slips on his headpiece. He hands me the handheld, which will report everything the cameras on the side of his headpiece “see.”
We are the least confident in the handheld. The shield device might disrupt the signals the cameras send back. We tested as best we could near the Business and didn’t have any trouble, but we’re not sure if that was an accurate test.
Like so much with wreck diving, this part of the dive gets tested only in the field.
I’m nervous. Karl is not. Roderick hasn’t said anything, and Mikk acts like this is a normal dive. While he’s curious about the Room, it’s an intellectual curiosity. He knows he won’t be able to dive it this trip, so it’s not the center of his attention.
In some ways, he’s along for the ride, even more than I am.
We don’t tether to the Room—that would be dangerous with the skip powered down—but we do extend a line. Karl is doing this as a courtesy to me. I won’t dive without lines. He has made one alteration. Once he reaches the door, he will attach a tether to one of the loops on his belt. If he loses consciousness in there, we can pull him back.
Mikk and Karl proceed to the airlock. They wave as they step inside.
They wait the required two minutes as their suits adjust. Then Mikk presses the hatch and Karl sends the lead out the door.
It only takes a moment to cleave to the jamb beside the Room’s door. We picked that spot because it seemed soft enough to hold the line. Nothing else around the Room’s exterior did.
They’re stepping out of the airlock. They’ll move at a very slow pace because they’re good divers. They’ll test the line. They’ll make sure each part of their suits is functioning. Then they’ll travel slowly to that door, and coordinate before Karl goes in.
I take those few minutes to walk into the cockpit. Roderick is sitting in what I consider to be my seat—the pilot’s chair—and is already monitoring the readouts. In addition to the skip’s cameras, some suit monitors send information directly to the skip itself. And both suits send heart rates and breathing patterns—or will so long as nothing interferes with the signal.
I plug Karl’s handheld into one small screen but only look at it to make sure the information is coming to me. Grainy flat images, mostly of the line, appear before me.
Then I look up. Roderick still has the portals opaqued.
“Let’s watch this in real time,” I say.
He doesn’t look up from the instrumentation. “I don’t like staring at interior station walls when I’m on a skip.”
“I don’t care,” I say. “We have a team out there. We need our eyes as well as our equipment. We need every advantage we can get.”
I shudder to think he’s run dives in the habitats on instruments only, and make a mental note to tell Karl that night. It should be a requirement for each dive that th
e pilot watches from the cockpit. The pilot won’t be able to see inside some of the spaces, but he will be able to see if there’s a problem between the lead and the skip itself.
“Karl says I’m supposed to make the decisions,” Roderick says.
“Well, I have twenty years of dive experience, and let me tell you, only amateurs let their people out of a ship on instrument only.”
Diving into the Wreck - [Diving Universe 01] Page 17