The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  More silence.

  I’m actually holding my breath. I look out a portal, see nothing except the wreck, looking like it always does. The handheld has been showing the same grainy image for a while now.

  37:24

  If they’re not careful, they’ll run out of air. Or worse.

  I try to remember how much extra they took. I didn’t really watch them suit up this time. I’ve seen their ritual so many times that I’m not sure what I think I saw is what I actually saw. I’m not sure what they have with them, and what they don’t.

  “Great,” Jypé says, and I finally recognize his tone. It’s controlled parental panic. Sound calm so that the kid doesn’t know the situation is bad. “Keep going.”

  I’m holding my breath, even though I don’t have to. I’m holding my breath and looking back and forth between the portal and the handheld image. All I see is the damn wreck and that same grainy image.

  “We got it,” Jypé says. “Now careful. Careful—son of a bitch! Move, move, move—ah, hell.”

  I stare at the wreck, even though I can’t see inside it. My own breath sounds as ragged as it did inside the wreck. I glance at the digital:

  44:11

  They’ll never get out in time. They’ll never make it, and I can’t go in for them. I’m not even sure where they are.

  “C’mon.” Jypé is whispering now. “C’mon son, just one more, c’mon, help me, c’mon.”

  The “help me” wasn’t a request to a hearing person. It was a comment. And I suddenly know.

  Junior’s trapped. He’s unconscious. His suit might even be ripped. It’s over for Junior.

  Jypé has to know it on some deep level.

  Only he also has to know it on the surface, in order to get out.

  I reach for my own communicator before I realize there’s no talking to them inside the wreck. We’d already established that the skip doesn’t have the power to send, for reasons I don’t entirely understand. We’ve tried boosting power through the skip’s diagnostic, and even with the Business’s diagnostic, and we don’t get anything.

  I judged we didn’t need it, because what can someone inside the skip do besides encourage?

  “C’mon, son.” Jypé grunts. I don’t like that sound.

  The silence that follows lasts thirty seconds, but it seems like forever. I move away from the portal, stare at the digital, and watch the numbers change. They seem to change in slow-motion:

  45:24 to

  …25 to

  …2…6…

  to

  …2… … … 7…

  until I can’t even see them change any more.

  Another grunt, and then a sob, half-muffled, and another, followed by—

  “Is there any way to send for help? Boss?”

  I snap to when I hear my name. It’s Jypé and I can’t answer him.

  I can’t answer him, dammit.

  I can call for help, and I do. Squishy tells me that the best thing I can do is get the survivor—her word, not mine, even though I know it’s obvious too—back to the Business as quickly as possible.

  “No sense passing midway, is there?” she asks, and I suppose she’s right.

  But I’m cursing her—after I get off the line—for not being here, for failing us, even though there’s not much she can do, even if she’s here, in the skip. We don’t have a lot of equipment, medical equipment, back at the Business, and we have even less here, not that it mattered, because most of the things that happen are survivable if you make it back to the skip.

  Still, I suit up. I promise myself I’m not going to the wreck, I’m not going help with Junior, but I can get Jypé along the guideline if he needs me too.

  “Boss. Call for help. We need Squishy and some divers and oh, shit, I don’t know.”

  His voice sounds too breathy. I glance at the digital.

  56:24

  Where has the time gone? I thought he was moving quicker than that. I thought I was too.

  But it takes me a while to suit up, and I talked to Squishy, and everything is fucked up.

  What’ll they say when we get back? The mission’s already filled with superstitions and fears of weird technology that none of us really understand.

  And only me and Jypé are obsessed with this thing.

  Me and Jypé.

  Probably just me now.

  “I left him some oxygen. I dunno if it’s enough…”

  So breathy. Has Jypé left all his extra? What’s happening to Junior? If he’s unconscious, he won’t use as much, and if his suit is fucked, then he won’t need any.

  “Coming through the hatch…”

  I see Jypé, a tiny shape on top of the wreck. And he’s moving slowly, much too slowly for a man trying to save his own life.

  My rules are clear: let him make his own way back.

  But I’ve never been able to watch someone else die.

  I send to the Business: “Jypé’s out. I’m heading down the line.”

  I don’t use the word help on purpose, but anyone listening knows what I’m doing. They’ll probably never listen to me again, but what the hell.

  I don’t want to lose two on my watch.

  ***

  When I reach him six minutes later, he’s pulling himself along the guideline, hand over hand, so slowly that he barely seems human. A red light flashes at the base of his helmet—the out of oxygen light, dammit. He did use all of his extra for his son.

  I grab one small container, hook it to the side of his suit, press the “on” only halfway, knowing too much is as bad as too little.

  His look isn’t grateful: it’s startled. He’s so far gone, he hasn’t even realized that I’m here.

  I brought a grappler as well, a technology I always said was more dangerous than helpful, and here’s the first test of my theory. I wrap Jypé against me, tell him to relax, I got him, and we’ll be just fine.

  He doesn’t. Even though I pry him from the line, his hands still move, one over the other, trying to pull himself forward.

  Instead, I yank us toward the skip, moving as fast as I’ve ever moved. I’m burning oxygen at three times my usual rate according to my suit and I don’t really care. I want him inside, I want him safe, I want him alive, goddammit.

  I pull open the door to the skip. I unhook him in the airlock, and he falls to the floor like an empty suit. I make sure the back door is sealed, open the main door, and drag Jypé inside.

  His skin is a grayish blue. Capillaries have burst in his eyes. I wonder what else has burst, what else has gone wrong.

  There’s blood around his mouth.

  I yank off the helmet, his suit protesting my every move.

  “I gotta tell you,” he says. “I gotta tell you.”

  I nod. I’m doing triage, just like I’ve been taught, just like I’ve done half a dozen times before.

  “Set up something,” he says. “Record.”

  So I do, mostly to shut him up. I don’t want him wasting more energy. I’m wasting enough for both of us, trying to save him, and cursing Squishy for not getting here, cursing everyone for leaving me on the skip, alone, with a man who can’t live, and somehow has to.

  “He’s in the cockpit,” Jypé says.

  I nod. He’s talking about Junior, but I really don’t want to hear it. Junior is the least of my worries.

  “Wedged under some cabinet. Looks like—battlefield in there.”

  That catches me. Battlefield how? Because there are bodies? Or because it’s a mess?

  I don’t ask. I want him to wait, to save his strength, to survive.

  “You gotta get him out. He’s only got an hour’s worth, maybe less. Get him out.”

  Wedged beneath something, stuck against a wall, trapped in the belly of the wreck. Yeah, like I’ll get him out. Like it’s worth it.

  All those sharp edges.

  If his suit’s not punctured now, it would be by the time I’m done getting the stuff off him. Things have to be piled pretty hi
gh to get them stuck in zero-G.

  I’ll wager the Business that Junior’s not stuck, not in the literal, gravitational sense. His suit’s hung up on an edge. He’s losing—he’s lost—environment and oxygen, and he’s probably been dead longer than his father’s been on the skip.

  “Get him out.” Jypé’s voice is so hoarse it sounds like a whisper.

  I look at his face. More blood.

  “I’ll get him,” I say.

  Jypé smiles. Or tries to. And then he closes his eyes, and I fight the urge to slam my fist against his chest. He’s dead and I know it, but some small part of me won’t believe it until Squishy declares him.

  “I’ll get him,” I say again, and this time, it’s not a lie.

  ***

  Squishy declared him the moment she arrived on the skip. Not that it was hard. He’d already sunken in on himself, and the blood—it wasn’t something I wanted to think about.

  She flew us back. Turtle was in the other skip, and she never came in, just flew back on her own.

  I stayed on the floor, expecting Jypé to rise up and curse me for not going back to the wreck, for not trying, even though we all knew—even though he probably had known—that Junior was dead.

  When we got back to the Business, Squishy took his body to her little medical suite. She’s going to make sure he died from suit failure or lack of oxygen or something that keeps the regulators away from us.

  Who knows what the hell he actually died of. Panic? Fear? Stupidity?—or maybe that’s what I’m doomed for. Hell, I let a man dive with his son, even though I’d ordered all of my teams to abandon a downed man.

  Who can abandon his own kid anyway?

  And who listens to me?

  Not even me.

  My quarters seem too small, the Business seems too big, and I don’t want to go anywhere because everyone’ll look at me, with an I-told-you-so followed by a let’s-hang-it-up.

  And I don’t really blame them. Death’s the hardest part. It’s what we flirt with in deep-dives.

  We claim that flirting is partly love.

  I close my eyes and lean back on my bunk but all I see are digital readouts. Seconds moving so slowly they seem like days. The spaces between time. If only we can capture that—the space between moments.

  If only.

  I shake my head, wondering how I can pretend I have no regrets.

  ***

  When I come out of my quarters, Turtle and Karl are already watching the vids from Jypé’s suit. They’re sitting in the lounge, their faces serious.

  As I step inside, Turtle says, “They found the heart.”

  It takes me a minute to understand her, then I remember what Jypé said. They were in the cockpit, the heart, the place we might find the stealth tech.

  He was stuck there. Like the probe?

  I shudder in spite of myself.

  “Is the event on the vid?” I ask.

  “Haven’t got that far.” Turtle shuts off the screens. “Squishy’s gone.”

  “Gone?” I shake my head just a little. Words aren’t processing well. I’m having a reaction. I recognize it: I’ve had it before when I’ve lost crew.

  “She took the second skip, and left. We didn’t even notice until I went to find her.” Turtle sighs. “She’s gone.”

  “Jypé too?” I ask.

  She nods.

  I close my eyes. The mission ends, then. Squishy’ll go to the authorities and report us. She’s gonna tell them about the wreck and the accident and Junior’s death. She’s gonna show them Jypé, whom I haven’t reported yet because I didn’t want anyone to find our position, and the authorities’ll come here—whatever authorities have jurisdiction over this area—and confiscate the wreck.

  At best, we’ll get a slap, and I’ll have a citation on my record.

  At worst, I’ll—maybe we’ll—face charges for some form of reckless homicide.

  “We can leave,” Karl says.

  I nod. “She’ll report the Business. They’ll know who to look for.”

  “If you sell the ship—”

  “And what?” I ask. “Not buy another? That’ll keep us ahead of them for a while, but not long enough. And when we get caught, we get nailed for the full count, whatever it is, because we acted guilty and ran.”

  “So, maybe she won’t say anything,” Karl says, but he doesn’t sound hopeful.

  “If she was gonna do that, she woulda left Jypé,” I say.

  Turtle closes her eyes, rests her head on the seat back. “I don’t know her anymore.”

  “I think maybe we never did,” I say.

  “I didn’t think she got scared,” Turtle says. “I yelled at her—I told her to get over it, that diving’s the thing. And she said it’s not the thing. Surviving’s the thing. She never used to be like that.”

  I think of the woman sitting on her bunk, staring at her opaque wall—a wall you think you can see through, but you really can’t—and wonder. Maybe she always used to be like that. Maybe surviving was always her thing. Maybe diving was how she proved she was alive, until the past caught up with her all over again.

  The stealth tech.

  She thinks it killed Junior.

  I nod toward the screen. “Let’s see it,” I say to Karl.

  He gives me a tight glance, almost—but not quite—expressionless. He’s trying to rein himself in, but his fears are getting the best of him.

  I’m amazed mine haven’t got the best of me.

  He starts it up. The voices of men so recently dead, just passing information—”Push off here.” “Watch the edge there.”—makes Turtle open her eyes.

  I lean against the wall, arms crossed. The conversation is familiar to me. I heard it just a few hours ago, and I’d been too preoccupied to give it much attention, thinking of my own problems, thinking of the future of this mission, which I thought was going to go on for months.

  Amazing how much your perspective changes in the space of a few minutes.

  The corridors look the same. It takes a lot so that I don’t zone—I’ve been in that wreck, I’ve watched similar vids, and in those I haven’t learned much. But I resist the urge to tell Karl to speed it up—there can be something, some wrong movement, piece of the wreck that gloms onto one of my guys—my former guys—before they even get to the heart.

  But I don’t see anything like that, and since Turtle and Karl are quiet, I assume they don’t see anything like that either.

  Then J&J find the holy grail. They say something, real casual—which I’d missed the first time—a simple “shit, man” in a tone of such awe that if I’d been paying attention, I would’ve known.

  I bite back the emotion. If I took responsibility for each lost life, I’d never dive again. Of course, I might not after this anyway—one of the many options the authorities have is to take my pilot’s license away.

  The vids don’t show the cockpit ahead. They show the same old grainy walls, the same old dark and shadowed corridor. It’s not until Jypé turns his suit vid toward the front that the pit’s even visible, and then it’s a black mass filled with lighter squares, covering the screen.

  “What the hell’s that?” Karl asks. I’m not even sure he knows he’s spoken.

  Turtle leans forward and shakes her head. “Never seen anything like it.”

  Me either. As Jypé gets closer, the images become clearer. It looks like every piece of furniture in the place has become dislodged, and has shifted to one part of the cockpit.

  Were the designers so confident of their artificial gravity that they didn’t bolt down the permanent pieces? Could any ship’s designers be that stupid?

  Jypé’s vid doesn’t show me the floor, so I can’t see if these pieces have been ripped free. If they have, then that place is a minefield for a diver, more sharp edges than smooth ones.

  My arms tighten in their cross, my fingers forming fists. I feel a tension I don’t want—as if I can save both men by speaking out now.

  “You got t
his before Squishy took off, right?” I ask Turtle.

  She understands what I’m asking. She gives me a disapproving sideways look. “I took the vids before she even had the suit off.”

  Technically, that’s what I want to hear, and yet it’s not what I want to hear. I want something to be tampered with, something to be slightly off because then, maybe then, Jypé would still be alive.

  “Look,” Karl says, nodding toward the screen.

  I have to force myself to see it. The eyes don’t want to focus. I know what happens next—or at least, how it ends up. I don’t need the visual confirmation.

  Yet I do. The vid can save us, if the authorities come back. Turtle, Karl, even Squishy can testify to my rules. And my rules state that an obviously dangerous site should be avoided. Probes get to map places like this first.

  Only I know J&J didn’t send in a probe. They might not have because we lost the other so easily, but most likely, it was that greed, the same one which has been affecting me. The tantalizing idea that somehow, this wreck, with its ancient secrets, is the dive of a lifetime—the discovery of a lifetime.

  And the hell of it is, beneath the fear and the panic and the anger—more at myself than at Squishy for breaking our pact—that greed remains.

  I’m thinking, if we can just get the stealth tech before the authorities arrive, it’ll all be worth it. We’ll have a chip, something to bargain with.

  Something to sell to save our own skins.

  Junior goes in. His father doesn’t tell him not to. Junior’s blurry on the vid—a human form in an environmental suit, darker than the pile of things in the center of the room, but grayer than the black around them.

  And it’s Junior who says, “It’s open,” and Junior who mutters “Wow” and Junior who says, “Jackpot, huh?” when I thought all of that had been a dialogue between them.

  He points at a hole in the pile, then heads toward it, but his father moves forward quickly, grabbing his arm. They don’t talk—apparently that was the way they worked, such an understanding they didn’t need to say much, which makes my heart twist—and together they head around the pile.

  The cockpit shifts. It has large screens that appear to be unretractable. They’re off, big blank canvases against dark walls. No windows in the cockpit at all, which is another one of those technologically arrogant things—what happens if the screen technology fails?