I also tell them not to say much until we meet tonight in the lounge.
Then I take the device, tuck the handheld into my pocket, and leave the skip. I’m going to meet the team first and I’m going to tell them what went wrong.
My father and Riya are standing near the door. No one else is with them and I have the distinct impression they’ve prevented the rest of the team from coming here.
My father is smiling. Riya is looking hopeful. Somehow they know we were in the Room.
All of my good intentions fade.
I toss the device at them. “This damn thing malfunctioned.”
It skitters across the floor. My father is staring at me. Riya bends down to pick it up. As she stands, she frowns.
“Obviously it didn’t fail,” she says. “You’re here.”
“I’m here,” I say, “but Karl is dead.”
“Karl?” Riya glances at my father as if he understands what I’m talking about.
And to his credit, he does. “You let Karl go into the Room?”
“I didn’t let him do anything,” I snap. “He’s in charge.”
Or he was in charge. But I don’t correct myself.
“He chose to go in. He decided last night.”
“You let him?” my father repeated.
Behind me, I can hear the door to the skip snap shut. Footsteps along the floor tell me that Roderick and Mikk have joined us, but have stopped just a few meters back.
“How irresponsible of you.” Riya shakes her head. “I gave this to you with the express understanding that you would use it.”
“Really?” I say. “You gave it to me so someone could access that Room and recover your father, which isn’t possible by the way.”
“You were supposed to go. That’s the basis for our agreement.” She’s still shaking the device at me. “You were supposed to go.”
She didn’t react to what I said about her father. Maybe she hadn’t understood me.
“What you want,” I say slowly, as if I’m talking to a child, “is not possible. Your father is not recoverable. Didn’t the previous people who went in tell you that? Didn’t they tell you how empty that fucking Room is?”
“It’s not our responsibility that he died,” she says. “You didn’t follow my instructions.”
I know she heard me the second time. And it’s clear she doesn’t care. She knew what was in that Room. She knew that her father—or some kind of ghost of him—wasn’t there.
I snatch the device from her hand. “What happens if I break this thing?”
“Don’t,” my father says, but he’s not scared. He is looking at my face, not at the device in my hand.
I turn and toss it to Mikk. He catches it, looking surprised. He holds it like it burns him, even though it’s cool to the touch.
Then I advance on my father. “Tell me what’s really going on here.”
“You were supposed to go in,” he says.
“I did,” I say. “I went in and recovered my friend.”
“He’s like almost mummified,” Roderick says, his voice shaking. “What does that?”
My father looks at me, then looks at Riya. She is staring at Roderick.
“They both went in?” she asks. “Together?”
“The boss already told you,” Mikk says. “She had to recover his body. He went in alone. It was a smart dive move. He was going to map everything. He thought he’d be clearer headed than everyone else.”
“You shouldn’t have allowed it,” my father says.
“Maybe if I’d had all the information, I wouldn’t have,” I say. “What aren’t you two telling me? Besides the fact that you knew the Room was empty.”
“It’s not our fault,” Riya says. “You didn’t listen.”
“I listened,” I say. “You wanted us to recover your father. You wanted me to treat it like I would treat any other wreck, and your father would be salvage. That’s what you offered. You came to me because I’d gotten out of the Room before and you figured I wouldn’t be scared to wear the device…”
My voice trails off as I listen to what I had just said. I had gotten out of the Room before. That’s why they hired me. Not because of the device. Not because of her father.
Because I had escaped once before.
“The device doesn’t work, does it?” I ask. “It’s just pretty lights and nothing more.”
“No,” my father says, but Mikk takes the device and rips it apart. He takes out the center piece, the part I couldn’t quite place, and stomps on it.
The lights still run along the outer edge of the frame.
“Son of a bitch,” he says.
Roderick takes the device, turns it over, then crouches and looks at the pieces on the floor of the bay. Whatever that circle piece was, it was solid. There were no component parts, nothing that built into an engine or a chip.
“What were you people thinking?” he asks my father and Riya. “Why did you do this?”
“You were testing something else, weren’t you?” I’m looking at my father. “This is something to do with your business, not with Mother, isn’t it?”
He doesn’t answer. He takes a step back. His cheeks flush.
“The others who went in, the ones you say tested the device, they’re all survivors too, aren’t they?” I ask.
Riya looks at my father again.
“I thought I was the only one still alive,” I say.
My father is staring at me.
“But there are others, aren’t there? And you found them. You sent them in. And they came out again. Didn’t they?”
I take a step toward Riya and I let her see how angry I really am.
“Didn’t they?” I ask again.
“Yes,” she says.
“With a fake device. A handful of us can come and go as we please, can’t we?”
“Yes,” my father says.
“Why didn’t you just tell us?” I ask.
“Would you have gone in then?” Riya asks.
“What does my getting into that Room prove?”
“That some of us can do it,” my father says. “Some of us are designed to survive.”
He clings to me. His helmet hits mine, and a crack appears along my visor. He covers it with his gloved hand and I can hear his voice in our comm system: Hurry, hurry, I think her suit is compromised.
He holds me so tight I can’t breathe. We go through the door back to the single ship someone has brought and they stuff me inside. My dad can barely fit beside me. He checks the environmental system in the single ship, then pulls off my helmet and shoves a breather in my mouth.
C’mon, baby, c’mon, he says, don’t die on me now.
My lungs hurt. My body aches. I look up at him and he’s terrified. He keeps glancing out the porthole at the Room.
I had no idea, he says. I didn’t know or I wouldn’t have let her go in there. I certainly wouldn’t have let her bring you.
But I can’t think about it. I can’t think about any of it. The hum is too loud, the voices echoing in my head. I close my eyes, and I refuse to think about it. About the way she stopped talking, the way her hand slipped from mine, the way her faceplate shattered as her body slammed into the wall.
Then I wrapped my arms around my knees, waiting. My daddy would come. I knew he would come.
I stayed there for what seemed like days, listening to the voices, feeling my mother’s body brush against mine, as she got older and thinner and more and more horrible.
Finally I couldn’t look any more. I closed my eyes and wondered when the voices would get me.
Then my father grabbed me and pulled me out.
And I was safe.
I look at him now. His eyes are wide. He has made a verbal slip and he knows it.
“My God,” I say. “You know what’s in there.”
“Honey,” my father says. “Don’t.”
I turn to Roderick and Mikk. “Go get the others. Bring a stretcher so that we can take Karl ou
t of here with some dignity.”
“I don’t think we should leave you here,” Mikk says. He’s catching onto this quicker than Roderick.
“I’ll be fine,” I say. “Just hurry back.”
They head to the door. Riya watches them go. My father keeps looking at me.
“You tell me what you know,” I say, “Or I’m going to have the authorities come get both of you for fraud and murder. You clearly brought us out here on false pretenses, and now a man is dead.”
Karl is dead. My heart aches.
“Call them,” Riya says. “They won’t care. Our contract is with them.”
My father closes his eyes.
I look from him to her. “For stealth tech. This is all about stealth tech.”
“That’s right,” she says. “You’re one of the lucky few who can work in its fields without risks.”
Lucky few. Me and a handful of others, all of whom were conned by this woman and my father. For what? A government military contract?
“What are you trying to do?” I ask. “Consign us to some government hell hole?”
My father has opened his eyes. He’s shaking his head.
“No, you’re just the test subjects,” Riya says, apparently oblivious to my tone. “Before they approved our project, they wanted to make sure everyone who got out before could get out again. You were the last one. Your father didn’t think you would work with us, but I proved him wrong.”
“I signed on to help you recover your father,” I say to her.
She shrugs one shoulder. “I never knew him. I really don’t care about him. And you were right. I already knew he wasn’t in that Room. But I figured telling you about him would work. I’m not the only one in this bay who was abandoned by her father.”
My father puts a hand to his forehead. I haven’t moved.
“I thought this was an historical project,” I say, maybe too defensively. “I thought this was a job, like the kind I used to do.”
“That’s what you were supposed to think,” she says. “Only you weren’t supposed to send someone else into the Room. You’re the only one with the marker.”
Marker. As in genetic marker. I turn to my father.
“That’s what you meant by designed. I’m some kind of test subject. I have some kind of genetic modification.,”
“No,” he says. “Or yes. Or I’m not sure. You see, we think that anyone on a Dignity Vessel had been bred or genetically modified to work around stealth tech. Then the ships got stranded and the Dignity crews mingled with the rest of the population. Some of us have the marker. You do. I do. Your mother didn’t.”
He says that last with some pain. He still grieves her. I don’t doubt that. But somehow he got mixed up in this.
“There were no Dignity Vessels this far out,” I say. “They weren’t designed to travel huge distances, and they weren’t manufactured outside of Earth’s solar system.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence,” he says. “We know you found a Dignity Vessel a few years ago. I’ve seen it.”
Because I salvaged it and got paid for it. I couldn’t leave it in space, a deathtrap to whoever else wandered close to it.
Like this Room is.
I salvaged the vessel and gave it to the government so they could study the damn stealth tech.
And now my father has seen the vessel.
“That’s how I knew how to find you,” he says.
“You didn’t need me,” I say. “You had the others.”
“We needed all of you,” Riya says. “The government won’t give us a go unless we had a one-hundred percent success rate. Which we do. Your friend Karl simply proves that you need the marker or you’re subject to the interdimensional field.”
Karl and Junior and my mother and who knows how many others.
“How long have the government known?” I ask. “How long have they known that the Room is a stealth-tech generator?”
She shrugs. “Why does it matter?”
“Because they should have shut it down.” I’m even closer to her than I was before. She’s backing away from me.
“They can’t,” my father says. “They don’t know how.”
“Then they should have blocked off the station,” I say. “This place is dangerous.”
“There are centuries’ worth of warnings to keep people away,” Riya says. “Besides, it’s not our concern. We have scientists who can replicate that marker. We think we’ve finally discovered a way to work with real stealth tech. Do you know what that’s worth?”
“My life, apparently,” I say. “And my mother’s. And Karl’s.”
Riya is looking at me. She’s finally understanding how angry I am.
“Don’t,” my father says.
“Don’t what?” I ask. “Don’t hurt her? Why should you care? I could have died in there. Me, the daughter you swore to protect. Or did you abandon that oath along with your search for my mother? Was that even real?”
“It was real, honey,” he says. “That’s how I found this. Riya and I met at a survivor’s meeting. We started talking—”
“I don’t care!” I snap. “Don’t you understand what you’ve done?”
“You wouldn’t have died,” he says. “That’s why we approached you last. Once we were sure the others made it, then we came to you. Besides, you’ve done much more dangerous things on your own.”
“And so has Karl.” I’m close to both of them now. I’m so angry, I’m trembling. “But you know what the difference is?”
My father shakes his head. Riya watches me as if she’s suddenly realized how dangerous I can be.
“The difference is that we chose to take those risks,” I say. “We didn’t choose this one.”
“I heard you tell the team,” Riya says, “that someone might die on this mission.”
“I always tell my teams that,” I say. “It makes them vigilant.”
“But this time you believed it,” my father says.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “I thought that someone would be me.”
16
AND THAT’S THE CRUX OF IT. I know it as soon as I say it. I thought I would die on this mission and apparently, I was fine with that.
I thought I’d die in multicolored lights and song, like I thought my mother had died, and I thought it a beautiful way to go. I’d even convinced myself that I would die diving, so it would be all right.
I would be done.
But it’s not all right. Karl’s dead, and I can’t even prove fault, except my own. Only when I review the decisions we made, we made the right ones with the information we had.
The thought brings me up short, prevents me from slamming Riya or my father against the bay wall.
Somehow I get out of that bay without either of them.
I don’t speak to them as the Business leaves the station. I don’t speak to them when I drop them at the nearest outpost. I expressly tell them that if they contact me or my people again, I will find a way to hurt them—but I don’t know exactly how I would do that.
Riya’s right. The government would back them because they’re working on a secret and important project. Stealth tech is the holy grail of military research. So she and my father can get away with anything.
And—stupid me—I finally realize that my father has no feelings for me at all. He never has. The clinging I remember is just him pulling me free of the Room, leaving my mother—my poor mother—behind.
I can’t even guarantee that we weren’t part of some early experiment on the same project. While my father was telling my mother’s parents to care for me while he tried to recover her, he might have been simply trying to recoup his losses from that trip, experimenting with people and markers and things that survive in the strangest of interdimensional fields.
After we leave my father and Riya on the outpost, we have a memorial service for Karl. I talk the longest because I knew him the best, and I don’t cry until we send him out into the darkness, still in his suit with
his knife and breathers.
He would have wanted those. He would have appreciated the caution, even though it was caution—in the end—that got him killed.
As we head back to Longbow Station, I have decided to resuscitate my business. Only I’m not going to wreck dive like I used to. I’m going to find Dignity Vessels. I’m going to capture anything that vaguely resembles stealth tech and I’m going to find a place to keep it where our government can’t get it.
I’m going to run a shadow project. I’m going to find out how this stuff works and I’m going to do it before the government does because I won’t have to follow the regulations.
The government and the people like my father, they have to follow certain rules and protocols, all the while keeping the project secret.
I won’t have to. If I go far enough out of the sector, I won’t have to follow any rules at all.
I can make my own. Change the way the battle is fought. Redefine the war.
I learned that from Ewing Trekov. Don’t fight the war you’re given; fight the war you can envision.
Once the government has stealth tech, they’ll have a seemingly invincible military. They’ll be stronger in ways that can hurt the smaller governments in the region and anyone who works at the edges of the law, like I do.
But if we have stealth tech too, then all sides are equal. And if we can figure out how to use that tech in ways they haven’t imagined, then we get ahead.
All my life, I searched the past for my purpose. I sensed that something back there opened the key to my future.
Who knew that I would find all that I lost in the one place that had taken everything from me.
There are no souls in that Room, just like there are no voices.
There’s only the harshness of time.
And like the ancients before me, I’m going to harness that harshness into a weapon, a defense, and a future.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.
Maybe I’ll just wait, and let the future reveal itself like the habitats on the station, one small section at a time.
“The Room of Lost Souls” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch was first published in Asimov’s SF Magazine, April/May, 2008.
The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas Page 17