Asimov's SF, April-May 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I didn't know if that voice—mixing with other voices—was an aural hallucination, a dream, or a reality. Sometimes I thought it all three.

  But it sneaks up on me at the most unexpected moments, sometimes beginning with just a hum. The hum sends shivers down my back, and I do whatever I can to silence the voices.

  Which is usually nothing.

  Nothing except wait.

  * * * *

  After three days, Riya Trekov finds me.

  I'm having dinner in Longbow's most exclusive restaurant. The food is exquisite—fresh meat from nearby ports, vegetables grown on the station itself, sauces prepared by the best chef in the sector. There's fresh bread and creamy desserts and real fruit, a rarity no matter what space port you dock on.

  The view is exquisite as well—windows everywhere except the floor. If you look up, you see the rest of the station towering above you, lights in some of the guest rooms, decoration in some of the berths. If you look out one set of side windows, you see the docks with the myriad of ships—from tiny single-ships to armored yachts to passenger liners.

  Another group of windows show the gardens with their own airlocks and bays, the grow lights sending soft rays across the entire middle of the station.

  On this night, I'm having squid in dark chocolate sauce. The squid isn't what Earthers think of as squid, but an ocean-faring creature from one of the nearby planets. It has a salty nutlike taste that the chocolate accents.

  I try to focus on the food as Riya sits down. She's carrying a plate and a full glass of wine.

  Clearly she had been eating somewhere else in the restaurant, on one of the layers I can't see from my favorite table. But she had seen me come in and somehow, she thinks that gives her permission to join me.

  “Have you thought about it?” she asks, as if she made an offer and I said I would consider it.

  I can lie and say I hadn't thought about any of it. I can be blunt and say that I want nothing to do with the Room of Lost Souls.

  Or I can be truthful and say that her words have played through my head for the last three days. Tempting me. Frightening me.

  Intriguing me.

  At odd moments, I find myself wondering how I would see the place after all my years of wreck diving, after all the times I've risked my life, after all the hazards I've survived.

  “You have,” she says with something like triumph.

  I continue to eat, but I'm no longer savoring the taste. I almost push my plate away—it's a crime not to taste this squid—but I don't.

  I don't want her to see any emotion from me at all.

  “But you have questions,” she says as if I'm actually taking part in this conversation. “You want to know how I found you.”

  The hell of it is that I do want to know that. Hardly anyone knows I survived the Room of Lost Souls. I can't say that no one knows because the crew on my father's ship knew. And I have no idea what happened to all of them.

  “I have people who can find almost anything,” she says.

  People. She has people. Which means she's rich.

  “If you have people,” I say with an emphasis on that phrase, “then have them go to the Room themselves and have them ‘recover’ your father.”

  Her cheeks flush. She looks away, but only for a minute. Then she takes a deep breath, as if she needs courage to dive back into this conversation.

  “They don't believe that anyone can get out. They think that's as much a myth as the Room itself.”

  I don't know how I got out. My memory is fluid and try as I might to recover that moment, I can't.

  When it becomes clear that I am not going to confirm or deny what happened to me, she says, “Your father is still alive.”

  I jolt. I had no idea the old man had made it this long.

  “Have you ever asked him about the Room?”

  I haven't, mostly because I never had the chance. But I don't tell her that. Instead, I say, “You spoke to my father.”

  She nods. “He's happy to know you're still alive.”

  I'm not sure I'm happy to know that he is. I prefer to think of myself as a person without a family, a woman without a past.

  “Quite honestly,” she says, “he's the one who recommended you for this job. I first approached him, but he said he was too old.”

  I slide my plate to the edge of the table to hide my face as I do the calculations. He turns seventy this year, which is not old at all.

  “He also said you have all the skills I need for this job.” She hasn't touched her food. “He says he doesn't.”

  That much is true. He's never gone diving—at least that I know of. He captained a ship, but in the old-fashioned way—not as a hands-on pilot, but as a planetbound owner, who told others what to do.

  We were on some kind of pleasure cruise, I think, when my mother and I wandered into the Room. Or maybe we were moving from one system to another.

  I honestly don't know. I don't remember and I never asked him.

  He wasn't around much anyway. After Mother vanished into that Room, he dumped me with my maternal grandparents and went in search of the very thing Riya claims she found: a way to recover people from the Room of Lost Souls.

  “It makes no sense that he has refused to help you,” I say as a bus tray arrives, sends out a small metal arm that sweeps my plate into its interior, and then floats away. “He's always wanted a way into the Room.”

  “He says the problem is not the way in, but the way out.” She finally picks up her fork and picks at her now-cold food.

  A chill runs through me. Does my father speak with that kind of authority because he has sent people in after my mother? Or because he's thinking of what happened to us all those years ago?

  “And yet you claim you have that way out.”

  A serving tray appears with an ice cream glass filled with red and black berries separated by layers of cream. My coffee steams beside it. My standing order. I shouldn't take it, but I do.

  “I do have a way out,” she says.

  “But you can't find anyone stupid enough to test it,” I say.

  She lets out a small laugh. “Is that what you think? You think I need a test subject?”

  I take a sip of my coffee. It's slightly bitter, like all coffee on Longbow Station. Somehow the beans grown here lack the richness I've found on other stations.

  “The way out has been tested. Going in and returning is no longer an issue. What I need is someone with enough acumen to bring out my father.”

  Something in her tone reaches me. It's a hint of frustration, a bit of anger.

  Her people have failed her. Which is why she's coming to me.

  “You've done this before,” I say.

  She nods. “Six times. Everyone survived. Everyone is healthy. There are no residual problems.”

  “Except they can't find your father.”

  “Oh,” she says. “They have found him. They just can't recover him.”

  Now I am intrigued. “Why not?”

  “Because,” she says, “they can't convince him to leave.”

  * * * *

  I take a bite of the berries and cream. I need a few moments to think about this. I still feel as if she's conning me, but I'm not sure how. Or why she would do so.

  “Why did he leave?” I ask.

  She blinks at me in surprise. She clearly didn't expect curiosity from me.

  “Leave?”

  “You said he didn't show up for the treaty signings. That he essentially missed the end of the war. Why?”

  She frowns just enough so that I realize she's never considered this question. She's been looking at her father as someone—something—she lost, not as a person in his own right. Oh, he has history, but it's history without her, and therefore not relevant.

  “No one knows,” she says.

  Someone always knows. And if that someone is no longer alive, the answer would probably be in the records. Something this modern is easy to trace; it's the old stuff, like the
Dignity Vessels, whose histories got so lost to time that they are difficult to figure out.

  She's finally hooked me and she probably doesn't even know how. I don't want to return to the Room for my mother—I barely remember her and what I do remember is vague. I don't even want to return to face my own past.

  I want to solve this mystery she has unwittingly presented me with. I want to know why a famous man, a man who won some of the most important battles of an important war, disappears before the war ends, and winds up in a place he knew better than to approach.

  For the first time in years, the historian in me, the diver in me senses a challenge. Not like the old challenges, the ones that cost me so many friends and colleagues.

  But a new challenge, one that will threaten me alone.

  One that has the risk I miss combined with the historical mysteries that I love.

  I try not to let my sudden enthusiasm show. I ask, as coldly as I can, “What are you paying?”

  Her eyes light up. She seems surprised. Maybe she thought she'd never catch me. Maybe I am her last hope.

  She names a figure. It's astoundingly high.

  Still, I say, “Triple it and I'll consider the job.”

  “If you can get him out,” she says, her voice breathless with excitement, “I'll give you one hundred times that much.”

  Now I'm feeling breathless. That's more money than I've earned in two decades.

  But I don't have a use for the money I have. I can't imagine what I'd do with a sum that large.

  Still, I negotiate because that too is in my blood. “I want it all up front.”

  “Half,” she says. “And half when you recover him.”

  That's fair. Half would provide me a berth at Longbow and all of my expenses for the rest of my life. I'd never have to touch the rest of my money, the stuff I earned these past few years.

  “Half up front,” I say, agreeing, “and half when I recover him—only if you pay all expenses for the entire investigation and journey.”

  “Investigation?” She frowns, as if she doesn't like the word.

  I nod. “Before I go after him, I need to know who he is.”

  “I told you—”

  “I need to know him, not his reputation.”

  Her frown grows. “Why?”

  “Because,” I say, “in all the hundreds of theories about that Room, only one addresses the souls trapped inside.”

  “So?”

  “So haven't you wondered how a man like your father got lost in there?”

  I can tell from her expression that she hasn't considered that at all.

  “Or why the name of the place—in all known languages—is the Room of Lost Souls. Are the souls lost because they entered? Or were they lost before they opened the door?”

  She shifts slightly in her chair. She doesn't like what I'm saying.

  “You've thought of this before,” she says.

  “Of course I have.” I keep my voice down.

  She nods. “You think he was lost before he went in?”

  “I have no idea,” I say, “but I plan to find out.”

  * * * *

  By the time I arrive at my berth, the money is in my account. That surprises me. I thought, after our conversation, that Riya would back out. She doesn't want to know her father as a human being. She wants only the image of him that she built up through her lonely childhood. The war hero who vanished. The strong man who got trapped.

  Not a sad survivor who might have gotten lost long before he opened a door into a forbidden place.

  Still, she has paid me and she has given me free rein.

  I sit at the built-in desk and move the money to all of my accounts. I'm going to have to create some new ones before I leave so that my holdings are diversified. Before I do that, I pay for this berth for the next five years.

  I had warned Riya that the recovery could take a long time. She wanted it done right. After I heard her tales of the previous attempts, I knew that part of the problem was she'd hired thieves and ruffians and risk-takers who specialized in cross-system possession recovery.

  She'd hired disposable people who usually committed snatch-and-grabs. People who didn't care much for her mission or their own lives.

  People who wouldn't be missed.

  In that, they were a lot like me.

  Riya and I had finished the negotiations as I drank my coffee. She showed me the device her people had used to get out of the Room. I examined it. It looked unusual enough.

  But she wouldn't give me its specs until I was ready to go to the Room.

  I was fine with that. It gave both of us an illusion of control—me, the ability to say I was done before I went into the Room; and her, the belief that I had no idea how to use what she had shown me.

  We'd made a verbal record of our negotiations. Both of our attorneys would work together to make a formal agreement that we would sign within the month.

  She seemed nervous and uncertain, while I was nervous and happy. If someone had asked me before we'd started the negotiations who would feel what, I would have said that I'd be the uncertain one while she would be happy with all that we'd done.

  I'd fully expected her to terminate before I arrived in my berth.

  Instead she paid me.

  I finish transferring the money. I contact and pay my attorney, notifying her of her obligations in drafting this agreement.

  Then I lean back in my chair.

  For the first time since I've come to Longbow Station, balancing my chair on two legs does not satisfy me. The berth—with its built-in desk, view of the grow pods, and slide-out soft bed—no longer feels like home.

  I need to move. I need to get out of here.

  I need to spend the night on my ship.

  * * * *

  By modern standards, Nobody's Business is a small ship, but by mine, it's huge. The Business can fly with a single pilot, but it's designed for twenty to fifty people.

  When I was wreck diving, I'd fly with ten or less and to me, that felt crowded. I'd close off the lower levels and lock up the cargo bays.

  Sometimes I forget all the space I'm not using. The main level has the bridge and auxiliary controls. It also has the lounge, where I've put most of my viewing technology so that I can review dives. There are six cabins on this level as well, including mine.

  The captain's cabin is two levels up. I never use it. My cabin is the same size as all the others. It looks the same as well, except for the hard-wired terminal that I use when I don't want anyone hacking into my work.

  Most (but not all) of the other systems on the Business are networked, and I'm up front with any crew that I hire that I watch the systems diligently. If they put something on the system from a virus to a piece of information, it's mine. I've learned a lot that way.

  The Business is docked in the permanent section of the station. I pay extra to keep her systems disconnected from the station's systems. I also bribe the officials to keep an eye on her, to make sure no one enters illegally.

  Even so, I still run several security programs—all of them redundant. No one, not even the best hacker, can shut off all of them and still have time to case my ship.

  So as I enter the Business, I stand in the airlock and check the first layer of security, seeing who—if anyone—has crossed this threshold since I last went through.

  According to the programs, no one has.

  I let myself in, breathing the stale air. I keep the environmental systems on low when I'm stationbound—no sense wasting the energy. I power up, check more redundant security systems, and run a full diagnostic which I network to my own internal computer.

  Long ago, I set up the Business and my single ship to communicate with me—mostly to make sure I remain awake and alert when I'm piloting either ship. But I also use the links to communicate with the Business about internal matters, so that I'm not tied to the bridge.

  The air has become cool as the environmental systems kick in. My cabin still smell
s faintly of incense from an abortive and mistaken attempt at relaxation on the last trip full of tourists. I make a mental note to have this room cleaned top to bottom, and then I sit at the hardwired terminal.

  It's covered with a faint layer of dust. I haven't touched it in more than a year. I'm not even sure it'll power up.

  But it does. Then it runs its own diagnostics and shows me all the security video from the cabin itself. I let the video play in a corner of the touchscreen while I access my financials.

  I move 90 percent of the money that Riya paid me from my public accounts to my private ones. In a day or so, I'll create some new accounts, and divide the money up even more.

  Then I settle into my chair and order lunch from my personal store.

  I'm going to be here for a while. I have a lot of research to do and I don't want it traced.

  * * * *

  I start with the Colonnade Wars.

  I learned long ago to research everything, especially something you're certain of, because the memory plays tricks. And something you're certain of is most likely to be the thing you'll get wrong.

  The Colonnade Wars lasted nearly one hundred years. The wars began as a series of skirmishes on the far end of this sector. Then actual war broke out toward the other end, on a small planet that had been colonized so long that some believed the humans on that planet actually evolved there.

  Other battles—with different participants—started throughout the sector. At first, the weapons brokers and the mercenaries seemed to be the only ones who knew about the various skirmishes, but then it became clear that powerbrokers from several nation states were financing their favorites in each conflict. And sometimes those powerbrokers backed both factions at the same time.

  The battle turned away from the petty internal squabbles—over land, over entitlements, over religious shrines—and turned against those who funded the fights.

  Suddenly the powerful found themselves fighting on several fronts. Their massive armies and huge weapon systems were no match to the smaller, more creative warfare of their enemies.

  And it looked, for a long time, as if the massive armies would break.

  Enter Commander Ewing Trekov and his cohorts. All of them had been injured on one front or another. Most of them had come within a heartbeat of dying.