Asimov's SF, April-May 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The Room of Lost Souls

  The old spacer's bar on Longbow Station is the only bar there that doesn't have a name. No name, no advertising across the door or the back wall, no cute little logos on the magnetized drinking cups. The door is recessed into a grungy wall that looks like it's temporary due to construction.

  To get in, you need one of two special chips. The first is hand-held—given by the station manager after careful consideration. The second is built into your ID. You get that one if you're a legitimate spacer, operating or working for a business that requires a pilot's license.

  I have had the second chip since I was the first woman ever to join a crew on an until-then male only freighter. I was just eighteen years old. I've been using the chip more and more these last few years, since I discovered a wrecked Dignity Vessel that I thought I could mine for gold.

  Instead, that ship mined me.

  Now I take tourists to established wrecks all over this sector. I coordinate the trip, collect the money and hire the divers who'll make those tourists believe they're doing real wreck-diving.

  Tourists never do real wreck diving. It's too dangerous. The process gets its name from the dangers: in olden days, wreck diving was called space diving to differentiate it from the planet-side practice of diving into the oceans.

  We don't face water here—we don't have its weight or its unusual properties, particularly at huge depths. We have other elements to concern us: No gravity, no oxygen, extreme cold.

  Those risks exist no matter what kind of wrecks we dive. So I minimize everything else: I make sure the wrecks are known, mapped, and harmless.

  I haven't lost any tourists. But I have lost friends to real wreck diving. And several times, I've almost lost myself.

  I haven't been real wreck diving since the Dignity Vessel. I've turned down other wreck divers who heard I wasn't going out on my own any more and wanted me to supervise their dives.

  What those divers don't understand is that I was supervising the Dignity Vessel when I lost two divers and destroyed three friendships.

  I can't stomach doing that again.

  So mostly, I camp at Longbow Station. I bought a berth here, something I vowed I'd never do, but I don't spend a lot of time in it. Instead, I sit in the old spacer's bar and listen to the stories. Sometimes I make up a few of my own.

  When I need money, I take tourists to established wrecks. Theoretically, those dives make everyone happy—the tourists because they've had a “real” experience; the divers because they got to practice their skills; and me, because I make an obscene amount of money for very little work.

  But obscene amounts of money don't do it for me. I bought the berth here so that I don't have to crawl back to my ship if I drink too much or feel like taking a half-hour nap. I haven't spent money on much else.

  I used to use the money to finance my real passion—finding wrecks. I wasn't so much interested in salvage, although I'd been known to sell minor items.

  I was interested in the history, in discovering a ship, in figuring out how it ended up where it was and why it got abandoned and what happened to its crew.

  Over the years, I'd solved a few historical mysteries and found even more. I liked the not-knowing. I liked the discovery. I liked the exploration for exploration's sake.

  And I loved the danger.

  I miss that.

  But every time I think on trying it again, I see the faces of the crew I lost: not just Jypé and Junior, who died horribly on that last trip, but Ahmed and Molse and Egyed and Dita and Pnina and Ioni. All of them died diving.

  All of them died diving with me.

  I used to lull myself to sleep making up alternate scenarios, scenarios in which my friends lived.

  I don't do that any more.

  I don't do much any more. Except sit in the old spacer's bar on Longbow and wait for tourists to contact me for a job. Then I plan the visit, go to the wreck, plant some souvenirs, come back, pick up the tourists and give them the thrill of their lives.

  With no danger, no risk.

  No excitement.

  The opposite of what I used to do.

  * * * *

  She's land-born. I don't need to see her thick body with its heavy bones to know that. Her walk says it all.

  The space-born have a grace—a lightness—to everything they do. Not all are thin-boned and fragile. Some have parents who think ahead, who raise them half in Earth Normal and half in zero-G. The bones develop, but that grace—that lightness—it develops, too.

  This woman has a heaviness, a way of putting one foot in front of the other as if she expects the floor to take her weight. I used to walk like that. I spent my first fifteen years mostly planet-bound in real gravity.

  We have the same build, she and I—that thickness which comes from strong bones, the fully formed female body that comes from the good nutrition usually found planetside.

  I used to fight both of those things until I realized they gave me an advantage spacers usually don't have.

  I don't break.

  Grab a spacer wrong and her arms snap.

  Grab me wrong, and I'll bruise.

  She sits down, says my name as if she's entitled to, and then raises her eyebrows as if they and not the tone of her voice provide the question mark.

  “How'd you get in here?” I pull my drink across the scarred plastic table and lean my chair against the wall. Balancing chairs feels like that second after the gravity gets shut off but hasn't yet vanished—a half-and-half feeling of being both weighted and weightless.

  “I have an invitation,” she says and holds up the cheap St. Christopher's medal that houses this week's guest chip. Station management shifts the chip housing every week or two so the chips can't be scalped or manufactured. After five guest chips are given out, management changes housing. There is no predictable time, nor is there predictable housing.

  “I didn't invite you,” I say, picking up my drink and balancing its edge on my flat stomach. I can't quite get the balance right and I catch the drink before it spills.

  “I know,” the woman says, “but I came to see you.”

  “If you want to hire my ship to do some wreck diving, go through channels. Send a message, my system'll scan your background, and if you pass, you can see any one of a dozen wrecks that're open to amateurs.”

  “I'm not interested in diving,” the woman says.

  “Then you have no reason to talk to me.” I take a sip. The liquid, which is a fake but tasty honey and butter ale, has warmed during the long afternoon. The warmth brings out the ale's flavor, which is why I nurse it—or at least why I say I nurse it. I don't like to get drunk—I hate the loss of control—but I like drinking and I like to sit in this dark, private, enclosed bar and watch people whom I know won't give me any guff.

  “But I do have a reason to talk to you.” She leans toward me. She has pale green eyes surrounded by dark lashes. The eyes make her seem even more exotic than her land-born walk does. “You see, I hear you're the best—”

  My snort interrupts her. “There is no best. There's a half a dozen companies that'll take you touring wrecks—and that's without diving. All of us are certified. All of us are bonded and licensed and all of us guarantee the best touring experience in this sector. It just varies in degree—do you want the illusion of danger or do you want a little bit of history with your deep space adventure? I don't know who sent you in here—”

  She starts to answer, but I raise a finger, stopping her.

  “—and I don't care. I do want you to contact someone else for a tour. This is my private time, and I hate having it interrupted.”

  “I'm sorry,” she says and the apology sounds sincere.

  I expect her to get up, leave the bar or maybe move to another table, but she does neither.

  Instead she leans closer and lowers her voice.

  “I'm not a tourist,” she says. “I have a mission and I'm told you're the only one who can help me.”

&nbs
p; In the two years since the Dignity Vessel, no one has tried this old con on me. In the twenty years before, I'd get one or two of these approaches a year, mostly from rivals wanting coordinates to the wrecks I refused to salvage.

  I've always believed that certain wrecks have historical value only when they're intact—not a popular belief among salvagers and scavengers and most wreck divers—but one that I've adhered to since I started in this business at the ripe old age of eighteen.

  I point to Karl, a slight but muscular diver who has the best reputation on Longbow. He's not very good at finding things, but he has his moments. He was with me on that last run and we haven't spoken since we docked.

  “Karl's good,” I say. “In fact, if you want real adventure, not the touristy kind, he's the best. He'll take you to deep space, no questions asked.”

  “I want you,” the woman says.

  I sigh. Maybe she does. Maybe she's been led astray by some old-timer. Maybe she thinks I still have some valuable coordinates locked in my ship.

  I don't. I dumped pretty much everything the day I decided I would only do tourist runs.

  “Please,” she says. “Just let me tell you what's going on.”

  I sigh. She's not going to leave without telling me. Unless I force her. And I'm not going to force her because it would take too much effort.

  I take another swig of my ale.

  She folds her hands together, but not before I see that her fingers are shaking.

  “I'm Riya Trekov, the daughter of Commander Ewing Trekov. Have you heard of him?”

  I shake my head. I haven't heard of most people. Among the living, I only care about divers, pilots, and scavengers. Among the dead, I know only the ones whose wrecks would have once made my diving worthwhile. I also knew the ones who had piloted the wrecks I found, as well as the people who sent them, and the politicians, leaders or famous people of their time, their place, their past.

  But modern commanders, people whose names I should recognize? I am always at a loss.

  “He was the supreme commander in the Colonnade Wars.”

  Her voice is soft, and it needs to be. The Colonnade Wars aren't popular out here. Most of the spacers sitting in this bar are the children or grandchildren of the losers.

  “That was a hundred years ago,” I say.

  “So you do know the wars.” Her shoulders rise up and down in a small sigh. She apparently expected to tell me about them.

  “You're awfully young to be the daughter of a supreme commander from those days.” I purposely don't say the wars’ name. It's better not to rile up the other patrons.

  She nods. “I'm a post-loss baby.”

  It takes me a minute to understand her. At first I thought she meant post-loss of the Colonnade Wars, but then I realize that anyone titled supreme commander in that war had been on the winning side. So she meant loss of something else.

  “He's missing?” I ask before I can stop myself.

  “He has been for my entire life,” she says.

  “Was he missing before you were born?”

  She takes a deep breath, as if she's considering whether or not she should tell me. Her caution piques my curiosity. For the first time, I'm interested in what she's saying.

  “For fifty years,” she says quietly.

  “Fifty standard years?” I ask.

  She nods. If I'm guessing her age right, and if she's not lying, then her father went missing before the peace treaties were signed.

  “Was he missing in action?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  “A prisoner of war?” Our side—well, the side that populates this part of space, which is only mine by default—didn't give the prisoners back even though that was one of the terms of the treaty.

  “That's what we thought,” she says.

  The “we” is new. I wonder if it means she and her family or she and someone else.

  “But?” I ask.

  “But I put detectives on the trail years ago, and there's no evidence he was ever captured. No evidence that he met with anyone from the other side,” she says with surprising diplomacy. “No evidence that his ship was captured. No evidence that he vanished during the last conflicts of the war, like the official biographies say.”

  “No real evidence?” I ask. “Or just no evidence that can be found after all this time?”

  “No real evidence,” she says. “We've looked in the official records and the unofficial ones. I've interviewed some of his crew.”

  “From the missing vessel,” I say.

  “That's just it,” she says. “His ship isn't missing.”

  So I frown. She has no reason to approach me. Even in my old capacity, I didn't search for missing humans. I searched for famous ships.

  “Then I don't understand,” I say.

  “We know where he is,” she says. “I want to hire you to get him back.”

  “I don't find people,” I say mostly because I don't want to tell her that he's probably not still alive.

  No human lives more than 120 years without enhancements. No human who has spent a lot of time in space can survive an implantation of those enhancements.

  “I'm not asking you to,” she says. “I'm hoping you'll recover him.”

  “Recover?” She's got my full attention now. “Where is he?”

  The tip of her tongue touches her top lip. She's nervous. It's clear she isn't sure she should tell me, even though she wants to hire me.

  Finally, she says, “He's in the Room of Lost Souls.”

  * * * *

  Ask anyone and they'll tell you. The Room of Lost Souls is a myth.

  I've only heard it talked about in whispers. An abandoned space station, far from here, far from anything. Most crews avoid it. Those who do stay do so only in an emergency, and even then they don't go deep inside.

  Because people who go into the room at the center of the station, what would be, in modern space stations, the control room but which clearly isn't, those people never come out.

  Sometimes you can see them, floating around the station or pounding at the windows, crying for help.

  Their companions always mount rescue attempts, always lose one or two more people before giving up, and hoping—praying—that what they're seeing isn't real.

  Then they make repairs or do whatever it is they had to do when they arrived, and fly off, filled with guilt, filled with remorse, filled with sadness, happy to be the ones who survived.

  I've heard that story, told in whispers, since I got to Longbow Station decades ago, and I've never commented. I've never even rolled my eyes or shaken my head.

  I understand the need for superstition.

  Sometimes its rituals and talismans give us a necessary illusion of safety.

  And sometimes it protects us from places that are truly dangerous.

  * * * *

  “Why in the known universe would I go there to help you?” I ask, with a little too much edge in my voice.

  She studies me. I think I have surprised her. She expected me to tell her that the Room of Lost Souls is a myth, that someone had lied to her, that she is staking her quest on something that has never existed.

  “You know it, then.” She doesn't sound surprised. Somehow she knows that I've been there. Somehow she knows that I am one of the only people to come out of the Room alive.

  I don't answer her question. Instead, I drain my ale and stand. I'm sad to leave the old spacers’ bar this early in the day, but I'm going to.

  I'm going to leave and walk around the station until I find another bar as grimy as this one.

  Then I'm going to go inside and I am, mostly likely, going to get drunk.

  “You should help me,” she says softly, “because I know what the Room is.”

  I start to get up, but she grabs my arm.

  “And I know,” she says, “how to get people out.”

  * * * *

  How to get people out.

  The words echo in my head as I walk out
of the bar. I stop in that barren corridor and place one hand against the wall, afraid I'm going to be sick.

  Voices swirl in my head and I will them away.

  Then I take a deep breath and continue on, heading into the less habitable parts of the station, the parts slated for renovation or closure.

  I want to be by myself.

  I need to.

  And I don't want to return to my berth, which suddenly seems too small, or my ship, which suddenly seems too risky.

  Instead I walk across ruined floors and through half-gutted walls, past closed businesses and graffiti-covered doorways. It's colder down here—life support is on, but at the minimum provided by regulation—and I almost feel like I'm heading into a wreck, the way I used to head into a wreck when I was a beginner, without thought and without care.

  I don't remember much. I remember thinking it looked pretty. Colored lights—pale blues and reds and yellows—extended as far as the eye could see. They twinkled. Around them, only blackness.

  My mother held my hand. Her grip was tight through the double layer of our spacesuit gloves. She muttered how beautiful the lights were.

  Before the voices started.

  Before they built, piling one on top of the other, until—it seemed—we got crushed by the weight.

  I don't remember getting out.

  I remember my father, cradling me, trying to stop my shaking. I remember him giving orders to someone else to steer the damn ship, get us out of this godforsaken place.

  I remember my mother's eyes through her headpiece, reflecting the multi-colored lights, as if she had swallowed a sea of stars.

  And I remember her voice, blending with the others, like a soprano joining tenors in the middle of a cantata—a surprise, and yet completely expected.

  For years, I heard her voice—strong at first and unusual in its power, then blending, and mixing, until I can't pick it out any longer.