Asimov's SF, April-May 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  It sounds like the bass line to a cantata. I freeze near the door and listen. First the bass, then the tenors, followed by altos, mezzo sopranos, and sopranos. Voices blending and harmonizing.

  Only they aren't. What I had identified years ago as the voices of the lost is actually some kind of machine noise. I can hear frequency and pitch, and my mind assembled those sounds—or to be more accurate, those vibrations—into music, which as a child was something I could understand.

  Now I understand what I'm hearing and for the first time since I go into the Room, I'm nervous.

  “Your heart rate is elevated,” Roderick says from the control room.

  “Copy that,” I say, and flick on my suit lights. They illuminate everything around me. There's a floor, a ceiling, the window that we'd already observed, and walls.

  A completely empty room.

  Except for Karl, floating free in the middle of it. His face is tilted toward the floor, his legs bent, his feet raised slightly. Occasionally he bumps against something and changes trajectory.

  He's either unconscious or—

  I don't let myself complete that thought. I use a nearby wall to propel myself toward him. I grab him by the waist and pull him toward me. His bulky suit is hard to hold; I undo the tether on my boot and attach it to his right wrist.

  That's not normal procedure—you could pull off the arm of the suit if you're not careful—but I don't plan to let go of him. Instead, I tug my remaining tethers, and hope Mikk is strong enough to pull us both out.

  It takes a moment, and then we're moving backward. I shift slightly so that I can see if we're about to hit anything.

  The empty room stuns me. I expected not just the lights, but shades of the people lost. Or their remains. Or maybe just a few items that they had brought in with them, things that had fallen off their suits and remained, floating in the zero gravity for all time.

  The previous divers wearing the device said they couldn't recover Commander Trekov—that he wouldn't leave. Were they lying? Or had they seen something I hadn't?

  The open door looms. I kick away from the wall and float a little too high. I have to let go of Karl with one hand to push away from the ceiling.

  Then we slide through the door and into the destroyed habitat. Mikk still clings to the tethers.

  I shove Karl at him, then reach behind me and grab that damn door.

  It takes all of my strength to close it. There's some kind of resistance—something that makes the movement so difficult that I can't do it on my own.

  I'm not going to ask Mikk for help, though, and I'm not going to leave the door open. I grunt and shove, then turn on the gravity in my boots for leverage. I sink to the metal floor, brace my feet, and push that door.

  It takes forever to close. I'm sweating as I do, and my suit is making little beeping noises, warning me about the extreme exertion. Roderick is cautioning me, and Mikk is telling me to wait so that he can help.

  I don't wait.

  The door closes and I lean on it, wondering how I can close it permanently, so no one ever goes in there again.

  I can't come up with anything—at least, not something I can do fast—so I make sure it's latched, and then I turn off the gravity in my boots. As I float upward, I grab the lead.

  I wrap my other hand around Karl and pull him with me. Mikk is protesting, repeating over and over again that he can bring Karl in.

  Of course, Mikk can bring him in, but he won't. I'm the one who brought Karl here. I'm the one who put him in charge. I'm the one who didn't protest when he wanted to go into that Room alone.

  He's my responsibility, and I need to get him back to the skip.

  It only takes a few minutes. It's not hard to move him along. Mikk moves ahead of us and pulls open the skip's exterior door. Together we shove Karl into the airlock and then follow him inside.

  I detach the lead. As I close the exterior door, I hear Mikk gasp.

  I turn.

  His body is visibly trembling. He's looking into Karl's faceplate.

  I walk over to them and look.

  Karl's face has shrunken in on itself. His eyes are gone, black holes in what was once a handsome face.

  “He's dead,” Mikk says and he sounds surprised.

  That's when I realize I'm not. I think I knew Karl was dead when his belt appeared at that door. Karl's too cautious to lose his extra breathers, his weapons, and the device.

  “What happened to him?” Roderick asks from inside the skip.

  I touch Karl's faceplate. It's scratched, cloudy, marred by the passage of time. The suit is so fragile that my grip has loosened its exterior coating.

  He didn't just die. He suffocated. Or froze. Or both. His suit ran out of oxygen. The environmental systems shut off, and he was left to the blackness of space as if he were outside the station, unprotected.

  “Is it something catching?” Roderick's voice rises.

  “No,” I say. At least, not yet. Someday we'll all die from the passage of time.

  “Then what is it?” Roderick asks. I realize at that moment he's not going to open the interior door until I tell him.

  “The device malfunctioned,” I say, and that's true. It didn't protect him, although it protected me. “The Room killed him.”

  “How?” Mikk asks, his voice nearly a whisper.

  All I have is a working theory at the moment, and I learned long ago not to let others know my theories. It causes problems, particularly if I'm right.

  “I don't know exactly how,” I say, and that's not entirely a lie. I don't know the mechanics of what happened exactly, although I do know what caused it.

  That Room has a functioning stealth system. Ancient stealth, not the stuff we invented. The kind we found on the Dignity Vessel. Only here, it works, and has continued to work over time.

  That's why we couldn't find an energy signal, like we did on the Dignity Vessel. Because the stealth tech is working here, masking everything, including itself.

  The station isn't growing. The stealth shield is degrading. The exterior parts of the station move in a slower time frame. The interior part, nearest the stealth tech itself, is moving at an accelerated pace.

  That's why Karl died when the device malfunctioned. Time accelerated for him.

  I wonder if that was when he saw the lights. Time passing, things appearing and changing, like the light from stars long gone, seen over a distance.

  At least he hadn't died frightened.

  Or had he? Thinking he was alone in that big empty Room.

  Thinking we had abandoned him.

  Like all the other souls lost in that horrible place.

  * * * *

  We get him inside. It's harder in real gravity; he's heavier than I expected. Roderick and Mikk want to remove the suit, to see what really happened, but I talk them out of it.

  We'll do it on the Business.

  We fill out logs, download information, remove equipment—all the things you're supposed to do at the end of a dive. We do it without speaking, and while trying not to look at the body on the floor behind us.

  Then Roderick goes to the cockpit. Mikk sinks down beside Karl, as if staring at him would bring him back. I take out the device. It's still on. The lights run along the bottom in the same pattern they did when I picked it up from Mikk.

  I shut it off again, then turn it on. I can feel no vibration, nothing to signal that the thing is working. Nothing changes around me—no visual shift, no audio hallucination.

  Nothing.

  Just like before.

  I should have seen that as a warning.

  But I didn't.

  It was my fault for trusting technology I didn't understand.

  * * * *

  Moments later, the skip arrives at the Business. Roderick sends the signal and we ease into the docking bay. The doors shut behind us, and the countdown begins until the atmosphere inside the bay gets restored.

  No one here knows that Karl is dead. No one knows how spe
ctacularly we failed.

  I tell Roderick and Mikk that Karl has to remain on the skip. We'll send in some of the other crew to retrieve him, while I look up the forms he filled out so that we would take care of his body according to his wishes.

  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 hand. “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 as if 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.

  There were no lights. Just the glimmer of her helmet light through my tears. And that faded.

  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 out 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.”