Sometimes its rituals and talismans give us a necessary illusion of safety.
And sometimes it protects us from places that are truly dangerous.
Like the Room of Lost Souls.
“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. Because she mentioned the Room, I’ll have my nightmare tonight. I’ll have the nightmare for the next week, maybe more, and I’ll curse her.
But mostly, I’ll curse the Room of Lost Souls.
“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.”
FOURTEEN
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.
What I remember of the Room and what I dream about it are different. If I actually try to remember the Room, I get only a few sensations. In the dream—the nightmare—I’m in the middle of it, feeling it, but not really seeing it.
What do I remember? Not 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 multicolored 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 couldn’t pick it out any longer.
I didn’t know if that voice—mixing with other voices—was an aural hallucination, a dream, or a reality. Sometimes I thought it both.
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 spaceport 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 view 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.
Of course I thought of it. I dreamed of it. Only the dream has changed. I force myself awake as my mother’s voice blends with the other voices.
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 Riya Trekov to see any emotion from me at all.
“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.