Often I watch him try to free himself. I try to tell him that he can’t, that he’s stuck in time, but he won’t believe me.
After a moment, I answer Squishy. “I don’t know when I first noticed it on the Dignity Vessel.”
“That took a lot of thought,” she says with no sympathy at all.
I shrug. “I could have told you after we found the body. But some of the details are gone now. I just know that the hum and the music are related, and I only hear them around ancient stealth tech.”
She taps a finger against her chin and looks at the image in front of us. It hasn’t changed much as we watch. Sometimes Karl explored the edges of the Room. Sometimes he tried the door. But he could never leave, for reasons I can only guess at. Was the door in another dimension? Out of time with him? Or was there something else going on?
I do know it was difficult for me to close that door after I pulled him out. Clearly, for whatever reason, it was impossible for him to open it.
“Sound,” Squishy repeats as if she’s mulling the concept. “In all the time I worked on stealth tech, no one reported any sounds.”
“Do you think that’s what was missing?” I ask.
“Sound?”
“Whatever the sound really is,” I say.
“Clearly,” she says. “Because you’ve been inside one working stealth tech system and near a malfunctioning one, and both times you heard something unusual.”
“But did I hear it because I can function in stealth tech?”
“Karl heard it,” Squishy says.
“When he was trapped inside of it,” I say. “But I heard it even outside the stealth tech. I heard it from the moment we arrived on the station.”
She’s frowning at me. “You never asked if anyone else heard anything?”
I shake my head.
“That’s not like you, Boss,” she says, and that’s the first time our conversation feels like one of our conversations of old.
“Nonsense,” I say. “You left because I hadn’t told you enough. Isn’t this just one more case of not saying anything?”
“No,” she says slowly. “Because you connect the sound to the stealth tech, so you would have asked others about it. You didn’t.”
“I didn’t make the connection until late,” I say.
“Still,” she says. “After you got out of the Room, you would have said something.”
I didn’t say much of anything when I got out of the Room. I was afraid if I said too much I would lose what small grip I had on my temper and go after my father and Riya.
“It wasn’t a normal mission,” I say.
“Clearly,” she says again.
That’s a new habit of hers, and one I’m not sure I like. It’s a bit condescending. But it’s obvious that she’s been in charge here for a very long time. She’s been the one people have confided in, the one who told them how to take care of themselves, how to live their lives.
On our missions, that had been my function, even though I listened to her and the other members of the team. Only now, she’s not acting like a team member.
She’s acting like Rosealma Quintinia, the doctor in Vallevu, the woman I really don’t know.
“I’m going to have to check my notes,” she says.
“You kept notes?” I ask. “On stealth tech? They let you do that?”
“They didn’t let me do anything,” she says. “I just did it. I had qualms from the beginning. I wanted to keep track of everything I learned, and I didn’t want it for their view only. I wanted to have the opportunity to think and speculate without those speculations becoming fact.”
I have a hunch, from her tone, that too many of those speculations became fact anyway. Or at least played some role in the experimentations.
“What do you think is important about the sound?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I think something is. But you’ve brought me so much information, I’m not sure where to start.”
“Start?” Now I’m the one who is confused. “Start with what?”
“Figuring out stealth tech.”
She sounds almost fanatical. There’s a light in her eye I haven’t seen before.
“I don’t want to figure out stealth tech,” I say to her. “I want to prevent my father and the Empire from figuring it out. It’s dangerous.”
“I know,” she says softly.
“I want to destroy it,” I say.
“You’ve told me that,” she says.
“Yes, I have,” I say, “but you don’t seem to understand. I want to destroy it. By myself. At no risk to anyone else.”
This time, she heard me. She looks at me, a slight frown creasing her forehead. “If that’s the case, why did you come to me?”
“Remember our conversation about the Dignity Vessel?” I ask. “Remember how you asked me to blow up the ship?”
“Yes,” she says. “You wouldn’t.”
“For a variety of reasons. I wasn’t going to because I wanted that ship. I loved the mystery of it, the history in it. I loved how challenging it was, and I found it beautiful. I didn’t want to destroy it. I wanted to explore it.”
“I know,” she says, crossing her arms.
“But I asked you a question about destroying the Dignity Vessel, remember? I asked you what would happen if we bombed it. Would we do some kind of damage? Open a rift in that dimensional field that the ship traveled in? Would we leave the stealth tech intact while destroying the ship?”
“I told you it didn’t matter,” she says.
“But it does,” I say. “Because ships do travel through there. And the last thing we want is for them to go into some kind of weird anomaly that we created.”
She stares at me. “And that’s somehow worse than the Empire getting stealth tech? Tell me how.”
She’s seeing something I’m not. “People will die,” I say.
“Do you know how many people will die when the Empire fully develops its stealth tech? The Colonnade Wars aren’t really over. They’re in hiatus. The Empire still believes the rebels are traitors. It’ll attack the Nine Planets Alliance, and it’ll be impossible to defeat. That’s why the Empire wants this. You know it’s important. You called it the holy grail of military technology, and you’re right.”
It’s my turn to stand. I know some of what she’s saying, but there’s a recklessness to her words, a recklessness born of deep conviction. She believes it’s wrong, so we can take any measure to destroy stealth tech, damn the consequences.
If dealing with stealth tech has taught me anything, it has taught me this: Actions have consequences. And some of those consequences can be prevented with thought and preparation.
I say, as calmly as I can, “I came to you, Squishy, because you understand stealth tech—”
“No one understands stealth tech,” she says.
I clear my throat, irritated. I have to take two deep breaths before I can continue.
“I came to you because you know more about stealth tech than I do—-”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” she says.
“Do you want to hear me out or not?” I snap.
She looks startled. No matter what has happened between us over all these years, I have rarely lost my temper at her.
“I’m sorry.” She uncrosses her arms and threads her fingers together. She adopts a posture of someone who is trying hard to listen, and while I don’t doubt her sincerity, I do doubt her ability to hear me.
She’s fanatical about stealth tech, just like I was fanatical about that Dignity Vessel.
“You understand the science of stealth tech,” I say.