City of Ruins

NINETEEN



We map. It seems to take forever. I’ve never mapped in gravity before.

The Six have cursory training in mapping. I’ve taken them on exploratory dives, and I’ve tested each in the ruined Dignity Vessels that we own. But to my knowledge, none of the Six have done real mapping— important mapping—aside from the work they’ve done in the caverns.

And, honestly, that work is simple compared with this.

We need to know each centimeter of the ship. We look for scoring marks, for damage, for design features and design flaws.

We are all working near the ship’s door—all of us except Seager. I’ve placed her near the door to the room itself. We need to map this room as well, so that we understand all that’s inside it.

I feel both overwhelmed and giddy. The gids haven’t gone away at all. I’m thrilled by this whole discovery, but the discovery is terrifying in its own way.

I want to get as much information off the ship as I possibly can. Rea’s observation that the ship might leave has frightened me. I will spend the rest of my life cursing my own caution if the ship disappears because I didn’t investigate it while I could.

If I were younger, I would find a way into the ship. If I were younger, I’d stay in this room until I was too exhausted to leave. If I were younger, I’d find out everything I could before the ship disappeared.

But I’m both older and wiser. Sadly wiser. I’ve lost friends and colleagues because of mistakes I’ve made.

And I’ve learned that I regret the deaths more than the missed opportunities. Opportunities find ways of repeating. Human lives are finite and precious.

I learned that lesson the hard way.

I can’t figure out what this ship is made of. I use the cameras on my suit to take images, and I use the chips in my gloves to take readings. I move slowly and wish I could vault upward so that when I finish a section, I’m really and truly done with it.

Right now, I can only map the parts of the ship I can reach. I’m working from eye-level downward, and I wonder what I’m missing. For all I know the latch to the door could be just above me. Or someone might have written the Old Earth Standard word for “danger” across the top.

We’ll have to bring in ladders or something to stand on so that we can explore the upper part of this ship.

It seems to hum beneath my fingers, as if it’s alive. I’m not sure if that’s my gids or my imagination or the ship itself. I’m already imagining that it’s the ship, that the ship is operating, even in this enclosed environment.

Of course I have no way to prove that.

A hand touches my arm. I nearly jump. Instead, I turn. It’s DeVries.

“Time’s up,” he says.

I want to finish this small area. There’s a dark score near the edge of it, and that’s the perfect marker. I’ll know where I ended up when I come back in a few hours.

If the ship is still here.

“I’m going to finish this section,” I say.

“Boss, we don’t have time,” he says.

I sigh. “It’ll just take a moment.”

He tugs at me gently. “Listen,” he says. “The worst thing we can do is take too much time and force Mikk to come in after us.”

I almost say he wouldn’t, but I don’t know that. Mikk volunteered once to go into the Room of Lost Souls, even when he knew what it could do to him.

I curse softly and let DeVries lead me away.

The others follow. We meet Seager at the door. She taps a fist nervously against the side of her suit. She wants out; I want to stay in.

DeVries opens the door.

I take one last look at the ship. It gleams in the weird light. It looks like a predator, trapped in a room, and yet I think it oddly beautiful.

It might be gone when I return.

I pray that it’ll remain.

I want to say good-bye to it, but I don’t.

Instead, I let DeVries push me from the room into the darkened corridor as Rea pulls the door closed behind me.

* * * *