Chapter 2 #3
“I am a Vessel,” Iris said. “A monk with the Starlit Order. I was sent here to give a proper burial to those who died on the ship.” He waited a moment and added, “I am unarmed.” That was a lie, but a comforting lie he had used many times before and had known to work wonders.
For a long while, there was no response, and then a petite woman, dressed in plain black trousers and a bright red T-shirt, emerged from the greenery.
Her cropped black hair fell around round cheeks and bounced with every step she took towards Iris.
She arched one perfectly groomed eyebrow. “You weren’t kidding,” she said, gesturing to the white robes. “Is that the standard costume?”
Iris managed a respectful smile along with a small bow. He could already tell he would like her. “They are rather flashy, aren’t they?”
The woman moved like the sand foxes Iris had spent his youth befriending. They too would approach him with a defiant tilt of the chin as if to say, I don’t really care about the rice patty in your hand, and a wound-up spring to their step, ready to bolt at any moment.
“My name is Riyu. Riyu Alo.” She held out a small but firm-looking hand. Iris gave her a little smile and a deeper bow.
She’s pretty.
Behave, Iris told VIFAI, arms glued to his sides.
Riyu furrowed her eyebrows. “All right. If that’s how you want to go about this. I was sent from the Sychi Institute, Department of Extraterrestrial Botany. I’m a professor there.”
Iris sprang up from his bow. “Then it’s Dr. Alo. My apologies.” He bowed again, this time to a pair of dimples settling in Riyu’s golden cheeks. The self-satisfaction radiated from her like the light of a newborn star. “Dr. Alo, a generation ship isn’t a safe place to be alone.”
It was him who was supposed to be alone, gloriously alone, in the relative danger of the ship, with no one to disturb his work, and no one to distract him. Yet here, here was a glaring distraction.
“You’re alone.”
“As a Vessel, I have a lot of experience with the dead, Doctor.”
“As a botanist, I have a lot of experience with alien plants, Vessel,” Riyu bit back and beamed up at him.
With any luck, his work would take him in a completely different part of the ship altogether.
There were multiple decks and countless corridors.
Surely, Iris would manage to find a place Dr. Alo wasn’t.
And yet, he wondered if some human company was just the thing for him, a rare opportunity to be around a layperson who was enthusiastic enough to speak to him about things other than religion.
“Anyway,” Riyu sang, “I’m not alone. In fact, it looks like it’s going to be pretty crowded on this ship.”
He wasn’t prepared for crowded. “What do you mean, Doctor?”
Riyu turned and started down the corridor, swiping the vegetation aside. She motioned for Iris to follow her. “Come. I’ll introduce you to everyone. Ishtan is going to have a fit. He’s never met a real-life Vessel before.”
Left with no other choice, Iris followed closely, moving just fast enough to catch the branches Riyu was bending out of the way only to release them a moment later.
His nearly empty duffel bag knocked into his knees with every step, and Iris resigned himself to positioning the straps over his shoulder to free his other hand.
Meanwhile, Riyu wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Then again, she was wearing shoes.
In mere minutes, the hem of Iris’s robes was soaked with condensation from the moss.
Somewhere, somehow, he had nicked his right sleeve on a branch, and now the fabric had a thumb-sized hole in it.
It was deeply embarrassing to meet new people in his dishevelled state. He should have packed his sewing kit.
Don’t be vain.
Iris shifted his focus back towards dodging the branches Riyu was sending his way.
“How many other doctors are there on the ship?”
Riyu made an undignified noise. “Two, in the loosest sense of the word. Ishtan is an archaeologist so you make what you will of that. There’s a group of engineers there as well, three of them, but they’re—well, you’ll see.
And then there’s two from station security because apparently ten years of studying alien flora hasn’t adequately prepared me, and I need two armed men watching my every step. ”
This is turning out to be a nightmare.
Iris mentally agreed, albeit hesitantly. “They’re not here with you now,” he pointed out, ducking under another branch whipping back right at his eye level.
“That’s because I ran away to work in peace, until—” Riyu gestured widely to Iris’s soiled robes. He was only mildly sorry to have run into Riyu. The doctor was proving to be entertaining enough to listen to.
The moss-covered walls peeled away, and with Riyu at the helm of their two-person procession, they entered a wide-open space with colossal, domed ceilings.
The vines returned here, and having the space to grow unbound, they were often as wide as Iris’s arm.
They traced the edges where composite cracked and gave way to metal underlining, snaking around sharp edges and ducking into fist-sized holes where bolts once were.
The shrubs here were taller and could be classified as fully grown trees.
At the far end of the thirty-metre room, three people were crowded around what looked like an ancient console the size of a small shuttle.
“And here we are,” Riyu announced cheerfully and clapped her hands together.
At her voice, one of the people snapped around, his eyes instantly falling to Iris.
“Oh, piss off. Not a week goes by, and Station already sends us a gravedigger,” he seethed.
He was young. Old enough to clearly be the leader of the group, yet young enough to still feel the need to assert his authority.
Leaning against the console with his arms folded across his chest, he glared directly at Iris and said, “Well? Get on with it. Do the thing so we can all get back to work.”
“Yan, play nice for once,” Riyu chided and quickly apologised for the crisp curse that followed. “Engineers, what did I tell you?”
Iris bowed low. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, engineer Yan,” he said, cordial enough. “I promise I will be finished as quickly as possible and will stay out of everyone’s way.”
“You haven’t done the thing,” Yan insisted flatly. “You have to do the thing.”
Rude.
Iris silently asked VIFAI to stand down as it was beginning to raise his blood pressure.
He had maneuvered around people like Yan before.
He could tell him off in the most eloquent of ways, but that would be prideful.
He could get offended at the callous words, but that would only distress him.
He could raise his voice, but that would satisfy Yan’s ego.
Gently, gently, everything was to be done gently and with utmost care, Iris reminded himself.
The only way forward without compromising his values was to play the interaction out by his rules.
So, Iris took the words as a joke and did the thing.
“I am Vessel Iris, from the Northern Temple of the Starlit Order at the Inon Gate, sent here by order of the Primary Temple and the guidance of the Mother Nova to usher whatever souls are left wandering these halls back to the One Beginning. I am the Vessel of the Infinite Light and through me it will speak, just—”
“Just as it speaks through every star in the night sky, and every blade of grass, and through everyone who will bear witness and listen,” Yan finished for him, mockingly, his face stern.
“That’s right,” Iris said, his eyes never breaking away from Yan’s.
“Good,” Riyu said. “Now, can we please all just get along? You’re both making Jesi and Tev uncomfortable.” She nodded to the other two at the console.
“No, they’re not. Are they, Tev?” Jesi asked. She was by far the shortest of the group, with striking blonde coils that contrasted against her dark skin.
Tev, his skin shade matching Jesi’s, shook his head. “No, good to know why this—what did you say you were?”
Iris bowed lightly. “A Vessel.”
“Right,” Tev continued, fidgeting with the coarse blue material of his coveralls. “Good to know why the Vessel, who, if I trust my ear, has come here from much farther away than the Northern Temple. The Starlit’s speech isn’t your mother tongue, is it? Neither is Common.”
Iris shook his head slowly.
Careful. You’ll give away too much.
It’s not strange for Vessels to speak multiple languages fluently. If anything, I am far less proficient than others before me, Iris admitted shamefully.
Tev pursed his lips in concentration, his youthful face taking on a far more mature expression. “Your diction is perfect, almost academic, like you’ve been studying hard to get it right.”
The girl beside him, Jesi, looked up quizzically. “What gave him away, then?”
“His inflection. His tone …” Tev’s eyes widened for a flash. “I know where you come from, but—”
How simple were the things that could expose him.
Iris instinctively tightened his robes around himself.
He had learned the right words and the right ways to say them, and yet this boy could undo years of work in hearing him utter a few rehearsed phrases.
With one wrongly placed emphasis, his whole life could begin to unwind, word by word, memory by memory.
Like a hand extended to the drowning, beside him, Riyu cleared her throat. “Yan, you should show him where we moved the bones.”
Iris would need to thank her later, when such an opportunity arose. Relief began to wash over him, only to be replaced a split second later as all her words registered. “You moved the bones?”
“Well, yeah,” Jesi said matter-of-factly. “We needed to clear out some space here to set up camp, so we moved them to a different room.”
This place is a lawless wasteland.