Chapter 2 #4
Iris, instead of replying, imagined a pile of human bones as tall as him, carelessly sitting in a damp corner of some abandoned room, all mixed together, indiscernible.
His stomach sank. Iris could, of course, just say the words over the mixed pile and be done with it in one swoop.
Many other Vessels would, but it was improper.
It was lazy. Every individual deserved his time, his care, his words.
“You go and show him, Jesi. I still have to clear out the ports,” Yan said, but the girl shook her head vigorously.
“No, nope, no way I’m going there. Neither is Tev.
It’s dark and creepy. Nope.” Jesi grabbed a small metal chisel from Yan’s hand and went to aggressively scrape lichen from the console cover.
On the Nicaea, it seemed to grow everywhere, searching and making a home in the most inconvenient of places.
Jesi nodded forcefully at Yan and then towards Iris.
“Well, would you, please, fearless leader?”
The ship was beginning to feel a bit cramped.
It would take uttermost restraint to continue his work here and avoid getting tangled in the interpersonal dramas of the people Iris had just met.
No one had bowed to him or requested they pray together.
No one offered to light incense. Was this what it was like to travel among laypersons?
He liked all of them already. Riyu, especially, was someone whose brain he would love to pick about the flowers and the vines and the shrubs, and everything that grew in between them, but only once his work was underway.
Jesi and Tev were nearly children in his eyes, at least ten years his junior, yet already they were trusted with a generation ship.
They had to be at least somewhat special.
Even Yan, who now trudged ahead of him, cursing at the entanglements of vines and ripping them from the walls, was somewhat of a volatile curiosity.
“How long have you been working aboard the ship?” Iris asked when there was a sufficient break in Yan’s cursing. The engineer didn’t reply right away, but Iris noticed a slight tensing of the shoulders through the navy sweatshirt.
“A week,” Yan said after a long silence, punctuating his reply by tearing another vine from the wall. His steel-toed boots left heavy footprints in the moss, and Iris made a game of following in them, placing his bare feet inside the indents.
“And what is an engineer’s task on a ship such as this one?”
Yan spun around and caught Iris mid-step. “You sure are a nosy monk.” He glanced down at Iris’s bare feet, one planted squarely inside his boot print and the other in midair, and scowled. “You’d do everyone here a favor to work quickly and stay out of our way.”
“Of course.” The corners of Iris’s lips curled in a polite smile. Yan wasn’t the first to let him know that his presence was unwelcome; he wouldn’t be the last. No harm done. No offense taken.
A rare, utterly unpleasant human.
Iris laughed silently. Maybe, he told VIFAI, but that doesn’t mean we should stoop to his level.
Iris followed Yan down the corridor in silence for a few moments.
The farther they ventured into the entrails of the ship, the thicker grew the moss and vines along the walls.
Insulated by both, the corridor fell into an ear-ringing silence.
Even Yan stopped his cursing. Iris looked forward to exploring these corridors alone when the others had grown bored of his presence.
He’s taking us to a cargo bay, VIFAI said, tracking their movements along the ship’s map.
“Sychi Institute sent us to figure out why the ship did what it did,” Yan said at last, quieter than he had ever spoken until now.
“Well, to figure out how it came out of the gate since it doesn’t have an onboard AI or anything.
I don’t think this ship has intent. We’re looking for a basic smart navigation system at most, nothing fancy, something that would allow the ship to pilot itself autonomously out of gate space and establish a shallow orbit.
Currently, we have a limited understanding of First Earth tech.
This is the only ship that’s in good enough condition to work on, which means we gotta move fast so the other institutes don’t get their permits through. Being first is all that matters.”
See? Not completely unpleasant, Iris thought at VIFAI, following at a safe distance.
“Well, here are your bones,” Yan said, pointing to the door at the end of the corridor. Once within reach, he yanked on the handle, then gave the door a hefty kick. The door swung open.
A strangled cry escaped Iris: half horror, half glee.
Inside, scattered across the moss-covered floor lay a pile of bones taller than he was.
There must have been at least two hundred complete skeletons there.
It would take him forever to reassemble all the remains.
It would take him months. Noticing the Vessel’s reaction, Yan shrugged, admiring his handiwork.
“Yeah, it took us a good three days to move everything in here.”
Iris swallowed the hard lump in his throat and fought back a sudden and unwelcome pang of anger that overshadowed the excitement of upcoming work. “And you didn’t think you were desecrating a grave?”
“We had work to do, and they’ve been dead for years, decades maybe. There’s nothing we could have done for them.”
“I beg to differ. A little respect goes a long way.”
Yan scoffed. “What do you know of respect, Vessel? You are a charlatan at best, the lot of you. You dress the dead up and say a few words, and then you leave. What do you know about the consequence of death, about its hold on everyone left behind? What good do you even do?” Yan was awfully close now, towering over Iris.
The sparse lighting of the corridor further carved his features with deep shadows.
His aristocratic nose now took on a beaklike shape, giving his face a predatory gleam.
Iris’s blood pressure rose in response, flushing his ears red.
Not everyone he met expressed pro-Vessel sentiment, but most laypersons who didn’t simply dismissed his presence and ignored him.
At worst, ship captains with especially strong convictions denied Iris free passage on their crafts, but even then, there was always another ship ready to take him to his destination.
Arguably, it was the Starlit lay practitioners who caused him most trouble, bowing their heads to him, asking him to stop and pray with them, inviting him for meals, derailing whatever schedule he was attempting to stick to.
But this stranger, so dismayed by Iris’s very existence and itching for a confrontation, was a new occurrence.
Normally, Iris would skirt conflict, defuse the situation to avoid any violent ends.
Yet this one felt different somehow, as if giving up ground meant giving up a part of himself.
To surrender an inch would lower him in the engineer’s regard even further.
“Tread carefully, engineer Yan,” Iris said slowly, still keeping his tone polite, professional.
This was as blunt of a warning as he would allow himself.
“There may come a time when I will be the one to speak burial rites over you.”
“Is that a threat?” Yan’s lip furled into a crooked smirk.
“An observation.”
Iris expected Yan to escalate, to vent his pent-up anger with a flourish, but instead the engineer gave him a long, solemn look.
His features softened as he sighed, waving his hand as if to say, I don’t know what you want me to do.
“Whatever. We all have jobs here. Get yours done and keep out of our business, and we won’t have problems. We don’t need your sutras and your burial rites here. ”
“As you’ve already been kind enough to inform me.” Iris couldn’t resist.
“What a great memory you have, Vessel,” Yan said and sauntered back down the corridor, no longer stomping his boots on the moss.
Once Yan was out of sight, Iris set his duffel bag on the floor outside the cargo bay and ventured inside.
Past the threshold, the air hung heavy, weighed down by the hundreds of lost souls now bound to this space.
An old smell permeated everything, one of moisture and lost memories and ancient death.
A smell that had increasingly become comforting to Iris in his years of practice as a Vessel.
A smell of endings, of the changing seasons, of crumbling dust on the windowsill when the setting sun struck it.
It had long eaten its way into his robes, and no matter how much Iris washed and starched them, it would not leave.
Under his nails, it had made a home as well, having moved and touched death as many times as he had.
Perhaps that was the reason people avoided him.
Feet stepping lightly on the floor of the cargo bay, Iris crossed the vast room and lowered himself to his knees in front of the monstrous pile.
Against the dark moss, the bones glowed the same soft white of his robes.
How similar he’d grown to death, orderly and silent.
The work would be gruelling and restless and, above all else, necessary.
Between two hundred and six and three hundred bones in each skeleton.
Between two hundred six and three hundred unique bones he would identify and place in their correct positions to form a single person, to remind the cosmos that they existed, to let them rest after an arduous journey.
Iris would never find which of the bones belonged to whom. But he would work with what he had, and what he had were scattered pieces of people that he could, with some work and some prayer, assemble in wholes and send off to the One Beginning. It was the thought that counted.
Or you can just say that you did and take a vacation.
Iris smiled serenely. You’re supposed to be helping.
He could pray first, or he could start with a pelvis.
He couldn’t go wrong starting with a pelvis.
With one final bow, Iris rose to his feet and pulled a relatively well-preserved piece of bone from the pile.
He wiped it with the corner of his robes and lay it flat on the floor.
It was a small piece of bone, much too small to have belonged to an adult.
“My friend, rejoice, for there is no you, and there is no me. The Light is your flesh as it is starlight,” Iris muttered softy and reached for a femur.
This one was adult sized. It would have to wait its turn.
Many hours would pass before he had a complete skeleton.
Many weeks before Iris would make good of this mountain of remains.
Not to worry. He knew this work well. It was the only work he’d ever known, and as such, it was as natural to him as the rhythm of his breath, as predictable as the cadence of prayer.
A proper thing to do, and the proper thing could never be rushed.
It was the only thing he could do for these people now.
It was the only thing he could ever do.