Chapter 7 #4
Before he left, Iris went up to Tev and Jesi, huddled together by the kettle.
When he drew near, Jesi flinched away, a look of blatant disgust plastered across her face.
Children. They were both newly minted second degree-holders by Iris’s assessment, both in their early twenties.
They were green to the ways of the institute and the rest of the world around them, and most of all, they were frightened.
They would both need to grow up fast if they were to be of any help.
All Iris could do was apologise again for the distress he had caused.
“I know you’re both scared,” he said. He’d given this speech before, but actual children were always easier.
Actual children could be distracted with sweets and toys, and mostly didn’t understand what was happening around them.
Tev and Jesi were young enough to be witnessing death for the first time, old enough to comprehend the full weight of it.
“I have the sense that your supervisor is frightened too.” He nodded to Yan.
“I think he would appreciate it if you stayed close. Maybe even provide him a little distraction, if you can. Can you do that?”
Tev nodded without saying a word.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Jesi asked softly.
Iris gave her a small smile. He wouldn’t outright lie. “I think your supervisor is a little shaken up, but he’ll be OK. We’ll all be OK, as long as we are there for one another.”
You can’t say that, VIFAI reminded him. You should never say that.
What else can I say? Should I tell them instead that the dark will eat them alive, no matter how hard they fight? Iris couldn’t even admit the truth to himself. Isn’t it my sole responsibility to provide a peace of mind during the worst of times?
VIFAI said nothing.
With Ishtan by his side, Iris ventured back down the long corridor towards the airlock that had become Ordan’s final resting place.
They walked in solemn silence, interrupted only by the squishing of feet against the water-laden moss.
Unconsciously, Iris untangled the mala from his wrist and passed the beads between his fingers, the smell of sandalwood rising until its scent flooded his mind entirely.
Yan had moved Ordan’s body around to retrieve the radio, but he’d put it back almost exactly as he had found it the first time.
The gaping wound was no longer bleeding.
The ground below was visible through the hole in Ordan’s chest, dark against the grey of what remained of the security uniform.
Despite the guard’s violent demise, Iris couldn’t bring himself to feel anything of substance.
It was effortless to slip into the refined and practiced sequences he had mastered years before his very first assignment as a Vessel.
Death was the most natural end for everyone, regardless of how unnatural the cause.
Ishtan didn’t have such teachings to rely on. At his first sight of the bloodied body, he gasped and slapped his hand across his mouth in an attempt to stop himself from being sick. Having failed, he stumbled around the corner and retched loudly.
“There’s no need for you to watch, Ishtan,” Iris suggested gently, “if it causes you such distress.”
Why the archaeologist had accompanied Iris in his work was beyond his understanding.
Surely he was aware of what such work entailed even if he had only read about it.
Theoretical study of death never compared to witnessing it firsthand.
Once, Iris too had found himself faint and sick in the presence of those passed.
He was fifteen, but so were the others around him, and they had fared much better.
After the bout passed, Ishtan emerged from behind the corner, swaying, wiping bile from his lips. “No, no, I promise it’s all done with. I’ll be good. I’ll be good. Please, continue.”
Pushing the archaeologist from his mind, Iris lowered to his knees and took Ordan’s limp hand in his.
The tan skin was waxy and cool to the touch, but Iris held the hand firmly in his, the way it was intended.
It was the broad and muscular hand of a man who had earned his living through manual labour, with a distinctive callus at the edge of his index finger. Manual labour and firearms, then.
Iris closed his eyes and said, “I’m sorry you had to pass in such a violent way, that your time had been cut short before the Light intended it.
We know that in your last moments you tried to help us, help all of us, and for that we are eternally grateful.
I’m sorry I did not know your name until you passed, but I will take care that your body rejoins your family just as you have been rejoined with the cosmos.
“The Light is still your flesh even as you no longer are, my friend. The Light persists in the blood no longer running in your veins. In your last moments, you gave your life to others, and thus in your last moments, you knew the touch of the Divine. In your last breath, you learned what it is to be the cosmos. You are returned to the One Beginning, to eternal life, and to eternal rest, my friend.” Iris placed Ordan’s hand back across his broad chest. “Ishtan, would you be so kind as to find a clean cloth for me?”
“Of course.” Ishtan had barely finished speaking before he turned and ran up the corridor.
There were several ways to delay a body’s progression through the stages of decomposition.
Most of them relied on tools and chemical compounds Iris did not readily have in his possession, but he could drain the body of its blood easily enough before it started to decay.
The reduction in fluid would also keep the bloating at bay, keeping Ordan’s appearance easier on the eyes.
Iris reached into his right sleeve. “I’m sorry, Ordan,” he said.
“I’m going to have to hurt your body a little more.
” Iris pressed his thumb against the indentation on the pulsar blade. Nothing happened.
Performance anxiety? VIFAI asked.
“This is not the time nor the place,” Iris grumbled. He pressed his thumb against the indentation again, this time with force, but the blade remained dormant.
I can help.
“Don’t,” Iris warned out loud, but it was too late. It took VIFAI a tenth of a second to locate and retrieve the necessary memory Iris had, and in another tenth of a second, Iris was back in the cramped maintenance room, stuck between the wall and Yan. The pulsar blade responded accordingly.
“I did not consent to that.”
I could have dug deeper, VIFAI chimed happily, but I didn’t.
Steadying his breathing, Iris shortened the blade until it was a mere inch long on one side and got to work.
First, the legs. Two incisions just behind each knee were enough to send slow waves of halted arterial blood oozing over the moss-covered floor.
Now, the upper body. The pulsar blade sliced easily through Ordan’s soft-shell jacket and his flesh to open the arteries running just beneath his armpit.
Iris pressed down on his knees and stood up, leaving bloody handprints on his white robes.
“What do you think?” Iris asked himself.
“I think I’m going to be sick again.” Ishtan’s voice was weak and trembling.
Without turning around, Iris folded the pulsar blade back up and wiped his hands on his robes. “Ishtan, could you find a large cloth or blanket for me? We will need to wrap Ordan up before he can rest.”
A brief cadence of footsteps was his only response.
The less time the academic spent around Iris, the less strenuous on them both.
Iris got back to work. Squeezing some water from the moss floor, he wet the cloth Ishtan had dropped when he saw the bloody spectacle Iris had made.
Softly, he ran the cloth over Ordan’s face, wiping the speckles of blood and dirt from an otherwise serene expression, over the wide nose and deep-set eyes, over the full lips, ocean blue in the faint light of the corridor.
Iris patted the cloth at the hairline, cleaning the last remaining drops of blood.
“It’s a shame,” he said.
Isn’t it always?
Despite countless decades lived, there were never enough years, never enough time with oneself, never enough time with others.
Despite attending the passing of the elderly and the ill, of children and centenarians, Iris never had quite grasped why a return to the One Beginning was necessary at all.
Why couldn’t they all continue to be as they were?
He carefully unwound a vine beginning to wrap around Ordan’s waist.
“I’m sorry,” Iris said, reaching out to unwind the vine that wrapped tightly around Ordan’s ankles. “I’m not quite done with him yet. You’re going to have to wait.” Nature never waited to reclaim ownership. At Iris’s touch, the vine flinched.
That’s not right, VIFAI said. Did you see that?
“I think I’m seeing things,” Iris said calmly, his fingers nimbly working the zipper of Ordan’s soft-shell jacket and the buttons of his trousers.
“And you, by proxy of viewing the world through my eyes, are seeing it too. I’ll need to sleep after this.
We should both get some rest after this.
It will be a long couple of days.” If they had a couple of days at all.
When Ishtan returned with a worn Sychi Institute blanket, Iris didn’t ask him where it had come from and simply told him to lay it out flat.
Then he returned to Ordan’s body and took a deep bow.
“My friend, unfortunately, we cannot leave you here. I will have to move you someplace safe for the time being. Your clothes are torn and bloodied, and I will remove them. I will keep them by your side for when you rejoin your family.”
Iris undressed Ordan as carefully as he could, folding each article of clothing and placing it just by the airlock.
Ishtan watched the work, doing a poor job of fighting back his stomach spasms. It hadn’t been an enlightening academic experience for him after all.
Beneath a thin, grey undershirt, Iris found blue bruising along Ordan’s wrists.
Similar bruising appeared around Ordan’s ankles.
Restraints, VIFAI said, and Iris agreed.
Is there a chance he acquired them before he came aboard? How old would you say these are?
As old as the wound in his chest.
Then there had been a struggle after all, and Ordan had resisted as well as he could.
Iris glanced along the walls for any more signs of a fight.
Two burn marks on one wall. Gunshots. Ordan had had the sense to defend himself, or he had reasonably thought he could win.
Maybe Yan was right. Maybe someone was willing to kill for the Nicaea.
When Ordan was ready to be moved, Iris picked up the man at the waist and flung him over his shoulder. While Ordan was on the shorter side, he certainly outweighed Iris. Staggering, he carried the body a little up the corridor and laid it across the blanket.
“I’m afraid I haven’t been much help,” Ishtan admitted, kneeling by the blanket. He was no longer retching every time he looked at the dead security guard, and he could even stand to look at the body for several seconds at a time without glancing away.
“You’ve been of tremendous help, Ishtan.
I am grateful.” Meticulously, Iris folded the blanket around Ordan, tucking the corners underneath his shoulders and around his feet.
When he was finished, only the face remained in the open.
With the last fold, Iris hid it from view with a long piece of fabric.
“And with that, we lay you to rest, Ordan.”
This wasn’t proper, not even close. A proper Vessel had the skill to lay a soul to rest while keeping their robes white.
This was bloody and messy and desperate, and it was the best he could do, despite his efforts.
This burial brought shame to the temple.
He brought shame to the temple. In all his years serving as a Vessel, he had faltered many times, but never this badly.
A polite cough came to him through the veil of rumination.
Her face pale, marked by tears, Riyu took a hesitant step towards the blanket-wrapped form.
“It’s silly, I know, but here.” She held out her hand, clutching a few of the bright orange flowers that sprouted in the corridor leading to the main airlock.
“I know they will wither, but I just thought—I don’t know what I thought.
They’re not poisonous as far as I know, and they’re pretty. It seemed like the thing to do.”
With a small smile and a bow of the head, Iris took the flowers and tucked them between two folds of the blanket at Ordan’s chest. Riyu was painfully right: the flowers would wither as life drained from them, as it drained from every other living thing in its due time, just as it had drained from Ordan.
Life was fleeting. How much longer did any of them have before life would drain from them as well?
“Everything will eventually wither, Dr. Alo,” Iris said, reverent. “It’s what we are now that matters. And for now, these flowers are beautiful.”