Chapter 12 #2
How do you think they got the words from Dr. Alo? Now, more than ever, Iris was grateful for having an internal companion to speak with.
Dr. Alo could have had personal devices with her that could be hacked. That was a likely scenario, but why would Riyu carry a recording of a lecture with her? Why play that recording at all?
Any other ideas? Iris pressed, unconvinced.
Something about the voice, grating and fractured, reminded him of a younger Iris, learning to speak the Starlit’s language for the first time.
In his first months at the temple, all he could do was repeat words despite understanding when others spoke to him.
Sometimes, when he got lucky, he could string some words he’d heard before into a semicoherent sentence, and he’d get an extra slice of fruit.
There was no syntax, there was no grammar, there was just—
They don’t speak the language, Iris blurted out.
They know some of the words, but whoever is watching us doesn’t speak the language.
They’re trying to communicate. They’re trying to tell us something.
The voice had recited Riyu’s words about the mycelium, about how it could act as a neural network for the ship.
Then it had switched to Riyu’s lecture from before and named Ishtan.
Whoever was speaking with Riyu’s voice wanted to demonstrate they had access to the words she’d spoken before boarding the Nicaea.
They also wanted Iris and Ishtan to know that the ship was interconnected, that it carried information the way neurons did.
That’s absolutely insane. VIFAI picked up on the tail end of Iris’s thought. It’s insane, and you are insane for thinking it. You need to rest and drink some water. What you are proposing is impossible.
Iris roughly shook his head to get rid of the AI’s voice. Why not? he pressed. Why wouldn’t our memories flow along the networks just as our body’s energies do?
You’re out of your mind. VIFAI gave Iris a little shock.
Iris didn’t fight it.
After hours of walking, they were finally only five kilometres from the agreed-upon meeting spot. Both Ishtan and Iris swayed on their feet, nearly delirious from exhaustion. Iris’s shoulder had grown numb from the weight of Tev’s body, and he had all but forgotten about the smell.
He stopped at last. “I have an idea,” he told Ishtan and pressed his index finger against his lips.
He placed Tev down and unravelled the stained fabric from the body.
When Tev’s bruised skin came into view, and the odour of his decaying flesh intensified, Ishtan spun around and ran three steps before he doubled over and vomited on the ground.
It was nothing but water. Iris focused on the task at hand. He had been around worse.
His third assignment as a Vessel had had him attending a shuttle that had lost propulsion in transit. While the occupants soon died by their own hands, the air supply did not. Two weeks of regular decomposition took its toll on the bodies. Compared to that, well, nothing would compare to that.
When Tev’s body was fully unwrapped, Iris lay it along the moss and draped what was once his robes over the body.
“I have a theory,” he told Ishtan, who was still dry heaving two metres away.
“I have to test it, but I’d rather not say anything until I know for sure.
Please, don’t say anything to Yan. Please only tell him that we couldn’t bring Tev with us.
I must know for sure first. I don’t want to hurt him any more than he needs to be hurt. ”
Ishtan gave him a weak OK. Leaning heavily against Iris, the two covered the last five kilometres in nearly two hours. Iris was starting to stumble over his feet when a familiar voice reached his ears.
“Another hour, that’s it.” It was Jesi, her voice still distant and muffled by the ever-present moss. “If they’re not here, I’m going to go look, whether you like it or not.”
“Like hell you are,” Yan said, and Iris nearly lost his footing. He wanted to call out to the engineer, but his throat was dry with sorrow, and no words found him.
“Over here,” Ishtan cried weakly, and the voices died. “It’s us. Over here.” They were met with a stomping of boots, and soon, under the glow of a small makeshift torch, Yan and Jesi, both dirty and bloodied, were smiling widely at them. Eli followed close behind, gun in hand.
“You’re late,” Yan said, looking straight at Iris. He was about to say something else when his smile faded away. He looked around with a growing sense of panic. “Where’s Tev?”
Neither Iris nor Ishtan said anything. Taking two steps forwards, Ishtan joined Jesi and Eli on their side, leaving Iris alone, now leaning on the corridor wall for support.
“Where is Tev?” Yan repeated.
With what little resolve Iris had left, he found Yan’s eyes and held his gaze. “Two days ago, we were ambushed. I don’t know where the vines came from or why they targeted Tev, but before I knew it—”
Yan closed the distance between them in a single step. “Where is he?” His voice was dangerously low.
“I pursued.” Iris held his ground, even as Yan towered over him, his voice as neutral as possible.
“When I finally caught up to the vines, Tev was dead.” He forced himself to look straight ahead, to meet Yan’s gaze and hold it.
“The initial—the initial blow broke his neck. He died instantly. I’m sorry.
” It was an outright lie, but no one would be better off if the fault fell on Ishtan.
Jesi gasped. Iris didn’t see her, his field of view blocked off by Yan’s face, but he could hear her start to cry.
“Eli, get Jesi away from here,” Yan said. “Where the fuck is the body?”
Iris didn’t want to lie, but if he told the truth, Yan’s fury would have no bounds.
“Iris carried him for some time.” It was Ishtan’s voice that broke through the silence. “But we had to leave him. Not too far from here.”
“Eli, get Jesi and Ishtan away from here,” Yan hissed. Miraculously, this time Eli obeyed. When the sound of their boots was out of earshot, Yan allowed himself to feel.
Grief always sounded the same. Grief transcended sex and gender, age and occupation, and it always began with a cry.
A cry that strangled itself up in the throat, a muffled cry sometimes, frothed from the lungs by shock and sharp pain.
A piercing cry, one that broke through concrete and steel, one that could burst an eardrum.
Grief was identical. It mixed shaking hands and soft pleadings.
It mixed prayers from faiths no one ever practiced.
It was as universal as the blood that ran along arteries, as universal as a last breath, as a newborn’s cry.
Yet, it was also mere kindling for the rage that erupted soon after.
And by the shaking of Yan’s shoulders and the way his knuckles paled to white, Iris knew that rage was close, so close to spilling over.
A storm was coming, and Iris was the lightning rod. Nothing would be left in its wake.
Yan threw his first punch with the skill of a man who had never been in a fight and was more concerned with impact than grace.
Iris dodged it on instinct, but what Yan lacked in finesse, he made up for in speed.
Before Iris could regain his footing, Yan’s fist was clenched around the front of Iris’s undershirt.
With his next step, Yan slammed Iris’s back into the wall of the corridor.
Iris’s head bounced against the wall, hard enough for him to see stars and then nothing at all as the shock spread through his neck and down his spine.
Stunned and disoriented, he slid to the floor in a heap.
He braced for more violence when someone’s footsteps broke through the fog and the ringing in his ears.
Someone else entirely screamed stop. Iris couldn’t tell who, but no further pain came.
For a moment, he lost consciousness because by the time his vision returned, Yan was crouching over him.
He took hold of Iris’s undershirt again and yanked him away from the wall.
“You listen to me.” Yan was so close now that Iris felt the heat of his breath against his skin.
“You will never be forgiven for this. You will never leave this ship alive, you hear me?” Yan’s face was smeared with old blood and tears, and the corner of his upper lip trembled with every word.
Iris braced himself for an additional beating, but Yan chose instead to land a fatal blow.
“May you never find peace. May any ground you step on be set ablaze around you. May you live alone and die alone, Iris.”
Iris’s vision swam. Still, his mind feverishly grasped for the original line meant for newly ordained Vessels, one Yan was so eloquently twisting.
And through your righteous work you will find peace, and through your righteous life you will sprout gardens where you step, and you will find family in every stranger for as long as you walk the righteous path.
Iris groped for Yan’s forearm in the dark, but his arms were leaden and refused to listen.
When he could see again, the world was turned ninety degrees.
His face was pressed against the soft moss of the corridor.
Childlike hands worked around the back of his head, and Iris wanted to tell them to leave him alone, to please leave him alone, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak.
VIFAI had been silent throughout the ordeal and even now communicated only through gentle pings.
It also wished to remain in silent abandon.
With great effort, Iris brushed the hands away from his head and forced himself to sit up.
Pushing down a wave of nausea and using the corridor wall for support, he got to his feet and staggered away, praying that he was going in the direction opposite to anywhere Yan was.
All he could do now was grant the engineer his wish.
When Iris’s feet finally stopped, he was facing Tev’s body.
It rested beneath his once-white robes, already encircled with a lattice of mycelium.
The body protruded from the floor as a faint organic bulge, an extension of the larger ecosystem.
Iris’s throat ached for water, but despite VIFAI’s calls for it, he ignored the need and, instead, lowered himself to his knees before Tev.
Here, he would be retaken by the ecosystem as well.
Iris reached beneath the sleeve of his undershirt and detached the pulsar blade from his forearm.
He lay the weapon in front of him, watched it glisten faintly against the emerald moss.
Closing his eyes for the final time, Iris relieved his body of all tension and crumpled to the ground.
The Infinite Light does not love, he thought.
But you already knew that. An echo of his own voice reached his fading consciousness.
CONTACT—UNDERSTAND—UNDERSTAND LANGUAGES—
Tev’s distorted voice roused Iris into consciousness.
AI COMMUNICATE—ONE ANOTHER—UNDERSTAND—UNDERSTAND—
Iris tried to say something, anything at all, but his voice cracked, and he broke down into a coughing fit.
All that he could see was a faint blue glow, rising all around him.
When he tried to lift his arm from the ground, he found it tied down by a thin bioluminescent net that stretched and morphed as he fought against it weakly.
HUNGRY—HUNGRY AGAIN.
Iris jerked upright at the sound of his own voice coming from the speakers, tainted with static and an electric hue. The faint net held him down by the neck and the base of his skull. He was only able to turn his head sideways, to peer at Tev’s faintly glowing corpse.
SURRENDER—SURRENDER—MYSELF.
He wanted to scream for help. He did, internally, for VIFAI, but it was silent and nowhere to be found in the wide-open chasm at the back of his mind. He was alone. For the first time in his adult life, Iris was truly alone. The pulsar blade was too far away, and he was far too weak.
For years, Iris had wished for death to come softly for him, for it to cradle him as a child would be and grant him reprieve.
He had wished for no pain or struggle, only the ease of letting go.
How quickly those feelings passed. How quickly real danger had ignited his will to live.
Too late, far too late to give him a fighting chance.
He would meet the same end as Tev, but no one would mourn his return to the One Beginning.
SURRENDER—
With a final gasp, Iris tumbled into the black abyss where the faint, blue glow of the fungi was his only company.