Iris permitted himself a small smile. The thin aluminum mug warmed his hands, and the rising smell of fresh coffee settled his mood. Why dwell on any unpleasantries when there was good coffee to be had? It was even easier when the coffee was accompanied by good company.
The last time Iris had had coffee was a year prior, when he was summoned to a small shuttle crash just off the Sarai Gate. A pilot, who had curiously survived, offered to buy him a cup on their return. Iris wouldn’t judge, not out loud, but a pilot should have never been the sole survivor of a shuttle crash. It was most unusual and most improper. The coffee in his mug tasted nothing like at Sarai. Iris took a sip and thenanother before he noticed Riyu’s grinning face in his peripheral vision.
“So?” she asked expectantly. Iris patently waited for a follow-up. “The coffee?”
“It’s delicious, thank you.”
Riyu groaned. “No. You’re supposed to say it tasted different. I grow and roast the beans myself at Sychi.”
Iris gave Riyu a rushed, but low, bow. He’d made a grievous error. “Please forgive me. In my ignorance, I didn’t notice the wonderfully intricate floral notes supporting the faint hint of vanilla.”
Riyu threw her head back with coarse laughter. “You can’t claim ignorance, Vessel, and then comment on theintricate floral notesin the same sentence. It undermines both statements.” When her laughter subsided, she reached into a small cooler and produced a tightly wrapped bowl. “Oatmeal.” She nudged the bowl into Iris’s hands. “Nothing special, but there’s some extra here, if you should want seconds. Now come, Ishtan won’t stop bothering me with how much he wishes to speak to you. He is relentless. Maybe, if you give him a day, I’m sure he’ll let you get back to your work.” Riyu waved for Iris to follow her.
It was alien, but not unpleasantly so, to have someone desire to speak with him who wasn’t on the verge of dying. Regrettably, there was still the matter of the mystery ping that had reached VIFAI at the orchard that threatened to sour the otherwise pleasant morning. Yan appeared to be the most suited to answer Iris’s questions and so the morning would be most certainly ruined.
At best, Yan would cuss him out and yell at him for distracting him from his own work. At worst—Iris didn’t allow his mind to go down that path. The entire predicament was beginning to cause a stomachache. He could handle conflict whenneeded, but he preferred to avoid it altogether. But this morning, Yan seemed to be in a milder mood, playful even. Perhaps, Iris prayed, there was a chance to convey his concerns without causing an outright confrontation. He followed Riyu closely, mug still in hand.
“When do you think it will be safe to speak with engineer Yan?” Iris inquired cautiously.
“After his lobotomy,” Riyu said, grinning wickedly.
Iris trailed behind Ishtan as they climbed seven flights of stairs up what Iris had dubbed as the eastern stairwell. Not that cardinal directions were relevant in space, but it was a force of habit to attempt to orient oneself in the simplest of ways. The crisp, cool air was a stark reminder of Iris’s oversight to bring warmer clothes. He shuddered through his words as they climbed. “Is it true,” he asked through chattering teeth, “that your institute will claim ownership of theNicaea?” Silence lingered. Ishtan remained mute. The words hung between them without an answer, as only the archaeologist’s footsteps echoed through the stairwell. Iris gave him space. Clearly, the academic had other things on his mind.
“In a matter of speaking,” Ishtan said at last, a touch out of breath, the climb taking its toll on him. “Some part of this ship will surely go to the institute. Some other part to the station, although, I’m not sure what the station will even do with it. It’s a peculiar thing, this ship. It was a home to so many once, and now it’s nothing more than a decaying body of a giant.”
Like a body, kept alive by the miracles of modern medicine after the mind had long perished. Unlike theNicaea, modern ships had AI constructs at the helm. Smaller craft utilised pilots, working collaboratively with companion constructs, butlarge ships were individuals of their own. Ships decided which contracts they took on, which captains they preferred to work with, and what adequate payment was. It would be nonsense to claim ownership of a modern ship as much as it would be to claim ownership of a person. With no one speaking for theNicaea, though, it could be fought over like a plot of land. It could be ripped apart, disassembled, and no one would be there to stop the carnage.
“TheNicaeawill be dissected?” Iris’s hand glided along the handrail, counting the rivets on the underside.Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine.VIFAI was quiet still, humming along with its idle work. Iris could feel it moving in the background, like a half-forgotten song.
“In a manner of speaking. Parts of the ship will be taken by my department,” Ishtan said. “Riyu will probably remove most of the vegetation she can get her hands on, catalogue it, and take it to her own lab for study. The engineers are working to extract the software as we speak. If they can’t, they’ll just remove the hardware and pray there’s something worthwhile on there. Each part of theNicaeawill create and sustain jobs and deepen our understanding of what life used to be like. Here we are.” Ishtan pushed open a door with a groan.
Iris didn’t overtly object to the dissection of the ship; after all, everything inadvertently became something else. But something in him cried out that it was wrong to peel a ship apart, deck by deck, wall by wall, so unceremoniously. No respect was paid to theNicaeaas a whole, to its monumental accomplishment. Like scavengers, the academics and station personnel had descended on her body, eager to steal away the largest piece for personal gain. This uneasiness sprung up within him like a warning, like a revelation that he was not among people who thought like him, who valued the things he valued.
The higher decks of the ship were cooler and supported sparse vegetation. Shrubs peeked through the cracks in the walls, shimmering with frost that sat in every crevice. Iris wrapped his arms around himself and watched puffs of fog float from Ishtan’s mouth as his speech grew more and more excited.
“I am what you might call a generation ship enthusiast. They’re not my specialty by any means, but I’ve always had such a fascination—oh, there is so much to learn from them,” Ishtan gushed, leading Iris down a dimly lit corridor. “For example, did you know that all the ships we’ve come across so far follow a similar layout? TheNicaeafollows it too. Large central spaces with spokes of corridors towards the edges. Such a fascinating way to build. And the cultures—oh! I could go on for hours. Butthis,this mural I wish to show you is really a particularly strange find, nothing like we’ve seen before on other ships. Very vivid, exceptionally well-preserved.”
Ask him about P’llani,VIFAI called out from Iris’s subconscious, where it was rummaging around and retreated to in the next instant to continue its work.
“You’ve seen other ships?” Iris asked, finally able to get a word in.
“Not personally,” Ishtan said with subdued pride, “but a colleague of mine brought me back a piece of a mural from the ship that washed up near P’Ilani. Oh, it’s abeautifulmural. If you ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend vising the institute. It really is a sight to see. Sychi has nothing of that sort, but maybe if we may extract this one—” He suddenly stopped. “There it is.”
Ahead, the corridor opened into a large chamber with sloping walls. Like the petals of a rosebud, they reached towards the apex, nearly twenty metres in height. At one time, the space had been well lit and vibrant, before decay and wear made it a barrentomb. The curved ceiling glowed dimly from some internal source. As far as the light permitted Iris to see, the walls were painted with peeling colours. Images of pale people and alien places in hyperrealistic form smiled at him from the walls, their faces monstrously large. Iris wasn’t superstitious, but he recited a prayer anyway, just to be sure.
Meanwhile, Ishtan produced a small flashlight from his pocket and ran the warm yellow beam across the paintings. “This mural, for example, will be removed in pieces and taken back to my department. This is a career-making discovery, Iris. Truly, this was worth waiting forty years for. Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Iris had not. He was busy fighting a rising mixture of panic and disgust in his stomach. The coming-and-going pulse he initially sensed once he had entered the ship was stronger here, reverberating through the domelike ceiling. It echoed through his limbs, starting from the balls of his feet and snaking its way through his fingertips, as if the ship was saying,tread carefully for you do not belong here. His own heart fought against its uneven pace, but it was losing more and more with each passing second.
Then there were the faces.
Frozen and uncanny, they smiled at Iris with their cold, flat eyes, some stripped of pieces of their bodies where the plants had gotten to them. Soon the mural would be taken apart, shipped to the Sychi Institute, or displayed at some prestigious gallery, removed from the ship, pinned and hoisted against some paneling. Iris swayed on his feet, a fresh wave of bile threatening to escape.
“This is one of the originals,” Iris heard Ishtan say, his voice coming to him as a distant echo. “I predict it was here when the ship took off. Now, the ones I will show you in just a momentare even more fascinating.” He walked back down the corridor, and Iris followed mechanically, his stomach doing somersaults, vision receding into a darkened tunnel.
“Did you feel that?” he asked Ishtan, struggling to keep up, the academic’s steps suddenly too fast.
“Feel what?” Ishtan threw a glance over his shoulder, hand tugging at his beard.
