“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 thebuttons 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 theNicaea.
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, hecarried 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.Hebrought 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 otherliving 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.”
8
When I woke, I was a child, crying and fragile. That was mere hours ago. Now I am all grown. My back can carry a man, carry them to their eternal rest. Then why, O, Infinite Light, is my mind still the mind of a child, crying and fragile?
One day, my body will be aged, wise, and frail, and yet my mind will still cry out, “Who will save me?
