That could most definitely be poison,VIFAI said.
And I am inoculated against most poisons. And if I am not inoculated against this one, then it is the will of the Light that I perish here,Iris replied, sardonically.Relax a little.He brushed aside the vine from across the doorway and ducked underneath it with one fluid motion.
Most generation ships were designed to strike a balance between lasting utility and marginal comfort, as both were vital for human survival. There was nothing comforting about a lifelong entrapment in a glorified can with only a modest hull to shield the inhabitants from all the brutality of outer space, so when quarters couldn’t be expanded horizontally, architects built up. Most communal spaces boasted high ceilings and were equipped with lighting that shifted to mimic the rising and setting sun. Where possible, corridors that went on for kilometres weaved between open spaces and living quarters, forming vast networks. Iris had read that the most sophisticated of these ships boasted holographic ceilings capable of projecting the entire range of weather patterns, and some rooms were large enough to grow full-size trees. TheNicaeaappeared to be one such ship. Judging by the abundance of diverse vegetation, theship was large enough to sustain weather systems even when its climate controls failed in-flight. Iris wouldn’t have been surprised to spot a few small animals scurrying by his feet. Some always snuck aboard generation ships while they were planet-side.
Do you want me to run a sweep, since we don’t have a map?
Iris glanced at the floor in response, and VIFAI registered the slight movement of his eyes as ayes. TheNicaealacked an operating system, so there was no way for VIFAI to ask it for directions. Iris reached out and placed his hand against an exposed bit of the hull. When his skin met metal, a mild electric shock originated at his neck and shot through his arm before disappearing into the wall of the ship. It was up to VIFAI to sweep the ship’s electrical circuits, tracing the wires along the entire body at lightning speeds.
In a few seconds, Iris would have a workable map, but in the meantime, he allowed himself a moment to pause and smelled another, now burgundy, blossom. Before he could make sense of the otherworldly scent, VIFAI returned and flashed a freshly made outline of theNicaea’s interior directly into Iris’s mind. The map glowed a faint white against his surroundings and was malleable to Iris’s gestures, to pinches and stretches, zooming in and out as Iris willed it.
“Thank you,” he said, wincing at the jolt of electricity that accompanied VIFAI’s return. He walked on slowly along the overgrown corridor, rubbing the base of his skull where the electricity spurred from. It would calm on its own if he didn’t think about it too much. The electrical shocks were a fair cost of interacting with the inorganic consciousness, a cost Iris had long accepted as his penance. He found it insufficient in magnitude for his transgression.
Do you find it strange that we haven’t found anyone yet?
No footsteps, no traces of anyone at all coming through the corridor Iris now ventured down. On ships ofNicaea’s size, one could get lost indefinitely, found only by another Vessel when the temple would inevitably send one to lay to rest one of their own.
This is one of the distal airlocks,VIFAI said.If I were starving or suffocating, I would probably go towards the centre, towards the greenhouses. Plus, the ship would have shut down these vents first in case of catastrophic failure. It takes a lot of energy to pump air through kilometres of vents. Wouldn’t want to be trapped out here during a hull breach. Ships are good at math. They’d rather waste a few passengers to save the colony.
Iris ignored the hints of amusement in its reply and walked on. As he covered more distance, he passed from one ecosystem to the next. The humidity around him dissipated, tropical vegetation giving way to small, barren shrubbery along the entire width of the corridors. New bark-covered branches fought their way through the paneling, cracking and peeling away the once-beige composite.
It was then that VIFAI alerted him that they were being watched. A moment later, a flicker of a bright red cloth caught Iris’s attention. If not for the earlier warning, he would have thought it to be a bird’s wing. But now, blossoming excitement filled Iris’s heart, even as he knew full well it could be quashed within the next second. It could have been anyone: another Vessel, a lone survivor.A lone survivor?Iris steadied his breathing. Would he be the first in the past three hundred years to make contact with a passenger from a generation ship? Unlikely, and yet—
You should probably say something. You’re being rude.
VIFAI was, of course, right. Iris was being incredibly rude. Doing his best to exude calm benevolence, he called out, “Please come out. I mean you no harm.”
The flash of red darted across his field of vision again and then a small, female voice yelled back, with perfect diction, “That’s exactly what someone who meant me harm would say.” The chances that this was the last remaining survivor of theNicaeawere dwindling.
“I am a Vessel,” Iris said. “A monk with the Starlit Order. I was sent here to give a proper burial to those who died on the ship.” He waited a moment and added, “I am unarmed.” That was a lie, but a comforting lie he had used many times before and had known to work wonders. For a long while, there was no response, and then a petite woman, dressed in plain black trousers and a bright red T-shirt, emerged from the greenery. Her cropped black hair fell around round cheeks and bounced with every step she took towards Iris.
She arched one perfectly groomed eyebrow. “You weren’t kidding,” she said, gesturing to the white robes. “Is that the standard costume?”
Iris managed a respectful smile along with a small bow. He could already tell he would like her. “They are rather flashy, aren’t they?”
The woman moved like the sand foxes Iris had spent his youth befriending. They too would approach him with a defiant tilt of the chin as if to say,I don’t really care about the rice patty in your hand, and a wound-up spring to their step, ready to bolt at any moment.
“My name is Riyu. Riyu Alo.” She held out a small but firm-looking hand. Iris gave her a little smile and a deeper bow.
She’s pretty.
Behave,Iris told VIFAI, arms glued to his sides.
Riyu furrowed her eyebrows. “All right. If that’s how you want to go about this. I was sent from the Sychi Institute, Department of Extraterrestrial Botany. I’m a professor there.”
Iris sprang up from his bow. “Then it’sDr.Alo. My apologies.” He bowed again, this time to a pair of dimples settling in Riyu’s golden cheeks. The self-satisfaction radiated from her like the light of a newborn star. “Dr. Alo, a generation ship isn’t a safe place to be alone.”
It was him who wassupposedto be alone, gloriously alone, in the relative danger of the ship, with no one to disturb his work, and no one to distract him. Yet here, here was a glaring distraction.
“You’realone.”
“As a Vessel, I have a lot of experience with the dead,Doctor.”
“As a botanist, I have a lot of experience with alien plants,Vessel,” Riyu bit back and beamed up at him.
With any luck, his work would take him in a completely different part of the ship altogether. There were multiple decks and countless corridors. Surely, Iris would manage to find a place Dr. Alo wasn’t. And yet, he wondered if some human company was just the thing for him, a rare opportunity to be around a layperson who was enthusiastic enough to speak to him about things other than religion.
“Anyway,” Riyu sang, “I’m not alone. In fact, it looks like it’s going to be pretty crowded on this ship.”
