“What am I looking at, Dr. Alo?”
Riyu gave him a timid smile. “You must think I’m deranged. Getting so excited about a dead person, but normally, this stage of decomposition would take weeks. But here, on theNicaea, the fungi are able to move so quickly for some reason. I’ve never seen anything like it. None of the First Earth flora I’ve encountered before has been capable of this.” She pointed to a bundle of glowing strands that reached from Ordan’s back to the ground. “It isn’t isolated, you see. It’s all part of a larger network running beneath all the moss and the soil around the ship. What it’s doing is rejoining it.”
Iris listened, eyes never breaking away from Riyu’s animated features. It was true that anyone could become beautiful when they spoke of their passions. This was Riyu’s, and in the faint glow of the fungi, her round face beamed with excitement. Thin lines creased around the corners of her eyes as she examined the body. Mesmerised, Iris watched her point from one glowing tendril to another, explaining the workings of the mycelium in a way that even he, as uneducated as he was, could understand. For a moment, he was in love with the brilliant doctor, with her childlike kindness, her razor-sharp intellect, and every little crease along her face. Then, just as quickly as the wave of affection had swept over him, it was gone, leaving behind nothing but the barren landscapes of his mind.
“The mycelium functions like the neurons in our brains, always communicating, always sharing information. All the shrubs and the vines here tap into it. It’s like a universal feed of sorts. They use it to chat, in a way, to see if any tree needs any additional help and then send it over. It’s all quite complex, really.”
“Where does all this information flow to, Dr. Alo? Is there a central brain?”
“A mother tree. She knows all her saplings by name and location, and watches over them and ensures their survival. Ifeven one sapling is lacking nutrients, the mother tree can send it more food. If there’s some sort of intruder endangering the ecosystem, the mother tree can instruct the shrubs to retaliate. Nothing is alone, nothing is left to fend for itself.” Riyu let out a long sigh, her eyes settling on Ordan’s prone form.
These wereherwords, as the Starlit’s mantras were Iris’s. In her own, academic way, she was saying the very thing Iris had said over each and every passenger of theNicaeaso far:You are returning to where you came from. It welcomes you. There is nothing left to be afraid of.
“This mother tree is intelligent, then?” Iris muttered half to himself.
“In ways we’re only beginning to understand. I wouldn’t worry too much, Vessel. At most, shrubs and trees will retaliate to viruses and microbes, not large organisms. They won’t be organising and marching out into battle any time soon. Although …”
Iris’s ears perked up. He briefly glanced at Riyu’s hands, which were holding a small, severed chunk of a vine.
“Is that—?”
Riyu nodded and held out the vine. “It sounded like nonsense. When you stumbled back towards us, you kept on talking about vines and how they came after you. But Ishtan said he didn’t see anything, and neither had I. We thought you got struck on the head. We tried to reassure you, but you wouldn’t settle and … and curiosity got the best of me. Look here.” She pointed to the cross-section.
Iris stared at the thick bundle of fibres that stretched along the length of the vine. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about botany.”
“But you are quite familiar with human anatomy. What do the fibres look like to you?”
They looked like the inside of a snake Iris had once found after it had been half eaten by a vulture. But snakes moved independently. They were nothing but muscle and skeleton.Vines.Over centuries of isolated development, could a plant evolve enough to become a hunter?
“I’m not insisting that this proves that vines attacked you,” Riyu said. “Only that it’s strange and that it looks like nothing I’ve seen before.”
“As is everything else aboard this ship,” Eli said from above them. “Looks like both you and the Tev kid were right. There are things slithering here, but none are snakes.”
Iris was about to thank Riyu for sharing her discovery when a shrill scream cut across the damp silence. Eli was first to bolt out the room in the direction of the cry. By the time he reached the communal space, Iris had caught up. The scream echoed again, and they took off running together, this time towards the corridor attached to the first airlock. Only a few steps inside were enough to see Jesi, tethered to the wall by dozens of vines wrapped around her torso and legs. One vine clamped across her mouth, and she bit into it with a vengeance and spat out a clump of its still-twitching flesh.
Tev was doing his best to wrestle new vines from reaching Jesi’s neck and face, but he was outnumbered. With a single motion, the pulsar blade was in Iris’s hand, the blue glow of the nanobots reaching two inches in either direction. He shoved Tev aside and in three cuts, freed Jesi and shoved her aside as well. The furious vines reached for him, but Iris dodged and pushed both Jesi and Tev out the corridor.
“Seal it, now,” he called out to both engineers, but they stood frozen, still in shock from the attack. It was an inconvenient time for them to remember they were children.
“Move,” Yan shouted and shoved everyone out of the way. He must have followed the screams as well and had only caught up now. He ripped open the control panel and pressed a few buttons, and the door slammed shut, sealing the vines inside. “What the hell happened to not messing with the ship?” he seethed, turning around.
“We just wanted to see—” Jesi started out.
“We wanted to see if we could fix the airlock or something,” Tev finished for her. “We just wanted to help.”
Yan grabbed him by the front of the coveralls and gave Tev a good shake. “Great fucking job helping.” He gave him another rough shake. “Everyonestays together. No heroics.”
Tev nodded, a deep burgundy flush creeping below his brown skin. Yan was about to give him another shake when Jesi put her hand on his forearm.
“If it wasn’t for Tev, it would have strangled me for sure. Don’t take it out on him.”
Begrudgingly, Yan let go.
A rushed flurry of footsteps made everyone turn around.
“Where is Riyu?” Ishtan shouted, and Iris realised that in his hurry, he hadn’t brought Riyu with him. She was still with Ordan’s body—alone. As fast as he could, Iris pushed past Yan, past Eli, and ran. VIFAI lay silent in his mind, but it was there, its concentration a prickling at Iris’s senses. Iris sprinted down the corridor, almost missing the door on his first pass.
“Dr. Alo?” he called out into the room and was met with silence. “Dr. Alo?”
