“Be silent, Captain.” My tone was even, but Captain Hetnys said nothing further.

Radchaai soldiers who touch dead bodies dispose of their impurities by means of a bath and a brief prayer—I never knew any to bathe without muttering or subvocalizing it. I didn’t, myself, but all my officers did, when I was a ship. I presumed civilian medics availed themselves of something similar.

That bath and that prayer sufficed, for anything short of making temple offerings. But with most Radchaai civilians, near contact with death was entirely another matter.

If I had been in a slightly more spiteful mood I would have gone deliberately around the small makeshift concourse, indeed around this entire level of the Undergarden, touching things and smearing blood so that what priests came would be forced to spend days on it. But I had never noticed that anyone profited from needless spite, and besides I suspected that the entire Undergarden was already in a dire state, as far as ritual uncleanness went. If Medical never came here, others had certainly died here before, and if priests would not come, then that impurity had certainly lingered. Assuming one subscribed to such beliefs, in any event. The Ychana probably didn’t. Just one more reason to consider them foreign and not worth basic amenities every Radchaai supposedly took for granted.

A senior priest arrived, accompanied by two assistants. She stopped two meters from Translator Dlique’s corpse in its puddle of blood, and stood staring at it and us with wide-eyed horror.

“How do they dispose of bodies here?” I asked no one in particular.

Governor Giarod answered. “They drag them into the corridors around the Undergarden and leave them.”

“Disgusting,” muttered Captain Hetnys.

“What else are they supposed to do?” I asked. “There’s no facility here for dealing with dead bodies. Medical doesn’t come here, and neither do priests.” I looked at the senior priest. “Am I right?”

“No one is supposed to be here, Fleet Captain,” she replied primly, and cast a glance at the governor.

“Indeed.” I turned to Kalr Five, who had returned with the priests. “This suspension pod is functional?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then Captain Hetnys and I will put the translator in it. Then you”—indicating the priests with a gesture that my barehandedness made offensive—“will do what is necessary.”

Captain Hetnys and I spent twenty minutes washing in blessed water, saying prayers, and being sprinkled with salt and fumigated with three kinds of incense. It did not dispense with all of our contamination, only mitigated it so that we could walk through corridors or be in a room without anyone needing to call a priest. The soldier’s bath and prayer would have done as well. Better, in fact, strictly speaking, but it would not have satisfied most of the residents of Athoek Station.