Chapter Text
Now, I don’t want to brag, but I’m the best any human has ever been at Eridian body language interpretation. Or, at the very least, Rocky body language interpretation -- mostly because he makes it easier for me. I know the other Eridians think we’re weird when we’re talking to each other, mostly because I go from 95% fluency in grammatically correct and scientifically complex Eridian while talking to a scientist about the biodome to me and Rocky’s mashed up pidgin as soon as he walks in the room. I can’t help it; it’s like my grad school classmate who would switch from standard American to a thick Tennessee accent as soon as her mom called.
All that to say, as soon as I open the door and Rocky trundles past me to sit down by the window, I can tell he is sad sad sad. <Hi, Grace,> he chirps, but his usual vim and vigor is completely gone.
“Hi, bud,” I say, shutting the door. “What’s wrong?” My mind goes first, selfishly, to the tomato plants that the biology team has been trying to clone from a bit of leftover ketchup in one of my discarded Hail Mary packaged meals. It was always a long shot, so Rocky should know I didn’t have my hopes up, but he gets so excited whenever he thinks he can offer me another shred of Earth here on Erid. This seems… like more than that.
<Nothing wrong,> he says, unconvincingly, but he gives it up when I sit down beside him in my bean bag. It doesn’t have actual beans in it, of course, but neither do most bean bags on Earth. <Okay, something wrong, but nothing very very very wrong. Need to ask Grace about something.>
“Anything,” I promise, and immediately regret it. If it’s another question about human waste recycling… but no, we’ve been up close and personal for long enough that I can fight through my discomfort. “What’s up?”
<Top of biodome,> Rocky snarks, but I can tell his hearts aren’t in it. <Grace know that Rocky Adrian trying to have eggs with next cycle?>
“Yes, of course!” I sit to attention. He told me months ago that they were “trying”, but that looks pretty different to humans trying, and I worried that if I asked too many questions, I would get more details than I actually wanted. So I haven’t asked about it, but golly, do I want updates. “Did something happen?”
Rocky makes an indeterminate noise. <Lots of things happen. Many stages in Eridian reproductive process. Rocky Adrian laying cycles finally sync up recently. So, Rocky Adrian think finally time for eggs. Adrian lay five eggs, very good. Only, strange thing happen. Rocky only lay one egg.>
“Oh,” I say. “That’s unusual, right?”
<Very,> Rocky hums.
My throat tightens. "Does that mean there's something wrong? Are you sick?"
Rocky makes a gesture I usually interpret as "not exactly". <Not sick,> he says. <But doctors still worry. When Eridian start to make fewer eggs, this usually means laying period of life is over soon. Rocky very young for this. Rocky supposed to be in ideal time of life for laying. Rocky younger than Adrian, even.> He shifts on three of his feet. Already, my mind is racing ahead, wondering -- <Doctors told Rocky to ask Grace, is this radiation side effect, question?>
I swallow. "It definitely could be," I admit. "Fertility problems are a classic symptom of radiation exposure on Earth. And..." I hesitate, but it's not doing him any favors to sugarcoat the truth. "I don't know how it affects Eridians, but with Earth creatures, it can cause, um. Genetic irregularities, birth defects. As far as I know, that mostly happens when someone is already pregnant when exposed to radiation, but I don’t know how it might be different with eggs. Do you have a word for that?"
Slowly, Rocky bobs his carapace. The more time he's spent around me, the more it looks like a human nod. <Yes, this happens sometimes. If egg cannot survive, does not fuse. Egg goes cold, inert.> He huddles his limbs closer to himself. <Grace thinks this happen to Rocky egg?>
"No, no!" I say. "No, I have no idea. It's just, it's something that can happen in humans."
<Even if egg survive, still only hatchling in clutch,> Rocky says. There’s a wavering note of unhappiness in his voice that I hate hearing. <Very, very unusual in modern day. Parents often worry if clutch only has two or three eggs, that hatchlings will be lonely. Will be... not good around other agemates.>
"Hey, I'm an only child," I protest. "I turned out okay."
Rocky huffs -- or does what I think of as huffing, where a small puff of hot ammonia comes out of his vents. <Yes, but Grace say humans only have one child at a time, question?>
"Yeah, mostly, but most people still have an older or younger sibling. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but us only children are definitely in the minority. Your hatchling will have you and Adrian and me, we won't let them be lonely."
Rocky warbles quietly. <Yes, if egg even hatches at all.> He shifts to four of his feet. <Sometimes Rocky think Adrian Rocky should have had eggs before Rocky leave, but hatchlings would already be half grown by now… Not worth it to miss so much development, to make Adrian raise clutch all alone. But... eggs would have been healthy, all five eggs...>
“You can't think like that, pal," I tell him. I wrap an arm around his suit. Rocky leans into me, a reassuring weight. He usually insists that our “hugs” are only for my benefit, but he doesn’t even try today. “What happens next?”
<Next, long wait,> Rock says, resigned. <Eggs gestate for several months. If Rocky egg viable, one Adrian egg will match up with Rocky egg and merge together. Should hatch by beginning of next year, if egg fuses successfully.>
“Where are the eggs now?” I ask. “Could I see them?”
<Grace come see eggs,> Rocky says, then, unable to restrain himself, adds, <This big big big honor, by the way. Only for closest members of cluster. Grace say thank you now.>
“Thank you, Rocky,” I say, and I can’t even make it sound sarcastic, I’m so touched. “How’s Adrian doing? Are they as worried as you?”
<Adrian worried,> Rocky says. <Maybe not as worried as Rocky. Adrian happy to have even one egg, just worried we end up with none. Not so upset about wasting other eggs. Adrian says even if this is only egg Rocky ever lays, good enough.>
I hesitate. This is probably insensitive, and I have no idea if it will make him feel better or worse, but Rocky and I passed those boundaries a long time ago. “You know, my parents wanted more kids after me.” Rocky makes a noise of interest, so I keep going. “They were on the older side already, by human standards, when they met. My dad was thirty-eight, my mom was forty-one, when they had me.” Kind of screwed up, actually, that with the time dilation I’m not totally sure if I’m older now than she was. I must be, right?
<Human mating period so short,> Rocky says, but it’s more sympathetic than insulting. <No more kids after Grace, question?>
“Yeah, they tried IVF,” I say. It’s strange, how older memories float back to me these days. Not in a flash of cognition, but more like they were always there, waiting until I tried talking about them, to be summoned to the forefront of my mind. “That’s when you get medical intervention to try to have better chances at getting pregnant. I was pretty young, I think they only told me because they didn’t want me to worry about all the doctor’s appointments.”
<Why medical intervention not work, question?> Rocky asks.
“Just didn’t,” I say. “It was expensive, and stressful, so they stopped after a couple tries. But, you know, it worked out for us.” Now that I think about it, I wonder if unsuccessful IVF rounds are the closest thing humans have to understanding what it must be like when eggs in an Eridian clutch don’t match up. Those four extra eggs Adrian laid, they’re not like miscarriages, exactly, but the lost potential is still… sad, when they were so wanted. “It’s not so bad, being a family of just three, I promise.”
Rocky makes a noise of disagreement. <Family of four,> he corrects. <Adrian, Rocky, Grace, egg.” He trills in a way I mentally translate as hmmph, so there.
You know how they say you don’t know how much you don’t know? That’s me with the amnesia. Every time I think I have my past more or less figured out, I find some more missing pieces. I have no idea what can be attributed to whatever drug cocktail they gave me before launch, what might be brain damage from all that time in a coma, and what’s just time and distance making things fade.
The weird thing is, I remember the concept of my parents more than I remember what they looked like. I have individual clear memories, but long blank patches in between. I remember that my parents were alive when I started college, and they died before graduation. I’m pretty sure it was a car crash, but I don’t remember any of the details.
I do remember that that was a big part of why I got my PhD right out of college. The plan had been to work a little, save up some money, maybe experience some of that “real life” everyone kept talking about. But then my parents died, and I couldn’t think of any better use for the modest sum of money they left me than to spend it on something that would consume 100% of my brain space. And it worked, to an extent. Hard to process any kind of grief when you’re stuffing your brain full of as much information as it can possibly hold. It probably didn’t help with the crashing and burning either.
But they were good parents, I think, when I had them. Rocky and Adrian are going to be good parents too, the best. When Rocky shows me the specially designed alcove in their home that acts as an incubator -- society has progressed since the days of burying eggs in warm mud, apparently -- I can’t get over how small the eggs are. I can tell which are Adrian’s -- they’re slightly bigger than goose eggs, pale gray -- and which one’s is Rocky’s, smaller and brownish, sitting in the middle in the hopes of giving it the best chance of merging. The shells haven’t hardened yet, although Rocky tells me they will, and they deform slightly where they touch each other, squishing together. I know it’s so that the membrane will be permeable, but it makes them look unbelievably fragile compared to hard Eridian bodies.
“The miracle of life,” I tell Rocky. “It’s nuts.”
<Eggs, not nuts,> Rocky says, even though he knows exactly what I mean and is just being annoying.
“When humans are having a baby, we use something called an ultrasound to see inside the womb,” I say. “Do you have anything like that?”
Rocky hums. <No special tool for scanning eggs. Too delicate. But, can hear cells moving around inside until merge happens and shell hardens. Beginnings of life.>
“Nuts,” I repeat, with emphasis.
I do wonder, sometimes, if my parents ever thought about being grandparents. If they looked at gawky, weird teenage me and wondered if I’d ever manage to procreate. Whatever they imagined, it certainly wasn’t this, and yet… I want to think they’d get it. How I can look at squishy alien eggs with some cells moving around inside and want so, so desperately to know the creature that comes out.
<Teacher Grace!> Wilhelmina hollers. No matter what species, kids have a special talent for hollering, I've observed. <Teacher Grace, question!>
<Go ahead,> I tell them.
(The name -- I know. I decided a while back that I couldn’t personally bestow names on every single Eridian I met; it was impractical, first of all, and second, it seemed a bit presumptuous. The result? Right now, I have an entire class of kiddos who picked their own Earth names based on how they sounded, or if they liked the meaning. And Eridians tend to like really, really long names, even in other languages.
So my current class, in alphabetical order, goes: Alessandro, Bernadette, Constantine, Demetrius, Himashree, Guillermo, Guinevere, Krittiya, Magdalena, Maximilian, Montgomery, Nasrallah, all the way down to Vijayalakshmi, Vladislav, Wilhelmina, and Zachariah. No, I haven’t figured out how to explain gendered or religious naming conventions to them, and no, I wouldn’t know how to begin. We’re going to start running out of human names sooner or later, and Eridians generally don’t share the same given name, so they’re going to have to get creative at some point. I’ve already had one student try to name themself Tiramisu -- which, granted, does have a nice ring to it. I probably would have just gone with it if their cluster hadn’t found out it was a word for human food.)
Wilhelmina wriggles in their spot. <Teacher Grace told us about human eyes and light waves, but can human eggs see too, question? How see inside a shell, question?>
Scientifically, it’s a great question. Internally, I groan. Explaining human biology to a bunch of human middle schoolers is hard enough, without introducing different species into the mix. <Well,> I say into my translator, <human eggs don’t have shells like Eridian eggs do. But there is an earth animal called a chicken that lays eggs with shells, and I can tell you that chickens definitely can’t see through the shell. They have to wait until they hatch, because the shell blocks the light waves.>
I’ve timed my distraction perfectly; three more kids have questions about chickens that simply must be answered before anyone can bring up the idea of human eggs again, and then class is over. I breathe a sigh of relief, and take my time walking back to my house. I love class, but it’s still nice to have a break to regroup.
I have some vague plan of seeing if Rocky is free, but instead, I find Adrian waiting for me on the bluffs by my house instead. It’s a pleasant surprise; Adrian doesn’t often visit by themselves -- usually they’re here either with Rocky or with someone else from the biodome team -- but their serene energy is soothing after the chaos of my class. They're sitting, watching the waves as the "sunlight" glitters on the tiny facets of their suit.
“Adrian!” I exclaim. “How are you?”
<Adrian well,> Adrian says. They’re so mild-mannered that at first I thought they might hate me, until I realized that’s how they are with everybody. They speak quite slowly by Eridian standards, an unexpected counterpoint to Rocky’s energetic bursts. It made it easy for me to understand them right away. If we ever send Eridian language learning tapes back to Earth, I really think Adrian should do the "speaking", with their low, articulated notes. <How was class, question?>
“Good,” I say, “although I think the kids are ready for the break. Things got a little wild towards the end.” Unlike American school, Eridian school goes year-round, with five short breaks for holidays. Most Eridian jobs work on the same cycle, giving clusters more time to spend all together. Even essential jobs that have to keep going year to “keep the lights on” (there are, of course, no lights on Erid except in my dome) take turns so everyone can at least have two of the five breaks each year. Adrian, I’ve learned, is a bit of a workaholic, and tended to work through all five holidays, although it’s unclear to me if they were always that way or if they needed a distraction from missing Rocky. “Are you taking the next cycle off?”
<Yes,> they say. <Egg has fused, so one of us will be watching it all the time now. Good timing, with the break. This is what Adrian came to tell you.>
If I didn’t have practice reading them, it would be easy to miss the excitement in their tone. Their voice is a full octave below Rocky’s usually, but right now, it shifts high at the ends of sentences as they struggle to maintain their composure.
“Adrian! That’s amazing!” I exclaim. I barely manage to stop myself from clinging my arms around their carapace; it wouldn’t hurt them, but they aren’t touchy the way Rocky is. Instead, I hug my arms around myself, practically jumping with excitement.
<Yes, is very good news,> they agree. <Adrian Rocky want to ask if Grace will come help watch egg.>
“Of course! Let’s go right now!” With the xenonite suit Rocky made me, I can basically do everything except sleep and eat outside of my biodome.
<Rocky watching egg now,> Adrian says. <Want to thank Grace for reassuring Rocky about just one egg.> They shift thoughtfully in the sand. <While Rocky gone, Adrian thought would never have any egg. Now Rocky think one egg is inadequate for Adrian. But Adrian Grace make sure Rocky know this not true.>
“Of course,” I say again, stupidly, swallowing hard. “Of course.”
To my surprise, Adrian lifts a large claw and rests it gently on my shoulder. It’s the kind of gesture I’ve seen them make towards Rocky before, brushing lightly against his carapace as he passes. I wouldn’t think twice about Rocky touching me like this these days -- years in space will do that to a relationship -- but this feels special. Weighty. Literally weighty, because even a carefully-placed Eridian arm is heavy.
<Grace give back Erid, Grace give back Rocky,> Adrian says, with the kind of sincerity that comes to them with sickening ease and sits prickling on my skin. <So, Grace give Adrian egg, too.>
“Grace get tears everywhere if Adrian doesn’t stop being so nice,” I threaten, which makes them burble a rare, throaty laugh and squeeze my shoulder before letting go. “I’ll get my suit, and we can go back to watch the egg?”
<Yes, yes, yes,> Adrian says, and shoos me into the house.