Work Text:
ROCKY'S REAL CURIOUS ABOUT THE HAIL MARY—HE ASKS ME QUESTIONS CONSTANTLY and he wants to see every single nook and cranny. So in our downtime, when we’re bored of making chain links and waiting for the ship to reach Tau Ceti E, we go exploring.
I'm a good host. I show him everything. The airlock. The area where I think the food storage is. The retractable toilet (he gets a good laugh out of my explanation for why I need one). Even the coma room, where the robot arms that I haven't really thought about in a while hang above where my dead crewmates used to be. Which I also haven’t thought about in a while.
Rocky waves at the arms. They wave back. He's having a great time.
The room that most intrigues him, though, is the library. When I open the door and he rolls in, he spends a full 7 Eridian minutes (I counted) turning slowly around in his ball and "staring" at everything. I do some staring too. I haven't spent much time in here since most of the information I've needed is accessible to me by computer. But it is a pretty nice touch. There's actual books on the shelves, secured behind stiff, clear plastic doors so they won't spill all over the room while the ship is in flight. Now that we're in centrifuge mode, I can open up the doors and see what Stratt and the rest of the crew decided to provide physical copies of.
"Amaze," he says at last. "What is room, question?"
"This is the library," I say. I take a sip of water from a pouch. All this running and rolling around—while carrying my laptop, mind you—has got me parched. "Libraries are where humans keep a lot of knowledge."
"Don't have on Erid," he says. "No need. Keep knowledge inside." He taps his carapace.
I roll my eyes. With a touch of a button, the clear doors pop open, revealing a wealth of human knowledge. "Yeah, yeah, I know. You guys are so much better than us in every way."
"Thank." Rocky rolls his ball right up next to one of the shelves and points. "What is this, question?"
"This... is a book." I pull one off the shelf—a science textbook, no surprise there—and flip through the pages so he knows it's not just a rectangular block. "This is what humans put knowledge in. Then we read it to get the knowledge."
"Read with eyes, question?"
"Yes. It needs eyes. Although a lot of books have been made into sound, so even people who can't see—or Eridians—can read, too. And there are some books with texture that represents words, which also helps people who can't see."
Rocky does his happy-excited jazz hands. "Understand! Eridians have something like this. Put knowledge inside so young Eridian can start learn. Then learn from old Eridian. Knowledge is... sound or feeling. Not flat like this, but made of many circles."
Rocky tells me his word for book (or, knowledge-record), and I add it to my laptop translation program.
"Why so many books, question? Knowledge is always knowledge. Need only one book for each knowledge on Erid."
"Because humans are always discovering new knowledge. We have to make more books. I bet Eridians can add to their books easier than we can."
"Correct. Easy. Add sound or texture. Add new circle if need."
Circles, huh? Man, Eridian books sound really cool. I wonder if they coil up like a spiral, or if they’re telescoping, or if the circles collapse into each other. I don’t know. I’d love to find out. "This is just a fraction of the books we have on Earth—most of the knowledge is on the ship's computer, anyway. Also, not all the books are for knowledge," I say, crossing over to the fiction section.
"What you mean, question?"
I pull another book off the shelf—a collection of fairy tales in Russian. Must've been a request from Ilyukhina. "New word: story. Sometimes books are stories. You know… knowledge that may not be true; that you made up. You imagine stories. You tell stories to children sometimes. Like—"
Rocky picks up what I'm putting down. "Yes!" More jazz hands. "Eridians have this. Talk about Eridian who go to get food with no good weapon. Help young Eridian learn to prepare. Talk about other planets too! May be true, may be not true."
"Yes, exactly!" I say. I'm not sure why, but it makes me happy that Eridians also have a story culture. We’re really not that different. "What's your word for story?"
"♪♪♩♫♩♪♩♩♫♪♪," says Rocky, and in no time the new word is in my program.
Rocky spends a few more Eridian minutes rolling around, and I continue to hydrate myself and peruse the physical books in the Hail Mary’s library. After a while, he comes over beside me and bumps my leg with the ball (gently for once; he's getting the hang of moving around).
Rocky points at the book I'm holding. "Grace. You read, question?"
I laugh. "I've read lots of books, yeah. That's... kinda how I got here. I got too smart."
"No. You read to me, question? Request. Read like humans."
Oh! Rocky wants me to read to him. Aww… That's kind of adorable, actually. "Yeah, of course!" I open the book in my hand and realize it's still the Russian fairytales. That won't work.
"Let me just find something I can read…" I scan the shelves and grab the first English title I see.
"Why not read first book, question?"
Rats. I grabbed another non-fiction. I put it back. "Uhhh, because it's not in my language."
Rocky gives a quick chirp that sounds quizzical to me. "You understand other language. You understand Eridian."
"Well, yeah, but I have to if I want to talk to you. I never learned this language. I didn't need to. My crewmates could speak my language."
"Why humans have many different languages, question?"
I pick up and immediately put down a pulp-fiction novel. "Because there's many different countries and many different humans." C'mon, library, gimme something good to work with!
"Understand… not much."
"It's like if you had different groups of Eridians that all spoke with different sounds."
"Oh. Understand. But you crew speak you language, question? Not problem."
"Like I said, they learned my language." Is this guy seriously guilting me for not learning another language to connect with my crewmates?
But Rocky's just being curious, like always. "Crew learn you language so you can work together. Good good good. Like you and me. Read book now, please."
"Hang on, hang on, I'm finding a good one." I close my eyes and choose a book at random.
War and Peace. Seriously? Who thought that would be casual reading for a suicide mission to deep space? Rocky and I have a good vocabulary, but I don't think it's broad enough to cover Tolstoy.
Hmm… I need something simple, so I won't have to stop reading so much to introduce new words. A children's book. Early reader, if we have it.
I spy just what I'm looking for on the shelf. "How about this?" I hold up a copy of Frog and Toad Are Friends. Ah, a classic. It's in English, so DuBois or Shapiro must've requested it. Or maybe me. Anyway, it's perfect—most of the words are things we've already covered.
"Good," Rocky says, sounding a little impatient. "Read now."
"Okay." I settle down on the floor. Most of my experience with kids is my high-schoolers, so I've never really done something like this. Of course, Rocky's not a kid, but getting down on his level makes me think of what storytime must be like. And, we're in a library anyway. How propitious.
I open the book to the first page, and try to speak in a "professional audiobook reader" voice, all calm and smooth. "Ahem. Frog and Toad Are Friends, by Arnold Lobel." Hey, this could be fun! I wonder if I should try different voices for the characters. "Chapter one—"
Rocky holds up a claw. "Stop, please. New word. No understand word after 'are'."
"Oh. …Wait, friends?" I can't believe we haven't gotten to friends yet. How did I miss that one?
"Yes, ♫♩♪," Rocky says, mimicking the sound of the word in his language.
"Got it. Hang on." I reach over and get the laptop ready to update the language program. "New word: friend. A friend is another person you care about very much. But different than a mate or family. You make friends with someone because…" I think for a bit. Explaining the concept of friendship, which I've never really thought that hard about, is kind of stretching my brain. "…well, because you want to. You like spending time with that person. Sometimes you like the same things. Sometimes not. But always you spend time together. And friends take care of their friends."
Rocky gives me jazz hands again. "Yes! Understand. Have word for this on Erid. Word is ♪♩♪♫♫♩♩. Love love love."
I add the word to the program. "Amaze. Ready for more?"
"Yes."
I pick the book up again. "Okay, Frog and Toad Are Friends, chapter one— Spring."
"Wait. Stop, please."
I stop reading, mildly annoyed. He was just begging me to hurry up and read! "What is it?"
"Amphibian and amphibian are different species, question? Sound different."
Ah, right. We established a word for amphibians, but I must've mentioned both frogs and toads when describing the species to Rocky since it didn’t really matter then.
"They are different species," I say. I tilt the book closer to him and point at the illustrations before I realize what I'm doing makes no sense. But I keep pointing anyway. Rocky can see me even if he can't see what's on the page. "They are the same kind of animal, but frogs and toads are different. Frogs are smaller and smoother, and toads are bigger and bumpier." Actually, there's a lot more nuance to it than that—all frogs and toads are families of the order Anura, and are only cosmetically different from each other—but I don't want to slow down our storytime any more. Especially 'cause I'm starting to get tired. "New word for both?"
"Agree." Rocky thinks for a bit, then assigns a suffix to the amphibian word for each: -small and -large. I add it to the program.
Rocky shuffles contentedly. "Amaze. No have many different species on Erid. Earth full of life."
Full of life. It is for now. Or was when I left. I try to smile, but it doesn't come easily. "Yeah."
"Friends can be different species, question?"
"Yeah, yeah they can," I say. "Most of the time they're the same, but some humans make friends with other animals too, like other mammals. Some animals make friends with other animals."
"Amaze. Love. Friends are very very very good." Rocky waves a claw for me to go on—a gesture I'm pretty sure he learned from me. "Continue, please."
I smile for real. I'm being ordered around by another species like a parent with a bossy toddler, and I don't really mind. "Okay. Chapter one. Frog ran up the path to Toad's house…"
I nearly fell asleep twice while reading. Hey, it's not my fault Arnold Lobel's writing is so cozy.
We only had to define two more words—April (well, all the months in the first story) and tea. We didn't get much farther, because pretty soon after Toad went to go think of a story to tell Frog, I started nodding off and Rocky threatened to take the book away if I didn't sleep for real.
"You sleep, I watch," he fussed, using his ball to nudge Frog and Toad away from me. "When you wake, I sleep and you watch."
"Okay, okay, I'm going. I'm going to bed. Calm down." I dragged my bed in from the other room and lay down to appease him. But also because, yeah, I did need to.
Rocky wasn't kidding, either. As soon as I got up and took a few steps, he rolled to the middle of the library and curled himself up inside his ball. But he must've been "reading" the book to himself while I slept, because right before he went all paralyzed-rock on me I swear I heard him saying, "Friends… Frog and Toad friends… friends take care of friends."
When Rocky is still and silent, I ask the ship for breakfast. And as my new alien friend sleeps, I sit dutifully by and watch over him, because all the friends he came here with aren't here to do it anymore.