Archive of Our Own

You’d never wanted to be a diplomat. You’re an engineer, and you like being an engineer. You like understanding things, figuring out how they work, problem solving and building solutions.

You’d expressed this sentiment to Adrian recently. They’d hummed sympathetically, then said, “Diplomacy is just doing that with people instead of things.”

The noise you made in response doesn’t have a translation into Earth language, not really. The closest you can think of is the blandly unimpressed face, corners of his mouth tight, that Grace sometimes makes when he hears what he would describe as “some real bull schnitzel.”

Right. The face he used to make.

You can’t forget, Eridians never forget, but with everything going on, it’s not always the first thought in your mind. That alone feels like a betrayal. Grace has barely been gone a week, after all. How can you think of anything else? 

But you know how much the work you’re doing now meant to him. You can’t let him down.

Relativity and years spent at near light-speed travel made it hard to judge these things with precision, but Grace had been approximately sixty-seven human years old when it started. Subtle, at first. He’d been tired more often. Losing weight, even though the Eridian scientists had long figured out how to meet his nutritional needs. His back had hurt. None of it was specific enough to indicate that anything was really wrong, but you’d been concerned when his appetite diminished rapidly from what it had been before. Grace had insisted he was fine, probably, that it was normal for older humans to eat less. But the medical scanner you’d helped to design, using a combination of Earth and Eridian science, had told a different story.

You hadn’t wanted to believe it. The average human lifespan was only eighty years, you knew this. Too short, but even still, you were supposed to have at least another ten years with him. It wasn’t fair. Of course you’d known you’d outlive him, but it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

He’d told you about it when you’d visited his dome later that cycle. He’d been uncharacteristically restrained, gentle. It reminded you of nothing so much as when he’d explained radiation sickness, all those long years ago: something terrible, but nothing to be done about it.

“It’s really not a surprise, all things considered. Getting blasted by cosmic radiation in space for years, and all.”

“I thought humans were resistant to radiation?” You had asked, begged really.

“More than Eridians, yeah, but it’s not like we’re immune. That might not even be the cause. Pancreatic cancer killed my dad, too. I guess I come by it honestly.”

You had been quiet for a long time, processing. Only Grace’s hand on your exosuit gave you any comfort. You could hear his pulse through the contact, steady and strong as it had ever been. You wondered if you could hear the mass of malignant tissue that was growing, Grace’s own body killing him, or if that was just your imagination.

“No. No, no, no. Grace can’t die. We can talk to the doctors. They can fix this.” Grace had been fluent in your language for decades now, but you understood that there were nuances that he couldn’t pick up on - they’re just outside of the human hearing range. The way to indicate extreme emphasis was among these, so you still had your habit of repeating words to show this, especially when you’re upset.

Like now.

Grace had sighed, and said, “I don’t think so, Rock. Even on Earth, with the best medical care money can buy, only about fifteen percent of people survive more than a few years with this form of cancer. And we don’t have any of the treatments here.”

“Hail Mary’s medical system can–”

He’d interrupted you. “Mary’s systems were never meant to deal with something like this, pal. We weren’t meant to have the chance to grow old.”

He was right, but you hadn’t been ready to accept it. So you pivoted. “Eridian scientists have spent a long long time reading about human science on the thinking machine. They have to be able to do something, make a cure. You’re going to be okay,” you said definitively, barely stopping yourself from adding ‘statement’ to the end.

He’d smiled at that, but you were good enough at reading his face to know that it wasn’t a happy expression. That was confirmed when he’d said, “That would be a lot of prototyping and testing, and I, uh, don’t think we have that long, bud.”

“How long?” You had asked, pleaded, demanded.

Grace had shrugged, then winced at the pain in his joints. “Can’t say for sure. Hopefully long enough that I can meet the ship from Earth, when they arrive.”

That was less than a year away. And it could be even sooner than that? You hadn’t had words, could only express your sorrow with long, low trills, leaning your carapace against Grace’s side as he wrapped an arm around you.

Only the slight tremor in Grace’s breathing betrayed his own fear.

You’re present at the top of the space elevator when the human delegation’s ship docks, and without the separation of vacuum, you can hear the shape of it. It’s larger than the Hail Mary, but the form and materiality of it ring similarly against your senses. 

They’d named the ship Grace. Its namesake had been both flattered and uncomfortable to learn that. You still don’t entirely understand humans’ propensity to name things, but you’d privately thought that it was the least they could do to honor your friend. 

Transmissions from Grace had started arriving about one Earth year ago, as the ship had begun decelerating from near-light speed to approach Erid. By that point, various groups on Erid had been sending messages and probes toward Earth for quite a while, eager to communicate with the strange but friendly species that had helped save their planet. You, yourself, had helped design the first one, basing it largely on the Hail Mary’s beetles.

It was with delight that you, and most of Erid for that matter, had received the first replies from Earth. Well, they weren’t really replies, not yet. It took sixteen earth years for messages to reach Earth from Erid, or vice versa. If you’d (collectively) waited to receive a message before sending a reply, you’d barely have anything to work with. 

Luckily, it seems Earth had had the same idea, and shortly after Sol had returned to full luminance, the first probe had arrived. It contained messages, both for Erid generally, and for you and Grace, specifically. They didn’t know if he was still alive, then, but they’d used their precious resources to send them anyway. That had made Grace very emotional. It was the timing of it as much as anything: after receiving the beetles, the first priority had of course been seeding Venus with taumoeba, but given the alacrity with which the first package had reached Erid after that, this hadn’t been far behind. Even with the hardship and loss of infrastructure that Earth’s cooling had certainly caused, they’d still been able to extend a hand in curiosity and friendship. The sheer relief that Grace had felt had been so palpable in those first days that you realized that it had weighed on him in ways you’d never understood.

Among the material intended for Grace on the first probe, there were updates about the state of Earth: species which had gone extinct in the Earth’s cooling, and which had survived. There were photos of places he’d seen and lived. Of a more personal nature, there were letters from children, which had made Grace cry and laugh and cry again. There were messages from the members of the former Petrova taskforce, which Grace had watched in private. He’d never shared them with you, and you’d never asked, though he’d been unusually quiet and distant the next time you’d visited him.

There were also seeds for Earth food plants, which had thrilled the Eridian scientists (as well as Grace). You remember visiting him after the soil they had formulated yielded results, and you added “garden” to your English vocabulary. It had been astonishing to see the little patch in Grace’s biodome grow so quickly into a lush, riotous mass of life, striving up to reach the sun - well, it was an array of grow lights programmed to imitate the light of Sol, but the plants didn’t know that. You loved the rustling sound of the stems and leaves as the artificial breeze made them bob and dance. You didn’t have anything quite like it on Erid.

“They’re not quite ready yet,” Grace had said one day, kneeling in his garden, “But I just can’t wait any longer.” He’d picked an orb–he’d called it a ‘cherry tomato’--off of one of the stems and popped it into his mouth. You barely had time to think how strange it was that seeing him eat no longer bothered you in the slightest before Grace was sniffling, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand.

“Oh, Grace is leaking again,” you’d said. “Happy or sad?”

“It’s still called crying, bud.” You knew that, of course; you just thought it was funnier this way. Grace went on, “I never thought I’d taste fresh vegetables again. No offense; your scientists are doing incredible work with the food they make for me, but…” He trailed off, and you’d bumped against him affectionately, and stayed there when the crying escalated.

“This is so stupid,” Grace finally managed, taking a breath. “Crying over a tomato.”

“It must be very delicious,” you offered tentatively, using a word that translated more literally as ‘fun food.’ Despite everything, it was still uncomfortable to openly discuss eating like this.

Grace hiccup-laughed. “No, I’ve actually never liked tomatoes. Sour and watery.”

“Just like Grace,” you’d observed, and he’d playfully shoved at you, now laughing more than crying. 

It is a treasured memory.

Who is going to take care of Grace’s garden now, you wonder? 

But there’s no time to think of that. The ship’s airlock is beginning to open, so that the humans can come out into the orbital mini-biodome you’d helped design. You hadn’t contributed to its actual construction, though. You’d hardly left Grace’s side since he got sick. Someone had to watch him sleep, and he’d been doing a lot of that, toward the end… You have to stop yourself. You have a job to do.

Elsa, whom Grace had said he’d named for their shiny icy-white carapace, is ready with the translation software. You brace yourself, and the airlock door fully opens, a group of five humans floating in microgravity beyond.

It’s only for a moment, but you falter, seeing them. Your brain so strongly associates that shape, that way of moving with your friend, that the pattern recognition makes something leap inside of you, before it falls and crashes. You recover, and speak.

“Hello and welcome to Erid, Earth friends. I am Rocky, and we,” you’d made a gesture, one you’d picked up from Grace, to encompass the entire diplomatic delegation, “Are very happy you have come to visit.”

The usual greetings and pleasantries and logistical conversations ensue. A human linguist carries a device similar to the one that had been made for Grace to communicate in your language, but you quickly discover that their grasp on it is rudimentary at best, and gently encourage the humans to use the translation software–it’s gotten quite good, after all the years of work that have gone into it. All is going smoothly until the human captain, who introduced themself as Abigail, asks you, “Will it be possible to speak with Dr. Grace, Rocky?”

You hadn’t expected this to come up so soon. You can’t answer, overwhelmed. You don’t have a script for this. When it becomes apparent you won’t reply in a timely manner, Elsa has to intervene. “With regret, Captain Abigail, Grace passed away seven Earth days ago. Rocky mourns him greatly.”

You didn’t think they had needed to add that last part actually, but it’s not like it isn’t true.

“Oh,” Abigail says with genuine dismay and sorrow in their voice. It sounds personal. That makes you examine them more closely. You know enough about human physiology and cultural practice to guess that this human is probably the gender they call “woman,” and mentally adjust your language. She is older, not as old as Grace had been at the end, but not as young as he’d been when you’d first met him. Humans burn out so quickly…

Abigail takes a breath, the way Grace had always done to steady himself, and says, “I knew him on Earth, a very long time ago. He was my teacher. It was a long shot, but since we’d gotten his messages from here, I had hoped…”

You abandon your formal diplomatic training and step forward to take her hand. She squeezes the suit hard, a gesture of affection and support that’s inexplicably shared between Earth and Eridian culture. You can hear the unsteadiness in her breathing. You don’t exactly understand why this is affecting you so strongly, but it’s significant that she mourns Grace for Grace, and not just for what he had done for Earth.

“Grace loved his students. Loved, loved, loved. All of them, Earth and Erid. Would have been so proud,” you say, and Abigail laughs as she wipes a tear from her eye before it can fall. All humans are leaky, you suppose, not just yours. You let go of her hand. Grace had once said that crying was like a release valve for when human’s emotions are too strong. You’d never envied them that until now, you think. You think your carapace is going to crack from the force of all of the feelings inside of you.

Instead, you settle, shaking your limbs out, and steer the conversation back on track. Grace had wanted the first diplomatic meeting between Earth and Erid to go well so, so badly. He’d held on as long as he could, and though he’d never said it, you knew he was desperate to get to see another of his species, one last time. It didn’t make you jealous; you remembered how deeply you’d missed Adrian and your crew those forty-six years you’d spend alone, orbiting Tau Ceti. How cruel, how unfair, it had all turned out. He’d been so close, too.

After his diagnosis, not much changed about Grace, at least not at first. He still took his cane or, more and more commonly, his wheelchair down to the beach to watch the waves. He needed more help now, but he still tended to his garden. For a while, he spent a few hours each day with his students.

That had been the first thing to change.

“My health is going to get much worse very quickly,” he’d told you in a matter of fact way, lying in his bed after a shorter-than-average class. Your carapace rested on the floor beside him, two of your arms on top of his old quilt, pressed against his shoulder. “I don’t want to let them see that happen to me.”

You remembered the trip from Tau Ceti, the helplessness and distress you’d felt as Grace withered, sleeping more, starvation making him irritable and unable to think clearly. It had scared you. It had only been bearable knowing there was an end to it, that you would reach Erid and your scientists would be fighting for the chance to work on making food that would fix him.

Your legs felt weak as you contemplated the idea of watching him go through that again. The end this time would be his death.

“Yes,” you’d said softly. “Is good idea to spare them. They will miss teacher Grace.”

“I’ll miss them too,” he’d said. “I need to sleep for a bit now, Rock.”

“Yes. You sleep. I watch.”

The next class he’d taught had been his last.

Some of those same pebbles were back in the classroom now, having been selected as part of a small cohort that would get the privilege of meeting the representatives from Earth and getting to ask them questions.

It’s strange for you to be back here, and must be for the pebbles, too, the way some of them shift and fidget.

Earlier, about one Earth day ago, the humans had been ferried onto the space elevator, in a compartment carefully modified for human life support, then transferred to Grace’s biodome.

You hadn’t liked that part. He was still everywhere, here. It wasn’t for them.

But it was the only place on Erid already set up in a way that would be comfortable for their guests from Earth, and more importantly, Grace had insisted that they would stay there once they arrived. He’d been so excited at the idea of ‘hosting’ that he’d tired himself out, overdone it with the planning, so that you’d had to push his wheelchair back to his house. He’d apologized and apologized, and a part of you had known that it wasn’t for the effort, but that he was getting worse. 

The pain was a constant torment for him by then, but you’d been so happy to see him enthusiastic about something again that you’d tried to pretend everything was fine. Really, it was you who should have apologized.

Grace had been around to supervise the construction of the ‘hotel’ where the human delegation is being housed. Adrian had worked with Grace on the design. It’s smaller, less grandiose than their architectural plan for the biodome itself, or the other large-scale facilities they mostly work on these days, but they’d been happy to be asked. Grace’s decline had upset them too, though they tried to be strong for you through it.

Either way, Abigail and the other humans seem pleased with their accommodations. 

“Nicer than the Marriott they put us up in on the way to the launch site,” one of the humans had observed to another, who had agreed with enthusiasm. You don’t know what a ‘Marriott’ is, but you plan to pass the compliment along to Adrian nonetheless.

As the humans gather in Grace’s classroom, you shift uncomfortably. Grace’s writing surface is still there, as is the camera that translated it into a textured surface. You numbly turn the camera on, and then you can hear the markings that Grace had left behind, unerased, after that last class session.

You half-listen as the pebbles ask questions about Earth animals. One of the humans, failing to describe what a bird is in a way that satisfies their audience, picks up one of the writing sticks and unthinkingly erases the board with their sleeve.

You flinch. You can’t help it, nor the surge of anger that you feel. The human didn’t do anything wrong, hadn’t known the significance of what they’d casually wiped away. But you can’t help what you feel.

To ‘cool your head,’ as he would have said, you sneak away from the delegation. Not far - you can still hear them and intervene if you need to - just a little way down the beach, where you drop onto the rough sand and listen to the waves. 

You try not to think of all the times you’d sat, just like this, with Grace at your side. Nor about how you never will again.

Wallowing in your grief is not a luxury you can indulge in just now. You pick yourself up, shake the wet sand off your exosuit, and return to the classroom. You catch Captain Abigail looking at you in the way humans seem to when they don’t want to be noticed doing that, then you both turn your attention back to the human who seems to have finally convinced the pebbles that a bird is not some kind of spacecraft, but a real living animal. You do understand their skepticism - Erid’s thick atmosphere and gravity haven’t allowed for the evolution of flying creatures. They have no context for this. It had confused you too at first, even with all the videos Grace had been able to pull up on the screen of his thinking machine. The fact that Grace himself hadn’t really understood the physics of it hadn’t helped either. 

There is yet another follow up question about birds, so you intervene, trilling for attention.

“The humans have to go soon,” you remind the pebbles. “Do you want to spend all your time asking them about Earth fauna?”

“Yes!” One of them pipes an indignant response, but several others speak over them about the other topics they still want to learn about before the humans leave.

The rest of the interview goes well enough, and you don’t have to redirect anyone again until the appointed time at which the pebbles are shepherded away from the classroom and back to their parents. 

The humans have a break period to rest and eat at their hotel before a meeting with a local government thrum later in this cycle.

You can’t sigh like a human, but you do the Eridian equivalent, making a noise too low-pitched for human ears to hear. You hadn’t really known how much of being a diplomat (even a ceremonial one) is really just ferrying humans from one appointment to another, making sure they’re comfortable, et cetera. 

It won’t always be like this - just for the first part of the visit to make sure it goes smoothly, since you are (apparently) Erid’s leading expert on human behavior.

You sit on the beach outside of the humans’ hotel again. After a moment, Captain Abigail joins you.

“May I?” she asks, gesturing at the spot next to you.

You scoot over slightly - there’s plenty of room, but you know this is human body language to indicate an invitation. Even though the company of anyone else (except maybe Adrian) scrapes against you right now, raw. It’s not very Eridian of you to want to be alone like this. Eridians are a social species, even more so than humans. Nevertheless, you want to be alone. No, you want to be with Grace, but that’s impossible.

Oblivious to the turmoil of emotions sloshing around in your carapace, Abigail takes the invitation. She doesn’t sit, but perches delicately on the balls of her feet, arms folded and resting on her knees. It’s not a pose you ever saw Grace in, and doesn’t look comfortable to you, but Abigail seems fine.

“Captain Abigail is comfortable in biodome hotel?” You ask to break the silence, altering your speech to be simpler and follow English grammatical structures, like you’d done in the early days with Grace. You know Abigail has studied your language, but you think it’s still polite, given that the translation software isn’t running right now.

“You can call me Abby, and the hotel’s great. This gravity is really something, though.” She rolls her shoulders, before quickly adding, “Not a complaint, to be clear.”

“Erid gravity hard on squishy human bodies,” you agree.

“How did Dr. Grace handle it for so long?” she asks, a little too quickly, and you get the feeling she’s been looking for a chance to get to talk to you about him.

“He hurt. Could not fix. Eridian doctors give assistive devices, cane, wheelchair, physical therapy. Only do so much.”

“Oh,” she says softly. “Is that. Is that how he died?”

“No. Cancer.” You’d had to come up with the Eridian word for it. It literally means something like ‘hungry growth,’ though there are derogatory, obscene connotations to the word ‘hungry’ in your language that don’t come across in English.

As such, you shouldn’t be surprised when the human tilts her head. “I don’t think I know that word, sorry.”

Ah. Of course. You explain as briefly as you can, and Abby nods, understanding. “Right. That must have been hard to see.”

“Very hard. Bad, bad, bad.” Understatement.

Abby looks out across the waves. “He’s the reason I’m here today, you know.” You tilt towards her, suddenly ravenously curious. She continues, “I didn’t have much interest in science before getting put in his class. He made it so… real and interesting.” A breath. “And then one day, my favorite teacher disappeared, and we had sub after sub, then finally a permanent replacement. No one really knew what had happened to him, until I was watching the news with my parents one night and he was there, first officer of Project Hail Mary, after that went public. It was… surreal.”

“And this made you want to become astronaut, question?” 

She looks down and you can hear a smile on her face. “Yeah. Well, not at first. I got my PhD in plant science; I had wanted to make crops that could resist colder temperatures. But then the Beetles returned, they broadcast some of his messages, and seeing you… Honestly, that was what really made me want to go to space. I applied to NASA the next day. So did thousands of other people. You should have seen Earth in the days after we learned that there is intelligent life out there, that you worked together to save both our planets, and that you wanted to be friends.”

Oh. You fiddle with the sand. Grace had always been uncomfortable with the hero treatment, and you’re even more so. So you dodge that subject and simply say, “Was same on Erid. Much excitement to talk to Earth. Grace could hardly catch break at first, so many Eridians wanted to talk.”

You hear her look over her shoulder, up the hill to where Grace’s house sits, silent and empty. When you’d first brought the humans to the biodome, you’d told them that it was safe for them to walk around, but politely and firmly asked that they not enter that building. 

No one had, not since they’d taken Grace’s body away. Not even you. The house is just as he’d left it.

“You must miss him,” she says at last.

That’s putting it too lightly. It’s like half of your world is just gone. Like trying to listen out to the void of space, where no sound can travel. It feels wrong.

“Grace was my best friend,” is all you can say, and is almost as great of an understatement.

It’s remarkable; for how different you are, humans die a lot like Eridians. With Eridians, their sleep cycles get longer and more frequent. A living Eridian is never silent, there’s always the comforting hum of their radiator, not unlike a human heartbeat. One day, they finally go to sleep, and that hum falls silent. It is custom to keep watch for a time after that, to gather family and friends around and keep them safe on their final journey.

When you’d explained this to Grace once, long ago, he’d given you the word ‘vigil.’ That’s what you kept for Grace, in those last days. His condition had deteriorated so quickly. He could no longer get out of bed. The Hail Mary’s medical system had been installed in Grace’s house, and it administered pain medicine that helped to keep him comfortable, but the tradeoff was that he was rarely awake, and even when he was, talking tired him. He had stopped eating entirely.

All you could do had been to stay by him, putting off your own sleep cycles to watch him, listen for the sound of his heart, which was growing weaker, and the rattle of his breath.

You’d read that that sound meant death was very close.

He’d rallied briefly before the end.

“Rocky…”

“Yes, Grace, I am here.”

“I know, bud. Thank you.” His hand, so worn and fragile now, comes to rest on top of your suit. You hated that wall that has always had to be between you, even now. “I don’t think I’m gonna make it to see the Earth delegation.”

You’d wanted to deny it, to insist that he’d get better and get to show them around himself. But you knew it wasn’t true.

“I will take care of them. Not Grace, but next best thing, yes?”

A faint smile. “The very best there’s ever been, Rock. I love you. Thank you. For everything.”

“I love you too, friend Grace.”

He’d fallen asleep again soon after that, his breath coming shallower and shallower as his the sound of his heart receded deeper and deeper.

You didn’t want him to go.

But when he finally did, it was almost a relief.

You didn’t have to hold yourself together for his sake anymore.

The human delegation has been on Erid for just over two Earth weeks when you receive a message from Abby. It’s physical, English letters embossed on a thin sheet of metal so that you can read it.

You haven’t seen her in a few cycles; for all that you are (allegedly) Erid’s Human Expert, you’re not really involved in policy or government, so you’re off the hook, as Grace would have said, while the Earth delegation meets to discuss formalizing their alliance with their Eridian counterparts. It’s very complicated, because Erid, like Earth, is made of many different cultural groups and political entities with different beliefs and practices, and all that nonsense is exactly why you’re an engineer. Anyway, you still have a few ceremonial duties, but you’re largely left to your own devices now.

Not long ago you’d craved the time to yourself to grieve, but now that you have it, you’re desperately lonely, even with Adrian giving you their quiet, steadfast support. 

The message is an invitation, it seems. With the help of some of their Eridian attendants, the Earth group has planned a celebration of the life of Dr. Ryland Grace, to take place in the biodome in a couple of cycles. 

Your first reaction is anger. Why hadn’t they asked you?

But then you remember a conversation you’d had with Grace a long time ago; how he’d had to plan his mother’s funeral and deal with her affairs while he was in the middle of writing his PhD thesis, and how hard it was to have to do all those things while also grieving someone he’d loved.

The charitable way to think of this is that the humans had wanted to spare you that. From that perspective, it’s a very kind gesture. 

But you still don’t really like it. Grace may have been human, like them, but he wasn’t theirs the way he had been yours. A part of you had never really forgiven Earth for what they’d done, forcing him to go on the Hail Mary. He hadn’t either, for all that he’d said over and over again that it had worked out for the best. 

When Adrian gets home from overseeing the progress of a construction project they’re managing, you show them the invitation. 

“What a nice human custom,” they comment. “We will go, of course?”

“Of course,” you echo, with less certainty. The funerary customs you grew up with don’t have anything like this. Why celebrate? It’s not like Grace is there to join in. But you don’t have any better ideas. Somehow, you and Grace had never talked about this when you’d still had the chance. You think he didn’t particularly care what happened after he died. He’d wanted to donate his body to Eridian science, and that had been hard enough for you to accept. You’d acquiesced in the end, of course. It was his decision, not yours.

You still don’t like to think about it, though. After that, you didn’t talk about it any more.

When the time comes, you’re not sure what to expect. You’d deliberately put it off, feeling hollow and uncertain, so you’re running a few minutes late. Adrian is a comforting presence beside you as you don your exosuits and go through the airlock into the biodome.

It’s more full of life than you’ve ever seen it, and that gives you pause. You recognize the shapes of the five humans, their Eridian attendants, and dozens more. Mates and family of your crew who had died on the way to Tau Ceti. Scientists that had worked with Grace while he’d lived here. Pebbles that he’d taught. And more. Everyone he’d touched in his too-short life.

You’d still rather have him back.

But barring that, this is… not as weird as you’d expected it to be.

Recognizing you, Abby picks her way through the crowd.

Adrian introduces themself to her, and Abby delightedly compliments them on the design of the hotel and the biodome, which makes Adrian preen. They’ve always been much better at taking compliments than you.

Then Abby turns to you. “Thank you for coming. This wouldn’t feel right without his best friend.”

“Many people are here to remember Grace,” you say. It’s both a simple observation and a compliment. Grace had confided in you once how lonely and isolated he’d been on Earth. You’d had trouble believing it. He was so easy to love. Before your silence has a chance to become uncomfortable, you continue. “What kind of things do humans do at a ‘celebration of life?’ We do not have such a thing, at least not where I am from.”

Abby hums, which you recognize as a human thinking noise. “We share our memories of the deceased. Sometimes there’s singing, food, and candles. But we were advised that you aren’t comfortable with open flames, so not this time.”

“Thank,” you say with more than a hint of chagrin. That likely would have caused the exact diplomatic incident you’d been consulted to avoid. Memories, though… you made plenty of those to share.

So you do. Abby tells you about the games that Grace had played with his students. You tell her about the similar things he’d done to engage his Eridian students. And you tell her about his garden, and then the whole process of getting the water temperature right in the biodome - Adrian chimes in on that one. You’re halfway through telling the story of the first time Grace had gone swimming once they’d finally gotten it dialed in, scaring you half out of your carapace, when you realize that you’ve gained an audience. And that, for a few moments, you’ve forgotten to be sad.

Oh. That’s what this is about. You get it, now.

Humans can be pretty smart sometimes.

Others speak, telling their own stories. Some of them you’ve never heard before, and not just coming from the humans. The human linguist tells them about dressing up as Dr. Grace from TV for a human celebration called “Halloween” when they were very young, little yellow raincoat, big glasses, knitted hat and all. Elsa talks about visiting Grace over the past year or so, planning for this visit, and how happy Grace would have been to see them come together like this. 

You wish it had been under different circumstances, but they’re right. This is what Grace would have wanted.

It’s Adrian who begins the chorus, playing the carved ridges on their arm in farewell. Others quickly join in. The last time you’d heard something like this had been a lifetime ago, when you’d boarded your ship on the way to Tau Ceti. The last time you’d done it yourself had also been to Grace, in the moments before he had detached the tunnel to the Hail Mary, and you’d thought you’d never see him again. How differently things had played out, in the end. This is not a conventional funeral practice, but it feels right to add your goodbyes to theirs, to play him off, as Grace would have said.

You can so perfectly imagine the look that Grace would have given you if he’d been here, his eyebrows raised, his mouth quirked into a rueful grin. The embarrassed shuffle he would do when people praised him. The thick sound of his voice when he was overwhelmed with emotion. You’ll always remember him.

It will hurt for a long, long time. 

But you’re starting to understand that it won’t only hurt.

You’ll never regret having known and loved Ryland Grace.