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You can't hear the inside of an Eridian. Our hardened outer carapaces are fully opaque. When you hear an Eridian you are hearing their disturbance of the atmosphere, not their interior machinery. That's private.
Humans are what they would call a different story.
Grace is the only example I have, but it assures me that it makes a decent holotype, at least for the 'male'. I'm just not sure that I believe that.
Human culture restricts space travel to only the healthiest examples of their species, it tells me, because expertise can be easily stored on their portable thinking machines. This makes it more practical to bring thinking machines to support brains than medical machines to support bodies. Still, I struggle to conceptualise a species where half of the things Grace does are considered healthy. It spends so much time sleeping! And it is in a constant, inefficient process of eating, and excreting, and the WATER— a majority of its mass is fluid, yet fluid leaks from it constantly. Surely nothing that used water as a primary structural component should expel over a kilogram of it per day?
I watch it, and I see water. Moving water in structures of water. Networks of water-tubes of water-liquid, branching fractionally and connecting and reconnecting.
In a way, the process is beautiful.
In all other ways, it is disgusting.
We are in the lab when it becomes clear to me that Grace will soon get much, much more disgusting.
This has been happening less frequently since we developed a concrete plan for integrating the taumeba into its diet, but not never. I'm much more aware of the intricacies of the process than anyone would ever want to be. On Erid, the entire process of digestion is private, and on Earth, only part of it- but to an Eridian nesting with an Earthling, none of it can be.
There is one long, coiling tube that runs vertically through the central part of Grace's body. Akin to a mouth, but with holes at both ends. It moves constantly, convulsing and shifting, pulsing slowly from the upper end to the lower. The contents churn and foam. This is loud and wet and squishy and I forgive this because I love Grace.
It also serves as a window into Grace's health, which is how I know that something is wrong. The movement has changed. Quickened.
Grace seems not to notice. It's hunched over its work at the biosafety hood, setting up an experiment with changes to the media formation for our newest strain of taumeba. But then its central tube convulses, roaring through all the other layers and networks, and I feel I have to intervene.
"Grace okay, question?"
"What?" It turns its 'face' to me briefly, a wet sound as its eyes flicked in my direction. "Yeah, bud, I'm fine."
"Sound different." The translator is frustrating; I have the words but not the nuance. "Inside, sound different, bad."
Immediately Grace's hand goes to its chest, its heart rate picking up a little.
"No," I huff. "Not this bad. Grace inside food parts bad."
"Really? It doesn't hurt or anything," it says, pressing a hand to its abdomen uncertainly. The tube inside writhes, the off-tempo growling it makes reverberating through the rest of Grace's watery body. "It can't be too bad...?"
I can never tell if Grace is lying to me about its body, or if it simply lacks the sensory equipment to feel all the things the thrashing tubes of wetness inside of it are doing. Either way, I'm very thankful that we're in the part of the Hail Mary with induced gravity.
Rather than try to argue— I know how much Grace hates being reminded that I can observe its interior parts— I decide to prepare.
Even in my new carapace-close suit, it's a difficult hunt. Grace had, some time after it returned to Tau Ceti, found a thing it called a "labelmaker", which imprinted letters of its language in 3-D on to thick, metallic tape. This would have been very useful if Grace put things where the labels suggested they belonged.
I find thin, polymer emesis bags in a bin labeled "s p a r e t o o l s" and a large bucket kicked under one of the fold-down storage bunks by mistake.
The main thing I'm concerned about is the water.
Several pouches, a litre each, fit in the bucket. I'm not sure if that will be enough. I'm not sure if we can spare enough. The last time something like this happened, the amount of water— important water, water that should have been reclaimed, not normal leaking water— that left Grace was enough to make its body stop producing several of the usual fluids. I never thought I could miss the leaking, until it stopped. The sound of Grace's dry-sticky membranes tackily separating still haunts me, and had happened every time it spoke.
Thin plastic sachets of sand-like powdered electrolytes from the food stores. Cleaning supplies. The bucket grows heavier. The entire time, I can hear the centrifuge still spinning.
I make my way back to the lab.
Grace is where I left it, but I can already tell that it's in a worse state. The stringy web of blood vessels that outline it has constricted all over, pushing fluid towards the hollow shapes of its digesting organs. The muscles in its jaw and shoulders have gone tense, and a thin sheen of sweat is beading up on its outer surface.
"Rocky?" Grace had heard me clattering down into the room, still unused to navigating without tunnels. "What have you got—"
And then all of a sudden it's across the room, grabbing and emptying the bucket, the soft flesh of its hands distorting around the rim as it flips it over and heaves. I scramble back as the smooth muscular channel within it contracts like a paint tube crushed in the middle. Grace makes an awful retching noise, and fluid is shot up into the network of of air-gaps in its skull, bursts from its facial orifices. For a moment the epiglottis flutters dangerously, and I feel a jolt of panic that it might inhale at the wrong time and drown.
"Jesus," Grace pants, when it stops for a moment. Every hole in its face is dripping, its eyelashes wet. "I guess my inside food parts are bad."
It's on its knees, leaning over the bucket and shaking slightly, clutching its abdomen. It hiccups. Spits.
Heaves again.
"Grace need help, question?"
It's shrugging its labcoat off, mopping at a sweaty face with the sleeve of the clothes underneath. Inside it, the whole way up and down, fluid roils.
"I, uh, maybe?" With a repulsive cacophony of sloshing and gurgling, Grace rights itself. The structures within it tremble, its heart racing. "Grace need bathroom, mostly. And clean pants."
After that, it sets itself up in the small footprint of the waste-disposal room that opens off the laboratory cloakroom, and the process repeats. I want to help it, but this is different than anything that would happen at home— I can't help, but I also can't stand watching it all happen.
Watching it suffer.
I can hear the muscles tensing. The capillaries bursting in the oozing layered membranes of its eyes. Acid, it has told me that the upper part of that system is filled with acid— spilling up and out and ruinously close to soft vocal folds, to being sucked down by one wrong move into its fragile, sponge-like lungs. It sits on the 'toilet' and slumps sideways against the wall with an emesis bag held to its mouth, caustic fluid gushing out of it at a rate that cannot possibly be safe.
I've never seen it this bad before.
I pace back and forth, piling supplies in front of the door, pretending for Grace that I'm not watching. It often forgets that the ship is constructed as lightly as it is. There are many times it tries to hide and I pretend for its sake that the hiding is working. I don't want to let it hide, now— it is sick, and it will need to sleep, and I will need to watch.
Eventually, the flooding slows. Grace shudders, lungs expanding jerkily. It slowly cleans and dries itself, then rises and stumbles to the sink.
"Grace okay in there, question?"
I can't bring myself to entertain the idea that it isn't.
"Yeah," Grace calls back, rasping. "This— this is a normal way humans get sick, sometimes. I just need clean water until it passes."
There's a wave of relief at that. I did not, at least consciously, allow myself to consider the alternative. I don't think I can consider the alternative.
"Rocky bring lots of water for Grace." I tap on the door with one claw, trying to coax Grace out. "Water and electrolytes."
"Eugh." The little lock clicks open, and the door swings wide. Grace is huddled on the floor now, its long limbs folded to fit the small space. "In a minute, I think. I'm not sure I'd keep it down."
"One minute."
Grace sighs again, its eyes clicking shut.
"It's a figure of speech. I need more time than that."
"Stupid human speech hard to understand! Ten minute."
I don't want to sound angry with it, but I need it to recover. And to recover, it needs to be treated. Grace once told me that the human body needs so much water because the leaking keeps it clean— pouring out of all the weakest places to wash away anything that may hurt it. The "mucosa" it describes as lining so many parts of it are equivalent to the membrane inside an Eridian's body cavity, exposed only when the carapace is broken.
So much of Grace is like one huge, open wound. It navigates the universe, just barely scarred over.
"Ten minutes," It confirms.
After ten minutes, I offer Grace the straw from the first water pouch and it gingerly sips. Waits. Sips again. Then the muscles in its upper body seize once over, and the water comes back up.
"Fudge," it groans, curling over and wrapping its upper limbs around its middle. "This is awful."
We carry on like that for hours.
Every time Grace tries to ingest water, it sets off another round of purging. But our success rate increases, little by little. I try not to watch when we fail, but I feel compelled to— because I remember the heaving shudders of insides slipping out, the flecks of fleshy shed material that should have served as a warning sign.
If I don't watch, I will imagine seeing that again.
After multiple of my days, it tapers off. Grace retains five millilitres of water, then ten, then thirty. The spasming of its ephemeral innards begins to finally, finally stop, the muscles exhausted. Grace crumples on the floor, wedging itself awkwardly in the narrow space between the walls and sucking morosely at the straw of a fresh water pouch. I stay nervously nearby, not wanting to leave it in case it needs me.
"'M gonna be okay, Rocky," it mumbles, its face smushed into the wipe-clean tiling. "Worst of it's over."
It holds out an arm, weakly. Wanting a 'hug'.
I do not want a hug. I hate hugs. I already have to hear every single thing that happens inside Grace's body; I prefer not feeling it as well. But I shuffle closer and press myself against it regardless, the slow shifting of its insides reverberating through my carapace. It wiggles slightly, coaxes two of my limbs across its abdomen. Xenonite has low thermal conductivity, but I can still feel the icy cold of Grace's body leeching the warmth from my atmosphere as it shifts to find an ideal position.
"Different this time, question?" I ask, when we're settled. "New variable?"
Variable, in the sense of an experimental parameter, is perhaps the most useful word Grace has ever translated for me.
"Yeah." Grace's voice is raspy and awful, worn out from all the vomiting. Its hair is plastered to its forehead, sodden with sweat. "Pathogens, I think— from me, from my biosphere. Contaminated my food."
"How to prevent this, question?"
I have been learning Grace's facial expressions. It is hard, because there are so many parts to its face and so many things it can do with all of them besides leak, but I recognise this one.
It looks guilty.
"Grace."
"Well…we're already out of no-rinse. And we'll be out here so long, we have to ration things— I've been prioritising disinfectant for the lab space, and diluting it a lot more for other uses."
Other uses?
Other uses like cleaning itself.
"Bad, bad, bad!" I'm disgusted by the idea. Everything that leaks out of Grace has microbes in it; human bodies don't get hot enough to sterilise anything. "Waste water, not clean as good! Dirty!"
"It's recycled water, it's not potable." Grace huffs, pleadingly. "And we need our lab as clean as possible!"
"Grace stupid," I say, tapping it gently on the head in a mockery of reprimanding. "Rocky atmosphere hot. Sterilise things in the airlock!"
It stiffens minutely at that, and I feel a tiny bit smug at being the one to have the idea. Human science works so differently, and Grace does the kind that works maybe most differently than the Eridian engineering I'm familiar with.
"We could," Grace says, finally sounding a little less miserable. "We could try that."
"Yes," I say, pressing my carapace closer. "And Grace could wash hands."