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“Why isn’t Grace sleeping?” Rocky asks. The voice facsimile that the thinking-machine translator uses spits out something more akin to “Why Grace no sleep, question,” but it’s close enough. It took a long time just to get it this accurate, and Grace is picking up more and more Eridian by the human day. Soon, Rocky will be able to communicate with it in full, normal sentences, instead of this pared-down hatchling-speak they have to use to make the translator understand. Grace can’t rely on the translator forever, Rocky likes to remind it, especially when the Hail Mary makes it to Erid in 2.3 Earth years and it meets many new Eridians who do not know to use the Eridian-English pidgin they have so painstakingly cobbled together. A dialect unique to the two of them. Three, if you count the thinking-machine (“laptop”), which Rocky emphatically does not. “Are you okay, question?”
Grace sighs and rolls around on its soft sleeping-surface (“bed”), just like it’s been doing for the last 45 minutes (always Earth units), staring at the ceiling and clenching its jaw-muscles. The structure creaks minutely and the blankets slither against each other. It’s beginning to get on Rocky’s nerves.
“I’m just having some trouble sleeping, bud,” Grace says, rubbing at its face. “I’m fine.” This is the tone that it uses when it is definitely not fine. Rocky has yet to figure out if this is some kind of Earth social custom, to tell obvious lies about one’s status until prodded into admitting the truth, or if Grace is simply determined to suffer for some unknowable reason.
“Grace’s breathing has been growing faster for the last 10 minutes. Heart rate increased. Breathing erratic. Still awake, despite not having slept in over 15 hours. Rocky would appreciate it if Grace did not waste time by lying.”
“I’m not lying, I am fine,” Grace lies. “I’m just. A little nervous about what happened today, alright? I keep worrying about it.”
“Grace doesn’t have to worry. It could have been much worse. Very scary, but we’re both okay. I won’t be using that xenonite formula for the seams again. It was en experiment that went badly, I’m sorry sorry sorry.” (“Bad experiment, apology apology apology.”)
Grace grinds its horrible mouth-bones (“teeth”) against each other – Rocky warbles with displeasure at the wet squeaking noise – and sits all the way up. “No, I know that. We were lucky it was just a slow leak we and not a massive depressurization, and I told you I’m not mad, buddy. You were in just as much danger as I was, and you’ve apologized, like, a million times already. That’s hyperbole, by the way, don’t interrupt me.” Rocky sinks back down, chastised.
“Logically, I know we’re safe now,” Grace continues. “I just. When the leak happened, I got kind of a faceful of your atmosphere, and it made me cough like crazy, for, like, hours, which makes sense, because, duh, superheated corrosive gas, not great for delicate human lungs, and I’m feeling fine now but earlier I looked up what kinds of side effects that kind of thing can have and I think I convinced myself that I had [pulmonary edema], which I clearly don’t because if I did, I probably wouldn’t even be conscious to have this conversation by now but every time I try to sleep a whole bunch of scary words like [pleural effusion] and [hypoxemia] and [respiratory] failure keep going through my head and –”
Rocky cuts off the rising tirade with a sharp, loud noise. “Deep breaths, command. Tell me again, slowly. Explain the new words.”
Grace stops, and does as it’s asked, abdomen expanding and contracting noisily. “Pulmonary edema. It’s when fluid builds up around the lungs, caused by a direct injury or sometimes a malfunction in the heart. It can be very dangerous because it inhibits the gas exchange – not enough oxygen getting into the blood or carbon monoxide getting out.” Despite the morbid subject, explaining a scientific topic audibly calms Grace down. Still, Rocky can’t help but recoil in fear.
“Grace has this? Can Armando treat it?” Humans are reliant on the oxygen-carbon gas exchange to live. There are so many things that can go wrong with humans, and so quickly. It’s terrifying.
“No, I don’t think I have it. I was only exposed for a few seconds before the air filtration kicked on, and there’s a lot of pretty serious symptoms that I’m not showing any of. It’s not… not really rational to be worried about it anymore. I’m just having some – medical anxiety, I guess. My brain is stuck on it and can’t move on.”
“The human brain is very irrational,” Rocky says, and doesn’t think about the soft splat of mercury sloshing from their navigator’s mouth the day they had collapsed. Rocky understands now that the navigator, who spent the most time at the helm of the ship and furthest from the astrophage engines, must have received the highest dose of radiation, and this is why they had sickened first. “Rocky will look.”
“At my lungs?”
“Yes. Rocky can hear your organs, remember? Will listen close for fluids, abnormalities. Will help Grace health related anxiety, make you sleep finally.”
“Huh. Like a living [ultrasound]. It’s, uh, a machine human doctors use to look at people’s insides. It essentially uses sound to produce an image we can see.” Grace is using its “teacher-voice” again. It is a voice Rocky enjoys very much.
“Medicine seems much harder when you cannot sense what you are treating.”
“You have no idea, bud.”
So Grace ends up curled up in the bed, its back pressed to the xenon as Rocky presses close the other side of the barrier, tapping to get a better picture. It’s kind of disturbing, hearing everything so up close. Between their own senses, impromptu biology lessons to pass the time, and the wonders of Wikipedia, Rocky is aware of the general outlines of most of it, but theory can’t always prepare one for cold, hard reality. Or, cold, squishy, squirmy reality. They try not to listen too hard to Grace’s organs in general, ostensibly for Grace’s “privacy” but mostly for their own mental health. They still know the shape of them, though, and the way they never stay still, even in sleep.
Everything inside is slick, coated in layers of fat and mucus and tiny muscles. A cage of curved, spindly bones (“ribs”) protect some of its most vital organs, but not all, and even those are hidden underneath layers of fat and muscle and skin. The air sacs (“lungs”) inflate and deflate, bringing oxygen in and carbon dioxide out. The heart (just one) (so large) pulses in a constant rhythm, pushing circulatory fluid (“blood”, colored “red”, from being rich in iron. Rocky cannot sense “red.”) around and around and around. It’s loud enough that Rocky can hear it with meters of air between them. Up close, it’s nearly loud enough to drown out the digestive system, squirming and writhing as smooth muscles crush its last meal, neutralize digestive acids and wring out nutrients until only waste remains to be disposed of. This process is so fast that Grace is hungry in a mere 21,600 seconds when it’s eaten a full meal, even less if the meal was insufficient. Most of its meals lately are insufficient.
How fragile this creature is, Rocky realizes. Its endoskeleton is so flimsy, and so far beneath the soft skin it should really be protecting. How easily injured. How malleable. How easily Rocky would be able to crush the tiny blood vessels (“capillaries”) near the surface, leaving marks that remain tender and sore and turn many colors (“bruises”). Rocky listens to the subtle tension in the scar tissue on Grace’s arm, painful and permanent. The way Adrian’s name is etched into Rocky’s surface. Humans etch things into their outer skin, sometimes, for decoration or religious reasons. They carve methodical injuries that heal into raised scars, or use tiny needles to embed colored pigments just below the surface, where it remains visible to other humans forever (“tattoos”). It is very painful because their skin is so delicate, and runs the risk of infectious diseases while it heals. Rocky wonders if Grace has any tattoos. Rocky thinks about being embedded underneath Grace’s skin.
“Grace should turn over now. So I can listen to the front.” (Grace roll over now, command. So Rocky look at front.) Rocky cannot hear any more fluids than the typical slime in the space around the lungs, or the telltale “crackling” noise Grace had described. Its breathing is smooth and even, relaxing further as the examination continues.
“Can you not hear everything from back there?”
“Better picture. Roll over, command.”
They both know there’s nothing Rocky needs from the front. Pulmonary edema could have been easily found from the back, and wouldn’t be subtle to their senses. Grace rolls over anyway, pressing its entire chest to the glass.
From this angle, the heartbeat is louder, almost deafening. It takes Rocky some time to figure out it’s not just the proximity, that Grace’s heart is beating harder and faster than it was just a few minutes ago. This is normal, Rocky knows. Grace’s heat rate changes frequently throughout the day: it speeds up when Grace is excited, or exerting itself physically, or angry, or scared; it slows down when Grace is happy, or calm, or sleeping, or following along with the “deep breathing” exercises that the Hail Mary’s onboard mental health protocols prompts it to do sometimes. Why does it speed up now? Rocky wonders.
They consider asking, but feel a sudden and irrational hatred for the automated voice of the translator. It would be – intrusive, somehow, on this delicate moment. They have a sudden and desperate longing for Grace to be able to understand their voice as it is. It cannot make out the nuance in their complex chords, cannot even perceive frequencies outside of a certain narrow range. Rocky tires of this flattened, simplistic speech they have adopted. They wish, not for the first time, that they were better with words, and spoken language, and could convey this strange emotion that is making their carapace itch, like it’s too small. But even if Rocky were an Eridian Poet Laureate, Grace would not be able to understand. So they stay quiet.
From this close, Rocky can hear the capillaries at the surface of Grace’s skin expanding, to vent excess heat. This causes a change in color called [being flushed], or [blushing] when it happens on the face in response to emotions like embarrassment or arousal. The portable thinking-machine is full of many facts like this, that Rocky peruses for the ever-increasing hours Grace is asleep. Much of this knowledge is functionally useless, Rocky knows, without the ability to apply it in practice. Even if they were a healer, they cannot touch without pain, injury, and risk of death to both of them.
(There had been three full-time healers onboard the ship, and ten more crew with at least basic first-aid training. Rocky had not been one of either group. It wasn’t your fault, Grace had said. There was nothing you could have done. All Rocky could do was watch.
If something happens to Grace, if it contracts an illness the medical robot cannot treat or the lack of food causes its body to eat itself alive – something that can’t be fixed with a single, death-defying stunt – all Rocky will be able to do is watch.)
Rocky thinks about punching into Grace’s freezing, flammable atmosphere, about feeling their vents ignite, about feeling in real time as chunks of their carapace sloughed to the floor, about the sound of Grace’s delicate skin searing under their touch, its arm-bones so fragile Rocky had to work not to crush them. They listen to Grace’s relaxed, trusting face, and realize they would go through that hell a thousand times over to spare this soft, short-lived creature even an ounce of pain. The thought scares them.
This is not how they feel about Adrian, whom they love with all five of their hearts, whose knife-sharp brilliance and quiet, serene beauty entranced them from the moment they met, whom Rocky has spent hundreds upon thousands of fervent nights hoping against all hope will be able to look past all the damage done by their journey. Loving Adrian is easy, constant, as natural as singing in a thrum and as undeniable as the laws of physics. Gravity pulls objects towards each other, and Rocky will always be pulled toward Adrian, happy to be caught in their orbit.
The way Rocky feels about Grace is altogether different, something volatile and fierce, a bond forged and hardened by trials and triumph and the joys of mutual discovery, by living in each others’ pockets aboard this tiny, flimsy ship, by having saved each other over and over again. It is something Rocky knows can never be replicated or replaced. They would volunteer to be sent on a dangerous, untested mission and go further than any Eridian had ever gone to protect Adrian, but they don’t know what they would do to protect Grace. Too much. Rocky is scared, and thinks others would be as well, if they knew.
Small and blunt and crass, Rocky knows they have never been particularly easy to love. They wouldn’t blame Adrian for not wanting them back after fifty years of absence, especially returning like… this. They know the extended isolation has affected them more deeply than they like to acknowledge. It has made them anxious and clinging and terrified of silence. Sometimes they are too scared to sleep, even with Grace to watch, convinced to their very core that they simply won’t wake up. They lie awake, knowing Grace cannot hear the difference, listening to the Hail Mary’s systems until they can no longer stand the stillness, and then are inefficient and irritable and jump at imagined whispers until their next sleep cycle hits hard and fast and they simply collapse at their work bench.
And on top of everything Rocky now comes packaged with a fragile, unsettling alien that will either die instantly on the planet’s surface or die slowly in orbit without Erid making centuries’ worth of advancements in biotechnology and medical science in a matter of months. Because Rocky cannot, will not leave Grace behind. Even the idea makes their insides twist up in revulsion. A good friend wouldn’t just abandon another on an alien planet. At least until Grace is settled and healthy again, they reassure themselves. Then Rocky can see if Adrian still wants them.
Rocky will not abandon Grace, but they know a codependent friendship (and the term ‘friendship’ seems pale and anemic in the face of what they have) with a frightening alien would be a strain on any relationship, even without the half-century of absence, likely presumed death, and return with too many physical and mental scars to count. Rocky at least hopes that Adrian will allow things to break off cleanly, if they cannot tolerate Grace’s presence. They live in fear at being forced to choose.
Eridians are naturally good at multitasking, but Rocky’s thoughts are so tangled that they don’t realize they’ve stopped tapping and instead are just resting their claw over the loud thudthudthud of Grace’s heartbeat until it starts to stir gently. They hadn’t noticed it dozing off. Even in sleep, its body is so noisy and full of motion. So alive.
“Rock?” it mumbles. Rocky can hear the way the skin over its light-hearing organs (“eyelids”) sticks together and peels apart, gummy with half-dried mucus. The sound is objectively disgusting, and should be offputting, but instead is comforting in its familiarity. It happens when Grace is sleepy, or just waking up, which means Grace is comfortable and safe and present.
“All done,” Rocky chirps, louder than they mean to. “Grace is fine.” (Is done, Grace fine, statement.)
Grace jolts up from its relaxed stupor. “Really? Everything’s normal?”
“Not ‘normal’. Wet, leaky, too soft, bones on the inside instead of the outside, too many holes, too much noise, way too many fluids. But that’s normal for Grace.” As planned, Rocky is rewarded with gentle huff of a laugh and the thin skin around Grace’s eyes crinkling in amusement.
“Sorry, bud. I know I’m gross. Thanks for humoring my illogical meat brain.” Grace wets its mouth-hole (lips) with its tongue and passes air over them, emitting a whistle much higher than its usual register. It’s a poor imitation, slow and halting and lacking the ability to produce true chords, but ultimately recognizable as the Eridian words for “thanks.”
Suddenly, the comfortable, climate controlled atmosphere Rocky spends so much time maintaining feels too hot. Hopeless, delighted affection bubbles up until it feels like they might burst. They have to stamp all five feet to hide the way their vents flutter with it like a juvenile’s.
This is embarrassing. Rocky is grown. Rocky is (was?) a mated adult, and a respected professional.
“That bad, huh?” Grace chuckles in that way Rocky has learned is self-deprecating, and that simply cannot be allowed to stand.
“No, good. Very good good good. You’re still learning. Grace is working at a disadvantage, breathing, eating, talking all through the same hole, and you can only make one note at a time. It’s not your fault your biology is so inefficient. Grace’s song is beautiful and unique, I love love love it.” (Not your fault body is inefficient. Grace song pretty and only, Rocky like like like, statement.)
“You know what, buried somewhere in all those insults was very nearly a sincere compliment.”
“Rocky is always sincere,” Rocky lies, and feels that sparkling swell of fondness again when Grace laughs. It’s so powerful that Rocky is doesn’t even complain when that laugh becomes a yawn (another horrible human thing they have become inured to in a shockingly short amount of time).
“Can I… can I sleep here tonight? You can say no, it must be gross with my squishy body up close ‘nd all but it’s so warm.” Grace’s speech is slowing down, along with its respiration. Its voice, deeper than usual from fatigue, drags like warm claws across Rocky’s carapace.
“Grace is tired. Of course you can sleep here. Sleep now, command.”
“Stay and watch?” Its heartbeat is slowing as well. Rocky can hear its eyelids fighting to stay open. Slowly, and with what seems like huge effort, Grace reaches up and taps the barrier between them. Rocky taps back, and both their hands stay pressed against the xenon like that as Grace finally drops off.
“Always, statement.” Rocky answers, and then adds in a register too low for the translator to pick up, “I will always watch over you.”