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I’m turning in for the night, tossing my hacky sack at the xenonite basketball hoop newly affixed to the opposite wall of the dorm, when the topic first comes up.
“You think they’re going to figure out meat before they get to a multivitamin?”
“Oh, meat easy,” says Rocky in his ball, fiddling with the little xenonite-mesh net he plans to affix to the basketball hoop in question. He’s positioned the pass-through panel right next to where the hacky sack tends to land so he can flick it back in my direction and I can grab it just by dangling my arm off the bunk. I’ve started losing weight and I’m tired all the time, sue me for lazing around.
“Already have technology for grow meat. Problem is heavy metals and Grace atmosphere temperature. Probably they have to hybridise. Grace cells plus something else. More nutritious.”
The hacky sack misses the hoop entirely as I choke on my own spit. (There’s a lot of it lately - being effing hungry all the time increases salivary gland production, apparently. I’ve started cutting the coma slurry with taumoeba. It’s not great, especially taste-wise, but I’m trucking along alright so far.)
“Grace cells?”
“Yes Grace cells, how else you think we do it? Rocky not biologist, maybe they figure something else out, but for sure want to start with Grace cells. Otherwise we probably have to catch 🎵🎶birds from upper atmosphere or something. Very annoying.”
I’m still working on getting my mouth back to normal.
“Rocky, I can’t eat my own flesh. Well, I guess I technically can, but - ”
Rocky cuts me off with an indignant squawk.
“Rocky watch Grace chew keratin deposits on digits every day of Rocky life past two years. Grace chew on inside of cheek, lips peel and Grace chew off skin - VERY disgust - and. AND! All times Rocky watch Grace lick own 🎵🎶off - ”
The hacky sack hits the ball square in Rocky’s “face” and he skitters back in surprise. Then he rolls the ball right up to me until it hits the side of the bed with a clunk.
“Grace can eat own cells. Many kinds. Also, now Rocky know how Joan of Arc felt. Statement.” Damn you, Eridian eidetic crystal brain and also our month-long Morrissey karaoke phase.
“Technically Grace can eat own cells,” I say, flopping over so that my head is at his level and my forehead thunks gently against a xenonite facet.
“But humans think eating other humans is gross. Like, the grossest thing you can do. A solid forty percent of horror movies on Earth are about people eating each other.”
“Yes. Rocky knows. Rocky Grace watch Train to Busan, Grace cry fifty-six minutes after. Remember?”
I am never going to forget Train to Busan, but I don’t let him change the subject. “No. Seriously. It’s pretty much the ultimate no-no, regardless of culture. Like, how would you react if I told you you had to eat an Eridian?”
Rocky gives his “Grace-is-being-exasperating” whistle.
“Not so strange,” he says mildly. “Back in not-so-distant past Eridian eat other Eridian all the time. Top of food chain. After natural disaster, war, not so much else to eat. Ecosystem delicate, especially if carnivore, especially if big. 🎵🎶 good thing to have to fall back on.”
What.
“Cannibalism,” I manage to get out, mouth gone suddenly dry. Salivary gland overproduction a thing of the past, for now.
“New word. Cannibalism.”
Over the next half hour we manage to hash out the remainder of the cultural differences, though I don’t think Rocky really picks up on the severity of the human taboo. Mainly he just makes jokes about humans going so hard on social eating that they had to unlock a second, secret kind of eating that was bad, actually. We cover prion diseases (and that I don’t have one, thank you very much) and that Uruguayan soccer team that crashed in the Andes, and the further implications of that one Ke$ha song, and while we listen to her dulcet tones filtering through the relocated karaoke machine Rocky informs me that one dead Eridian, when cracked open like a king crab at a seafood boil, is generally nutritionally complete enough to keep one living Eridian going for a good Earth month or so, presuming the dead Eridian in question was reasonably healthy and the living one was eating regular meals of the usual size. If you’re an Eridian willing to put yourself on something closer to starvation rations, though, like I’m doing with the taumoeba, an Eridian your same size can keep you alive for closer to three or four.
While human famines usually result in, I don’t know, people boiling tree bark or shoe leather before going for Grandma, Eridians are carnivores without that same luxury. Until they’d figured out industrial farming, it was, apparently, not uncommon throughout the long stretch of the planet’s history.
“Was even part of fringe contingency plans for initial Tau Ceti mission,” he tells me matter-of-factly, like he can’t hear my too-empty stomach roiling with tamped-down disgust. It’s payback, probably, for all the eating stuff I’ve put him through. Most of his repulsion is for show now, of course - not like I haven’t rummaged around in his orifice extensively by now.
“Last last resort though. In case of catastrophic failure. Everyone on mission too crucial.” His carapace dips, a little, as he remembers. Then he perks up. “Also very popular trope in Eridian youth fiction. Melodramatic. Soapy. Ohhhh, my love, you watch me sleep until I die and then you eat me and I live on forever within the shelter of your carapace, worker cells use me to reconstruct you, et cetera.” His tones go almost nasal when he’s being mocking in a way that’s weirdly human-y.
“So the people you trust to watch you sleep are the people you trust not to eat you while you’re still alive?”
Rocky hums in a so-so way. “More like people who you would trust to eat you. If was needed.”
My head spins. This is insane. “So when you invited me to watch you sleep in the tunnel that first night. The implication there was that it would be cool if I ate you?” Maybe Rocky and I are a little codependent. Two years stuck together in a couple of reinforced Pringles tubes’ll do that to you. But surely defaulting to prosocial anthropophagy (xenopophagy?) on Day Freaking One was a bit much.
Rocky stamps his little foot in exasperation.
“No. Obviously not. Grace is being weird about this.”
“But you just said- ”
“Rocky tell you semi-obscure historical fact Eridians learn to gross out littermates in adolescence. Nobody on Erid eating anyone day-to-day. Unless famine from astrophage get way worse very quickly. But Grace-Rocky already fix this, so no problemo.”
He likes ‘no problemo.’ Not sure where he got it from. “Also, Grace mouth mineral deposits too brittle to break carapace. And already knew Eridian atmosphere would cook gooey alien flesh. So Grace eating Rocky was not on Rocky mind, no.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling crestfallen and weirdly offended for some reason. Because my alien bestie-with-benefits rightfully assumed I couldn’t eat him.
“But would let Grace eat Rocky now, of course,” Rocky adds thoughtfully.
I nearly inhale my own tongue, spluttering over the xenonite ball where my head is still pressed up against it, and Rocky gives an overexaggerated disharmonious trill at my impoliteness.
“Ugh, Rocky offer tender innards for Grace masticate very horrible and this is how Grace repay - Rocky rethink offer, maybe have to lean out of space elevator and grab weird 🎵🎶bird instead - ”
“As if you would let me eat you - ”
“No, seriously, Rocky test. Took internal sample with - ” Here he says a word that I can’t quite pick up, but sounds uncomfortably close to one I’ve previously translated as ‘hole-punch’.
“Borrowed lab equipment. Tested for heavy metals not safe for human consumption. Used YouTube tutorials. Still too much, even if using selenium on Rocky side of Mary for chelation.” He vents a huff of steam in frustration that fogs up the ball a little. “Long shot anyway.”
I’m nearly speechless. Nearly. “Rocky. What the h- you know that’s not a solution to anything, right? Like, even if I did agree to – to eat you, which I wouldn’t, first and foremost, you’ve got like, what, fifteen pounds of organic material in there? That’s not exactly getting me clean through to Erid.”
“Not about mass,” Rocky says almost sulkily. “About nutrition. Stretch taumoeba like with coma slurry. And wouldn’t have to be all of Rocky organic material. Could get by with two legs, adaptive devices, prosthetics. Grace could have other three.”
Silence in the dorm except for the ever-present low hum of the engines through the walls.
Rocky suddenly adopts the overtone that means he’s joking and says “KIDDING!”, which contextually is about as jarring as someone putting on a clown nose at a funeral. Also, crucially, he’s lying.
I twist so I can grab the edge of the quilt and throw it over us both. It settles over me and the ball, a safe, dark little cubby. We do this sometimes. It doesn’t make any difference to Rocky, sensorily at least, but I like it. If I close my eyes and curl around the ball or the bed nook, all I can feel is the furnace of his body heat so carefully extruded by the xenonite panels and the juddery vibrations of his body when he shifts or moves or taps the divider. It makes me feel like I can see him the way Eridians see, in my own inadequate human way. Like I can touch him.
I wedge my newly bony shoulder into a more comfortable position against the curvature of the ball, and say “You’ve really thought about this, huh, buddy?”
Rocky’s vents flare wide open and he bursts into tears.
Or, well, he doesn’t, because he’s a rock alien and a near-perfectly closed system whose fluids are all mercury-based, but he does the closest thing to it. Sure feels like holding someone who’s just burst into tears.
“Grace can’t s-starve,” he manages to get out between the involuntary shivery whistles that it took me an agonisingly long time to realise are his equivalent of gasping sobs.
“Only just got you again. Has to be a way to f-fix - ”
My own eyes are burning hot and red as I try my absolute best to somehow mash my face further into the ball.
“Rocky. Buddy. Buddy. I’m not going to starve. You told me yourself, you’ve got the weird vat-grown meat technology and a planet full of chemists to synthesise micronutrients and those weird - upper atmosphere space-bird things - ”
“Not on ship, Grace doesn’t have any of that on the ship, still sixteen months to go, Grace already lose mass, Grace already - ”
I poke my fingers into the pass-through panel. I don’t do this very often, because it feels slightly like sticking your hand into a pizza oven. But right now screw it, because I need to feel Rocky and he needs to feel me. I feel three little claws wrap tightly around my fingers, gritty and hard and unyielding and so, so gentle. My eyes are leaking onto his ball, which I’m sure he’ll want to performatively complain about later.
“I’m not going to starve,” I start, and before he can retort I finish the sentence.
“And even if I do, you have my full permission to eat me. Like in the shitty Eridian teen flicks. So I can be with you and in you when you save Erid and while you do all of the incredible things you’re going to do even after that.”
This is sounding a little too sincere and fatalistic, so I add:
“And so you can be lauded forever as the biggest freak in all of recorded history for being the first to eat a sentient alien. And that’s even without them knowing about the sex stuff you were also the first at.”
It’s not the greatest speech in the world, but Rocky valiantly gives me a little honk of laughter anyway. His claws tighten around my fingers and then release as he gently pushes me back through the panel.
“Grace try and cook hand, too preemptive, Rocky not eat yet,” he says, still warbly and teary but rallying, and my heart throbs in time with my slightly-burnt fingers. I automatically tuck them into my mouth, and Rocky habitually says “Disgust,” without any bite behind it. I wipe my fingers off on my shirt and then tuck my hands between my chest and his ball. My preferred sleeping position these days.
“Watch me sleep. I’ll see you in the morning. And that selenium chelation idea was a good one, maybe we can poke around with the taumoeba a little more, see if we can get them to eat certain heavy metals as well as astrophage. Worth a shot.”
We both know it’ll probably come to nothing, like most of our experiments. What we’ve got is what we’ve got, at least for the next sixteen months. But we both need something to look forward to when I wake up. And, clearly, Rocky needs to know that I will wake up. He’s not going to get to make a meal out of me just yet.
I close my eyes. There’s a single, gentle claw tracing sideways over the fat pad in my palm where it’s wedged up against the pass-through panel. Too light to burn. Just warm, and sweet, and not-quite-satisfying. Enough for now.