Chapter Text
The human probe arrived twenty earth years into Grace’s life on Erid, and though they clearly thought Grace was dead, they nevertheless included recorded messages from Grace’s friends in the hope that, however unlikely it might be, Grace might see them.
I shared those with Grace immediately. He was all but bedbound now, his joints paying the toll of Erid’s heavy gravity, and I only mocked him a little for how leaky he became. He asked me to watch them with him, for emotional support. All the humans looked old, older even than Grace. Victims of relativity just as my crew had been, though from time rather than radiation.
I shared other parts of the probe’s contents with Grace, too, over time - updates on Earth, scientific advancements, new songs and TV shows and films. He still had all the content from the Hail Mary, which not even an Eridian’s lifetime would be long enough to get through - but the newness was exciting to him. Not much was exciting for him anymore, now that he could barely leave his little house.
There was only one part that I didn’t share with Grace. I guarded it jealously, and shared only with the thrum dedicated to Grace’s health and maintenance and, of course, Adrian. They were the human experts - the thrum, of course, had been keeping Grace alive for over thirty earth years. Adrian was an expert in RockyandGrace. As self-proclaimed ‘second contact’, the probe announced that a human delegation would be sent to Erid, and contained detailed notes and data of how they would survive in our environment. They knew nothing of what we had made for Grace, of the biodome and the xenonite suits. Instead, they had come up with their own method of adjusting to life on Erid. Of a deep, cultural exchange.
It was ingenious. It was crazy. It was human to the core of it. I was only a little jealous that we hadn’t thought of it first.
**
Grace was having a good day. He was already sitting up in bed when I arrived - in recent days, he had needed help to lever himself upright - and his voice was a lot stronger when he said good morning.
He hugged me three times, talking fast and excited about what he’d learnt from the probe’s messages, about his old friends, his old students. I’d grown used to hugs long ago, and no longer found the gurgling, wet noises of his body unsettling. Adrian had hated hugs at first, and had refused to even touch Grace when wearing the xenonite suit. I understood. There was something so obscenely open and visceral about his churning, sloshing insides. I had long since gone past disgust. The sound, as awful as it was, simply captured Grace’s aliveness in a way that nothing else could, especially now that he moved so little. Each throbbing wet pulse of his heart was a reminder that he was still with me. I dreaded the day that I pressed against his thin skin-carapace and heard nothing at all.
The first year that he lived in his Graceland (the silly name he gave his biodome), when he was well enough to live by himself and I could finally bring myself to leave his side without feeling the stiffening terror that he might die while I was gone, he lived alone. It was better to spend time apart, we said, after four years of intense cohabitation on the Hail Mary. It was better to lessen our intense codependence, said our therapists. And to be honest, there were times when even the smallest wet noise from his mouth sent my carapace crawling. It would do us good to have some time apart, we agreed.
That meant I had to move in with Adrian, which was good, and Adrian’s new mate, which was not so good.
Adrian had thought me long dead. I did not feel anger at them moving on. I was glad that they had found someone to keep them company, to love them, to potentially build a family with. I just wish, I complained to Grace in those early days when we barely saw one another, that Adrian’s mate wasn’t such a boring stick-in-the-mud.
‘Where did you learn that phrase?’ Grace snorted. I hitched up my carapace in a facsimile of a human shrug, which always made Grace laugh. We had watched a lot of human sitcoms towards the end of the journey, when Grace had been… deteriorating. It filled the silence that he left behind. I didn’t like to bring it up, that dark period of time when Grace’s survival had been so unsure. I don’t think Grace liked talking about it either. He was very self-conscious about the teeth he had lost from the illness he called ‘scurvy’, though of course Eridians had no idea how many mouth-bones humans were supposed to have. I told him this.
‘It’s the way my mouth feels,’ he complained, prodding at the holes with the fleshy protruding muscle he called a tongue. ‘It’s just.. It feels wrong.’
There he went again, with those disgusting wet mouth-sounds. Even when humans aren’t eating, they sound like they are.
‘They are nothing like Rocky,’ I grumped. ‘Placid and quiet.’
Grace hummed.
‘Shale is very quiet and polite,’ he said. Shale was Adrian’s mate’s human name - Grace had vetoed my suggestion, which had been Mark. Shale had bowed obsequiously low and hummed endlessly about the honour of being bestowed a human name from Star-Savior-Alien-Grace. Watching it had been almost as disgusting as watching them eat. Grace had told me later that Shale was an earth rock, grey and crumbly, and that made me feel a bit better.
‘Rocky is polite,’ I said, betrayed.
‘Shale works in, from as far as I can tell, your version of human resources-’
‘Boring job,’ I added.
‘-and is, perhaps, the least likely person ever to choose to go on a crazy, brave mission to save the stars,’ Grace finished.
I realised I was tapping my claws together - what Grace always called my ‘thinking hands’ - and clenched them shut. But I understood what Grace was saying.
‘Adrian could never have replaced you,’ Grace said, wrapping his arm around my carapace and leaning against me in one of his standard side-hugs. ‘So they found the opposite of you.’
Even through the xenonite suit, he felt cool and fluid-like. I used to find it vaguely disgusting, the meaty surround-sound of Grace’s blood churning through his veins at ever so slightly irregular intervals. I reveled in it now. I had heard it get so quiet and so sluggish when he had almost starved to death, that the roar of it was glorious.
**
I can’t keep up when Grace and Adrian get lost in their scientific conversations, the closest thing to a thrum that Grace can achieve. I used to mind - I used to be jealous of Grace’s time, even with Adrian, a hangover from our intense cohabitation on the Hail Mary. But I don’t get jealous anymore. If anything, I delight in their friendship. They are so alike. And I can still wow both of them with the simplest of my creations, which never fails to cheer me up.
I’m keeping myself busy, checking the robustness of my warren of tunnels inside Grace’s biodome. Once the first human year had passed, the time boundary set by the therapist to ameliorate our separation anxiety, I built myself into Grace’s small house just as I had done in the Hail Mary, complete with a small inset over his bed so I could perch above him and watch him sleep.
The therapist didn’t approve, but Grace did, and that was all that mattered. The night I watched him sleep in his biodome, for the first time in an earth year, I felt something inside me unblock.
I tried to spend half my time with Adrian and half with Grace, though over the years I’m sure it would have added up to more time with Grace. Adrian, throughout all of it, was so incredibly understanding. Almost too understanding. They understood when I said that I needed to watch Grace sleep, that I needed to be there when he woke up, when he taught his first class, when he attended his first proper thrum as a participant, not just a bystander. Adrian understood when I asked to delay having our first clutch until after Grace had passed. They even understood when I began to spend all my time in Graceland, as Grace grew older and slower and sicker.
Adrian was the most wonderful, most understanding mate anyone could ever ask for. No matter what, they promised me that I would always have their love. And yet, I was still terrified for the day that Grace’s body lay silent, for I would truly feel alone.
It was because of that fear that I kept quiet, even when the scientists ran tests using the human drone's information. The tests needed human blood and DNA to perform, but that was something they had in abundance from growing Grace’s meat. They didn’t even need to ask Grace for it, though they believed they had his permission. I had lied to them, had told them Grace knew what they were doing.
I didn’t feel bad about it at all.
Only once the body had grown, and was viable - only then would I let myself feel hopeful. Only then would I tell Grace what gift the humans had given us, and what I had done with it.
***
After tests were completed, and proved promising, we got working on growing the body straight away. I convinced - or more like threatened - the human-expert thrum to prioritise it, over the other work they’d been putting in to understand humans and their culture from Grace’s thinking machine.
I started getting the painful spark of hope that I might get more of Grace than just the paltry few human decades his lifespan would allow. It hurt to nurse that spark, and I knew it would just be more painful if it never turned into anything real, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d already watched Grace deteriorate before, on our journey to Erid, and now I was watching it happen again, slower now but inexorable, with no chance of improvement.
I got so involved in the project that I spent much more of my time away from Grace, which he noticed, as I’d all but permanently moved into Graceland after Adrian and Shale laid their eggs. I liked their children, and I counted myself as their tertiary caregiver, but the house became very busy and noisy, and I much preferred spending my time with Grace anyway as I knew it was on a countdown.
Grace had asked me only once if I had wanted to lay eggs with Adrian first, after Adrian and Shale had told him the happy news that four of their five eggs had fused and quickened. He had been surprised by the news.
‘I thought, as Adrian’s original mate, you and Adrian would lay eggs first,’ he asked, too perceptive for his own good.
‘It’s not a specific rule,’ I explained, focusing on not anxiously clicking my claws together. ‘I was away for a long time. I don’t feel ready, not yet.’
Any reference to our shared trauma in space generally shut Grace up, and I felt guilty deploying it as an excuse not to talk about eggs. In truth, Adrian had approached me first about it, and Shale had been happy enough to wait their turn. But I had declined the offer.
‘You always wanted children, before,’ Adrian said, gently. ‘What’s changed?’
‘I still do,’ I said, fidgeting with a xenonite sculpture I was making for Grace. It was a flat sheet with raised parts to demonstrate the Eridian alphabet, a cheat sheet for Grace to use to learn written language. He already had one, of course, one that I’d made for him almost as soon as he was well enough to sit up after our arrival on Erid, but that one was old, and the surface had been worn smooth from use. Human skin oils were no joke, as Grace would say. ‘I just - I have too much to think about, at the moment. Children deserve more attention than I can give.’
‘Then - do you want us to wait?’ Adrian asked.
‘We can wait!’ Shale piped up.
Adrian had aged quicker than me, due to relativity - something I still struggled to comprehend, no matter how many times Grace explained it. They were still in their prime, but they were well beyond the age generally seen as the best one for a first egg-laying.
‘No, no - you two go ahead.’
Adrian had approached me later, privately, while Shale had been at work. I had had to scrap and remake the alphabet sheet - I had messed up one of the letters, which rendered it useless. How would Grace practice his Eridian Brialle, as he put it, if the alphabet I gave him was wrong?
‘Are you sure?’ they asked, gently, quietly. ‘I would have thought you’d want to have children while Grace is still with us, so that he can meet them.’
I was sure. I’d thought about that - about bringing my children to visit Grace, at seeing them learn from him, play with him. It would be beautiful, and I knew Grace would love it.
But at my core, I was selfish. Children would vastly reduce the time I had to spend with Grace, and would require love and attention and affection that would take away from Grace. Grace, who had so little time left, compared to Eridian lives. I didn’t want to share Grace - I didn’t want to be distracted from Grace. Adrian seemed to understand without me having to explain. It was one of the many reasons I loved them.
Grace had been disappointed to learn that I wouldn’t be having ‘pebbles’ anytime soon, but as I pointed out, I was still relatively young, and I had important work. And when Adrian and Shale’s children hatched, Grace delighted in seeing them through the xenonite wall. He gave the four of them human names - George, John, Paul, and Ringo - and didn’t let me explain to Adrian where the names came from. But when the children grew tired, and needed to be fed and put to bed, Adrian and Shale took them away, and left me and Grace together, as it should be.
As it should always be, if not for the cruel trick of divergent evolution.
**
The body itself was so very Eridian that it was hard, at first sound, to sense the difference. It had long, slim limbs, like Adrian’s, and a smoother texture than mine. It hung limp in the growth liquid, and sounded dead.
‘Have you told him yet?’ Adrian tapped gently on the side of the vat, for a clearer sound. ‘It’s a good body. Tall and strong.’
They knew I hadn’t. I’d spent more time away from Graceland in the past few months than I had since the year of enforced separation, too scared that Grace might hear the lie in my voice, might see the nerves in my clicking hands, might sense the words I wasn’t saying.
‘Not yet,’ I said, in a low hum.
Adrian trilled softly.
‘It’s ready,’ they said. ‘You need to tell him, before someone else does. It should come from you.’
‘What if…’ it was almost too painful to say out loud, even though it was the very thing I had been mulling over since the moment the scientists discovered the information in the human’s drone.
‘If Grace says no, then he says no, and we save the body for when the other humans arrive,’ Adrian said, patiently.
When the other humans arrived. When Grace would be long gone, either buried under Eridian rock or dissembled for science, he oscillated between the two. I didn’t like either option. I wanted to keep his body in a vacuum, undisturbed, so I could visit him until I reached the end of my much longer life, and then we could both be buried together.
If they buried him first, he would be nothing but dust by the time I joined him.
‘If Grace says no, I will keep asking until he says yes,’ I muttered. I didn’t think he would say no. He had always been up for crazy schemes - our adventure fishing on Adrian stood testament to that. I think some people still didn’t believe me when I tell them that story in full.
But there was still that tiny, doubting part of me. The part that had watched Grace almost die before we managed to create real nutrients to keep him alive. The part that worried that he had been through too much already, had been thrown into new and unknown horizons against his will. I wanted this to be his choice. I wanted him to want it as badly as I did.
**
In the end, I was a coward. I gave the files, converted to Eridian metal sheets, to Adrian, who took them to Grace during their weekly discussion about quality-of-life upgrades to the biodome. Then I kept myself too-busy, and didn’t visit Grace until the next human day, in the evening, when I knew he would be tired after a day of teaching and talking to the biodome thrum.
I only went then because Adrian, patient, gentle, Adrian, kicked me out of the house.
‘Go and see Grace,’ they said, physically bundling me outside. I could hear George and Ringo trilling in amusement as I was unceremoniously dumped into the street, though the sound cut off when Adrian slammed the door in my face.
I did go to Graceland, but the long way round, and when I got to the airlock I put my xenonite suit on so slowly that I probably looked like I was under twice the gravity on Erid.
The front door swung open under my knock, even though I’d been the gentlest I could. There was no call, no greeting.
‘Grace?’ I warbled. I clenched my claws together, so as not to give away my nerves.
‘Over here, Rock.’
He didn’t sound mad - he sounded distracted. I shuffled into the room, and tapped on the floor to get a better look. He was already in bed, wrapped up in his soft coverings, in his sleep-clothes, and the hard-carved Eridian metal files were spread out across the sheets. He was wearing his eye-plates, so I knew he was reading. I waited in the doorway. Grace said nothing else.
‘Grace?’ I tried again, taking a few small steps forward.
Grace sighed, and rubbed at his face, knocking his eye-plates askew.
‘Why didn’t you want me to see this?’ he asked. He sounded devastated.
‘No! Did want, did want,’ I trilled, scuttling further forwards until I reached the edge of his bed.
‘Then why didn’t you give me this along with the rest of the drone contents, months ago? Why did you make Adrian give it to me?’
I was clicking again. I sat on the offending claws.
‘I wanted to wait,’ I said. ‘Wait until they were sure that it was possible.’
Grace’s mouth fell open.
‘You mean, this works?’
‘Well, we haven’t tested the mind transfer yet,’ I said. ‘But we have successfully grown a working body.’
‘But to do that you’d need human DN… hey, did you use my DNA?’
I gave a performative shrug. Humans love body language. Probably because their voices are so limited. ‘We have lots.’
Grace heaved another sigh. I heard his lungs inflate and contract. They spasmed slightly - a spasm I had been keeping a close watch on. It wasn’t getting any worse, but it wasn’t getting any better, either.
‘So you didn’t want me to know until you were sure it could be done with Eridian bodies.’
‘Humans only tested with alien lifeforms more similar to humans, more humanoid. Mammals,’ I added. ‘May not have succeeded with worker cells.’
‘But… it did?’
‘It did,’ I confirmed. I couldn’t see Grace’s expression, he was so silent, so I tried to surreptitiously tap the floor. His face was creased, but it was more creased anyway now that he was older. I couldn’t tell what he was feeling. I didn’t like not knowing. I usually always know what Grace is feeling. Sometimes I think I know how he feels better than how I feel.
‘Can I see it?’ His creases deepened - he was smiling. My joints went loose with relief.
‘Yes! But… maybe tomorrow,’ I added. ‘You’re already in bed.’
‘We could have gone today if you’d told me earlier,’ Grace said, but a quick tap told me he was still smiling. ‘Fine. Tomorrow, after class. You’ll come with?’ He pushed the metal files aside, and lay back on his bed, fussing with the coverings.
‘Of course.’ I lifted a claw up to the bed. ‘I watch?’
‘Please,’ Grace yawned, giving me a disturbingly good view of his uvula wobbling in his throat. I knew what it was called because I’d complained about it before. Many times.
I clambered onto the bed and settled down beside Grace. I raised a nervous arm, unsure if I would be welcome. Grace grabbed it and tucked it over his chest.
‘Night, Rock.’
‘Goodnight Grace.’
I waited until he was snoring, the vibrations soothing as they always were, and then I collected the files with a free claw. I scanned through them again, even though I knew them already. It would work, I told myself. It had to work.