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The thing about sharing a spaceship with a guy in a hamster ball is you end up doing the grunt work. So here we are, en route to an alien planet, and I am once again hanging off the side of the dang ship. At least this time I’m securely fastened and not watching us sink toward our doom. Two hours ago we plowed through a molecular dust cloud and alarms went off, not of the “death imminent” variety. More like “a bunch of exterior stuff just got scratched up like an angry cat went after it.” I am getting better at the piloting thing, which is not to say I am good. But I did get us safely slowed down and prepped for repairs. Hence my current hanging-off-the-ship situation. I am fixing the dings with an Eridian blowtorch, a heckton of xenonite patches, and more blood, sweat and tears than I’d hoped to part with today.
“Wish I could help Grace,” says Rocky’s voice in my headset.
It’s slow going. I have never been accused of being nimble even without the lumbering Orlan. “Wish you could too, Rock. You’d be five times faster than my primitive human hands can manage. I’m giving this my whole ass and it looks half-assed at best.”
“Half. Assed. Grace referring to his posterior orifice, question?”
I giggle. It’s become a kind of competition, seeing how thoroughly we can confuse each other with our native idioms. “Hey, it’s like I always told my students, half a bum is better than none. What I wouldn’t give for an Eridian-sized Orlan,” I say wistfully. “You think you could fit into Ilyukhina’s?”
“Like a cave snail in a wedding suit,” says Rocky, and laughs at the noise I make. Idioms—they’re a trip. Then, “Oh! Oh, Grace! A suit! A suit for me!”
“What, buddy, a wedding suit? Like the cave snail’s?”
“No! Grace! I can make! Eridian-sized spacesuit! I can make it now!”
“Oh my God. No.” I wave my hands in pointless emphasis, unbalance, overcorrect and bang my knee on the side of the ship, sending me spinning away from it. Thank heck for my tether. I have to flail my way back to a handhold. “No, Rocky, I do not want you out here. I’ve got it. It’s fine. Please stay in the ship and away from deep space.”
“No no no, I make suit. Is not just for spacewalk. Grace stayed with me, needs proper crewmate. Ball was good plan for quick work but there is more time now. Time to make something clever clever. Could walk around free. Could help with all tasks. Could do experiments with Grace!”
“We already do that plenty.” But of course I’m considering it.
“Could use Grace’s tools. Could help Grace lift things; your hands not so strong. Could—” He hesitates. “Could learn to use controls, operate ship if Grace needs me—if you are not able—I would not be helpless—”
He cuts himself off. I see it now. I get it. I clear my throat once, twice. “Yeah, buddy, that’s a good call. I could use the backup. You make that suit.”
***
He works on the suit for ages, building prototype after prototype. Xenonite is a heck of a substance, but it’s made for strength, not flexibility. And yet there really isn’t anything else that could hold up to the pressure differential between my environment and his. The flex panel is the idea he’s working from—he put that into his ball ages ago, and it’s been great. But a full-body thing is harder. Of course he’d built me a suit to explore his ship in, and it was brilliant, but so stiff I felt like a possessed mannequin walking around. He needs something with the bend and give of the panel. But a whole suit of the stuff, with enough range to let him jump, wiggle, curl up, run? With no weak points? Translucent for my sake, and thin enough to let him manipulate tools, but still insulated, so I’m not sharing space with a wandering hot stove just waiting for my careless hand?
Watching him work through the issues point by point is mesmerizing, like watching Edna Mode design for that superbaby. (One of the perks of being a teacher was that I got to pick the movies the students sat through while I caught up on grading. The Incredibles stayed in heavy rotation. Yes, I’m going to make him watch it too, once we’ve gotten through Star Wars and its ancillaries.) He tries about fifteen different shapes for the fingers, and about fifty alloys for the jointing. I think he invents some brand new components for the life support system, trying to reduce the thing to a manageable size for such a close-fitting suit. I spend a lot of nights sprawled beside him playing Stratt’s bootleg Pong and privately cataloguing the Eridian swears he refuses to translate for me.
It’s good for my psyche, I think, the down time. I haven’t really slowed down at all since I woke up in actual freaking deep space. I’m not second-guessing my choices since, but I sure could use some time to chew on them. And to think it all over while watching his little hands work, his wriggles and steam-hisses of pure exasperation, his small stomps of joy when something works the way he imagined it, the tuneless whistling he does unconsciously when things are flowing—it really helps a guy keep perspective.
I don’t know what my life is going to look like from now on. I don’t know what it does to a human mammal to be the only one of its species for parsecs, and I suspect I will reach levels of “eccentric hermit” that make castaway Tom Hanks look like a paragon of emotional stability. But my personal Wilson is a heck of an improvement on Tom’s model. Right now Rocky’s got his hand in his newest prototype glove and is wriggling it around like a starfish, testing the joins. “I’m glad you’re here,” I say to him, and don’t mind how deeply fond I sound. He lets me be as soft as I like.
“Glad you are here,” he echoes, distracted but just as fond. He taps the model against the barrier between us. I tap back.
***
I don’t know what I expected, when he finally had it on. He insisted on changing in the other room, so I couldn’t see, as though I hadn’t watched him weld and weave every part of it. I wait with a heart that is beating oddly fast. I wonder if he felt like this when he asked me to trust him, take off my helmet, let him see my face.
He comes and stands in the doorway. Stands there, with no wall between us. No hamster ball. Just him and me. He looks—the same as always, of course, but somehow naked too, vulnerable, wrapped in the delicate spun glass bubble of the suit. He’s bouncing on his feet, just a little. “Hey, Rock,” I say.
“Hi, Grace,” he says back.
Then he springs straight up like an excited labrador, making me jump; spins around limb by limb, almost dancing; and flings himself into a forward somersault, legs tucked. Rocky is rolling across my floor like a gleeful bowling ball. He tumbles to a stop in front of me, spins again, and hops three springy little hops. “Oh, buddy,” I say. He’s so happy. I hadn’t realized how happy he’d be to move unhindered again. He’s been wedged into little tunnels in my periphery all this time.
“Grace, Grace,” he’s trilling, “Grace, look, all flex, all good, move free, hands free, I am free!” and he’s butting his carapace into my hand like an insistent cat, and I laugh out loud. I hop, too, join the impromptu little dance of freedom. He does jazz hands at me and I do them back. Then he’s off, leaping and spinning and tumbling around and out of the room. I can hear him scrambling through the ship. I can’t keep up; I run to find him hanging off the walkway in the middle of the Don’t Go Crazy room, swinging side to side like a little spider monkey. He swings up and over, runs between my legs, shouting, “Too slow!” as I make a swipe at him and miss.
I run after him again, following his giddy trilling.
He goes through my stuff. Tries on the fox mask. Attempts to bounce the basketball, disastrously. Flips the disco ball on and off a dozen times. Then he hustles me up into the cockpit. He wants me to show him all the ship’s controls. I figured he had them memorized already, but I guess it’s different when you get your hands on them. Turns out he’s no smoother of a pilot than me, after all he had to say, but in twenty minutes he completes his first full sequence of test maneuvers and shimmies with glee in the pilot’s chair. “Fist bump!” I say, and he does. And then I lose my cool a little, because we can actually do it. “I bumped your fist!” I say. “For real! Wait, wait. High five!”
He slaps my hand. He already knows this one; I’ve demonstrated before. But this time there’s actually a slap of his little palm against mine. “Down low!” I hoot. He goes for it with more enthusiasm than my soft flesh can handle. I shake the stinging hand out along with the adrenaline rush. It hurts, but it feels so good. “Whoo! We’re going to have to practice our impact levels now that you can actually make contact, bud.”
“So many Earth social rituals involving hands. Wave, bump fists, slap fives.”
“You don’t know the half of it. There’s the salute,” (I demonstrate), “noogie,” (ditto, as he squeaks in surprise), “flip off—wait, never mind that one” (going to regret that), “shake hands—oh my God, we’ve never been properly introduced. Rocky,” I say, holding out my hand to him, “I’m Dr. Ryland Grace of Grover Cleveland Middle, Earth. Very pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Bless him, he takes my hand and accepts the vigorous shake I give him with only two more surprised squeaks. “Third Engineer Rocky,” he offers, “Adrian’s match, of the seaward cliffs, of the cleft cave clan, fourth of my clutch.”
“Hey, you never told me half of that. You have siblings?”
We break for a “Holy moly, you still have so much backstory I’ve never heard” yap session for a while. Eventually I realize I’m hungry. It occurs to me that with his help, I could finally do something about my suspicion there are more snacks wedged deep in the storage area. The crawlspace is really small, and while I’m not as scared of tight places as I am of elevators, they’re still on the “nemeses” list.
Rocky is delighted to investigate the crawlspace. And nothing is too heavy for him to move, and he can see better in the dark than I do in broad daylight. He comes up with things I had no idea were in there—enough books to last me ages, a bound collection of vintage star charts, a headlamp, a big bag of beef jerky, and believe it or not, six pairs of my sweatpants. I’ve been living in flight suits this whole time. I really thought they’d completely forgotten to pack me pants.
“This is the best day of my life,” I say when I’ve pulled on the softest pair of blue joggers and am sprawled out in the Don’t Go Crazy room with him, the bag of jerky and the star charts, comparing them to the night skies Mary is projecting on the walls around us. We’re leaning back to back, but for real. I can feel his weight rest against mine. “Wait, you need to show me your constellations.”
“What those, question?”
“Ohhhh. Oh, you wouldn’t have any. Since you couldn’t see them. Right. Well, we have these stories about the stars—”
Eventually Rocky has to take a suit break for mealtime, so I leave him alone and go to work on my own stuff. I’ve been getting a lot done lately, little experiments and plans. We’ve had a lot of down time. He’s been quiet. I think he’s feeling the letdown, too, after so long in a crisis. When I’ve asked him if he’s all right, he’s just said, “Thinking,” and I suppose he’d say more if he was ready, so I haven’t pushed. I’ve just kept working where he can see me—recording my observations of the last few months in detail, refining the Eridian grammar charts I’ve started to put together, and attempting something like a regular workout routine, now that there are no electrodes hooked up to my bod to keep me toned.
While quiet, he’s usually somewhere nearby all day; but he disappears when it’s time for him to eat, or groom himself, and I let him have his privacy. Still, he’s been gone longer than usual this time. I’m starting to wonder. I’ve set up some dishes of preserved taumoeba jelly on the lab table and am playing around with them, testing what kind of flavors I can create (salted lime taumoeba is not bad, cherry Koolaid taumoeba is unforgivable). Finally, out of the corner of my eye I see Rocky sort of sidle back into the room. The suit is back on. I put the pipette down and whistle a two-toned “What’s up?” at him, one of the Eridian shorthand interrogatives I can just about manage with my limited physiology—I’ve been practicing.
He edges closer. He doesn’t seem to have any words.
“C’mon,” I say, “come here,” and I waggle my fingers in a gesture that both humans and Eridians would understand as an open invitation.
He comes to me, slowly. Shuffles right up to my side and then just slumps into me. Braced, still, of course—his whole weight would knock me right over—but enough of him rests against me that I can feel he’s trembling gently.
“Oh,” I say. I lay a hand atop his carapace. The trembling increases. His vents rise in puffs and flutters—frenetic, recognizable. I’ve had some bad anxiety attacks—had them on the regular for several years after the UNESCO thing. I know what I wished someone would’ve done for me. I lower myself down and wrap my arms around him; sink down with him as he slides to the floor in the circle of my arms.
I lean my head against him, feel the emotions shaking him, let him listen to my breathing, my heartbeat. God, I wish I could do more, but just this is overwhelming. It’s been so long since I held anyone. I feel it like electricity running through me, the solidity of him, the warmth at every point he’s touching me. Finally some instinct compels me to hum, as deep in my chest as I can, low and steady, and it has an immediate effect. The trembling slows. The tension starts to ebb out of his limbs. The overheated stress-steaming lessens. It’s working. I’m so relieved I almost flop back onto the floor too, but I’m trying to keep him together. I just keep humming, until he relaxes completely, a puddle in my arms, and I am glad, glad, glad.
When he finally shifts away, angles his carapace in a wordless nod, I attempt another slipshod Eridian whistle-query, the “You okay?” one, and he says very softly, “Yes,” and “Thank you,” and then, “Can watch you work, now, question?”
He stays low beside me on the floor as I start work again on the preserves. His hand slides out and catches hold of my leg. His little thumb starts to work over my ankle bone, like a worry stone.
Such a small thing, to mean so much.
I hum, and go on working.
***
Rocky, of course, doesn’t have a twenty-four-hour sleep-wake cycle, but he accommodates mine. Apparently, with humans, it’s all about light. I half-remember reading about experiments with a guy living in a perpetually dark space for weeks at a time. He ended up in a four hour on-again, off-again unnatural facsimile of a standard circadian rhythm. I could let that happen to me, but since we’ll be traveling for years, I probably need to maintain some kind of biological normalcy. I’ve set Mary up with a full day-cycle: I have her dim the lights near “sunset” and shift the tone toward warm amber light, like I’m resting by a campfire, like humanity did for millennia. (Rocky finds that little fact both fascinating and terrifying. We set our environment on fire on purpose, and then just conked out by it? Because the world was swarming with creatures who wanted a taste of us but would run from active oxidation, the sort that almost burned him up? On the other hand, he’s deeply pleased to learn there was usually someone sitting up tending the fire and keeping an eye on things. Humans got watched while they slept, too.)
So when the lights fade to golden, I put my work away and head to the bunks, brush my teeth, change my socks, rub my eyes. Rocky waits, crouched in the corner of the room. Usually he’s in his tunnel above me with a craft and a laptop, getting ready for a little human knowledge binge session. But now he’s tucked up against the wall, tapping his fingers together, restless.
He says, “Grace sleep now, question?”
He knows I will. “Yeah, bud, what’s up?”
“Was wondering. Where watch.”
“Hmm?” I pause climbing into my quilt-and-pillow nest to study him. Our routine hasn’t really changed since he first told me he wanted to watch, keep me safe through the night. I remember his wistful voice saying, Normally much closer. On your chest. “Oh, hey. Did you want to get up here with me?”
“Mmm. If Grace like.”
He still can’t sit on my chest, of course. He’s about the density of a small motorcycle. But he could snuggle up with me, if we lay side-by-side. Could hold me, even, if he wanted. All his life he’s slept in someone’s arms. I wonder what that feels like, to always be cradled through the silence. To wake every day to someone who loves you saying your name. God, no wonder he wants that again.
He seems almost shy about it. I guess a species who by preference sleep with a friend wrapped right around them don’t really have personal space problems. But we’ve spent this whole trip with a literal wall up between us. He doesn’t know if I’d want him that close for that long.
Do I want him that close? Facehugger-close? Heart to heart, all night through?
I think—I think I really do. There aren’t many people I’d want that with, but he isn’t people, he’s my Rocky.
“Oh man. Yeah, we can do that. Come on, buddy, come up here.”
He launches himself at the bed; clambers up and wraps himself around me, all clinging limbs.
Warm, so warm, even through the xenonite. He’s vibrating, like a purring cat—the sound is coming from deep inside him, too low to hear, but I can feel it all the way through me. Isn’t a purr supposed to trigger healing? It feels like it is setting all my cells glowing with joy. I tuck my head against him and laugh out loud. He pulls me more firmly against him. His vents are working overtime, trembling and rising. “Rocky,” I say, and my eyes fill with sympathy tears. “Are—are you crying?”
“Eridians do not leak.” But the notes are pitched high and wobbly.
“I know. But is it like that? The feeling?”
The hitching redoubles. The sound of his breath in the tremoring vents is not so different from mine. His arms wind around me tight, tight, and I hold him back just as hard.
Eventually we calm down. The steady rumble he’s still making is blanketing my brain, like the sound of running water or a distant storm. It’s making me very sleepy. I am falling asleep in a purring one-Eridian snuggle pile. “You know,” I murmur, “humans sleep like this sometimes, too.”
“Thought humans move all around when sleep, kick and wriggle.”
“Mmm. Some of us are restless.”
“Grace very restless, wriggle around all night, like new hatchling.”
“Alright, I get it. Even so, it’s nice to be held, drifting off.”
“Am glad.” He is thinking. “How you want me, question? Rocky can be still, or tend to you. I watch you fall asleep, you do this—“ and he lifts a finger to run it along my arm, gently, up and down.
I do do that sometimes—have since I was a kid. I hadn’t thought about it, Rocky watching me, drawing broad conclusions about human sleep habits. Might not be anthropologically sound. I never knew if anyone else was like me.
He’s still petting me. The hairs rise along my arm, my neck. I shiver. I didn’t know someone else could give me that relief. “Mm,” I manage, “ ’s good.” Apparently the featherlight touch triggers my autonomic sensory meridian response. I’d learned about that in grad school, startling me. I didn’t know the lovely shivers that released all my tension had a name. I think Rocky would probably like to hear all about it—he’s endlessly curious about the oddities of the human body. Later. When I’m awake enough for full sentences.
He keeps stroking my arm, my back, my side, gentle as a whisper. Another hand strokes my hair and smooths tenderly over the base of my skull. Soothing me. Vagus nerve regulation, apparently—thank you again, grad school. I’ve been doing that for myself since I was little, too. He really has been learning all of me.
I’m too happy to talk, now, and he doesn’t seem to expect it; he’s still rumbling, a subsonic thrum like the tectonic vibrations of a shifting planet, like the tide pulling out. Somewhere far behind me lies Earth and her seas. The Hail Mary sails on through oceans of stars. Space and time have us caught in their endless current. Well, Rocky is caught in it with me, so I don’t mind it now. I close my eyes and feel it carry me away.