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Rocky
Adrian is dead.
There is no sound, nothing to echo back to me off the unmoving crags of their carapace. But I hear it in the quiet. I hear it in the vast chambers above and below me, the hollow rooms, the threads that fan out in all directions until they abruptly vanish into the nothing, nothing, nothing of space. Even the engines have gone still, their fuel reserves depleted, mechanisms failing despite every desperate attempt to revive them.
Adrian is dead, and I am alone.
I don't dare move. I keep my vents sealed, my limbs locked in place beneath me. The slightest scrape would reveal too much. But despite how many years I have cried and begged to the empty night that will not hear me, I am not capable of forgetting.
I know exactly what waits in the belly of the ship. Rows and rows and rows of them, silent and solid as stone. I arranged them myself, draped ceremonial garments over them where they lay, delicate tinkling metal over cold, cold bodies.
They sleep together; I can give them that, at least. I sleep alone.
I will not dress Adrian’s body. I will not prepare their funeral garments, or sing their last song. I will not drag them down to the bay with the others to join that empty thrum.
Adrian, I will keep. I will await the strange, horrible death that comes for me, and I will not cry out when it rips my body apart. I have failed my mission, and Grace is gone, and there is nothing left to do but fall into my final rest beside my mate, orbiting a dead star in a dead ship years and years away from home.
I do not want to die. But I cannot live with the silence any longer.
I watch the place where Adrian is not sleeping, and I wait.
When a sound finally does come, I hear it first as a vibration deep in my carapace that reverberates through the floor and shakes the walls. The shapes that come back from the room around me don't make any sense. A thick, choking layer of fear and confusion rolls over my grief.
The sound rises, slowly. I feel the pressure in my air bladders, the force of the shaking in my body, a five-note wailing chord that grates against my auricles and strains the upper and lower bounds of my range of hearing.
Ah. I know this one.
I am screaming.
♫
Grace
This afternoon, I’m making myself grade papers. These assignments are more of a challenge for me than for my students; Rocky didn't have any written materials on the Hail Mary and my brain was too mushy from the malnutrition to absorb new information for a while after landing, so I've only been learning to read for around three months. It’s not going well.
A lot of the writing system is character-based rather than phonetic, so my fluency in the spoken language is no help. Plus the material today is all written by the Eridian equivalent of first-year middle schoolers. It’s pretty literally a case of the blind leading the blind, and some of their handwriting is borderline illegible.
Reading practice is sort of fun when someone is here to answer questions and laugh when I read out funny comments from the kids. Doing this alone, on the other hand, mostly cycles between frustrating and boring. There's a reason I'm not a linguist.
But I promised Rocky and Adrian I'd be fine keeping myself entertained for the day while Rocky watches them sleep, so I'm doing my best not to be too grumpy about it. Rocky has refused to be anywhere he can't hear me for more than an hour since we touched down, and it's clearly been driving some kind of wedge in his marriage. Adrian doesn't seem to resent me personally, but I can't imagine it's fun for them to still be sleeping with family all the time now that their mate has returned. Those two need some actual alone time, and I'll be darned if I'm going to interfere with that because I don't want to do my homework.
I’m reminding myself of this and taking a small stretching break when the wall of noise slams into me.
It might be the worst thing I've ever heard – like every string of a broken cello wailing through a dozen low-quality megaphones over the whining roar of a jet engine. It hits my inner ear with a force that makes me dizzy. My fake window rattles in its frame.
Sound carries well through the dense Eridian atmosphere, so I have no idea how far away it's coming from. I pull my EVA suit on in record time, slamming the airlock button repeatedly like I can convince the vents to pump faster. Protocol is to stay in my room in case of an emergency, but right now there is nothing on Earth, Erid, or the stars between that could stop me from finding Rocky.
The suit is awkward and my muscles are weak, but it's only a two minute walk to his house from my little terrarium under normal circumstances. I make it in record time.
Terrifyingly, the volume only increases as I get closer. I adjust the sound dampening dials on my helmet, which helps a little, but it's still hard to think straight. I can feel the vibration in my sternum, my spine, rattling though my brain. I round a corner too fast and slam my shoulder hard against the wall, enough to bruise badly, but I don't have time to worry about that. Finally, I come to the arched entrance of the nest room.
The sound is coming from Rocky.
I think some part of me knew from the moment I heard it, but what he's doing is so removed from his bright, musical speaking voice that it's hard to process. I don't know how he's able to produce such a staggering volume on his own.
He's collapsed on the floor beside Adrian, who appears to still be sleeping. I've seen Rocky have a crisis more times than anyone, probably, but I have no idea what to do with this.
I should have pressed the panic button before I took off. We live in an isolated area, partitioned off from the rest of the city by a massive park – one of the perks of saving the planet, I guess, an accommodation for my delicate human need not to be stared at all day – but it means there aren't a lot of people around to hear if something goes wrong. There should have been at least two maintenance staff and a member of my medical team on duty at my bubble, so I just have to hope one of them heard me leave and will alert… whoever. Somebody.
In the meantime, I slowly lower myself to the ground beside Rocky.
“Rock?” I try to make my voice as gentle as I can while basically yelling. “Talk to me, what's going on?”
He doesn't react.
I place a hand gently against his side. The vibration that runs up the weakened joints of my arm is a painful shock, but I don't pull away. Slowly, too slowly, his screaming reduces to more of a whimpering drone.
“Hey, bud, I'm here. It’s okay.” I don't actually know that, but what else can I say? I can barely keep my voice steady. I'm so scared for him.
He warbles something that sounds like Adrian's name, in the midst of the meaningless noise.
“Yeah, Rock. Adrian is here, too.”
It was the wrong thing to say. The cry starts up again, not as loud but somehow so much worse. Despite our vastly different evolutionary history, there is a deep, instinctual part of me that understands this sound: an endless pit of grief and loss, a wild, animal terror. I feel sick to my stomach, struggling not to break down sobbing right along with him.
“Please, tell me what's wrong. I'm here. I love you. Let me help.”
He cries, and cries, and cries.
It feels like forever before the emergency response team arrives. I keep out of the way as much as I can, but I refuse to take my hand off Rocky and they give up on trying to convince me otherwise.
Then someone manages to interpret some of Rocky's speech through the wails, and things get much more frantic. One of the EMTs hooks a machine to Adrian which begins clicking rhythmically, sort of like a heart monitor. The other two wheel all sorts of devices in, crowding the room.
They confer with each other in rapid, overlapping notes I have no chance of understanding, something between a conversation and a mini thrum. Finally, with the practiced solemnity of an oncologist about to deliver a terminal diagnosis, one comes to stand before me.
“Adrian is not dead,” they say.
I panic, obviously. That hadn't even been on my radar of possibilities, and also this is maybe the most ominous thing a doctor could say short of telling me someone is dead.
“What's wrong with them?”
“Nothing is wrong. They are asleep.”
Jesus. "Why would you say it like that?” I'm shouting at the poor EMT beyond what's necessary to be heard, but they deserve it because what the heck?
“Savior Rocky said their mate has died. This is inaccurate.” They seem very, very uncomfortable to be contradicting the planet’s biggest hero. I don't feel sorry for them, since they're supposed to be the professional here and my best friend is still screaming.
“What's wrong with Rocky?” I yell.
“Nothing is wrong with Savior Rocky.”
“Bullshit.” If there's ever been a time for cursing, this is one, even if the EMT probably doesn't know the word. “Listen to him. You have to help, you have to do something.”
They shuffle their limbs nervously. “Physically, nothing is wrong with Savior Rocky,” they say, apologetic. “We can administer a calming agent, with Savior Grace's consent.”
“Rock? Is that alright?”
He doesn't respond.
“Okay, yeah. Do it.”
They scuttle off to fetch the medication, and I hover uselessly while they inject a syringe of something into one of his vents. They stand in the corner until Rocky finally goes quiet. Then they pack up their equipment, offer a very awkward “we hope Savior Rocky recovers well,” and disappear as quickly as they arrived.
I wrap myself protectively around my favorite person in the universe, and I cry.
♩♬
Adrian
There is a memorial for the crew of the mission to Tau Ceti, a massive structure in the center of the city completed IVℓℓ years after their departure. I was offered a consulting position on the design team. I did not take it. Neither did I attend the public ceremony held for its completion, though nearly everyone else in the region was there.
It was a memorial for the dead, and Rocky was not dead.
Most of the families had already held funerals, placed stones in their mortuary halls in memory of bodies they expected never to recover. People begged me to move on. It was unhealthy, they said, to cling to deaf hope. They did not understand. For me, there was no other option; to accept the death of Rocky would be to accept the death of my entire world, in more ways than one. I am too stubborn and too proud to lie down and give up so easily.
I left my job a few days after the unveiling, unwilling to pass as close to the thing as was required to reach the thrumming amphitheater. I stopped going out altogether, when people began offering unasked for condolences in the streets. When Rocky’s family tried to hold a funeral of their own, I stopped speaking to them, too, and would not provide the personal items they required to perform the ceremony properly. Still, the hulking mass of the memorial sat heavy in the corner of my mind, and I could not excise it.
When Rocky returned, alone, the memorial was altered. Rocky and I were asked to attend this too, in a manner that did not leave room for refusal. Even so, we refused. He hasn't spoken of his years alone in silence, and I have not spoken of mine. We circle each other, together again except in all the ways we are not.
And then there is Grace. I watch them together, my half-alien mate and his half-Eridian mirror. They understand each other in ways I cannot, ways no one else ever will again. I am grateful, and bitterly envious.
It catches me off guard, when Rocky asks me to take him to see it.
“Grace cannot go,” I say, confused. The distance to the city center is too far, with nowhere to refill Grace's air and no low-pressure rooms to rush him to if something goes wrong. I listen to the slow, deep breaths of the fragile creature currently sleeping on the other side of the barrier, my mate perched attentively above him. We cannot risk it.
Rocky tilts his body slightly, one of many strange gestures he brought home with him.
“I know,” he says, finally. “Adrian and Rocky will go.”
I feel unsteady, uncertain. We've barely been alone together since he returned, and not at all since I woke to him drugged and panicked Vλλ days ago. I still feel uneasy to think of going near the thing that was meant to be a monument to his death. For so many years I have avoided it, ignoring my neighbors, the city elders, the endless planning committees, our family and friends. But I cannot say no to Rocky.
“Tomorrow,” I agree.
The memorial is smaller than I expected. More intimate, somehow. I had been informed of its design, heard it looming from a distance, but to stand beneath it in person is different.
It is made up of a series of interlocking rings, dotted with metal spheres like orbiting planets. Each one is approximately the size of an adult Eridian, hollow, with small holes tuned to the median vocal pitch of a member of the crew.
When the wind passes over them, they sing.
There is a small seating platform at the center, large enough for one. Someone is there when we arrive, but they step aside when Rocky approaches to take their place. He settles. I stand sentinel beside him. Neither of us speak.
We listen upwards towards the soft, whistling chords as they rise and fall with the breeze. Somewhere far above, under the warmth of a star we cannot sense, his friends sleep.
Together, Rocky and I watch.
♬♫
Rocky
Three Earth weeks after my disastrous breakdown, Grace gently informs me that he and Adrian have put together a plan, when and if I want to try again. It's another five before I let myself be convinced to make the attempt.
Grace was right. It's very different, this time.
He bullied the medical team into giving us the little monitor; it clicks softly about once every three seconds, in time with the tiny, inaudible signals keeping Adrian's nervous system in stasis. Alive.
Grace has loaned them a silky dressing gown and dismantled one of his crewmates’ shirts to fashion what he calls a “night cap,” a long, floppy pointed hat with a little ball on the end. It sounds ridiculous, and about as far from ceremonial clothing as you can get. Grace is surprisingly decent at sewing – it makes me wonder if he'd be any good with the xenonite weavers, if I made a pair to fit his long, slender hands.
We're in the room by the back garden. A gentle breeze drifts through the open windows, brushing across the tops of my vents and fluttering the end of Adrian's hat. It makes my core ache to know they still trust me enough to fall asleep in such a vulnerable place.
Grace is sitting on the oxygenated side of the room, limbs sprawled awkwardly over one of the chairs I made him. I recently finished the stringed instrument he requested months ago, and he's learning to play. It sounds awful, frankly, and I have to help him tune it every time because he can't tell when the pitch is wrong. It's loud, annoying, frequently off-key despite my best efforts, and it takes him about 10 seconds to switch hand positions when he changes chords.
He's also been talking non-stop, between strums. He's trying to convince the materials scientists to develop some human-safe “nail polish” for next time, apparently, so we can have a proper Earth-style sleepover. Grace wants his hands to match the colors of our carapaces. I'm not sure what this has to do with sleep, but it sounds nice.
Hours pass between clicks of Adrian's monitor and Grace’s endless chatter. I don't say much, but I'm not screaming either, so I think that's okay.
When Grace finally tires of playing, he puts on his suit and joins me on my side of the room. He leans against Adrian and I, his body a cool, solid presence, and sings a soft human pebble-song in a language I don't recognize: something about a flower, I think. It's beautiful.
The air through the window is warm and dry, carrying faint sounds of life from the world outside. The comforting weight of gravity presses me against my mate’s body. I can feel the pull of Erid's magnetic field, a quiet awareness in the back of my mind that I hadn't even realized I'd missed until I had it back. I think of the song of my crew on the wind. For a moment it does not hurt to remember them – even now, someone watches them sleep from beneath the memorial. They are not only mine to carry, anymore. I let their voices in my mind layer with the single-note rumble of Grace's singing, deep and smooth and familiar.
Adrian is sleeping. Erid is safe. And I am not alone.
