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For decades, centuries, I do not speak my name or hear my name spoken. I speak: talking to myself becomes a habit early on, and I have no will to try to prevent it. It's a sign of my mind degrading in the isolation, like heat is a sign of proximity to combustion. Natural, and unavoidable. I talk to myself, in the quiet, and I sing to myself, and I pluck the ship communication threads often, asking them to relay the same information over and over, just to create sounds. But no one calls me by name. I am no one, known to nobody.
Then the alien comes.
They ask my name, and I give it. It's the first time I've heard those notes in that order since the death of my last crewmate, From-Stillness-Into-Celebration. From-Stillness-Into-Celebration thanked me, at the end, for caring for them. For caring for all of them.
I tell the alien my name, and I show them my arm carving, and it feels like a performance, a quotation of who I used to be, or who I should be. I suppose it's who I'm trying to be, for the alien: someone who can finally help solve the problem that threatens our worlds.
"I'm gonna call you Rocky," the alien says, words that I don't understand but will come to understand later. But I do hear my new name, the sounds the alien associates with me: the purr as their tongue bunches and vibrates in their mouth, then the opening of their hole to admit the sonorous middle sound, then the click at the back of the mouth. The last sound spreads their lips apart, just for a moment. It's simple, like a sound a child would make in imitation of real speech, but every time the alien says it, I come to like it more. It comes to feel more like me.
The alien introduces themself as Grace, a name that has only one sound in common with the name they gave me.
"My name has a meaning," Grace says. "Precise, beautiful motion. Controlled elegance." Much later, I will look these words up on my human thinking machine to understand them better. But even now, with my limited vocabulary, it's funny. Controlled elegance. Grace has very little of either control or elegance in their physical movements. I have already seen Grace trip over the same obstacle multiple times in a very short interval, and drop things, and break things, constantly surprised by unmoving inanimate objects.
I let Grace think that I've used the name for precise, beautiful motion in my language as their name. But the truth is, before they ever offered their name, I had already begun calling them One Voice, after the strange single way they had of speaking. I don't bother to change it. My name for them suits them better, anyhow. After all, while Grace may be funny, and compassionate, and creative, and cooperative, they aren't graceful.
"What about you, does your name have a meaning?" Grace asks.
I consider the empty, silent ship all around me. My family named me Harmony-that-Emerges-from-Happiness because I was the last one of the cluster to hatch, and the smallest one. All of my clustermates hatched many days before I did, and had already begun to thrum together in the formless way that infant siblings do, before they have language but when they share experience. My family always told the story in this romantic way: that I must have heard the happy thrum from within the egg, and been too joyful to keep to myself any longer. I emerged from the egg, my family says, already thrumming. Already harmonizing with the greater whole.
"We feared that you would not emerge," one of my parents told me, once, when I was still a small child. "But you were called by joy, and you brought us great joy in your emergence. You brought an end to our fear and completed our song."
I consider the empty, silent ship.
I think that I will only know the alien a short time. I also think that, if they called me their word for my true name, whatever it might be, I would have to hear it, listen for it, expect it. I don't know that I could complete the mission, with the alien calling me the thing I no longer am: Joy-Harmony.
"No meaning," I say, in response to Grace's question. "Just name."
I will think about that decision, many years later. I will think about it, obsess over it, as Grace goes on calling me Rocky. As we hurtle, as close to the speed of light as we can go, towards my home planet, where people will once again address me as the person I once was. The person who emerges from joy, the person who sings in harmony. They will call me by that name, despite the fact that I emerged from sorrow, and sang, for so long, alone.
I will think about telling Grace. I will think: there is a limited amount of time in which I can tell them this before they find out for themself. I will not bring it up.
Instead, I will take comfort in the sound of my new name every time it flows through the wet meat-instrument of Grace's voice. I will listen for its variants: Rock, Rockstar, Rockefeller. I will become hungry, voracious, disgusting, for the other endearments they give me: buddy and bud, when we first become friends, and pal, when they're trying to soften bad news or contradict me; then, later on, a whole set of new ones: babe, when we're having a particularly silly argument and they think they've made a good point; sweetheart, when they're sleepy and unguarded and romantic, kissing the xenonite softly before they move into unconsciousness; baby, when we're coupling in ecstasy and their desperation has driven them to beg for release; dear, when they're making fun of me but willing to accommodate my demands; and love, only once, when I am, for some reason, talking about my years alone, about the silence and the unending failure, about the lifeless, resonating bodies of my crewmates who have now been left behind in the cold. Oh, Rocky, love, they will breathe, as if wishing to extend their love for me back into the past, towards the person who was Harmony-from-Joy.
I will wish that they could, but I will know that they can't.
But then, something astonishing will happen. A gift, a kindness, an unexpected relief from pain.
Grace will say, one day when we're about six Earth months away from Erid: I have to tell you something. I can't keep it anymore. I love you too much not to tell you, even if it changes how you feel about me. And they will explain, with a particularly monotone voice and an uncharacteristic lack of tears, that they did not consent to their original mission, that they were coerced. They will explain that they did not have the kindness, the compassion, the cooperation, the sense of harmony with others necessary to sacrifice themself to save their planet.
Part of me will grieve for Grace, for the violence done to them. Part of me will imagine myself in their position, wonder if I would have gone to Tau Ceti if I had thought I would die. Part of me will wonder what would have happened if they had told me this sooner: if I would love them less deeply. Part of me will become angry at the ones who did this to them, before becoming understanding, before becoming grateful. And part of me, the most secret part, will feel guilty, for being grateful that Grace was forced into my life. I will not be able to speak for long seconds, while Grace's heartbeat gets harder and harder in their chest.
And then I will say, "You are here now. Do you regret that?"
And Grace, without hesitation, will say, "No. Not anymore. I could never regret meeting you, Rock."
I will feel the same way. I will feel so inextricably bonded to them that I will not be able to change how I feel, despite Grace's fears. I will only accept that there was a time when they were not compassionate, when they were instead selfish and afraid. It will become part of what I know about them, like their size and shape and preference for sweet foods.
I will tell them, "Nothing could change how I feel about you." And they will cry, then, just a little, from relief.
Then I will become brave. I will say, "I want to tell you something, too."
Grace will blow out their breath and nod their head. "Go for it."
"My name . . . has meaning. Eridian name. I told you it didn't, but it does."
"Oh yeah?" Grace will be listening, but their face shape will communicate confusion. They will not understand, at first, the relevance of this confession. They will not understand that the connection between our two stories is shame, long-held, being finally released.
I will sing my name for them, slowly, carefully, enunciating in a way that one normally doesn't with names. "You hear it?"
"Oh! Something—harmony, right? Like the word for thrum?"
"Harmony that emerges from joy," I will say, with a yes-tone of agreement. "Joy-Harmony"
Grace will laugh. I will assume it's from incredulity. "Wait. Sorry. Your name is Joy Harmony?"
"I know. Name not fit," I will say, dropping a little into our old pidgin, our old safe space, where contradiction and complexity could be ignored. "Not fit anymore. Alone for too many years. Not bring harmony, not have joy. Rocky now only Rocky." I will say the words of my new name in my own language for Grace. "Made-of-stone. Grace's name for me."
"Oh. Oh, bud." They will wrap their arms around me. I will press wordlessly up against them. Many seconds will pass before they will speak again. "Okay. Listen. I'll call you whatever you want. But you are joy, to me. You are harmony. When we work together, when we touch, when we talk, that's joy and harmony to me. I hope—I hope you know that."
I will begin to shake, then; I will be unable to avoid it. The truth of that statement will pluck me to my core. Grace will hold me, as best they can through a significant atmospheric differential, and press desperate, loving kisses to the surfaces they can reach. I will touch them back, just as desperately, hands and carapace pressed against the barrier we share.
"And I thought this conversation was gonna be all about my trauma," they will say, and we will laugh together: me shakily, them wetly.
"You forget that I am also a strong contender in the trauma competition," I will reply.
Grace will just embrace me again. They will start to call me by their name for me, and then stop themself. "Rock—sweetheart. Trust me when I say that I don't ever forget it."
Later, when our emotions have subsided a little, I will try to make a joke. "Maybe is okay if Harmony-from-Joy, Made-of-Stone, doesn't have any harmony. Because Grace, Elegance-of-Motion, is very clumsy. So we match."
"Hey!" Grace will say, predictably, the way they always will when I make fun of them and they like it. They will relent immediately. "Okay, you're right, I'm clumsy. But Grace has another meaning, too, you know."
"Yes?"
Grace will pause, hesitate. I will listen more closely.
"It means. Well. Mercy. Kindness, compassion. Mercy given when it's not required or expected."
"Your name is Mercy?" I will ask, incredulously.
"Yeah. Uh. Another name that doesn't fit, I guess. Couldn't be merciful even when my whole planet was at stake."
I will hear the despair in their voice, and I will recognize it.
It will be a note that matches my own song.
"You were mercy to me," I will say, the truth of it filling me like air into my vents. "You were compassion to me." Emerging from out of the stillness, twice, to save me from my fear and loneliness. Grace had never been anything but a mercy, and by then, I will love them enough to be able to tell them so.
Grace will shake their head, then nod. "Maybe." And they will trail their hand over the xenonite in a way I will have come to recognize as fond. "Maybe. A little."
Grace will spend two days carefully not using any name for me. Waiting for me to decide, I will surmise. They will call me buddy and bud and sweetheart and baby but not Rocky, and certainly not Harmony-from-Joy.
And eventually, I will tell them: "I know you worry about calling me Made-of-Stone. But it's what I am. I am the person you found in the quiet and cold. I will always be that person, who learned to harmonize again with you. You should still call me Made-of-Stone. I will be proud to be called this."
Grace will nod, and kiss me softly, and they will say, "Rocky," in their simple, one-note voice. But one note can still form part of a harmony.
We will go on traveling, go on passing the time with silly games and human entertainments, go on researching the vitamins and minerals that Grace will need synthesized when the food runs out after we get to Erid. And most of the time, Grace will call me Rocky.
But when we couple together, sometimes, Grace will touch my hand through the flexible xenonite, or kiss my carapace, and I will hear them say it, quietly, softly, tentatively: Joy. My joy. My harmony.
And when we arrive at Erid, I will introduce Grace to my people: here is the alien who saved our planet, who is my best friend and my lover, I will say. And I will say: their name is Mercy That Ends the Silence.
*
After my long time alone, when the alien asks for the meaning of my name, I speak the truth: there is none.
But I don't know, in that tunnel, sensing the shape of my future for the first time, that there will be.