Archive of Our Own

“This way, Honoured, this way,” chirps the scientist, and I follow them into the lab.

The scientist introduced themself as ♫♬♯♩♩♫. They’re not one I’ve personally met before, but everyone in the human life support thrum at least knows of me, and they tend to act like I should consider them all interchangeable and beneath my notice. It’s been a strange adjustment, leaving Erid as an ordinary if well-regarded engineer, and returning a hero. I was one among λ⩝, and now I’m just one of an exceptional, elevated two.

♫♬♯♩♩♫ can’t seem to decide between deferentially ushering me on ahead, or walking in front so they can actually show me where to go. Considering it’s their lab and I don’t know my way around, you’d think the correct order would be clear. Or maybe I’m just being impatient.

“Where is it?” I ask, deciding to solve their indecision.

“Right over here, Honoured,” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ says, with a tone that borders on the obsequious.

“Just respectful-equals register will be fine, thank you,” I say.

It was very amusing, the day shortly before we arrived when I decided Grace was finally ready to learn about Eridian honorific registers, and shortly thereafter when he realised that every other Eridian he talked to was addressing him like he was, well, the saviour of our species. Obviously, I’ve been addressing him in casual-collegial register since the start, growing increasingly casual as we got more comfortable around each other and learnt more words. Now we’re at the point where it’s actually quite odd for two individuals as close as we are to be addressing each other like friendly coworkers. But it’s the version of spoken Eridian he’s most familiar with, and it works for us.

“Of course,” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ says, now much closer to the register I requested. I can’t tell if they’re put at ease by my humility or made uncomfortable, but that’s not really my problem. Funny how much worse I’ve gotten at reading Eridian tones and body language, and how little it bothers me. I suppose l⩝𝓁l years alone in space and then pair-bonding with an alien will do that to you.

♫♬♯♩♩♫ leads me to a growth vat in the centre of the lab. Walking over to it, I immediately find myself relaxing. Laboratories have that effect on me, these days. Eridian labs look very little like human ones, but there’s a similar atmosphere of careful sterility and industrious progress, with little hints of personality here and there. Somebody has carved a fond nickname onto the side of a piece of scanning equipment, someone else has brought in a trinket or a child’s toy to sit on a shelf out of the way. It’s nothing like the chaos of the lab on the Hail Mary. No clothing scattered on the floor, no xenonite habitat running along one side, no mattress propped up in the corner for when Grace wanted to sleep in there. Not to mention, the equipment is all different. The lab benches are at a comfortable height not far off the ground, as opposed to the ridiculous towering constructions that humans favour. A lot of the less frequently needed tools and reference materials are stored on shelves higher up, where one has to climb and scramble up handholds on the wall to reach them. But it’s familiar enough that I still feel somehow at home.

“Here, please observe,” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ says.

I tilt my body mass back and forth in front of the growth vat, and tap my foot to clarify the soundwaves. If I didn’t already know what it was, then I don’t think I ever could have guessed just by observing.

The vat is mainly constructed of steel alloy, with purpose-extruded xenonite for some of the more complicated parts. Inside a bath of fluid, there is a soft and featureless lump of… something. Approximately the size of my closed fist, though a little flatter.

“Is that all there is?” I ask.

“We have a larger growth tank in the next room,” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ says, “and we have the capacity to scale up further, if this proves to be a viable option.”

I hum approvingly. I’m trying to project confidence and optimism, here. I badly want this to work. We’re running out of other options.

In two days’ time, I have another tour arranged at the lab currently working on synthesising thiamine and ascorbic acid, among other chemical compounds. Grace had the foresight to save some of what he calls his “coma slurry”, so that our chemical engineers would at least know what kind of nutrient profile to aim for, and I’ve made models of all the relevant molecules. The scientists have made extraordinary progress. But it’s not enough.

“What’s it growing on?” I ask. The human life support thrum sent me a document with all the relevant information, but I can’t help double-checking. All of the cells I saw Grace culture back on the Hail Mary were either a thin smear in a flat plastic dish, or an undifferentiated sludge of discrete, disconnected cells, like in the Taumoeba breeder tanks. This, however, has three-dimensional structure. Cohesion.

“The growth medium is mostly Taumoeba-derived sugars, lipids, and amino acids,” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ says. “And the scaffold is made of scurrybeast chitin.”

I rear back in alarm. “You processed it to remove the metals, question?” I demand.

“Of course,” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ says.

“And you were thorough, question??” I tap my foot emphatically. “Even things that might not seem obviously harmful— a bit of zinc and iron are fine, but the amount of cobalt and mercury in a scurrybeast would be very harmful with long-term exposure—”

“It’s in the document,” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ says, with admirable patience. “The thrum has closely reviewed the information provided to us by yourself and Honoured Grace. Our protocol stipulates a hard maximum of 𝓁.𝓁⩝ ♩♪ of mercury per ♪ of food. And the trace quantities of cobalt left in processed scurrybeast chitin will be beneficial.”

I huff warm air out of my vents, and try to calm myself. It’s fine. I need to trust the scientists of Erid, and the summarised knowledge of the Hail Mary’s databases, and most of all, I need to trust Grace. He was the one who compiled the information on his own biological requirements and limitations, on the journey back home. He read the document that the human life support thrum sent, as well, or rather, I read it out loud and he listened. He’s been in radio contact with the nutrition support scientists, to answer their questions and give them feedback on their protocols. If they’d overlooked anything, he would notice.

“All right,” I say, clasping my hands in front of my body. “I apologise for my anxiety, but you must understand I am very concerned about my companion’s wellbeing.”

“Of course.” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ doesn’t probe for any further details, although I can tell they’re curious. The nutrition support node of the thrum probably gets updates from the medical care node, but most of them have never met Grace in person. They don’t know what his baseline is, and they don’t know how far he’s deteriorated. The medical care node knows, but only theoretically. They weren’t there from the start, they didn’t observe it as it happened. I’m the one who gets to bear the full understanding of that.

“So what’s next?” I ask.

“Proof of concept,” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ says. “We’ve tested it thoroughly to ensure it fits the specified nutritional profile, and several members of our team have ingested small amounts of it to ensure there were no adverse effects. They found it palatable enough.”

Once again I’m shocked, and more than a little territorial. “You ate some of it?” I ask, rudely. I’m too irate to mind my language. Who do they think they are? That meat is for Grace. In a way, that meat is Grace.

“Yes,” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ says. They and the rest of the human life support thrum know better than to be offended by my occasionally strange behaviour. “Obviously we weren’t going to risk the life of Honoured Grace on a completely untested technology. We were relatively confident it was safe for ingestion, but we wanted to be sure.”

That doesn’t mean much. There’s a lot of things that are safe for ingestion by Eridians that would outright kill a human. So it doesn’t stop me worrying, irrationally, about some kind of heavy metal that the scientists might have somehow forgotten to scan for, about contamination by bacteria that the Eridian stomach would obliterate, which might unexpectedly prove to be fatal by humans.

Trust Grace, I remind myself. He’ll have thought of all this.

There’s not going to be a solution with absolutely zero risk, much as I wish there were. The one we’ve settled on is the most likely to be safe and biocompatible. My options are to accept an imperfect compromise, or let Grace starve to death.

“So the next step is to take some back to the Hail Mary for Grace to try, question?” I ask.

“Correct,” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ says. “Honoured Grace should continue to rely on Taumoeba for the majority of his nutritional intake, and we’ve devised a schedule to gradually introduce the cultured meat into his diet, while monitoring for adverse effects.”

I make an impatient noise, but I understand the sense in starting small. Aside from the remote but non-zero possibility of adverse effects from the cultured meat itself, Grace’s digestive system won’t be able to handle more than a small amount of it at once, not for a while. He explained it to me at one point. Human metabolism is very complicated, and prioritises different pathways depending which energy sources are available. But that can apparently complicate things, when a human body that has been malnourished for an extended period of time is suddenly given an abundance of nutrition.

“We’ll have some meat decanted for you to bring back in a storage capsule,” ♫♬♯♩♩♫ says. “Honoured Grace has a copy of the protocol, but please remind him to take a circulatory fluid sample ll𝓁lλλ seconds after meat consumption, and send the results to the medical node to analyse.”

“I’ll ensure he does,” I say. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

♫♬♯♩♩♫ makes a self-effacing gesture. “For Honoured Grace and Honoured Rocky, it’s a privilege to be able to assist,” they say.

♫♬♯♩♩♫ removes the slab of cultured meat from the nutrient bath, seals it inside a storage capsule, and hands it over to me. After exchanging a few more pleasantries, I leave. I’d be interested to inspect a bit more of the facility and learn about the work they’re doing, but that’s not my priority right now.

The human life support thrum has been a massive undertaking of effort and resources. Hundreds of Eridian scientists, medics, technicians, engineers, builders, support staff, all united in their effort to keep one fragile organism alive. But Grace is worth it. Our planet would be facing a slow, ugly death, without him.

Grace doesn’t know this, but in the last few weeks of our trip back to Erid, I grew increasingly worried about the reception he would get on my homeworld. I still have these paranoid moments sometimes, where I become convinced despite all evidence that something disastrous has happened. That Grace has died in his sleep, even when I can hear him moving and breathing. That our mission failed, and the Taumoeba will not be enough to save our star from being consumed. That I imagined the whole thing, and I’m still drifting alone on my empty ship, and Grace’s very existence is just a pleasant fantasy to lull me to sleep as I succumb to radiation poisoning.

Towards the end of our journey, I began to harbour a suspicion that the rest of my people wouldn’t be able to know Grace the way I have come to know him. They would fear and revile him. Or they’d be grateful for his sacrifice, but they would thrum together, and regretfully decide that the effort required to keep him alive on Erid was not possible. I didn’t know how things would have progressed, in my absence. I knew Eridian society would be able to sustain itself for many years to come, but that still didn’t mean we’d have the resources to comfortably spare for my precious alien.

I wouldn’t tell Grace if that ended up being the case, I decided. I would be the one making contact with my people and telling them about what we’d achieved. So if it came to it, I would simply threaten to withhold the Taumoeba until they made a commitment to do whatever was necessary to keep Grace alive, comfortable, happy. I would never be able to follow through on that threat, of course. But they would have no way of knowing that. I’m very confident I could sound like I meant it.

Grace would have hated it. He was so excited about me getting the chance to go home, he wouldn’t like to think there was even a remote possibility of his presence causing discord between me and my people. He came back for me because he wanted to save Erid, and he did so fully accepting that he might die. It would be a terrible betrayal of his sacrifice. So it’s just as well that my fellow Eridians value Grace’s life almost as highly as I do.

The human life support research complex is set up in a series of buildings, as close to the base of the space elevator as possible. The space elevator is around λ𝓁𝓁𝓁 seconds’ travel from ♫♬♮♫♫♩, one of the biggest cities on Erid. The outer margin of this city is where the construction of Grace’s biodome has begun. The location was chosen so that we would have enough space to make the biodome comfortably large, and even expand it later on, but its proximity to ♫♬♮♫♫♩ was needed for access to resources and qualified scientists.

♩♪♬♩, the town where my extended family lives, is a day’s travel away. The city where I used to live with Adrian is further still. I’ve visited both these places once, during the months I’ve been back on Erid, but it was an uncomfortable experience. I don’t like being so far away from Grace if I can avoid it.

On my way out of the human life support research complex, scientists and technicians acknowledge me as I pass by. Many of them hum or gesture their respect. Some even call out to me— Honoured Rocky! or thank you!

I chirp my acknowledgement, and move along quickly. It’s all too easy to get caught in conversation. Everybody wants to talk to one of the saviours of Erid. They want to know what it was like, they want to thank me and tell me how grateful they are for what I’ve done. They want stories of boldness and triumph. And more than anything, they want to hear about Grace. Tell us about what it was like, making contact with an alien. Did the alien really climb around on the outside of its spaceship? How did you figure out how to communicate? Were you scared, disgusted? How is Honoured Grace? Tell him you both have our endless gratitude.

I don’t want to tell stories about Grace to a bunch of strangers. Not now. I’d probably love to brag about his bravery and kindness and quick-thinking, if we’d already solved the problem of how to keep him from dying of malnutrition. But as it is, I don’t want to waste time talking about him when I could be with him.

I make my way out of the complex, and take a tram from there to the space elevator. All the staff at the space elevator recognise me, and I’m there frequently enough that I recognise most of them, too. I’m waved through without having to show any identification or credentials. They already know who I am, and what I’m here for. Being a hero is nice sometimes.

The ride up the space elevator is interminable. I spend the time mentally going over some notes about my current project, a form-fitting xenonite EVA suit. Once the biodome engineers have constructed a place for Grace to live on the surface of Erid, I want to actually be able to walk around and interact with things. With him. I’m trying to engineer xenonite panels to be as thin and flexible as possible for the best range of movement and dexterity. But there’s a limit to how thin I can get them and have them still contain the atmospheric pressure I need inside the suit, and insulate Grace from my body heat.

It passes the time. Eventually, I make it up to the place in the upper atmosphere where the Hail Mary is docked.

I walk into the docking bay, where my life support sphere is parked just where I left it. I check myself over before I get inside. I’ve got my satchel, with the container of cultured meat, and a decorative sculpture that I thought Grace would enjoy, and a couple of tools that I brought with me. I’m planning on doing some repairs while I’m visiting, we’ll pass things back and forth through the airlock drawer in the sphere.

I roll my sphere into the docking bay airlock, and wait patiently while it pumps the Eridian atmosphere out, and the human atmosphere in. I can’t help fidgeting, shifting my weight from one foot to another, drumming my fingertips on the satchel to hear the echo of the contents. It’s been the better part of a day since I’ve seen Grace. I’m starting to adjust to not spending all my time within hearing distance of him, but it hasn’t been easy.

“That you, Rocky?”

I can’t help it. My vents flutter, and I let out a little trill of delight.

“I’m back, Grace!” I call out. I find myself easily slipping back into habitual speech patterns. Casual-collegial register, a bit of playful teasing, simple sentence construction to make it easier for him to understand. I hear his footsteps echo on the metal floor, and I thump my closed fist against the sphere to try and perceive him better through the wall.

Finally, the airlock finishes repressurising, and opens the door to let me out. I barrel through, only just remembering to slow down in case I knock something over. In case I knock Grace over. He’s up and about today, making his way down the hallway to see me.

“Go lie down!” I scold him. He’s using his cane at least, but I can hear that he’s limping. He must be having nerve pain.

“I’m fine!” Grace argues. “Just wanted to see you.”

“You could’ve waited another minute and then you’d have seen me, comfortably and safely in bed,” I say. Completely hypocritical, telling him to be patient, when I spent the ride up the space elevator nearly vibrating out of my own carapace with anxiety.

“Yeah, yeah,” Grace dismisses me with a wave of his hand. He turns around and begins to limp back to the dormitory. “Who knows more about human biology, me or you? I need to walk around a bit each day. If I say it’s safe, then it’s safe.”

Fine. Despite my instinct to swaddle him, he’s right. He explained it all to me in disgustingly biological detail— functional decline, muscle loss, pressure sores, the risk of clots forming in his circulatory vessels in his legs. I concede that it’s necessary for Grace to move around, as much as he’s able. I still think he pushes his limits, sometimes.

I’m fussing a bit, hanging close on Grace’s heels as I follow him back to the dormitory. That’s another reason why I want to complete my EVA suit. If he has a fall or some other medical crisis, there’s a limit to what I can do for him in my sphere. The hands-robot is better than nothing, and there’s a monitoring station at this level of the space elevator, where a member of the medical care node is always on call in case something happens. They have remote controlled robots that can enter the Hail Mary and provide assistance. But there’s such a limit to what we can do, when none of us can even touch him.

“Okay, sitting down now, happy?” Grace says, heaving himself up onto his sleeping platform. I give an approving chitter, and bump my sphere gently against his leg, which always makes him smile.

“That’s really nice, Rock,” Grace says. “Warm.”

“Are your legs hurting today, question?” I ask. I want to give him the gift as soon as possible, but I need an update on his status first. I echolocate, trying to gather as much information as possible. Body mass, bone density, any new contusions that might have appeared. I even try to search for blood clots in his legs, although those would most likely be too small for me to hear without specialised medical equipment.

“Hands and feet, mostly,” Grace says. “It’s kind of like pain, kind of just numb. Tingly, sometimes. Comes and goes.”

“Fatigue?” I ask.

“You don’t wanna hear about that,” Grace says. “I’m spending half my time napping, it’s so boring. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Dizziness?” I ask insistently. “Vision problems? Bruises or bleeding? What’s your blood pressure today?”

“Enough, Rocky,” Grace says, annoyed. “I’ve been over it already with the medical guys, go ask them if you want a summary. I don’t want to talk about how I’m feeling any more.”

I crouch slightly, chastised. I didn’t mean to be overbearing. “Apologies,” I say formally.

Grace sighs. “No, it’s fine, I know you’re worried,” he says. “I’d just rather spend my time with you talking about something else. What have you been up to today?”

I brighten. “Today was the tour of the meat culture lab,” I say.

“Oh, yeah? How’s that coming along?” Grace asks. “Actually, while we’re on the subject, lemme get my feeds started. Maybe I’ll digest it better if I work up an appetite talking about meat.”

Lately, Grace hasn’t been able to tolerate enough oral intake to meet his nutritional needs. His teeth hurt, he’s nauseous, he has ulcers in his mouth. He’s hungry, but has no appetite. After a few days of fretting and fussing (on my part) and trying to come up with increasingly desperate ways to make himself choke down his daily serving of Taumoeba (on his part), Grace came up with a solution of inserting a nasogastric tube. The Hail Mary had plenty in stock from when the crew were in their comas, and the pumps for the “coma slurry” were just as easily used to pump Taumoeba.

Grace had to insert his own nasogastric tube. I was there when he did it, along with a member of the medical care node. Again, there wasn’t much we could do if it went wrong. Grace had cheerfully informed us that it was possible he’d “go down the wrong hole” (disguuusting) and insert the tube into his own lung, which is a vital organ.

“You guys will be able to see if that happens, though,” he added. “So that makes it a lot easier! Just yell at me to pull it back out!”

What followed was a few absolutely fucking horrible minutes of gagging and retching and crying, and at the end of it, Grace had a flexible polymer tube that went down his nose and into his alimentary canal. The dangling end of it is capped off right now, not in use, and pinned neatly to the front of his shirt.

Anyway. Now Grace can trickle Taumoeba directly into his stomach, on the days he can’t bring himself to swallow anything. It’s not enough. But it’s better than nothing.

“Don’t start just yet!” I say to Grace. “The lab gave me a sample to bring back for you, try that first. They said you should already have a copy of the schedule for introducing it to your diet?”

“Oh!” Grace gets excited, almost like he’s about to get out of bed again, so I roll my sphere to gently block him in.

“Here.” I take the storage capsule out of my satchel, and hold it up for him to examine. He leans forward, interested.

“That’s more than I was expecting,” he says. “The schedule says for me to have less than half of that, for my first meal.”

“Maybe they meant for you to store it for later?” I suggest.

Grace shakes his head. “I haven’t got anywhere to safely store it. Well, there’s a fridge in the lab, but no. Cross-contamination risk. The schedule just said they’d send me a fresh sample each day for the time being.”

“It must be extra,” I say, glancing down at the storage capsule. It’s very little meat, by the standards of Eridians, who normally consume infrequent but extremely energy-dense meals. It’s even small by human standards, so as not to overwhelm Grace’s digestive system.

Grace shrugs. “Guess we’ll have to dispose of it. I really don’t think I can safely store it, and I doubt the lab wants it back.”

“You want to try now, question?” I ask. I place the storage canister in the sphere’s airlock, close and cycle it.

“Sure, might as well,” Grace replies. “Mary, can I get a plate? And a knife and fork? Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Dr Grace,” the ship replies.

We wait a few minutes for the storage capsule to cool enough for Grace to safely pick it up. “I should’ve gotten you to cook it for me,” he says, grinning. “Just slice it up and lay it out on your carapace. Like ▄■░▊▕▒▒▄.”

“Need a word?” I ask, baffled. It’s fairly rare these days for me to encounter a word in his language that I don’t already know.

“Just a specific style of food preparation,” Grace says, which would explain why I don’t know it. “With raw meat slices and a hot plate in the middle of the table. You sit around with your friends and cook the meat however you like it.”

“Disgusting,” I announce.

“Yeah, whatever. As if you’re not planning on hanging around to watch me eat this,” Grace says, patting the storage capsule.

“Medical necessity,” I reply. Like we haven’t been watching each other consume food since almost the beginning of our partnership. Like Grace isn’t just as close to me now as any mate or family member. Closer.

“Man, I can’t wait until you’re finished making your new EVA suit,” Grace sighs, shuffling around to sit cross-legged on his sleeping platform. “Then I can get you to do errands for me. Like, I was planning on cooking this, but I don’t think I can get up again.”

“Should be safe for human digestive system while raw,” I say. “It’s freshly decanted, and has been kept in a sterile container since then.”

“Yeah, it’s just a textural thing,” Grace says. I bob my body mass up and down to gesture my understanding. Eridians are picky about food texture, too. “I guess it’s not too different from ▇▄ ▒. And some people eat other kinds of raw meat, I’m just not used to it.”

“Stop wasting energy talking and consume fuel already,” I say.

“Ugh,” Grace says. “Okay, let’s do this. Hey, Mary, can I have something for nausea? IV metoclopramide, if we’ve still got some.”

“Yes, Dr Grace,” the ship says. After a moment, the medication is dispensed, and the hands-robot springs into action. It draws the medication up with a sterile needle, and Grace obligingly holds out his arm, propped up on his bent knee. The hands-robot carefully searches for a vein, disinfects the area with alcohol, and the needle slips in.

I don’t like watching this part. It’s unsettling to me, that Grace’s body is so easily breached and infiltrated by a tiny, thin, sharp-tipped steel tube. It reminds me of the time after we collected the Taumoeba, when he was injured, and I had to drag him into range of the hands-robot so he could receive medical care. I can’t stop thinking about how easily damaged he is. But Grace claims that having the medication administered directly into his circulatory system is more effective. The other alternative is for him to ingest it, and that is obviously less preferable, when he’s already feeling nauseated.

“Medication will take some time to work, question?” I ask.

“Half an hour or so, usually,” Grace says. “Not sure it’ll actually do anything, but the ▔▇▄ effect is pretty powerful stuff.”

“New word?” I ask, pleased at the opportunity to learn. It’s not anywhere near as frequent these days, for Grace to say a word in his language that I’ve never heard before, but it still happens.

“▔▇▄. It’s, um. Well, maybe Eridians don’t even have this. It’s a psychological phenomenon where you give someone a supposed medicine or treatment that doesn’t actually do anything. But they’re expecting it to have a positive effect, so it actually improves their symptoms. Or seems to. It doesn’t really apply for most things, but nausea is partially psychological, so. Maybe it will help.”

“That’s nonsensical.” I’m not sure I grasped all the nuances of Grace’s explanation, but it seems like he’s saying that just the act of administering a medication will make him feel better, even if it has no actual physiological effect. “The human brain is an amazing organ. I guess that’s what happens when you do all your cognition with a pile of wet meat.”

“Hey, this pile of wet meat helped save the world, you know,” Grace says. He leans back on his sleeping platform, then shifts onto his side to look down at me. “Actually, I’m gonna move the mattress onto the floor, okay? I wanna cuddle.”

I give a happy chirp, and scoot my sphere back out of the way. This is another thing I wish I could help with, but Grace looks reasonably steady on his feet as he gets up and hefts the mattress off the sleeping platform. He places the plate and implements and the canister of cultured meat on the floor next to the mattress, and then lies down.

This is much better. It means I can push the sphere up onto the mattress, and Grace can curl his body around its circumference.

“Oh, that feels amazing,” he sighs, and I feel my hearts ache. I resent the fact of my body temperature sometimes. Every time I look at the burn scar on Grace’s arm, every time I think about the fact that we can never touch directly without both of us being hurt. But right now, it’s a blessing. I can alleviate his pain just a little, just with the very nature of my existence.

“Grace,” I croon, and my vocal harmonics sing out all my worry and pain and fear and love. “Grace, Grace, beloved.”

“Yeah, buddy.” Grace presses a hand against the wall of my sphere, and I place my own hand up against it. “I’m right here. Love you too, Rocky.”

We lie there for a while, and we wait for Grace’s medication to kick in. Him, feeling my body heat, and me, listening to his internal organs pulse and churn. Reassuring ourselves that we’re both still alive.

“So what else did you do today?” Grace asks.

“Meat lab,” I say.

“That was all?” Grace sounds a bit disappointed. “Have you seen Adrian lately?”

“You know I haven’t,” I say. I’d have told him, if I had.

“C’mon, Rock,” Grace cajoles me. He raps his knuckles gently against my sphere. “You gotta make an effort here, man. You told me the two of you were thinking of getting back together.”

I did say that. Mostly to make Grace feel better. In his current state, he doesn’t need to be worrying about me.

“We saw each other lI𝓁 days ago, you know that,” I say. “We had a good conversation.”

“Nothing more than that?” Grace asks.

“Good, good conversation,” I repeat, and Grace laughs. Probably reading more into the statement than I intended, but that’s fine.

It really had been a relief to meet with Adrian, to know they were well. Thriving, even. I have no doubt they mourned me, but they carried on with their life in my absence, which was all I wanted. They were happy to meet with me too, we still get along, though it’s slightly awkward after all those years apart. There’s still a chance of us becoming something more again. Becoming mates again. But I don’t have the time or the space in my hearts for that, right now.

To tell the truth, I don’t know if Adrian really forgives me, for being so ready to throw my life away in service of the greater good. Are they actually so happy to have me back? Or is it just that anyone would be— should be happy, to have one of the heroes who saved Erid for a potential mate? Are they simply doing what they feel they’re supposed to do?

I can’t help but wonder that about every Eridian I meet, these days. Even my family, the people who have known me since I was a hatchling, they seem unsure of how to act around me. Part of it’s my fault. I don’t make it easy for them. At times, I am the same person they always knew. At times, I am solitary, moody, short-tempered. I steam up with anxiety, but won’t let any of them soothe me. My primary concern right now is keeping my Grace alive, and I don’t have a lot of patience for anything that takes my focus away from that. They know about the harrowing experience I’ve been through, but none of them have ever been isolated in space for l⩝𝓁l years. They don’t really know what it was like, out there. There’s only one person who really understands, and he’s curled around my life support sphere, forever on the other side of a sheet of xenonite.

So, no. Adrian and I haven’t “gotten back together”, as Grace puts it. I’ve got the rest of my life for that, if it seems more important to me later on. Right now, I have other priorities.

Still, I don’t want Grace to worry.

“We might go to a music performance together next month,” I tell him.

“Aw, that’s so cute!” Grace says, face creasing in a wide smile. It really makes him so happy, to think I’ve got the rest of my life all nicely sorted out. “I knew you crazy kids would work it out.”

“Not a child,” I say, tetchily. “Also not mentally unsound.” Debatable.

“Figure of speech,” Grace says, still grinning, and wraps himself a little tighter around my sphere.

“Twenty-five minutes have elapsed,” I say, translating into base ten and human time units for Grace’s convenience. “Ready to try meat, now?”

“Ugh,” Grace says again, and buries his face in the mattress. “Not really.”

I could give him another six minutes, another twelve, another hour. But we’ve been through this before. The medication helps, but not much. If I’m waiting for Grace to be enthusiastic about eating, it’ll never happen.

“You have to try, Grace,” I say. “Just a small amount.” Pressing my hand into the fine mesh panel of the sphere, I nudge the storage canister into Grace’s hip.

Grace sighs, then sits up to open the canister. The item inside sounds soft and slippery, still bathed in the remnants of nutrient fluid.

“Looks like ground beef,” Grace comments.

“Dirt?” I ask, confused.

“No, different ground. Like, mashed up into small pieces.”

“Ohh,” I say. “Seems okay, that’s how Eridians consume meat.”

“Humans too, sometimes. But I was kinda hoping for a steak.”

“Disgusting,” I say again, affectionately. Grace likes to consume his food in what seems like impractically large chunks, which he then pulverises into mush with the hard mineral protrusions inside his mouth.

“Good texture!” Grace argues. He cuts a little less than half of the mass of the cultured meat, and places it on his plate, then regards it for a moment.

I make an expectant noise.

Grace takes his implement, and slices a tiny morsel off the corner of the cultured meat. Raises it to his mouth, then hesitates, and places it back down again.

“Sorry,” he says. “I really appreciate how much work has gone into making this, but I just feel too sick. I can’t eat anything right now.”

I could sob with mingled frustration and concern. “You have to,” I insist. “Grace, you need to consume food.” Slipping into vulgarity, I add, “Eat.”

Grace slumps, draping his upper body against the sphere.

“If I try and force myself, I’m gonna vomit, and you’re really not gonna like that,” he says. “Look, I’m tired, Rock. I’m sorry to waste it, but I can’t do it. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Grating out an upset noise, I press my hand into the mesh panel, and use it to scoop up a small piece of the cultured meat. It feels soft, and I can hear the moist, fatty squish that it makes between my fingers.

“Just try a small amount,” I insist.

“Gonna hand-feed it to me?” Grace says, with the intonation that means he’s making a joke.

I freeze. That’s an obscene suggestion, and Grace is familiar enough with Eridian cultural norms that he should know that.

“Sorry, gross, I know,” Grace says.

“I’ll do it,” I say, at the same time. “If it helps. Will hand-feed Grace.”

I can hear the blood rushing to Grace’s pallid cheeks. “Um,” he says. Hesitates. “Yeah, okay. Maybe just a little bit. Give it a go.”

I feel myself shudder. What the fuck am I doing. Even after all that Grace and I have done for each other, surely this is crossing a line? But he said it was okay.

“Bring your head down,” I instruct. There’s a limit to how far I can reach up through the mesh panel, and all the way up to his precipitously tall head is beyond it.

Grace slouches inelegantly, seemingly reluctant to let the rest of his body lose physical contact with the sphere, until his head is about level with my hand.

“Okay,” he says.

I can hear his mouthparts moving, the thick muscle sliding wetly against the roof of his mouth, then out over his lip, revealing his soft tender interior. Tiny sounds are made as the mineral protrusions click together. I’ve gotten good at filtering out my awareness of some of his more distracting bodily processes, but it’s difficult to think of anything else right now.

I raise my hand as far as I can, and he almost meets it with his mouth, before pulling back again.

“Grace!” I’m despairing now. Maybe we can somehow pulverise the meat even further, and pump it down his nasogastric tube? No, it’ll just get blocked, and then Grace will have to pull it out and put a new one in.

“Sorry. Just give me a minute.” Grace closes his eyes and leans his face against the sphere. Crouched over like this, his head is level with my body mass.

“Grace. Open your hole,” I snap.

“My what?” Grace says. Obviously he doesn’t know that word in Eridian, because I haven’t taught it to him. I try not to swear around Grace, since I know he doesn’t like it. But it’s hard when I’m so emotionally fraught, and when we’re already talking about such an impolite topic.

“Your orifice.” Embarrassed, I correct myself to the polite euphemism Grace is familiar with.

“Okay, since you asked nicely,” Grace says, amused. I think he figured out from my tone that I was being crude, before.

Surprisingly, my swearing seems to have… helped? Or at least distracted Grace enough to get his mind off his nausea. Very slightly, in a way I can’t help interpret as shyly, he parts his lips and leans forward.

I press the fragment of meat into his mouth.

My vents tremble as his lips brush my fingers. I can’t feel him through the xenonite, not directly, but I can feel the slight pressure as he makes contact. I can hear the strange cool softness of his flesh. The wet cavernous opening, the way it twitches and contracts to swallow secreted fluids. Then his lips move, so bizarrely flexible, to brush the piece of meat back onto his strong mouth-muscle. Grace swallows again, and the meat disappears.

“Good…” I say. My notes come out strained and cracked, so I try again. “Good job, Grace,” I say.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Grace muses. “It would be better if it was cooked, but it’s been so long since I’ve tasted anything besides Taumoeba, even raw meat is an improvement.”

“More?” I ask. I’m struggling to form full sentences, but maybe Grace will just assume I’m dumbing things down for him.

Grace thinks about this for a moment. “Yeah, I think I can handle some more,” he says.

There’s not really any reason why Grace can’t feed himself. But he’s ill, and he’s tired, and this is something I can do for him. So I do it.

Another tiny scrap of soft, moist tissue. I press it to Grace’s mouth, gentle but insistent. I can’t feel it, but I can hear a slight suction, the way his mouth-muscle licks the remaining traces of meat from the xenonite mesh.

I think about the fact that this meat is cloned from Grace’s own cells. Nurtured by Eridian science, given back to Grace for nourishment. Brought to him by my own hand. If the universe is kind, Grace will grow healthy again on this sustenance.

Grace sighs quietly. Again, I pick up a piece of meat. Again, he eats it from my hand. His eating orifice (his hole) is so careful and delicate, so dexterous with his flexible face muscles. Sometimes, I get distracted just observing the way it moves as he shapes words and makes expressions. Sometimes, I think…

I feed Grace another mouthful. This time, his mouth-muscle scrapes over my finger and around it. I shiver, chittering at a pitch that I hope is too low for Grace to detect.

“Hungry?” I ask. That’s not a question any Eridian would dream of asking someone who wasn’t their mate or their direct relative. Even then, only privately and indirectly, to clarify post-meal sleeping arrangements. Phrased so bluntly, it’s easier for Grace to understand what I’m asking, but it also has a sexual implication that I’m absolutely sure Grace does not grasp the language well enough to pick up on.

“A little,” Grace admits, smiling and lowering his gaze. Is he trying to be coy on purpose, or is it unintentional? His alien body language isn’t naturally intuitive to me, but he still somehow manages to be impossibly charming. “Guess it’s working.”

“Good, good,” I manage to restrain myself to just saying it twice. I’m so ridiculously pleased. Not just by Grace doing what he’s told, doing what’s best for him for once— by him tolerating solid food, something that will nourish him and improve his health. Proteins and fats that his body badly needs, B vitamins, phosphate, iron, zinc, and yes, traces of cobalt, which he apparently needs, too. It’s not everything. I won’t be able to relax until the chemistry lab is able to synthesise all of Grace’s required micronutrients. But this feels like progress. Hope.

“Can I have some more?” Grace asks.

I want to trill with joy and dance on the spot. Grace is being so good, so sweet. Soaking up my body heat, resting his weary limbs, and eating every bite I give him. I’m happy, because if he can eat the specified portion of cultured meat— if he can keep it down and digest it and use its constituent parts to heal and grow— that means he’ll eventually be well again. It means we’ve found part of our solution. It means he’ll live. I try to focus on this comparatively noble and selfless form of pleasure at the thought of my friend getting better, and not on how much I like being able to perceive the hollow space inside his mouth.

His hole. It’s hard not to notice it, when he talks out of it and emotes with it and has been freely and shamelessly eating in front of me for years. I think at some point I must have stopped being shocked by it. A human mouth isn’t anything like an Eridian orifice, after all, and it’s prudish and closed-minded to compare them. I got used to seeing it. Just another one of my alien friend’s many oddities that I gamely learnt to live with. But our current situation has brought it back into sharp focus, and I find I am not coping.

Slowly— as though I am moving in twice the gravity I’m used to, rather than a little more than half— I scoop up the last of Grace’s portion of meat. He ducks his head to meet my hand, very nearly eager.

My auricles seem to strain, with how hard I’m listening to pick up on his every movement. Grace’s lips meet my fingers and he gives a quiet sigh of satisfaction. Hungry. I vibrate with delirious hope that soon he will have a proper appetite again. I’ll be able to bring him food that truly nourishes him, that the best minds of my homeworld have come together to create for him. He will eat it and he will enjoy it and he will be made healthy and strong again by it. His mouth-muscle writhes wetly against the xenonite barrier, and I think about all the other things I could feed him.

It’s impossible, and furthermore, it’s disgusting. Grace, my lanky ephemeral oddity. The two of us were never even meant to touch, let alone build any sort of life together. He’s still got a scar on his arm, from the one and only time my carapace made direct contact with his skin. If those scientists of the human life support thrum could see us now, would they still call us Honoured? They’d think I was sick, from all my years alone in space, or that Grace had corrupted me with his alien influence. Or they’d think I was taking advantage of him in his weakened state, and they’d probably be right.

“Grace,” I hum. The translation I picked for his name is so short and inelegant, but that only incentivises me to repeat it. “Grace grace gracegracegrace.”

“Hey, Rocky,” he says, mouth still up against my fingertips. His mouth-muscle darts wetly forth again, then back in. His lips purse, and I feel that suction again, tugging at the thin xenonite mesh.

“Mmh,” Grace hums. I feel the vibrations through my hands, right the way into my core. I hear the wet click as he swallows, his mouth-muscle tapping the roof of his mouth.

I can’t really explain what happens next. Does Grace lean forward, or is it some unaccountable spasm of my hand? Or is it an entirely volitional movement, and I’m just making excuses for myself? I seem to stand outside myself, transfixed, as my finger slides over Grace’s lip and into his hole.

This can’t be comfortable for him. He shows a definite preference for soft surfaces and smooth, even textures. My carapace and the faceted xenonite encasing it are neither of those things. It’s like my entire being is concentrated within the auricles of that one finger. I hear Grace swallow his mouth fluids, and the sound echoes, and I am excruciatingly aware of the exact dimensions of the inside of his mouth. The plush texture of the walls, the hard and rugose roof. The muscular twitches and contractions as he seals his lips and forms suction again. The wet glissando of his secretions coating every surface.

Experimentally, I slide my finger in a little further. He lets me. He lets me get away with so much. Taking over his space ship, bossing him around, teasing him when he’s stupid or clumsy, even though he’s actually so clever and adaptable that I’m constantly in awe. He saved my life, he saved my planet. He gave up everything he knew for it, and didn’t even think he’d survive. That’s how much he’s given me. Yet somehow I keep asking for more. It’s a hideous greedy thing, this pit that’s been left inside of me after l⩝𝓁l years of isolation. But I’m lonely, and I’m hungry, and I can’t help myself.

I’m so small compared to Grace, I could easily fit another finger inside his orifice if I wanted. Sometimes when he’s tired, it triggers an involuntary inhalation where his mouth gapes impossibly wide, often accompanied by a disgusting pop from the fluid-filled pocket where the bone of his jaw meets his skull. So I know his hole is much bigger than it seems when it’s closed. I could maybe fit my whole hand in there. It would put pressure on his mouth ulcers, his aching gums and loose teeth. These days, when he opens his mouth too wide, his dry skin cracks and bleeds. It would hurt him. I think he’d let me do it anyway.

Grace’s mouth muscle slips out and curls around the final piece of cultured meat, loosely grasped within my hand. Sinuous, dexterous, he pulls it back into his hole. I feel him swallow again around my finger.

“You’re doing so well,” I say. “That’s the last of it. All down now. Good, perfect mouth. Perfect cunt.”

Grace definitely doesn’t know that word, but I still regret saying it, the instant I sing the notes.

Grace pulls back from the xenonite panel in a final slick wet slide, sits more fully upright, and lets out a heavy sigh.

“Feel okay, question?” I ask him.

“Yeah,” he says. “My stomach hasn’t quite made up its mind how it feels about solid food just yet, but I don’t think I’m going to be sick.”

I pipe out a soft, fretful noise, and rock my weight from side to side, before forcing myself to settle. This is good. Grace ate all of his first portion of cultured meat, and so far he’s keeping it down. This will work. He’ll be able to do the same thing again tomorrow, and the next day, and gradually his body will rebuild itself.

Grace is going to live.

My vents steam, and my air sacs let out a warbling cry that I don’t quite manage to clamp down on. I’m so relieved I want to just curl up and wail.

“Rocky!” Grace says. “What’s the matter?” He wraps his arms around my sphere, and it’s so fucking unfair that we can’t embrace carapace-to-carapace.

“Nothing,” I say, fighting to keep my tone even. “It’s just. A lot.” That’s a phrase I’ve picked up from Grace. A lot of what? No need to specify.

Grace shifts so his face is mashed up against the xenonite between us. “I know, bud,” he says.

We stay like that for a while. Grace dozes, propped up against my sphere, and I listen to his disgusting, miraculous internal processes.

“Guess I’d better dispose of the leftovers,” Grace eventually says, shifting to sit up. I already miss the slight pressure of his body weight against my sphere.

“Later,” I say. “Grace lie down and rest now. Remember to do your circulatory fluid test in six hours.”

“Hey Mary, can you do a blood test to check my electrolyte levels, six hours from now?” Grace asks.

“Of course, Dr. Grace,” the ship replies.

“Although, actually,” Grace says without context, turning to face me again. “Do you want it?”

“Want what, question?” I ask blankly. The blood test?

“The leftover lab meat. Grace-▙▄▒░, whatever we’re calling it.”

We are not calling it whatever the fuck Grace just said. He’s bad at naming things, I don’t need him to translate to know he probably just said something stupid.

“Want it for what? I can’t bring it back to the lab,” I say.

“No, I mean to eat,” Grace says, nudging the storage canister with one finger. “It’s fine. Probably less heavy metals than what you’re used to, but you can still use the protein, right?”

I can. It will be a very small and nutritionally unbalanced meal, which makes me feel kind of itchy to contemplate, but.

I don’t want to waste it. Grace won’t eat it, he probably physically can’t force himself to ingest any more, and. It can’t go back to the lab. The only destination for it is the waste receptacle, to be incinerated.

This is Grace’s meat, both in the sense that it was made for his consumption, and in the sense that it was cloned from his tissues.

I’m not normally sentimental about Grace’s body like this, not when it’s no longer meaningfully part of him. Grace sheds hair and skin cells constantly, and his digestive system does unspeakable things with its own lining, and I’m happy not to think about any of that more than I absolutely have to. But it seems like a monstrous waste to discard this soft vulnerable blob of Grace’s muscle and fat cells, when Grace himself has so little of those things to spare.

“Go on,” Grace says, grinning. He can tell I’m hesitating, thinking about it. He opens up his side of the airlock compartment in my sphere, and places the storage capsule inside. “You’ve been working so hard lately, running around trying to keep all those scientists organised. Have a snack, take a nap. I’ll watch over you.”

The casual intimacy makes my hearts thump. We’ve been doing this for years now— arranging sleep schedules like we’re bonded, like we’re mates. It goes without saying that Grace will watch me sleep whenever he’s able. But he still likes to reassure me with the reminder.

“It hasn’t been that long since I last… ingested,” I say delicately. My stomach cavity still feels relatively full, still processing the nutrients from my last meal, not ready to expel waste just yet. I won’t start feeling hunger signals for λ𝓁 days, at least.

“This barely counts,” Grace says, closing the airlock compartment. “It’s basically junk food, right? It’s hardly anything compared to the size of your usual meals.”

I shiver, and tap my fingers together, considering. It is technically possible for me to open my orifice and ingest a small amount of additional food. It’s not something most Eridians would bother doing, due to the privacy requirements and inconvenience of eating. But I want to do it. Grace has offered me this gift, and I want to take it.

The airlock compartment finishes repressurising, and I slowly open it.

I carried this storage canister and its contents all the way from the human life support research complex, up the space elevator to the Hail Mary. It’s never felt more weighty than in this moment, half-empty, laden with significance.

I pick the meat up directly in my bare hand. It sizzles slightly, naked proteins denaturing in my body heat. I try not to think about how this is the closest I’ve gotten to touching Grace directly in years.

My carapace shudders as the lips of my orifice unseal. It’s easier than it should be between mealtimes. Embarrassingly, I’m slightly aroused. Not enough to be obvious to even another Eridian, and especially (mercifully) not to Grace. Not enough to need to do anything about. But my orifice— my hole— readily gives way. Slick mercury beads around my opening.

Grace is looking at me out of the corner of his eye. It took me a while to realise his light-detection sense was monodirectional, and longer after that to realise he could still change the direction of his vision without actually moving his head. It’s hard for me to tell exactly where he’s looking, unless I’m focusing closely enough to actually hear his ocular muscles twitch. But right now, it’s just a feeling I have. He’s polite enough not to point his head directly at me, but he’s still interested enough in my biology to want to watch.

Like family. Like a mate.

The piece of meat is so small and soft, I don’t really need to crush it before eating. I do anyway, just for the pleasure of feeling it squeezed beneath my hand. Placing it inside my orifice, my hand brushes against my genital pore, just inside the rim. Normally easy to avoid, with an empty stomach cavity. But half-full and half-aroused as I am, the glancing touch makes me keen a short, high-pitched note.

“What was that?” Grace asks, amused. “Do I taste that good?”

“Just uncomfortable,” I fucking lie.

“How do you think I feel?” Grace asks. “I haven’t eaten solid food in months.”

“Poor fragile human,” I say. The teasing condescension is easy to retreat back into. Anything sincere I could say in this moment would be far too much.

Grace is inside me. His genetic material, used to build these lipids and amino acids that I will digest, and incorporate into my own body. He’s already saved me, several times over. Again I wonder, how much more can I ask of him to give?

I heave a sigh out through my vents as I withdraw my hand from my orifice, and seal myself shut. I feel slightly overfull, but not as uncomfortable as I’d claimed. Lethargy is already creeping up on me. I want nothing more than to curl up and rest, set aside my worries for a while, safe in the company of my… my…

“Grace watch?” I ask again. I’m slurring my words now, not speaking simply for Grace’s sake, but because I can’t be bothered to string a full sentence together. I feel pathetic for seeking his reassurance, his protection, when he’s so sick and exhausted. But maybe it’ll help us both.

“Yeah, Rock,” he says. The fondness in his voice burns, like the sear of my hand on his skin. “I’m gonna be right here. I’ll take care of you.”

I only ate a small amount, so it’s unlikely I’ll sleep for very long. This is good, because there’s so much more to do. I have another lab tour coming up, and in the meantime I wanted to review some schematics for a water filtration system for Grace’s biodome, and of course, the whole reason I’m here on the Hail Mary is to check up on Grace himself.

My xenonite ball shifts slightly as Grace settles down on the mattress next to me. With my fading senses, I hear the gurgle of his awakened digestive system, the muscular contractions of peristalsis. The soothing, rhythmic swoosh of his air sacs inflating and deflating in slow, even breaths. The steady thudding of his heart. I hear him nuzzle his face against the wall of my sphere, and briefly press his lips against it in the affectionate gesture he calls a kiss.

I know he’ll still be here watching me when I wake up. We are safe. We completed our mission, we saved Earth and Erid, and my mission to keep Grace alive will succeed, too. Grace will eat, and he will live.