Chapter Text
About three days after Rocky and I install the Don’t-Go-Crazy panels and watch all of Meryl Streep’s filmography, I wake up bright and early to find that something about my habitat is very different.
Technically, it’s not morning. Rocky and I set the lights up to have a sort of day-night cycle, but I like to mess around with it to stay up late or get up early, so the routine is kind of weird. My approximate schedule is that I lie down when the lights start to dim, but then I can’t sleep so I get back up and turn them on. Then I actually fall asleep an hour later, and when I wake up in the “morning” the habitat is bright and sunny, the xenonite is shimmering, and a dozen Eridians waiting outside the airlock for me to try a sip of my new smoothie.
Today, though, something is different. There are less Eridians outside my habitat, and one who is inside.
“Hello good morning Grace!” Rocky says.
“Rocky,” I say, pushing myself up on one arm and blinking the sleep from my eyes. “You’re... in your suit?”
Rocky is in fact, in his XEVA suit, which has been slowly fine-tuned and engineered to fit closer to his body. It’s more like an... exoskeleton now, with built-in life support that gives him a few hours of Eridian atmosphere to breathe. He’s hanging above me, all five arms gripping the xenonite wall above my bed, his carapace close enough to my face that when I exhale, it fogs up just the tiniest bit.
“Wanted to watch Grace sleep, wait for Grace to wake up,” Rocky says. I try not to think about the fact that right now, his 800-pound body is currently inches away from falling onto my ribcage and crushing me. He leans down even closer, so close I can make out the tiny granules of non-crystalline mineraloids that make up his carapace through the XEVA suit. “Grace get up now, question?”
“I would, but someone is kind of blocking my path,” I point out. Rocky jolts, then swings out of the way.
“Apology apology apology!” he says, thudding to the floor and scrabbling up the side of my bed. “Grace get up now!”
“Working on it,” I say, sitting up and stretching my arms out in front of me with a groan. Man. I feel like an eighty-year-old man sometimes. My hip pops as I stand up, so I bend down with purpose to really stretch out all my flexors and tendons. “Did they drop off breakfast already?”
“Grace disgusting meal is here, yes,” Rocky says. “I brought inside.”
“Room service? Today must be a special day.” I find my disgusting meal, which has been placed underneath the sink. Weird spot, but I won’t mention it. Sometimes Rocky puts things in weird places. I think one time he tried to tell me it was some kind of cultural thing, or a biological urge to do with food and resource guarding, but I honestly did not get any of it. When I take a sip, the smoothie is still warm, which lends itself a little bit to the flavor. Not the texture, though. Definitely not the texture. I fight back the urge to grimace and wipe my mouth, turning to the side and deciding to just chug it.
“Close your ears,” I call back to Rocky. “I’m going all in.”
“Ewwwww,” Rocky says, making a sort of clipping, disgusted noise over and over again as I down the beaker full of sludge in one go. Like I said, the taste is not terrible. Somehow they’ve really grasped a faux-banana flavor, mixed with sand and a light dusting of woodchip. I can say with certainty that it’s not the grossest thing I’ve ever eaten.
“I’m done,” I say, burping loudly. Over on the other side of the room, Rocky falls over and curls his legs inwards like he’s a dead spider. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic.”
“Grace so disgust it kill me,” Rocky says, one leg twitching. “Grace fill room with disgust mouth sound. I died.”
“You’ve heard me do worse,” I say. don’t mind reminding him about the lack of privacy aboard the Hail Mary.
“Urgghhh,” Rocky says. He drags himself up to his feet as I busy myself getting ready for the day. The entire time Rocky is following me around, handing me my toothbrush and a fresh shirt before I can even ask. As claustrophobic as it is, I don’t entirely mind having a guy who follows me around and gives me everything I need two seconds before I know I need it. Now that he’s mostly finished with his new suit, he’s all up in my business. He’s attentive, I’ll give him that much.
“What’s going on with you?” I ask, craning my neck to get a better look at the new, strange addition to the airlock. It’s large and tube-shaped, like a large... tube. Or a tunnel. I think I might have an idea, but I want to hear it from him. “Are we going somewhere today?”
“Maybe,” Rocky says. He skitters around my legs as I go to put my empty beaker in the sink to wash later, then slips on the smooth floor as he skids to avoid tripping me and goes toppling over. “Apology. Excuse me.”
I crouch down, grinning as I tip my head to look at him. “All good in there?”
“Rocky has surprise, much surprise for Grace,” Rocky says. He scrabbles to get up, all five of his arms working overtime. He’s talking fast and loud, which means he’s really excited. I stifle a laugh. “Rocky has surprise, has been working on it while Grace was asleep, had to be very quiet since Grace does not sleep right, other Eridians did not understand so were loud many times–”
“Oh, it’s okay,” I say. “I didn’t hear a peep.”
“–and Rocky very worried, but completed project very fast and Grace did not wake up!” Rocky jumps up and down, then turns his carapace to the side I’ve dubbed “Mr. Monobrow” and says, “Grace ready, question?”
“Give me a second,” I say. I go for my shoes, and take my time with the laces. I go slow on purpose – just to watch him get more and more frustrated. “Do you think I should change?” I ask, looking down at my Ah! shirt and spacewalk pants. The other week I made myself a belt. Learning how to sew has been very difficult, but I am getting there!
Rocky drums two hands on the floor in agitation. “No no no,” he says. “Grace beautiful as is. Come on, come on, come on!”
“Aw, you think I’m beautiful?”
Rocky ushers me... into the airlock. Um. “Rocky just said beautiful to make Grace go faster.”
“That’s not technically a no,” I say, ignoring how my stomach actually did a little flip for a minute there. “You really know how to woo a guy.” I look around as Rocky shuts the door, then goes over to the little airlock panel. “Hey, can I ask– are we– I know this is a new tunnel, but what are we doing again, exactly?”
“Shh,” Rocky says. I press one hand up against the xenonite and squint, trying to see beyond the distortion. There’s another section out there, made of the same clear material as the one we’re in now. Small footlights mark the pathway, glowing dim against the floor, with a single row of evenly spaced bulbs on the ceiling with one central wire to power them all. Wow. He really put effort into this. Rocky presses a button on the control panel, and the airlock door swings outward, into this new space.
Hesitantly, I take a step.
“Grace come on!” Rocky says, pushing himself out of the airlock. In the tunnel it still smells faintly of ammonia and the air is almost uncomfortably warm, but it’s definitely pressurized correctly. “This way,” Rocky says, and I follow.
We go up, and up, and up, far enough until I realize we’ve been underground this whole time. My habitat was literally in a cave. That makes sense, I think, considering the surface temperature of Erid. Put the delicate human somewhere safer.
The walk is long. We’re in some kind of long, dark tunnel that the Eridians must use to get down to me. Rocky has added just enough light for my tiny human brain to be able to see, and I’m careful not to trip on the uneven ground. Occasionally, I have to stop and catch my breath, but Rocky is patient in those moments. He only urges me forward once he thinks I’ve recovered.
“Here, here, here,” Rocky says. It’s a wide left turn, and I take it slowly and carefully. The slope upward is starting to even out.
“Are you gonna tell me where we’re going?” I ask.
“You said you wanted to see Erid,” Rocky says. “Am showing you Erid.”
“I guess I didn’t think you would be showing me so soon,” I say, taking a step over a large bump in the tunnel. “Are we going somewhere in particular?”
“Will see,” Rocky says mysteriously.
I let him have his moment and shut up so I can focus on walking. I can feel... something. A sort of vibration in the walls whenever I touch them, and a tension in the air that I can’t place. Rocky is getting more and more excited too, jumping and bumping into the walls whenever he rushes forward a little too quickly.
Finally, Rocky says, “We are here!” His voice is so high-pitched with excitement that I grimace.
“And where, exactly, is here?” I ask, just as Rocky leads me around another curve.
“Place where Adrian wait,” Rocky says, and oh!
“Hey, Adrian,” I say. They’re in another XEVA suit– the same one they came to meet me in the first time up on the Hail Mary, but with some new, sleek modifications. There’s another airlock here, and it leads out into another part of the tunnel. Rocky has clearly been working on this for quite some time. He’s built me a hamster cage on steroids. They must have done all this first before they extended the tunnel to my habitat, just to keep it a surprise. Wow.
“Hello, Ryland,” Adrian says, lifting a hand to wave. I haven’t seen them for a few days– I forgot how tall they are! Rocky scuttles up next to them and bonks his carapace to theirs, very gently, then steps back. Adrian takes a wobbly step forward. “Rocky make me new suit.”
“And look at it!” I say, stepping to the side as Adrian suddenly plows forward. “Wow!”
“Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude,” Adrian says. They stop. Then they turn very slowly. “Apology. Adrian new to suit.”
“Well it looks really good,” I say. “Very streamlined. Very chic.”
“Not understand word.”
“Grace calling Adrian beautiful,” Rocky says, shuffling between us. “Because is true. Come on, is time go.”
“Time go what?” I ask, as both my best little alien friends in the world walk further up the tunnel. “Is anyone gonna tell me where we’re going?”
Then I hear it.
The vibrations have been growing stronger the whole time we’ve been walking, but now I realize it’s not just vibrations. It’s sound.
Sound is, of course, vibration itself. I hadn’t been able to hear anything in my ears because I was at the wrong distance or angle or the frequency wasn’t in the right range for my human senses to pick up on. But sound is spatially affected by pressure, velocity, and displacement. Sound waves themselves aren’t particles. They’re mechanical waves that travel through an elastic medium (like a diaphragm or metal or stone, which I guess aren’t really elastic in the traditional sense, but when has physics ever been traditional?) which are then received and perceived by– us. Humans and Eridians, and all other kinds of life. The cave walls and my xenonite tunnels had been dampening the full effect for a while now, but the closer we get to the source of the disturbance, the stronger the sound waves. I’m starting to hear it now too, as the frequencies my ears can pick up finally make it to my eardrums.
It’s loud. I can’t make out words, but it’s not music, either. It’s something else. Something with deeper meaning and an intonation I can’t quite place. It’s both alluring and terrifying. It activates some primal part of my mind that still wears a cheetah-skin toga and holds a wooden club and says ooga-booga and tells it to run.
“Rocky?” I ask, suddenly feeling more than a little frightened. Rocky turns around to face me.
“Is okay, Grace,” he says, beckoning me forward.
“I don’t know if I can go in there,” I say.
Rocky taps his fingers together, then swings his carapace between me and where Adrian is standing a couple feet up the tunnel. He skitters back and forth for a second, then moves towards me. “Made the walls thick,” he explains. “Did not want Grace ears to hurt with sound, so dampened noise. Wanted Grace to see Erid. Wanted Grace to meet Thrum.”
Of course it’s the Thrum. What else could it be? I remember Adrian saying that they were organizing the second-largest one since the Astrophage became a noticeable problem. How many Eridians are standing above me right now, wailing their song to the earth? Four thousand? Five? Ten?
I wanted to be here a day ago, but now I can hardly get my legs to move. They burn from the effort of getting here. Rocky is waiting patiently in front of me as I stare at him. The light here is dim– he had to stretch the bulbs further and further apart to get them this far. There’s only so far I can stray from the habitat before the entire world would go dark. I would be helpless. But Rocky built me a pathway through it, and kept the floor as level as he could. And now he wants me to meet a thrum.
...Whatever that means.
All I know is that it’s important. It’s important to Rocky, and to Adrian too, I think, based on the fact that they’re here.
I nod before I can let the fear take over. “Okay,” I whisper.
“Good good good,” Rocky whispers back.
He leads me forward, and the noise gets louder and louder. Adrian falls back to walk with us, and I have to press my lips together hard not to laugh at how absurd I must look. A guy in a nerdy science t-shirt flanked by two aliens as they walk down a dimly-lit path towards a cacophony of Eridian voices– it’s like something out of a bad sci-fi flick.
But all that goes away when I step out into the Thrum.
Rising up around me are high walls in a familiar shade. This whole place is built of xenonite, of course. But it’s not the transparent version I’m used to– it’s the same kind that Blip-A was made of, like paint splashed together without actually being mixed. The space is huge and vaguely ovular, probably the same size as a football field. Actually, it’s a lot like a football field– the bottom is flat and wide, but the walls are slanted with staggered terraces that are filled to the brim with Eridians. I don’t mean just a couple– this place is packed. I can make out the bottom few rows thanks to a series of lights that Rocky must have scavenged from Mary and somehow connected to a power source. They light up the stadium all the way up to the top, like a city skyline at night. It gives the enormous room an ethereal, impossible ambiance. He must have been working on this for ages. Rocky, Adrian and I are in a geodesic dome of clear xenonite at one of the Thrum’s far ends, right at the mouth of the tunnel we walked up. It’s a little like one of those bubble hotels up near the Arctic circle, but instead of seeing the aurora borealis, I’m watching an alien species commune.
My chest literally throbs with inaudible frequencies, words I can’t hear, and my ears are filled with music. “Oh my god,” I say.
“Rocky added light so Grace could see,” Rocky says. “Do you like it?”
Do I like it? Do I like it? Is he crazy? I turn to look at him and find Rocky with his hands fidgeting, clicking gently. I can’t hear the nervous little noises he must be making right now over the sound of the Thrum, but he looks hesitant. This means a lot to him, I realize. More than I think I can understand.
“Of course I do,” I say, and Rocky visibly relaxes. “Why– why are they here?” I ask.
“To help build Ryland safe habitat to live,” Adrian says. They hum a soft little tune, the same one they first greeted me with weeks ago. A formal introduction.
“They Thrum,” Rocky says. He raises two of his arms and then lets out a long, warbling, wordless song. I look over at him and watch the way the low lights he installed at the bottom of this amphitheater cover his whole body in sharp, angular shadows. I want to call him beautiful, just because it’s true.
“What are they saying?” I ask. I make an ugly snorting noise as I try to keep myself from losing it. I turn to look at Rocky, but he seems intertwined with the thrumming. Tears slip out of my eyes and drip down my face, off the tip of my nose, and finally Rocky lowers his arms so he can turn his carapace up to face me. It takes him a little effort to disengage from the Thrum, but he rattles his vents and leans in until he’s bumping against me. Wordlessly, I lean into him.
After a second, Adrian speaks up. “Is many things.” They get quieter. “Is song. Is story. Is history. Is... not know word. Rocky, question?”
“They are saying...” Rocky pauses. “They are saying, thank you Grace. Thank you for saving star. Thank you for bringing Rocky home. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
I feel my heart catch in my chest.
I look back up just as what must be hundreds, no, thousands of Eridians start to sing along. It’s a roar of song and music and words, most of which I can’t catch. It’s totally overwhelming.
All of them are going to live because of Rocky and I.
I want to exist with these wonderful creatures, this beautiful world. I want to hear their stories and their songs. I want to teach them all about Earth, I want to drag the golden plates down off of Mary’s wall and tell them everything I know about my home, about being alive, about space. I want it so much it hurts, a curling claw hooked into my chest that makes it hard to breathe. I want to be with Rocky and heck, Adrian too, and I want to carve their names into my skin and grow old by their sides.
I’ve never felt so strongly about anything before. Not the Petrova taskforce, not even saving Earth. If I had felt like this when saving Earth, then I wouldn’t have turned around and gone back to find Blip-A and Rocky after the taumeoba escaped. I think there must be something wrong with me. To run away from humanity for so long, then do everything I can to save them, and somehow come out the other side still choosing an alien world.
Choosing Rocky.
I would do it all again. It’s not even a question. I would do it all again even if it means I end up here on Erid with no food or guarantee of safety. I don’t care how many awful protein smoothies I have to drink, or how small of a habitat I have to live in, or how some days, I kind of feel like a zoo animal. Forget all that crap about guns and heroin and dying before life gets too hard– why would I do that? Why would I just give up? After I’ve come this far? After everything these guys have done for me?
I suddenly can’t stand the oppressive, undyingly grateful voice of the Thrum. I turn around and rush clumsily down the tunnel Rocky built for me, using the wall as a crutch so that I can move faster. The air around me vibrates with Eridian song, so loud that I can’t seem to escape it no matter how far down I go. I clutch my chest– I can hardly breathe.
I want to live. I want to live.