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“Why is Grace being so weird about this?” Rocky asks, tapping one of his arms to signal the question with more vehemence than usual. “Not asking to demonstrate, only to explain.”
“It’s a weird question! It’s a weird thing to talk about! For humans, this is private!” Grace replies, throwing his own hands up in exasperation. “I gave you a laptop with all of wikipedia on it, go ask that!”
“Is not the same. Too many words I don’t know.”
“Great news, bud. The laptop also has all of Merriam Webster. And the Oxford English Dictionary! You’ve got options!”
Honestly, Rocky is probably exaggerating, anyway. Grace still has to enter words into their shared dictionary just about every day, or whatever counts for a day in space, but at this point the’re pretty esoteric or culturally specific. In fact, just this morning he’d actually added the word ‘esoteric.’
Rocky trills in irritation and changes tactics. “For Eridians, eating is private, but Grace watch. For science. Now Grace answer Rocky’s questions about human mating. For science.”
Grace catches himself about to insist that it’s not the same, that, if anything, Eridian eating habits and customs are more like human toilet habits (he’s spent a lot of time thinking about this). But he knows what he’d have said if one of his students had pulled that kind of ‘um, actually,’ with him, and he may be a hypocrite, but never let it be said that Dr. Captain Ryland Grace doesn’t have any dignity.
Honestly, it’s surprising it’s taken this long for Rocky to bring it up. And he knows it’s not going to go away if he ignores the subject; Rocky, his wonderful, genius, beloved best friend in the whole universe, is so stubborn that it makes Grace want to scream sometimes.
“Fine!” he says, spinning his chair so that he’s facing away from Rocky. “What do you want to know?”
“Movie described human who desired sexual intercourse as ‘horny.’ Humans do not have horns. Do humans grow horns during mating season like earth animal ‘deer?’ Why has Grace not mentioned this before?”
“Oh my god,” Grace says, covering his face with his hands, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead, where they stay, askew. In Rocky’s defense, that is a question that would be hard to answer with wikipedia. This is going to be a very long, very weird conversation.
Later, when he’s supposed to be sleeping, Grace blinks at the ceiling of his bunk and wonders why he is so weird about this subject. Sure, he hadn’t been lying when he’d said it was private, but he remembers enough about his roommate in undergrad, who was very sexually active and very eager to share all of his adventures, to know that his own reticence is, perhaps, a standard deviation or two above the human average.
Is it because he’s American? The United States is a nation of notoriously prudish people, but this feels deeper than a simple societal norm.
“Am I Catholic?” He wonders, not realizing he’s said it aloud until Rocky replies.
“No understand word. Why Grace not sleep?”
“Just… thinking about earlier,” he mumbles, turning onto his side, facing Rocky.
“Oh, when Grace was big big drama about explaining human mating,” Rocky sounds dismissive.
Grace rolls his eyes and lets it go. He thinks… he would remember if he was a practicing member of any religion. It would permeate so many facets of his life that he wouldn’t be able to not remember anything about it.
Was he… raised religious? Memories of his childhood are still fuzzier than the rest. Of all the things he can’t bring himself to forgive Eva Stratt for, the fact that he can’t remember his mother’s face is high on the list.
Still, that idea doesn’t feel right either.
Maybe– and that’s when the memory rushes into him like a wave breaking on the rocks.
Recovering from amnesia is a lot like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, Grace thinks. At first, every revelation hit like a freight truck, a wild reevaluation of what the overall picture might end up being.
These days, just over four months into the trip to Erid, he thinks he has a pretty good understanding of what all those pieces come together to make. There are still gaps, and he still remembers new things almost every day, but it’s always pretty much in line with what he’s been able to deduce about himself from context. A regular Sherlock Holmes, he’s turning out to be, except that the only mystery he’s solving is what his own deal is.
Which is to say, he’s rarely shocked or surprised by what he remembers anymore.
Rarely.
But not never.
Giving everyone on the project access to Grace’s full calendar was a mistake. He couldn’t even lie and decline a meeting request by saying he was double-booked because then it would get him a whole lecture on putting all his appointments in his calendar to avoid this exact situation. For crying out loud, sometimes a guy just wanted half an hour to himself in the middle of trying to save the world. A little nap. A chance to turn off his brain and watch cat videos on youtube for a while. Was that really so much to ask?
Anyway, he was already not in the greatest mood when DuBois and Shapiro sent him a meeting invitation on short notice when he’d been really looking forward to that forty-five minutes of unscheduled time. But making sure that his science specialists were prepared for the mission took precedence, naturally.
They’re already in the aircraft carrier’s small secondary conference room when he arrives, a little out of breath from jogging halfway across the ship from his last meeting, laptop clamped under his arm.
“Hey Annie, Martin - what’s up? Need to go over the latest round of astrophage energy modeling?”
“Please sit down, Dr. Grace,” DuBois says, gesturing at the open chair across the table from them. The two of them are, as always these days, seemingly joined at the hip (or somewhere close to that).
Grace takes a seat as instructed, and sets the laptop on the table, opening it so he can pull up the results of the simulations his bioinformatics team have been running. “Yeah, so we can extrapolate the data from the most recent model, and it’s showing–”
“That’s not why we asked you to be here, Ryland,” Shapiro says, and Grace’s mind momentarily goes blank. She’s not nearly as formal as DuBois, but Dr. Shapiro has never called him by his first name before.
“Uhh,” he says eloquently. “Okay. What’s up, then?”
DuBois is the one to answer. “Dr. Shapiro and I have discussed this, and we would like to extend an offer to you.”
“About what?” Grace asks.
“A proposition, if you will,” Shapiro says with a wink.
“...About what?” Grace asks again.
“See, Martin, I told you he wasn’t just letting us down easy. He really isn’t getting it.”
DuBois tilts his head in…apparent acknowledgement of his defeat, or something? Grace still isn’t totally following what’s going on here, but he’s starting to get suspicions. Suspicions which are confirmed when DuBois says, “Dr. Grace, Dr. Shapiro and I have been trying to invite you to participate in a three-way sexual encounter.”
“What.”
“For months,” Shapiro adds.
“What.”
“Yeah,” Shapiro says, nodding. “All those times we would discuss our plans to hook up and then look at you? Those were hints, Ryland.”
Grace splutters. “You said it was–like, disclosing mission-relevant information, or something like that?”
“At first, yes. It was prudent to keep our superior officer apprised of crew fraternization. But after that…” DuBois pauses.
Grace cuts him off. “Wait, superior officer?”
Shapiro looks at him, tilting her head. “You signed off on the org chart. We both report directly to you.”
Had he done that? Surely he would remember that. Either way, that’s not the important part right now.
“Sure, whatever. Anyway, this is a very funny joke, but–”
“I assure you, it is not a joke, Dr. Grace. You are a very attractive man, and I would thoroughly enjoy exploring your body.”
“What he said,” Shapiro adds, and both of them eye him speculatively. “I know it’s weird because, well, you’re our boss, but we’re all professionals here. We can put that aside, right?”
“Oh my god,” Grace says, putting his head in his hands to hide his blush.
After a second, Shapiro says, “I know you only have forty-ish minutes before your next meeting, but I think that’s enough time.”
That makes Grace raise his head again, staring at them. “Now?!” he hisses.
“We have no time to lose,” DuBois affirms, nodding. He reaches across the table and places his hand on Grace’s forearm while maintaining eye contact.
Grace, without intending to, snatches his hand away like it had been burned, clutching it to his chest.
“I, uh, thank you? But no–” Grace backs up and puts his hands up defensively, backing up as far as he can in the cramped little room. He eyes the escape route.
DuBois furrows his brow and says, “My apologies, I did not think that you and Ms. Stratt were exclusive–”
“Nope!” Grace all but shouts, already halfway out of his chair. “Not what this is about! I, uh. Goodbye.”
He doesn’t even grab his laptop as he spins to leave the room.
The last thing he hears before he firmly shuts the door behind him is, “Dr. Shapiro, it appears we might have made a social blunder.”
Grace powerwalks away from that conference room at a speed that would leave the little old ladies at the mall in the dust, but he doesn’t run, and he’s proud of himself for that.
He rounds a corner in the labyrinthine ship and nearly bumps into Stratt, who’s walking with Dr. Lamai.
“Sorry,” he mutters, and tries to continue not running away, but she blocks him.
“Dr. Grace?” Stratt asks. “Is something the matter?”
He realizes that, between his pace, the expression on his face, and his general aura of agitation, he must be a pretty alarming sight. “Nothing mission related.”
“Then walk with me, Dr. Lamai was just–”
“Not right now, Stratt,” Grace interrupts, and slips past her. He just… needs a minute.
“He looks like he’s seen a ghost,” he hears Lamai say as he turns another corner.
Grace spends the rest of his thirty-four minutes of free time sitting in his supply closet-turned-office, lights off, pretending no one’s home, picking at a frayed seam on his jacket and trying very, very hard to just be normal.
His alarm on his watch beeps a warning that his virtual meeting with the large-scale astrophage breeding team starts soon, and he reluctantly reaches to start up his laptop–which is… not there. Gosh… fricking darn it, he’d left it on the conference room table.
He pulls up his email on his phone to let the team he’s running a couple minutes late, only to find that the meeting has disappeared from his calendar. Instead, he’s cc’d on an email from Stratt, canceling the call and asking that they send their updates in a summary email instead.
He could cry, he’s so grateful.
He’s immediately less grateful when he opens the next email, also from Stratt, a simple three words: “My office, now.”
Oh no, he’s in trouble.
There’s no use delaying the inevitable. He heaves himself up and slips out into the corridor, consciously straightening his shoulders so he doesn’t slink like a kicked dog.
Stratt’s office is right down the hall, unfortunately. He knocks twice, and lets himself in.
She’s behind her oversized desk, which is, as always, overflowing with papers and two laptops. Seeing him, she closes one. Oh, he’s really in trouble.
“Dr. Grace,” she says, “Can you get the door?”
Heart sinking in his chest, he does so, then takes a seat when she gestures at one of the chairs across from her.
There’s a brief standoff, each waiting for the other to speak first. As usual, Grace caves first.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped at you in the hall earlier.”
She blinks, tilts her head. “What?”
“It was really rude of me.”
“Dr. Grace, I don’t care about that. Are you okay?”
Well… that wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He’s suddenly aware that he must really be overreacting if it got Eva Stratt to clear a full hour on both their schedules just so she could check up on him.
“It’s fine. It’s not actually a big deal,” he mutters, slumping down in the chair. “Just… something freaked me out more than it really should have.”
“Dr. Grace, you’re far too valuable to this operation to lose to a personal crisis. Is it something I need to address?”
“No!” Grace exclaims, sitting straight up again. He takes a deep breath, and, all in a rush, says, “Dr. DuBois and Dr. Shapiro asked if I wanted to have sex with them. Both of them. At the same time. I, uh, declined and the whole thing kind of…”
“Freaked you out,” Stratt finishes when Grace trails off, repeating his own words back to him. Incredibly, she doesn’t sound judgmental or dismissive.
Grace sighs. “Yeah. It’s not… they weren’t inappropriate, well, no more so than their whole deal already is, and they didn’t pressure me or anything, it’s just…” he trails off, unsure of how to phrase what he’s thinking, or if it’s a sentiment he should even try to unpack with Eva Stratt, of all people.
She looks at him expectantly, granting him the rare and dubious honor of her full, undivided attention.
“I don’t like people, I don’t know, thinking of me like that?” he tries.
“As… attractive?”
“Yes. Well. No. But yes?” He takes a breath, focusing on the top left corner of the room behind Stratt, so he doesn’t have to look directly at her. “I know it’s a me problem, but I don’t… do that. With anyone. And it makes me weirdly uncomfortable to know that people are thinking of me. You know. Like that. Does that make sense?”
Stratt makes a noise that’s almost a laugh, which startles Grace into looking at her. “I’m a woman in a position of power, Dr. Grace. Of course it makes sense.”
“Oh. Right. Of course, yeah.” Foot, meet mouth.
Stratt goes on. “But for what it’s worth… we have this in common.” Oh. Her, too? That’s… a tidbit he’ll just file away to think about later. She actually smiles sympathetically at him. “Anyway, it is inappropriate of them to make such a request of a superior officer. I will speak with them.”
Grace groans. “Please don’t; I think they got the message. Also what’s with this ‘superior officer’ thing I keep hearing?”
One eyebrow, perfectly raised. “You signed off on the organizational chart, Dr. Grace.”
“Stratt, I sign a lot of stuff. I’m blanking on this org chart everyone’s talking about.”
Without hesitation, Stratt opens one of the thirty-something folders scattered across her desk and rifles through its contents for a second, before pulling out a crisp sheet and handing it to Grace.
Sure enough, that’s a photocopy of his signature on the bottom, right next to Stratt’s and Dimitri’s. He glances at the chart itself. Stratt at the top, naturally, chief of Project Hail Mary. And then right under her… that can’t be right; that’s his name. First officer and chief scientific officer. He has a whole pyramid of names reporting up to him, and he reports directly to Stratt.
He looks up from the paper, brow furrowed.
“Far too valuable to this operation to lose,” she says again, and there’s no trace of irony in her face or voice.
“But I’m just a scientist,” Grace protests.
“Mm-hm, and I’m just an administrator,” Stratt says with a little shrug. “I’m counting on you, Dr. Grace. If anyone else on the project is making you uncomfortable enough for it to affect your work, tell them I have to sign off on any personal liaisons you are involved in."
Grace laughs. That’s not going to help the rumors. He starts to stand, saying, “I should probably go check on the report from the astrophage breeding team.”
“If you don’t have anywhere pressing to be, you can look over the reports here. I’d like an update immediately if there’s anything urgent.”
Grace nods politely, and moves toward the door. “Sure, let me just go get my laptop–”
There’s a knock on the door, and Stratt says, “Perfect timing,” and gestures at Grace to open the door. He does, and there’s Carl, holding not only Grace’s laptop, but also a tray with two sandwiches and cups of coffee.
Grace gives him his best imitation of a formal military salute, and Carl shakes his head before handing over his deliveries and leaving again.
“How’d you know I skipped lunch?” Grace asks, placing one of the sandwiches and cups on a rare open spot on Stratt’s desk.
“We have worked together for years, Dr. Grace,” she answers plainly.
Grace accepts that and goes back to his chair, balancing his laptop on his knees while he unwraps the sandwich. Stratt opens her own laptop again, and they work into the evening in comfortable silence.
“Grace?” Rocky says, bumping his ball against the foot of Grace’s bunk. When had he had time to get into the ball? Whoa, it’s been a while since a recovered memory had him zone out that bad.
He sits up and looks over the side of the bed. “Sorry, Rock. I just remembered something. Hit me kinda hard.”
Rocky trills lowly, his tone somewhere between annoyed, concerned, and relieved. “Human brain just as leaky as human body,” he grumbles.
“Well, yeah, bud, the human brain is literally almost eighty percent water,” Grace says, “Just sloshing around in there. Wetly.” He grins when Rocky recoils in disgust, but it’s half-hearted. Rocky still thinks the amnesia is a side effect of the induced coma. He’ll tell him about his refusal to go on the mission, and how he’d been drugged one day. Eventually. It’s going to be a long trip to Erid.
“What Grace remember this time?” Rocky asks. “It better be worth it.”
Well, he’d learned that he’d been–how had Rocky put it?--big big drama about human mating for much longer than he’d been in space. Well, more specifically, only when he was involved. He’d had to teach sex ed and human anatomy to a bunch of eighth graders for years, which was never his favorite part of the curriculum, but he’d handled it like a grown adult and a professional. But now that that one memory has been unlocked, he can remember that he’s clammed up any time someone hit on him basically his whole life, even those couple of times in school when he’d tried to force himself into a relationship that would inevitably fall apart in a couple of months.
But this puzzle piece, when slotted into place, makes a lot more things come into clear focus.
He does wonder if he’d have reacted differently had he known that DuBois and Shapiro would die just a few short months after that deeply awkward conversation. And Stratt had been so… cool about it? Well, it hadn’t affected his ability to do his job, which was what really mattered to her, but still. His… very complicated feelings about his boss-slash-friend-slash-murderer bubble to the surface again. But Rocky had asked him a question, and he’s already been quiet for a little too long, so he’s got to pack that back away for now.
“Well,” he finally answers, “I remembered that I’m probably not Catholic.”
“Explain word. Grace used it earlier, too.”
Grace leans back on his bunk again. How had they gotten here? “Remember when we talked about religion?”
“Yes, yes. Have similar ideas on Erid.”
“It’s one of those religions. Or, well, technically it’s a subset of a religion called Christianity, but the thing that made me think of it is that Catholics are kind of known for having a lot of shame around sexuality.”
“Why ashamed of normal human biological function?”
“Why are Eridians ashamed of eating?”
“Is gross. Private.”
“Exactly.”
Rocky launches into a series of questions that actually make good points - if human sexuality is shameful, then why are human mating practices in so many of the movies that Grace makes him watch? If it’s gross, why do so many humans make stupid stupid stupid decisions in order to get it? And so on. Grace tries to explain. One, not everyone feels that way. Two, there’s an allure to the taboo. Three, for most humans it is an important part of their life.
“But not Grace?”
“No, I, uh, actively dislike it. Which is very unusual for a human.”
Rocky makes a dismissive noise. “Not for Eridian. Many choose not to take mates, are happy that way.”
“That sounds nice. I probably would have felt like less of a freak, growing up there.”
“Would have been big big big freak on Erid. Wet. Squishy. Clumsy. Noisy. Leaky.”
“Aw, thanks bud,” Grace says sarcastically.
“Also atmosphere would have killed Grace.”
“It was a figure of speech, Rocky. Not literal.”
“Why Earth speech have so many non-literal meanings?” Rocky asks in exasperation. “Eridian not do this.”
“If I spent the entire trip to Erid trying to explain why the english language is like this, we still wouldn’t have enough time.” Rocky makes an irritated noise that usually precedes a tirade about how weird and dumb humans are, so to distract him, Grace says, “You know, to circle back to Catholicism, it’s actually where the ship got its name.”
“Hail Mary?” Rocky asks, successfully distracted.
“Yeah. Mary was the name of a really important person in their religion, so they have a prayer asking for her help. It starts, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace…’ Anyway, there were some folks on the project who insist that the ship takes its name from the football meaning–I’ll explain about football later–but it’s a metaphor that goes way beyond that. It means any sort of really desperate situation where the odds of success are really low.”
“Is that why Grace went on mission?”
“Not following.”
“Hail Mary, full of Grace.”
Grace chuckles. “No, that was just a coincidence. I can imagine the jokes they made back on Earth, though.”
“Why Grace word have so many meaning? Typical confusing human language.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry, bud, I didn’t make the rules.” He has a thought. “Hey, what’s the word for grace in Eridian? Not the one that you use for my name, but for the word in the prayer. Or the one that’s like, you know the opposite of clumsy?”
There’s a hesitation before he answers. “Is same word,” Rocky eventually says, and demonstrates by making the sound that Grace associates with himself.
“You’re kidding me. How did that work out?”
Rocky makes a noise that Grace thinks is the Eridian equivalent of a filler word, stalling. Is he embarrassed? “When first meet Grace in tunnel, Grace introduce self, then immediately trip on wire. Not graceful. So gave nickname ‘Grace.’ Thought it was funny. Eridians often name young after qualities they hope will have when grow up.”
“You little punk,” Grace laughs, leaning over the side of his bed to look at Rocky. “What about your name? What does it mean?”
Rocky shimmies from side to side in his ball. “Means… similar to ground. Stable. Reliable.”
“Like a rock,” Grace says. “Rocky.”
“Yes,” Rocky agrees. “Rocky parents thought it very funny when Rocky interested in space, go to work on elevator. Not like name at all.”
“Well, I guess we have that in common, Rock.”
They’re quiet for a long moment, and Grace’s lack of sleep is starting to catch up to him when Rocky says, “Rocky glad reached for stars. Got to meet Grace. Save Erid and Sol.”
Even after having to live on after his crew died. Even after forty-six years of isolation, the fact that Rocky can say that… he has to blink back tears.
“Yeah. Yeah. Me too, Rocky.”
“Even if human culture stupid and confusing.”
Grace laughs. “Tell me about it.”
“Already am?” Rocky says.
“Also a figure of speech, bud.”
Rocky makes another disgusted noise. “Grace go sleep now. When wake, we work on Eridian language. Then Grace can talk in way that makes sense.”
“Deal,” Grace agrees, dropping one arm off the side of his bunk to bump his fist against Rocky’s ball. A moment later there’s the clink of a fist bump returned. “Night, Rocky.”
Before he drifts off, Grace thinks of how strange and remarkable it is that he had to be sent a dozen light years away from Earth to find a place where he and all his eccentricities finally fit perfectly.