The Silvers

by Jill Smith

  “I find it hard to worry about that.”

  “They must be, right? Why else would they bring it to Earth?”

  “Why only one? Why this one specifically?”

  Imms changes the channel, finding a satire news show he likes. The show is doing a segment called “Alienable Rights.” The host jokes that the government has just adopted a puppy; it’s cute now, but soon it will be crapping everywhere and stealing steaks off the counter.

  “I don’t even like steak,” Imms mutters.

  He turns off the TV and stretches out on the couch. B should be back by now. Imms can’t tell if he’s grateful for the time alone, or if he misses B. Making sense of his feelings is increasingly difficult. He never used to have so many. He sinks into the darkness, imagining it is water. He watches the light from his heart move across the ceiling. He finds that sometimes, if he follows a certain thread of thought, he can create a spark in his mind. Not a flame, not a fire, but an attempt at one. He can make himself almost-angry.

  First, he thinks about the lakes on the Silver Planet. He reminds himself that he will never see them again. He thinks about all the colors and noises of Earth—too many of them—the way they slip under his eyelids and into his ears. He thinks about B getting annoyed at him for little things like biting his lip and liking cartoons. He thinks how unfair it is that Tin Star gets put in jail when the bad things he did were just things the Rough Rider Committee made him do. Finally, he thinks about being on the table in the Byzantine lab, about the glass rod against his skin. He remembers that over and over again, until the scars on his chest heat up. Then he thinks very quickly about all these things together: the lakes, the noise, Tin Star, burning, and especially B’s irritation.

  A spark shoots up, small and orange. It starts to fade, then glows bright again. It touches something else in Imms’s mind, and then—a flame.

  Imms shakes his head, afraid. The flame dies.

  He is not angry. He is still a Silver. He is not turning human.

  B comes home. Imms listens to the rustle as he sets grocery bags by the door. “Why are you in the dark?” B asks.

  “I was watching TV. But I got tired of the noise.”

  “I brought you something.”

  Imms listens to B approach the couch. Thirteen steps. B’s holding something in his arms. A dark shape that moves. Imms sits up.

  It is a dog. A small, black dog with bent-back ears and a stubby tail.

  “Her name’s Lady,” B says. “God-awful name, but a sweet dog. A friend at work can’t keep her anymore.”

  Imms takes the dog carefully. She is very warm, and as Imms gathers her against his chest, she wags her stumpy tail. “Is she a baby?” Imms asks.

  “No, she’s two. Grown-up, in dog years. She’s a miniature pinscher. That’s as big as she’ll get.”

  Lady puts her paws on Imms’s chest and licks his face. “I love her!” Imms strokes her. She is so smooth. B switches on a light, and Imms looks at Lady more closely. She is perfect—sleek, delicate, with tan patches on her muzzle, her chest, and above her eyes. Her eyes are much kinder than human eyes. Imms laughs.

  “I thought it might be nice for you to have some company around here, while I’m at work.”

  “Yes!” Imms says. “Yes, yes, I love her.”

  Lady’s tail wags furiously.

  “You’ll have to take care of her. She needs to be walked at least three times a day. I’ll let the entourage know. Stay on the property.”

  Imms turns his face, trying to get away from Lady’s tongue. He can’t stop laughing.

  “This is the best present, B.” Imms leans forward and kisses B softly on the cheek. Lady is immediately between the two of them, licking chins.

  “It’s important to me that you’re happy.”

  “I am,” Imms says. He cocks his head. “Are you?”

  B gives him a soft smile. “I’m a lot better since I met you.”

  This makes Imms shiver. He’s not sure why. “B? I killed the people on your team.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I knocked the fire onto the floor.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I hated that they died. But then, after it happened, I was happy it was just me and you. And Grena.” He’s never shared this before, and doesn’t know if it will make B mad or not.

  “Me, too.” B is not looking at Imms anymore.

  “I didn’t want the fire to happen,” Imms continues. “But I didn’t feel that bad about it afterward.”

  “You can’t feel bad,” B says, almost sharply. “You’re incapable.”

  “Silvers can feel bad.”

  “What, like guilty? When did you feel guilt before we came to your planet?”

  Imms shrugs. Lady has settled on his lap and looks back and forth between him and B. “I don’t know. But I’ve felt it before.”

  “You don’t need to feel that way.”

  “You would tell me if you were mad about the fire?”

  “I’m not mad,” B says.

  “You’d tell me?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” B stands. Lady’s ears prick up. “What are you thinking for dinner?” He heads for the kitchen.

  “Dunno.”

  “I need to teach you how to cook,” he calls.

  “Okay.” Imms looks at Lady. He still feels happy to have her, but a dark feeling is underneath the happiness.

  Imms shifts. The dog jumps off his lap and stands looking at him. He gets up and goes to the kitchen. “Let’s not eat yet,” he says.

  “Not hungry? Do you—”

  Imms shuts him up with a kiss. He pushes his fingers through B’s hair. He doesn’t leave B any room or breath to kiss back. He tugs the front of B’s shirt, and is surprised when B follows him willingly to the bedroom. Imms undoes B’s pants—rare, B usually undresses both of them. He attacks B’s shirt, fingers moving deftly down the line of buttons.

  “Turn over,” Imms whispers, unbuttoning his own pants.

  “Why?” B asks.

  “I want to fuck you.”

  B stares at him for a moment in the darkness. Imms’s heart pounds somewhere behind his stomach. It thumps against his spine, making his tailbone shudder. “Okay,” B says at last.

  B lies face down on the bed, arms folded under his head. Imms moves his hand from B’s neck down to B’s thighs, enjoying the feel of warm skin under his palm. B has to adjust to accommodate his organ’s rising. Cock. His cock.

  Imms enters B very slowly. Once inside, he takes his time. He explores as he would any new place. B groans.

  “Shh,” Imms says. He wants silence except for the slick, crinkling noises of their fucking. Except he’s surprised by his own inability to hide how much he enjoys this. B is almost always quiet during sex, so Imms feels he should be, too. But he can’t stop himself from making noise, and soon B is answering him.

  The dog enters the room. B notices first. “Get her out of here.”

  “Why?” Imms asks.

  “So she doesn’t see this.”

  “She would be doing it, too, if she had a mate.”

  B pulls away from him, yanks his pants up. The dog backs out of the doorway. B puts a hand on the door, as if to close it. He turns to Imms. “Let’s start dinner,” he says. “I’m hungry.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  B shouldn’t be surprised the old feelings know where to find him. He left them here in this house—in the wrinkles in his sheets, the dust on the curtain rods, in the pipes under the sink. He left Earth, left behind boredom, the sharp-sticky mess of love, and that deep despair that kept him awake but unmoving at night, finding solace in the ink of the universe until even the trajectory across infinity grew lonely. The Silver Planet was a distraction, but it made him colder than ever. He still slept poorly millions of miles from home.

  Now he is back and has brought a new mess to set on top of the old one.

  He arrives home one evening while Imms is at Mary and Bridiqu
e’s. He hasn’t had the house to himself for a while, and he tries to savor it. He dials Grena, but she doesn’t answer. B wants to talk to her, make sure they’re still clear on their story about the fire. NRCSE is starting to ask more questions about the fire, about Imms, about Project HN.

  B thinks, as he sometimes does, of the tears in Imms’s flesh when B first found him—healed now, barely threads of scars where Joele’s belt fell. B wonders if some of his hope for what the two of them could be didn’t fall into those wounds, if the skin didn’t heal over them. What B feels now is a restless aggression, a snarling desire to use his time on the Silver Planet as a shield against the life he left behind. Look what I saw, look what I conquered. Look what is mine now.

  He turns on the TV and sees that horrible drawing of Imms. A woman with dark hair is talking to local news anchor Elise Fischer. B recognizes her. Veronica Stuart, the Planetary Integration Specialist hired by NRCSE. The media face of Imms’s assimilation to Earth. Veronica Stuart has the tense, over-smiled look of the consultant on one of those shows where a finicky client struggles to find the perfect house or wedding dress or spouse. She has met Imms only once and was afraid to shake his hand.

  B changes the channel and is almost relieved to see images of a flood in the southeast—anything but Imms. He mutes the TV and tries to concentrate on other peoples’ disasters.

  The world is watching. B feels people staring when he walks down the street and hears the clicks of covert cell phones. The entourage crouches like videogame heroes surrounded suddenly by enemies from all sides at once, and they battle the gawkers while B continues forward. He thinks the media could be a valuable ally. They love the story of Imms’s heroics. If NRCSE continues to fight for access to Imms, turning to the public for support might be an option worth considering.

  The trouble is, he doesn’t want his life with Imms to be a constant struggle to either fend off or ally with outside forces. He wants the two of them bound by something neither of them understood, like they were on the Silver Planet.

  The moving idea is a good one. He and Imms can make a choice together about the future. B won’t have to look at this damn carpet or any other badges of failure this house wears—the house is a badge of failure. It seems a shame, though, to move too far from his mother and Bridique. They are good with Imms, good to Imms—better, probably, than B is to Imms.

  Money is a problem. NRCSE hasn’t offered B a hero’s salary. They provide a small stipend for Imms’s care, but B dislikes this. It binds Imms to NRCSE, gives NRCSE leverage over both of them. So far NRCSE has agreed that Imms benefits from living in B’s custody. They want to see how he does living a “normal” human life. But B knows it is only a matter of time before the NRCSuckers decide what they really want to do with Imms is exactly what B and his team did to other Silvers—take him apart. They’ll see it as a wasted opportunity to let Imms live in domestic bliss, or an imitation of it, with B.

  Dr. Hwong, for instance, wants to look at Imms’s brain and heart. He wants to be the one who solves the mysteries of a mind that can’t hate and a heart that moves. He’s planning an invasion, slicing Imms open, gawking, prodding. He wants to attach a tiny tracking device to Imms’s heart so he can search for patterns in its movement. The doctor says he’ll put Imms under. Imms never even has to know what’s being done. He’s willing to pay B for the opportunity. B’s supposed to “sleep on it.”

  It’s not right. B can’t offer Imms up for procedures he won’t understand. And if he says yes to this, it’s a slippery slope. NRCSE won’t take no for an answer anymore. Any part of Imms they want, they’ll take.

  Then there’s the fire. B spends each day waiting for a call. From Hatch, from the investigators, saying they know how the fire really started, that B and Grena lied, that Imms isn’t really a hero, and so humans don’t owe him any kindness. The call doesn’t come. What B does get are unsolicited messages from magazines and tabloids. Once, the superintendent of a local elementary school calls and wants to know if B will give a talk at a Career Day assembly.

  B’s phone rings now and he jumps, but it’s not Grena or the investigators. It’s Matty. Maybe B should be surprised, but he’s not. Matty kept in touch for a while after the breakup. Said he wanted them to stay on good terms and meant it. On some level, B’s been expecting him to check in.

  “Hey,” says Matty. His voice reminds B of being outdoors.

  “Hey,” B says.

  “Wanted to call and say I’m glad you’re home safe.”

  “Thanks. How’ve things been?”

  “Good, good. I’m living with someone.”

  That was Matty. Blunt as hell when he wanted you to know something.

  “He treat you well?” B asks.

  “Sure. He’s a—whatdyacallit, a cyclist.”

  A whatdyacallit? “That’s great.”

  “I understand you’re living with someone, too.” B hears the grin in that mud-and-cliffs voice.

  B can’t think of anything to say. Finally he says, “Yeah.”

  “I really am glad you’re home safe.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We should have coffee sometime.”

  “Sure.”

  “B?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You sound just the same.”

  “Be careful, now,” B says, a general warning, not a response to Matty’s statement. He feels like a parent cautioning a child. He always felt that way, just a little, with Matty.

  “Same. Stay cool.”

  Then Matty’s voice is gone. B is left, eyes closed, remembering this kitchen with their mutual smoke rising from a skillet, their laughter, Matty trying to cover the skillet with a lid while keeping his arms around B’s waist. B imagines Matty and the cyclist on some absurd bicycle for two, Matty’s arms around the cyclist’s waist. People come and they go. Some trace your bones for a while, some taste your skin, kiss your eyes. But they dig beneath fences. They slip under.

  Memories of Matty slip in to memories of Imms. Those nights by the rocks. The moment B started to go into the ground with Imms and was surprised to find his fear wasn’t really fear at all, just the knowledge that he should be afraid. The fear he feels now when he looks at Imms, needs Imms, maybe that’s not real either. He thinks he should be afraid to love someone not human. He needs to let go, go deeper. He has to want to go deeper.

  That is what he wants, he realizes. He just has to get better at letting Imms know.

  He is still smelling smoke when Imms gets home. He is smelling smoke and smiling.

  *

  Today the NRCSuckers have a surprise. They’re going to let Imms swim in the river. It is still warm for fall, but Violet Cranbrim warns him the water will be chillier than the water in the pool. Imms doesn’t mind. A river is much more like a lake than the pool. A NRCSucker named Devin drives them to the river in a jeep. Violet rides in the back with Imms.

  The river is thin and has a strong current until it flattens out into a wider pool. The water is kept calm by a dam there. If Imms swims too far down the wide part, the river will get skinny again, and the current will pull him downstream too fast for the NRCSuckers to catch him. So he has to be careful.

  They park the jeep at the beginning of the wide part. Violet tells him to have fun. Imms jumps into the greenish water and wriggles through the murk. He pops up in the middle of the river. He swims up the dam, touches it. It’s cool and rough against his fingers. He can feel the water, angry and pushing on the other side, forced into ineffectual ribbons by the stoplogs.

  He swims down the river’s center, then dives under, coming to a rest on the silky bottom and reaching out to feel the rocks and plants. After he’s been still for a few minutes, the mud settles, and he can see better. A big fish with whiskers swims by. Catfish—he’s read about them. When he looks up, he sees bugs skating along the surface.

  He swims farther. Eventually he becomes aware the water around him is stirring. Chilly bursts of it knock the sides of his h
ead, and he feels himself tugged forward. He must be close to the thin part of the river where the current is strong. Straight ahead, the river seems to deepen and darken. He grabs a plant on the river’s floor and stays in place for a few minutes, feeling the water try to tug him with it as it rushes forward. He likes this—waiting on the threshold of danger.

  He sees a rock a few feet away and releases the plant, letting the current push him toward the rock. He hugs it and sticks his head out of the water, grabbing a breath. The river splits to go around his rock, the twin streams flowing fast, joining each other in a powerful white sash that rushes as far ahead as Imms can see.

  He hears a sound above the rushing and knows it’s the NRCSuckers. Over his shoulder, he can see the dark dots of them running along the bank, waving their arms. He turns around and swims back into the fat part of the river. He has to fight the current for a moment, and this is exciting. When he returns to the bank, the NRCSuckers all talk at once, asking him what he thought he was doing, and didn’t they tell him to stay away from the current? Devin whispers to Violet, “Well, I guess that’s the last time they let him in the river.”

  On the drive back, Violet asks if he has any idea how long he was out there swimming. He says no, and she shakes her head. A long time, she says. “Didn’t you get tired?”

  He never gets tired of swimming.

  “You need to listen when we tell you something, Imms,” Violet says sternly.

  Violet never speaks to him that way. Imms sits a little farther from her.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  B is pleased to see how Imms has bonded with Lady. Imms walks the dog around the property every few hours, plays with her, feeds her, and teaches her to shake. B is adamant that she sleep in a crate, not in bed with them, and Imms accepts this. Once, B catches Imms speaking to Lady in the Silver language.

  “You’re on Earth,” he says to Imms. “There’s no need for that anymore.”