by J. A. Rock
“You speak good English,” he says.
The Silver closes its eyes. Its heart bumps the bottom of its ribs, drifts down its leg. B watches, fascinated.
“You know Grena?” he asks.
“You b-better h-h-hightail it outta here, m-mister.”
“Who did this to you?”
The Silver doesn’t answer. It rolls its eyes up to the black sky.
B runs a hand over his mouth. He needs to make a decision. He can leave the creature to die out here, or he can bring it aboard the ship as another test subject for Project HN. It’s half-dead anyway. Maybe Vir can put it under and cut it up without feeling too bad. “Look,” he says, “we’ve got some medical supplies on the ship. Let’s get you inside. You’re not gonna make it out here.” He reaches out, and the creature instantly sinks partway into the ground.
It doesn’t go any farther. It gasps, slapping the ground with its palm. “Shit,” it whispers. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Come on,” B says. “I’m trying to help you.”
The creature gazes at him for another moment. B can’t read those cracked eyes. “Pardners?” it asks finally.
“Yeah, if you want.” B reaches out again and just brushes the chilly skin. The Silver draws back and sinks the rest of the way into the ground. B can see it just below the surface, as if it’s encased in ice. Blossoms of red adorn the tightly curled body.
B sighs, stands. “All right. Have it your way.”
He starts toward the ship. He turns back once and swears he can see the gentle glow of the creature’s heart rising from the ground.
B’s room on the ship looks nothing like his room back home, for which B is grateful. The floor in his room on the Byzantine is hardwood, the rug nailed down, the bed stapled neatly to the wall. Beside it is a standing lamp, painted to look like a flower and stem. As captain, he gets the room with the largest bath, though “large” is relative. B showers every three days in water brought from home. The water will run out soon. Not just on the ship, but on Earth.
That’s why they’re on the Silver Planet, to determine the silver water’s suitability for human use. He sets an extra quilt on the bed. Finds his own flashlight in the desk drawer.
His room back home has thin, soft carpet, something expensive and cream-colored that Matty picked out. Living with the same man for seven years, and B never had the courage to say he didn’t like the carpet. He could’ve replaced it when Matty left, but he and the thin pile were grudging friends by then. He even toasted it, on his first night as a divorced man. He set one open beer on it and raised another. “Here’s to you, you ugly rug.” A year later, he still found himself whispering to it sometimes. “You ugly rug.”
He tells Grena he won’t be going with them to collect the Silvers. Between Joele and Gumm, they’ll manage. He asks her what story she read to the clan she’d stayed with. She asks why he’s asking, and he says he’s just curious. She says the book is called Tin Star and Thunder Sam.
B gives Joele her flashlight back. Looks again at the blood on her jacket. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn she’s responsible for the injured Silver. But why wouldn’t she say anything? He told the team to leave all Silvers alone until Project HN starts, but Joele is never shy about flouting rules, especially B’s rules. Vir looks composed, inscrutable. Gumm still smells like vomit. He decided last week to find out if a human could survive strictly on quilopea. B sees them off as they drive west in a Planeterrain vehicle, toward a stain of rusty trees near a lake where Grena has observed a small clan feeding by night.
B finds a shovel and a sweatjack. The sweatjacks are uncomfortable, like wearing a rubber shell, but they help. They have little heat pustules inside that burst every few seconds, then fill and burst again. Joele is the only one on the team who can go any significant length of time outside without one.
He goes to where he last saw the Silver. It is still in the ground, but its heart isn’t visible and its eyes are closed. It doesn’t move. It’s not quite the same color as the earth, but its limbs have a liquid way of mimicking the bumps and spills of the terrain. B sticks the shovel into the ground near the creature’s side. The Silver doesn’t wake. He digs until he exposes a shoulder, then traces the legs with the thin ravine he’s making. The Silver is dead, he thinks. No new blood is flowing, just old, dark drool on the gray flesh. But as he continues to dig, the creature wakes. B doesn’t realize it is awake at first, but when he stops to wipe cold sweat from his forehead, he sees the creature’s eyes flutter. A second later, the Silver seems sucked from the earth by the air. The ground knits together beneath it, and it lies on the surface. It meets B’s eyes, and its soft brows lean toward one another.
Then it screams.
The scream doesn’t work well. It is ragged and unemotional, unpracticed and ugly. B drops his shovel and claps a hand over the creature’s mouth. It lashes out, and B is so startled he lets go. The Silver tries to roll onto its belly, to get its legs underneath it, but it’s too weak.
“Stop, just stop,” B orders. The creature goes still, sides pumping with each shallow breath. This is like watching a bug die, a spider that still waves its legs no matter how you grind it into the carpet. B unclips the flashlight from his belt and shines it over the thing’s body. The wounds are deep. Dark patches, almost black, mar the Silver’s ribs. “You’ll die out here,” B says. “Will you let me take you inside?”
It doesn’t answer. It is not shivering anymore, a bad sign. B extends a hand.
The Silver moans, but it doesn’t pull away or go into the ground. B touches its shoulder and the cold pricks his hand. He feels like he’s grabbed a cactus. But once his flesh gets used to the cold, transfers some of its own warmth, B is aware that the Silver’s skin is smooth as water.
B grabs the creature under its arms. It draws a quick breath and goes limp. Its heart is on again, but the organ’s path is shaky. Instead of drifting in straight lines, it shudders in a circle, like a fish missing a fin. Its light is fainter too.
B lifts the creature and carries it toward the ship.
B tells himself the Silver has to be taken to the lab. He can clean it up, strap it to a table, and donate it to Project HN, for however long it has left. But B doesn’t go to the lab. He goes to the main deck and hurries down a narrow hall. He takes the Silver into his room, sets it on the floor, and throws a quilt over it. It doesn’t stir.
The atmosphere will kill it, B thinks. And that will be a relief—will absolve him of further decision making. Still, he heads to the lower deck. The storage room across from the lab has tents and bedrolls. He grabs a sleeping bag and a first aid kit along with a basin for water collection. He enters the lab and takes a bag of dried quilopea. He pauses for a moment, looking at the tables and restraints. Hurries back upstairs.
The Silver’s heart flickers on and off like a dying bulb. B unzips the sleeping bag, spreads it out, and rolls the Silver on top of it. He goes to the bathroom and fills the basin with warm water. The Silver remains unconscious as B cleans the worst of the mess. Its skin seems to shy away involuntarily from B’s touch. B tries to be gentle, wondering why he bothers. Most likely the creature won’t wake again.
B talks to it, asks it questions, liking the way silence hangs between each one. He changes the water in the basin three times. When he is done, he opens the first aid kit, disinfects the wounds, applies salve. Lifts the creature and winds a bandage around its ribs. It has started to shiver again, and B feels unexpected relief at the movement. He zips the bedroll and repacks the first aid kit. B thinks that he should do something to restrain the Silver in case it wakes. Gag it, at least, in case it screams again. But B decides this is either going to be a disaster or it isn’t. Either the Silver will recover, or it will die. And if the others on the team discover what B has done, well, so what? He is the captain.
B places a hand on the side of the Silver’s neck. Feeling for what, a pulse? Fever? The flesh is cool but not frozen. A bit of dark hair is stuck in
a slick of ointment on its forehead. According to Grena, Silvers’ hair never grows past their ears. It’s black when they’re young, white when they’re old. Something about this Silver’s body, about the timbre of its voice when it spoke, makes B think it’s male, but he’ll have to get a second opinion. From whom? How is B going to explain bringing this creature into his quarters?
Helping it?
But B brushes the lock of hair back, his thumb sliding through the ointment. The Silver stirs. B watches as it moves its hand, places it on B’s. Something comes to him from one of Grena’s reports. Something he’s tried not to remember. That Silvers often sleep holding hands.
B pulls away, takes the basin to the bathroom and empties it. When he comes back into the room, he notices a paperback on his desk. It is Tin Star and Thunder Sam. Grena must have left it for him. Grena is like that. You ask her a question, and she’ll answer it as best she can, then come find you later with additional resources. He picks up the book. He needs to find a way to let the others know that his quarters are off-limits.
He reads silently for the next hour, while the Silver breathes softly on his floor. It is still alive, asleep, when the others return. B goes to meet them. They have captured two Silvers. The third escaped. Both captives are drugged, unconscious. Project HN begins.
He opens his eyes, counts four walls, a ceiling, a floor, a door. Thick air. Blood smells, sweat smells, wood smells. Smells he didn’t know before humans. He swims against a torrent of pain, gasps in it. Holds his breath. Something squeezes him, he tears at it. A strip of clothes—no, the word is cloth. He pulls himself further into the warm cave and tries to go into the ground, to become part of this softness. He can’t. Stuck here, warm, alive, nothing to do but wait. The floor is a puzzle with thirty-seven pieces that he can see. No plants. He can crawl out of the cave, but he’ll be cold. He’s lost what keeps him warm. The large female took his blood.
Nineteen places he feels his skin torn. Three places he’s crushed inside. His heart stutters, afraid of the dark spots.
Why would the female damage him? It is counterproductive, a word he loves. Grena was nice. She read them the book. She tried to learn their language. That’s why he crawled toward the ship after the large female finally left him. He thought maybe he could find Grena. He could have gone to his clan, but they would not accept him, smelling like humans. They would have gone into the lake, hidden from him as if he were a human himself.
His throat is pebbled from his scream. He doesn’t know why he tried it, only that humans in the book did it when they were hurt or when they didn’t want somebody near them. Grena had demonstrated the sound when she’d read aloud, and he had been tempted to try it too. But he hadn’t wanted to miss any of the story.
He remembers the thick-muscled man who tore him from the ground. The man with 7,618 hairs in his beard. Rough estimate.
He sees four walls, a closed door. This means he is in prison, like Tin Star in the book. This means he should dig with a spoon and spit on the guard when the guard orders him to talk. But if the guard here is like the guard in the book, he won’t like the spit and will take more blood. If the guard is the large female, he won’t spit, he decides, but if it is the man with the short beard, he will.
What’s strange is that he hurts in his mind, too many places to count. He has always known what it is to want, but now he knows what it is to not want. He does not want to be hit. He does not want to be trapped. He does not want the man with the beard to come back. The man hasn’t taken any blood yet, but his voice scrapes like rocks.
He tries to count threads in the soft cave, but pain batters the numbers. He tries another sound, one he hasn’t made before. Sounds that are not words have always seemed pointless. But now he lets this sound rest in his throat, then pushes it slowly out. It is high and wavering. He does not want to make it anymore. Stops.
He is caught somewhere between sleep and waking when the man with the beard comes in. He almost opens his eyes, stops himself. He goes perfectly still and holds his breath. He listens as the man sets four items on the desk, then takes three steps toward the soft cave’s entrance and crouches down.
He opens his eyes and spits.
The spit hits the man’s beard.
He’s done it wrong. In the book, Tin Star spits after the guard speaks.
He watches the man comb the spit from the short gold hairs and holds his breath again.
“I thought you guys couldn’t get pissed,” the rough voice says.
He calls the man an improper pollinator in the Silver language, because that is what humans do in the book when they would like to modify another human’s behavior—they announce the other person’s deficiencies. They do it very loudly, and a feeling called anger is behind it, which moves humans as strongly as love.
The man splits the cave open, and now he can think about nothing else except the light, sweeping his eyes, and the cold, leaping into the rips in his skin.
“How much English do you speak?” the man asks.
A lot. Grena said I was the fastest learner in the group. She said I speak better than most humans. I’m the only one she taught to read.
He thinks of all he wants—food, water, to leave this place—and is surprised when none of these matter as much as what he does not want. He does not want the man to take more blood.
“Can’t believe you’re still kicking. I’m gonna call you Roach. Back on Earth we’ve got these bugs, they’ll crawl around with half their guts hanging out. Ugly sons of bitches you can’t kill. That’s what you remind me of.”
Strange, these critical words, when he isn’t doing anything wrong.
“Unless you want to tell me your real name,” the man says.
A thrashing clarity tells him to keep his real name from the man. Because humans take, and they do not share. Once you let them take something from you, you won’t get it back.
“I like Roach,” he says. He and the man can share this new name. The man will call him Roach, and he will respond, but he will not have to give the man anything that truly belongs to him.
The man laughs, but he doesn’t sound happy. “Roach it is, then. How do you feel?”
Roach hesitates. He has no reason not to tell the truth. Except that the large female asked him this question. When he answered, she hit him, and when he didn’t answer, she hit him too.
“Hungry,” he says finally.
The man goes to the corner of the room and reaches into a bag.
“What’s your name?” Roach asks.
“Call me B.” B returns to the cave—not a cave now, razed and torn open. He opens a small package, sets it down beside Roach. “There. Quilopea.”
Roach shakes his head. “That’s not quilopea.”
“Sure it is. It’s just dehydrated, so it’ll last longer.”
“It’s not right,” Roach says. For just a second, something lunges forward inside of him, a crazy need to make B understand. Then the feeling is gone.
B shrugs. “Eat it or starve. Up to you.”
Roach takes one of the dried fruits from the package, sniffs it. B isn’t lying; it is quilopea. He takes a tentative bite. It is sour and chewy. Soon it is gone, and he takes another from the package.
“What happened to you?” B asks. He sits at the desk.
Roach doesn’t answer. Four dried fruits. He chews two hundred and forty-three times. The package is empty.
“No predators here, I know that,” B says. “And Silvers don’t fight each other. Which means someone from my team did this to you.”
Roach licks the fruit from between his teeth. He wishes he had more.
“Still hungry?”
“I ain’t obliged to answer you, Sheriff,” Roach says.
B shakes his head. “You hungry or not?”
“Yes.”
B gets another package of dried fruit. Holds it just out of Roach’s reach. “Who did this?”
“Large female.” Roach’s eyes are on the food.
“Yes.”
B sits on the floor beside Roach. Still doesn’t give him the fruit. “Why?”
Roach is suddenly not that hungry anymore. B’s voice is softer now, and Roach remembers that same soft voice from the female, the questions she asked, right next to his ear. What he wants is B farther away. He can smell the outside on B, the cold, the white dust. He is aware of his own heart gliding into his throat, a place it rarely goes. He swallows, and it drifts back into his chest.
“Shit,” he whispers. This is his favorite human word. It’s the best word to whisper.
“What’s shit?” B asks.
“Is she your friend?”
“She works with me.”
Roach closes his eyes briefly and tries to remember how Grena’s voice sounded when she read the part where Tin Star is brought before the Rough Rider Committee. “You try any funny business, you’ll be eatin’ fist through a hole in your skull,” he informs B.
B throws back his head and laughs. “You’re all right.”
Roach doesn’t feel all right. His whole body is trying to get into the floor without him even thinking about it. The dried quilopea doesn’t want to stay inside him. B hands him the second package, but he doesn’t take it. He mumbles a question B doesn’t hear.
“Say it again?” B says.
“Am I in prison?”
B shakes his head. “You’re on my ship. You’re in my room. You can stay here until you’re better. I won’t try any funny business.”
Twenty-one words. The voice isn’t as rough as it’s pretending to be.
“I have to ask you something, though,” B says. “As long as you’re here, you can’t make noise, and you can’t leave this room. Understand? The woman who hurt you, she lives here too. She can’t know you’re here. Got it?”
