by J. A. Rock
Grena says, “It’s important, Imms, that we make this fire look like an accident. So we can protect you when we get to Earth.”
Imms walks to what’s left of the table and tells the story. Grena stops him occasionally so she can ask questions. It reminds him of doing interviews with her when she used to visit his clan. At first he didn’t know the English words for many of the things he wanted to tell her, so he acted out what he was trying to say, and she did the same for him. That was fun, but it was even more fun later, when he was better at English.
Now he doesn’t encounter a single gap as he tells his story. He knows all the words for what happened and wishes he didn’t.
“This is going to be easier than we thought,” Grena says when Imms finishes.
“How?” B asks.
“If the first thing to catch fire was Joele, we might not have to worry about staging a source area. We could say the spark leaped from the wire overhead and caught Joele’s clothes. When she dropped to the ground, she landed too near the sweatjack, which exploded. Flames hit the counter where the preservative chemicals are still out—boom.”
“All right,” B says.
Grena turns to Imms. “You’re the witness. You were in the lab doing an interview with Vir. Joele was working with chemicals. You saw the spark shoot from the wire and onto Joele. You tried to help her, just like you said, but you couldn’t get to the hatch in time. B arrived and tried to drag Vir and Gumm out of the lab. But he breathed too much smoke and collapsed.”
Imms’s stomach feels like he’s just eaten a Cosmic Granola Bar. He wants to get out of here. The lab smells terrible, and he doesn’t want to listen to Grena talk about Joele on fire, or Vir and Gumm. Or B collapsing.
Grena and B show him how he saved B. They place him where he would have stood and tell him how he had to move. B lies on the floor while Imms practices pulling him to the hatch. Imms doesn’t want B pretending to be passed out, and this not-wanting makes him stronger than he usually is. He pulls B quickly, even though B is heavy.
When they are done practicing the rescue, B offers Imms a Spacedream Sandwich, which Imms takes outside and tosses into the lake. He has had enough of being human for one day.
A group of Silvers watches the Byzantine take off. B sees them through the window on the main deck. Imms is with Grena in the control room. He isn’t interested in looking out windows. The Silvers stand in a line. They’d look manufactured—tall, thin, steel-colored—except for the way their glowing hearts glide through their bodies.
One waves.
B leaves the window and goes to the control room. Imms is curled in one corner. Grena watches the screen that charts their progress.
“You can sit in a chair, you know,” B says.
Imms uncurls a little, and B feels something more delicate than passion and subtler than love. Whatever B has done on this mission, and whatever he’s failed to do or protect or learn—he will make up for it by having Imms. He has done what they couldn’t do in Project HN. He has captured a Silver’s heart and studied it alive.
“Want to learn a game?” Grena asks Imms.
“Sure.”
She teaches him Twenty Questions.
B sits beside Imms on the floor. He doesn’t touch him, not with Grena here. But as they move into space, they are side by side. They are bound somewhere.
Imms picks at his suit pants. The material is slick and thin and brushes him every time he moves. He tries to be still, to concentrate on his audiobook. He is listening to Northanger Abbey, which is good, though the humans in it cause themselves a lot of pain for no reason. This, he is finding, is true of humans in general. Not just in books.
He tugs at his pants again. He thinks about how he will sit tonight. Up straight, back against the chair. He will use silverware. He practices sitting up. He closes his eyes.
“You look like Buddha.”
Imms jerks. B has come into the room. Imms sometimes hates the noise on Earth. He hears so much noise all the time that he has gotten much worse at hearing important sounds. He’s gotten worse at counting too. Numbers aren’t solid in his mind anymore; they scatter and slide into one another when he tries to use them.
Hates. He is finding he likes to hate things. Hating is easier than he thought. On the Silver Planet, not-wanting was enough. But when he discovers something on Earth he doesn’t want—and he has discovered many, many things in the two weeks he’s been here—the scars on his chest seem to blaze open, and out leaps a much fiercer feeling, as though he’d rather die than let the thing he doesn’t want get any closer. B says this is hate.
“Who’s Buddha?” Imms asks. On Earth, B uses dozens of words that Imms doesn’t know. They are almost all the names of things: laptop, spatula, Concord Street, raisins. Learning new words is not as exciting as it was on the Silver Planet now that Imms realizes just how many words are in the English language.
“Well, not really Buddha. You’re too skinny. Buddha was a fat guy who sat with his eyes closed and meditated.”
B is like this a lot now. Grinning, joking. Not at all the quiet, troubled man he was on the Silver Planet. B is glad to be home.
B still gets angry. Imms has become good at discerning when he is angry, and often why. In fact, Imms sometimes likes to make B angry. He can do this many ways. He can leave the stove on, or ask too many questions. He can bounce a tennis ball against the wall. He can take all the books off the shelf to look at them and not put them back. He can roll over in bed and pretend to be asleep before B can touch him. He feigns bewilderment when B’s expression hardens, when red rushes to his cheeks. It is tough, sometimes, to keep from laughing.
Tonight, though, he doesn’t want B angry. He doesn’t want B to make everything a joke, either.
“What are you listening to?” B asks.
“Northanger Abbey. I want to learn about manners.”
B laughs. “That’s a pretty archaic portrayal of etiquette.” Imms doesn’t ask what archaic means. “But I see your plan. You’re going to be terribly charming and polite at dinner, and make me look bad in front of my mother.”
“No way,” Imms protests as B kisses him.
“Yes, yes. You’re a conniving creature. But it won’t work on Mom. She’ll see right through you.”
“Will they hate me?” Imms asks.
B looks at him, really looks at him, for the first time since entering the room. “No,” he says quietly.
Six buttons on his shirt.
B loops an arm around Imms, crushing him against his chest. “They’ll love you.”
“They’re nice? Like Grena?”
B steps back. Twenty-eight light brown hairs in the space between his eyebrows. He has started shaving his beard down to prickles. “We’ve been over this, Imms. Not all women are—”
“I know,” Imms says. “They’re not just good or bad.”
B goes to the refrigerator and takes out a tall green bottle. “Wine?”
Imms shakes his head. “I’ll get sick.”
“You had some the other night. You were fine.”
“I felt sick. After you went to sleep.”
“You’ll at least try some of whatever my mother’s made, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You can have all the apples you want when we get home.”
Apples aren’t quilopea, but they’re good. Imms would eat them all the time if he could. If B didn’t insist he “expand his horizons.”
“Did you leave the oven on again?” B asks, looking at the dial.
Imms closes his eyes briefly. This time it really is an accident. He’s fascinated by how hot it gets inside the oven—hotter and hotter without producing fire.
He gets up, goes to the oven, turns it off. The two of them stand there for a minute in the heat.
They drive to B’s mother’s house. B’s mother has arthritis, so B’s sister lives with her and helps her out. Imms likes cars. He likes to put his cheek on the window, feel the cool of the gl
ass, watch the world fly by. He can’t get used to lights on top of posts. Even at night, Earth is not dark.
As they drive, B sets a hand on Imms’s knee, and Imms is grateful.
“Remember, this evening, we’re just friends,” B says.
“You don’t love me tonight,” Imms jokes.
“Don’t say that.” B clears his throat. “I just want to give them time to get used to you.”
Imms knows. He and B don’t love each other when they go to the NRCSE facility, either. Even when the psychologist asks Imms questions like, “Do you think B is handsome?” Imms has to pretend he has never thought about it.
Imms is allowed to tell NRCSE he considers B a close friend. He is allowed to say he doesn’t want to live with anyone but B. He is not allowed to say anything about love or fucking or kissing. Nothing about being strapped to the table in the Byzantine lab, or about Joele burning him. The scars on his chest are supposed to be from rescuing B. The humans at NRCSE want to hear this story again and again. They want him to stand in the burned lab of the Byzantine—which now looks like a sad, tired old animal, not at all the towering emergency it was on the Silver Planet—and show them what happened. They call him a hero, but they seem afraid of him.
Imms turns the TV on sometimes when B’s not around. People on TV are always talking about him. Last night, a blonde woman said that the presence of humanlike creatures on another planet proves the existence of God, and that the human body is the most perfect of all living forms. A dark-haired woman said this isn’t true, that the existence of Silvers means the Bible is wrong, that Earth isn’t anything special. She said the presence of humanlike creatures on another planet supports quantum mechanics. Infinite outcomes.
Nobody is supposed to have pictures of Imms. They’re not allowed. Anyone who gets too close or asks questions or tries to take pictures gets in trouble. But B says Imms has to do his part.
Don’t go anywhere alone. Don’t talk to anyone B hasn’t approved. Instead of a photo, the news channels display a drawing of him. It doesn’t really look like Imms, but Imms likes to see it.
He has looked into mirrors and realized that he is ugly. The only things on Earth colored like him are machines. He looks at humans and feels shame. Not the same kind of shame he feels knowing he caused the Byzantine fire. That shame winds itself around his body so that sometimes he can’t move without tripping over it. Shame over being ugly comes in jolts, gone so fast Imms is never sure it’s real. He’d rather look at humans than himself. Humans have shining hair, colorful eyes. He likes overweight people. He likes how their bodies swing and wobble. He likes how soft they look.
B looks at him. “Would you quit picking at your pants?”
“Sorry.”
“I thought those’d be more comfortable than jeans.”
“They are.”
“They look good on you.”
Imms smiles. He puts his cheek against the window.
They slow down in front of a wonderful house. It’s small, made of brick, with white trim around the door and windows and a circular plant on the door. Imms asks what it is.
“A wreath,” B says. “It’s tacky. Tell my mother that.”
Imms won’t because he can tell tacky means something bad.
For a moment, Imms can’t move. He wishes they could turn around and drive home. He wishes B would call him Roach and hand him a package of dried fruit.
“Come on, slug.”
Imms gets out of the car, follows B up the tidy walkway to the door.
The door opens before B can knock. A short woman with gray streaks in her dark hair takes B in her arms as they enter. “It’s about time,” she murmurs. Imms knows that B saw his mother and sister just after the Byzantine landed two weeks ago. Imms spent his first night on Earth with Grena at the NRCSE facility while B visited his family. But he can see from the expression on B’s mother’s face that this hasn’t been enough. That she never wants to let him go.
She releases B and turns to Imms, extending her hand.
“Mary.”
“Imms.” He shakes her hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
She pulls him into a hug. He is surprised, but relaxes quickly. “I’m so glad you’re here. B told me you like fruit. I made a fruit salad with yogurt dressing. There’s chicken and potatoes, buttered sprouts, and blueberry pie for dessert.”
“Sounds great,” B says.
In the kitchen, a woman slightly younger than B sits at a round wooden table. She has short, dark hair and wide-set eyes. The flatness of her face reminds Imms of a cat. She has one leg up on the chair beside her. “Hey,” she says when they come in. She looks past B and stares at Imms. “How’s Earth treating you?”
“Fine, thank you,” Imms tells her.
She snorts. “I’ll bet. Plates are over here. We’re rocking this buffet style.”
“Imms, this is my sister, Bridique.” B puts an arm around Bridique. She makes a face but gives his arm a squeeze.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Imms says.
“Sit through a goddamned dinner with me, then decide if you’re pleased to make my acquaintance,” Bridique says.
“Don’t mind her.” B claps Imms’s shoulder. “Grab a plate.”
Imms likes looking at the food. The colors and patterns fascinate him. But when it comes to actually putting it on his plate, he has trouble. He doesn’t want the slick, sucking noises the potatoes make when he lifts the spoon. He hates how the fork tines nestle into the pale flesh of the chicken.
“Just take a little of everything,” B suggests, reaching around him for something green.
B doesn’t understand that food is more than taste. It has sound and color, and he thinks of its history and the way fire changed it.
Imms takes a little of everything and sits down.
“You want a little fruit with your entrée?” Bridique asks.
Imms looks at his plate. He has taken mostly fruit.
“Don’t give him a hard time,” Mary says. “What did you eat back home, Imms?”
“Quilopea,” he replies. “It’s a kind of fruit. A very good fruit.”
“That’s it?” Bridique asks.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you need, like, vitamins and shit?”
“Vitamins and . . . ?”
“Silvers only need quilopea,” B says.
“What do you do for work?” Imms asks Bridique, racking his brain for B-approved questions.
“I work at a big cat rescue center. You know what lions are? Tigers?”
“He does,” B says.
Bridique ignores him and waits for Imms’s nod. “We take in cats that are sick, injured, or abandoned, and we fix them up. Give them a place to live out the rest of their days.”
“Where do you get them?”
“All over. Zoos, circuses. People who try to keep them as pets, which is the stupidest thing ever. By the time they get to us, they’re so fucked up.” She shakes her head. “Humans are assholes. You’ll learn this. Two divorces and a kid I only get to see twice a month. People don’t have the slightest notion of how to be kind.”
“Has B taken you anywhere exciting?” Mary asks Imms.
“It’s damn near impossible to go anywhere, with all the gawkers.” B wipes his mouth. “Our guard detail’s outside right now.”
The entourage. That’s what B and Imms have started calling the group that follows them around and stays outside the house to protect them.
“He took me to the hardware store the other day,” Imms says.
B swallows a bite of chicken. “I wouldn’t call that exciting.”
“Would you like some more fruit, Imms?” Mary asks.
“Dear creature,” he says. “How much I am obliged to you!” This is how Isabella answers Catherine in Northanger Abbey.
Bridique bursts out laughing.
Mary laughs too, spooning fruit onto his plate. “No need to be obliged to me. What’s my son been teaching you?�
��
“Not me,” B says. “Jane Austen.”
Imms discovers he hates people laughing when he is not. He sticks a forkful of chicken in his mouth. It is salty, and juice pours between his teeth. He feels a heat in his body that reminds him of fire. He sets his fork down. “May I be excused to the restroom?”
“Certainly,” Mary says. “It’s—”
“I’ll show you where it is,” B offers. He leads the way out of the kitchen and into the hall. He gives Imms’s arm a playful punch. “You’d sound perfect if this was the 1790s.”
“Yeah.” Imms wishes they were home.
B catches his shoulder, turns him so that they’re face-to-face. B studies him. “Hey.”
Imms turns away. Eighteen squares of floor between his right foot and the kitchen.
“She wasn’t criticizing you. She just wants you to be comfortable.”
“It’s fine.”
“Imms?” Mary appears in the doorway. “I want to apologize. I wasn’t making fun. It’s been a long time since anyone around here has taken a stab at politeness. Look at this one.” She nods at B.
Imms looks at this one and thinks, not for the first time, that even though many humans are beautiful, B’s looks will always be Imms’s favorite.
“Please,” B says. “I’m not that bad.”
Mary rolls her eyes. “You could learn a thing or two from Imms.”
B turns to Imms. “You don’t have to behave any certain way when you’re here. Just be yourself.”
Imms isn’t sure who that is at the moment. “Okay.” He tries to smile, to make it a joke.
Mary brushes a lock of Imms’s hair behind his ear. “Good boy. I know.”
Humans can do this, can pass judgment as easily as they issue a greeting. It scares Imms, and makes him glow, to be called good.
B says, “The bathroom’s at the end of the hall, on your right.”
The rest of the dinner goes smoothly. Mary asks Imms questions about the Silver Planet. About his family. About encountering humans for the first time. She listens attentively to his answers. Bridique is less attentive, twirling her hair on her finger, bundling herself into odd positions on the chair. Imms likes the lines around her eyes. They are like the lines in cartoon drawings that show something moving fast through the air. Every now and then, she snorts at something Imms says or shakes her head.
