The Silvers

by Jill Smith

  “He’s not some pet that needs to be socialized,” B says irritably. “He’s not NRCSE’s goddamn project.”

  “You can’t deny how useful these observations would be.”

  “Useful for what? For when we colonize the Silver Planet and enslave the Silvers?”

  Scofield smiles. “I don’t think we need to go that far, Captain. Studying Imms has helped us shed light on what it means to be human. Dr. Hwong’s analysis of Imms’s unique brain, heart, and lung structures has enormous implications for the medical community.”

  “You want to observe him living a human life? Let him live like a human. Let him have a family. Give him the freedom to go where he chooses. Get rid of the guards. Let people meet him. I’ll help him through that.”

  “What about safety?”

  “Whose safety?”

  “His. Yours. The public’s. You have no idea what could happen. You haven’t known him long enough to know what he’s capable of.”

  “Capable of? You mean like, violence?” B asks.

  “Partly.”

  B laughs.

  Scofield’s cheerfulness has subsided. “He attacked an investigator.”

  “That investigator came into our home and confronted Imms. Anything Imms did that day was done in self-defense.”

  “Well, regardless of why Imms tried to wound the man, he proved he’s capable of violence. We understand the necessity of protecting both Imms and those around him.”

  “He saved me. Are you forgetting that? He saved my fucking life.”

  “I am aware.”

  B would like to shout, but he knows another outburst would be unwise. He leans back in his chair. “This is about the investigation, isn’t it? The fire?”

  “This is about what’s best for Imms. Which may not be you, Captain.”

  B’s surprised by how much the words sting. And by how familiar they are. He’s thought them before. Still, the idea that NRCSE is a better option for Imms than B is ludicrous. “Keeping Imms at NRCSE is to refuse to acknowledge his essential humanity. It makes him a prisoner, an experiment. An animal.”

  “You make it sound as though we’d keep him in a cell in the bowels of this building. We’re talking about houses, Captain. Other homes. Other families. Imms is struggling, Captain. His handlers here have noticed a marked change in his demeanor.”

  B doesn’t answer.

  “There are also some who believe the best option for Imms is to go home aboard the Breakthrough II.”

  “What?” This is the first B has heard of it.

  “We haven’t talked to Imms about it yet, but it is a possibility.”

  B is too numb to be angry. When he speaks, it’s just a soft, “No.”

  “No?”

  “He can make his own damn choices, and he’s chosen to stay with me.” The words sound like a little kid’s saying them. His well-worn bravado has fear showing through its holes. He wishes someone else would decide what he does next. Tell him to run or stay put. Or relax, it’s not the end of the world.

  Scofield sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose. “We’d like to talk to Imms, Captain. Privately.”

  *

  B tells Imms about his conversation with Scofield.

  “No,” Imms says, so loudly B winces. “No, B. Please.”

  “She just wants to discuss it with you.”

  “I want you there.”

  “She wants to talk to you privately. She thinks I’ll influence your decision.”

  “Don’t let them keep me there,” Imms begs.

  “You’ll talk with Scofield for an hour or so, then I’ll take you home.”

  “Shit,” Imms whispers. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “It’s just to talk.”

  Imms takes a deep breath. “I want to stay here. Please let me stay here.”

  “You’ll stay with me,” B says firmly. “We just have to jump through the hoops so they’ll leave us alone.” He thinks about the bag under his bed. Then he thinks about the Breakthrough II. “And Imms…if you don’t want to stay here…”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Imms sounds hard, human.

  “Listen to me.”

  “What’s wrong, B? Are you mad? Did I do something? I’ll be happier. I’ll get off the couch. Just please let me stay.”

  “Shut up. You didn’t do anything.” B wraps his arms around Imms, pulls his head onto his chest. He can’t explain anything to Imms when Imms is like this. “If you fight NRCSE, they’re going to think I turned you against them. Listen to what they have to say. Pretend to think about it. But tell them you want to stay.”

  “You want to get rid of me.” Naked accusation is in Imms’s voice.

  “Roach,” B says softly. He hears Imms’s breath catch, then feels the body against his relax slightly. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Just like with the doctor.”

  Imms mutters something into B’s shirt.

  “What’s that?”

  “I had to. Let the doctor do what he wanted.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He said if I didn’t, he’d make sure NRCSE took me away from you.”

  “When did he say that?” B asks over the pounding in his ears.

  “Once when you were out of the room.”

  B’s hand on Imms’s back clenches into a fist. He feels Imms tense. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The fucking bastard doctor. That whole organization of fucking bastards. They know Imms has human thoughts and feelings, and they use that to exploit him. And Imms, so quick to put himself in danger for B. Why always for B? Imms braved the ship, Joele, to see him—twice. And now Imms has obeyed the instructions of a man he hates and fears to stay with B. That’s twisted. B truly is a barrier to Imms’s independence, to his happiness. Any fantasy of running off with Imms is a joke. Fuck, what if Scofield’s right?

  He pushes Imms away. “So why tell me now? You obviously decided you could handle the situation. You let him cut you open and stick that thing on your heart, and expose your body to all kinds of germs. What’s the point in saying this now?”

  Imms huddles against the back of the couch. “I don’t get to do what I want.” His voice is slow and sharp, like a needle pushed through skin. “I do what lets me stay.” His eyes glitter. The jagged irises tremble, as though they might split open.

  “When did you stop trusting me?” B stands. “That’s what I want to know.”

  “You can’t always protect me. You can’t always rescue me. I know that.”

  “I could damn well have tried.”

  “You could try right now! You could try now.”

  The urge to strike is gone so fast it might not have been there at all. B stands there, all his power, all his energy gone. He doesn’t want to hit Imms. He doesn’t want to touch him at all. He feels strangely peaceful. If he keeps Imms outside of him, refuses to let him in, he will be alone, and he can finally get some rest. He just has to find a way to make that person on the couch into a shell. Like he was on the Silver Planet. Something to cut into.

  B goes to the bedroom. He spends a lot of time there now that Imms and his cloud of darkness have taken up residence on the couch. If Scofield is right, and B isn’t what’s best for Imms, then maybe Imms should meet new people. Spend less time here. Maybe one day live on his own.

  Except that won’t happen, B knows. Imms will end up at the NRCSE facility, in a lab. The NRCSuckers aren’t evil. But they are like B and his team when they first encountered the Silvers—their awe was temporary. They now see Imms as an opportunity, a project. The NRCSuckers may bond with Imms on a superficial level, but they will not love him. They will not protect him.

  If Imms leaves B, he has to go back to the Silver Planet. But if Imms goes home, what kind of life is waiting for him there? Forgotten by his clan, he’ll have nothing to do but wander around in the darkness tending goddamn flowers.

  He’s more than that. B has always liked him because he’s more.

&nbs
p; B glances at his laptop, closed on the bedside table. Writing his reports on Imms for NRCSE is getting harder and harder. Last week, B caught Imms in front of the hall mirror, talking to his reflection in the Silver language. His tone was vicious, and he seemed to be searching for words at times. Once, Imms uttered a single word, a hard, sharp word that cracked across the room, and then he traced one side of his face with his finger.

  “What are you doing?” B finally asked, stepping into the room.

  Imms looked startled, then guilty, then so sad that B felt his own heart catch. He came to B and put his head on B’s shoulder, wrapping his arms around him. Imms didn’t answer any questions B asked, only pressed himself closer to B as though B was the ground on the Silver Planet, as though he wanted to sink into him. Then his hands went to B’s shirt. He looked as if he were unraveling the garment, rather than unbuttoning it. He put his hands on B’s bare chest, feeling the skin. Then he knelt and undid B’s fly.

  I can hardly write a report about that. He remembers how he let himself be distracted. How he didn’t pursue the matter of the mirror.

  B thinks of all he has done so far to avoid any mention in his reports of his relationship with Imms. The psychologist continues to ask if Imms has experienced feelings of attraction toward humans. “No,” B tells her. “No,” Imms tells her. B wonders now if he should have come clean from the beginning. It might have put a stop to all this business of sending Imms to live with someone else, if NRCSE only knew that B’s bond with Imms goes beyond rescuer and rescued.

  He thinks of Christmas Eve, the two of them in the bath. “I wonder if I can stay underwater as long as I used to,” Imms said. “Want to time me?” Without waiting, he plunged under the silver water. B felt Imms’s body brush against his legs. He tried to spook himself with different scenarios. He was in the ocean, and the thing bumping his leg was a shark. Or a dead body bound in seaweed, about to surface beside him. Danger lurked beneath the surface of the water, and B had no choice but to drift and wait to be pulled under.

  But no, he finally decided. The real danger is that this is how they live now. Imms below the surface, B just above.

  B can’t love below the surface.

  He does, though. He goes deeper and deeper into dark ground where he can’t breathe. With Imms there, too, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s what he’s clinging to that hurts. Love, however sharp and fierce it gets, isn’t so painful. But the house, the carpet, his job, his family—this all jabs him when he goes to make a decision. How is he supposed to be anyone but the man he’s always been, trapped and at odds with his universe? If he’s not trapped, he has nothing to push against, nothing to excuse his inaction.

  Imms gives him something to fight for, a possibility of freedom, an excuse to exclude himself from a society he’s never felt welcome in. NRCSE’s got a Planetary Integration Specialist working to make Imms a part of Earth. But B fell in love with the stranger, the outcast forgotten by his clan. Together they’ve woven a story. B wants them as they were, on bright earth under a black sky, the only two hearts on the planet that didn’t hide from each other.

  He takes the bag out from under the bed and rips everything out of it—the flashlight, the cans of soup, the spare clothes. It really does look pathetic, all strewn on the floor.

  He hears Imms’s words again. “You want to get rid of me.”

  Matty used to manipulate him that way. “You hate me,” he’d pout, if B got the least bit angry.

  B rolls a can of soup across the carpet and feels disappointed when it veers instead of hitting the wall.

  “I don’t hate you.” B would say, consciously placing his voice in a gentler register. B used to love his role of reassurer. Now he is older and doesn’t have the energy. He has seen too much. He wants people to take responsibility for themselves.

  He climbs into bed without taking his shoes off. He falls asleep and is surprised to wake and find Imms asleep beside him, one hand on B’s chest. B looks at the hand, sees that the cuticles around the nails are chewed bloody. He picks up Imms’s hand as carefully as possible. Imms doesn’t stir. He touches the tiny stinging spots with his thumb. He kisses each knuckle. He gets up to fix lunch.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Imms goes to see Scofield. The psychologist is there, too, along with two other NRCSuckers. Imms listens politely to everything they say. He tells them very politely that he’d like to stay with B.

  They tell him to think it over, and they’ll be in contact when they get some potential handlers lined up. Then Imms can come and meet them.

  He could tell them now about the fire. Then he won’t get any new handlers—the NRCSuckers will take him to jail, and that will be that. B can stop worrying, stop feeling guilty. But when he opens his mouth, the words won’t come out.

  The psychologist asks him questions, and he tries to give the right answers. She asks which he likes better, the tip or the eraser of a pencil. She tells him there’s a runaway trolley on a railway line, and five humans trapped on the main track. Imms can, if he chooses, pull a switch that will divert the car to a siding, thereby saving the lives of the five humans. However, a Silver is standing on the siding, and the Silver will be killed if Imms pulls the switch. What does he do? This doesn’t make any sense to Imms. He is the only Silver on Earth. How can another Silver be on the siding? And what is a siding? The psychologist says the situation is hypothetical.

  He hasn’t had any Italian lessons for a while. And hardly any swimming. It’s mostly just meetings with the psychologist, and sometimes trips to see Dr. Hwong.

  B drives him home. He doesn’t ask how the meeting went, so Imms doesn’t tell him. Imms goes to sleep on the couch and wakes up when the phone rings.

  “I told Don to stay the fuck away from me,” Bridique announces by way of greeting. She sounds like she’s been crying.

  Imms doesn’t answer.

  “He was getting really clingy. I don’t know what he thought. That we were in love or some bullshit. Anyway, he thinks there’s something going on between you and me. That’s what he said. Fucking cockwad.” She waits. “Hello? You there?”

  “Yeah,” Imms says.

  “So I’m a fucking idiot, right, for ever getting involved with him. But I just wanted to warn you, he’s no fan of yours right now.”

  Imms is silent.

  “What’s wrong with you? Can a girl get a little support?”

  “Why’d you have to do that?”

  “What? Speak the fuck up.”

  “Why’d you have to do that?” Imms repeats. “Get him pissed at me?”

  “Fuck you, too. Did you take an asshole pill today or something? Call me when you’re ready to be a friend.” She hangs up.

  Imms curls tighter. So tight his organs might burst like pimples. He doesn’t get pimples. Humans get pimples. Silvers are ugly enough without them. He practices the Silver word for ugly. He had to modify a couple of other words. The word for “unfortunate,” and the word for “appearance,” because Silvers have no word that means ugly. He likes to look in the mirror and speak to himself in his old tongue. He likes to bring human feelings to a language that never allowed for anger, or hate.

  Lady jumps onto the couch beside him, but he pushes her off. If she gets too close, she might get ugly, too. She might stop listening to commands unless they’re in the Silver language, because Imms used to talk to her in that language until B stopped him.

  B has gone to work. B said things would be different. Better. But they are not.

  The phone rings. It’s Brid again.

  “I forgot today was your meeting with the NRCSE assholes. So I guess I’m the cockwad. How’d it go? You tell them where to stick it?”

  Imms drops the phone.

  It stays light out a little longer each evening. B goes to bed a little later.

  Sometimes after B goes to sleep, Imms lies outside in the backyard, pretending he’s on the Silver Planet. He is glad B never asks what happened to the book he gave Imms
for Christmas, because then Imms would have to tell him he dropped it behind Mary and Bridique’s radiator in the basement with the spiders and dust, where his hands can’t reach. It started hurting too much to look at it.

  Imms is taking another pottery class at the Potter’s Wheel. He’s getting good, though he breaks most of what he makes—brings home vases and pots and ashtrays while B is at work and drops them on the kitchen floor, then cleans up the mess before B returns. He thinks B knows because sometimes B rubs the sole of his shoe on the kitchen floor, and clay dust crackles beneath.

  He practices going into the ground. In the yard, when B’s not home. For a long time, he can’t. Then one day, he slips, just a little bit, beneath the surface. Part of him knows he shouldn’t be satisfied with this. But he’s so desperate for any sign he’s still who he was that he doesn’t mind that he can’t go deeper.

  “Walk the dog,” B says one evening. Imms is lying on the couch, picking out shapes in the textured plaster of the ceiling.

  “You walk her,” Imms mutters.

  B strides over to the couch and grabs Imms by the arm, pulling him up. For an instant, Imms is frightened and thrilled—finally, something will happen—but B looks into his eyes and eases his grip. Takes a deep breath and says, quietly, “Walk her, please. She misses you.”

  Imms wonders what is in his eyes that even B won’t fight.

  *

  “Were you ever going to tell me?” B asks, dropping some papers on the coffee table in front of Imms. Grena’s book of cryptowords. Imms eyes it. “Grena won’t answer my calls. She’s never in her office when I’m there. But she’ll send you fucking coded messages.” He slaps his hand on top of the book. He wants Imms to jump, but Imms doesn’t. “Why does she think you’ll need her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Christ.” B rakes his hand through his hair. “What did she tell you? Did she tell you they want to send you home?”

  “No,” Imms lies.

  “She thought we shouldn’t bring you here. You know that? She tried to talk me out of it.”

  Imms doesn’t answer.