Triptych Read online

  “Whatcher sighingova?” Basil asks, forgetting to be articulate, to scrub out his argot.

  Kalp snaps his eyes open. “I beg your pardon?” he asks, careful to use the politest form of requesting clarification he knows.

  “You sighed,” Basil repeats, conscientious this time of his speed and word use. He is leaning on the brace of his hands, elbows locked backwards in a pose that makes Kalp’s arms sore just witnessing it. These humans seem so stiff and angular, until he witnesses them doing things like this, turning their arms around in their sockets, or the way they pivot on the balls of their feet when they wish to move fast, seeming to ignore the existence of their own toes. He has seen contortionists performing on television.

  Kalp does not know this word, “sigh,” and pulls his eyebrows down to indicate so. That, at least, is one facial expression their species share.

  Basil huffs out a breath, repeating what Kalp did earlier. “That’s called a ‘sigh.’” He does it again and clarity washes through the air. Then Basil touches the back of his own neck in the same place Kalp had touched his. “Why?” he asks.

  Gwen, who is leaning over a pad of paper upon which she had been scribbling translations as Kalp made them, looks up in interest.

  “I have pain,” Kalp says, deciding not to lie. If he explains what the problem is, perhaps they can correct it. At the least, conversing will allow for the excuse of the momentary drop in productivity. Breaks are often very informative in this office, even the unofficial ones where they must stay inside and cannot venture forth for refreshment.

  Kalp has learned — and taught — more about their differing cultures during these small conversations than in all the classes he has attended. At least, it feels that way.

  “Pain?” Gwen repeats. “Your neck is sore? Or is it a headache?”

  “Both,” Kalp admits.

  She sets down her writing instrument. It threatens to roll off the table’s surface, but stops at the edge. “Is it from doing the translations? We can take a break. Or are you thirsty? I always get a headache when I’m dehydrated.”

  “The translations do not pain me,” Kalp says, trying to explain carefully that it is not work that is hurting him. He wants to be clear on that. He does not want work taken away from him; it is the last thing that is keeping him sane, from dwelling too long and too often on the tormenting past. From the loneliness. “Though I will require water soon.”

  “Could use a cuppa myself,” Basil says with a bob of his head that indicates affirmation, though his words are once again puzzling and Kalp is unsure with what Basil is agreeing. Kalp decides that it will take especially long to learn how to communicate with this particular human.

  “You can always go for a cuppa,” Gwen chides, and this is humour Kalp knows, has seen before on the television. She is being derogatory but with a smile and a pleasant tone — teasing. “So what’s causing the pain, Kalp?” Gwen asks, using his name directly.

  Kalp likes the way his name feels across his skin when she says it.

  “These arrangements…” Kalp hesitates. Would admitting the truth about the work environment be considered impolite? Gwen and Basil are both waiting, faces open and patient. Kalp once again decides on truth over safe words, over the mask of politesse; it has not failed him thus far. “They are not comfortable.”

  Basil’s eyes narrow, and run up and down Kalp’s body once, then flick to run similarly over the table, the note pads, the blueprints; assessing with his engineer’s mind. He grins suddenly and presses the thumb and the middle finger of his left hand together and then draws the middle finger down swiftly into his palm, producing a sharp fleshy clicking sound that makes Kalp’s whole scalp shiver.

  “Ah ha,” Basil says. “Table’s too low.”

  “Oh crap,” Gwen adds, consternation crossing her features. “I should have thought of that. I’m sorry, Kalp.”

  “Do not trouble yourself — ” Kalp starts, falling back unconsciously into humble speech, ears folding. But Basil is already across the room, snatching the chair on wheels out from under his own desk.

  He flicks a catch on the side and the spindle under the seat hisses out air and rises until it is as high as it will go, which is still low enough to fit under the drafting table.

  “There you are,” Basil says with a flourish. “Should be the right height now.”

  Kalp hesitates. It is an extremely generous offer, to share one’s stature-seat with a co-worker. A true gesture of equality. He wonders if Basil is aware of how awed Kalp feels.

  “Sit, sit!” Basil says, flapping his hands impatiently.

  Kalp makes another smile of pleasure, toes curling as he feels the breeze from Basil’s impatient gesture ruffle the fur on his face. Kalp sits. Basil touches the catch again and the spindle sinks a bit under Kalp’s weight. Basil reaches under the seat, playing with the handle and tugging and adjusting the altitude until it becomes the perfect height for Kalp to tuck his legs under the draft table, yet still see the documents without having to hunch over. Basil’s fingers slide against the nape of Kalp’s neck in passing as he makes adjustments, wonderfully hot, and Kalp resists the urge to lean back into the touch.

  The continual and steady stream of consideration and generosity coming from Kalp’s partners is truly overwhelming, and Kalp sees now why Earth took them in so readily. They seem to see these acts as natural, obvious. Here, kindness is a right, not a privilege to be earned.

  Perhaps there is something to be said for loose hierarchies.

  Basil smacks his palms together, making the same sharp fleshy sound the clicking fingers did, only on a larger scale. “So, tea for me, coffee for Gwen — requests, Kalp?”

  The snap of flesh on flesh makes Kalp shiver once more, and he likes the way his name sounds when Basil says it, too.

  “Water, please,” Kalp says.

  Basil snorts. “Just water? You’ll see — I give it a week before you’re a tea drinker.” He waves at the air, sketching a form of salutation, and walks out the door. The wooden cylinders in the curtain click together soothingly as they settle back into place.

  “We can take a break now,” Gwen says, walking over to her own desk and writing something down on a different piece of paper.

  “What do you write?” Kalp asks, taking her comment as an invitation to conversation. He has not had the opportunity, really, to have a free and open-ended dialogue with a human yet, and this is the part of his work that he is most looking forward to. He arches his back in an effort to relieve the ache from hunching forward, revelling in the muscle-releasing click his spine makes in response.

  “Hm? Oh, memo. Uh — a reminder to myself,” she clarifies when he makes the face of confusion to indicate his puzzlement at yet another new piece of vocabulary. She clicks the end of her writing utensil repeatedly, making the tip from which the ink emerges vanish and reappear at a constant rate. Kalp has noticed that Gwen almost always has something in her hands — a pen she flips through her fingers, a cup whose handle she strokes. She taps her chin, picks at her lips, runs her fingers through her hair. He hears every movement, and it is constant, a throbbing wash over his body, and she feels just so alive. Alive and active in ways that none of his kind have been in what feels like lifetimes. “I have to remember to order you your own desk and chair at the right height.”

  “You would — ” Kalp begins but Gwen stops him with a smile and a wagging finger.

  “Equal status, Kalp,” she says. A soft reminder, but seriously delivered.

  He does not finish his sentence. Instead he basks in the warmth of this feeling of…welcome. He moves his head to the side to look at the door, to see if Basil has returned yet, and a sharp pain slices up the side of his neck. He grimaces.

  “You okay?” Gwen asks.

  Kalp knows that “okay” is universal Earth jargon for everything from “feeling well” to “pleasant,” “delicious” to “good.”

  “I am not okay,”
he admits, still fighting the impulsive urge to be polite and tell smart words instead of the truth.

  “Your neck, still?”

  “Yes.”

  Gwen moves back to his side. “What brought this on?”

  She is close and the rhythmic patter of her heart is soothing. “Where I sleep, it is very hard,” Kalp says.

  “Ah — bed cramps,” Gwen says with another one of those affirmative head bobs that she and Basil seem fond of. “And what does pressing your fingers there do?”

  “There is a chemical,” Kalp explains, turning his head and shoulders together, carefully, to look up at her so as to avoid another sharp pain. “It is in our bodies. It makes us feel good. Over stimulating the painful area forces the body to release the chemical to counteract the pain. It also helps to work the tension from the muscles affected.”

  “Endorphins,” Gwen says. “We have them too. May I?”

  Before Kalp can ascertain what Gwen is asking permission for now, her fingers are on the back of his neck, warm and moist and pressing carefully in the same spot he had been. Then she moves her strong thumbs in small circles along the connective tissues of his neck, and Kalp nearly weeps with relief.

  He slumps forward, giving her hands better access to the back of his neck, not caring that this means that she could easily slit his throat or strangle him in this pose. She is his teammate and she is showing great caring and trust in providing this relief. It is only fair that he shows the same.

  Besides, it feels fantastic.

  Basil comes in then, his hands full of containers of liquid, and stops just past the wood curtain. “Oi!” he says, sounding very annoyed. Kalp flinches away from Gwen’s wonderful hands and cowers, ears flat back.

  Kalp has already deduced that Basil is, if not currently, planning to be mated with Gwen. Kalp fears that the therapeutic touching has damaged his fledgling camaraderie with the human man. Basil has been touching Gwen a lot, and to catch Gwen touching Kalp in a similar manner…will Basil take this as a challenge? Kalp knows so little about human mating rituals; will he and Basil have to fight?

  “I apologize — ” he starts, but Gwen is trilling again. Laughing.

  Basil’s anger, it seems, is not real. This is another joke.

  Kalp “sighs” in relief.

  “If Kalp gets a massage, I want one, too,” Basil says, coming forward to divest himself of the beverages. Two are in paper cylinders, and he hands one to Gwen and keeps one for himself. Kalp assumes the clear plastic cylinder filled with water is for him.

  “Later,” Gwen promises and blinks, somehow, with only one eye.

  It is some sort of communication method, a physical gesture that Kalp does not understand. There is more silent conversation that occurs with meaningful muscle spasms in the face, but it is a conversation with a code that Kalp is not privy to. Feeling as if they have forgotten his presence entirely, Kalp decides not to interrupt.

  He opens his bottle and drinks.

  When the silent conversation is complete, Gwen and Basil return to their positions at the table, and they all three resume work. At the end of the day, Kalp’s neck is still sore, but less than before, and he feels the warm glow of belonging settling under his skin. He still longs for a chance at the cleaning cubicle, but the humans’ secretions are somehow less offensive today.

  Gwen touches his shoulder in parting, as she and Basil head in one direction across the Institute’s parking lot towards the conveyance that they share. Kalp goes in the other, to the larger one that his kind takes back to their building.

  There is a smile on Kalp’s face and he does not remember putting it there.

  ***

  Back at the Sleeping Place, Kalp returns to his cot from the cleaning cubicles with water droplets still clinging to his fur. He misses the soft sponges and the meagre buckets of water that his own people use, but the “shower” is soothing in its own way, the water sluicing cool across his bare skin, a blissful pitter patter down his flesh. He drops his shoes under his bed and nudges them out of sight with his toes. He is very pleased to remember that he does not have to wear them ever again, at least, not to work. He has been given permission from equal-status teammates, and even Derx cannot order him to wear them now.

  Let Derx and the other High Statuses scrambling for acceptance half-deafen themselves for it. Kalp is accepted already. His team regards him with affection and is concerned for his well-being and comfort. To them, this is more vital than his proper Integration, and Kalp feels a little surge of pleasure at the thought that learning to be accepted by Earthlings may not be as taxing as he’d originally feared.

  Kalp is aware that his pride is perhaps ill-founded and too quick. Today, after all, was his first real full day at “the office,” and perhaps they were acting especially nice because of the novelty of his presence. Kalp fears that this might be the case, but he is fairly certain that it is not. Gwen and Basil are just as easy with him as with each other, and their mutual affection seems natural and unforced.

  They are simply kind people.

  And truthfully, after so many months in the escape ship, followed by hours, weeks in military installations and medical centres, and then still more months in classrooms and teaching halls interspersed with so many stuffy, formal functions and welcome parties, after having lost…

  After. Just after.

  Well, Kalp is understandably a bit skin-starved. Just to be touched, touched with purpose and warmth, even if it is with moist, scent-marking hands, is a little bit of a wonder.

  He lies down on his cot. The time when the lights are removed is far off yet — Kalp has not yet gone down to the other building for his evening repast — but he feels languorous and revels in the silence of having the Sleeping Place almost entirely to himself. He stretches his hands far above his head, touching the wall behind him, and stretches his toes as far as they will go in the other direction, and lays indecently sprawled in his clean clothing, enjoying the closest thing to silence that the electricity-laced walls can offer.

  The sounds from the park around them — the chitter and flap of the native fauna, the flying animals that so astounded Kalp when he first saw them — is rather soothing. It cancels out the zip in the wires, and Kalp decides that he likes birds. Their quick little hearts and their hollow bones and their flittering wings wash excitement across his body, so he lies still and enjoys it. He inhales and exhales slowly and deliberately, holding onto the oxygen. He practices his “sighs.”

  The moment of respite is broken by an exclamation in the corner closest to the door. When Kalp came in, there was a knot of Lower Statuses sitting on a cot, peering intently at some form of Earth literature. Kalp did not so much ignore them — he is not as arrogant as Derx — as leave them to their own pursuits. They had all returned earlier than he; they are younger and as such are attending the local “University,” which keeps shorter hours in deference to the extra work the young ones must complete at home.

  Kalp likes that word: university. A city in which the universe is found. Or founded.

  The others who had returned from the Institute that afternoon with Kalp have gone their own way, seeking a meal or entertainment, or things that Kalp did not long for. So he had parted ways with them to take advantage of the relative privacy of the cleaning cubicles and to think.

  Only, he cannot think now, because the young ones are shouting.

  “It is on the outside!” says one, and his companions gesture for him to keep his voice low and respectful. Were Kalp not in the room, they surely would not care. The speaker’s voice drops to barely a whisper, but Kalp swivels an ear in their direction, intrigued. Besides, it is nice to hear his own language after so many hours struggling to find the correct words in English.

  “Only when — ” another starts, but stops. “Oh, no, there it is before. That’s…rather revolting.”

  “Well, no one says you must perform intercourse with any.”

  Now
Kalp sits up.

  “What are you reading?” he asks, and they all immediately turn to him, raise their palms and drop their ears. The literature lays spread open on the cover of the cot.

  Kalp stands. He is concerned about their overt interest in copulation because he is older, because he is an adult and they are not…yes, he is only interested out of concern. Kalp almost believes his own lie. In truth, he is just as intrigued as the young ones about the mechanics of human reproduction. It is not a topic that has been openly discussed in any of his classrooms to date.

  Do they, like his people, engage in the act for pleasure as well as to conceive? From the looks of the glossy, thin book lying open on the bed, it seems they do. They also, like his kind, produce pornography in order to stimulate sexual pleasure in a reader.

  Do they have orgasms? he wonders. Are they capable?

  Kalp walks over and looks down at the book, and the young ones’ fingers all tremble.

  “Oh, do stop,” he says and they drop their hands as one. “I am not here to chastise you — in honesty, I am as curious as you. From where did you obtain this book?”

  One of the young ones, whose name Kalp does not know, says, “My classmate. I think she…the term is ‘crushes me.’”

  Kalp touches his nose. “Sounds unpleasant.”

  “No, it is slang. It means ‘to wish to have intercourse with.’”

  Yes, Kalp is very familiar with the problems of Earth jargon. He avoids the instinctual nervous gesture of tugging on his ear at the memory of “cheers,” and instead puts his hands on his hips, mimicking the pose of stern, concerned parent he has seen the humans use.

  “And she gave you this book in order that you would be informed in the manner in which this is accomplished?”

  The young one nods like a human.

  “Do you intend to follow through?”

  The young one lifts his shoulders and drops them again, a shrug. Kalp thinks he is bad for picking up the humans’ gesture tics, but the young ones are worse. The humans’ physical communication methods are starting to overshadow his own people’s, and Kalp wonders if he should be concerned about preserving his native culture. Well, there are others whose first concern is that, anthropologists and the like from both races. Let them worry. Kalp will do as he feels comfortable doing; he will do what is needed to be understood.