Triptych Read online

  “I thought perhaps I would investigate it first,” the young one admits.

  “We are not genetically compatible,” Kalp reminds them, “so there is no danger of impregnation, but they have different sexually transmitted diseases. Use prophylactics,” he adds in deference to his elder status. Parents and adults are meant to be sources of opinionated imperatives.

  But the curiosity is pulling hard, and Kalp cannot take his eyes from the book, from the page that it fell open on. “May I take this?” he requests. He could demand it, but Kalp has never been one to demand anything. Few people do follow the old strictures of the hierarchy — even at home they were nothing more than a way to shuffle the world into logical organization. It is only the arrogant ones like Derx that demand.

  The young ones seem unhappy at the loss of the literature, and Kalp promises, “I shall return it when I have finished my perusal.”

  They share a glance and agree, uncomfortable with denying a Higher Status at any rate, and disperse to go play a game of “hoops” with the human soldiers who live in a Sleeping Place of their own on the far side of the park.

  Kalp picks up the book and, feeling ridiculously salacious, returns to his cot with it. He opens it to the first page, skipping the graphic photographs in favour of reading the accompanying text, practicing his English first, building his vocabulary. It is an exercise in maturity and self restraint. It also builds a slow, anxious, but delicious sort of anticipation. As he reads, he tries very hard not to envision the faces of Maru and Trus.

  When he finally does allow his eyes to turn to the images, he somehow cannot imagine that under their clothing Gwen and Basil look like that, glistening pink and splayed out and vulnerable.

  ***

  Kalp is having an understandably hard time concentrating on work.

  He is in Basil’s chair again, because the desk and chair that Gwen requisitioned have not yet arrived. He is supposed to be concentrating on the schematics before him, but all he can seem to look at is the small shadow of flesh at the top of Basil’s chest. His top shirt button has worked loose and the vee of lightly furred skin is far more intriguing than it ought to be. Kalp looks at Gwen, busy laying out an assortment of delicacies that she apparently baked the night before, arranging them temptingly on the edge of her desk. She too has her top button undone, but he can only see the dip in her collar bones, and no further.

  Discreetly, Kalp undoes his own top button. It seems the done thing.

  He wonders at the fashion trend that makes a whole pairing of fasteners obsolete, when they are obviously there to be fastened, but then he puts that thought aside. He has seen stranger on his own world.

  Kalp had finished looking at the pornographic book before anyone else returned to the Sleeping Place, and, as promised, left it on the younger one’s cot. He spent the rest of the evening, however, thinking about Maru and Trus and how much he misses his family. He misses frantic, heated intercourse for no other reason than for the sheer pleasure of revelling in each other’s bodies, in the sweetly gasping responses and arousing little sounds. He misses comfortable quiet domestic compatibility. He misses performing kind gestures for no other reason than to evoke pleasure in another. He misses cherishing and being cherished. He misses falling asleep wrapped in his nest and around his Aglunated.

  He only allowed himself the usual mourning period; he could not stand to dwell any more than that. It had just been so fast, all of it, and sometimes it still feels like it never happened, that he may wake up any moment, rise up out of his unconscious phase and find it all to have been an illusion of the mind while he slept. Maru and Trus will be there, and the sky will be the soft green of his childhood.

  He performed the Ceremony and still feels incomplete — not that he had been alone in performing it on the refugee ships.

  Their mutual loss is what is holding those who are left together.

  Some had escaped with family — parents, siblings, children — some with Aglunates, some with whole Units. And some, like Kalp, utterly and absolutely alone. Kalp has no one.

  Kalp is widowed and touch-starved and, yes, he admits it, empty-feeling. He feels left behind, like maybe he really did die with Maru in the smoke field or Trus in the panic, and he is not on Earth, placed among — between — two of these strange, squishy creatures and trying vainly to adapt. To Integrate.

  And humans are squishy. Perhaps solely because they are nearly sixty percent water, they leak, ooze, secrete, and shed all over the place. It is a wonder that they do not leave puddles in their wake. While fornicating, the blood inside them flows all down in men and all up in women. Women make natural lubrication, but men do not, and yes, as the young ones found so revolting, all of the men’s sexual organs are at all times on the outside of the body.

  Kalp has to make an effort not to stare at the area of Basil’s pants that hide his genitalia as the human passes by in front of the drafting table to fetch more tea. Beyond a small tell-tale wrinkle, he looks perfectly flat in front, like Gwen and Kalp himself. Do men tuck themselves into contraptions to flatten their crotches, Kalp wonders, just as women tuck their fully inflated breasts into lingerie to buoy them up, to enhance their visibility and put their fertility on display?

  Kalp will not deny that “bras” are flattering, and add to the attractiveness of a woman, but it is strange to him that their breasts are inflated at all times, and not just when they are prepared to create and nourish a child. It is a strange evolutionary signal and Kalp is eager to investigate medical literature to further understand it. For the same reason he wonders why the penis and the precious sacs in which seminal fluid is created are placed in such an unprotected area. Kalp’s genitalia are safely tucked under his rib cage, where no stray jarring or accidental injury could endanger his chances of procreating. It seems only logical.

  Kalp is roaming amongst his thoughts when Gwen moves to stand before him and wave her hand in front of his eyes. The gentle buffet of sound that the movement creates brings Kalp back to the present. He fears Gwen will be angry with his distractedness, the way he has ceased to work, but she is smiling.

  “Earth to Kalp,” she says. “Where were you?”

  Kalp has heard this idiom before. He replies, “I was lost in thought,” and says nothing about the nature of his thoughts.

  “About what?”

  Kalp lowers his head and feels his ears droop. Gwen can read his body language well enough, it seems, not to press the issue. Instead she proffers a clear plastic container filled with delicious smelling sweets.

  “These are called brownies. Have you had chocolate before?”

  Kalp has, and says as much, but the first tender bite makes him wonder if he had been lied to originally. The “candy bar” that he had eaten several months ago was nothing at all like this. This is fantastic. Kalp’s pleasure pleases Gwen, and she grins.

  “I figured you’d like them,” she says. “I thought, if you have endorphins, you’d have to love the rush that chocolate gives.”

  Kalp is too busy licking the last morsels of the treat from his lips, trying not to look like he is sizing up the rest of the shallow dish.

  “Have another,” Gwen says, “but don’t eat too many too soon. The sugar will make you sick.”

  Kalp takes another, says, carefully, “Cheers,” and stuffs it with rather less grace than usual into his mouth, licking around his teeth to make sure he has chased down every last delicious molecule.

  Gwen’s eyes go shiny and bright and Kalp is not sure if she is more pleased about his reaction to the brownies, or that he has managed to utilize his jargon lesson from yesterday so effectively.

  Basil sweeps back into the office with a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, and a bottle of water. He sets all three down on the draft table, seemingly unconcerned about the ring of moisture the condensation from the water bottle causes on the thin paper, and dives in for a handful of brownies of his own.

  “Chocolate!” he crows, cramm
ing two into his mouth at once, chewing lustily.

  “Hey you,” Gwen says with a smile, pulling the container away from his grabbing hands too late. “These are for Kalp. You ate your half last night.”

  “I only had batter,” Basil protests. His speech is still slower, but Kalp is slowly becoming accustomed to the pattern of his cadence and today Basil’s words are easier to decipher, even if they are muffled by the detritus of food between his cheeks.

  “Exactly,” Gwen says.

  Basil opens his eyes very wide and makes his lower lip protrude, and Kalp stops. He watches Gwen’s reaction to this strange new expression.

  “Don’t beg,” Gwen scolds, but she is still smiling.

  Ah, so this arrangement of the features is “pleading.” Kalp memorizes this dutifully and wonders if he can make his own mouth into that shape. He doubts his lower lip is plump enough, but perhaps he will try later when he is before the mirrors in the lavatory. If this is the expression he must make to earn more brownies, he is certainly willing to practice.

  Gwen sighs — another term from yesterday — and holds out the box for Basil. Kalp does not begrudge the human man more of the brownies; they truly are excellent and Kalp believes that in the spirit of good will and mutual cooperation, he can sacrifice a few to Basil’s good humour.

  But then Gwen does something Kalp did not expect. Right before Basil’s fingers close on a brownie, she tugs the dish out from under his fingers. She smiles at him, but the expression is different, wider and yet more narrow, and with a jolting stab of revelation, Kalp realizes he has seen this face before, too.

  This is “sly.” This is the “invitation” face the woman in the pornography was making at the man.

  Like the man in the book, Basil obligingly takes a step into her personal space and presses his mouth against Gwen’s. There is chocolate at the corner of his lips and Gwen’s wet pink tongue darts out to lick it away.

  Kalp stands abruptly.

  If they are in the opening phases of sexual intercourse, Kalp feels that for decency’s sake, he must leave them to it privately. He is no prude, but Kalp feels intercourse should only be witnessed by those in the Unit involved. He also fears his own physical reaction to the deed. His own genitalia, once engorged, would be very visible. He fears either that they will be disgusted by the physical manifestation of his arousal, or angered that he was aroused at all.

  And after reading that pornography, Kalp does not doubt that he will become aroused.

  He turns to walk towards the door, but Basil calls out to him, “Oi, mate, where you headed?”

  Kalp stops, because it would be inconsiderate of him to depart without explanation, especially after so direct a request. “I will make myself absent for a time,” Kalp says. “So you may…finish.”

  “Finish what?” Gwen asks, and the puzzlement in her voice forces Kalp to look over his shoulder at the two, just so he can gauge her reaction.

  They are no longer entwined. Gwen is at her desk and Basil at his, the brownies temptingly unguarded in the middle of the draft table.

  “Were you not just initiating intercourse?” Kalp asks, for clarification.

  When they choke and turn red and trill, this time Kalp knows it is laughter and is not alarmed. He is mildly annoyed that they are once more laughing at his mistake, but he is more eager for them to cease laughing so that he may discover what they find amusing.

  “It was just a kiss,” Gwen says. “It could lead to…to intercourse. But, uh…not in this office.”

  “Anymore,” Basil adds under his breath and Gwen’s face flushes pink, again like the woman from the pornography.

  Is she shamed or aroused? Kalp wonders.

  Still, this is a revelation that Kalp must muse over in solitude. “I require the lavatory,” he says, and it is the first outright lie he has told a human since Earth-fall. Were he feeling less conflicted about other things, he may have felt guilty for the deception. As it is, he is merely anxious to depart the office.

  Basil waves him permission and Kalp goes.

  Kalp retreats into one of the small metal cubicles and puts the lid down on the commode and curls himself into a ball and thinks.

  Basil and Gwen are, if not a Unit, at least committed sexual partners.

  Kalp knew that they were comfortable with each other, with each other’s proximity and bodies, but he had not suspected that they currently engaged in intercourse. Or rather, he had suspected, but suspicion and confirmation are two very different things, and Kalp cannot help but feel mildly surprised. He tugs his ears nervously — the images behind his eyes grow more vivid. The woman and man in the pornography suddenly wear the faces of his teammates and it is too intriguing to be professional.

  A sudden, lurching thought occurs to Kalp.

  They touch him the very same way.

  No one has initiated something so intimate as a kiss yet, but perhaps that is due merely to shyness. Basil and Gwen each touch Kalp with the same casual affection that they touch each other. They had displayed their sexual initiations before him today, and unless Kalp missed the meaning of their exchange regarding the brownies, then they had been discussing intercourse that had been performed the evening prior. Intercourse that had involved Kalp’s brownies. In front of Kalp. And Basil keeps referring to Kalp as “mate.”

  Most importantly, Kalp is a widower.

  Here are two humans, already well on their way to being Aglunated, and him alone, who had volunteered to do whatever it takes to gain the human’s trust. What if he had misunderstood the question about volunteering? It was entirely possible — when the Specialists had come to them, Kalp’s grasp of English had been shaky at best.

  Kalp could have agreed to anything without being sure of the particulars of the arrangement. It is not an unknown occurrence, even on his own world. Mistakes in comprehension are sometimes made.

  What if what Kalp thought was a working relationship is actually a symbolic marriage? Has Kalp been purposefully placed into an Aglunate composed of humans and himself, as a political gesture?

  For a brief moment, Kalp rages.

  How dare! Kalp still aches for his lost Aglunates, he is not ready to retake others, especially so soon and especially a pair of leaking humans! He will not be used as a political tool, his own emotions rendered invalid. It is not fair and it is supremely undemocratic. Yet Gwen and Basil are kind, and Kalp really is willing to do whatever is necessary to ensure that his people stay welcome on Earth. There is nowhere else they can go. The bonded pair of humans the Institute selected for Kalp could be worse.

  It may not be so big a hardship, Kalp hopes tentatively, to be bonded to two people who are so thoughtful. Already he is very fond of them. Their generosity and kindness has impressed him, made them endearing. It makes him want to do something kind for them; like making brownies, or sharing a status-seat. He wishes there was something he could give, but he left his home with so little and everything he owns now is meagre and was donated. The thought touches the place inside where he still aches for Maru and Trus, but this time it does not hurt as much. Perhaps, he muses, spreading his palm flat, his fingers wide against his chest, the step towards intimacy and domesticity would not be as shockingly difficult as he fears.

  Perhaps, just perhaps, this is exactly the thing he needs to help make the pain of abandonment fade.

  For many long moments, Kalp remains in the commode’s cubicle, fingers tugging at his ears, thinking. He conjures up Maru’s and Trus’ faces and scents — they had been trying for a child, he and Maru and Trus. Any offspring generated from two would have been considered the product and pride of three. A Unit of four is the idyll on his world.

  Kalp had been looking forward to offspring.

  He had wanted very much to be a father. He had been anticipating lazy sunny afternoons with a picture book; evenings in the kitchen, the small one reaching up to thieve a sweet before the evening’s repast has finished cooking; teaching the child ev
erything that Maru and Trus could not, the things that he knew only from his own parents. All the things his mothers and father taught him.

  Now he will never know the child he had so envisioned. Not one of his own, not unless he enters into another Aglunate of his own people, and there are so few of them, they are so scattered…But here, he has been offered a place — symbolic, surely, but it appears as if Gwen and Basil are willing to take a step beyond the symbolic, to make it a true Aglunate, if he is willing to participate. The resultant offspring will not be his own, but Kalp thinks he would not mind helping to raise theirs. He will care for it, he knows, as if it were his own, pink and fragile or not. He could be that child’s father, too, and teach it everything that Maru and Trus would have, everything his own mothers and father taught him, could have the lazy afternoons with the picture books, even if they would be in English, could have the sneaked sweeties.

  Yes, Kalp decides. He will do this.

  For his people. For their future on Earth. For Gwen and Basil, and for, perhaps, the child he may be father to. For his own happiness.

  He can try.

  Choice made, Kalp emerges from the cubicle, washes his hands to ensure no cross contamination of bacteria, and returns to the office. It is quiet when he enters, Gwen and Basil each sheepishly bent over paperwork at their desks. Basil has retrieved a second chair from somewhere. Both of their cheeks flare red briefly, fetching and signalling shame all at once.

  Kalp, taking the cue of silence, walks over to the drafting table and sits, and works over his own translations quietly until the mid-afternoon repast.

  ***

  The only item in this whole marriage that confuses Kalp is the domicile arrangements. If he and his teammates are meant to be an Aglunate, then why does Kalp not reside with them in their own home? Do Units not live under the same roof, here? But he has seen on television that they do, at least in the unrealistic perfection of the fantasy world that Kalp knows television represents.