Triptych Read online

  Gwen mutters, the sound muffled by the pillow Kalp imagines her face to be mashed into.

  “Oh no,” Basil says in response to her, “if I let you sleep until the alarm goes off you’ll be a grouch all day. Up. Kalp’s already used up all the hot water.”

  Kalp would be alarmed at his own rudeness for depleting the supply, if he did not already know that this is one of Basil’s favourite phrases for teasing.

  He also understands now what Gwen meant by “shopping.” When he opens his chest of drawers, Kalp realizes that he owns no civilian attire. The only clothing Kalp owns is meant for work, so in the end, he is wearing a pair of Basil’s blue jeans. They are far too short in the leg and Gwen says they look like clam-diggers. It takes Basil’s explanation around a mouthful of eggs at breakfast to understand what Gwen means. Kalp is also wearing one of Basil’s seemingly endless supply of tee-shirts with intentionally humourous phrases printed across the chest. This one says Obey Gravity! It’s the Law!

  Basil wanted to put him in a tee-shirt that had one arrow pointing at his face with the label The Man, and another pointing towards where his genitalia would be were he human and the label The Legend. Gwen had looked at Kalp in it, giggled, and vetoed it.

  “Besides,” she had added as Basil herded Kalp back up the stairs to change again, “the arrow isn’t even pointing to the right place!”

  Basil had turned pale and pushed him back into the bedroom.

  Kalp cannot help the little thrill of joy at the memory. Gwen, at least, has studied enough of his kind’s anatomy to know where all the pertinent parts are; perhaps, like him, she has also read pornography for the sake of study.

  Kalp is consuming a pot of kiwi yogurt — he is unsure that he likes the taste of the grainy green fruit and is glad that they did not buy any at the market yesterday — and watching Gwen pack, unpack, repack, and reunpack a vinyl shoulder bag. “Hat, keys, sunglasses, chapstick, sunblock, oh, Basil, hand out,” she says. Basil does not stop shovelling food. He merely switches his fork to his other hand and holds up his free palm obligingly. Gwen squirts some of the oily cream into it, and he rubs it all over his face as he’s chewing.

  Kalp loses his appetite for the similarly-textured yogurt.

  He abandons it on the table and fetches an apple instead, crunching through the red skin to the soft white flesh below, trying to keep the juices out of his chin fur. Kalp is not even finished eating the apple before he is hastily ushered out the door to the car. They drive to the train station. It takes forty minutes, during which Gwen slathers herself with the sunblock cream and tries to remember if she locked the front door (she did, Kalp watched her do it), and fusses about counting out enough tender to pay for train tickets.

  Kalp will receive his first pay packet next Friday. He feels guilty for being unable to contribute to the excursion — Units share — but Gwen assures him that he can pay next time, and that puts his conscience at ease. By the time Basil has parked the car, Kalp has consumed the entirety of the apple (“what, core and all?” Gwen notes, aghast) and has to duck to enter the train station. It is an old building and its ceilings are low. Generations ago, Basil explains, humans used to be shorter.

  They buy three tickets and the station master is unsure whether to laugh or scream at Kalp’s stooped countenance. Kalp does not let the man’s discomfort affect him, and soon they are back out in the open air of the platform, waiting for the train to arrive. Kalp has also never been on a train before. He wonders what life will be like when he’s run out of things to do for the first time, and hopes that the day when that occurs is far, far off.

  There is a family with two little boys who look even more difficult to tell apart than usual — “twins,” Basil calls them, a litter of two — beside them on the platform. At first the boys are terrified of Kalp, and Kalp, who hovers very high above them, does not blame them. He crouches low to the ground to remove some of his looming impressiveness, and says, “This is my first excursion on a locomotive.”

  The mere mention of a train is enough to get both boys, who are each clutching small plastic models of a blue steam engine with a smiling face on the front, excited.

  “What, never?” one asks, and then both are off, chattering so excitedly about this rail line and that engine, that their fear of Kalp vanishes entirely. Kalp cannot understand all that they say — their accents differ again from Basil’s and Gwen’s, and they speak far too rapidly, but the enthusiasm is infectious and Kalp finds that he does not care.

  Kalp thinks that if all children react to him as favourably as the ones he’s met thus far, men like Rudy will eventually become obsolete as people outgrow their bigotry. It is a comforting notion.

  When they enter the train, the family heads towards the front so the boys may watch the driver, and Basil, Gwen, and Kalp find a group of four seats facing each other in a relatively unoccupied car near the back. Gwen sits opposite Basil and Kalp and drops the carry bag filled with lunch and other necessary items into the seat next to her.

  “You’re good with kids,” she says. She kicks off her sandals and lifts her feet, and puts them in Basil’s lap. It is shockingly intimate and sends a thrill up Kalp’s spine. “You would have made a good dad.”

  Kalp smiles. He anticipates the hot twist of pain that should accompany the thought of his Aglunates and what they were denied, but is surprised to note that it has mellowed slightly.

  He supposes that the Earth idiom is true, and time eventually does heal all wounds.

  ***

  Kalp does not like the Eye of London.

  It is beautiful to the sight, but the grinding clanks of the machinery in motion and the bobbing sway of the glass-ensconced pods make his heart beat too fast and his breathing ratchet up. If he had the skin for it, he knows he would be as flushed as Basil when he is angry. Only this is fear.

  Kalp sits on the bench in the exact middle of the glass pod and pushes the pads of his fingers together in an effort to keep from tugging on his ears in distress. Kalp can hear the small hissing breeze that is slithering in through the rivets and joints, the surging gasp of electricity sparking over wires, and it is unnatural to be so high up and supported by a few small creaking bolts.

  Gwen calls his reaction a panic attack.

  Basil calls it agoraphobia, claustrophobia, acrophobia, and a sensible mistrust of potentially shoddy workmanship.

  “It’s just twenty minutes,” Gwen says, and points to her wristwatch, “and look, see, we’ve done seven already. Just a little bit more and we’re off. There’s a trooper.”

  Basil huffs and comes back from the window and sits so close to Kalp that Kalp can feel the warmth of his body all along his side, from knee to shoulder. It is a comforting, grounding distraction and Kalp welcomes it. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the sounds Basil’s body makes when it is pressed right against Kalp’s sensitive skin.

  The other humans in the pod with them keep their eyes resolutely aimed on the distractions outside. Kalp suspects this is due to Gwen’s sweeping glare, and this he appreciates as well.

  The truth is, the glass pod reminds Kalp too strongly of the escape shuttles that he had been crammed into — the segmented hive-like compartments that had been jammed to dangerous capacity with the weeping, the wailing, the ash-coated, and bleeding, and for some, the dead and dying.

  Kalp remembers the one in the coffin-like sleeping pod beside him. The face was half gone when the other person had thrown themself into it. The person was bloody down all one side. They had groped blindly and called for people who did not come, and Kalp had grabbed the upraised hand and held it, just to make it stop. To make the other person shut up. He felt the death, heard the heart stop beating and the skin stop throbbing and he had to break the dead fingers to get them off of his. He had barely freed himself before another came and threw the corpse carelessly to the floor, where those who hadn’t been quick enough to claim a pod were huddled, and took its place.
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  Kalp’s stomach churns and the yogurt of the morning seems intent on rebellion.

  He breathes deeply over and over again through his nose and calls out to Gwen and pulls her close to his other side to block out the hissing breeze that is pushing in through minuscule gaps between steel and glass and sounds exactly like a child screaming.

  Gwen and Basil wrap their arms around Kalp, trying to cover off as much of his skin as they can with their fat, awkward limbs and he is too busy trying not to be sick to marvel at the familiarity of it.

  He is here now. He is on Earth, surrounded by healthy humans, on a conveyance of amusement. He is not in space, surrounded by shrieks and corpses, on a conveyance of despair.

  When the pod shivers to its slowing stop, Kalp is the first off and none of the other passengers begrudge him this position. He walks swiftly to the bottom of the ramp, as the signage requests he do, turns into a small grove-like area made up of large potted flora, and empties the contents of his stomach at the base of one.

  Some small part of his brain that is not occupied with the retching wonders if his unique stomach acids will harm the plant.

  Gwen is there when he is finished, handing him an already opened bottle of water with which to rinse the sour taste from his teeth, and something called “gum” which is sharply refreshing and is not meant for swallowing. It disguises the scent and flavour of sick and he is happy for it.

  Basil comes around the corner a moment later, tucking the black animal hide fold in which he keeps his currency back into his pocket. In his hand is a cardboard frame with a glossy photograph. In the photograph, Kalp is standing beside Basil, his long arm reaching over Basil’s shoulders to rest on Gwen’s. All three are standing before the great machine, in the same position as Basil and Gwen’s photograph on the kitchen wall.

  In the photograph, Kalp has mastered his smile, Basil looks bemused, and Gwen is grinning. It is a “before” shot.

  “This is not an accurate reflection of our experience,” Kalp says, peering over Basil’s shoulder to investigate the image.

  “No,” Basil agrees. “But it’ll make for a good story one day, wonnit?”

  ***

  They stop for their lunch of leftovers after that, sitting on a bench facing the water on the Riverwalk Quay. Kalp is not very hungry, but he nibbles at the bread to help settle the last of the roiling discomfort in his stomach. Gwen makes Basil leave enough food for Kalp to eat later, and Basil once more performs the expression of begging — wide, wet eyes, jutting lower lip — but this time Gwen is resolute. Kalp does not feel that he will be eating any time soon, and rather than see Basil hungry, he gives his permission. Basil consumes the remainder happily, though Gwen smacks his arm when he dips his chin to lick the dish clean.

  They walk to Gabriel’s Wharf next. By the time they arrive, Kalp’s heart has returned to its normal rhythm and his ears are back up, swivelling to catch the sounds of the busy market. It is like the open square in their home town, but on a far more massive scale. Someone is playing a stringed instrument at the corner, and people are throwing him coins in approval. There are so many carts displaying so many different kinds of wares that Kalp does not know where to begin. They try on hats and sunglasses, poke through piles of second hand books, and Kalp purchases a long sleeved, long-hemmed white shirt of a gauzy material called “linen.” It is delicately embroidered all around the scooping collar and the hem of the sleeves with bright red and yellow and green thread fashioned to resemble birds. Basil calls him a “hippie” in it, but Kalp adores the shirt, adores the birds. He strips off the quirky tee-shirt, folding it into Gwen’s carry bag, and dons his new shirt immediately.

  The vendor is so pleased he asks to have photographs taken with Kalp for advertisement. Kalp is not adverse to the notion, and poses gamely. Soon, however, there is a whole flock of tourists taking Kalp’s picture. This was not anticipated and is slightly uncomfortable. He smiles for what must be ten minutes, and sometimes there are people who shove their way through the crowd to stand beside him, to be captured with him, without first requesting permission.

  He does not want to offend by walking away, but he is no longer enjoying himself. There is a very large difference between one photo as a favour and many simply because people have him cornered. When his smile starts to flag, Gwen grabs him by the hand, thanks the humans for their attention, and pulls him away. Kalp is more than happy to go. He did not dislike the experience, but it was wearying. He now pities those of his kind who are the military and governmental leaders, who now work in high profile positions with the Earth governments and must endure such photography sessions often.

  Kalp is very happy to not be famous.

  When they complete their shopping, they are just in time to make a walking tour of the National Theatre, so they double back for that. Kalp is intrigued by the counterweight pulley system that raises and lowers set pieces, but they are not allowed to touch them. Basil mentions that there is a community theatre playhouse where they live that is always bothering Basil to be a technician, and maybe he can get Kalp in to do volunteer work on weekends. After the completion of the tour, they walk all the way to the end of the quay on the Thames. It is nearing the dinner hour and Basil is nagging for a pint. They stop in a pub with an outdoor patio so they can “people watch.”

  Kalp has sampled beer before, and wine, and champagne. There were many parties when he first made Earth-fall, and at the time he had been hurt and angry by the celebrations. He knew he should have been celebrating his survival, the survival of his race and culture, and the new-forged friendship with the humans, but all he could think about was that they had not buried their dead. There were neglected bodies, just lying on the streets, in homes, in offices, floating jettisoned through space, and here they were making small talk and sampling delicacies and consuming psychotropic beverages.

  Never mind that, rationally, Kalp knew there were no streets and homes and offices left; that the whole planet had cracked apart and disintegrated into particles so small they could be inhaled. It still felt wrong.

  Kalp associates beer and wine and champagne with this sense of wrongness, so he allows Gwen to order him a drink that does not taste like those. She finds something called a Strawberry Daiquiri on the menu, which comes out in a tall round vessel with a paper umbrella, violently pink with a swirl of nearly phosphorescent green. It tastes like tart osap and Kalp is pleased. Gwen has a glass of red wine and Basil a pint of Guinness, and the manager of the pub sends out a waiter with a camera. If Kalp and his friends will not mind posing for a photograph to go behind the bar, the waiter says, their drinks and whatever food they order will be free.

  Friends. Until now Kalp has thought of Gwen and Basil as teammates, co-workers, potential Aglunates, but never as “friends.” He likes it.

  But Kalp is also starting to resent this form of generosity — it appears harmless, but it is, in truth, selfish. It is not generosity like Gwen and Basil opening their home to him and asking for nothing more than his fair share of domestic duty. It is utilizing Kalp in order to procure more business. Kalp is sure that the shirt vendor and the pub owner will pull in far more revenue simply by displaying Kalp’s photograph than the amount they lose in compensating his purchases.

  He thinks about denying the server his photograph, but also understands that if he says no, then they will have to uproot and move to a different pub because the owner here will be resentful. And even still he will probably be asked for his permission again for a photograph at the new pub. Kalp sighs and agrees and puts on his best smile for it.

  When the waiter goes away, Kalp says, “I do not wish to pose for any more photographs.”

  “Thank God,” says Basil. “I’m sick to death of them.”

  Gwen grins, genuinely this time, not the fake and careful smile she had used for the picture, and sips her drink. Because the owner has promised them free meals and because Kalp is feeling bitterly used, they each order a full meal from t
he expensive part of the menu, and a dessert to accompany it. When each meal arrives — steak tartare, lobster, and roast veal; chocolate cake, an ice cream sundae, and key lime pie — they push their plates together into the middle of the table to sample each dish. It is another of the marvellously intimate things that Kalp’s people would never have done were they not of one Aglunate, and it gives Kalp hope.

  He is desperately fond of both of these humans.

  He hopes they are growing as fond of him.

  He knows he is behaving as an abandoned stray animal might — slavishly devoted to whoever rescues him first, no matter how kind or cruel they may be — but he cannot help it. It has been so long since Kalp has been shown such simple, honest kindness. Had he a tail, he is sure it would be wagging.

  Gwen tries to steal Basil’s last piece of chocolate cake, which is by far the best dessert on the table, and Basil grabs the hand that holds the fork and tries to aim it back towards his own mouth. They struggle above the plates, laughing, both of their cheeks pink with mild exertion and alcohol. Kalp is feeling pleasantly warm himself, all his joints loose after his second daiquiri, and slightly daring.

  He leans forward, snakes out his tongue, and snatches the last moist morsel of dessert out from between them. Basil and Gwen both stare with dropped jaws. Basil bursts into a flurry of trilling laugher, and Gwen follows suit, but there is something different in her narrowed eyes.

  She touches the back of her neck, and Kalp looks down at his hands and says nothing, chewing contentedly.

  ***

  After dinner they go to a mall with a store especially for tall men and Kalp purchases an armful of blue jeans and khaki trousers and some more loose shirts with buttons up the front that are similar to the one he is wearing with the bird adornments.