Triptych (24 page)

Kalp is satisfied with this one small step, does not want to push too far, too soon, so gives Basil an opportunity to make his excuses: “You have not completed my tie,” he says.

Basil jumps at the offered out, the distraction. He hastily finished the process, until the swatch of fabric is laying smooth and flat down Kalp’s shirt front. Basil slowly runs his palm down the tie, hot against Kalp’s chest, deliberate. Then he snatches his hand away and turns and leaves Kalp alone in his room.

Kalp listens as Basil makes his way to the bedroom, calling for Gwen. But Gwen is not in there. Kalp heard her throw her clothing onto the floor with a huff of extreme frustration and go into the washroom ten minutes ago. She urinated, and now she is just sitting on the commode, waiting for something. She has not flushed.

“Gwen?” Basil asks. He emerges from his bedroom at the same time Kalp emerges from his own. Basil’s cheeks go bright red. Kalp finds even that attractive now, as he knows that it signifies the exertion that intercourse requires or the rumination on such activities. Kalp nods towards the bathroom and Basil frowns. In his hand is the sleek black dress that Gwen was meant to have been donning.

“Gwen?” Basil asks again, tapping on the door with his knuckles to indicate his desire for entry. When she does not answer, he pushes open the door, and Kalp crowds in behind him, worried. Gwen has never not answered before.

The door swings inwards and reveals Gwen in her pyjamas, sitting very still on the lid of the commode, a white plastic stick clutched between shaking hands. The stick must be symbolic — it means nothing to Kalp, but Basil seems powerfully affected.

Basil drops the dress to the floor of the bathroom in shock.

“I’m sorry,” Gwen whispers in the tone that is used for consolation. “I hoped I was just…I thought it was the flu. But my dress doesn’t fit any more.”

She gestures at the small bulge in her middle. It is so infinitesimal that had Kalp not been looking, he would not have seen it.

“Holy shit,” Basil says, and his face and lips have gone totally white. He is shaking and Kalp puts out a hand, spreads the pads of his fingers along the bottom of Basil’s back, fearing that Basil will faint. “Holy
shit
.”

“I do not understand,” Kalp admits. “Is Gwen gravely ill? Are you dying, Gwen?”

Gwen chuckles, but it is a watery weak sort of laugh that conveys no real humour.

“Pretty much the opposite,” she says. “I’m pregnant.”

Basil does faint then, and Kalp is too shocked himself to catch him.

***

They are late for the party because Gwen has to choose a different dress, and Basil must be waked without spilling water on his expensive suit. Kalp is smiling and cannot stop. He has tried and it hurts too much to be not smiling.

They are going to have offspring.

His Unit is having a child!

Gwen is driving, her party dress hiked up and puddled around her thighs to allow for the operation of the vehicle. Basil usually drives. Tonight he cannot because Basil will not release the pregnancy test. He returned to the bathroom upon waking and seized it and investigated its readout, and has not let go of it since. The skin around his eyes and mouth is very tight and white, and he has said nothing. He has allowed Gwen and Kalp to herd him into the car, but he has not said a word.

Gwen keeps shooting concerned looks at his face, and when they finally arrive at the Institute — decked festively in red and green lights — Gwen parks, shuts off the car, and, still gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead, asks, “Are you angry?”

Kalp blinks and his smile slides away.

How could Basil possibly be
angry
? This is wonderful, joyous, fantastic news! This is news worthy of the celebration of the evening.

Perhaps Gwen fears Basil will be angry because she hid her illness — the first signs of pregnancy in humans, Kalp learned — from Basil; perhaps she fears that Basil will be concerned because they are not married; perhaps Basil will leave because they had not agreed to have the baby together first. Kalp loves Basil very much but if Basil leaves Gwen alone and pregnant, Kalp will be very angry at Basil. Kalp of course will stay and care for the offspring — it will be his son or daughter instead of Basil’s.

But he hopes it will be “with” rather than “instead of.”

Basil turns his head so slowly and stiffly that it appears as if he is some sort of child’s toy, his neck a ball joint swivel. He licks his lips once, and takes a small breath.

Before he even speaks, Gwen flinches.

“I,” Basil says slowly, fingers opening and closing on the pregnancy test. The cramped interior of the vehicle smells faintly of urine. “I’m gonna be a daddy.”

He grins now, wide and white, and Kalp sighs and slumps back against the back seat, relieved.

Gwen yelps in joy, and Gwen and Basil lean towards each other to press their mouths together. It smears Gwen’s red lip paint all over Basil, and makes Kalp’s chest ache. He wants to kiss them, too.

He settles with placing one hand on the top of each fuzzy human head and smiling wide. They turn to him and he leans forward tentatively, pursing his lips and pressing one small, nervous kiss on each cheek.

“You’re gonna be an uncle, Kalp!” Basil says.

Kalp would prefer to be the father, too, but uncle sounds just perfect for right now.

Gwen repairs her lip paint with the reflection in the rearview mirror, and then they go inside the building, Gwen’s arms threaded through theirs, one on each side in grand presentation, to keep them all from slipping on the ice. Kalp is wearing shoes today, because he has already had his toe-pads freeze to the parking lot once and is not eager to repeat the experience.

Inside, the music is steady and calm in deference to the employees of the Institute from Kalp’s world. Basil is relieved. He has never been a fan of the harsh loud music that is popular currently. They shed their thick outerwear and pass it to a woman who takes it away and leaves them with a claim ticket. Kalp sends his shoes with her, too.

The canteen is decorated to approximate a sort of classy eating establishment, with balloons and bright red starburst flowers on each cloth-draped table. Kalp, Gwen, and Basil purposefully take seats at a table on the far side of the room from Derx and his human friends, Barnowski and Edgar, all three of them loud and offensively self-congratulating. Kalp was astonished to discover that there were not one but
three
people in the universe like Derx. Of course, all three like nothing more than the sound of their own voices, and to be told that they are clever, and so every conversation between them sounds more like three separate monologues.

As long as they are happy — and Derx’s attention is therefore elsewhere — Kalp is happy for them.

Another team sits at the table with them, these three all human, and congratulate Gwen enthusiastically when Basil all but shouts their good news into the din of the candle-lit room. Kalp knows the name of only Agent Aitken, a female with interesting blonde hair that frizzes out like a curled light flare. She is reservedly polite to Kalp, and he thinks that she is perhaps afraid of him. There are still those, even at the Institute, who have very little contact with his kind. He would be the same, had he not been placed with Gwen and Basil, he thinks.

They eat, and Gwen avoids the fish and alcohol for the sake of the child growing within her, and Kalp makes the expression of pleading to be allowed to touch her soft round stomach again, now that he knows what the thrilling flutter had been last month.

Kalp can hear the baby with his fingertips — the small pattering heart is strong and steady, and he tells her so. Gwen’s eyelashes dot with moisture and she is very pleased to hear it.

Basil scrubs a hand through his hair, and shoots to his feet. “Come dance with me, Mummy.” He extends a hand to Gwen, “I’m antsy.”

Gwen graciously accepts his hand, uses it to pull herself to her feet, and follows him onto the dance floor. There are several other couples out there, holding each other close and swaying artfully to the rhythm of the music. Some are made up of same gendered humans, some of opposite genders. It is beautiful and surreal and heart-wrenching.

To Kalp, they all look incomplete. Torn apart.

They only dance in twos and it looks
wrong
.

Only widows dance as couples.

Kalp can see the pain he feels reflected in the expressions of his people all over the room. Even Derx’s ears are pulled back against his head, a sure sign of distress. This is simply something with which they cannot cope. Kalp’s eyes get hot in sorrow. It reminds him too much of all the death that they have had to endure, and he knows the same reminder is in the minds of everyone else.

Seeing Basil and Gwen, smiles wide and faces shining, as just two,
hurts
Kalp deep down in the same place it had hurt him when he lost Maru and Trus. He feels like he is dead, like he is the one who ought to be absent, like he is the one who was killed on his home world and not his other Unit. He feels invisible; like a ghost.

Kalp waits for someone,
any
one to take the floor and complete any of the pairs, but no one moves, either out of distress or out of fear of offending the humans.

Offending them
.

Stuff and nonsense
, Kalp thinks, and the words echo in his head in Gwen’s voice. They are here to be Integrated, yes, but they are also here to live their lives and retain their own culture, and if the humans have an issue with a proper three person Unit, then they have no business working at the Institute.

Kalp stands, and all the eyes and ears of his people swivel in his direction. Derx makes a gesture that demands Kalp return to his seat, but Kalp commits the horrid sin of ignoring the Higher Status and walks across the dance floor. He comes up beside Gwen and Basil, and they step apart from each other. “Wanna take the happy mummy for a spin?” Basil asks, offering Gwen’s hand to Kalp.

“No,” Kalp says, firmly.

Basil frowns, his normal crooked expression of puzzlement endearing. “Wanna take me?”

Kalp doubts that Basil is aware of the innuendo that peppers his question, so answers it on the non-sexual level. “No,” he says, though he would gladly say the opposite in another, more private setting.

Gwen’s eyes narrow, and Kalp thinks she understands immediately what Kalp is about to do.

Kalp leans down and rubs his cheek — and the scent pouch behind his jaw hinge — first along Basil’s neck, then Gwen’s. Gwen gasps and lifts her hand to the quickly drying wet patch of scent chemical. She knows what this means. Basil does not. Derx’s ears shoot upwards, and he is
furious
, and it makes Kalp cruelly content to feel Derx’s extreme displeasure. Agent Aitken gets up from the table and departs.

“Did you just — ?” Gwen asks. But she does not finish her sentence. Kalp suspects it is because she fears his answer.

“Just dance with me,” Kalp says. “Just dance, for now.”

“For now,” Gwen agrees, nodding once. Her tone and expression says that there will be conversation later. A long, long conversation, possibly filled with shouting. Kalp will do everything he can to make sure her agitation does not harm the child. Her body vibrates anger.

“What just happened?” Basil asks, accepting Kalp’s hand on his shoulder, guiding him in a slow circle in a parody of the sort of dance that is used to announce a new Aglunated Unit. Basil leans into the warmth of Kalp’s body so naturally, Kalp wonders if he knows his posture has betrayed his feelings.

All over the room, Kalp’s people’s ears jump up and they whistle shrilly between their teeth in congratulations. Kalp just hopes that this “stunt” works out as well as the last one.

***

They depart after two more dances. One is with just Basil, who is flushed and nervous, his palms secreting copiously; he finally realizes what has happened and seems torn between mortification, fury, and interest. The other is with just Gwen, who performs the motions of the ritual dance out of respect for Kalp’s people’s traditions, and the many many eyes of the rapt spectators around them, but says nothing.

The car ride home is tense and silent, but this time Kalp does not allow his nervousness to consume him. The car pulls to a juttering halt in the drive. Gwen slams into the house, stomping up the stairs to her bedroom. Kalp can hear her stripping off her fancy dress and putting on her house clothing. Basil sits down in the dining area, undoing his tie and the top two buttons of his expensive shirt in a daze.

Kalp suspects that Basil must be rather shocked — to find out that he is to be a father in one evening is quite excitement enough, but to then also be informed that Kalp has what essentially amounts to proposed marriage to both him and Gwen, in public no less…it must be very hard to process.

Kalp undoes his own tie, glad to be rid of the mild choking sensation of the garment, and goes into the kitchen to put on the kettle. Basil’s ears catch the familiar sounds of Kalp’s motions and he lifts his voice and says, “No, no, something stronger.”

Kalp returns to the dining area with two glasses of Basil’s whiskey and one glass of water for Gwen — if she should deign to descend the stairs and join them. He and Basil sip at the whiskey in thoughtful silence, and Kalp fancies he can actually hear Basil’s mind thinking very quickly, and very hard.
Why us?
is practically written across the human’s forehead.

After a long, long time, Gwen finally comes down the stairs. She is breathing calmly and her heart rate has returned to normal. Basil and Kalp are each on their third glassful.

“Why didn’t you say something?” she asks. They are the first words anyone has spoken in hours.

Kalp lifts and drops his shoulders, a gesture he has learned means that one is unsure of how to answer. He adds, “I have tried for many months to convey my affection.”

Gwen touches the back of her neck, guiltily. Basil touches his cheek. They both catch each other’s movements, and flush.