Triptych (28 page)

The British love their tabloids, and Basil’s mother calls the day after the article is published to say that she is making a scrapbook. Basil groans at the phone.

Scandal sells papers, and once they are Aglunated and their humble speeches to the press have been recorded and run, Kalp’s Unit is no longer scandalous. Kalp learns the words “husband” and “wife” and rather likes the connotations of ownership that are implied by them.

The world moves on to other, more sinful people. Anti-Integration protests move to Moscow, where a human and an alien have professed to trying to get pregnant together via in vitro. Basil or Gwen or Kalp’s faces periodically reappear in the tabloid news when someone with a camera phone catches them canoodling in public, but otherwise the fanfare dies.

On those rare spotlight days, Basil spends hours on the telephone with his mother and sisters, reassuring them of his personal happiness and safety. In every conversation, Basil promises to visit his family with his Unit, once the media circus dies. Later, he promises. Always later.

Kalp eagerly anticipates later’s arrival.

Gwen always looks miserable when Basil hangs up, but walks out of the room when Kalp suggests she call her own parents; that they probably worry for her.

Kalp wishes his parents were here.

He thinks — he’s sure — they would be happy for him.

Besides the ever diminishing picket lines at work filled with angry people waving rude signs at their car every morning, things start to go back to normal. It is now March and the world has ceased to be white, for which Kalp is immensely glad. Now he can forego shoes again. There are three more months before the baby is born, and Gwen is determined to continue to live normally until she absolutely cannot. She refuses a lighter workload, or the Institute’s offer to telecommute, and comes in every morning same as ever, only waddling a bit more now and taking far more frequent trips to the toilet.

Kalp teaches Basil, lesson by lesson, how to massage Gwen’s feet and back in a way that relieves the pressure that the extra weight of the child adds, by demonstrating on Basil first. This usually leads to more intercourse, and Basil does not seem to mind. Kalp certainly does not. Basil tries to repay Kalp in kind and slowly gets better at the massaging technique, the more he practices.

Kalp slowly learns about human bodies, about the different ways to press Basil into ecstasy, to rub Gwen into sighs, about little nubs of flesh, about orifices, lubrication, preparation and pouncing, and about what fits where. He is surprised at first that human men have no pleasure orifice near their genitalia, but approves of the biological compromise that is the evolution of a prostate.

Eventually the progression of her pregnancy means that Gwen cannot participate in intercourse as often any more. She complains of discomfort and aches and concern for the child, but enjoys the massages and professes that she is “just fine with watching.” Basil and Kalp are fine with it too.

As a gift for Basil’s natal day celebration in late March, Gwen surprises everyone with tickets to see a live concert by an artist named Raquel Winkelaar. Kalp has never heard of her, and neither has Basil. Basil suspects that Gwen was given them by a press agent who wishes to cash in on their lingering celebrity, but she neither confirms nor denies the accusation. She smiles and calls them a surprise from a co-worker and nothing more.

Kalp caught Gwen conversing in quiet tones with Agent Aitken yesterday afternoon in the cafeteria. He has a fairly good idea from whom Gwen received the tickets.

Gwen is not so heavy now that she cannot manoeuvre herself into the concert hall under her own power, so she does not see why they cannot go. They do not know what kind of music it will be and agree not to look the artist up in order not to spoil the surprise. However, the concert is being held in a very posh symphony hall in London, so the men don the same suits they’d worn to the holiday party in December and Gwen wiggles into a red sheath dress that accommodates her stomach and makes her look surprisingly delectable.

They are late for the opening act as a result.

They sneak in as the curtains close to allow for an unseen equipment change. If the press
was
lying in wait, the hour at which they arrive seems to have sent them packing. March is still too chilly to wait around outside of a concert hall on chance for a few blurred, and now illegal, photographs.

It is not until they’re seated in the auditorium and the first screeching wail of an overpowered electric guitar rips into the air that the three of them realize with horror that this is an
electronica show
. The curtains swoosh open to reveal a flashing metallic set refracting screamingly bright neon lights. Kalp claps his ears to the side of this head and whimpers. All of his fur stands on end and he can feel his skin rippling in an effort to
get away get away get away
.

Kalp cannot hear anything but the painful screech of the throbbing bass line, the grinding wail of the syncopated counter rhythm. He tries to stand, to flee. He feels his feet go out from under him, the gratefully familiar throb of Basil’s hands under his armpits, hauling him up the aisle towards the doors and away from the massive speakers. He wraps his fingers around Basil’s arm and squeezes too tight. Gwen is right beside him, trying to use her body to get between Kalp and the speakers, shrieking at the humans who have surged into the aisles to dance. She yells at them to move, to get out of the way. The concert goers are impeding their progress.

When they finally reach the parking lot, Basil and Kalp collapse onto a median mounded with soft, wet grass. Cold ground water seeps into Kalp’s pants and stains them. Basil wraps his body around Kalp’s, his chest against Kalp’s, his arms heavy, his thigh thrown over Kalp’s hip a familiar, grounding weight against the agony that rips through him. Gwen fumbles herself to her knees, rubbing her hands down Kalp’s over-sensitized skin on his head and ears and neck over and over, trying to smooth out his fur, to soothe his jarring discomfort.

Had he the ocular glands for it, Kalp is sure he would be crying.

Oh, it
hurts
.

And then, suddenly, it hurts a different way. There is a sharp pain in the back of his head. Basil’s body is suddenly ripped away and he can just barely hear Basil shouting over the ringing after-pain that still ripples all over his body. He reaches blindly for Gwen, but she is gone, too.

There is another sharp pain in Kalp’s stomach, and then his face. He feels one of his teeth break and slam into the back of his mouth.

Someone is
kicking
Kalp.

“Fucking freak!” a voice shouts, right beside his ear and Kalp
howls
when the hard heel of a boot grinds into his fingers.

Now he can hear Basil shouting, threats and promises and horrible, horrible swear words.

Then he grunts, and there is a slapping sound and the cracking of breaking bones and someone is shouting “Fucking faggot, fucking faggot!” over and over again.

And Gwen…Gwen is begging. “No, please,” she says, and Kalp cannot see for the dark blood that is now running into his eyes, but he can hear her sobbing, her own yelps as she too is struck. Kalp is appalled. Who would strike an expectant mother? It is inhumane, monstrous! “It’s Basil’s, it’s not his,
please
!”

“Get her!” screams the same harsh voice that called Kalp names. “Get the freak baby!”

And Gwen screams, so high and so desperate that Kalp balls his hands up and bares his fangs and throws himself in the direction of the sound. He meets a body, hard and male and
not Unit,
he can tell by the smell and feel, and he rears back, snarling and snapping his teeth as the punk tries to kick Kalp off.

“You will not harm her!” Kalp says and sinks his sharp teeth into the tender skin under the punk’s ear and rips.

Something hard — a baseball bat, perhaps, Kalp thinks — strikes him repeatedly in the back of the head, but Kalp does not let go. Consciousness slips away, and Gwen is still screaming.

Kalp still does not let go.

***

When Kalp wakes, he knows much time has passed. He is slightly surprised to have awakened at all. His hand aches, and he looks down to see it encased in bandages. His head aches too, a spinning nauseous pain in the back, where it is supported carefully by a stirrup that is keeping it from touching anything. A quick probe with his tongue reveals a broken gap where his front tooth used to be, and there is a sharp discomfort in his stomach. Even his skin is still tender from the horrible music.

He does not remember a lot past the first screeching wail of the guitar, but he does remember the taste of blood in his mouth, the surging fury, and Gwen’s screams.

Gwen!

Kalp tries to sit up. The agony brought on by the movement rips a soft cry from his throat. 

“Kalp?”

It is Basil’s voice. The restraint on Kalp’s head, pushing his ears flat, keeps him from being able to turn to the side to find the man from which the voice originates. Kalp tries not to panic, but he wants to
see
his husband. Thankfully, Basil limps into Kalp’s field of view, leaning heavily on a cane. Perhaps Basil is just as desperate to look into Kalp’s eyes as he is into Basil’s. The skin around one eye is florid and swollen, the same colours as Kalp’s favourite Hawaiian shirt. The eye itself is flooded with blood, all the white gone that entirely human, too-vibrant red. There are stitches sprinkled beside his eyebrow. Kalp doubts that the resulting scar would be very visible, not like Gwen’s.

Basil smiles and it is thin, like it hurts too much to mobilize so many muscles in his face.

“Where…?” Kalp tries, but it hurts too much to get much more breath than that, and his mouth is gummy and dry.

“Don’t talk,” Basil says. He hobbles around the foot of the bed to the side. He pulls a chair up beside the metal rail, just inside Kalp’s field of vision, and drops himself carefully into it. He lays aside the cane so it does not clatter, and picks up a small cup of water from the bedside and holds it to Kalp’s lips.

Grateful, Kalp sips softly, knows that if he imbibes too fast it will only make him ill in this condition. The fuzzy, gummy feeling is washed away.

“We’re in the hospital,” Basil says, answering Kalp’s question as he sips. “The cops came, someone called them on their mobile, thank God, but not before…” He stops and tips the glass again.

When Kalp has had enough water, he says, “Gwen?”

Basil goes white.

Kalp swallows heavily and feels his stomach roil despite how much care he took with the water.

No.

No, Kalp does not believe it. He will not be widowed a
third
time. He refuses.

Basil hisses out between his teeth. “She’s…alive,” he says, as if the term is something he needs to debate. “She’s still asleep but they think she’ll wake up…soon. She’s, I mean…
she’s
pretty much fine —  there’s some bad bruises, some, um, road burn, but they really only went after, uh…there was some surgery, to fix all the damage they caused inside, and
Gwen’s
fine…ex-except for…but not…” His eyes get wet and he reaches out blindly, wrapping his fingers around Kalp’s arm. Kalp bends his good fingers back and grasps Basil’s hand, as comforting as he can be when he is this immobile.

“The baby?” Kalp asks. Not because he wants to, but because he has to; he has to
know
…

Basil shakes his head once, slowly.

Kalp’s eyes burn.

Basil buries his face in the hospital sheets covering Kalp’s side, hands threaded in utter despair on the back of his head. Kalp wraps his good arm around Basil’s shoulders and rubs in small circles. Basil cries so hard it sounds as if his soul is being wrung out into each tear.

***

When Gwen wakes two days later, the hospital staff moves the three of them into a private room. They do this to keep the grieving family together, and safe from the press. It also allows them to use fewer security guards.

 Gwen is inconsolable. The damage inside of her is irreparable, the doctors explain. It is a wonder that she did not bleed out on the asphalt.

For Gwen, there will be no second child.

Basil weeps and Kalp holds him, his eyes burning, and Gwen…stares at the wall and says nothing.

She only responds to the touches of her Aglunates, communicates in curt head gestures, and refuses food until the nurses threaten to strap her to the bed and force sustenance on her via intravenous tubes. Gwen is not best pleased by the threat, so she eats her Jell-o morosely and drinks the orange juice. That satisfies the nurses for now.

Gwen might not take being held down again very well, and everyone knows it.

Kalp is relieved that it does not come to strong measures, though he is worried for the state of Gwen’s mind. She has not, he thinks, cried for her dead child yet, and that scares him more than her silence and fasting.

Worry burns like a hot stone in the bottom of Kalp’s stomach, in the back of his throat, and he spends every moment of every day fairly sure that he is about to puke.

Three days pass in this manner, and every time Kalp awakens from his unconscious phase he is more exhausted than he was going into it.

Every time Gwen turns down food, the nurses tell her that she’s lost a lot of blood and that she needs to get up her strength, and it makes Basil flinch. Kalp thinks it is utterly cruel of them to keep reminding Gwen of what she has
lost,
and finally says so in a very loud and perhaps less than civil manner. The nurses, who up until now have treated him like some sort of exotic teddy bear, get round-eyed in horror and flee. When they return to bring the required meal a few hours later, they look ashamed.

Good.

The nurses seem to have forgotten that his kind come equipped with a mouth full of very sharp teeth and fingers tipped with dark, strong nails. He has reminded them.

Kalp thinks, uncharitably, very early one sleepless morning, that if his kind had come in their full force, they could have just
taken
the Earth as their new home, instead of begging for a place among its cruel multitudes. Their weapons had not been particularly advanced, but they had been different enough to perhaps have afforded them the advantage.