Triptych

by J. M. Frey

  The human is very eager to please, as eager as Kalp, and wishes to be able to perform the Greeting properly. Kalp is grateful, for the ritual puts him at ease on this planet that is so full of improvisation; but the human’s mastery of Kalp’s language is negligible, which makes the teaching difficult.

  Specialist Doctor Basil Grey’s accent is worse than Gwen’s, his fingers are too short, too small, too pink to fit all the way around Kalp’s bicep. His skin is too hot, too moist, too ridged with nearly invisible wrinkles, and covered with soft downy hair that feels simultaneously like a young child’s and some strange creature’s. But Specialist Doctor Basil Grey is a strange creature. Strange to Kalp. It makes Kalp’s fur stand on end and his flesh recoil and his mouth stretch back with a smile that he holds onto desperately for fear of offending.

  Kalp forgets to remember that he is in the same position in the hierarchy as Specialist Doctor Basil Grey. He wishes the Specialist Doctor had given him permission to use his name; four words is an awfully long string of syllables to address a person with.

  Kalp spends the afternoon with his ears flattened all the way down.

  ***

  After the first day of Institute Assignments has been completed, Derx is more boastful than ever.

  Kalp says nothing because he is lower than Derx, and it is not his place to say. But he knows that some of what Derx says right now is incorrect, merely from just observing Gwen and Specialist Doctor Basil Grey today. Kalp endured Derx all the way to Earth, and it seems rather insufferably unfair that he and Derx have been assigned the same living quarters and employers after planetfall, as well. Kalp tucks his ears against his head in an effort to appear complacent, but to actually block out as much sound as possible. He burrows under the strange muffling layers of the blankets and ‘duvets’ filled with animal sheddings. He is for once thankful for their suffocating heat and the way the insulation dampens the world into blissful deafness.

  Kalp drops into his unconscious cycle wishing he’d had the chance to clean the oils of the humans’ skin from his arms. The large building in which all of his skilled people live has a disproportionate number of cleaning cubicles. He’d run out of time before the lights were removed.

  Kalp could have easily found his way to and among the cubicles, as any of his kind can in the dark, but humans are easily frightened, slow to trust, night blind, and do not like surprises. For the sake of their small, pattering hearts, Kalp stays in the cot.

  ***

  Kalp resumes consciousness to the sound of Derx talking, accent broad and southern, and wonders rather uncharitably if Derx had ever actually stopped. If they are ever made unwelcome on this new world, Kalp does not doubt that it will be in part because of Derx’s incessant blather.

  “To the moon, Alice…” Kalp thinks and cannot help but take pleasure in the thought of someone striking Derx right in the “kisser.”

  Kalp sits up. The cot on which he sleeps — though given freely and with much sympathetic charity, for which they are all grateful — is too stiff, too long and thin, no good for curling up. He must sleep straight and narrow to prevent falling from the bed in the middle of the night and he is not used to that. Discomfort shoots across the base of his neck. He wishes Maru was here to press fingers under his skull, as Maru used to.

  The cot is more comfortable than the hard-shelled pods back on the escape ship, but far less than the nest Kalp has left behind at…on…

  Home.

  Kalp touches the aching spot between his eyes and scrunches his nose — a gesture of self-frustration that he has already assimilated from the humans. His Cultural Etiquette Specialist used to make that gesture a lot.

  The pads of his fingers still feel oily, and leave residue on the prickle of soft fur between his eye ridges.

  Slipping from his cot carefully, certain not to turn his back to Derx or the other Higher Ranks whose cots were furthest from the drafty and noisy apertures of the doors and windows, Kalp makes his slow way towards the cleaning cubicle room.

  “Kalp!” Derx calls out, and ever mindful of his rank, Kalp turns and lifts his palms to catch Derx’s words. He cannot, however, prevent the wary droop of his ears. Kalp has never been very good at hiding his emotions; his ears reveal all. They always have.

  “Your shoes,” Derx says, pointing to the heavy deafening sheaths on the floor, lined up neatly side-by-side at the end of Kalp’s cot. “Do not forget them today. It is offensive.”

  Kalp bends to retrieve them, snagging his nails carefully under the laces, then turns and retreats to the cubicles, away from Derx and his orders and the muffling cocoon of his duvet.

  He wishes he could stay in bed for the next few solar cycles.

  The poor, uncomfortable excuse for a proper nest is imminently more comforting than the inside of the ever-buzzing Institute office filled with the colourless, fragile human-things and their shifting smells and too-loud hearts and slick, leaking skin. Their strange words and their strange ways.

  Kalp wants a real nest, his nest, and his Unit.

  But Maru had been outside when the sky had first gone black and had never come back to their dwelling. Trus had been at the medic’s awaiting test news and had been killed in the panicked trample and Kalp had been…

  Lazing about in his nest, late into the morning.

  Safe and saved.

  Kalp drops the shoes outside of the cubicle, on the provided bench, and sheds his “pyjamas.” He turns the water as cold as it goes. He steps in, for once alone in the cleaning room, and relishes the feel of the dirt and the smog and the oil and the guilty memory sliding off his skin.

  ***

  Of course, the first thing that the Gwen-human does is touch him.

  She initiates the Greeting, a comfort and a sharp pain of memory all at once. This time Kalp’s flesh does not try to crawl away from the stickiness her touch leaves behind. He is prepared for it now. Kalp has also brought disposable cleaning papers — “tissues” — with him today, so he does not mind as much. She can touch him now, and he will clean himself later.

  He is terrified, however, that his new companions will be offended if they see him scrub away their residue. He determines to wait until both are occupied elsewhere before he uses the Kleenex. For all Kalp knows, maybe this expressive spreading of liquids is some sort of ritual scent-marking and they are paying him a compliment by rubbing their smell into his skin. Perhaps it is some sort of a biological imperative.

  He wishes he could just know.

  The twisting tension tightens. It is difficult to breathe.

  He feels like he is living on the edge of a blade — one totter too far one way or another and he will fall. He will offend, he will be sent away, he will be worthless and alone and nothing. So Kalp watches, silently, desperately, waiting for knowledge to make itself clear to him, for things to slot into place, as they did when he did his schooling. He waits for the composite image to emerge from the components of the diagram.

  The work day begins and Kalp settles into observation. He notices small things first, the habitual movements that the male makes with his hands and mouth, as if trying to coax understanding out of the air; the way the female keeps patting her hair down over her forehead. Specialist Doctor Basil Grey seems to touch Gwen often; fingertips at the back of her neck, a palm on her elbow, a brush of bare forearms, kind and claiming. Where is the pattern? Is he threatened by the proximity of another male? Is he staking breeding rights over Gwen or merely stating protection? Or is he just touching her because she is there and there is no inherent biological meaning in it? Are they gestures of friendship? Are his touches purposeful or instinctual?

  But Gwen touches everything, lamps and desks and chairs, and Basil too. Does that mean the same as well?

  There seems to be no rigidity to them, no code for Kalp to learn and read.

  So much to know and so little taught.

  But then Specialist Doctor Basil Grey touches Kalp in some of the same
ways as he touched Gwen when he comes into the room that second morning, a soft hand on his wrist, a firm “handshake,” a light touch on the shoulder of the kind that is shared between “pals.” He uses only his given name today in the Greeting, giving Kalp permission to address and think of him as “Basil.” He presses into Kalp’s hands a slip of grubby cloth-paper, the sort that passes for currency.

  “First task of Integration,” Basil says cheerily, “is learning which lunch lady to flatter at the canteen, innit?” He talks slow and enunciates clearly. Gwen must have told him to speak so in order to make his words more easily understood, and Kalp is startled at the caring that the gesture shows on both their parts; Gwen for thinking of it, and Basil for following her advice.

  Basil’s mouth stretches, displaying his small white teeth in pleasure. This is a joke, Kalp is sure, but what sort he was unsure of. Slapstick? Sarcasm? Is Kalp meant to be the Straight Man or to reply? Panic surges. The tension twists tighter, and Kalp feels as if his air passage is closing.

  Basil goes on: “Down the hall, take the second right, say it’s for me and they’ll know. Gwen wants coffee, black — bloody Canadian — and you get whatever you fancy. Cheers.”

  Kalp blinks. A desperate tightness presses at the back of his throat. These were things Kalp has never been taught! Coffee, black? Is not the steaming beverage brown? How does one fetch black coffee? Where does one find it? Take the second right to where, and how does one pick up a “right”? Who is bloody and do they need a medic? He understands the last command, at least.

  He lifts a hand in the air and stretches his mouth wide and says “huzzah!” with what he hopes is the appropriate amount of enthusiasm, anxious to get this one little thing right, to prove that he is not stupid, that he is useful.

  “Wha — ?” Basil says, blue eyes going wide, the translucent lids dropping and lifting once.

  Gwen starts to choke.

  She makes a horrible hacking, swallowing, screaming sound, face going red in distress. She seals a hand over her mouth.

  Kalp’s ears shoot up in horror.

  He’s killed his teammate on his second day.

  Gwen sucks at more air, straining, unable to take in enough. And she starts…

  Singing?

  It is a repeated trilling sound that ripples up Kalp’s skin, leaving breathless wonder-pleasure in its wake. There are no distinguishable tones, though, no clear sustained sounds like the human-singing on the radio. Is she dying? Is this a knell?

  And what will they do to Kalp when they find out? They will execute him for killing her, surely, and he feels the pathetic burn in the back of his eyes that signals distress.

  Basil makes the choking sound too, and then he is singing tonelessly as well.

  “No, no!” Gwen splutters around gasping trills.

  Kalp wonders if it is safe for her to be speaking when she is having such trouble breathing. Is there something he is meant to do? What if they both asphyxiate right here, by Kalp’s shoes? But she goes on, proving that she is at least getting enough air to sustain sound:

  “Not cheer, the imperative.” Gwen splutters. “‘Cheers.’ It’s local jargon for ‘thank you.’”

  She sucks more breath, apparently not having trouble retaining oxygen at all.

  Realization breaks across him and the burn in his eyes gets worse. Shame. There is no relief in the revelation of this particular pattern. Kalp is thoroughly mortified. His ears sink again, pressing tight against the back of his neck.

  What a horrendous mistake.

  Basil begins to suffocate harder and Kalp takes a quick step towards him, feet almost slipping out from under him — he’s forgotten the shoes, the careful way he must narrow his balance in them. He wraps the fingers of the hand not holding the money over Basil’s shoulder and shakes him.

  “Do not asphyxiate!” Kalp yelps, a little desperately.

  Basil’s face goes redder and he trills more.

  Gently, Gwen grabs Kalp’s wrist, her fat fingers pulling, and Kalp cannot help the flinch this time, the quick step backwards that sends the soles of the shoes slipping out from under him. Gravity, just as effective on this planet as his own, brings him crashing onto his back.

  “Jeeze!” Basil says, cutting the trilling abruptly. “Kalp, mate, youallrigh’there?” Kalp does not understand the second half, it is too fast, and his head is reeling.

  Gwen kneels down beside Kalp, and uses a gentle touch on the clothed part of his arm to prod him back up to a sitting position. She looks deeply at his face, her own a mask of pulled down eyebrows and down curled corners of her mouth — “anger”? No, “concern.” She is worried for him. That is relieving to notice, at least.

  “Are you hurt?” she asks, gently, slowly, and with far more kindness than Kalp is expecting. She is so sympathetic towards his many errors. Many of his own kind would not be as patient if she were making similar errors, were she the refugee on his world. Derx least of all.

  The hot tight feeling in his throat gets worse, and this time it is shame. Shame for the way his society acts on his planet.

  “I am,” he says, struggling to speak English clearly around the closing lump. He touches the side of his face, and the grounding pressure slows and stops the reeling spin. “I am just…the shoes…” He makes a gesture that, on his world, means frustration but he is sure means absolutely nothing to these humans. So much he cannot communicate and it fills him with anger and despair.

  Basil and Gwen’s gaze move to the offending articles in tandem.

  “Why on Earth are you even wearing them?” Gwen asks, and her tone holds puzzlement.

  “I must. Otherwise, it is offensive,” Kalp says softly, and manages to keep the bitterness at having to repeat Derx’s words in check. The tightness is finally twisting so hard that his voice is coming out broken-sounding. They will hear his confusion, his distress, and that is even more mortifying than his mistake at the jargon for thanks.

  He does not want them to see him unhappy.

  And he is very unhappy.

  “Bollocks,” Basil says, straightening. “I don’t care if you wear them.”

  “Me either,” Gwen says. “Do what you like in this office, Kalp. It’s yours, too.”

  Kalp licks his lips, ears twitching sideways.

  “Truly?” he asks softly. He wheezes for air and his throat loosens. “As I like?”

  “As you like,” Gwen says. “Our status in this room is equal. Your rank matches ours.”

  Kalp lets forth a shaking breath of relief. Suddenly his lungs feel twice as large. The hot twisting winds down and sinks away, and the trembles in his ears and fingers cease. He shakes himself once, all over, to resettle the jagged lay of his fur, and proffers a wide, silly-feeling smile to indicate his relief at this statement.

  “I will remove the shoes,” he says.

  Gwen smiles to match Kalp’s, and he feels absurdly pleased that he is learning how to provoke a pleasure response from his co-workers. His head is light from the abrupt upswing in his mood.

  “Oi, what did you mean about asphyxiating?” Basil asks, and he is speaking slowly and clearly once again. Now he remembers to enunciate, once the distress is passed. One buttock is perched on the edge of his desk. He already has a small tool and an electronic component back in his hands.

  Kalp reaches down to untie the laces that hold the shoes onto his foot. He says, “You trilled. It sounded painful, like you could not get enough air.”

  “Trilled?” Gwen asks, lifting herself to her own feet. “What, you mean, laughing?”

  “Laughing,” Kalp repeats. “Yes, I have heard of laughter. You were laughing?”

  “Yes,” Gwen says, and makes a sort of small aborted trilling noise in illustration. “We were amused by your mistake.”

  “For which I am deeply, deeply sorry,” Kalp says, kicking off the shoes and scrambling upright. He moves to bow his neck in the Apology, but Gwen’s hand on his shoulder — still fat an
d fragile, but warm — stops him.

  “Don’t apologize,” she says. “If one of us apologizes every time we make a cultural error, we’ll be doing the Apology for hours a day. Let’s just laugh at our errors together, okay?”

  Kalp feels his mouth stretch again, but this time it is involuntary.

  Smiling.

  “Okay,” he agrees. “And now, I must purchase coffee and a…fancy?”

  Basil snorts at the machine in his hands, and Gwen pats Kalp’s elbow, the same tender guiding gesture he’s seen Basil use on her, and turns him towards the door. “We’ll go to the cafeteria together.”

  Her palm is still oily, but Kalp appreciates the acceptance inherent in the gesture, even if Gwen is not aware that she has done it. Perhaps, Kalp thinks, he does not mind being scent-marked by Gwen, after all.

  Not if it means she worries for him like this.

  ***

  Kalp has a sore neck.

  It is left over from lying on the cot, surely, but it also comes from stooping low to bend over Basil’s blueprints. Kalp longs for a taller table, but would not presume to ask for one. How then could Gwen and Basil read from it, if it was tall enough for Kalp?

  Attempting to be subtle, Kalp raises his fingers slowly and presses the back of his own skull, applying pressure to two little knobs. Right below the skin are knots of nerve endings and hormone centres that help regulate the flow of chemicals that keep his body functioning correctly. Though he knows it will not last much beyond a few moments, he feels temporary relief from the release of the enzymes produced by the pocket of chemicals there. He lets out a long breath.