Triptych

by J. M. Frey

  “You really do love her.”

  His grin was brilliant but brief, damp with strain and sorrow.

  “And you loved Kalp, too?”

  Again, the narrowed eyes, the quick and calculating gaze. “I loved Kalp just as much as I love Gwen,” he said a mite forcefully. Like he’d had this argument many times before. He probably had. “Different but just as intense. People are capable of loving more than one person at a time.”

  “I’m not disputing that,” Evvie said softly.

  He swallowed his sharp retort, all the angry tension on his face falling away, rigid posture melting to a languid sprawl.

  “You’re one of the few, then,” he said, just as soft.

  “I don’t see how it’s my business, telling people where to fall in love,” Evvie said tightly, because she was wising up fast. If she wanted to be able to accept, to love her daughter, she would have to also accept that this was how she chose to live her life and there was, clearly, literally nothing Evvie could do about it. “Though, I wonder about…” Evvie stopped. She looked down at her hands.

  “Mixed breeding?” Basil supplied and he sounded like he’d had this argument before, too. “We’re not genetically compatible, so don’t worry about that. Any…” he trailed off, face scrunching up, and Evvie thought she saw him brush at his eye with his cuff. He pressed the heel of his hand against his temple, so it could have just been a gesture of frustration, of exhaustion. “Any child would have been mine and Gwen’s, but Kalp…K-Kalp would h-have been…I’m sorry.” Now he was crying. He wiped his wet cheeks on the arm of his tattered sleeve.

  “You miss him.”

  “Hell, yes.”

  Silence.

  Then, “Actually, I wondered about the wedding rings.”

  Basil looked up, the mottled flush back. “Uh, Kalp’s people don’t, and, uh, thin fingers…it kept slipping off. We just, uh, didn’t bother.”

  “And Gwen’s sure it was Kalp who…betrayed you?”

  Basil set aside his tea, suddenly not interested in it anymore. He crooked his legs, wrapped his arms around them, rested a sharp chin on his knees. Alone.

  For a moment he sat perfectly still. Then he reached into his jacket breast pocket, took out the round piece of palm-sized plastic/metal from the cockpit of the space ship, and began to flip it over the backs of his fingers and down his hand. Evvie had seen people juggle coins that way. The disc shone with the same out-of-this-world sheen as the little blackened lump by Basil’s foot, though the colours were lighter, more pastel. This disc was human-made. Evvie had seen CDs like this on the news, but never so small.

  After a minute of disc-flipping Basil answered her question: “The evidence seems to say so, but it’s too…neat. Too perfect, yeah? Just one more Specialist out of the way. Occam’s Razor — the simplest answer is probably the most correct, but the simplest answer makes them all seem so daft.”

  “But Kalp wasn’t a Specialist,” Evvie said, trying to understand it herself.

  Basil made a small, frustrated sound in the back of his throat. “That’s what I mean, innit? It makes no sense. They’re not a stupid race. Kalp was too damn smart to…to get caught that easily. Unless…”

  “Unless he was framed,” Evvie said, voicing the thought that Basil seemed reluctant to put into (reality) words. “And Gwen’s hurting too much to consider it. She needs someone to be angry with.”

  Basil nodded silently.

  “Why kill Specialists? That’s what I don’t understand,” she admitted. “What good would it do, getting rid of the people who were helping them adjust?”

  Basil made the frustrated sound again. “We’re just the tip of the iceberg, see? What happens below the water line, we don’t know. They don’t tell us. ‘Help them,’ we’re told. ‘Learn from them,’ and ‘teach them,’ and now ‘kill them.’ Only they don’t tell us why. They put Kalp under house arrest, like all of the Institute employees of his kind, so how did that bit of Flasher get in the house?”

  “You could have — ” Evvie tried to interrupt, but Basil shook his head sharply.

  “I sure as hell didn’t bring it home. I would have remembered that. But we were all so scared, so wound up, so strung out and our fingers are all on the triggers and just like that, here’s the traitor? Fire at will? No.” He picked up his tea again without looking, a long-ingrained habit. A comfort blanket in a mug. The small disc dropped to the carpet, forgotten.

  “It’s too perfect.”

  Basil smiled wryly against his mug, lips still on the rim. “Innit?”

  “Gwen doesn’t see it that way, does she, though?”

  Evvie picked up the abandoned disc. It was lighter than she expected it would be, not at all metal, but more like holding a piece of hard feather; plastic but too smooth to be plastic. The future — Evvie was holding a piece of the future in her hands. It was more surreal, more believable, more…futuristic than a bloody gauze bandage. Evvie turned it side to side so the rainbow refracted in the surface skittered along the edges, then flipped it over to read the writing etched on the other side — Raquel Winkelaar: Live From Montréal.

  “She’s hurting. We’ve lost friends.”

  “And Kalp.”

  He sighed, heavily. “And Kalp.” He counted off on his fingers: “A Linguist, a Pop Culture Specialist, an anthropologist, a security guard, a biologist, two of Kalp’s colleagues…there’s no connection. They’re not even all human. All that’s left is questions and grieving Aglunates.”

  Evvie frowned, something tickling the back of her mind. “Wait,” she said. “All of them had Aglunates? Is it that…accepted, then?”

  Basil frowned, shook his head. “Not really, no. Only the Specialists have formed proper Aglunates, because you know, we’ve known them longer, understand their culture. It’s more accepted at the Institute, but it’s gaining…well, people are getting used to the idea. You can’t just disallow an entire part of someone’s culture because it doesn’t fit into your tidy world view. The rest of the planet will get there slowly.”

  The tickly something twitched again. “So, the Specialists being killed are all Aglunated.”

  “Yeah.”

  Basil reached out and plucked the disc from her hand. He read the label, then sneered. “This was, without a doubt, the worst night of my life, and only partially because it was such an awful concert. We all hate Raquel. It made Kalp’s skin ache. He squeezed my arm hard enough to make bruises.”

  “His skin?” Right, yes, Gwen had said something about Kalp and the television, Kalp feeling with his skin, like…like a bat, maybe?

  “Raquel in particular is horrible for them. She’s got this synth thing in all her music that’s all syncopated and grinding, and it just rubs the wrong way. Drives them loony. I haven’t met one of ‘em that can stand to be around her music without trying to scratch off their own fur. Physically hurts them.”

  Evvie frowned. “So why would the pilot of the ship have her album in the cockpit player?”

  A beat.

  All the colour slid off Basil’s face, and he shot to his feet. “Why didn’t I…why? And I’m supposed to be a genius! I see where Gwen gets it.” He bent down, pecked a kiss to Evvie’s cheek, and vanished up the stairs in a flurry of black uniform and flashing eyes.

  His mug sat abandoned on the arm of the couch, a slow amber drop of cold tea sliding down the pristine white side until it bloomed against the fabric.

  ***

  Evvie followed the sound of the screen door slamming back, feet pounding across turf, the shouting.

  Gwen was sitting in the lowest branch of a gnarled apple tree on the edge of the property between the garden and the corn. Evvie wondered if this was going to be her favourite place to think while she grew up. Basil tugged her leg, pulling her to the ground, catching her against his chest.

  “What the hell is wrong — ”

  “The pilot!”

  “ — with you, what? What pilot? Huh?”<
br />
  Evvie slipped on her garden boots, folded her arms to fend off the chill night breeze, and crossed the dark lawn towards them.

  Basil flashed an excited, white-toothed smile. “Jesus, Gwen, the protesters. You saw the riots when the first — when our Aglunate was government-sanctioned. It was violent. Those people were determined.”

  Gwen scowled. “What’s that got to do with us? They were disbanded. Arrested!”

  “All of them? Are you sure?” Basil said, eyes flicking over her face, searching for, hoping for some sort of realization, of understanding and acceptance, for some spark of emotion, for anything. “What I mean is…what if it’s someone else? What if it’s all humans? Someone using them — their technology — to sneak around the Institute? All of ‘em not wanting us mixing.”

  “What? How do you — ?”

  Basil’s mouth pulled up in the parody of a smile. “The pilot was listening to Raquel!” He cocked his head to the side, a yes yes, you see? expression on his face.

  Gwen’s eyes got wide. “He was human?”

  Basil nodded. “I think. I mean, I didn’t get a good look before you…it could have been a mask or, or plastic surgery maybe? Think about it — it’s only human Specialists who’ve been Aglunated have been targeted, yeah?”

  “What about Derx?”

  “With Barnowski. Pias, too.”

  “What about…” she trailed off, swallowed once, “Kalp?”

  By now Evvie was close enough to join the conversation. “He was a set up — a dummy,” she said softly. “To get you to turn against your own teams. Get the Institute fighting itself. To kill the trust between our people and theirs.”

  Basil snapped his fingers, pointed at Evvie like a particularly bright student, and nodded. “Everyone on the bloody planet knew our bloody address, they could have mailed something and Aitken was just so keen…”

  Gwen pressed her forehead against Basil’s shoulder, and Evvie resisted the urge to reach out, to rub her back in soothing circles.

  “Oh,” Gwen whispered, voice weak and shaking. Her whole face turned a ghastly white and for a moment she appeared as if she was going to vomit. She swallowed heavily, hands suddenly shivering where she had them fisted into his tee-shirt.

  Her knees went out from under her and for a second Evvie thought she’d fainted, but no, her daughter was stronger than that. She was just trembling too hard to remain upright. Basil held her up by winding his arms under hers, and looked with excited concern into her face.

  “Gwen?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine I…fuck.”

  Basil whispered quickly, excitedly into her ear. “Yeah? But it…it’s perfect, innit? There are enough people who don’t want them around. Enough politics. This is just one way to get the world’s attention. Get their voices heard without causing any actual genocide.”

  “That’s horrible,” Evvie said. Misery and anger slid cold in her gut.

  Basil snapped and pointed at Evvie again. “Of course, The Institute is the shining beacon of integration. Of accepting new ways. That’s gotta go, too.”

  Gwen frowned, looked back up. Her cheeks were dry, and Basil’s words on her stubbornness flooded back to Evvie. Gwen still refused to mourn for Kalp.

  “They picked Kalp because of us. Because we were — ”

  “ — exactly. So it was all — ”

  “ — and they would have to target people we knew, people they thought were the worst offenders — ”

  “ — like us, like Kalp — ”

  “ — set him up and put him in a position to be murdered, without the onus being theirs, the bastards — ”

  Gwen and Basil stared, gap-mouthed, at each other for a moment.

  Basil reached down, fingers shaking, and wound them around Gwen’s hand tightly.

  Gwen sniffed, her chin shaking. “I never cried for him,” she said, eyes shining. “I hated him and I never, I never cried…he died reaching out for me and I couldn’t…touch him.”

  Basil pulled her flush against his chest, buried his nose in the thready curls below her ear.

  Gwen wept, and all Evvie could think was finally, finally, finally.

  ***

  They returned to the house, Basil buzzing with caffeine and new purpose. Gwen retreated to the master bedroom to have some time alone, her eyes red and puffy, her face blotched, exhaustion and weariness and grief pulling at her shoulders. Evvie felt, strangely, both hollow and filled. Too filled.

  Mark left Gwen the room and went to go start the dawn milking.

  Eventually Gwennie woke and fussed for breakfast, disturbing Gwen through the baby monitor. She stumbled out into the hall, bleary and looking no more rested than she had when she’d gone to lay down. Mark was still in the barn, so that left Evvie to juggle Gwennie and her bottle. Gwen was willing enough to help, and held her squirming self at the kitchen table, watching the red face, the chubby fingers, the bandage on her head.

  Basil came up the stairs sometime after Gwennie settled. He had a piece of metal, roughly a box, cradled in his arms, three empty mugs clutched awkwardly in one hand and his strange flat, unbelievably small computer in the other one.

  “Cheers,” he said, when Evvie swooped in and took the mugs.

  “Basil,” Gwen said, looking up from where she was holding the bottle to her younger self’s lips. “It has a big red button.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said with the excited grin of a child with the best shiny new bike ever. He was practically vibrating with geeky (endearing) excitement. “Cool, innit?”

  Now, if only Evvie could get him to wear tight jeans and ask for a second helping of apple pie. Evvie had no pie to offer, so instead she said, “Shower? Breakfast before you go?”

  Gwen nodded, looking down at herself, sniffing surreptitiously. Then she said, “Ehg. Yes. Shower.”

  Basil wrinkled his nose. “Oh, yes please.”

  Evvie gestured at the stairs, then held out her arms for Gwennie. “I assume you know where the towels are?”

  Gwen flashed Gareth’s twinkling smile at her mother. It was real and it was a relief, and to Evvie it felt like it melted a burden (guilt) away. Gwennie changed hands with nothing more than a perturbed blink.

  “I’ll leave fresh clothes out on my bed,” Evvie said after them as they walked up the stairs wearily, and tried very hard not to think about the fact that she could distinctly hear both sets of footfalls walk into the washroom together.

  Evvie busied herself with dishes and laundry and Gwennie.

  When they came back downstairs, Gwen was wearing the dark jeans and the bright teal sweater Evvie had laid out for her. She was shifting her shoulders around, grimacing. “Shoulder pads?” she asked, gesturing at them. “They’re hideous.”

  “Lady Di wears shoulder pads,” Evvie said, reaching out and adjusting them to sit properly.

  Basil made an unflattering sound in the back of this throat. He was wearing his uniform pants, as none of Mark’s were big enough. A clean, machine faded tee-shirt stretched across work-sculpted pecs, and he actually looked quite dependable. Evvie already knew that he worked unreasonable hours, but she wondered if he had a good benefits package.

  Did he bring home flowers?

  ***

  Breakfast was a rather subdued affair: runny scrambled eggs that Evvie couldn’t cook properly because Basil had taken a piece out of the microwave without telling anyone, and toast that was slightly burnt for the same reason. The tea was hot because he’d had the good sense to leave the stove and kettle alone.

  It had taken some convincing to get them to sit down for one last meal with the Piersons, and Evvie had a feeling that Gwen knew that she had ulterior motives. Motives that were harder to talk about than Evvie had assumed they would be. They sat there like a sixth diner in the corner, and hulked until she just couldn’t take the tiptoeing around them any longer.

  “I want to apologize,” Evvie said.
r />   Mark didn’t look surprised, nor did Basil. Gwennie was calmly and with great dignity giving herself an egg facial, and Gwen didn’t look up from her mug.

  “I didn’t mean to make you feel…” Evvie looked at Mark, trying to search for the correct word in his face. He found it in hers first.

  “Unwelcome,” Mark said softly.

  Gwen put her mug down on the table and waited.

  “I don’t hate you,” Evvie confessed. “You saved my baby’s life. You’re saving other people’s lives. You are doing work that’s helping people.”

  Gwen snorted, and said into her mug, “Rocks and hard places have nothing on this.”

  “I’m proud of you,” Evvie said softly. Gwen jerked her eyes up, and they were wide and suspiciously wet. Evvie gave Gwen her biggest, warmest grin, the one that matched Gareth’s. And Gwen’s. “I want you to do what makes you happiest, even if I don’t understand it. Even if I don’t get half of what comes out of your mouth.”

  Gwen said nothing, ducked her head and butted it up against Basil’s shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, kissed her scar again, and went back to his eggs.

  When the dishes were soaking in the sink and Mark was bouncing Gwennie on his knee, Evvie managed to talk them into one last cup of black, bitter coffee; nearly twenty-four hours without sleep had begun to tug at everyone’s eyelids and she had given up on tea having enough kick to keep them all on their feet. Basil tapped away on his TV-notepad-computer and when Mark asked what he was doing, he said something like, “Detailed mission report. Best to do it as it’s happening, then you don’t forget anything.”

  And before Evvie wanted it to end, it was over. The kettle was empty, the day had fully dawned, and Gwen and Basil were cooing goodbyes to Gwennie in her highchair, shaking the Piersons’ hands with grins and a soft, genial “so long” from Basil.

  “What, ‘so long’?” Mark repeated, startled. “That’s it? No advice? Not gonna tell me which stocks to play?”

  “Can’t go changing the timeline,” Basil said with a cheeky grin. “That’s the Temporal Prime Directive, innit?”