Triptych

by J. M. Frey

“That’s ‘Star Trek,’” Mark crowed, triumphant. “I knew that one!”

  Gwen punched Basil’s arm again. Basil conceded and added: “I’ll see you in twenty-nine years, maybe? Come for a proper family dinner, yeah? Uh, pay you back for the Betamax.”

  Evvie felt panic, surprising and sudden. “That’s not… that’s not enough!” she said without thinking. “I want to know…you have to…”

  Gwen stopped, looked at her, expression a cross between amusement, puzzlement, and perhaps the slightest hint of anger. “What?”

  “Just tell me…tell me why,” Evvie asked, a little desperate. “Why can’t you quit? Why don’t you just walk away? Haven’t you lost enough?”

  Oh, that look of shock on Gwen’s face. Of course Evvie knew what she had lost. Evvie was a mother. She may have been the product of a time before aliens and openness and the perfect slapshot, but she was not (obliviousbigotedhardhearted) stupid.

  “I don’t want to have this fight again,” Gwen said softly. “I’ve already had it with you once.”

  “Well, it’s the first time for me,” Evvie said. “So explain it. Why does it have to be you? My Gwennie?” She gave in to temptation, reached out, cupped Gwen’s cheeks in her palms. It was the first time Evvie had touched her. Her skin was soft, smooth, warm. And above all that, familiar. Evvie knew this face, this skin, had touched it before, caressed it, bathed it, soothed it.

  This really was her baby.

  The corners of Gwen’s eyes crinkled with a soft, sad smile, and she turned her head to press a gentle kiss into her mother’s palm. “You haven’t called me that since I was fifteen.”

  “Why?” Evvie repeated miserably, not letting Gwen change the subject. “Answer me.”

  Gwen sighed, sort of shrugging all over at once. “Because…who else is there? If not me, then who?”

  “Really?”

  Gwen looked down at her feet. “Revenge, maybe?” And with a last, sad smile, she stepped back, took Basil’s outstretched hand, squeezed his fingers once. “I hope that’s enough of an answer.”

  “Call me,” Evvie said, desperate. “Please, call me when you get back. I don’t want to fight.”

  “I…yeah, okay.”

  Basil leaned over, murmured something soothing into her ear, kissed her cheek. Then he levelled one last calculating, quantifying stare at Evvie, as if she were some complex equation he could decipher by study alone.

  With great deliberation, Basil depressed the red button on the surface of the device. There was a sudden flash of light so bright it left spots in Evvie and Mark’s vision, the afterimage of two strange people dressed in their clothing imprinted against the inside of their eyelids.

  When the images cleared and they opened their eyes, Basil and Gwen were gone. Evvie turned in a slow circle, but there was no trace of them anywhere, no evidence that they had even been here beyond the tampered-with technology and a trashcan filled with dirty, destroyed uniforms, a bloody onesie, and of course, Gwennie’s cut. The scar.

  And, winking in the fluorescent light of the basement, was a small lump of metal, curved and curled and strange, half hidden by the skirt of the sofa. It had the rainbow slick surface, same as the disc of music. It was alien.

  Evvie looked at Mark. He was rubbing the corner of one eye with his blunt-tipped fingers. His lips curled up to match his wife’s, small smiles of hysterical wonder.

  “Did that just happen?” he asked.

  Evvie nodded. “I think so. I’m pretty sure.”

  Mark nodded, too. Evvie looked down at her hands. They felt too empty. Mark picked up Gwennie; he must have felt the same, the strange void of knowing-but-not, the way that the whole world —  the future — had shifted around them and left them feeling impotent and futile. Evvie walked down the stairs, slowly, and approached the small configuration of wires and casing and the future. She felt silly, reaching towards it with slow fingers, as if it was a dog that might snap if she was too nervous. It didn’t, and she picked it up. It was lighter than she expected, and when she peered in through a gap in the side, it was filled mostly with air and a fine filigree of wires and plastic caps and bright green walls. There was a curved piece decending from the bottom, like a trigger, and several smooth round barrels and suddenly Evvie’s stomach swooped down into her knees, because she was pretty sure she was holding a weapon.

  Basil must have taken it out of his vest pocket to make himself comfortable, or to access a tool, and forgotten to put it back in. Gwen wouldn’t have forgotten, but then Gwen was twice the soldier Basil had been.

  Clutching it to her chest, Evvie went back upstairs and past Mark and Gwennie, who were doing a little dance together in the kitchen — Mark singing a sad but silly song about runny eggs — and into the little alcove off the mudroom that served as the farm’s office.

  Revenge, maybe? she heard Gwen say again in her mind. No, it wasn’t enough of an answer. But it was all Evvie was going to get for the next thirty years.

  Revenge.

  Evvie wondered if (hoped) she got it. She dug a small cardboard box out of the back of the desk, emptied it of its blank envelopes, and tucked the weapon from the future into the bottom corner. She jammed the whole thing back into the only drawer on the whole desk that locked, turned the key, and for the first time since they’d bought the desk, removed the key from the lock. She hid the key under the base of the desk lamp.

  She didn’t exactly know why she didn’t just throw the weapon into the trash and let it get carted away to the dump where it could never hurt anyone again. She just knew that she wasn’t ready to let it go, just yet. That maybe she would need it to defend her family again, or to remind herself that Gwennie’s scar really hadn’t come from her falling down the stairs, or that she hadn’t made this whole strange day up.

  Evvie sat down at the desk, put her head in her hands and took a deep, hitching breath. She could do this. She would be fine. She would just wait. For the aliens, for the news, for the phone to ring.

  PART II: MIDDLE

  He has chosen to be a “he.”

  Humans use pronouns to distinguish between individuals of specific genders. They have two genders among his people as well, of course — almost every copulating species does — but they aren’t as finicky about labelling them. They don’t dwell on sexuality and gender performance on his world…or rather, they did not.

  He has the reproductive organs of a male, or what the humans categorize as such, so he has decided that it is easiest to simply submit to the use of the aligned pronoun instead of insisting on the neutral.

  Here, he must be careful to do and say the right things, the things that are associated with the performance of the male gender, which he has decided to embrace. It is often times confusing and yet one more thing he must constantly remember to do in order to avoid attracting the wrong sort of attention. Reminders to himself are so constantly buzzing within the confines of his skull that he marvels that he has enough automatic memory left over to continue to breathe the too-cool, over-oxygenated air of Earth. Odd, that there are some things that he cannot say or do, things he is not meant to enjoy, simply because of his biology. To pretend that he does not take as much pleasure in preparing meals as he does…did. To take up a sporting team to support.

  Human faces are hard to read, but he’s been assured that there are distinctive differences between the males and females: broader jaws, softer cheeks, longer lashes or fur on chins. He will learn to see these differences when he gets used to interpreting their eyebrows, the curl of flabby lips, the flat flashes of herbivore-like teeth. He will become accustomed, given enough time.

  And he will have nothing but time with these people.

  His race’s faces are rarely so different from each other as to require gender pronouns; but everyone sounds and feels different. Each person is unique in the way they transmit their physicality, so each person is granted unique address: everyone is referred to by their name. A woman’s smell is only
distinguishable from men when she is seeking a Unit; no less attractive, but different all the same. Simply an evolutionary sexual signal, and no reason to refer to a body rather than to a brain.

  To be addressed for his genitals, rather than his individual personality…it is another thing that he has to learn to become accustomed to; to accept.

  They cannot go back.

  “He” follows his guide up the corridor, lit with bulbs that make his skin hurt, glowing with a humming, audible brightness. His feet slip on the too-smooth floor, and he has to grip with the wide pads of his toes, feel the click of curving claw nails against the ridiculously shiny tiles, coated with too much polished wax. It is either that or suffer the dead feeling of deafness that he gets when he wears the shoes the Specialists have given him. This place, with its glaring whiteness and its stark right angles, is nothing like the buildings at home and everything is just all wrong.

  He aches for what is gone with every broken fragment of himself.

  He should feel lucky, he knows that. He has skills that the humans can use, there is something he can do to help, something that he can give to this new planet of theirs to make life a little better for everyone.

  He can repay.

  It had been easy to say and think that when the Specialists met them. It had been easy to stand in the grassy field and stare at the too-blue sky and swivel his ears towards the diminutive, fat pink creature that had come to greet them, stumbling through the speech in the new language that was so foreign to all of them. The hordes of diminutive, fat, multicoloured creatures that shaded from pale peach to dark blackish brown, that stood behind the first. It had been easy to volunteer and easy to speak up about his expertise. Easy to step forward and say “me,” just to get away from the stink of the ships, the crying children, the gazes starved for explanations and comfort and sunlight, the desperation clinging all around everyone in a dark cloud, the soot that no one could quite get out of their eyelashes, fearing to wash it away lest it was all that remained of a loved one.

  It is different now, though, after so many lessons, so many months, after trying so hard and still being so…so anxious. So floundering. Now, now that he is walking through the…the…Institute, following the male — the man — who is leading him to his new position.

  The life that is intended to be his.

  Will be. But was not supposed to be.

  A life that he is about to be given; given unearned.

  He feels false; he feels like an actor who has stepped into another’s role, unrehearsed and under-prepared, knowing the rudimentary plot but none of the dialogue, none of the vital gestures he is meant to parrot.

  He reaches out and skims the wall of the corridor as he walks, feeling the smooth, glossy surface of the paper decoration and the vibrations beneath it; a thousand beings walking, talking, tapping, beating. Not alone, never alone.

  A thousand beings, and he still aches to be touched.

  He is lonely.

  The guide stops, his all-colours-at-once military Institute security uniform rustling. He cannot read the man’s face, does not know if that look means “kind” or if it means “angry.” He does not much care, so he just turns his own face to the ground. He will probably never see this particular human again.

  It is the people on the other side of the door he is worried about.

  He rearranges his face into a smile. His Integration Specialist told him that he has the best smile in the class and it is a small, ridiculous thing to be prideful about. He holds the smile as the guide presses a button on a device by the wall. A low sound is relayed into the room, presumably a signal to tell them someone wishes to speak with them. He cannot read the sign on the door, the words are too long, even though the letters are familiar from months of intense study.

  R-E-S-E-A….

  Smile when you are introduced, his Integration Specialist had said. A smile is a sign of pleasure.

  …R-C-H-L-A…

  But she had never explained the difference between the pleasure at meeting a child and the pleasure at meeting the leader of a new planet. The pleasure, the terror, at meeting the team you will be working with for the foreseeable future.

  …B-O-R-A…

  He longs for the rigid hierarchy of the Greetings. He does not want to upset these people by failing to give them the pleasure they deserve, but he fears he just does not know how. He fears insulting them simply by existing.

  Bigger is better, he has learned from his Popular Culture Specialist, Pink is the new black, Mmm…Doughnuts, Oh My God They Killed Kenny, I See Dead People, It’s Bigger On The Inside.

  He stretches his mouth until it aches.

  …T-O-R-Y-#421

  Raise your voice at the end of a phrase to make it a question. Lower it to make it a demand. Eye contact indicates trust.

  So many little nuances, inflections and expression that he’s had to memorize, had to learn to mold his facial muscles and mouth around. Humans spoke all over the register, high voices for excitement, loud for anger, but sometimes loud was for excitement as well. They were so similar, so many inflections were so alike that it took careful parsing of the expression to even begin to understand.

  His guide presses the button again, and still there is no reply. Perhaps they are ignoring the sound, or perhaps they are as nervous about meeting their new teammate as he is. The guide grows impatient and taps out something on the number panel by the door. The guide shields it with his hand so that Kalp cannot see, but he could have been at the other end of the corridor and still he would be able to reproduce the code simply by the pattern of vibrations washing across his forearm as the guide’s fingers move.

  But he is not concentrating on that. With his fingers pressed to the cool, opaque glass of the door, he can hear the occupants of the room talking, muffled by the barrier, in English and too rapidly to understand. Now he thinks that they merely have failed to notice the chime of the door signal. The conversation sounds intense. There are two voices; one low, therefore male, as he’s learned, and one higher and therefore female.

  In response to the guide’s code, the door slides open. He snatches back his hand as the door tucks away smoothly into the wall. The talking stops. Hanging cylinders of light coloured wood are suspended just in front of the doorway to make a screen that prevents anyone from casually glancing into the room. It is decorated with green paint that creates a stylized, organic swirl of leaves and plants, naturally beautiful.

  It reminds him sharply of the pattern that was on his workroom floor back home, and something inside him twists.

  One of the humans — the woman — calls out, “Who is it?” in English. There is the muted clatter of tools being put down, ringing sharp against the skin of his torso, and the sudden buffeting shift of the air as someone moves quickly to their feet.

  The guide calls out something littered with numbers and codes and designations and he is not listening to the guide, he is listening to them. He can hear their familiarity with each other in their movements, the way they echo. He can hear an exchanged glance and their footsteps in unison as they approach.

  He straightens and checks that his smile is still in place.

  The guide pushes aside a section of the clacking curtain of wood.

  They are all smaller than him, little, fragile looking people. They are pale and colourless, and like the guide, he can feel their hearts beating, a reassuring background patter on his skin which almost drowns out the abrasive throbbing of the overhead lights. Their shoulders are jagged and straight, unlike his, their limbs awkward, with only three easy-to-snap joints. They look like they shouldn’t even be able to walk upright, their toes don’t spread out far enough. And yet there they are, face to face with him, balancing.

  The guide is introducing him now in English, but he does not know what to say, how to act, so he just keeps desperately smiling and mute. All those classes, all that studying and it is all for nothing, completely inaccessible in his apprehension.r />
  The man starts to say something, but this human’s words are too heavily accented for him to understand. He cannot even interpret the twist of the man’s mouth and the ripple of the broad, strong muscles in his shoulder, and the sidelong glance he throws at the woman. The same something inside twists again, sharp and slightly panicked.

  He does not know what that means.

  She smacks the man in the arm, making both of them flinch, but then the woman steps forward to grasp his arms in the initial steps of the Greetings.

  “Welcome,” she says, in his own language, “My name is Go-win.”

  And even though her accent is so thick that she sounds like she came from the other continent (even that is gone, it is all gone now), he tightens his own grip on her fat, squishy arms in relief.

  “I give thanks for your welcome and offer my name in pledge,” he replies, comforted by familiarity and rote. “I am Kalp.”

  ***

  The softer lights of the laboratory — that was one of the long words on the door — hurt less. There are small incandescent lamps on each desk, burning a welcome in soft gold. These two humans prefer not to turn on the raucous fluorescent overheads, for which Kalp is profoundly grateful.

  The guide has since departed, leaving the humans alone with Kalp. There is an awkward first few moments, and then Kalp settles into a proffered chair and listens as they explain the gist of the project to which they are all assigned. It is to translate and create a working model of a design from a blueprint from Kalp’s home world. Kalp cannot tell what it is from his initial glance, though he has an idea of what it may become. The humans have become blocked by some of the more technical and particular words present in the document and require the help of an engineer who is familiar with the specific jargon. That is Kalp.

  But there are other things, smaller miscellaneous assignments that each must do for their superiors, that Kalp will eventually be given as well, and that is why, on the first day, Kalp’s team whittles quickly down to two.

  For someone who has spent so many long days learning, it is odd to be thrust so quickly into role of teacher again. Specialist Go-win, Gwen, whose name he has been practising silently over and over in his head in order to learn the proper pronunciation, has an assignment due. Those above her in hierarchy demand its completion without tardiness, and so Kalp is left alone in the room with Specialist Doctor Basil Grey, whose name is even harder — there is no “B” sound in Kalp’s language, and he must push out his lips obscenely — and Kalp teaches him the first intimate steps of the Greeting alone.