by Isaac Asimov
Chapter 11
1b
Odeen was moderately aware that Dua was off on the surface. Without really thinking about it, he could judge her direction and even something of her distance. If he had stopped to think of it, he might have felt displeasure, for this inter-awareness sense had been steadily deadening for a long time now and, without really being certain why, he had a sense of gathering fulfillment about it. It was the way things were supposed to be; the sign of the continuing development of the body with age.
Tritt's inter-awareness sense did not decrease, but it shifted more and more toward the children. That was clearly the line of useful development, but then the role of the Parental was a simple one, in a manner of speaking, however important. The Rational was far more complex and Odeen took a bleak satisfaction in that thought.
Of course, it was Dua who was the real puzzle. She was so unlike all the other Emotionals. That puzzled and frustrated Tritt and reduced him to even more pronounced inarticulacy. It puzzled and frustrated Odeen at times, too, but he was also aware of Dua's infinite capacity to induce satisfaction with life and it did not seem likely that one was independent of the other. The occasional exasperation she produced was a small price to pay for the intense happiness.
And maybe Dua's odd way of life was part of what ought to be, too. The Hard Ones seemed interested in her and ordinarily they paid attention only to Rationals. He felt pride in that; so much the better for the triad that even the Emotional was worth attention.
Things were as they were supposed to be. That was bedrock, and it was what he wanted most to feel, right down to the end. Someday he would even know when it was time to pass on and then he would want to. The Hard Ones assured him of that, as they assured all Rationals, but they also told him that it was his own inner consciousness that would mark the time unmistakably, and not any advice from outside.
"When you tell yourself," Losten had told him - in the clear, careful way in which a Hard One always talked to a Soft One, as though the Hard One were laboring to make himself understood, "that you know why you must pass on, then you will pass on, and your triad will pass on with you. "
And Odeen had said, "I cannot say I wish to pass on now, Hard-sir. There is so much to learn. "
"Of course, left-dear. You feel this because you are not yet ready. "
Odeen thought: How could I ever feel ready when I would never feel there wasn't much to learn?
But he didn't say so. He was quite certain the time would come and he would then understand.
He looked down at himself, almost forgetting and thrusting out an eye to do so - there were always some childish impulses in even the most adult of the most Rational. He didn't have to, of course. He would sense quite well with his eye solidly in place, and he found himself satisfactorily solid; nice, sharp outline, smooth and Curved into gracefully conjoined ovoids.
His body lacked the strangely attractive shimmer of Dua, and the comforting stockiness of Tritt. He loved them both, but he would not change his own body for either. And, of course, his own mind. He would never say so, of course, for he would not want to hurt their feelings, but he never ceased being thankful that he did not have Tritt's limited understanding or (even more) Dua's erratic one. He supposed they didn't mind for they knew nothing else.
He grew distantly aware of Dua again, and deliberately dulled the sense. At the moment, he felt no need for her. It was not that he wanted her less, but merely that he had increasing drives elsewhere. It was part of the growing maturity of a Rational to find more and more satisfaction in the exercise of a mind that could only be practiced alone, and with the Hard Ones.
He grew constantly more accustomed to the Hard Ones; constantly more attached to them. He felt that was right and proper, too, for he was a Rational and in a way the Hard Ones were super-Rationals. (He had once said that to Losten, the friendliest of the Hard Ones and, it seemed to Odeen in some vague way the youngest. Losten had radiated amusement but had said nothing. And that meant he had not denied it, however. )
Odeen's earliest memories were filled with Hard Ones. His Parental more and more concentrated his attention on the last child, the baby-Emotional. That was only natural. Tritt would do it, too, when the last child came, if it ever did. (Odeen had picked up that last qualification from Tritt, who used it constantly as a reproach to Dua. )
But so much the better. With his Parental busy so much of the time, Odeen could begin his education that much the earlier. He was losing his baby ways and he had learned a great deal even before he met Tritt.
That meeting, though, was surely something he would never forget. It might as well have been yesterday as more than half a lifetime ago. He had seen Parentals of his own generation, of course; young ones who, long before they incubated the children that made true Parentals of them, showed few signs of the stolidity to come. As a child he had played with his own right-brother and was scarcely aware of any intellectual difference between them (though, looking back on those days, he recognized that it was there, even then).
He knew also, vaguely, the role of a Parental in a triad. Even as a child, he had whispered tales of melting.
When Tritt first appeared, when Odeen saw him first, everything changed. For the first time in his life, Odeen felt an inner warmth and began to think that there was something he wanted that was utterly divorced from thought. Even now, he could remember the sense of embarrassment that had accompanied this.
Tritt was not embarrassed, of course. Parentals were never embarrassed about the activities of the triad, and Emotionals were almost never embarrassed. Only Rationals had that problem.
"Too much thinking," a Hard One had said when Odeen had discussed the problem with him and that left Odeen dissatisfied. In what way could thinking be "too much"?
Tritt was young when they first met, of course. He was still so childish as to be uncertain in his blockishness so that his reaction to the meeting was embarrassingly clear. He grew almost translucent along his edges.
Odeen said, hesitantly, "I haven't seen you before, have I, right-fellow?"
Tritt said, "I have never been here. I have been brought here. "
They both knew exactly what had happened to them. The meeting had been arranged because someone (some Parental, Odeen had thought at the time, but later he knew it was some Hard One) thought they would suit each other, and the thought was correct.
There was no intellectual rapport between the two, of course. How could there be when Odeen wanted to learn with an intensity that superseded anything but the existence of the triad itself, and Tritt lacked the very concept of learning? What Tritt had to know, he knew beyond either learning or unlearning.
Odeen, out of the excitement of finding out about the world and its Sun; about the history and mechanism of life; about all the abouts in the Universe; sometimes (in those early days together) found 'himself spilling over to Tritt.
Tritt listened placidly, clearly understanding nothing, but content to be listening; while Odeen, transmitting nothing, was as clearly content to be lecturing.
It was Tritt who made the first move, driven by his special needs. Odeen was chattering about what he had learned that day after the brief midday meal. (Their thicker substance absorbed food so rapidly, they were satisfied with a simple walk in the Sun, while Emotionals basked for hours at a time, curling and thinning as though deliberately to lengthen the task. )
Odeen, who always ignored the Emotionals, was quite happy to be talking. Tritt, who stared wordlessly at them, day after day, was now visibly restless.
Abruptly, he came close to Odeen, formed an appendage so hastily as to clash most disagreeably on the other's form-sense. He placed in upon a portion of Odeen's upper ovoid where a slight shimmer was allowing a welcome draft of warm air as dessert. Tritt's appendage thinned with a visible effort and sank into the superfices of Odeen's skin before the latter darted away, horribly embarrassed.
Odeen had done such thing
s as a ,baby, of course, but never since his adolescence. "Don't do that, Tritt," he said sharply.
Tritt's appendage remained out, groping a little. "I want to. "
Odeen held himself as compactly as he could, striving to harden the surface to bar entry. "I don't want to. "
"Why not?" said Tritt, urgently.
"There's nothing wrong. " Odeen said the first thing that came into his mind. "It hurt. " (It didn't really. Not physically. But the Hard Ones always avoided the touch of the Soft Ones. A careless interpenetration hurt them, but they were constructed differently from Soft Ones, completely differently. )
Tritt was not fooled by that. His instinct could not possibly mislead him in this respect. He said, "It didn't hurt. "
"Well, it isn't right this way. We need an Emotional. "
And Tritt could only say, stubbornly, "I want to, anyway. "
It was bound to continue happening, and Odeen was bound to give in. He always did; it was something that was sure to happen even to the most self-conscious Rational. As the old saying had it: Everyone either admitted doing it or lied about it.
Tritt was at him at each meeting after that; if not with an appendage, then rim to rim. And finally Odeen, seduced by the pleasure of it, began to help and tried to shine. He was better at that than Tritt was. Poor Tritt, infinitely more eager, huffed and strained, and could achieve only the barest shimmer here and there, patchily and raggedly.
Odeen, however, could run translucent all over his surface, and fought down his embarrassment in order to let himself flow against Tritt. There was skin-deep penetration and Odeen could feel the pulsing of Tritt's hard surface under the skin. There was enjoyment, riddled with guilt.
Tritt, as often as not, was tired and vaguely angry when it was all over.
Odeen said, "Now, Tritt, I've told you we need an Emotional to do this properly. You can't be angry at something that just is"
And Tritt said, "Let's get an Emotional. "
Let's get an Emotional! Tritt's simple drives never led him to anything but direct action. Odeen was not sure he could explain the complexities of life to the other. "It's not that easy, right-ling," he began gently.
Tritt said abruptly. "The Hard Ones can do it You're friendly with them. Ask them. "
Odeen was horrified. "I can't ask. The time," he continued, unconsciously falling into his lecturing voice, "is not yet come, or I would certainly know it. Until such time - " Tritt was not listening. He said, "I'll ask. "
"No," said Odeen, horrified. "You stay out of it I tell you it's not time. I have an education to worry about. It's very easy to be a Parental and not to have to know anything but - "
He was sorry the instant he had said it and it was a lie anyway. He just didn't want to do anything at all that might offend the Hard Ones and impede his useful relationship with them. Tritt, however, showed no signs of minding and it occurred to Odeen that the other saw no point or merit in knowing anything he did not already know and would not consider the statement of the fact an insult.
The problem of the Emotional kept coming up, though. Occasionally, they tried interpenetration. In fact, the impulse grew stronger with time. It was never truly satisfying though it had its pleasure and each time Tritt would demand an Emotional. Each time, Odeen threw himself deeper into his studies, almost as a defense against the problem.
Yet at times, he was almost tempted to speak to Losten about it.
Losten was the Hard One he knew best; the one who took the greatest personal interest in him. There was a deadly sameness about the Hard Ones, because they did not change; they never changed; their form was fixed. Where there eyes were they always were, and always in the same place for all of them. Their skin was not exactly hard, but it was always opaque, never shimmered, never vague, never penetrable by another skin of its own type.
They were not larger in size, particularly, than the Soft Ones, but they were heavier. Their substance was much denser and they had to be careful about the yielding tissues of the Soft Ones.
Once when he had been little, really little and his body had flowed almost as freely as his sister's, he had been approached by a Hard One. He had never known which one it was, but he learned in later life that they were all of them curious about baby-Rationals. Odeen had reached up for the Hard One, out of nothing but curiosity. The Hard One had sprung backward and later Odeen's Parental had scolded him for offering to touch a Hard One.
The scolding had been harsh enough for Odeen never to forget. When he was older he learned that the close-packed atoms of the. Hard One's tissues felt pain on the forcible penetration of others. Odeen wondered if the Soft One felt pain, too. Another young Rational once told him that he had stumbled against a Hard One and the Hard One had doubled up but that he himself had felt nothing - but Odeen wasn't sure this was not just a melodramatic boast.
There were other things he could not do. He liked rubbing against the walls of the cavern. There was a pleasant, warm feeling when he allowed himself to penetrate rock. Babies always did it, but it got harder to do as he grew older. Still, he could do it skin-deep and he liked it, but his Parental found him doing it and scolded him. He objected that his sister did it all the time; he had seen her.
"That's different," said the Parental. "She's an Emotional. "
At another time, when Odeen was absorbing a recording - he was older then - he had idly formed a couple of projections and made the tips so thin, he could pass one through the other. He began to do it regularly when he listened. There was a pleasant tickling sensation that made iteasier to listen and made him nicely sleepy afterward.
And his Parental caught him at that, too, and what he had said still made Odeen uncomfortable in remembering it
No one really told him about melting in those days. They fed him knowledge and educated him about everything except what the triad was all about. Tritt had never been told, either, but he was a Parental so he knew without being told. Of course, when Dua came at last, all was clear, even though she seemed to know less about it even than Odeen.
But she didn't come to them because of anything Odeen did. It was Tritt who broached the matter; Tritt, who ordinarily feared the Hard Ones and avoided them mutely; Tritt, who lacked Odeen's self-assurance, in all but this respect; Tritt, who on this one subject was driven; Tritt - Tritt - Tritt -
Odeen signed. Tritt was invading his thoughts, because Tritt was coming. He could feel him, harsh, demanding, always demanding. Odeen had so little time to himself these days, just when he felt that he needed to think more than ever, to straighten out all the thoughts -
"Yes, Tritt," he said.
1c
Tritt was conscious of his blockiness. He didn't think it ugly. He didn't think about it at all. If he did, he would consider it beautiful. His body was designed for a purpose and designed well.
He said, "Odeen, where is Dua?"
"Outside somewhere," mumbled Odeen, almost as though he didn't care. It annoyed Tritt to have the triad made so little of. Dua was so difficult and Odeen didn't care.
"Why do you let her go?"
"How can I stop her, Tritt? And what harm does it do?"
"You know the harm. We have two babies. We need a third. It is so hard to make a little-mid these days. Dua must be well fed for it to be made. Now she is wandering about at Sunset again. How can she feed properly at Sunset?"
"She's just not a great feeder. "
"And we just don't have a little-mid. Odeen," Tritt's voice was caressing, "how can I love you properly without Dua?"
"Now, then," mumbled Odeen, and Tritt felt himself once more puzzled by the other's clear embarrassment at the simplest statement of fact,
Tritt said, "Remember, I was the one who first got Dua. " Did Odeen remember that? Did Odeen ever think of the triad and what it meant? Sometimes Tritt felt so frustrated he could - he could - Actually, he didn't know what to do, but he knew he felt frustrated. As in thos
e old days when he wanted an Emotional and Odeen would do nothing.
Tritt knew he didn't have the trick of talking in big, elaborate sentences. But if Parentals didn't talk, they thought. They thought about important things. Odeen always talked about atoms and energy. Who cared about atoms and energy? Tritt thought about the triad and the babies.
Odeen had once told him that the numbers of Soft Ones were gradually growing fewer. Didn't he care? Didn't the Hard Ones care? Did anyone care but the Parentals?
Only two forms of life on all the world, the Soft Ones and the Hard Ones. And food shining down on them.
Odeen had once told him the Sun was cooling off. There was less food, he said, so there were less people. Tritt didn't believe it. The Sun felt no cooler than it had when he was a baby. It was just that people weren't worrying about the triads any more. Too many absorbed Rationals; too many silly Emotionals.
What the Soft Ones must do was concentrate on the important things of life. Tritt did. He tended to the business of the triad. The baby-left came, then the baby-right. They were growing and flourishing. They had to have a baby-mid, though. That was the hardest to get started and without a baby-mid there would be no new triad.
What made Dua as she was? She had always been difficult, but she was growing worse.
Tritt felt an obscure anger against Odeen. Odeen always talked with all those hard words. And Dua listened. Odeen would talk to Dua endlessly till they were almost two Rationals. That was bad for the triad.
Odeen should know better.
It was always Tritt who had to care. It was always Tritt who had to do what had to be done. Odeen was the friend of the Hard Ones and yet he said nothing. They needed an Emotional and yet Odeen would say nothing. Odeen talked to them of energy and not of the needs of the triad.
It had been Tritt who had turned the . scale. Tritt remembered that proudly. He had seen Odeen talking to a Hard One and he had approached. Without a shake in his voice, he had interrupted and said, "We need an Emotional. "
The Hard One turned to look at him. Tritt had never been so close to a Hard One. He was all of a piece. Every part of him had to turn when one part did. He had some projections that could move by themselves, but they never changed in shape. They never flowed and were irregular and unlovely. They didn't like to be touched.
The Hard One said, "Isthis so, Odeen?" He did not talk to Tritt.
Odeen flattened. He flattened close to the ground; more flattened than Tritt had ever seen. He said, "My right-ling is over-zealous. My right-ling is - is - " He stuttered and puffed and could not speak.
Tritt could speak. He said, "We cannot melt without one. "
Tritt knew that Odeen was embarrassed into speech-lessness but he didn't care. It was time.
"Well, left-dear," said the Hard One to Odeen, "do you feel the same way about it?" Hard Ones spoke as the Soft Onesdid, but more harshly and with fewer overtones. They were hard to listen to. Tritt found them hard, anyway, though Odeen seemed used to it
"Yes," said Odeen, finally.
The Hard One turned at last to Tritt. "Remind me, young-right. How long have you and Odeen been together?"
"Long enough," said Tritt, "to deserve an Emotional. " He kept his shape firmly at angles. He did not allow himself to be frightened. This was too important. He said, "And my name is Tritt. "
The Hard One seemed amused. "Yes, the choice was good. You and Odeen go well together, but it makes the choice of an Emotional difficult. We have almost made up our minds. Or at least I have long since made up my mind, but the others must be convinced. Be patient, Tritt. "
"I am tired of patience. "
"I know, but be patient, anyway. " He was amused again.
When he was quite gone, Odeen uplifted himself and thinned out angrily. He said, "How could you do that, Tritt? Do you know who he was?"
"He was a Hard One. "
"He was Losten. He is my special teacher. I don't want him angry with me. "
"Why should he be angry? I was polite. "
"Well, never mind. " Odeen was settling into normal shape. That meant he wasn't angry any more. (That relieved Tritt though he tried not to show it. ) "It's very embarrassing to have my dumb-right come up and speak out to my Hard One. "
"Why didn't you do it, then?"
"There's such a thing as the right time. "
"But never's the right time to you. "
But then they rubbed surfaces and stopped arguing and it wasn't long after that that Dua came.
It was Losten that brought her. Tritt didn't know that; he didn't look at the Hard One. Only at Dua. But Odeen told him afterward that it was Losten that brought her.
"You see?" said Tritt. "It was I who talked to him. That is why he brought her. "
"No," said Odeen. "It was time. He would have brought her even if neither of us had talked to him. "
Tritt didn't believe him. He was quite sure that it was entirely because of himself that Dua was with them.
Surely, there was never anyone like Dua in the world. Tritt had seen many Emotionals. They were all attractive. He would have accepted any one of them for proper melting. Once he saw Dua, he realized that none of the others would have suited. Only Dua. Only Dua.
And Dua knew exactly what to do. Exactly. No one had ever shown her how, she told them afterward. No one had ever talked to her about it. Even other Emotionals hadn't, for she avoided them.
Yet when all three were together, each knew what to do.
Dua thinned. She thinned more than Tritt had ever seen a person thin. She thinned more than Tritt would ever have thought possible. She became a kind of colored smoke that filled the room and dazzled him. He moved without knowing he was moving. He immersed himself in the air that was Dua.
There was no sensation of penetration, none at all. Tritt felt no resistance, no friction. There was just a floating inward and a rapid palpitation. He felt himself beginning to thin in sympathy, and without the tremendous effort that had always accompanied it. With Dua filling him, he could thin without effort into a thick smoke of his own. Thinning became like flowing, one enormous smooth flow.
Dimly, he could see Odeen approaching from the other side, from Dua's left. And he, too, was thinning.
Then, like all the shocks of contact in all the world, he reached Odeen. But it wasn't a shock at all. Tritt felt without feeling, knew without knowing. He slid into Odeen and Odeen slid into him. He couldn't tell whether he was surrounding Odeen or being surrounded by him or both or neither.
It was only - pleasure.
The senses dimmed with the intensity of that pleasure and at the point where he thought he could stand no more, the senses failed altogether.
Eventually, they separated and stared at each other. They had melted for days. Of course, melting always took time. The better it was the longer it took, though when it was over all that time seemed as though it had been an instant and they did not remember it. In later life, it rarely took longer than that first time.
Odeen said, "That was wonderful. "
Tritt only gazed at Dua, who had made it possible.
She was coalescing, swirling, moving tremulously. She seemed most affected of the three.
"We'll do it again," she said, hurriedly, "but later, later. Let me go now. "
She had run off. They did not stop her. They were too overcome to stop her. But that was always the way afterward. She was always gone after a melting. No matter how successful it was, she would go. There seemed something in her that needed to be alone.
It bothered Tritt. In point after point, she was different from other Emotionals. She shouldn't be.
Odeen felt differently. He would say on many occasions, "Why don't you leave her alone, Tritt? She's not like the others and that means she's better than the others. Melting wouldn't be as good if she were like the others. Do you want the benefits without paying the price?"
Tritt did
not understand that clearly. He knew only that she ought to do what ought to be done. He said, "I want her to do what is right. "
"I know, Tritt, I know. But leave her alone, anyway. "
Odeen often scolded Dua himself for her queer ways but was always unwilling to let Tritt do so. "You lack tact, Tritt," he would say. Tritt didn't know what tact was exactly.
And now - It had been so long since the first melting and still the baby-Emotional was not born. How much longer? It was already much too long. And Dua, if anything, stayed by herself more and more as time went on.
Tritt said. "She doesn't eat enough. "
"When it's time - " began Odeen.
"You always talk about it's being time or it's not being time. You never found it time to get Dua in the first place. Now you never find it time to have a baby-Emotional. Dua should - "
But Odeen turned away. He said, "She's out there, Tritt. If you want to go out and get her, as though you were her Parental instead of her right-ling, do so. But I say, leave her alone. "
Tritt backed away. He had a great deal to say, but he didn't know how to say it.
2a
Dua was aware of the left-right agitation concerning her in a dim and faraway manner and her rebelliousness grew.
If one or the other, or both, came to get her, it would end in a melting and she raged against the thought. It was all Tritt knew, except for the children; all Tritt wanted, except for the third and last child; and it was all involved with the children and the still missing child. And when Tritt wanted a melting, he got it.
Tritt dominated the triad when he grew stubborn. He would hold on to some simple idea and never let go and in the end Odeen and Dua would have to give in. Yet now she wouldn't give in; she wouldn't -
She didn't feel disloyal at the thought, either. She never expected to feel for either Odeen or Tritt the sheer intensity of longing they felt for each other. She could melt alone; they could melt only through her mediation (so why didn't that make her the more regarded). She felt intense pleasure at the three-way melting; of course she did, it would be stupid to deny it; but it was a pleasure akin to that which she felt when she passed through a rock wall, as she sometimes secretly did. To Tritt and Odeen, the pleasure was like nothing else they had ever experienced or could ever experience.
No, wait. Odeen had the pleasure of learning, of what he called intellectual development. Dua felt some of that at times, enough to know what it might mean; and though it was different from melting, it might serve as a substitute, at least to the point where Odeen could do without melting sometimes.
But not so, Tritt. For him there was only melting and the children. Only. And when his small mind bent entirely upon that, Odeen would give in, and then Dua would have to.
Once she had rebelled. "But what happens when we melt? It's hours, days sometimes, before we come out of it. What happens all that time?"
Tritt had looked outraged at that. "It's always that way. It's got to be. "
"I don't like anything that's got to be. I want to know why. "
Odeen had looked embarrassed. He spent half his life being embarrassed. He said, "Now, Dua, it does have to be. On account of - children," He seemed to pulse, as he said the word.
"Well, don't pulse," said Dua, sharply. "We're grown now and we've melted I don't know how many times and we all know it's so we can have children. You might as well say so. Why does it take so long, that's all?"
"Because it's a complicated process," said Odeen, still pulsing. "Because it takes energy. Dua, it takes a long time to get a child started and even when we take a long time, it doesn't always get started. And it's getting worse. . . . Not just with us," he added hastily.
"Worse?" said Tritt anxiously, but Odeen would say no more.