From Part 2 ...
“How do you keep warm in winter?” he repeated.
Lois firmly suppressed her lingering amusement. “We have heating,” she said. “We burn gas or wood or coal. We also wear extra clothing such as coats.”
“We have no gas and our supplies of wood and coal are extremely limited.”
“It’s warm in here.”
“This is the Regal Residence. It is kept warm.” Kal looked up from the floor. “But my people are not so fortunate.”
He seemed genuinely concerned.
“Some homes have no heating at all,” he continued. “Many people die every winter.”
There was no sorrow on his face and his voice carried no emotion. But Lois could feel his concern. In his strange, mechanical way, this leader cared for his people.
His head was low, his shoulders slumped.
Lois experienced a sudden, unexpected impulse to reach over and touch his hand. To connect with him. To convey encouragement.
She didn’t. She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She had no suggestions as to how this cold planet could find warmth through the winter.
And she was uncertain as to how touching him would be received.
But her gut feeling was ... it wouldn’t be welcome.
Part 3
Kal stared at the floor, regretting his impetuosity in coming to Low-iss without formulating a plan of what to say when he got here.
He wanted to stare at her. She completely captivated his attention - but it was rude to stare at an inferior, so he kept his head low.
Lacking the advantages of forethought, he’d latched onto his original justification for ordering their one remaining Translator be inserted into her head. If she had knowledge, information, ideas ... anything that could alleviate the many difficulties they faced, it would be a good investment.
So, he’d asked her about heating.
And then the most startling thing had happened. Her mouth had stretched sideways. Not only sideways, but the ends of her mouth had turned up and she had bared her teeth.
If he hadn't seen it ... if someone had described it to him, Kal would have thought the effect would be menacing ... threatening even.
Yet what he’d perceived on Low-iss’s face was ... he didn’t know ... he had no word. Good, he supposed. It was like something inside her was good and somehow it translated to the mouth twitch.
But even more astounding was the effect it had had on him.
*In* him.
It was as if something inside him had lifted. As if he could suddenly see a way to warm his people this winter.
Which was illogical, obviously.
And disconcerting.
But what was more disconcerting was how much he wanted her to do it again.
Kal had repeated his question, hoping she would respond in the same way, but she hadn’t. She‘d answered him.
Then, he had sunk back into awkwardness. He just couldn’t think of anything to say.
What was it about this woman that made him feel like the ground beneath him kept slipping away?
He didn’t know.
Careful to avoid looking at Low-iss, Kal checked his watch. He had to leave her - it was time for his lunch. Another wild, aberrant notion exploded in his brain.
He could eat his lunch in here with Low-iss.
Of course, it wasn’t done. The Supreme Ruler ate alone in his Dining Room. Not with a concubine in his bedroom.
But ... he was the Supreme Ruler.
If he chose to eat his lunch in his bedroom, no one could stop him!
Kal rose abruptly from his chair and went to his Dining Room. Tek brought in his plate of food and a glass of blue.
When the servant had left the room, Kal picked up his plate and glass and hurried back to his bedroom.
To Low-iss.
+-+-+-+
Lois watched as the bedroom door closed abruptly behind Kal.
He’d come in, asked about heating, stared at the floor, then, without any explanation, hastily left.
Lois sighed deeply. They’d put something in her head – something that meant she could understand their words - but it didn’t change that she was an alien.
Different.
An outsider.
She slipped from the bed and went to the small basin in the corner of the bedroom. There was no faucet. Would it be possible to wash her hair in it? How did you get water?
Before she had time to investigate further, the door opened and Kal entered, carrying a plate and a glass of blue liquid. He sat on the chair, put the plate on his lap and the glass on the floor. “Are you hungry?” he asked.
Lois returned to the bed and sat on the edge of it, her bare knees only inches from his. She wished she was wearing one of the ankle-length gowns instead of the short, white dress. “What did you have put in my head?” she asked.
“A Translator.”
“That’s why I can understand you now?”
“Yes.”
“But I’m from a different planet,” Lois said. “Your language doesn’t even sound human.” She glanced quickly to Kal’s face, wondering if he would take offence.
He didn’t seem to, although how would she know? His face didn’t change whatever she said. “It reads from the language processor in the left hemisphere of your brain and transmits it,” Kal said. “The Translator in my head receives it, translates it to Kryptonian and feeds it into my brain.”
Lois checked the short dark hair around Kal’s left ear. She couldn’t see any evidence of a foreign object buried in his brain. “You have one too?”
“Yes.”
“Does anyone else?” she asked. “Will I be able to understand other people? Will they be able to understand me?”
“Older people have them. Children do not.” He offered her one of the two sticks. “Are you hungry?”
Lois looked at Kal’s plate, recognising the same green stuff she had been given yesterday. He also had brown lumps which vaguely reminded her of meatballs.
She took the stick, but hesitated. Did he mean for her to dig into his green stuff? “What is this called?” she asked, wanting to secure a few extra seconds to try to ascertain what was acceptable.
“Vegetable,” Kal replied.
It didn’t look like any vegetable Lois had ever seen, but it was possible that was the closest paraphrase. She doubted every word could be directly translated.
Kal dug his stick into the ‘vegetable’. He looked up at her. “If you’re hungry, eat,” he said.
Lois pushed her stick into the vegetable mass and ate a blob. It wasn’t too bad, she decided. Certainly no worse than some Earth vegetables she’d tasted.
Kal speared his stick into one of the lumps and took it to his mouth.
“What is that called?” Lois asked, regarding it dubiously.
“Meat,” came back the answer.
Meat! Lois picked up a lump and nibbled at it, trying very hard not to think about what animal it had once been. It tasted like nothing she had ever experienced before – a little spicy, but not unpleasantly so. In fact, it was preferable to the vegetable.
Soon the plate was empty. Her stick had softened. Lois bit off the end and chewed.
Kal’s eyes widened. His face remained a mask, but through the mask, Lois was sure she discerned shock.
His eyes dropped to her stick ... and fixated on the jagged end.
Lois’s jaw stopped, mid-chew, as realisation hit. She had chomped on the cutlery!
The pointy end of the stick ... combined with Kal’s wide-eyed reaction ... incited a gurgling ball of rampant laughter that rolled through her stomach and up her throat. Her frantic efforts to maintain control were a chance to succeed until Kal’s jaw dropped just enough to hint at his acute bafflement.
Lois swiftly averted her eyes, but it was too late. Her laughter erupted – effervescent and unruly. She slumped forward and clasped her shaking ribs.
When she had managed to seize back control, Lois straightened her body, composed her face and replaced the remnant of the stick on Kal’s plate, before risking a glance to his face.
His eyes – intense and deep – ensnared hers. Slowly, Kal raised his hand towards her face and used the edge of his forefinger to lift the teardrop from the corner of her eye. He withdrew and gazed at the speck of moisture on his finger. When he looked back to her, his eyes were a mass of questions.
“It’s a tear,” Lois explained.
“A what?”
“When you laugh or cry, sometimes your eyes water.”
There was not even an inkling of comprehension in his face.
“Laugh,” Lois prompted. She laughed again, more controlled this time. “Laugh, like when something is funny.”
“What?” he asked.
“It’s funny that I ate the cutlery.” Just saying it kindled her simmering amusement.
“It’s not food,” Kal informed her, deadpan.
Lois smiled again. “I know that now. I’m sorry.”
Kal put the empty plate on the floor and picked up the glass. He sipped some of the blue liquid, solemnly contemplating her over the rim.
Cautiously, he held the glass in her direction. “Don’t bite it,” he advised sombrely.
Lois managed to sip from the glass without spluttering. The blue liquid was almost tasteless, despite its vibrant colour. She handed the glass back to Kal.
He examined it closely.
No doubt looking for tooth marks, Lois thought, again stifling the smouldering ball of laughter within.
He drained the glass, picked up the plate and stood.
“Kal?”
At the door, he turned to her. “Yes.”
“Where can I find water? And soap and shampoo?”
“I’ll have a bucket of water sent in. Soap and shampoo are in the cupboard under the basin.”
“Is it all right if I use some?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a shower?” Lois asked. “Or a bath?”
“Neither,” he said. “We have insufficient water.” With that, he left.
+-+-+-+
After Kal had gone, Lois returned to her former room to collect the clothes from her closet. Back in the bedroom, she filled the basin with the brown-tinged water from the bucket she'd found when she returned and managed to wash her hair and her body. It was cold, but at the end of it she felt a lot better. She dressed in one of the shapeless gown-like garments.
Her hair hung unevenly. There was no mirror in the room and nothing resembling a comb in the cupboard. Lois pulled her fingers through her damp hair and tried to arrange the left side so that it covered the bandage.
Then she put her underwear and the white dress in the cold water and washed them. She wrung them out. There was nowhere in the room to hang them to dry, so Lois pushed aside the pile of folders on the desk and draped her clothes across it.
She peered out of the tiny window, but could see very little other than the red-grey mélange of hazy cloud and drab concrete. Her reflection – indistinct though it was - reiterated her suspicion that her hair was lop-sided and dishevelled.
She pushed at it, but promptly gave up and turned away.
Lois looked around the room. There were no books, no photographs, no decorations, no window coverings, no cushions, nothing to make it more homelike.
The starkness was broken only by a small rectangular device on the wall. It displayed an ever-changing series of outlandish characters. Possibly it was a clock.
Lois estimated it was mid afternoon – there were a lot of empty hours before bedtime.
The room held nothing to engage her mind. She took the top folder from the pile on the desk and opened it. It contained two pages of squiggly scrawl, not unlike the clock characters. With a sigh, Lois replaced the folder.
She wished she could go for a walk. There was a whole world out there ... a new planet, new horizons, new people, just waiting to be investigated. It had to be teeming with stories. It just had to be.
But was it dangerous?
Danger had never impeded her before.
But this wasn’t Metropolis.
It wasn’t even Earth.
She hankered to go.
But she didn’t want to be arrested. Or shot.
What restrictions were placed on concubines?
She bristled at the thought of restrictions. Restrictions that had been forced upon her.
She’d never allowed herself to be intimidated ... never allowed anything to stop her chasing down a big story.
And this was certainly a *big* story.
But the reality was that even if she got the story, she had nowhere to take it.
No Perry. No Daily Planet. No readers. No job.
No family.
Lois slumped onto the bed.
No family.
No Mom, no Dad, no Lucy.
No Perry, no Jimmy.
They would think she was dead.
They would grieve.
They would believe they would never see her again.
They were probably right.
Lois curled into the bed, her zest for exploring the new completely consumed by the desolation of grieving for that which she’d lost.
+-+-+-+
Kal was shaken.
The mouth-twitch thing Low-iss did had affected him a lot. But the mouth-twitch thing with sound was simply incredible.
It was so much more than the sound ... it was what it had done to him that had him reeling. It tugged at something within him ... something unfathomable inside him that had been bound for longer than his memories stretched.
There was so much he didn’t understand.
So much about her.
So much about how she affected him.
Why she affected him.
Why he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
But one thing he did know; he wanted to ... was driven to ... spend time with her. A lot of time. Minutes. Hours. Days. Weeks. Months.
And he wanted to hear the sound of her mouth-twitch again. He wanted to see it. To hear it. To understand it.
To experience it.
That afternoon he had a Cabinet meeting. They really had to find solutions to the lack of water and heating fuel. He needed to concentrate and apply himself to the needs of his people.
Which wasn’t going to be easy when every time he closed his eyes all he could see was Low-iss and her mouth-twitch.
+-+-+-+
Kal managed to keep his mind mostly on the matters brought by his Cabinet. There were still no solutions to the water problem. Nor the heating problem.
There was a worrying development in the aftermath of the murder of the young boy last week. One of his Cabinet members – Lord Nor - suspected the boy’s father and uncle were plotting a revenge killing against the family of the man who had already been executed for the murder.
Kal knew only too well how quickly situations like this could escalate. Murder trials and executions were carried out with such celerity precisely to suppress any thoughts of retaliation.
The meeting took every moment of the scheduled four hours. Kal had no time to detour to his bedroom to see if Low-iss was still there. He walked to the Dining Room. Tek brought his supper and then turned to leave.
Kal cleared his throat. Tek hesitated, then turned back to Kal. “Yes, Sir?”
“How is your wife?” Kal asked.
Kal knew his question had surprised Tek. They talked about matters of state occasionally, even though Tek wasn’t a Noble and had no position of authority in New Krypton. But Kal didn’t aimlessly chat with him.
Actually, Kal didn’t aimlessly chat with anyone.
He rarely had the time and had never felt the inclination.
But he’d begun to realise his communication skills were distressingly deficient.
“She’s well,” Tek said.
“When you go home to your wife,” Kal said. “What do you talk to her about?”
“Our children.”
That wasn’t helpful. “Anything else?”
Tek thought for a moment. “Her elderly mother is unwell. I ask about that. We talk about ways to keep our children warm during the nights. We talk about what opportunities we want for our children. We talk about the future.”
Kal picked up his plate and drink and hurried to his bedroom.
+-+-+-+
When her stream of tears had ebbed to a trickle, Lois dried her eyes and stood from the bed.
What now?
Her old life had gone. If there was any possible way to get home, Lois meant to find it. But for now, trying to adjust to her new life seemed to be the smart option.
What was she allowed to do?
What was she expected to do?
Already, she could feel the boredom infusing restlessness into her brain cells.
Not that she couldn’t appreciate the irony.
Here she was – literally landed in the middle of the biggest story in the history of Earth - but she had no way to get either herself or her story home. She didn’t have a computer. Nor paper. Not even a pen.
Maybe she could ask Kal for -.
The door opened and he came in – again with a plate and a glass of the blue liquid.
Lois looked up quickly – as a brook of gladness rippled through her. She was glad to see him, glad he broke the monotony, glad that, despite his stilted ways, he gave her some social contact. And a chance to get answers to some of her questions. “Hi,” she said, trying to sound welcoming.
He glanced to the ceiling. “High?”
Lois felt her smile blossom and, not wanting Kal to think she was laughing at him, quickly lifted her hand to her mouth.
In a hasty movement, Kal put down his plate and glass and reached for her. Lois swayed back, startled. He carefully clasped her hand and eased it from her mouth. He released her hand and then, very slowly, placed a forefinger on each end of her mouth and with surprising gentleness guided her mouth out and up.
Then his hands dropped from her and he studied her.
Did he *want* her to smile?
Is that why he had uncovered her mouth?
He wanted to see her smile?
Lois smiled tentatively.
Kal didn’t return her smile. He simply stared at her, face blank, eyes intense. Until this moment, Lois hadn’t realised the effort required to continue smiling at someone who showed no inclination to smile back.
After a few seconds, she could sustain it no longer. “What’s on the plate?” she asked brightly.
Kal dragged the chair close to the bed and sat down on it, his plate on his lap. Lois sat on the bed and looked at the food. There were more meatball lumps; threaded through them was short, fat spaghetti.
On second thoughts, the short, fat spaghetti looked more like long worms than spaghetti. Lois quickly shut down that notion. Kal offered her a stick. A stick that she now knew was cutlery – not food.
Her smile leapt again. When she lifted her eyes from the plate, she discovered Kal was staring at her. She widened her smile. “How do you eat this?” she asked.
He jabbed his stick into the food and deftly wrapped a bundle of the strands around it and then lifted it to his mouth.
“I don’t think I can do that,” Lois said.
Kal took her stick from her and loaded it. He held it towards her. Awkwardly, Lois took the empty end of the stick, inadvertently brushing across his long fingers. She slipped the food into her mouth. If she shut down the worm connection, it wasn’t too bad. Although it tasted nothing like spaghetti – more like avocado. “Thank you, Kal.”
His loaded stick stalled half-way between the plate and his mouth. “What did you say?”
“Thank you, Kal.”
“We have no translation for the first two words.”
“You don’t say ‘thank you’?”
“No,” he said. “What does it mean?”
“If someone does something for you, or gives you something, it is polite to say ‘thank you’. It shows your appreciation.”
“Say it slowly,” he requested. “There were words that didn’t translate.”
“If someone does something for you, or gives you something, it is polite –."
“That word,” Kal said. “What does that mean?”
“Polite?”
“Yes.”
“Good manners. Etiquette.”
He seemed to be considering that as he loaded her stick again and offered it to her.
“Thank you, Kal.”
They continued eating in silence. Every time Lois handed the empty stick to Kal, every time he returned the loaded stick, their fingers touched.
When the plate was empty, Kal offered her the glass of blue liquid.
Lois drank from it and then said, “Thank you for sharing your food with me, Kal.”
+-+-+-+
Kal drained the glass and put it on the empty plate. What now? He wanted to talk with Low-iss. But about what? If he didn’t say something, she would go back to her room. He had to say something. But what? What would Tek say? “How is your mother?” Kal spurted.
Instantly, he regretted his question.
It changed her face. Closed it – like a door slamming.
As he watched her, the moisture gathered around her eyes again. This confused him completely. Last time the moisture had come, she had been making the mouth-twitch sound and he was sure that was good.
But this was bad.
Yet the moisture was there again.
He wished he could undo his rashness. But he couldn’t. He wished he knew how to open her face again. But he didn’t. The only thing he could do was ask another question and hope it would somehow make things better. “Do you have a mother?”
Low-iss moved her head up and down.
The moisture in her left eye overflowed and drizzled down her cheek. Alarm flooded through Kal. What was he supposed to do now? He shot a look at the clock. In ten minutes he was supposed to start the Disputes.
But he did them in his bedroom and Low-iss was here and he was certain that going to his desk now would be even worse than asking about her mother.
Low-iss rubbed the dampness from her cheeks. “I have a mother and a father and a sister,” she said. “They probably think I’m dead.”
Of course they would think that. And realistically, she *was* dead to them because if there was one thing Kal was sure of, it was that there was no possibility of Low-iss getting back to Planet Earth.
Unless her people came to take -.
No! His reaction was swift and emphatic.
He didn’t want her to leave. Really, really didn’t want her to leave.
He could order her to stay ... he was the Supreme Ruler.
But if she wanted to go ... he knew he would never force her to stay.
And of course, she would want to go.
He could still see the traces of wetness in her eyes. Was that how Earth people responded to tragedy? “I don’t understand ...” He reached across the small distance between them and collected her moisture on his fingertip. He held it up for her to see.
“I’m crying,” she said.
The second word didn’t translate.
“But you ...” Kal gestured to her eye. “... when it was ...” She’d told him the word, but there hadn’t been a Kryptonian equivalent. Again he put his forefingers on the edges of her mouth and carefully shaped it.
She did a small mouth-twitch under his fingers. He jolted his hands away so he could see. “When people get emotional, they cry,” she said.
“That didn’t translate.”
“When people feel very good or very bad inside, they do this.” She pointed to her eyes.
“This was very bad, wasn’t it?”
She moved her head up and down.
“Does ...” Kal copied her movement. “... mean ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”
“Yes.” She moved her head left and right. “This means ‘no’.”
“When you ate the cutlery?” he said, trying to understand. “That was very good?”
She did the mouth-twitch again as she dried the remainder of the moisture from both of her eyes. “Yes. That was good.”
“If someone ...” Kal pointed to her eyes. “How do you know if it’s good or bad?”
“By what else is happening. Or, if you’re not sure, you ask.”
“There is much about you I don’t understand,” he said.
“There is much about everything here I don’t understand,” Low-iss said.
There would be, of course. Until now, he hadn’t considered too deeply how confusing this must be for her. “If you’re not sure, you ask,” he said, aware he was copying her words.
That comment earned him a mouth-twitch.
It was like a reward. Because every single time she did it, it was like a little burst of goodness exploded inside him. He had never experienced anything like it, but he was sure he would never, ever tire of it.
“You will answer my questions?” she asked.
Kal opened his mouth to reply ‘yes’, but then he remembered. Feeling self-conscious, he moved his head up and down.
Low-iss’s mouth-twitch widened, accompanied by a soft rumbling sound. Not like before when it had been loud and explosive, but soft. Different, but just as good.
When the soft rumbling had stopped, Low-iss thumped her fist on her chest. “What does this mean?” she asked.
“That is how you greet someone inferior to assure them you will not harm them.”
Her mouth-twitch disappeared. “So, when you did that to me, you were telling me you were better than me, but you weren’t intending to harm me?”
“Yes.”
“So, I shouldn’t do that to you?”
“No.”
She stopped talking. Kal searched for something more to say. What else did Tek talk about with his wife? Their children. But if he asked Low-iss if she had children, that was going to make the bad moisture come again.
He was still trying to decide what to say, when Low-iss spoke. “Why did you make me your concubine?”
“To stop Lord Nor taking you.”
“Oh,” she said. She swept the sheet of her hair behind her right ear and looked away. “Are you married?” she asked.
“Yes.” Kal hesitated. “Are you?”
“No.” She looked at him directly with her moisture-softened eyes. “How many wives do you have?”
“One,” he said, unable to pull his gaze from her eyes.
“Where is she?”
The question surprised him. “In her house, I suppose,” he said.
His answer surprised her, though Kal wasn’t sure how he knew. Maybe it was the way her eyebrows reached upwards. “She doesn’t live in this building?”
That question surprised him more. “No. Why would she live in this building?”
“Because you live here,” Low-iss said. “On Earth, people who are married live together.”
“The lower classes do that. Nobles do not.”
“And you’re a Noble?”
“I’m higher than a Noble,” Kal explained. “Sometimes a lower Noble can choose his wife if the woman’s family is of similar ranking to the man’s. Higher Nobles have their wives chosen for them – which permits them to take concubines. The highest rank of a Noble is a Regal Noble. We have three Regal Nobles – Lord Nor, Lord Yent and Lord Ching.”
“Was your wife chosen for you?”
“She is my birth-wife. We were promised the day she was born.”
“When did you marry her?”
“When I was sixteen – ten winters ago.”
“When do you see her?”
“At the Nobility Convention.”
“Do you love her?”
“I don’t know that word.”
“Love?”
“Yes. It doesn’t translate.”
“Love.” Low-iss’s hands lifted and darted around in front of her. Kal wasn’t sure why. “Love is something you feel in here.” She pointed to the middle of her chest.
That confused him even more. The only thing Kal had ever felt in his chest was his heart beat.
He noticed it most when he’d been running. Or exercising.
Although ...
Being with Low-iss often had the same effect.
