Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon

all but trotted up to Derek. “No? Oh, please! A—joke?”
    “No joke. Just no.”
    Jane breathed, “Derek, what are you on? Goofballs?”
    Derek threw up his hands. “No. It’s a good word. Ain’t ‘no’ better than a whole lot of yak? No, that’s all.”
    “Derek—”
    “Mr. Jax,” said Derek.
    “Mr. Jax, please think it over,” Henry said. “I’ve been wanting to work with you ever since you recorded ‘Slide Down.’ ” You know how long ago that was. I don’t just want to play piano someplace. I want to play here—with you. I don’t care about the pay. Just let me back up that bass.”
    “He never talked like that to me,” said Jane with a small smile. “You’ve made yourself a conquest, puddin’head. Now—”
    “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk,” exploded Derek. “I don’t want to hear any kind of talk. I said no!”
    Jane came to him. She squeezed Henry’s forearm and gave him a long look. “Walk around some,” she said kindly. “Come back and see me later.”
    Derek stood looking at the piano. Jane watched Henry go. He walked slowly, holding himself in, his head forward. At the other side of the dance floor he turned and opened his mouth to speak, but Jane waved him on. He went out.
    Jane whirled on Derek. “Now what the God—”
    Derek interrupted her, rasping, “If you got any more to say about this, you can look for a new bass man too.”
    Pallas McCormick was fifty-three years old and knew what she was about. She strode briskly down Eleventh Street, a swift, narrow figure with pointed shoulders and sharp wattles at the turn of her thin jaw. It was late and the tea room would be closed before long.
    Verna was there before her, her bright white hair and bright blue eyes standing out like beacons in the softly lit room.
    “Good evening, Pallas.” Verna’s voice was soft and pillowy, like her pudgy face and figure.
    “Evening,” said Pallas. Without preliminaries she demanded, “How are yours?”
    Verna sighed. “Not so well. Two are willing, one isn’t. The little fool.”
    “They’re all fools,” said Pallas. “Two billion stupid fools. Never heard of such a place.”
    “They want to do everything by twos,” said Verna. “They’re all afraid they’ll lose something if they don’t pair off, pair off. They’ve been schooled and pushed and ordered and taught that that’s the way it must be, so—” she sighed again—“that’s the way it is.”
    “We haven’t much more time. I wish we hadn’t lost—” There followed a dim attempt to project “Mak,” a mental designation for which there was no audible equivalent.
    “Oh, dear,
stop
saying that! You’re always saying that. Our first third is gone, all eaten up, and that’s the way it is.”
    “We’re two,” said Pallas caustically, “and we don’t want to be. Are you all right?”
    “Thoroughly encysted, thank you. Pa’ak can’t get to me. I’m so well encased I can barely get through to control this—” she lifted her arms and dropped them heavily on the table—“this bag of bones. And I can’t telepath. I wish I could communicate with you and the others directly, instead of through this primitive creature and its endless idioms. I’ve even got to use that clumsy terrestrial name of yours—there’s no vocalization for our real ones.” Again there was an effort to identify the speaker as “Myk” and the other as “Mok,” which failed.
    “
I
wish I could get through to the others. Goodness! A weak signal once in a while—a mere ‘come close’ or ‘go away’—and in between, nothing, for weeks on end.”
    “Oh, but they’ve got to stay closed up so tight! You know how the Pa’ak infection works—increasing the neurotic potential so that the virus can feed on the released nervous energy. There are two groups of three people who must come together by their own free emotional merging, or Ril’s three parts and Kad’s three parts can never become one again. To