The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov Page B

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