The Fresco

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “That idiot McVane would ask them to prove it!” snarled the Secretary of State, who was in a waspish mood. She had slept badly and had already spent a good part of the morning alternately assuring the Israeli Prime Minister, the Vatican, the Eastern Orthodox Church, a handful of American evangelicals and charismatics, and the Palestinian Ambassador that no, the U.S. had no weapons advanced enough to have dug that hole without damaging a single citizen. A big hole, yes, maybe, but one that cleanly followed ancient city walls and didn’t kill so much as a sparrow, no. She had pointed out that even the cars that had gone over the brink had been found in the desert, their occupants asleep but unharmed. Ethical behavior, she had said repeatedly, was often abridged by the possible, and the U.S. lacked the know-how to behave in such an ethical manner.

  “You think the ETs did this?” asked the president. “You’re sure?”

  “Of course they did it,” the SOS snarled once more. “They asked us, remember? At dinner. What some of our problems were.”

  “They asked me during our meeting, too. I mentioned the Middle East.”

  “They asked about Afghanistan, and your wife mentioned women’s rights in that context. I mentioned the fact that in Africa national boundaries were established by colonial powers without taking tribalism into account…”

  “So, what do we expect to happen next?” he grated. “All the women disappear? All the tribes in Africa?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You’re afraid to know,” he said, biting his lip. “So am I.”

  She muttered, “I don’t suppose we could just ask them to go home?”

  He laughed, without humor. “They warned us not even to think about that. They don’t go home. Not until they’re finished or they give up.”

  JERUSALEM DISAPPEARS

  WORLD WONDERS AT ACT OF GOD

  MYSTERIOUS MESSAGES CONFOUND SCIENCE

  UNEARTHLY FORCES DEMAND PEACE

  FUNDAMENTALISTS GREET DISAPPEARANCE

  AS OVERTURE TO LAST DAYS

  JERUSALEM TRANSPORTED TO HEAVEN, SAYS FALWELL

  HOLY CITY TO RETURN AFTER ANTICHRIST

  THOUSANDS GATHER TO AWAIT SECOND COMING

  BAPTISTS CROWD SOUTHERN MOUNTAINTOPS

  RUMORS OF PLAGUE IN AFGHANISTAN

  KABUL REQUESTS AID FROM CDC

  20

  from chiddy’s journal

  As an athyco, it was to’eros task, that is, my task, dear Benita, to design remedies for societies, including our own, that did not work well. Yes, Benita, sometimes even our own society does not work as well as it should. I find comfort in this, when I am confronted with some problem difficult of solution. Patience, I say to myself. Even we have problems we have not put an end to.

  After spending several years both reading case histories of other athyci who had worked in prior centuries and solving thought problems under the guidance of my mentor, ton was sent to the village of Quo-Tem to solve a problem that had come up in recent years. It was in Quo-Tem that ton first met the person who was to be to’eros long-term workmate, Vess. Of course, no one in the village called ais Vess. In the village Vess and Chiddy were called Aisos Torsummi or Aisos Torsum. Earthlings would say, Their Excellencies or His Excellency or even, if speaking directly to us, Your Excellency, though our language does not have an easy equivalent to “you.” In our society such directness is considered rude. Among intimates and when referring to self, we use the first level undifferentiated, casteless pronouns we learned as children, with a mouthpart gesture to indicate whether we refer to self or other. Ton, I or you. To’er, me or you. To’eros, mine or yours. Ton’i, we or you. To’eri, us or you. To’erosi, our or your. In speaking to others, especially to groups of differing castes, we speak always of “one,” using the pronoun of the highest caste present. Ke (or li or ai) afar. One serves. Ker (or lic, or ais) afari. Serve it to one. Keros (or licos or aisos) ca fi. It is one’s.

  Since this document is intended for you, dear Benita, I continue the struggle to put it in your words. Ça fi shunus to’erosi afarim. It is our joy to serve.

  Vess and I were soon on a confidential basis, Chiddy and Vess, to’eri, new athyci. The problem in Quo-Tem, which was a farming community, mostly campesi, had to do with the communal lands on which the people grazed the village livestock. Over the past century, the number of persons in the town had increased, the herds had likewise increased, and the public lands could no longer support the number of beasts. Riverbanks were destroyed, the plants that held the soil were killed, good soil was being washed downstream, into other communities.

  In all problems, athyci are required to keep the great fundamental truths in mind. Some of these are as follows: Resources are finite. Some things are not renewable. Intelligent creatures must give way to irreplaceable achievements. One cannot explain to a tree or a forest that it must either grow without water or move to another place, but one can explain to a person that it must go somewhere else, where water is available. As we say, “The health of a forest outweighs both the tears of a nootch and the plaint of an athyco.” After all, it may take half a millennium or more to achieve similar trees while it would take only a few decades to achieve a new nootch or a new athyco. Of course, it is easier for us than for your governing bodies since we do not consider our temporary inconvenience as superior to the needs of permanently essential forests and seas. We are taught to think in many lifetimes, not only in the short span of our own. This kind of thinking is, in your language, Darwinian, since only people who think this way will survive in the long run. The fact that your Madagascar and your Brazil and several of your African countries will be incapable of supporting either flora or fauna within thirty years are cases in point.

  On Quo-Tem we first had to determine why the number of persons had increased. We have a saying, “False reasons grow like weeds.” It is true. There are as many false reasons as there are neurons to fire them off, but problems cannot be solved using false reasons. Real reasons are of utmost importance. We looked at the data. Years before, several of the undifferentiated young of Quo-Tem had been selected as inceptors more or less simultaneously. This was a statistical blip, but such things happen. As is the way with inceptors, ke’i had accumulated receptors, some from Quo-Tem and some from outside, three here, four there, and the receptors had recruited nootchi for the creating of young. The young had grown, and while some had been selected out into other areas, more had returned to the village, mostly those we call the glusi, the not-very-able-ones, the perpetually undifferentiated, the ones who do not come to mind when one gives thanks.

  Return to one’s ancestral place is a right we try very hard to guarantee, but another of our immutable facts is: Managers always recruit the top layers among persons, for such persons will reflect well upon them, and the lower one’s ability, the higher the chance one will be left where one is. In time, therefore, Quo-Tem had grown top heavy with glusi. While glusi eat no more and take no more space than others, they use up space and resources without regenerating them. They tend to destroy in that way, by sucking energy, or through undirected energy of their own, or through ineptitude or even, sometimes, malice. There is no cure for a glut of glusi except not to beget them in the first place, but by the time one knows one has a glut, it is too late.

  The moment that the people-load had gone beyond the numbers allowed to the village, the strain should have been brought to the attention of the athyci. Why had that not happened? Because the former recording-campes responsible for assembling and transmitting information, a very able person, had died at that time, and ke had not been replaced. No one had gone to the bureau of selectors and told lic’i a recording-campes was needed. So, the imbalance had gone on and gone on, and now the situation was at a point where no acceptable solution was possible. No matter what Vess and I did, persons would be greatly disturbed, even angry, both the innocent and the persons responsible.

  We faced this anger resolutely. Panel number seven of the Fresco, The Adoration,
is an inspiration in such times. In it, Mengantowhai, who has made massive changes in the lives of the Jaupati in order to bring them peace, is hailed by them as their savior. I always think of this when I am required to bring trouble or pain to our people. In the end, I say, they will be thankful for it.

  We needed to know whether the glut of glusi was achieved out of ignorance or whether it had been deliberate. We started our inquiry with the campesi. Unbelievably, after millennia of refinement in our methods, some campesi still end up believing they have not been properly selected; some still resent having been selected at all! Even today we may find one who croaks like a pfluggi and wants to be a singer. Or one who has all the grace of a puyox but wants to dance. Or another one, who cannot add up the same figures twice with the same answer, who wants to be a proffe, what you call an engineer! I feel gratitude that such longings are rare. Though most campesi require only slight adjusting to be content, for a few there is no soothing. We have a saying, “There is no misery like misdreaming.” Or, as earthlings might say, “No tragedy like false ambition.”

  It would be necessary, we found, to cut the village population by about a third, to reduce grazing on the lands by more than half for a lengthy period, and to undertake strenuous regeneration of the lands, which would require the labor of all campesi in Quo-Tem for some time. This meant the other categories who remained would have to do their own chores for a time, which is proper. We are taught, “An inescapable burden must fall equally upon all castes.”

  As athyci, it was our job to choose who would stay and who would go. The first task was to message the need everywhere, at first to the places of that world, then, if necessary, to other settled worlds. So many inceptors, so many receptors, so many nootchi, so many undifferentiated ones, so many campesi, all to find places for. When the returns came in, we began the allocation. Receptors and associated nootchi to the same places, when possible. If not possible, then interviews with them to assess their relative willingness to separate. Some receptors, luckily, were willing to be separated, and others, who had reached or exceeded the number of young required of them, wanted to be reselected to nonreceptor caste.

  Few of the nootchi and none of the inceptors wanted to be reselected. This is most often true of inceptors. Their lives are centered on gratifying their mating organ to the extent they cannot even visualize doing something else. It was at this juncture we found that several of the inceptors were closely related, that several of them shared the same cell parents, even the same nootch!

  This explained everything! While organ gratification comes first with inceptors, progeny pride comes second! Inceptors who have the same lineage have been known to engage in progeny competition, even when, as was the case here, the progeny were not of very high quality. When we noticed this, we marked all the related inceptors for retirement therapy.

  We then moved on to the undifferentiated ones, those not yet twelve. Undifferentiated ones are easiest. So long as they have a good nootch, they are usually content. We identified all those procreated by the inceptors in question and tagged them in the records as nonbreeder stock, even if they showed great aptitude for the task. It is an unfortunate truth that inceptors and receptors of very little brain are often very skilled with the generative organ and emit very strong mating smells. That is one of the reasons our selectors must be extremely careful in their choices. It is rather like politics or policing: those who most enjoy the work are often those who should not be doing it!

  When we were finished, we had retired or allocated all but the leftover campesi, mostly old ones or glusi, the offspring of the inceptors we had already tagged. As earthlings would say, the bottom of the barrel. A few were old enough to refer to the farms for the aged, but several had to be sent to the sleep gardens. Though we do not publicize these arrangements, persons may sleep in the gardens up to one hundred years, and this is usually more than adequate time to find places even for supernumerary campesi. The settlement of new planets requires many such, and we Pistach are usually settling somewhere.

  When Vess and I had finished, we knew that unhappiness and trauma had been minimized to the extent possible. Still, we felt the strain of that which remained! The pride of the inceptors had been unavoidably damaged and a number of the nootchi had been aggrieved. Nootchi grow very attached to their home place, and it is hard for them to move. They have spent years weaving a village, planning it, decorating it with gardens, laying out its walks and pretty-places and play areas for the young. Nootchi are the cement of a community, they stick fast, and it is like flaying a fluggle to tug them away.

  In any case, persons from all four village categories came to us, as we knew they would, to complain. It was during our last formal session. They bowed, calling us Aisos Torsummi. They presented their petition and asked redress of grievance. We inquired whether they wanted vengeance, and they affirmed this. Such an imbalance was someone’s fault; their grief demanded redress. While we knew the real trouble had started with the selectors who had sent too many inceptors of the same, faulty lineage back to this village, we did not say so, for the selectors were not answerable to people below them in caste. We would take care of that ourselves.

  Nonetheless, we told the villagers a truth: that the trouble began when the recording-campes died. The inceptor who was then the village master had the duty of requesting a new recording-campes. Ke had not done so. That inceptor was still alive, and keros name was such and such, and the aggrieved had our permission to kill ker, if they wished, though we advised them it would be courteous to listen first to keros explanation.

  Since inceptor in question had been retired to an aged persons’ farm at some distance, vengeance would require the aggrieved to make a lengthy trip. Serially, the aggrieved ones declaimed their intention of doing so, and we made note of their intentions so they would have no trouble getting travel permission. Their actually going to the aged persons’ farm was unlikely. Since many of those in the group would be sent to their new homes on the following day, thus separating them from one another, it was doubtful they would ever get around to confronting the old inceptor. Grievance and anger need a certain heat of immediacy and a constant draft of rhetoric to keep them burning. This is why humans who explain their anger to counselors and psychologists go on being angry; they fan their anger with a constant hurricane of reminiscence. Separating those who are aggrieved is like raking out a fire, a good way of cooling things down, while the process of formulating their grievance served both to focus and to ameliorate their feelings. Knowing who was to blame, they would not waste energy on other targets.

  Our last few hours on Quo-Tem were spent with the most able campesi, those who would remain, and the current village manager who was, luckily, a person of some administrative talent, though he had not had the will or the authority to do what we had done. Village managers live by the will of the village, and villages make painful changes only when they are in agony. When agony is not present, no matter how imminent it looms, painful change must come from outside. This is a truth. We detailed the measures that would be necessary to restore the land to health and we swore ker’i to the task, however long it might take. The few inceptors who were left in the village were forbidden to initiate breeding until the task was done, and the village master was given the necessary medications to quell all mating odors and assure compliance. As a parting gift, we gave the village, as was customary, worms from our own home lands, thus tying their fate to ours and our future to theirs. We have a saying, “Where one lives, all live; where one suffers, all suffer.” One, in our language, includes all living things. In your language someone has said, “No man is an island,” which encompasses the concept but which, by mentioning only mankind, misses the point.

  The task was completed when ton’i, Vess and Chiddy, met with the selector who had sent the faulty inceptors to Quo-Tem. Before going there, we reviewed the standards for selection and found that tabulation of current breeders by place and identity of parent was neither requir
ed for the record, nor easily derived therefrom. We advised the selector that this lack had resulted in unnecessary trauma and dislocation, that we recommended a warning system be initiated to identify such blips in the future. We told lic that the recommendation had already gone to the Bureau of Selectors. The selector thanked to’eri for to’erosi diligence, and also for to’erosi recommendation that the selector not be mercifully disposed of, inasmuch as the mistake could not have been easily avoided.

  Sometimes mistakes are not foreseeable. You, dearest Benita, made a mistake in selecting the inceptor you did. Still, it was not one you could easily avoid. Your race is thrust into sexual behaviors so young! Far too young. Until recent generations, your young persons did not mature so early. You are so well fed, so overexposed to chemicals that act upon you like fertilizers, you sprout up like weeds! We speak of this, Vess and I. He admires you, though he does not have for you the tenderness that I do. Where does it come from, this tenderness? I do not know. I have felt it, now and then, for things, sometimes, for places, for ideas. You are the first other I have felt it for. The feeling is very precious to me.

  21

  mrs. chad riley

  THURSDAY AND FRIDAY

  On Thursday morning, Mrs. Chad Riley, the former Merilu McElton, had returned with sons Jason and Jeremy to the family home in Georgetown, intending to stay only long enough to pack their clothing and the boys’ toys. Thirty-six hours in a huddle with her mother had set in concrete her desire to leave Washington. Since she and the boys had luxuriated in room service meals in the suite between visits to the pool, the spa, and the beauty shop, and since they had not ordered a paper or looked at anything on TV but the cartoon and shopping channels, Merilu was still unaware of the events that had much of the world either dumb with astonishment or loud with accusation.