The Fresco

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Then Chiddy did something with his face that made him look extremely stern. They would not, he said, be doing anything about drinkers, smokers, drug takers, or those who kept guns their children killed themselves with.

  “Evolution must have a way to work among all races,” said Chiddy in a serious voice. “Of any population, some will be born who are not survivors. Some are self-destructive or destructive of others. Others cannot muster the effort to function at a viable level. Some cannot learn. Your society, instead of letting people either perish from stupidity or learn from foolish acts, protects them from themselves and allows them, even helps them, to blame others for the stupidities they have committed. If someone has a broken ladder, sees that it is broken, then climbs it, falls, and breaks a leg, he is allowed to sue the manufacturer without even having to pay the lawyer. If someone is not bright enough to stay in school, he or she drops out and becomes the parent of several children, and you support both the person and the children. I have seen in your papers accounts of drug addicts receiving fertility treatment at public expense. Of poor women being given treatments that result in the birth of multiple children! This is monstrous!

  “Persons who are no longer babies should never be saved from themselves! Persons who are self-destructive should be allowed to do so, without hindrance, as otherwise you perpetuate the tendency generation after generation! I have read in a garden book that one saves labor by learning to love weeds. This was written as a jest, but it is true of more enterprises than gardens. Weeds have their own purposes, and so do high death rates among alcoholics, drug addicts, violent persons, gun worshippers, and the perpetually angry. What we Pistach must help you do is to arrange that the fatalities happen inside these groups, rather than among innocent bystanders.

  “We have a saying, we Pistach. ‘Aul’a ek glusi ekfeplat num’ha ca ek athici ekfe num’h goff glusi.’ Loosely translated, this means that people wanting to kill should kill themselves rather than innocent bystanders. Remember the time of the Red Guard in China and of Pol Pot in Cambodia, when the competent were killed in their millions. This is not to suggest one should punish the incompetent. No, no. Life has already done so, unfairly, as is the way of life and the universe. Let us, therefore, be kind to them. Buy them a drink or a pack of cigarettes. Wish them a nice day! Meantime, let us work together in devising ways to keep innocent bystanders from injury!”

  Chiddy turned to Vess and smiled. Vess nodded, picked up a letter and displayed it.

  “We have here a communique from your ACLU, complaining about the completion mark that shows on the hand of those who have filled out the questionnaire. We are unable to find any incursion upon your liberties attendant to this. You all have social security numbers, each one different, and you are asked to contribute to opinion polls all the time. We’re taking a virtually one hundred percent poll on American opinion, the first of its kind. And we’re being sure we count everyone, one time only, which means it’s inclusive and honest.

  “Parenthetically, you should know that we offered the results of our count to your census bureau, learning to our confusion that your Congress is not really interested in an accurate count of everyone, particularly minorities. Be that as it may, in our poll we are not interested in what sounds acceptable, or what the majority can be cajoled into supporting. Good government should take into account all points of view. People without the completion mark haven’t filled out their questionnaires, so it’s easy to tell who’s holding up the works.”

  The morning papers recorded forcible detention of bare-palmed individuals by friends and neighbors who insisted they fill out the questionnaires so other people could get the help they needed. The papers also recorded a number of pedestrians in major cities were passing out cash, booze and cigarettes to street people they normally avoided.

  32

  from chiddy’s journal

  Dearest Benita, Vess and I have just learned that we must leave Earth for a short time. An emergency has arisen on Pistach-home, and all athyci are being mustered to consider the situation. The last time this occurred, about fifty years ago, the emergency turned out to be a minor problem of ego-assertion among two royal family inceptors. It took only part of one morning to solve, yet athyci had come from as far away as Fancher-the-Farmost. I feel this will no doubt turn out to be another of the same, though Vess is not so sanguine. Vess feels something wrong and has been feeling so for some time. Ai says there is a disturbance in the aura of Earth that stretches all the way to Pistach-home. This sounds to me like a late-life crisis. We all have them, Mengatowhai knows, that feeling that time is closing in and we have not yet made our contribution as fully as we had planned to do in giddy youth.

  If Vess should be correct, however, what can it be? Has the rebel T’Fees done something new? Have the Xankatikitiki started pushing delegates around again? Are the Fluiquosm off on another of their nihilist excursions, or have we seen yet another failure in Wulivery communications? Any such thing would indeed be troubling.

  You have wondered, I am sure, dearest Benita, why we have not given you or your people any details about the other members of the Confederation. If you ever read this, as I hope you will, you may even wonder why I had not given you this document as it was written, rather than as a going-away gift, only when we are ready to depart. When the time comes that you do see this, you will appreciate that there was a strong possibility you would never see it. Giving this writing to you is only a possibility, not a certainty. If your people should not come, as you so neatly put it, up to the mark, I will be forbidden to give you any information at all. If you do not achieve Neighborliness, you will be told as little as possible. Your people must want to join us for the right reasons, not out of fear at what may happen if they do not. So, I write—often and much—only in hope of a happy outcome.

  Panel five of the Fresco, Civilization, in which the Jaupati order their world, shows what can be accomplished when peoples devote themselves to proper lives. Even the Jaupati, I am sure, were not told of the consequences of failure. No one wanted them to know that un-neighborly planets are free territory for the predators among us. On un-neighborly planets, predators are unrestrained in coming and going as they please, restricted only from causing an extinction.

  Also, I will not tell you we are leaving on this trip, for you might then feel you had to tell the authorities and this might lead to inappropriate action on their part. We hope no one will notice we are gone, for we have left TV broadcasts and various interventions—including several for your school dropouts—to be implemented at intervals while we are away. We will, that is, I will, dearest Benita, look forward to seeing you again on our return.

  33

  benita

  FRIDAY

  When she came upstairs for lunch on Friday, Benita called Angelica on her cell phone.

  “Oh, Mom, I’m so glad you called. There’s some man hanging around here on the campus…or he was a few days ago. He’s been talking to Carlos, telling him you’re in trouble, that you may be mixed up with some people who are dangerous. He wants Carlos to help find you, and he’s offered Carlos money to help them.”

  “Just offered, Angel?”

  “Well, no. I think he’s given him money, because Carlos got enough from somewhere to rent a new apartment.”

  “He’s definitely moving out?”

  “Yes. I’ve taken the smaller place upstairs, and there’s no room for him. He started out being angry, but lately he’s been suspiciously helpful. I wouldn’t put it past him to have bugged my new place for this man, whoever he is. Plus, Carlos insists he’s going to get caller ID, so he’ll know where you’re calling from.”

  “Even though he knows I don’t want him to know?”

  “You know Carlos, Mom. When did what anybody else wants ever stop him? Himself and that girlfriend of his are the only people in his life who mean anything to him, forget the rest of us.”

  “Have you seen this man that’s been hanging around?”

>   “He’s a little guy, with a scruffy mustache. Carlos pointed him out to me. And the crazy thing is, another man has been offering Dad money, too. To help find you.”

  “Ah,” murmured Benita. “Well, well. We do seem to be popular, don’t we.”

  “What’s it about, Mom? Come on. Don’t leave me hanging like this. This is scary!”

  “My job is with books, as I told you, but it might be described in part as working for the government,” said Benita, voice firm, but hands clenched to keep from trembling. “I have to have a security check. I’m sure all this is just the normal hassle of checking my background.”

  “Well, I hope that’s it. I’m taking this phone upstairs with me, no change in number, so you let me know how you are, okay?”

  “I will, Angel. Always.”

  She hung up the phone and said loudly to the ceiling. “Chiddy, I need to talk to you.”

  There was no immediate response. “As soon as possible,” she shouted. “Please.”

  She did not see Chiddy that day, nor the following one, even though that night both envoys appeared on television to announce that compliance was above ninety-five percent.

  “We consider this good enough to go on with,” said Vess. “The last five percent is always very difficult to reach, and it is unlikely to change the response to any question significantly. Now we will start working on some of your problems, and we’ll catch up to the other five percent as we go along.

  “Let’s fill you in on previous requests first. We were asked to help a boy with paralysis in Arkansas. We have helped him and a number of other people with similar conditions. We aren’t announcing his name, as we don’t want him or his family bothered just yet. When he is recovered, as he will shortly be, he will hold a press conference.

  “Yes, we have learned who the murderer was of the young woman in Seattle, and the identities of the killers of the three African-Americans in Texas. Those miscreants will soon be brought to justice, in accordance with your own traditions. The press will be notified when it happens.

  “As previously announced, we are already studying how to remedy the problems with your schools. The causes of their failures are many, ramified, and deeply entrenched in local politics. The most amazing thing about the situation is that fifty years ago, a century ago, your schools were far better than they are now! They taught fewer subjects and taught them better, with far more success and far less jargon. Everyone agreed then that children were children, that is, impulsive, naive, and ignorant creatures in need of training. No one suggested then that schools or teachers had to put up with hostility or violence or that students had “rights” to such behavior or that freedom of speech included rudeness in the classroom. Persons could be expelled from school and sometimes were. Children were expected to be good citizens and mannerly, and the schools taught citizenship and manners. A necessary adjunct to the school was the truant officer, who sought out and detained any child under eighteen who was not in school, and children did not get out of school until they could read and write and do arithmetic. As is true on so many worlds, the theoreticians and politicians have ruined a good thing. It is likely our interventions will simply roll back time.

  “Though we choose to do nothing about drug addiction, we do choose to do something about the violence, theft, and destruction of neighborhoods that accompanies the drug problem, and you may already have heard about our efforts in one such particular area in California. Your news media have been kind enough to carry the details of that action, and the supplies requested by law enforcement agencies in other states are already being shipped.”

  When the program was over, Benita took Sasquatch up to her favorite thinking place, the roof. The weather had stayed so warm that the plants under the arbor had grown a third of the way up the trellis, and there were many little green worms turning up the soil, probably making fertilizer like crazy. Benita could not recall ever seeing green worms before, but then, the world had a lot of creatures she’d never seen before, all gyring and gimballing on the wabe, a whole foment of them.

  Which is what the ETs were doing, and what the world was undergoing. “Chiddy,” she said to the sky, pleadingly. “Please.”

  The plea went unheeded, as had those before.

  There was much news in the Sunday papers. The quadriplegic boy in Arkansas appeared on television, walking on crutches, but definitely walking. He thanked the envoys for his miraculous recovery. The murderer of the woman in Seattle turned himself in to police, refused counsel, and pled guilty, saying a voice in his mind had told him to do so. While he was at it, he said, he’d like to also confess to thirteen other murders he had committed in Oregon, California, Nevada and Arizona.

  The militia in Texas that had cooperated in the slaying of the three African-Americans turned itself in also, all eleven members. Eight confessed to conspiracy. Five confessed to aiding and abetting. All eleven confessed to illegal firearms possession, and four of them said they’d done the actual killing. Meantime, there were followup stories on the drug pushers who had ruled the territory outside the Morningside Project, all of them caught in the act of dealing drugs, acts documented right down to the quantities and amounts of money and persons present. All had been impeccably Mirandized on tape and were currently incarcerated awaiting trial. Law enforcement in sixteen other states had requested causeometers, and some had already received them.

  Newspaper and TV polls taken during the week gave the ETs a seventy percent approval rating by all races, ages, sexes, and all professions except attorneys and conservative religious organizations, both of whom felt the ETs were invading their territory.

  On Sunday, Benita got a phone call from the First Lady. “The president wants me to touch base with you. Do you mind?”

  “Why?”

  “He wants me to know how you’re holding up, and whether you need any help. There’s something happening on the Hill. Not just the usual extravagant egos. The president doesn’t know where you are and he doesn’t want to know, because there’s a push for congressional hearings about the ETs. They’re charging that the president knows more than he’s telling, and they’re looking for any excuse to accuse him of something. If I stay in touch, he can honestly say he hasn’t spoken with you. Do you speak French, by any chance?”

  “No,” Benita confessed. “Spanish and English, that’s all. And even my Spanish has gotten rusty since my mother died.”

  “Well then, I won’t quote the French ambassador. He feels we shouldn’t listen to the envoys, they can be up to no good, because if they’d had any culture at all, they’d know that French was the language of diplomacy, and they’d have started their mission in France.” She chuckled, rather ruefully. “Anyhow, the president is out of town today, so I called to invite you over for supper tonight.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you,” Benita said.

  Murmuring at the other end. “Chad will pick you up around six, will that be okay? Just you two and the Secretary of State and me.”

  “Thank you,” she agreed, wonderingly, shaking her head a few times, trying to clear it. She had really had a casual conversation with the president’s wife. She had not imagined it. My, my, how her life had changed! She put the receiver down and returned to her perusal of the daily papers.

  ETS PROVIDE CAUSEOMETERS NATIONWIDE

  HUNDREDS OF ARRESTS MADE SINCE DETECTORS AVAILABLE

  ET INQUIRY TOO PERSONAL SAYS CHRISTIAN COALITION

  CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE ASKED ABOUT FEELINGS

  QUIET REIGNS IN ISRAEL FOR SECOND CONSECUTIVE WEEK

  AFGHANI WOMEN, CHILDREN ENTERING PAKISTAN

  FAMILIES FLEEING PLAGUE, SAY BORDER GUARDS

  GEOLOGISTS ATTEMPT SONIC PROBE OF JERUSALEM HOLE

  NOTHING THERE, SAY TECHNICIANS

  MORSE DEMANDS TESTIMONY BY INTERMEDIARY

  PRESIDENT CLAIMS NO KNOWLEDGE OF WHEREABOUTS

  PSYCHOLOGISTS SAY ETS HAVE SENSE OF HUMOR

  PUBLIC UNSURPRISED

 
BAPTISTS CLAIM ETS POSSIBLE DEMONIC INVASION

  FALWELL SAYS ETS MORE LIKELY GAY

  AFRICANS ON MOVE

  MIGRATIONS STUMP EXPERTS

  That evening Benita waited inside her back door for the car to arrive, having decided to be cautious about standing about alone in deserted places. Once the bookstore was closed, the parking lot looked empty, but one couldn’t tell, really. Some lurker could pop up from behind a Dumpster or come zipping around a corner on skates. She was wasn’t afraid, not really, but she was homesick. She wanted the shady portal of her parents’ house, and the smell of the sun on the piñons and watching for the first golden leaves in the cottonwoods. She imagined being there, then imagined Bert being there with her and decided it was better where she was. After all, even here the evening felt like late September, with air that was crisper and cooler than it had been. Perhaps winter air would be drier.

  She was so lost in nostalgia that she missed the arrival of the car until she heard the horn and looked up to see Chad Riley standing beside it, waving. He insisted she sit in the backseat, and they chatted about the book business on the way, not even mentioning the ETs. The car had darkly tinted windows, but she obediently lay down on the seat and covered herself with a blanket before they approached the gate. When he showed her up the back way, to the White House family quarters, she found the First Lady and the Secretary of State already partway through a bottle of wine and a tray of hors d’oeuvres.

  A little later they served themselves from the simple buffet that had been set out earlier. Only when they had filled their plates and taken their places at the small table did the First Lady ask about the ETs.

  “Intermediary, what are they really like?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t honestly know much more than you do. They keep switching shape, which can be confusing. I’d say they’re even tempered, for they don’t get angry at me when I get grumpy, and I have been a time or two. I believe they do intend to help us live happier lives.”