The Fresco

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Lupé stayed at the senator’s side until he finally settled down, though it took awhile, and by evening, he had stopped raving. He sent Lupé home to get the car—she had come with him in the ambulance—and his clothing. Upon the arrival of both, he checked himself out of the hospital and stopped at a pay phone on the way home to call McVane.

  Chad’s cronies at the FBI had been keeping tabs on the senator for some time. The agents following him had a directional microphone that could pick up, so the technician bragged, a gnat fart at half a mile, and they had no trouble recording both sides of the conversation.

  Morse yelled, “Call the damned woman, McVane.”

  “She’s not there, Senator. She agreed to testify before your committee on Monday, but we couldn’t get hold of you, so the predators have already picked her up.”

  “Testify? Picked her up? You mean they’ve kidnapped her? Where is she?”

  In the heat of the moment McVane had neglected to arrange contact with the predators, which he admitted to, and the senator subsided into his car in a state of shock. Lupé drove him home while he fumed and snorted and made threats both general and specific about what he would do to this one or that one when this matter was over. On arrival home, he called his secretary and several staff members and dictated a press release to be sent out immediately, charging the president and the intermediary with complicity in the attack upon his body, which, he said, he intended to prove as soon as the intermediary could be found.

  SIX SOUTHERN SENATORS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED

  ALL SIX MEN PREGNANT, ACCORDING TO PHYSICIANS.

  TWO HOSPITALIZED FOR HYSTERIA, POST TRAUMATIC STRESS

  SYNDROME

  LDS ELDERS REQUIRE RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE ONLY

  UTAH SENATOR EXCOMMUNICATED

  IMMORAL BEHAVIOR WITH ET ALLEGED

  “I was raped,” he says, denying reports he was on drugs when admitted to hospital.

  “He was high as a kite, laughing like a lunatic,” reported ER nurse Blanche Smith. “And he was wearing tight jeans. Didn’t some judge just recently rule you can’t rape somebody wearing tight jeans?”

  THIS ISN’T A BABY, SAYS TV PERSONALITY REQUESTING

  ABORTION

  INFANT ET IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE WITHOUT KILLING

  OVERWEIGHT HOST

  INKLEOZESE THREATEN REPRISAL IF LARVAE INJURED

  UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL IN EMERGENCY SESSION

  ARAB NATIONS DEMAND ACCESS TO INTERMEDIARY,

  INSIST ON IMMUNITY FROM PREGNANCY

  IMMEDIATE CURE DEMANDED FOR INFECTIOUS UGLY

  43

  benita, bound

  LOST WEEKEND

  Benita dreamed she was rocking in Mami’s hammock, the one on the back portal of the old house, where she and her brothers had sometimes slept during the summer. It was a soothing motion, though subtly wrong, for her legs were rocking much more widely than her head. As though she’d gotten all tangled up in the hammock and one end had come loose, leaving her dangling upright. She heard one of her brothers moan, and she opened her eyes to locate him and tell him to be still, he was making her seasick.

  The portal posts were gone. There was no roof. Only the moonlit sky above her, against treetops that bent and swayed in a soft breeze, just as she did. She tried to move her arms and found she couldn’t. She was wrapped, not uncomfortably tightly, but tight enough that she couldn’t move. She turned her head to see Chad, head on his chest, and beyond him three other figures, long bundles hung in the treetops. And beyond that, heavens, a dozen or more others, just hanging there. Like in the Hobbit. Spider food. Rock-a-bye baby, she thought. Rocky-bye. Below her, in a moonlit clearing, stumpy trees wandered about among squat, furry creatures, occasionally turning toward some vacancy and gesturing at it, as though there was someone there.

  As, undoubtedly, there was. She remembered at once what had happened. She and Chad had been about to leave, but the Wulivery had bashed in the front windows and grabbed them, and then something had told them firmly to go to sleep. That had to have been a Fluiquosm, one of the vacancies below her in the forest.

  She risked another look below. The Wulivery and the Xankatikitiki were busy doing something else and were paying no attention to her. After a time, she realized what it was they were doing and hastily averted her eyes. Evidently they’d stopped somewhere en route in order to hunt. Or maybe they’d just taken something down out of the larder.

  Contorting herself, she managed to swing the cocoon until it bumped into Chad. He moaned softly, but did not waken. The membrane that wrapped her was quite elastic. Though her hand was pressed against her side, she could clench her fist, move her fingers, feel with her fingers…feel the sharply pointed nail file she had dropped in the large flapped shirt pocket after she had filed down her broken nail. Also in the pocket, yes, by all that was holy, the handgun Chad had given her when he walked in the door. And the translator! She’d pocketed it along with the gun. She’d been all packed. Chad had left the car down below, she was telling him she was ready…and that’s when the windows fell in.

  Moving carefully, inch by inch, she bent her elbow and moved her hand up, over the pocket flap, then fiddled with the flap, rolling it up under her hand so the hand could go down again, into the pocket. Grasp the nail file. Bend the elbow again, bring the file out of the pocket, jab the membrane she was wrapped in. Flexible. Like a rubber balloon. Not infinitely flexible, however, for it punctured very nicely on about the fourth try. Another puncture just below the first one, then a few above and a few more below, working up and down to make a dotted line, tear here, r-r-rip. Actually, it didn’t rip, which was lucky, or she might have fallen a considerable distance, but it did loosen. After ten minutes of careful effort, the wrapping was loose enough that she could get the gun out with her left hand and pass it across her body to her right hand. After thumbing off the safety, she put it in the right pocket. Chad had pointed out the safety, first thing in the apartment, or she might not have remembered.

  The apartment. Lord, Sasquatch! He’d probably hidden under the bed, and hooray for him, if so. And the alarm had gone off, so her absence wouldn’t go unnoticed for long. Not that it would help anything, since no one had a clue where she was, including herself, except that she was hanging in a maple tree. The silhouette of the leaves against the moon was unmistakable. A large maple tree, just starting to shed its leaves, somewhere in a forest which could be anywhere from Maine to Wisconsin, from Canada to Virginia. Probably Virginia or Maryland. Why carry her farther than they needed to?

  The branch from which she was hung was only a foot over her head, and another sizeable branch went off to her right, just below shoulder level. After a few moments’ rest, she decided the lower one of these was reachable. She passed the file to her right hand and made an arm hole, somewhat easier this time since the membrane was looser, and got her arm out and over the branch. No good. She needed her right hand to work with. She contorted herself to spin the cocoon until she could get her left arm out and over the branch, pulling herself halfway onto it. That was better. Now she could make more holes with her right hand, enough to extricate one leg, an inch at a time, which immediately loosened the wrapper enough that the other leg came out easily and there she was, heaving herself up to lie along the branch, the flaccid wrapper hanging around her like the skin of a sucked grape.

  If one of them looked up, they’d see that. Better they didn’t see that. Carefully, she gathered the wrapper up onto the branch, stuffing it under her. From below, it shouldn’t be evident at all. There’d be one bundle missing, but among so many, maybe they wouldn’t notice it.

  The branch beneath her was, however, somewhat narrower than her body, which could be noticeable from below. She eased back toward the trunk of the tree, the branch thickening in that direction, until she was totally hidden from below except for one eye and a bit of forehead resting in a fork of the branch to keep watch on what happened down there. Now, if she could just figure out a way to get
Chad awake and moving, maybe they could escape…

  Carlos! She hadn’t been thinking at all! The three hanging bundles on beyond Chad had to be her family! Well, two of them, Carlos and Bert, plus the unknown girl. She rested her head on her hands, fighting an insane desire to scream. No way she could get all five of them out and down this tree…no, not this tree. The other three weren’t even in this tree, they were hung from another tree. It was nearby, but she was no damned flying squirrel!

  Chad, then. At least Chad. He had been armed, too, when they were taken. A shoulder holster, with his jacket over it. Perhaps they’d paid no more attention to that than they had the gun in her pocket. Thinking of which, she reached back along her body and carefully buttoned the pocket flap. The gun was a small one. What had Chiddy and Vess said? You shoot a Xankatikitiki in the head. And you shoot a Wulivery just below the tentacles, where the seven eye holes are. Or, shoot the breathing apparatus on top, which would immobilize the creature and eventually kill it. And if you can locate a Fluiquosm, just shoot it anywhere. Any wound of the flight organ pretty well disabled them.

  She crawled out on the branch once more, taking another fork that brought her alongside Chad’s cocoon. She reached out, pinched his cheek, slapped him lightly, whispered in his ear. No reaction. Either he was unconscious or he’d been…whatever the Fluiquosm did to people. Convinced him he was in paradise, maybe. Convinced him he was a baby in Mommy’s womb. Maybe if she cut him some slack, he’d suck his thumb. She put her head down again and fought tears. If Chad couldn’t help, who the hell could?

  Below her, the eerie sound of untranslated alien speech. She had the translator in her pocket, and she knew it had been on in the stockroom because it had translated the speech of whatever had grabbed her. Had it been damaged in transit? She fished it out of her pocket, holding it to her ear to hear it humming. There were no other buttons, no other controls. What had Chiddy said to her…yell at it? Not damn likely, here where she was a minute away from being sucked like a orange!

  She whispered, “Translate what you hear into English, very softly.”

  “Is this soft enough?” whispered the translator.

  “Very good,” she said, fighting an urge to giggle hysterically.

  “The Wulivery is saying he sees no reason not to eat Chad now, or if not him, then the girl. The Fluiquosm say they do not want to partake of Bert or Carlos, inasmuch as they both smoke and drink much alcohol which makes the blood taste funny.

  “The Xankatikitiki don’t mind eating Carlos or Bert, but they’re not hungry right now, and besides, they should leave everyone alone until after they have spoken to the humans again. They must not do anything to endanger the pact they hope to make to hunt on this world, as this will give them authority before the Confederation.”

  Benita put her head on her hands and considered. “Can you speak Fluiquosm?” she asked. “And Wulivery?”

  “Of course,” said the translator. “Right now one Fluiquosm says she wants to drink your blood because she has smelled you, and you smell very sweet. Someone else has told her to wait until…until they talk to someone named…M’van?”

  “McVane.”

  “Ah. Would you like me to summon the Pistach?”

  “Can you do that? Silently? Without the predators knowing?”

  “If you wish it. They are very far away, however, and they cannot travel as quickly on a planet as they can in space.”

  “Please let them know immediately where we are and what’s going on. Now what are they saying?”

  “The Wulivery assert their right to eat Chad or the girl now. They are hungry and see no reason to wait.”

  “Oh, Lord,” she sighed. What could she do? Obviously, something was needed by way of a diversion, which she could do better from ground level.

  Easing back along the branch, she reached the trunk, the translator keeping up a steady murmur of argument from the creatures below. There were plenty of branches on the back side of the trunk, and she slithered from one to another, taking care not to make any sound. Luckily, she was wearing chinos and a sweater and soft-soled shoes when the attack came. If one had to climb trees, at least it was better to be dressed for it. The argument went on, and on, as she struggled silently downward, arriving finally at the foot of the tree, where, realizing she’d been holding her breath, it took all her willpower not to gasp audibly.

  Slow breaths. One, two, three. Again. One, two, three. The pressure in her head and chest eased.

  “ Go ahead and eat him then,’ says the Xankatikitiki. ‘If you have so little foresight.’” The translator chuckled to itself. “The Wulivery says the man is out of reach, it asks the Fluiquosm to bring him down and the Fluiquosm says no.”

  Diversion, diversion, Benita thought desperately. Stab something with the nail file? Confuse them with the translator? Shoot them? How about all three?

  She leaned from behind the tree to reconnoiter. The woods thinned opposite her, and beyond was a moonlit meadow.

  “When you hear a loud bang,” she whispered to the translator, “I want you to yell loudly, first in Fluiquosm and then in Xankatikitiki. Yell, ‘There it goes, out onto the meadow, get it, get it.’ Okay?”

  Leaning from behind the tree, Benita sighted the pistol at the nearest Xankatikitiki’s head. It was talking with another Xanka, just a foot to the right, so she shot twice, bang, right a notch, another bang. She sagged back behind the tree.

  “Qyoxilizimak! Zixit izi. Shamma! Shamma!” yelled the translator. “Gromfrr growrrg glor, Furrgrinnor! Furrgrinnor!”

  The creatures turned and made for the meadow, except for two Xankatikitiki, one of whom was still and silent, the other barely moving.

  Now what? Benita asked herself. They’d come back. She’d better finish off the moving one. She stepped out into the clearing, moving quickly toward the moving Xanka, gun in pocket, hand on gun. She did not see the stooping form above her until the tentacles closed around her. She was lifted, hoisted, up, up, turned upside down and then swallowed, glurgle, glurgle, glurgle, her way down the long throat oiled by jets of stinking liquid, choking from the stench, dropped into a sac half-filled with stinking ooze.

  Gagging, she sagged against one side of the stomach and peered upward, catching a glimpse of light among the tentacles. She thrust the gun up in trembling hands, held her breath and fired. Once, turn slightly, twice. Turn slightly again, three times, then a fourth. She should have pierced the body in several places, right up at the top. The walls of her prison trembled. High above her the tentacles lashed. Then, slowly, slowly, the creature fell, changing from a smokestack to a lengthy culvert, down which Benita began to crawl, sloshing, toward the roots of a tree, barely visible in the moonlight. Around her, the flesh of the creature still shook, and a high keening moved up the scale toward inaudibility.

  She arrived at the dead, lax tentacles just as the predators came back from the meadow, talking loudly among themselves. The translator was still giving her the gist of it, still in a whisper.

  “Odiferous Tentacle, Oh, Stinky, what’s happened to you. Look, look, Stinky’s down. Stinky’s leaking! Oh, Stinky emits death stenches! Alas, alas! Oh, Mrrgrowr is dead, see him lying there, dead and gone, his strength gone, his proud head fallen low, oh, alas, alas.”

  “Do they all say alas?” murmured Benita.

  “I’m translating freely,” admitted the machine. “I lack synonyms for alas. The Fluiquosm is asking if it or they got away. The Xankatikitiki say they must depart immediately with their fallen comrades, the burial rituals of their people demand it. The Wulivery say they must also depart, taking their commander with them…”

  Benita very much wished to exit the commander. Her legs were beginning to burn, as though they were being digested. The tentacle end lay amid a cluster of evergreens, however, so she took the chance and crawled out beneath the low branches of the nearest. Behind her, the body of the dead Wulivery was tugged into the clearing. There were bustling sounds.

 
“Quolzikkaz closmmi wozzik.”

  “The Fluiquosm wonders how many creatures it took to kill three of their group, why they were not seen, and how they got away,” murmured the translator. “The Fluiquosm are discussing moving the prey creatures to their own larder, after the Wulivery and the Xankatikitiki leave…”

  Benita started, gritted her teeth and began to move out of her hiding place. She still had a few shots left. Maybe she could hit a Fluiquosm when it started to move one of the humans. It stood to reason she’d be able to tell where it was from the way the packaged body was moved….

  “Shhh,” said a voice at her ear.

  Slowly, in total terror, she turned her head to confront the huge, compound eyes of…an Inkleozese, who spoke at some length, unintelligibly.

  “The Pistach are on their way,” whispered the translator. “I strongly suggest that you stay here very quietly while we conduct our business. Our being here makes the ensuing time an official matter. It will be tiresome, time consuming, but do be still. They will not speak freely if they know you are listening.”

  “The others…” murmured Benita, gesturing.

  “They will not be harmed, and they will not move on their own. Only you were given the ability to shake off the Fluiquosm mindfog. Immunity to common types of predation is a usual gift to give an intermediary. We do not like persons of any planet interfering with official intermediaries.” The Inkleozese went up the trunk and out along a branch, where it disappeared among the leaves.

  Like a great, big wasp, Benita thought to herself. A huge wasp, going about its business. Except it had more than six legs. However many legs, its presence was reassuring, and the expectation of Chiddy and Vess arriving was even more so. And what was that about who speaking freely? The predators? Who cared if they spoke freely!