Sheri Tepper - The Fresco

by The Fresco(Lit)

  Despite the pill, she couldn't settle. Sasquatch turned around and around on the foot of the bed until she yelled at him. He gave her an offended look, jumped off the bed, and curled up in his huge dog basket, though even there, he kept up a restless shifting and ear-pricking, as though something was bothering him. Finally, about midnight, she fell asleep with the light on, some time later rousing just enough to switch it off without interrupting the dream she was having about trekking through a jungle. Sasquatch was with her, nervously alert, woofing low in his throat the way he did when he saw a skunk or a really big raccoon or Bert with the blind staggers.

  In the dream, she was worried about some kind of beast, a bear or jaguar, and she heard Sasquatch's woof very clearly, so clearly that she woke up with the reality of it in her ears. There was Sasquatch in the middle of the bedroom floor, the fur on his shoulders and neck bristled up like a mane, nose wrinkled, fangs showing, the dim light reflected from his eyes as he stared up at the high windows of the bedroom that looked out on the roof of the other building, which was accessible only from the higher roof above her head. Which was, supposedly, accessible only from the elevator unless someone had a very tall ladder. The people who fixed up the apartment had covered the whole row of windows with gathered curtains of translucent muslin. The light came in, but the view was blocked, either in or out. Benita's half-opened eyes followed the dog's gaze to the curtains, a row of slightly lighter squares against the dark...

  Slightly lighter squares across which something moved, from left to right, a slow shadow that progressed from window to window, touching each one, pushing at each one, making them creak protestingly. The shadow was a featureless blob, sometimes straight on the sides, sometimes with a hint of squirminess about it. The frames creaked, again and again, though not loudly and without yielding, for wire-glass inside steel frames doesn't break easily. Sasquatch backed up until his rump was against the bed and went on making what was almost a whispered growl, more a mutter in his throat than a threat. He didn't like whatever was up there. Benita didn't either. Whatever was up there scared her shitless. The bottom of the windows were even with the roof and the panes were about five feet tall. Whatever was throwing the shadow was taller than that, as it extended all the way from bottom to top.

  The shadow moved on, and almost at once she heard something rattling from the direction of the elevator hall. She almost fell out of bed as she scrambled to get there before the elevator could move. At each floor the cage was shut off by a folding metal grille that could not open unless the elevator was on that floor, to keep someone from falling down the shaft. The elevator was where she had left it, on the third floor, and the rattling was coming from the roof above her!

  She opened the elevator grille, just enough to keep the elevator from departing, and looked frantically around for something to prop it with. The hall was empty, so she simply stuck her foot between the grille and the frame, holding it there while the rattling continued over her head as though something was trying to get into the elevator housing. It had an outside door, which locked automatically if one didn't set the unlock button. Even if whatever it was got in, so long as she held the grille open, the elevator wouldn't ascend and the upper grille couldn't move.

  The rattling was succeeded by the hum click of the controls. The thing had broken into the housing and pushed the button that summoned the elevator. The grille thrust hard against her foot, and she swore in a panicky whisper as it pinched. A smell came down the shaft, filtering out around the car, and she almost gagged at the rotten meat filthiness of it.

  She was scrunched up tight in the corner of the hall where the elevator shaft met the outside wall, one foot extended awkwardly into the grille space. The only window was several feet to her left, and though she couldn't see through it from her position, she could see the quality of light that came through it as it was repeatedly blocked by something. Dim, then brighter, then dim again, over and over, as though something hung over the parapet and looked in. Or as though something rose up from the street and looked in? That window was a good thirty-five to forty feet above the ground and at least eight or ten feet below the edge of the parapet that ran around the roof. Benita told herself she was all right, she had to be all right if she was doing arithmetic in her head.

  All right or not, she was shaking. Through the open apartment door she could see Sasquatch lying absolutely flat with his head on his paws and his ears out to the sides as though he were hiding, or at least keeping a low profile. She knew he was out of the line of sight, as she was, so whatever was looking in couldn't see anything. Then everything stopped above her and she heard a swudge, swudge, swudge going from above her head toward the front windows, the center one of which happened to be slightly open!

  She scrambled to her feet and ran through the living room to the window, where she reached under the closed drapes and cranked the window shut, slammed the lock down, then ran back past a bookshelf where she grabbed a thick book and got it jammed in the elevator door just in time to hold it open as the clicking from above resumed.

  Leaving it there, she returned to the living room and lay down next to Sasquatch. They cowered silently together while she distracted herself thinking of escape routes. Down the fire stairs, two flights, into the stockroom, which had doors that could be locked from inside. Or, from the stockroom into the bookstore and out the front door. But, whatever was on the roof could see the front door. And she didn't have a car. And her phone was in the bedroom, which would put her farther from the stairs...

  Tiring of the elevator fiddle, the visitors tried another gambit. A very familiar voice.

  Bert's voice. "Benita! You open this door! I need to talk to you, Benita! You come out here where we can talk! You've got the kids all worried about you, and I need to talk to you."

  Silence. The voice seemed to be coming from outside the front windows, which was unlikely. Though he could be yelling from the sidewalk, it didn't sound like that, and turning her head she saw a man-shaped shadow pressed against the glass.

  "Benita?" Then a clatter. "Ouch, damn it, she's not home, if this is her place, stop that."

  Benita didn't move, nor did the dog. The squadge, squadge, squadge was repeated several times, and then silence fell. It went on, and on, and at last Sasquatch's head came up, then his ears. He got up and went to the elevator where he sniffed all around the door before coming back to lick her face.

  What had it been outside her window? She thought of the First Lady's remarks about the men in Oregon, the men in Florida, the guy in New Mexico. People off in the trees, and then no people. Just gone. Only bones left. Nobody saw what did it. Could something invisible cast a shadow?

  She didn't know and she didn't want to find out. There was no one she could call except Chad, and what could he do? Take her somewhere else, put her in custody? Keep her safe? What she really needed was to talk to Chiddy, and she hadn't seen him in person for... over a week!

  She went back to bed, welcoming Sasquatch's company close beside her. An hour later she gave up and called Chad.

  He arrived in twenty minutes.

  "What do you think it was?" he asked.

  "Whatever's doing all the stuff the First Lady told us about the other night! I mean, what else could it be? It wasn't people. It, or they, were a lot bigger than people. It wasn't anything native to Earth, that's for sure. And whatever it was pushed Bert right up against the living room windows, and those windows are thirty feet off the sidewalk."

  She took a deep breath. "It wasn't Chiddy and Vess because they come in here all the time, they don't have to walk around on the roof, but I'll bet it was some of those other races they talked about at that dinner, remember? Chiddy talked about predators who had to obey Confederation law, but only if we were in the Confederation. Remember, they said that's why they wanted to move in such a hurry?"

  He looked dazed, then angry, then gave her some news that hadn't appeared on TV. People were still being killed. In India whole vil
lages of them were wiped out around the perimeter of nature preserves. Also in Southeast Asia. Any activity requiring people to work out of sight in rural or primitive areas had pretty much stopped, because nobody could find crews willing to do it.

  "The White House has asked the news media to report things that might concern the ET's as calmly as possible with no screaming headlines. The president told the media that nothing now happening is under the control of any person. At this point, we believe we still have influence over what may happen, but any public outcry may move events beyond our abilities even to influence them."

  "This is getting serious, isn't it?" she said.

  "I simply wish your two ET friends hadn't picked right now to take off where they can't be reached. And I wish to hell they'd come back!"

  From Chiddy's journal

  Dear Benita, I write this as we return toward your Earth from our sojourn in Pistach-home. We were not summoned home on a simple matter, as I had hoped. This was no confusion over royal egos but was, instead, a vast troubling over T'Fees the Turbulent, who has titled self Grand Something-or-other, ruler over three Pistach planets! In each case, T'Fees has moved in, talked the campesi into a fury, assaulted the more specialized castes, particularly selectors and athyci, and has begun training armies. Amazing, impossible that he should have been able to do this alone! How has this happened!

  Vess and I were summoned home to answer to the Chapter about our work on Assurdo, which had resulted in this bizarre ligament of events. We self-examined our work. The only thing we might have done differently was to have regressed T'Fees, but the guidelines tell us never to do that unless necessary, and in T'Fees's case, no one had known it was necessary. Luckily, the three planets T'Fees has conquered are low-tech planets, which means they can be easily assailed with high-tech modifiers, such as those we have used on your Earth, dear Benita. A surreptitious seeding of nanobots has been done on all three worlds. The nanobots suspended everyone on the planet, and teams from both Pistach-home and several of our high-tech worlds are even now descending to do regressions on all army trainees. We hoped to find T'Fees and his coterie, a group said to be more intelligent and active than most, but unfortunately they were not on any of the planets we invaded. How did they escape us, and where have they gone?

  Our fear is that they may have taken refuge with some other race of the Confederation, not all of whom are sympathetic with our ways. Sometimes I wish we could use nanobots on other races, but all other Confederation members have defensive bots to prevent our "taking them over," as though we would want to! Providing them with bots of their own was part of our original peace process, what Vess and I sometimes call our balance of error.

  There was nothing we could do to help this situation, and the Chapter agreed it was not our fault. Biological sports like T'Fees are not anyone's fault. They just happen. You have had your Attilas and Hitlers and Milosevics,- we have had our K'fars and M'quogjums, et al., though they were far, far in the past, in pre-Mengatowhai times. When we catch up to T'Fees, be assured he will be analyzed from heelspur to carapace! Though we will be kept apprised of what goes on in the T'Fees matter, the Chapter, having heard disturbing news concerning predation on your world, urged us to get back to our work as soon as possible.

  Though our prerecorded appearances on your TV will have kept things simmering in accordance with the plan, that plan certainly did not include the inexcusable actions of the Xankatikitiki, the Fluiquosm and the Wulivery! They have, as your people say, pushed the envelope of acceptable behavior. When we arrived at Pistach-home we learned of their incursions on Earth from a Confederation staffer. Evidently the predators had bragged of it at some interplanetary meeting or other. They do revel in coup counting, though it is often their downfall.

  We immediately appealed to the Confederation headquarters. They responded, saying the three predatory races now claim they had never been informed that we, the Pistach, are assisting your planet toward Neighborliness.

  Our ambassador to the Confederation immediately provided a copy of our previous notification, which had been circulated long before Vess and I even left Pistach-home! The Wulivery, as usual, claim communications problems, this time between their hunters guild and their Confederation legation. The Xankatikitiki and Fluiquosm claim they are merely acting in concert with the Wulivery, whom they relied upon to take care of the formalities. This is patently dishonest, a ploy which is new only in its details. They knew very well we were here and they risked failure of our project by their interference!

  One knows why, of course. No planet has ever been discovered as crowded with intelligent life as yours! All of our predatory races prefer creatures of good taste, that is, brainy creatures. Even your native predators eat the brains of their prey first when they can.

  Meantime, a good many of your people have been slaughtered, though the loss is only numerical. No appreciable proportion of humanity or any subset of it has been lost, no irreplaceable knowledge or experience has been deleted. Even so, the deaths are grievous to us. We will immediately touch the survivors to learn what may be done to atone. We must also, unfortunately, make our own arrangements to find the Xankatikitiki, et al., and bring them into compliance, for once on the hunt, these races do not call home.

  As we must make clear to your people, dear Benita, our predatory associates are not easy to find, let alone admonish. While your armed forces might possibly locate and destroy them, leaving the matter to us will result in less loss of life in the long run. I will communicate this directly to your United Nations when we return, dear Benita. We are covered with chagrin.

  Despite these alarms and confusions, I am looking forward to seeing more of your art and hearing more of your music. I still quiver at the memory of those paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. How majestic they are, how strong and pure. Even your ancient paintings at Lascaux and Altamira have a great strength and resonance, an inborn sense of beauty. There is much about your people that is enviable, Benita. You will be a great asset to the Confederation if we can only sort out these minor difficulties.

  Benita-WEDNESDAY

  On Wednesday evening, Chiddy and Vess returned, announcing their arrival by a phone call only moments before they appeared in Benita's hallway. Over coffee, which they said they much liked and intended to export to Pistach-home, they told her about a Pistach named T'Fees who had gone crazy and upset the orderly way of things, requiring a lot of trouble on the part of their people. She listened, lips tight and growing more and more irritated, while they hemmed and hawed for a while, using a lot of words to say almost nothing.

  Finally, Chiddy said, "Benita, we have to tell you something. We deeply regret it, but..."

  "You don't have to tell me the predators are here," she snapped, in a voice that sounded testy even to her. "I'd rather imagined they were when one or more of them tried to get into this apartment last night! They've got Bert already. I don't suppose you knew that!"

  Both the Pistach turned rather green and slightly demorphous, as Benita had observed them do on similar occasions. When they were upset, they lost a certain definition of shape, becoming foggy about the edges, though only momentarily. As they solidified once more they glared at one another, turning redder and redder. During their visits she had learned to tell when they were angry, because no matter what shape they were in, they turned red, just as humans did. When she had mentioned this, they told her their vital fluids were similar to those of humans.

  Chiddy growled, "They came after you, Benita? You particularly?" "The only other creature living here is the dog," she growled. "It was at night, so I was the only person in the building. Something went past my bedroom windows and then tried to get into the elevator. Then they pushed Bert up against the front windows and had him yelling at me, asking me to come to the door. If they'd tried him first instead of crunching around on the roof, I might have fallen for it."

  Chiddy's male human guise nodded miserably. "We found out the predators were here
when we arrived at Pistach-home, and when we returned, we detoured to affirm the presence of their ships on the back of your moon. We've already called for censure of all three races by the Confederation, plus we've brought several Confederation Inkleozese back with us."

  "More aliens?" she blurted.

  "The Inkleozese are the traditional monitors and peacekeepers of the Confederation. They are feared even by the predators, and they are best qualified to do what now must be done. We did not know, could not have guessed, that the predators would bother your person, yourself! Why would they?"

  She had pondered this herself. "They probably aren't doing it for themselves. There are people looking for me. Political enemies of the current administration. You know that."

  "Yes, but... is it possible that... could they... can we believe..."

  The two of them went off into a corner and buzzed at one another, waving their arms, looking crestfallen.

  She interrupted their conference. "Someone probably put them up to taking Bert. I'm not fond of him, Chiddy, but I don't want him... eaten or tortured or anything like that."