Sheri Tepper - The Fresco

by The Fresco(Lit)

  Chiddy shook his head, almost humanlike. "Benita, though we hate to believe it, you are probably correct about their motive. It seems likely the predators have made common cause with some barbarians among you who wanted your husband taken for political reasons. If this is so, they are unlikely to hurt him. The predators are brazen, but they are not fools."

  "What barbarians are we talking about?"

  "Those like the man McVane."

  "Good old McVane," she snorted. "Him and his cabal."

  Chiddy shook his head, remarking, "Such violations of protocol have been known to happen in the past when members of the Confederation have discovered intelligent races who do not have a planetary government. A disunited planet allows the predators to shop about among factions, nations, tribes, or rulers to find someone or some group they can work with! Once they have done so, they claim immunity from Confederation rules because they have a treaty with natives. Then the whole matter must be referred to the Confederation courts for decision, and the courts appoint a study commission, the commission submits a report, the report is subject to question by some other group, and the whole thing takes absolutely forever! Meantime, the predators go on happily hunting.

  "Unfortunately, we have no immediate way to reach those of them who are loose on your world except by going to the ships on the back of your moon and demanding contact. We could do this, we will do it if necessary, but it will be a black mark against Pistach in the Confederation. A ship at rest on an unoccupied planet or moon has a status equivalent to your foreign embassies. Why in the name of Gharm the Great didn't you people set up an outpost there when you had the chance? Since you didn't, the predators' ships are sovereign territory. One may visit, one may gently suggest, but making a demand on sovereign territory opens one to criticism and shame."

  Vess interrupted, "Individual predators on an occupied planet, however, have no such status. We may do with them as we will..."

  "Or can," muttered Chiddy, looking downcast. "When and if we find them!"

  Vess gave him a reproving stare. "We will find them! It may take a few days, however, and we can't wait that long to explain to your people, dear Benita."

  "Start by explaining a couple of things to me," she suggested angrily. "Starting with how they found me!"

  Chiddy heaved a very human-sounding sigh. "The Wulivery can smell the Pistach, dear Benita. I mean they can smell any creature, like your bloodhounds, only better. They had only to send out sniffers to pick up our Pistach scent and determine where it was stronger. We have spent more time with you, here, than in virtually any other place, so our smell is very strong here, in your home. They would have known that."

  "I see," she murmured. She couldn't smell anything, but then, she wasn't a Pistach, or a predator. "You'd better let the world know what they're up against. People are not going to like it."

  Chiddy composed himself enough to say, "Please call your go-between to the government and explain what has happened. Then, tonight, we will apologize to all your people through the television. We will also introduce the Inkleozese to them and explain the function of our monitors."

  Vess assured her their apology would appear everywhere, in whatever language was locally spoken. She suggested they show pictures of the predators on TV, just so people would know what they were talking about, and they said they could do that for the Xankatikitiki and Wulivery, but not for the Fluiquosm, who do not make any reproducible image.

  "Are they invisible when they're dead?" she asked grumpily.

  "Why no," said Vess.

  "Then show a picture of a dead one," she demanded.

  "Wouldn't that be in bad taste?" Vess asked, making fussy little motions with his hands.

  "You told me you've watched our television for years," she snarled. "After O. J. Simpson's trial and Ken Starr's investigation and the constant stench from Trash TV, what's a dead Fluiquosm or two?"

  They thought a bit and then said they'd get a picture of a dead one. "By the way," said Chiddy, "you may do me a small favor. I would like to leave my translator here, listening to your television. I would do it in the ship, but all the ship's circuits will be fully occupied seeking predators and maintaining the disappearances and the ugly-plagues."

  "You really want to translate our TV?" she asked, distractedly. The thought of Bert as a captive had just led her to wondering if Angelica and Carlos were safe. If they had taken her husband...

  "No. There is little of it we enjoy. However, my accumulation of spoken vocabularies is not complete, and you have a Spanish language station? If you would be kind enough to leave it on while you are away?"

  She nodded and gestured at the set, without really listening, not even watching as Chiddy put a black device no larger than a tiny camera on top of the TV.

  "When you are leaving, turn on the TV and push the red button to turn it on," Chiddy murmured when he left. "It will feed accumulated vocabulary to the ship. In fact, if you should need us, you can simply shout at it. Something urgent. Like SOS or Danger, or Fire!"

  She wasn't listening, for she had already picked up the phone to call Chad and ask him to provide some protection for Angelica. By this time she and Chad had each other's numbers memorized, as they talked virtually every day, and Sasquatch was so used to Chad dropping in that he didn't even growl at him anymore. On this occasion, Benita explained her concern by repeating every word Chiddy and Vess had ever said about predators making common cause with McVane, et al. She didn't mention T'Fees. Even though neither Vess nor Chiddy had asked her to be secretive about the T'Fees problem, she didn't think Earth needed any more variables thrown into the pot than it already had. She did, however, tell him about the Inkleozese.

  Chad muttered and grumbled, "New ones? Benita, you've got to be kidding!"

  "I'm not, Chad. They just told me about these creatures. Evidently they act in the same capacity as our UN peacekeepers."

  "Ineffectually, you mean?" he said in disgust.

  "Chad! It's not my fault."

  He said he knew that, apologizing for his tone. "Since you seem convinced the predators are working with McVane and his bunch, there's nothing to suppose they'll stop with Bert. I think you're right to be worried about your kids, and I'll get some protection started for them."

  "Anything you can do, Chad. I hate to be a bother but..."

  "Think nothing of it," he said, entirely too tersely, as he went off to transmit the message to whomever.

  That night she watched as the two envoys explained very clearly and concisely what the Confederation was and who the members were. They mentioned there were over fifty member races, most of whom lived at great distances from one another and from Earth, only about ten of them anywhere nearby. "Nearby," Chiddy defined as "offering something worth the very high cost of interstellar flight." Chiddy and Vess showed pictures, the non-predators first: flutelike Vixbots, swamp-living Oumfuz, the differentiated Credons, the winged Flibotsi, the crablike Thwakians.

  Then, in greater detail, the predators: the Wulivery looked more like sea anemones than elephants. They had a ring of twelve tentacles around their mouthparts, which were on top of their heads. When relaxed, the head part was immediately above their relaxed, stumpy fat legs. When the creatures were not relaxed, the legs elongated from around eight feet up to thirty feet or more, moving the tentacles far above human eye level and allowing the rough gray skin of the leg to blend among the tree trunks of any forest or jungle. Their hunting was generally limited, said Chiddy, to wooded areas.

  Oh, yeah, Benita commented to herself. Washington, D.C., wasn't wooded, but that was the shape that had been on the roof!

  While the Wulivery resembled sea anemones, the Xankatikitiki looked more like six-legged bears. They weighed a hundred twenty to a hundred fifty pounds. The fur and the personality were like that of a wolverine. The four longish legs were cheetah-like. The two arms were muscular, like a gorilla's. The prehensile tail was like the back end of a python, and the jaws were as strong as hy
enas'. Adding to the general ferocity, their claws were retractable and the teeth were poisonous in the same way as a Komodo dragon's teeth, that is, so filthy that any wound led to sepsis and eventual death. All of which meant, so Chiddy said, they could climb very well, run very fast, and kill almost anything. They hunted in small, family packs, mostly in open areas.

  The Fluiquosm were virtually invisible. They flew and had rending organs (beaks? talons?). The body they had pictures of was pale yellow, about the size of a Rottweiler, with a strange complicated growth on its back that Chiddy identified as the flying organ, not wings, but something else. Chiddy said to think of them as large, intelligent, invisible eagles who happened to be quite ferocious.

  The broadcast continued with Chiddy apologizing profusely to all the people of Earth who, he said, would understand what was happening, because on Earth there were member nations of the U.N. who were always telling lies and trying to beat the system, like Iraq or Libya, or members who didn't pay their dues but still expected to be respected and listened to, like the U.S.

  At the very end of the broadcast, they explained why they had brought the Inkleozese and introduced the score of them who were already on Earth. Their names were unpronounceable. They didn't seem threatening or unlikable, though when the Inkleozese turned to leave, the audience could see rear ends much like a wasp's rear end, terminating in a lethal looking dagger-like arrangement.

  Benita's phone rang about an hour after the broadcast: Chad, wanting to know if it would be a violation of Neighborliness if humans went hunting for the Xankatikitiki and others. The White House was receiving hundreds of calls, and he said for every call they got, there were probably a dozen hunters out there, already planning their expeditions.

  When she hung up, she uttered this question loudly and her phone rang.

  Chiddy's voice said, "You caught us just as we were leaving to go hunt predators, Benita. What is it?"

  She explained Chad's problem.

  "Predators' rules are different from civilized rules," Chiddy replied in a reproving voice. "Any Confederation predator who goes on the hunt is fair game for anyone, although the odds on Earthian hunters actually killing one are vanishingly small."

  To help out, however, he said the body temperature of a Xanka was 116ø F, a Fluiquosm 80ø F, and a Wulivery 104ø F, so heat detectors could be used against cooler or warmer backgrounds. All their worlds were reasonably Earthlike, and they didn't need any kind of protective gear except for the Wulivery, who need breathing tubes to furnish them with methane.

  "What about me?" Benita asked. "Will they keep coming after me?"

  Long silence. "We will try to protect you, dear Benita," said Chiddy. "So long as you are in your home or at work this should be fairly easy. We could always find you, of course, you or any other individual, but it would take time, so keep us apprised of your whereabouts."

  Thanks a lot, she grumbled to herself. She reported to Chad; he thanked her, sounding irritated, though she felt it was irritation at the situation, not at her. She could visualize all those eager hunters, stocking up on ammunition and dehydrated food and buying tickets to... where? India? Brazil? Or would they stick mostly to the U.S? Chiddy and Vess hadn't specifically mentioned the killings in the U.S. So far, nobody had publicly tied Oregon, New Mexico, and Florida to alien predation.

  Law Enforcement-FRIDAY

  The retaking of the Morningside Project from the dealers was considered completed on the Friday afternoon when the wagon and attendant patrol cars drove to Morningside, as they had each day for the past several weeks, but returned empty for the third consecutive day.

  Sergeant McClellan got down from the passenger seat side of the cab and shook himself, settling his trousers into their customary sag and his face into an unaccustomed grin.

  "Any?" asked the captain from the precinct steps.

  "Not one," replied the sergeant. "The Fourth Floor Women's Circle baked a cake. We had coffee and muffins. The kids sang. It was a party."

  "You did a sweep inside every vacant apartment?"

  "There're only a few vacant ones, and they're being rehabbed. This last two weeks, the place's filled up. All the people that wanted to get out, they've stayed in. The place even looks better. Somebody donated paint and rollers, and the tenants are painting the halls themselves. A nursery donated some trees. The city's fixed the elevators. Some teachers and some of the kids from over at the school came over. They gave us thank-you cards the kids made."

  "Thank you, ET's," breathed the captain. "What do you think? Have a patrol go by there a couple times a day, just to check?"

  "I'd say that isn't necessary." McClellan eased himself up the steps and down the hall to his desk, the captain close behind. "The people there, they'll call us if anything goes wrong. You know, we're gonna have a new problem, Boss."

  "What's that?" asked the captain, following along, beaming from ear to ear.

  "I read last night the traffic into the States from Mexico is moving right along. All it takes is a touch of the causometer to let somebody through. No more searches for no reason, no more stops with no evidence. It's working. So, we're looking at a problem actually solved here. What're we supposed to do now? No real drug busts for a week. Almost no burglaries for... what, six days? The drug gangs have disappeared. We've had no little kids caught carrying weapons. No shooting incidents, drive-by or school yard. Our problem's going to be finding stuff to do."

  "We still got domestics," snarled the captain, attempting severity. "We got murders. We got muggings. We got some nut up on Alta Vista trying to get little kids into his car to pet his weenie. It's not coming up all roses. You haven't died and gone to heaven yet, McClellan!"

  McClellan shrugged. "Hey, let me gloat a little. Let us feel good. Tomorrow somebody'll figure how to fool the causometer, we'll be back where we started..."

  "We are back where we started," said the lieutenant, from the other side of the room where he'd been tied up on the phone. "We've got five people disappeared from the university, three male students, one coach, one woman student, all of them taken from the sports center up on Canoncito, twenty hundred block..."

  "So? Send a car," said the captain, looking puzzled.

  The lieutenant came across the room to murmur into Riggles's ear. The captain frowned, shook his head, then said, "McClellan, take Burton with you, go up there and find out what's happening."

  "Something weird?" asked McClellan, accurately reading his boss's expression.

  The captain shrugged. "Ah... remember that Enquirer article? And the ET's on TV, talking about predators? Maybe this isn't something for a patrol. We'll bypass patrol and find out, okay?"

  Burton, a husky youngster only three years on the force, drove, lights and siren on. McClellan watched the streets flee by as they swerved through evening traffic, counting to himself. After today, three more days until his last day. And wouldn't you know, the job was just getting worth doing again when he was getting ready to leave it. These last couple weeks had been fun, like the old days, putting the bad guys away and doing it without walking a tightrope the whole time, doing it honestly, no cheating, no faked evidence or any of the stuff some men fell into when their patience wore out. If he were a churchgoing man, McClellan thought maybe he'd go to services and thank God for the ET's.

  "Next right," he said to Burton, grabbing for support as the car swerved at the corner. "Slow down. We're not chasing anybody." Wouldn't that frost your cookie! Killed in a speeding police car, chasing nobody, three days before retirement.

  The street ended at the back of a tall, blocky gymnasium, separated from the street by a row of bollards. Burton eased around the bollards and parked as close to the front of the building as he could get. An unlocked gate in a high fence opened on a wide stone terrace extending across the building front. Three shallow steps outside the double doors of the building were occupied by a cluster of young men and women students gathered around a hunched over, weeping figure.

 
McClellan fumbled for his notebook and approached the group. "So, what happened?"

  The tear-stained person at the center of the group looked up and cried, "They disappeared. Right in front of me!"

  "Okay, okay, miss," murmured McClellan. "Now, who was it who disappeared?"

  "My brother," the young woman cried. "Carlos Shipton. And some other people. I don't know who. They were out there..." She waved toward the oval track below them, separated from the terrace by a wide, shallow tier of bleachers. "There were two other guys, and a coach, and... a girl in running shorts walking along the track, and..." She looked up, her mouth squared into an agonized mask of tragedy.

  "And then?" murmured McClellan.

  "They were gone. One minute they were there, the next minute they were gone." She dabbed at her face with the backs of her hands, smearing the tears.

  "There was a smell," volunteered one of the students. "When I came out of the building, there was a strange smell."