Sheri Tepper - The Fresco

by The Fresco(Lit)

  Two others nodded, yes, there'd been a smell.

  One of the building doors banged open to a hurrying youth, who called out, "It was Coach Jensen. Coach Jensen, and he was out there with three guys, Turley, McClure, and Shipton."

  "Who was the girl?"

  The young man shook his head. "She was just somebody out there running. I came over here to see Carlos. He owes me money from when we roomed together last year, and I need it. When I got here, I saw he was busy with the coach, so I waited for him. Then I saw the girl, and at first I thought she was Carlos's sister, so I walked down there and called to her and waved. She looked up, and then I saw she was somebody else."

  "You were here when they disappeared?"

  The youth looked flustered. "I didn't actually see them disappear. I thought the girl was Angelica, so I yelled 'Hey, Angelica,' but it wasn't her. The real Angelica was standing right there," he pointed, "at the top of the stairs, and I said something like, 'Oh, there you are,' and she screamed. She was looking past me, down there, and when I turned around, they were gone."

  "Coach Jensen, and three students?"

  "That's who the coach's assistant says. And the girl," said the youth.

  "Your name is?"

  "Mack Dugan. I roomed with Carlos last year. That's how I knew him and his sister."

  "Is that what happened?" McClellan asked Angelica. "Did he tell it the way it happened."

  She nodded, wiping at her eyes. "That's what happened, yes. They just weren't there anymore. Just gone. Like... vanished,"

  "Why were you here?" McClellan asked. "Do you usually meet your brother..."

  "No," she cried. "Somebody came to my place late this afternoon looking for him," she flushed, not wanting to mention the FBI, "and I said I'd... I'd let Carlos know." Actually, the FBI man was now standing over by the fence, talking rapidly into a cell phone and waving his free hand in frustration. "I know he has a late phys ed class, so I thought he might be here..."

  "What about this smell?" asked McClellan. "What did it smell like?"

  "Like welding," said one of the male students. "I heard her screaming, and I came out from inside, and I smelled it. Like welding. Kind of a hot smell."

  Another of them said he'd smelled something also, but he couldn't identify the smell, though he said it reminded him of blood.

  "Show me where people were," McClellan said to Mack, leading the way down the stairs at the center of the bleachers. There Mack turned to the left and walked about thirty yards to bring them even with the starting blocks.

  Mack said, "Here! Right here. The three guys were at the starting blocks of the three inside lanes, Ron Turley on the inside, then Carlos, then McClure. Coach Jensen was standing in the next lane, leaning over, telling them something." He turned to his right. "The girl was twenty or thirty feet that way, walking along the outside lane toward the bleacher stairs."

  McClellan turned, peering in all directions. Concrete posts had been set into the slope with canted steel els protruding from them. Thick wooden slats making up seats and backs were bolted to the els. The rows were separated by flat, graveled paths. There was no place to hide, everything was wide open. You could see every gum wrapper. There was nothing below but the starting blocks, the lines marking the lanes, and the hurdles set up at intervals.

  McClellan moved across the track onto the grass at its center to examine the pole vault uprights and landing pad, one designed to be inflated during use but currently flat and wrinkled. He heaved up a corner, finding it was laid directly on the earth. The landing pit for the long jump had been freshly raked. There were no prints in it. The oval track was separated from the grassy slopes beyond by chain link fences with gates at either end and in the middle of the far side. McClellan trudged to each of them in turn, finding them securely padlocked. This entire area could be locked off by closing the gates on either side of the building, and anyone wanting to leave would have had to go through those gates. Or fly away.

  He returned to Burton and the witness. "Did they all go at once?"

  "You'd have to ask Angelica," Mack responded. "They were all gone when I turned around."

  "And when you called to the woman you thought was Angelica, you called by name?"

  "Yes. I called out, 'Hey, Angelica.'"

  "And you hailed her brother by name, also?"

  "Yeah. I yelled 'Hey, Carlos!'"

  "So, whoever or whatever took them might have thought he was getting two members of one family?"

  Burton shook his head. "Then why take the coach and the other two guys?"

  McClellan stared at his shoes. "Maybe we all look alike to them."

  "Them, who?" asked Burton.

  "The ET's," said McClellan. "Maybe they can tell male from female, but we all look alike. Like we were deer or elk or something." He beckoned. "Let's look over in those nearest trees."

  Since the bottom gates were locked, they went back up the bleacher stairs, across the terrace, through the open gates and around the outside of the fence. The first grove of trees was a hundred yards down the hill, a clump of oaks with shadows lengthening eastward, toward them, trees that had been planted when the college was founded, if not before. The trees were big and old and created a welcome shade.

  "Tracks," murmured McClellan, pointing at an area of bare earth. "Remember the TV broadcast. The predators. That's what one set of tracks looks like. Wulivery. Like elephants."

  "Over here!" cried Burton. He was kneeling by a body, with another one beyond him. "They're alive!"

  "That's the other two," cried Mack. "That's Ron Turley, and Bamma McClure!"

  "Bamma," murmured McClellan to himself, wandering farther into the trees. "What did he do to deserve a name like that? Now where's the coach? If I'm right, we'll find him, but not the other boy, the Shipton boy." He leaned momentarily against a tree trunk to remove a cinder from his shoe, then caught sight of a red shirt. "Here's the coach," he cried.

  The man was unconscious, but seemingly uninjured. As though he'd been anesthetized. In fact, all three of them seemed to have been anesthetized.

  When the ambulances departed with the three unconscious men, McClellan sat down next to Angelica Shipton and waved her sympathizers away. For a time he didn't say anything. He was reflecting on his earlier euphoria, considering whether pride had had any part in it. It was pride that supposedly went before a fall, and oh, boy, was this going to be a fall. From blessing the ET's to damning them, in one easy circuit.

  "Look, miss," he said gravely. "They took your brother. And it looks like they thought they got you, too, because Mack Dugan called both of you by your names. And, it looks like it was done by those predators we heard about on TV, but it's not the kind of thing they've been doing. I mean, right here, in the open, on the campus isn't the way they've been operating. They've been more... sneaky than that. So, I got to ask you, why would these predator ET's want to come after you and your brother?"

  Angelica stared at him from tear-bleared eyes, her head moving from side to side in baffled negation. "I don't know! I have no idea! Why would they? I mean, why us?"

  "Your parents, miss. I'd like to get in touch with your parents."

  Angelica shook her head, and began to laugh hysterically. "You can't," she said. "I can't. Carlos tried to call our father yesterday and couldn't find him. And Mother... she's moved. She calls me, but she doesn't have a number where we can call her yet..."

  Back at the precinct, McClellan reported to the captain, only to have the captain murmur, "What's that stink, Mac?"

  "Stink? I can't smell anything. I've got a cold."

  The captain rose and came around his desk, sniffing. He sniffed at McClellan, front and back, then said, "Take off your jacket and look at the back of it. It's all over goo."

  McClellan removed the jacket. It did have goo on it, like... something waxy or tarry. "I leaned up against a tree at the campus," he remarked, wonderingly.

  The captain stared at him for some time, nostrils twitchi
ng. "You thought it was a tree."

  Benita-FRIDAY

  Early Friday evening, Benita's phone rang, and she shuddered. Each time she heard the sound, she had a renewed feeling of doom. When she took a deep breath and picked it up, however, it was only Chad, saying he had enjoyed their dinner together and would she be interested in a movie.

  What she really wanted to do was scream. Recent events had combined to give her the feeling there were snakes under the furniture, things ready to jump out at her. She tried to shake off the nervy, antsy mood, deciding she'd probably feel better not being alone. Besides, she liked Chad, so she said yes, why not a movie.

  Chad had paid her a good deal of attention recently, which both pleased her and made her slightly uncomfortable. He was married. And though she wasn't even forty, doing without sex had not been a big problem for her. Sex with Bert had not been pleasurable for... well, for virtually their entire married life. She found it hard to understand how she had convinced herself she loved him, way back when. Of course, he'd been young, and he hadn't been the big drinker he turned out to be within two or three years, by which time she had been grateful to be let alone. So, when a man was nice to her, complimentary, as Chad was, and kind in his attentions, it was nice but it also made her apprehensive, as though enjoying the attention, any of it, might be equivalent to committing herself to something unearned, forbidden, or inappropriate. Not that Chad had made a single gesture in that direction, but he was a thoughtful, intelligent man, and as she kept reminding herself, being alone with a thoughtful, intelligent man wasn't something she was used to.

  When he picked her up, however, he looked worse than she felt, not like someone headed for an enjoyable afternoon.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "The movie was just an excuse, Benita. You remember the name Dink? I may have mentioned he works for the Select Committee on Intelligence, reporting directly to Senator Morse."

  "My own dear Senator Morse?"

  "That one, yes. The DEA got some feedback from an agent planted way, way deep in a Colombian cartel. It seems Charles Dinklemier is well known down there. Well known, much valued. He clears the way for a lot of shipments."

  She stared at him, at first not getting it at all. Then it began to trickle in, like reading a thriller when you're half asleep, missing it when the author throws a curve at you. "Does the senate committee know?"

  He exhaled. "I think I mentioned to you that there've been some rumors about where certain soft contributions to senatorial campaigns came from. Dink works for Morse. Morse gets lots of soft money. This has got to be where it's coming from."

  "What does Morse do in return?"

  "He votes for the war on drugs. Votes more money for the DEA. Makes sure there's no drug policy reform. The War on Drugs keeps the market up, keeps the dealers working, keeps the money flowing. They don't want drugs legalized. It'd be like what happened when we stopped Prohibition. The gangsters didn't want it stopped. They made millions."

  "What does that have to do with our problem right now? With the ET's?"

  "All of a sudden there are ET causometers on every lawman's wrist, and the market is drying up. The drug cartels, the DEA, the private prison lobby, they'd do almost anything to get rid of the ET's. Which means that since the administration is supposedly supporting the ET's, drug money is being used to discredit the administration, the ET's, and anyone or anything to do with either of them."

  "Including us."

  "Including us." He laughed shortly. "The White House has been hoping it can declare a victory in the war on drugs now that the illicit ones can be controlled, but the big money is all on the other side."

  She smiled grimly. "So we're being eaten alive by ET predators, we're going to have thousands of addicts going cold turkey, and it seems a whole bunch of our legislators work for a foreign business. It's nice it's all happening at once. I hate things all strung out."

  He gave her a sickly grin.

  She returned it, saying, "I'm hungry. Since there's to be no movie, can we have some supper?"

  They did so, with wine, though the wine didn't assuage her feeling of impending annihilation. "All it does is make me feel I'm floating on doom instead of drowning in it."

  "Chiddy and Vess are looking for the predators, right?"

  "So they said when they left."

  "And until they find them?"

  "I don't know. Let the storm rage, I guess."

  "Hope it isn't too long, Benita. If our domestic storm gets to the point of a feeding frenzy, you may get tossed to the sharks as a delaying tactic."

  She looked up from her dessert plate. 'They promised to keep me out of it!"

  "They promised they'd try. You can try to keep a secret, but if some damned congressional committee subpoenas you, you can't keep it long."

  "The president wouldn't tell where I am!"

  "Benita, Benita. If the predators took Bert, they did it because they'd been in touch with McVane. Why else? So, if the predators found you, then McVane knows where you are. This makes me, as a friend, say thoughtfully to myself that if someone has anything to hide, someone had better hide it really well, because sooner or later, people are going to start digging." He gave her a limpid gaze which succeeded only in making her angry.

  She snarled, "Chad, I am exactly who I have always said I am, and I have no sins on my conscience, sexual, financial, or otherwise. This business has me... I don't know. This whole thing is maddening!"

  "You feel like a rabbit thrown to the wolves, I'll bet."

  "When you say thrown to the wolves..."

  He took a deep breath. "I meant that one or more senators may exercise the privilege of subpoena to get you before a congressional committee. The president would, no doubt, delay this as long as possible, but it couldn't be delayed forever since McVane knows where you are, and if McVane knows, then Senator Morse knows. So, even if the president tried to delay access, they could come at you by another route. The only thing they possibly don't know about you is that you are having dinner with me right this minute, and I could be wrong about that."

  He toyed with his spoon. "Tell me again, how was it the predators found you?"

  "Chiddy said smell. The Pistach have been in my apartment time after time. I suppose it does smell of them, though I can't smell it."

  "What do you all do there? Have tea parties?"

  "Popcorn, mostly. They really like popcorn. And ice cream, especially strawberry. They go crazy over our fruits and fruit-flavored things. And sodas, anything but root beer, or anything else with sarsaparilla in it, like cream soda."

  "They don't like sarsaparilla?"

  "It puts them to sleep. One night we had root beer floats, and they slept on my couch for nine hours in about thirty different shapes. Which isn't the subject. Smelling me out is the subject, because that's what the predators did!"

  "They can track the whole world by smell?"

  "We track the whole world by sight. Chiddy and Vess have machines that circle the world listening for certain sounds. And Chiddy told me the Fluiquosm track by taste. It's just a matter of having machines that sort through the data to find specific things, and I'm sure any race that has space travel has sorting machines. As a matter of fact, Chiddy asked to leave his translator listening to my TV because his ship is operating at full capacity at the moment. Finding predators is probably what it's doing."

  "And presumably they didn't need to smell out Bert because the cabal knew where he was, right? Well, that relieves a minor worry. I thought there might have been a leak from the bureau. Your apartment was supposedly an FBI 'safe house' operation, done by Justice as a favor to State, who said they needed it for visiting dignitaries threatened by terrorists. The contractors are reliable people the FBI uses from time to time, and nobody involved except General Wallace had any idea who would occupy it. He's the only one who talked to your boss, nobody else said anything except 'Hi there.' As for the First Lady and the Secretary of State, nobody has asked them w
here you are. I'm the only one who's seen you with them since that dinner with the ET's, and we hoped they'd think you left town after that."

  "You said you'd protect the kids..."

  "It took hours to get the red tape cut. I haven't been granted authority over field offices. When we try to do things quietly, it takes time to get cooperation, but your children should each have an agent arm in arm, right now."

  "We're still trying to be quiet?" she asked, incredulously.

  "Trying to avoid panic," he said, frowning.

  He chewed thoughtfully while she blotted chocolate from her lips, fighting down the temptation to scream. "Who told this cabal my name? Originally."

  "Your namesake congressman. He thinks he's a liberal, he's generally on our side, but he's also ex-military, and he falls for the national security gambit every time someone plays it. Star Wars. Stealth anything. Talk about burning the flag and he gets all choked up. Funny, so many of these guys think the country stands for the flag instead of the other way round. So long as Old Glory's whipping in the breeze, it's okay to deal guns to kids and cheat on your taxes."