The stuff stank, but it worked almost miraculously, needing little if any rinsing and leaving virtually no streaks. In half the usual time, we had the inside of the dome done, the pillars washed down, and it was time to do the walls above the Fresco, which had been carefully—so we assumed—draped to avoid any damage. As it happened, I was the one who committed the offense. I was working above the final depiction, The Martyrdom of Kasiwees, when someone tried to open the left-hand door from the outside, bumping the scaffolding and making me drop the cleaning cloth as I grabbed for support. The cloth dropped between my body and the Fresco, and in the effort to catch it, I pressed it against the drapery with a lower appendage. When I retrieved it, I saw to my horror that it had been pressed against the Fresco itself, through a gap in the drapery.
My cries brought assistance, and we carefully redraped the area, leaving no holes at all. It was not until the job was done and the drapes were removed that we saw, high on the Fresco of Kasiwees, a rag-sized area of blue sky dotted with figures we had been taught were flosti, returning from their wintering grounds. With the grime removed, one needed no magnification to see that the figures were not flosti. They were Pistach, winged Pistach who, from their dress, were from the Imperial Houses, the house from which Mengantowhai had come. Also, the figures were not arriving; they were departing.
The shock was palpable. The Fresco Chapter—all those currently charged with the care of the Fresco—met in lengthy sessions to determine what should be done about the disclosure. Whose fault was it? Though they were kind enough not to blame me for dropping the cloth, they were thrown into great confusion by the contents of the Kasiwees commentary, the one that referred to symbols of springtime and renewal—i.e., flosti—when in fact the the flosti were not there!
It was suggested that since the Fresco had sustained no damage, the entire Fresco or at least the entire Kasiwees panel should be cleaned, as the symbols of renewal would no doubt be found elsewhere on the panel. This was shouted down. Though the symbols might be elsewhere on the panel, possibly they might not, and no one wanted to deal with that eventuality. The Chapter felt such a discovery would undermine the entire structure of our society.
Another suggestion was that we go back and amend any of the commentaries that did not agree with the now disclosed reality. This was discussed for days, until everyone agreed we could not conform the commentaries to the disclosed reality because we did not know what the disclosed reality was! As our adage puts it, lum ek avowl, ni lûmek’aul: a tiny patch of blue is not heaven. (You would say, one swallow does not make a summer.) We would have to clean the entire Kasiwees panel, at the very least, in order to say what the tiny patch meant, and that might raise questions about other panels that had not been cleaned!
The anger and confusion finally settled into a determination to find out who had first misled the people and to cover up the patch of blue so the people would not be further confused. It was agreed that the only sensible thing to do was haze the patch with tallow smoke, that is, re-dirty it. That decision had the weight of tradition behind it, at least. Since I had dropped the cleaning cloth, I, personally, smoked the patch into illegibility, though I confess to putting every detail of it into memory as I did so.
A small committee was delegated the job of going through the archives starting with our earliest ancestors to determine who was responsible for this error, if, indeed, it had been an error. I volunteered to help and was accepted as one of the researchers. Though I had studied Pistach history prior to being accepted as an athyco, I had never actually looked at original documents. The thing I most wanted to see was the often-referred-to Compendium, the panel-by-panel drawing of the Fresco together with the notations on which our knowledge of the Fresco now depends. This Compendium was created long ago by Athyco Glumshalak who is known as “The Inceptor of Morality.” It was Glumshalak who codified our beliefs and virtues; it was Glumshalak who taught us that the Fresco was too holy to be cleaned. Unfortunately, the Compendium was not available on Pistach-home, for it was on display in the Fresco House of one of the colony worlds. Though this was a disappointment, other documents were profuse.
I had no idea how much writing there had been prior to widespread use of electronic communication and the development of mind-scanners. Prior to modern times, we Pistach used sheets of stuff called thizzle, a kind of starch that dries into sheets, almost like your paper, and there are bales of it in the archives. Though there seemed to be a dearth of official documents prior to Glumshalak, there were uncountable items of personal correspondence. Back then, everyone wrote to everyone else, and all of it had been saved in stasis files—to prevent its being eaten by gniffles—even letters from people who were only remotely if at all connected to the building of the Fresco House.
I was sorting through old letters when I came across one from a proffe, one Merg’alos of Sferon, to his nootch. The letter concerned Merg’alos’s visit to the Fresco, and it was dated only fifty years after the Fresco was completed. In the letter, Merg’alos—who was evidently an artist—wrote that he found the Fresco “undistinguished.” He referred to Kasiwees as “abandoned,” and to the (unnamed) figures in the sky as being, “like so many flosti, flying.” The symbol conveying the word “like” or “similar to” came at the end of a line, at the very edge of the thizzle sheet, which had been slightly nibbled. As it was the first reference to flosti that I had seen, I set the letter aside. Days later, I came across a critique written by a proffe who was also of Sferon House, dated some seventy years after the Merg’alos letter was written. The critique referred to “my ancestor’s letter” and mentioned the possible symbolism to be found in the “flock of flosti either arriving or departing.”
I found an entry in the Fresco House official commentaries, dated another hundred years after the critique, after the time of Glumshalak, referring to “the springtime symbolism of the arrival of flosti, flying in at the upper left.” By that time—over two hundred years after the Fresco was painted—the Fresco had already disappeared behind its layers of soot and research had to have been done from the Compendium and commentaries alone. After that citation, the “springtime symbolism” was referred to again and again in the various commentaries, and other commentators found other springtime symbols in the panel as well. There were said to be bulbs scattered around Kasiwees’s kneeling figure, plus worm jars and, that quintessential harbinger of spring, a bough of hisanthine in Kasiwees’s hand.
Having just traced the origin of nonexistent flosti, I was of no mind to accept the bulbs, the worm jars, or the hisanthine. Many early sketches of Fresco panels were in the archives, in addition to Glumshalak’s Compendium, most of them done by athyci and proffi who were not, unfortunately, artists. Yes, there were some little bumps drawn around Kasiwees’s kneeling figure, but it was impossible to say whether they were bulbs or rounded stones or unripe fruit or a clutch of pfiggi eggs. The same uncertainty applied to worm jars, and though Kasiwees definitely had something in his hand, whether it was a branch of hisanthine, I could not say. I commented to one of my fellow workers, a professional historian, that I thought there had been a conspiracy in those early years to destroy or hide all the documents that would be needed in the future. He commented that this was often the case, for in any situation with more than one side or opinion, only the winning side or opinion would be around to justify whatever it had done, no matter who had been right or wrong. He said, “Ones have always inferred that Glumshalak may have disposed of some material which did not accord with aisos view of Pistach purpose.”
This was a new idea to me, and I confess that I was depressed by it, particularly since I was unaware there had ever been any other side or opinion than those we had been taught.
When I reported to the Chapter, other researchers had also found mentions of flosti subsequent to the first letter, and we agreed that the interpolation of flosti had indeed arisen in a casual letter from Merg’alos to a family member, a letter subsequently cited, inaccura
tely, by one of his lineage. Or, to put it baldly, our teachings regarding the content of the Kasiwees panel were in substantial error. I wondered at the time why the Compendium of Glumshalak had not prevailed over this error since it did not mention the flosti, or whatever.
I think it was at that point that I suggested using technology to penetrate the coating of grime and get an image of the original Fresco. This could be done without changing the Fresco in any way, and then the Chapter might, privately, take its time in assessing what changes in doctrine might be necessary.
I might as well have thrown a pfiggi haunch into a pool of hungry pfluggi, for the assembled Chapter ripped the suggestion to shreds. It was obvious the Chapter preferred preserving the current doctrine to changing doctrine, even though change might bring it into accord with Canthorel’s divine purpose. No one, no one said exactly that, but that is what they meant. I did not say it either. I remember that my nootch told me many years before that I would know I had gained wisdom when I learned to keep my mouthparts quiet. I thought of her and was silent.
The head of Chapter set everything into the preferred perspective. “Tradition weighs as much as truth,” the old one said. “What has existed for thousands of years as a support of goodness and peace has as much right to teaching as a painting done yesterday that has yet to prove itself.” In other words, we’d been getting along fine with things the way they were, so leave them the way they were. One of your favorite Earth sayings, that one: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Though I was presumably acquiescent, I confess to being troubled about this matter. Truth has always mattered to me, dear Benita. You and I have discussed this from time to time. Even though we have agreed that real truth is hard to come by, we have also agreed that it is worth the effort. It seemed to me then, as it seems now, that we could have modified the teachings concerning Kasiwees. He might, for example, have been seeing a vision of Pistach in the guise or manner of flosti. Or a vision of the Pistach leaving the Jaupati in the future, as eventually they did. We could have admitted we did not know what the panel conveyed. The only thing at issue was whether the panel contains symbols of renewal. Does it matter whether it does or not? We believe in renewal! Must we assume our attributes are worthy only insofar as they are ancient? If we cling so tightly to the old that we do not allow ourselves to improve in both beliefs and behavior, of what value are we? Can we not say a newly achieved virtue is more worthy than a corrupted teaching?
The answer of the Chapter was that we could not. Rather than disturb the long-accepted teachings of our people, the Chapter chose to hide the bit of sky that had shown itself, and I, your friend Chiddy, was the one who hid it. For the first time in my life, I felt embarrassed, sick, vicariously humiliated at a decision of our people. I didn’t make the decision, but it hurt me nonetheless. It seemed then, as it still does, wrong.
30
senator morse
TUESDAY
When Senator Morse received Dink’s report early Tuesday morning, he barely managed to maintain his usual glacial reserve.
“So you haven’t found her.”
“No, sir, we haven’t, but believe me, these other ETs will. Arthur isn’t sure about it, but Briess thinks it could make a lot of sense to throw in with this new bunch.”
“Give them hunting rights? Dink, have you thought for even a moment how that would look on the evening news? ‘Senator Approves Extra-Terrestrial Hunting Rights on Human Race!’”
“It wouldn’t be publicized! The agreement will be secret. They won’t make any noise about it if you don’t.”
“And the Pistach envoys? They’ll keep quiet about it? I think not.”
“According to this bunch, the Pistach won’t be able to prove anything. I get the feeling this bunch is a lot quicker on the uptake than the Pistach are. It’s like the difference between cats and cows. Or maybe goats; the Pistach are some smarter than cows. And we could always deploy a little disinformation. Like, we claim the Pistach are doing it themselves while trying to throw suspicion on someone else.”
“There are paranoids out there who would probably believe it. Unfortunately, most of them don’t vote.”
“Senator, take a minute. Think of what they offer. Selective hunting. You got a political enemy: Bammo, he’s hamburger. You got some newsman on your tail: Zip, he’s cube steak. You get somebody in as president, somebody who’s politics-proof, like you-know-who, he meets with an unfortunate accident. That’s a good deal. Just think if we’d had this deal in the nineties! It’s too good to pass up.”
“Our polls say the public likes this Confederation idea.”
“The predators don’t care if we go ahead and join the Confederation. The predation agreement is under the table.”
“And how do we keep the Pistach from finding out?”
“We tell the predators they have to hunt in places where it won’t be noticeable. God knows there’s plenty of places like that! Hell, every year a few million people starve here and there and nobody even blinks, providing it happens in Asia or Africa. Thirty thousand some odd kids starve every day.”
“That’s not something we accept!”
“Oh, hell, Senator. Don’t feed me the party line. When was the last time any of your colleagues voted for overseas family planning programs? You guys claim it’s to prevent abortion, but you know it’s not. You know damn well cutting family planning causes more abortions than it prevents, but you still do it. Why? Because most of the pro-life people are anti-contraception, too. And anti-sex education. And antigay. And anti-women’s-rights. But they’re pro-gun, pro-hunting, pro-military. Killing’s part of their lives. So why not take advantage of what these critters offer?”
“And you think the Pistach won’t notice? You think people won’t?”
“So, if the Pistach notice we’ve got deniability. So people notice. We say, hey, sorry, we’ll bring it up in the UN, but it’s got nothing to do with us. Senator, it’s no different from stuff we do all the time, here and there. They won’t hunt here in the U.S.”
The Senator growled to himself. “Next time you talk to them, I’m going along.”
“They’ll let us know when they’re ready. When they’ve got the woman. Briess has already laid the groundwork for that. He says we have to ask them to do something for us, to prove it won’t be one-sided. Like always, one hand washes the other.”
31
pistach management
TUESDAY-THURSDAY
The Tuesday afternoon papers said eighty percent of the population had filled out the questionnaires and the American Civil Liberties Union was screaming for blood, as were a number of people who had seen untruthful forms disintegrate under their hands. On Wednesday, Chad Riley called Benita to say in addition to completed forms there were a few dozen bags of mail for the envoys at the D.C. main post office.
Benita looked at the ceiling and said loudly, “You’ve got mail.”
Chad called back in ten minutes to say the bags were gone, and she said, “Fine, just let me know whenever you want a pickup.” Privately, she thought Chiddy and Vess might have simply vanished the mail, without bothering to read it or scan it or feed it into their machines, whatever.
She had underestimated them. Thursday night, without previous announcement, the envoys appeared on television again. They told jokes about how many Americans it took to fill out a questionnaire (all of them) or how many Afghanis (one, because there was only one right answer for everything). They said they’d heard they’d been given the nickname of Pistach-ios, because humans thought they were nuts. Benita noticed that their appearance had been further refined. They looked subtly more cuddly than they had before. Their eyes were more glowing and kindly. The squidgy bits around the mouths were less tentacular and more like a mustache. Rather Santa Claus, altogether.
Since some people hadn’t filled out their questionnaires, said Chiddy—in an admonitory voice very much like Mary Poppins as portrayed by Julie Andrews—progress in solving
problems would have to wait. Thank you, Chiddy said, for all the mail. Yes, they could help the quadriplegic boy brought to their attention by the governor of Arkansas and others of like condition. Yes, they had already provided help for the housing project in California which was being turned into a war zone by local drug dealers. Yes, they could find the murderer of the young women in Seattle, as requested by the police of that city, and of the three black men in Texas, as requested by the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Yes, they were already analyzing the subject of education in the U.S., as suggested by one million two hundred twenty-three thousand six hundred and eighty-four correspondents. Just as soon as the last few people filled out their questionnaires, all these matters would be handled.
“In fact,” said Chiddy, “we’ll share with you some of our ideas about improving education, as so many of you have suggested. We have looked at the information on dropouts, and we believe the basic trouble is that no significant rite of passage occurs at high school graduation. It should be a goal, something to be achieved on the way to adulthood, but it isn’t. So, we must make it so. Certain things that adults do, like driving cars, should not be available to people who haven’t graduated from high school, and social graduation of the unqualified shouldn’t count. A diploma doesn’t mean anything unless the information is in the head. Adult liberties should not be entrusted to ignoramusses!”