The Fresco

  “We need…we’re going to have to have something more than just the envoys’ word that they’re beneficent. You told Chad the Pistach have gone home at least once during their visit here. That means either that home is very close, which we don’t believe, or that they have a method of travel…”

  “Polarized space,” she said.

  All three of them looked at her in confusion.

  “Chiddy told me about it,” she said, trying to remember what he’d said. “Space is full of these little tiny thingies—Chiddy calls them umquah—all spread out, evenly distributed, like layers of marbles in a tray, only marbles would have little spaces among them, and the umquah shape themselves to fill all the spaces, and they’re infinitely small. All together, they fill the universe, and they repel matter and energy, joining together to squeeze matter or energy out. Chiddy said I should think of it as though gravity wasn’t an attractive force but a repulsive force. It’s as though matter doesn’t attract other matter, it simply gets squeezed together by the umquah, and the more matter there is in one place, the more umquah are displaced to do the squeezing, so they can squeeze harder. When they squeeze out clumps of matter, they become compressed and curved around it, and they’re always trying to straighten out and spread out evenly.

  “When an umquah gets touched by a photon, say, it and its neighbors squeeze it out, so it gets passed along. Each umquah touches more than one other, of course, so whenever one squeezes something out, it can start up a wave form. Sometimes it just squeezes around and around, in a tiny circle; sometimes it squeezes things across the universe.”

  “I see,” said the president.

  “I doubt it,” she said. “Because I don’t, and neither does Chiddy. He says it’s impossible to explain without the math, and he doesn’t do that kind of math.”

  “And you know Chiddy was telling you the truth?”

  “No. Of course not, though I can’t think why he would lie about it. It’s possible they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s possible I’m not quoting them correctly. I’m not a scientist and neither are they. They’re diplomats. Foreign Service types. Maybe Chiddy just made it up when I asked how they travel so quickly.”

  “String physics?” murmured the FL.

  Benita nodded. “Chiddy did mention string physics. He said it’s a move in the right direction, because the strings are just lined up—or maybe it was curled up—umquah. Ai is very pleased with our progress.”

  “You are pleased?” asked the First Lady, puzzled.

  “Ai,” Benita said. “Ay-eye pronounced Ah-ee. See, that’s what I mean about their gender. It’s a neutral pronoun. Chiddy and Vess are athyci, fourth caste, and their pronouns are ai, ais, and aisos…”

  “Benita,” interrupted the president, rubbing his forehead wearily. “Would you be willing to do something for us?”

  “If I can,” she said, suddenly embarrassed at the way she’d been going on and on.

  “All my instincts say these people are good people. They have done wonders for us. Drugs, terrorism, the inhumane treatment of women, all being solved.”

  The FL said, “Forced marriage of young girls has stopped. Selling young women into the sex trade has stopped. Genital mutilation has stopped. The last several days we’ve been getting reports that some people who try to drive cars are unable to do so. The cars won’t start unless the person in question has knowledge equivalent to a GED. It affects all age groups. It’s amazing.”

  The president nodded. “All this…it’s so valuable to us. The dream of peace. The dream of progress without conflict. We feel, that is, the First Lady and I feel, that if things go on as they are for a while, say a few years, we’ll have a breakthrough of expectations. If we did a happiness index here in the U.S., people would be less worried and more contented than they’ve ever been. You’d think every politician in the country would rejoice, but they claim it’s all a hoax, that the real motives behind it are nefarious, and I can’t prove they’re wrong! We know what they can do, but we know nothing about them as people. Until we know something about them as people, we can’t answer the charges that our opponents make against them.”

  He stopped, leaned forward and took Benita’s hand. “Will you ask them to show you their world?”

  “Ask them to take me to Pistach-home?” she said, astonished.

  “Yes. Ask them if they will. The FBI will provide some small recording devices to take with you, sealed, and when you get back, you can give these recordings to the committees in Congress that are kicking up the worst of it, so it won’t be your word alone. We can publicize your findings in the media. Maybe then, they’ll quit playing games and let us get on with…with…Excuse me.” He got up hastily and left the room.

  The FL got up and went to the window, murmuring, “He thinks the arrival of the Pistach is the most exciting event in the history of mankind, but his own advisors are telling him he’s being played for a fool, he ought to order a full-scale mobilization. Congress is like a dozen armed camps, all fighting each other, one side blaming another for defunding NASA just when we need it. American Jewry is furious because of Jerusalem. Some conservative Islamic Americans are furious because of Infectious Ugly. Evidently the ugly-plague has started here, too, among immigrants from Afghanistan and Pakistan and even India. My husband…he genuinely likes people. He has a warm and trusting nature toward people, and he wants to trust the envoys, but his own people are making it impossible.”

  “You want me to ask this favor of Chiddy and Vess?”

  “Yes. Please. You shouldn’t go alone, though. There are idiots over there on the hill who would probably listen to a man where they wouldn’t listen to you.”

  “Chad could go,” Benita said. “We get along well together.”

  “But not too well,” the FL cautioned, giving Benita and Chad a searching look.

  “No, ma’am,” he responded in an angry tone.

  Benita said, “You could always have the CIA design me a chastity belt before I leave, if that’s important. Or is my sex life a domestic matter for the FBI?”

  “Don’t be angry, either of you. You know what we’re up against. We’ve had more than one commentator accuse the president of carrying on with Benita!”

  “I’ve never been alone with him, ma’am.”

  “Oh, I know that! He’s careful these days not to be alone with anyone, regardless of what sex they are. He has a chaperon around when he plays with the dog!”

  Benita smiled dutifully, looked at her shoes, then at the ceiling, finding no help either place. She sighed. “I’ll do what I can. Really.”

  She and Chad talked about it on the way home, both of them were in the backseat, behind dark-tinted windows, with someone else doing the driving. Now that the news people had seen her in Chad’s company, he was as much fair game as she was.

  Halfway home, she started crying. She was too much at the center of things. Without specific reason, the tears welled and spilled over. Chad put his arms around her and they sat that way for a while, just close. He offered her his handkerchief, and she wiped her face. When they got to the apartment, he sent the car away and came upstairs. She opened a bottle of wine, and they sat in the living room, looking between two boarded-up windows through a clear one that showed the Capitol dome.

  “How do you get in touch with them?” he asked.

  “Usually I just yell. Chiddy, I need you now!” She said it quite loudly. “If he agrees to take me, he may do it all at once, just boom. They do things like that.”

  “You mean, they might take you suddenly, without me or any of the surveillance stuff?”

  “If there is such stuff, you should get it here in a hurry, Chad,” she said. “Chiddy and Vess move awfully fast when they’re motivated.”

  He went to the phone and made a call, then several more, taking notes as he did so. His last call was a ten-digit one. He spoke, listened, spoke, then turned to Benita with the phone still in his hand.

  “Meri
lu?” he said. “She hung up on me. She says your husband alleges we’re involved sexually, right now, on CNN.”

  “Bert? I thought the Inkleozese had him!” She turned to CNN, and there was Bert, a bit foggy around the eyes, but by heaven he had on a new suit, he was shaved, and he was being interviewed on national TV, and telling them all about his wife, old moocow Benita, who was being a sex slave to some aliens for the FBI.

  She had barely time to get angry when the air turned cold, then warm, then wavy, and Chiddy materialized in a burst of light on the living room rug.

  “Dear Benita,” ai said, patting her on the shoulder. Ai offered his hand to Chad, who took it. Chiddy was, no need to say, in his masculine human form.

  “Look,” Benita cried, pointing to the TV. “What’s that about?”

  “The Fluiquosm,” growled Chiddy. “They made that tape several days ago by planting an idea in his head, but they hadn’t used it yet. Now they are angry at having to leave Earth, so they sent it out to TV networks in a fit of resentment. It will be necessary to supplant that idea in his mind and then undo this damage.”

  Chad asked, “Are the predators gone…?”

  Chiddy pinched his lips and looked severe. “They have departed. As I said, they were very angry about it, but they have definitely departed. None of them wants to tangle with the Inkleozese.” He sat down beside Benita. “What is the emergency?”

  She told him, everything tumbling out at once, the committee and Morse and what the president wanted her to do, and why it was necessary.

  He stared at both the humans thoughtfully. “Before any of this is taken care of, I must go back and finish our discussions with the Inkleozese. They are most annoyed at the ShLQ, as are we, and steps must be taken to keep them in line and to make your former inceptor withdraw his stupidities. While this is being accomplished, we will think on this business of taking you to Pistach-home.

  “Mr. Riley, be kind enough to get together whatever you need to take with you. Also, since gender mistrust seems to play a part in this whole matter, we agree it would indeed be wise for you to accompany Benita to my home world. If there is any possibility of their assuming you have a…relationship between you that is unacceptable, please recommend a third party to come along as well. A ‘chaperon,’ I think it is called. Though I would be happy to serve in that capacity, my word might not be trusted. By the way, I assume you are male, in all respects, heterosexual, functioning, and so forth?”

  Chad laughed, a real laugh. “When called upon,” he said, shaking his head in amazement. “I am still functional, yes. And heterosexual, though I have a past very much like Benita’s, remarkably conformist and dull.”

  “My son,” Benita cried, suddenly remembering. “We’re forgetting him in the midst of all this! As well as the girl they took instead of Angelica.”

  “We will see to that, as well,” Chiddy said. “We have already assured ourselves that they have not been injured.” And ai was gone.

  “He seemed very affectionate,” said Chad, regarding her with curious eyes.

  “I think they probably are an affectionate people,” she replied, shaking her head at him. “I know they’re a sensual people, too, because Chiddy’s mentioned how much he enjoys hot springs and massage and certain earthly scents and flavors. I am fond of ais, and ai may well be fond of me. That doesn’t equal an affair. Companionship isn’t sexuality.”

  “Even when he’s in human shape?”

  “Even when ai looks human. Though, come to think of it, when they take other shapes, I think the shape has different sensory equipment from their own forms. You shake his hand, and Chiddy feels it, even though the real Chiddy doesn’t have hands. Maybe that’s why they morph so much, because they like the new sensations they get.”

  “Their morphed selves certainly feel real to the touch,” he said. “I purposely bumped them and brushed up against them at that first dinner.”

  “I know,” she said tiredly. “It’s very confusing.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then patted her, rather as he patted Sasquatch. “Since our previous effort to get away was interrupted, our bags are already packed. Mine’s down in the car that’s still parked out back. I’ll go pick up the stuff from the bureau. Have a nap. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “What about…Merilu?”

  “Merilu is looking for excuses to end our marriage,” he said in a flat, dead voice. “Any excuse will do, even a phony one. Even if I quit the job today and was in Montana by tonight, she’d find some reason. She’ll do what your husband is doing, what she started to do on the phone, accuse me of having an affair, or putting my job ahead of the boys, or anything. I’ve been hoping she’ll settle down. I’m not sure she will.”

  “And she doesn’t work?”

  “No,” he said. “That’s part of the problem.”

  “Do you have a picture of her?” Benita asked curiously.

  He dug it out of his wallet. She was blonde, blue-eyed, with a face like an angel. Everyman’s everywoman.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “Yes,” he said with an aching sigh. “She certainly is. I sometimes look at that face and think I’m the luckiest man in creation. On the phone, however, I sometimes get a more…accurate picture.”

  He went down in the elevator alone. Benita took a few moments to repack the small bag she had packed two days ago, adding casual clothes and another pair of shoes, thinking as she did so that she had never seen any advice about packing for interstellar travel. No raincoat, obviously, or boots. No warm sweaters. No tank tops for sunning. Slacks. Shirts. Sox. Shoes. Underwear. Nightgown. Nothing sexy. Not that she owned any such thing.

  While she didn’t think she’d sleep, she dozed off as soon as she lay down. She didn’t wake up until evening, when Chad rang her on the phone. He’d be over in half an hour.

  She called Simon, who was still downstairs in the office doing something or other, and told him she’d be down. When she came in, he was staring at the TV which was rerunning her brief interview by the press that morning. He turned from the screen and stared at her.

  “So that’s what it was all about,” he said.

  She fumbled for something to say. He shook his head. “The apartment renovation? All the comings and goings?”

  She sat down across from him. “Yes, Simon. But, I had no idea all this would happen when I applied for the job.”

  “I know.” He shuffled the papers in front of him. “I was angry at first. Because you didn’t tell me. But then, I thought why would you? You wouldn’t want to tell anybody, for fear they’d get at you. The press, I mean. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you’re doing a good job here. The best. I can’t imagine where you found the time, with all this going on…”

  “There was plenty of time, Simon. It doesn’t take long to pass on a message or talk to the ETs. Mostly that stuff happens in the evenings, after we’re closed.”

  “Well, everything you’ve done so far is great. Your files are up to date. Your work is accurate. Are you going to go on working for me?”

  “Simon, I would very much like to go on working for you. However, I can’t work for you this week. The president has asked me to go to the Pistach home world and look at it. The FBI man who’s been guarding me—”

  Simon’s eyes flickered sideways. “Oh. That’s who he is. I wondered.”

  “He’s been working as liaison. He’ll go with me on the trip, so he can verify what I see.”

  “What do they think you’ll see?”

  “Our government, part of it, anyhow, is worried it’s a conspiracy. The predators. The Pistach. The Inkleozese.”

  “Why doesn’t the president go?”

  “Who’d believe him? He’s trying to work inside the politics of mistrust, Simon. The other side has only one agenda, to discredit him, falsely if necessary, and they don’t care if it hurts the country. I have no ax to grind. I’m not a political person. If Bert can be
muzzled, they’ll have a hard time discrediting me because there’s nothing there to discredit.”

  He nodded sympathetically. “Well, you know, if they can get the public lined up to peek through bedroom windows, it makes it easier for them to rob the rest of the house!”

  She smiled. “I’ll be away for a few days. I came down to ask if you’ll feed Sasquatch.”

  “I will feed and exercise Sasquatch. And I’ll be glad when you come back, Benita.” He held out his hand, and she took it. He pulled her across the desk and kissed her cheek, quite gently. “Very glad,” he said.

  She went back upstairs and waited for Chad, looking out the little window in the elevator hall, her hand on the cheek that Simon had kissed. What a strange man. Or not. He was really very nice, wasn’t he? Thoughtful. Considerate. Appreciative. Undemanding.

  Chad always parked where she could see him from the elevator hall, so she could come down to unlock the door. He arrived bearing two small suitcases and a paper bag of Chinese takeout. When Benita smelled it, she realized she hadn’t eaten all day, not even breakfast, and Chad hadn’t either. They set it out on the table in the living room and munched without talking for some time.

  “I wonder where Chiddy is?” she said finally, surfeit with sesame shrimp, asparagus and rice.

  “On his way, I should imagine,” he said, putting down his fork with a sigh. He wiped his mouth thoroughly on a paper napkin. “I wonder what they’ll feed us on Pistach-home.”

  “If they take us,” she amended.

  “I think they’ll take us. If only because they’re so embarrassed over this predator business.”

  “Or over the Inkleozese.”

  “My guess would be that doesn’t embarrass them at all. The envoys took it for granted that intelligent people mean what they say, and somebody who says he’s pro-life means it.”

  “How do we go about finding out whether the Pistach are as represented?” she asked him. “If we depend on them to show us the world, won’t they just show us what they want us to see?”