The Fresco

  “We have gained some time,” said Chiddy, drawing Benita away from Carlos and Chad. “One has told them of the predators, of your son’s capture, of your fear for his life. One has begged tolerance for his lack of manners, saying that time is needed for balance, for regaining equanimity. Please, Benita, may one speak to you sincerely?”

  She nodded. He took her a step or two farther from the others and said, “T’Fees notwithstanding, Benita, one can help you with your boy, if you like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One’s hearing is keen. One heard his comments and saw his comportment. Such a demeanor is injudicious at this juncture.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted. “But he’s still frightened. We gave him no time to get his balance after you saved him from the Fluiquosm.”

  “One knows. So one offers a way of rebalancing. It’s a kind of therapy. A way of changing behaviors. It does work. Would you like one to try?”

  She wanted to say yes. She wanted to say, he’s broken, fix him. She couldn’t. Suppose it made him happier? Suppose it made him a nicer person? Perhaps he enjoyed being unhappy, some people did. Perhaps he chose to be miserable! She shook her head, whispering, “Not just yet, Chiddy. Give him a chance on his own…”

  “One understands, dear Benita. Individuality is very important to your people. Vess and I have seen that some humans think of their pain as their own, whereas they think of happiness as something they should have been given and did not receive. They do not know that happiness comes from within. They rant at the world for not providing it while they keep it from ever emerging. Your son would rather play tragedy than comedy. It is an individual choice.”

  She wiped her eyes surreptitiously. “I do feel guilty. I should have controlled it, Chiddy. If I had married someone else, if I had not been impetuous, if I had waited until my judgment was better, maybe he wouldn’t be like this. It makes me sorrowful.”

  “Ha. And would some other choice have produced some other result? Perhaps not. Your son would not have been like this, true. Also, he would not have been this son. Another son could have been happier only if this one had not existed. This argument is futile and silly. We will not discuss it further.”

  She flushed and nodded.

  Chiddy said, “This idea of cleaning of the Fresco is more dangerous than I can say. If we had known T’Fees was here, we would not have brought your son with us. Now, Carlos is, as you say, a loose cannon, and we cannot risk his crashing about. Will you allow me to give him a slight euphoric? One that will keep him happy and quiet?”

  “Of course, Chiddy. I don’t want him to upset things. He just seemed to be so…useless, and it hurts!”

  Chiddy patted her arm. “Don’t be so sure he is useless. The Pistach have a little saying: ‘Goff requos bemin pequos.’ From this shit may verdure come. All kinds of people turn out to have a use.” He patted her again. “Enough of sadness. Welcome awaits at the guest house of the Cavita family.”

  The house was small and elegant. It reminded Benita of pictures she had seen of Japanese houses: sliding screens instead of walls, simple surfaces, beautifully finished; only necessary furniture, a few storage chests, a few mats. Obviously the Pistach did not use chairs, but they did have slanting boards they could lean their ventral sides on, leaving their arms free on each side. There were three sleeping areas, separable each from the others, with soft mats on the floors, and each human adopted one, putting their belongings on the simple chests.

  The sanitary arrangements were out back, so to speak, except for the bath, an anteroom leading to a tiled booth with nozzles in every direction. A carved chest in the anteroom attracted Benita’s attention, and without thinking she opened the lid. Something flew out of the chest and covered her, crawling under her clothing, into every seam and crease of her body. She screamed, and things crawled into her mouth. She gurgled, hearing the rattle of Chiddy’s feet on the floor.

  Chiddy whistled, and the stuff came off her, rushing back into the box. It was…insects. Beetles or something. She leaned against the wall, shuddering. “What…what…”

  “So very sorry,” said Chiddy, his mouth parts shivering. “Oh, so very sorry. The iglak was supposed to be removed. I told them twice. Remove the iglak.”

  “What in hell is it?” asked Chad, standing wide-eyed behind him.

  “They,” said Chiddy. “A small life form that lives on the shed skin of other life forms. You have dust mites, too small to see. We have iglak, necessary to get under the carapace and around all the joints where water may not take away the soil. We open the box, they come out and go all over us, eating every dead flake of integument, then we whistle and they go back to the box, then we shower in water. Oh, I am so sorry you were frightened, dear Benita.”

  He left her there, and she took the opportunity to undress and shake her clothing. The iglak had all gone, but she still felt itchy. She put her clothes in a cabinet, stepped into the booth and turned on the water, if it was water. When she turned it off, it dried, almost at once, no towels needed. She realized for the first time that the Pistach were far lighter than water. They would float in a tub.

  That evening, several members of the family came to the house to wish the visitors well. They stayed only briefly except for Chiddy’s nootch, Varsi, who lingered to talk with Benita through her own translation device. She was very proud of Chiddy; Benita heard it in every word she said. “Ai has gone far,” ke said. “Ai is the best one I have nootched, ever. Needed so little, ke did! Only a word, now and then. No sleep teaching. No removals of bad traits.”

  “You can remove bad traits?”

  “Some. If they have not gone too deep. Nootchi in your race cannot do this?”

  “Regrettably, no. I wish we could.”

  Benita was so touched by Varsi that she gave her the scarf from her own outfit, a red one, knowing this color could be worn by a second-level Pistach.

  Each Pistach who came brought something pleasant to eat or drink. As the evening wore on, Benita guessed that Chiddy had spiked Carlos’s tea with the proposed euphoric, for he became mild and mannerly, even seeming to be interested in what was going on.

  “Are those iglak things trained?” he asked Chiddy. “I mean, do you train them to answer the whistle that way?”

  Chiddy made his negative gesture, his half headshake, half lowered shoulder. “It is the sound their nootchi make, from the nest, recalling the workers. The box is their nest. Inside it is very complicated, with many chambers. Are you interested in such things?”

  Carlos nodded. “I was just thinking, that’d go over great on Earth. At a spa, like. You’d have to have a cabinet that left people’s heads out, though.”

  Chiddy said thoughtfully, “You may be right. They are very easy to breed and control. Perhaps we will attempt to export them.”

  Vess announced that they were invited to the House of the Fresco on the following morning, to see the cleaning, which was likely to take all day.

  “You’re terribly worried about it,” Benita said to Chiddy. “Aren’t you?”

  “I have reason to believe,” he murmured, “that the actual paintings may differ in details from what we have learned of the content.”

  “Would this be a tragedy? Which takes precedence, your teachings, or the content of the Fresco?”

  “Ah, Benita. I have asked myself that question, over and over. The Fresco has given us legitimacy, the way your holy scriptures give you legitimacy. How often have I heard your legislators quoting Scripture to prove almost anything. I have heard your people speak of ‘two millennia of tradition,’ or even, ‘four millennia of culture.’ Unlike your Scripture, the Fresco does not govern our belief about the universe, for Aiton is Aiton, no matter what being paints what or what writer writes what or what philosopher says what. In the nebulae, in the clusters, in the spaces between the galaxies, no matter what persons think, Aiton is still Aiton.

  “But, the Fresco does define our belief about ourselves and o
ur worlds. Your Scripture defines men and women as unique children of God and it defines the world as the center of God’s attention. Because of your Scripture, you behave as though that is true, unfortunately from our point of view, for it leads you to destructive, hurtful excesses. Our Fresco defines us as a people who amend other worlds and bring them to peace, but I confess, we are that people only because the Fresco says so.”

  Chad said, “I’m a student of languages, and in our world, seminal works of ethics are almost always written. In fact, I know of no culture in which moralities are conveyed by picture, though certainly many histories are memorialized in that way. What is it that makes you so concerned?”

  Chiddy came close and confided in them, telling them all about the dropped cleaning rag and the flap that followed. He told them about Glumshalak and the Compendium. He told them how the Chapter had refused to look any deeper at the Fresco itself.

  “How far back does the cleaning taboo go?” Chad asked.

  “To the time of Glumshalak,” Chiddy said. “It was that athyco who forbade us to fiddle with the Fresco evermore. We have always believed that Glumshalak considered the possibility the Fresco might be changed by some political or tribal faction to gain power for themselves, and so ai forbade it.”

  Chad nodded, asked a few more questions, and looked exceeding thoughtful.

  “Do you understand what’s going on?” Benita asked him when they were alone.

  “You reminded me about the Dead Sea Scrolls. The reason there was such a tizzy was that many religious groups really don’t worship God, they worship the Scriptures. Christians, Jews, they both do it. So do the Moslems. Even though the commandment says ‘You shall have no other God before me,’ the Scripture worshippers put the writings ahead of God. Instead of interpreting God’s actions in nature, for example, they interpret nature in the light of the Scripture. Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture.

  “The Pistach could be like that. Totally governed by what’s on that wall.”

  “That’s a happy thought,” said Benita, finding it anything but. If anything, the discussion amplified the atmosphere of pending danger, one sufficiently disturbing that none of them, except for Carlos, slept really well that night.

  In the morning they were given a meal of tea and a fruit that looked like a spherical, faceted eggplant and tasted like nothing they had ever tasted before. Rhubarb, maybe, Benita suggested. Chad thought sweetened asparagus. Carlos merely smiled and ate it without complaint. Even as they climbed the stairs to the House of the Fresco, Carlos had a smile on his face and was humming under his breath. The stairway was wide and gracefully curved, with flowers growing along the edges of the terraces and flat areas where Pistach gathered and sang. Their singing, Benita thought, was like an evening chorus of crickets and night birds and frogs, repetitive and soothing and, after a time, so subliminal as to be totally disregarded. The House at the top of the stairs rose in a lovely domed line, like the breast of a young girl. They went through the center one of three bronze doors.

  She had expected dirtiness, dark colors, ominous shadings something akin to the look of the Sistine Chapel murals before they were cleaned, but it was far worse than she had imagined. The room was lofty, well proportioned and clean, but the painted panels were only dark smears, shapes barely discernable through a varnish of soot. Above the Fresco was a narrow circular gallery on which a number of Pistach were gathered. Though she wasn’t sure what old age looked like among the Pistach, she got the immediate impression that these were very old ones. Perhaps it was the way Chiddy and Vess bowed to them and walked with their eyes down beneath the gaze of those above.

  The humans were led to the center of the room, to the “Ground of Canthorel,” a plot of fragrant leafed plants where a bench had been provided for them.

  “The plants are actually grown in a greenhouse,” whispered Vess. “They bring in fresh ones each morning, take the bottoms off the pots so the roots can actually touch the Ground of Canthorel, which is where his ashes were spread, thus sanctifying the plants. Visitors nip off a leaf as a remembrance. There’d be nothing left unless they put new ones in each day.”

  Several Pistach carrying buckets and mops were gathered between the center door and the one to the right, and a tall Pistach in blue apron and hood (a curator, they were told) stood behind a lectern. Benita thought he looked nervous, though she couldn’t tell why she thought so until she noticed the tiny fringy bits around his mouth trembling, as though he had Parkinson’s disease. T’Fees emerged from the group with the mops and signaled the curator, who began to read. Chiddy, beside her, translated.

  “Panel number one,” he said. “The Meeting. This panel portrays the welcoming of Mengantowhai by the Jaupati. We see the ship in the background, and in the foreground several of the Jaupati, gazing with wonder at the great vessel. In the middle distance, we see Mengantowhai approaching, carrying his staff. Stepping forward from among the Jaupati is the person of Bendangiwees, leader of the Jaupati and first friend of the Pistach. To the rear, right, we see three amorphous figures assaulting wine jars. This is a teaching against drunkenness.”

  At this point in the reading, T’Fees shouted a command, and his minions began sloshing liquid over the amber/ocher haze that hid the subject matter. As the curator went on with the details of commentary, the liquid ran down the wall, carrying the soot away, disclosing the bright colors of the wall. Runnels of dark cleanser gathered on the floor to be sponged up by the cleaners and squeezed into empty buckets. Again and again the mops stroked fresh cleanser across the panel between the doors, and the cleaning Pistach moved back and forth, taking buckets away and bringing new ones.

  On the gallery, the old Pistach murmured among themselves, sometimes crying out in feeble voices. Benita saw them point and shiver and point again, as though they saw some great disaster they were impotent to avert.

  Since the cleaners worked from the top down, the first part of the picture to emerge was an expanse of bluish violet sky. The ship emerged next, coming out of the sooty haze as a great lumpy thing with what looked like gun turrets all over it. Next was Mengantowhai, a strong, stern-looking Pistach carrying…well, the curator had called it a staff, but it was obviously a weapon. The huddled things in the middle right background were not wine jars or any kind of vessels, but people, presumably Jaupati, who were being beaten by uniformed Pistach.

  Finally, they saw the foreground Jaupati emerge from the veil, a furry people rather like large six-legged cats. Their mobile faces showed expressions of terror and loathing of the Pistach. Their gestures were aversive, and their leader, Bendangiwees, thrust out his four-fingered forehands, warningly.

  “Look at it, curator!” called T’Fees, when the last of the mopping and sponging had been done. “What does it show?”

  “As I said,” the curator intoned, his voice shaking only slightly. “It shows Mengantowhai’s first meeting with the Jaupati. The Jaupati were afraid, at first, but this emotion was soon replaced with gratitude.”

  “And the ones being beaten?”

  “Probably…criminals. People…who had attempted to disrupt the order of the meeting ceremony…”

  “Or perhaps simple citizens who didn’t get out of the way fast enough,” trumpeted T’Fees. “Second panel! Read, curator!”

  The curator looked at the page before him, hesitantly, letting his eyes drift upward to the aged Pistach on the gallery.

  “Read!” demanded T’Fees again.

  He read.

  “The Descent of the Steadfast Docents. We see the docents descending into the society of the Jaupati, spreading throughout their society in order to civilize them and make them orderly….”

  This time the sloshing was done more quickly, the wiping away more efficiently. This panel was not crowded between bronze pill
ars, more cleaners could work at once, and they were falling into the routine of it. Everyone saw armored figures moving out from the ship, crushing any who stood in their path. In the picture, one of the Pistach carried a lance with a Jaupati head on it, and when he saw this, Chiddy stopped translating. He was shaking. The Pistach do not weep outwardly, Benita knew, but something very similar was going on with him.

  “Third panel,” cried T’Fees. “Read!”

  “The Uniting of the Tribes,” read the curator. “Seeing the peaceful Pistach willing to help them, the tribes voluntarily gave up their independence to join into a union…”

  On the wall, they saw the tribes united, by force, and marched off into the next three panels, Peaceful Work, Civilization and The Offerings, where they saw slaves laboring for the Pistach to build mighty monuments and estates and finally a great palace. The Offerings was panel number six, and it purported to show the voluntary offerings of the Jaupati to King Mengantowhai at the time of his crowning. It was, however, the Jaupati who were being offered up, and in panel seven, The Adoration, the Jaupati were being slain at Mengantowhai’s feet. Among the slain was the leader Bendangiwees, and dragged along to observe his murder was his obviously pregnant mate.

  Panel eight was the Birth of Kasiwees. The mother was the same female as in the preceding panel (the Jaupati had distinctive skin markings that enabled one to identify individuals). When the soot was removed, they saw the gifts brought to the child by his family; many types of blades and weapons, sharp edges to turn against the conquerors who had murdered his father. Panel nine, The Evangelism of Kasiwees, could have been better named the Vengeance of Kasiwees, for it showed the young Kasiwees raising up a rebel force under a banner bearing the word UmaPokoti, or Avengers.

  “We were told the Pokoti were another people entirely,” whispered Chiddy in a depressed and horrified voice. “We have been taught they were envious of the peaceful Jaupati.”

  “It looks like to me they were simply fighting against invaders,” said Chad. “But that was centuries ago. Many races begin as warlike.”