The Fresco

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “According to what they told the president, they never appear to the public in person. Only to small groups, and only right at first. They’re assigned to visit races who have become interested in other intelligent life. The president thinks they’re here to invite us to join some interstellar federation.”

  She shook her head doubtfully. “It’s possible, but I don’t think so, not right away anyhow.”

  “Why not? It’s as likely as anything else.”

  “Not really. It’s more like…if we discover a new race of people, some little tribe, say, down in the Amazon somewhere. The linguists and the anthropologists might go look at them, but no ambassador or head of state is going to travel down there and invite them to join the United Nations.”

  He looked quite taken aback. “Why would they bother just looking at us? Surely they must want something.”

  She smiled, thinking about it. “Maybe they’re just curious.”

  The general had a very disturbed expression on his face as he said, “I can think of several reasons why someone would go visit a newly discovered tribe in the Amazon. Because they knew about herbal remedies that could be valuable to pharmaceutical companies. Because they were sitting on gigantic ore or oil deposits.

  “Or, because the big lumber companies were coming, and the tribe wasn’t going to be there—or maybe anywhere—very long.”

  And with that happy thought, they both fell silent, not speaking again until they reached their destination.

  The dinner arrangements were fairly intimate and not at all pretentious. Benita was introduced to the president’s wife, and to the Secretary of State, both of whom seemed utterly unflappable but confessed to being excited by the whole affair. No one was very dressed up. The only other person Benita hadn’t met was a red-faced general from the Pentagon, James McVane, in full uniform and an angry expression. Chiddy and Vess had shown up in the guise of pleasant, plump, dark-skinned middle-aged women clad in saris, making a total of eight for dinner, plus the watchful men in the foyer and three liveried waiters, two moving around a table in the adjacent dining room, setting up a dinner service, and one serving cocktails and hors d’oeuvres in the nicely furnished living room.

  Benita received a hug from each alien, who also pressed her cheek with theirs, as if they were old friends. “Tonight we are Indira and Lara,” said the taller one in green. “Indira is in green and Lara is in red. This is the first step in our finding out about you.”

  “Why did you choose to be women?” Benita whispered. The three of them were standing in a corner, closely observed but not intruded upon by the other guests.

  “You can figure that out,” murmured Indira. “At some times we will take on the form of men, and also children, and perhaps different sorts of both, all three sexes—what is it called? Gay? In such guises we will wander around often, seeing how things work. But for now, we will be women and foreigners.”

  “You want to elicit knee-jerk reactions, don’t you?” Benita asked. “You want to know how people treat women or foreigners, habitually?”

  Indira nodded. Lara merely smiled. Benita didn’t think it was a real smile.

  “When you smile, your eyes need to crinkle up a little,” she said, showing her. “Otherwise it looks insincere.”

  “What if it is insincere?” Lara asked. “What if I am not at all amused?”

  “Well, if you smile so it looks sincere, it will keep others from knowing how you feel. If you smile in a way that looks insincere, they will know exactly how you feel, which maybe is what you want. If you do not smile at all, people will think you are cold.”

  “You do not smile when you are chilled?”

  “Cold means uncaring. We feel warm or cold about people. Warm about our friends and loved ones. You might care very much, but it doesn’t count as caring unless you do something, often something quite trivial and useless. Like smiling, or patting someone’s arm, or murmuring conventional phrases, or bustling around in an attempt to help while you get in everyone’s way.”

  “So if I care greatly, but merely sit quiet, staying out of persons’ way, I will be thought cold.”

  “Exactly,” Benita confirmed. “I used to go to dinner at my grandmother’s house, my father’s mother. She never shut up from the time you walked in the door until you left. She cared so much that whenever you got comfortable, she made you change where you were sitting in order to sit somewhere better. She passed you food so many times you had no time to eat. She never listened to anything anyone said, and if you tried to help her, she told you how to do it, over and over. Whenever Papa took me there, I’d find a chair in a corner and sit very quietly…”

  “While she told your mother you were cold,” finished Lara.

  “Exactly,” Benita replied, ruefully. “Caring, grieving, rejoicing, we are expected to share them all intimately and vociferously.”

  “So we will share,” said Indira. “Tell us, please, what you have been doing here in this city. We detect a newness about you!”

  “I suspect you may have planned this all along. I have a new job and a new place to live.”

  “Ah.” The smile again, with crinkles. “We did not plan so, but we were hopeful. Describe this place you will live?”

  Benita did so, ignoring her doubts and concerns and dwelling at length upon its convenient location, about which Indira asked a great many questions.

  “And you are pleased with these changes?” asked Lara, when she had finished. “We prefer that people we…bother…are pleased.”

  “Yes, I think…I am pleased,” Benita confessed. “Change is…it’s hard to get it into my head, but I’m sure you weren’t a bother.”

  “Ladies,” boomed General Wallace. “What are you drinking?”

  “I am not,” murmured Lara.

  “He means, what would you like as a drink,” Benita whispered. “Drinks and small tasty things are customary as a prelude to festive evening meals.”

  “Fruit juice,” Lara said to the general, smiling, with her eyes crinkled up. “I have never tasted anything so lovely as your fruit juice.”

  “For me, also,” cried Indira, crinkling her eyes until they radiated with wrinkles. “Apple, or grape, or what is that other one, Lara?”

  “Maaango,” cried Lara, with a marvelous giggle.

  “Julia Roberts did the giggle,” murmured Indira in Benita’s ear. “On TV. Has Lara got it right?”

  “Perfect,” Benita said, accepting the glass the general put in her hand. It was also fruit juice. It was quite possible no one was drinking anything alcoholic, and that might make sense. When she looked up, Lara and Indira had crossed the room to speak to the First Lady and had been replaced by the Secretary of State.

  “You seem to get on with them quite well,” said the SOS.

  “They probably chose someone they knew they’d get along with,” Benita replied, though doubtfully. “I suppose I would do the same, in their place. They said they preferred to appear to someone just ordinary who could put them in touch with the VIPs without making a fuss about it.”

  “You think they’ve done this before, then?” the SOS asked. “On other worlds?”

  “Either that or they’re following a protocol,” Benita replied, after a moment’s thought.

  The SOS gave her a piercing look. “Why would you think so?”

  “Oh, the box they gave me. You’ve seen that?”

  “I saw it, yes. It was the main course at two Cabinet meetings. One Monday, one this afternoon.”

  “That box isn’t something made up for one occasion. You noticed how it fills in the names? That clicking, while it searches for the proper label? If they’d made it up special, the names would have been included seamlessly. No, that box is something they use all the time. They probably have a supply of them in their ship, just in case they need more than one.”

  “Ah,” said the SOS, then asked casually, “Is it a large ship?”

  “Not the one I saw. It looked hardly big enough
for the two of them. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have a big ship.”

  “Where is it, do you think?”

  “Oh, probably on the back side of the moon. That’s where sci-fi writers would put it. Or under the ice in Antarctica, like in the X-Files. Or maybe it’s simply a stealth ship, right out in the open only we can’t see it, or, since they can appear as any creature they want to, maybe their ship can, too, and it’s taken on the likeness of something we’d expect, a cloud, or a weather balloon.”

  The SOS choked on her drink. “That doesn’t disturb you?”

  “Not really. I don’t get any feeling of menace from them. Not even right at first. I think they’re really what they say they are. Xenologists. Or xenological social workers.”

  “Studying us? General McVane is quite worried about security. He tells us there have been multiple sightings of something—ships, perhaps—in the last several days. Our military are in considerable disruption. They can’t identify who or what is flying around over our country, perhaps studying our weapons.”

  Benita shook her head. “It could be just as likely they’re studying our culture. If we went to the Amazon to study a tribe there, our Department of Defense wouldn’t be greatly interested in their bows and arrows, would it? We’d be more interested in other things, their language maybe.”

  “Their physiology?”

  “Only if it differed greatly from our own.”

  “Would we kill one and dissect it?”

  “If we were ethical, no. And one of the beings at that first meeting told me they were ethical. They don’t do vivisection.”

  “So they won’t kidnap a human to dissect?”

  “They say they’ve never done that. If they needed to do that, which I doubt, they would probably wait until they could lay hands on a dead one.”

  General Wallace announced dinner and offered Lara his arm. The president’s wife was at one end of the table and General Wallace at the other. Indira was on the First Lady’s right, Mr. Riley on her left. Lara had General Wallace’s right, with General McVane across from her and the SOS on his left, opposite Benita. The food was simple but very good, and both the ETs seemed to enjoy it. Benita watched them, thinking they might only be playing at enjoyment, tucking the food away inside to dispose of later. No telling what they could do with those infinitely morphable bodies. They were offered wine, which they refused. Benita’s wineglass was filled, but she tasted it sparingly. Since she was sitting at the mid-point of the table, she could hear the conversation at both ends.

  “Perhaps you ladies would be kind enough to resolve a small confusion for us,” she heard Indira say with a kindly smile.

  The First Lady and the Secretary of State shared glances. The FL said, “We would be happy to try.”

  “We have found a strangeness in your world that we cannot quite reconcile. During our study time, before we reached out to you, we learned much of your history and culture and religions, particularly the one claimed by a majority of the American people. The religion teaches that the purpose of man is to worship and adore and praise God, and those who do not do so will probably be punished. Is this correct?”

  The SOS said guardedly, “Some religionists teach that, yes.”

  “Ah. But you have countries ruled by despots who demand that people worship, adore and praise them. They put great pictures of themselves upon the walls, like icons, and those who do not adore are often killed or disappeared or tortured. There was one called Mao, one called Stalin. One now, called Hussein. Isn’t this true?”

  The FL nodded, warily.

  “Ah. Your nation, however, wishes to be a good nation, and it therefore despises despots, regarding them as evil and rejoicing when one of them is overthrown. Is this so?”

  The FL put down her fork and took a deep breath. “Yes. This is so.”

  “Ah. Now to our confusion. If a person torturing and killing people is evil, why are gods who torture and kill people called good?”

  The SOS patted her lips with her napkin and said to the FL, “Don’t look at me.”

  The FL glanced along the table, catching Benita’s eye.

  “Do you have an answer for our guest?” the FL asked.

  Benita thought for a moment. “I can quote something I’ve read. Some professor of history wrote that cultures define their gods when they’re young and primitive, when their main concern is survival. They endow their gods with survival characteristics like omnipotence and authoritarianism, belligerence and suspicion, and that’s what goes into all their myths or scriptures. Then, if they survive long enough, they begin to develop morality. They examine their own history, and they learn that authoritarianism doesn’t accord with free will, that belligerence and suspicion are unhealthful, but this newly moral culture is stuck with its bigoted, interfering gods, plus it’s stuck with people who prefer the old bloody gods and use them as their justification for doing all kinds of awful things.”

  “Ah,” said Indira. “I am glad our morality has been with us since early times, preserved for us indelibly. I would hate worshipping a god I could not respect. Why do you?”

  The FL was regarding Benita with some surprise. “This is a paradox,” she said. “It’s not one we’re going to solve tonight. We have other problems that are perhaps more solvable. For example, there is the continuing problem of drugs, not only the issue of addictions and consequent criminality, but also the consequent economic and political issues…” She went on to give a description of the war on drugs, focusing on drug trafficking and profiteering and keeping well away from the subject of religion. She concluded: “Legalization would drive prices down, crime would stop, then we could take care of the addicts…”

  “And you do not do this because of…politics?”

  The SOS said, “The war against drugs is big business. Thousands of people are on the payroll. The people on the payroll don’t want the problem solved, though they can’t say that out loud or, perhaps, even admit it to themselves. Instead, they continue to take a moral position that requires them to punish people. Punishing people is always considered moral.”

  Indira shook her head. “It is like the Pursnyp people on the planet Hiddle. They built an enormous wall to protect them from the marauding tribes of nomadic Flizz. Half the population worked at maintaining and garrisoning the wall. Then a plague came, and the Flizz were almost wiped out. The Pursnyp people sent aid to the Flizz, and when we asked why, they said if the Flizz died out, the wall would not be needed, and there would be no more work for the Pursnyp.”

  “Like fox hunting in England,” remarked Chad. “They say they hunt the foxes because they’re vermin, but they’re careful to preserve plenty of foxes so they never have to stop hunting.”

  At the other end of the table, Benita heard Lara ask, “What problems do you have in this country, General Wallace?”

  He chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, patted his lips. “Well, ma’am, I’d say destruction of the environment is one of our biggest problems…”

  While the talk flowed—the drug situation, the environment, various international concerns, everything but religion—Benita ate salad and chicken Kiev and asparagus, chatting from time to time with Mr. Riley, who was obviously keeping a careful eye on everyone present. When the chocolate mousse cake was cleared and coffee served, they listened politely to short speeches of welcome by the First Lady, the SOS, and General Wallace.

  Then Indira rose to reply.

  “We have been most pleased to join with you in this festive meal, enabling our two peoples to know one another a little better. We know you are recording this meeting, and we intended it so, in order that you may have a record to show your people of the reason for our coming here.”

  General Wallace leaned forward. General McVane frowned. Those who were drinking coffee put down their coffee cups.

  “You have in recent time stepped upon your moon and begun the building of a space station. We have noticed this. You have in recent time sent small mechanic
als to your planets, to learn about them, and you have built listening devices to detect intelligent life on other worlds. We applaud this, and we also applaud your efforts, so diligently though ineffectually carried out, to live peaceably among yourselves and, as we have learned this evening, to improve your perception of morality.

  “You have in recent time sent a mechanical device beyond your own system out into the universe. Pistach people have found it, and in response they have sent us, athyci, you would say ethical representatives. Part of our task is to reach out to newly noticed races and assist them in meeting the prerequisites of our galactic principles of coexistence. We—the several races in our Confederation—call these principles Tassifoduma, what you would call Neighborliness. We have read much of your literature. One of your poets has said that good fences make good neighbors, and this is often true. When a neighbor throws empty cans over his fence, it may mean he is not a good neighbor, or it may mean the fence is not high enough. When small mechanicals are sent outward over the fence, it could be a sign of either. It is then we must do our work quickly before some larger garbage follows to attract the attention of others whom you are not prepared to meet.

  “Our Confederation includes intelligent races, some of them predatory, though all agree to respect other members of the Confederation. Since the predators among us could do you great damage, it is to both our advantage if we can get you into the Confederation and subject to Confederation law as quickly as possible.

  “So we have come to you as we have come to many worlds where we have learned the best ways to do our work. This is how we intend to proceed:

  “Though our actions will not be limited to this country, we will begin our association with this country, as it has a quality other countries call cultural imperialism, which, we have found, means a tasty culture that other peoples readily enjoy, an infective culture, if you will, from which ideas and usages spread quickly. We find your language to be an inclusive one, your religions, for the most part, mutually tolerant, your races working consciously to remove bigotry. These are good signs. Nations that try to limit religion or racial configuration or the language spoken by their people are impossible to work with for they are more concerned with form than reality. We have selected our intermediary with great care. She meets our needs, and she will continue in that role.”