The Fresco

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Whenever we ask you to transmit a message, you may say it appeared on your table, but it self-destructed once you had read it. We got that idea from an old TV show of yours.”

  “Strange,” murmured Vess, “that we had never thought of it ourselves.”

  Benita murmured, “I can understand your being enamored of old Mission Impossible technology, but if you expect them to believe you’re using me as an intermediary, you should black out this place every now and then for a few moments. If they can see me whenever I’m here, but never see you, and if all my time is accounted for, they’ll get to the point where they’ll suspect I’m making things up.”

  Chiddy paused, staring at his feet in a very humanish way.

  “She’s right,” he said. “We have never visited a moderately advanced world before, so we must adjust our methods. Should it be blackouts, or fake visits?”

  “I think blackouts,” she said firmly. “I’d have to remember what was supposed to have happened during fake visits, in case they asked.”

  “Very well,” said Chiddy. “We will black you out for a time whenever we are with you. As we speak, we are making a blacked-out time.”

  “Now, what about if I have visitors? If Simon comes up to my apartment, or if I invite someone in?”

  “On those occasions, we will let them see what is actually happening,” Chiddy said, his handsome face twisted into a slightly lecherous leer. “Unless you ask us not to.”

  “That facial expression should be avoided,” she told him severely. “It is most insulting.”

  “An actor named Price did it,” Chiddy replied.

  “He was almost invariably the villain,” cautioned Benita. “What about my phone line? Did they tap my phone?”

  “Both this phone and the ones downstairs, yes. But unless it is a call we ask you to make, they will hear only innocuous conversations. You, asking if there are tickets available for the opera. You, wondering if a retailer has an item in another color. You, ordering books. It’s all being done automatically. Believe us, no one will see or hear you doing anything significant or embarrassing. You may scold or bless your children, laugh or cry, or even scratch your intimate parts in private. The only calls they will actually record are the ones you make to them.”

  They waved, stepped into the elevator, and closed the door. Though she listened carefully, she heard nothing on the roof, not even footsteps. Come to think of it, she hadn’t even heard the elevator. She opened the elevator door and found it still on her floor, but empty. It hadn’t gone anywhere. She fretted for a few moments, then went to the phone and placed the call, announcing herself as the intermediary and asking to speak to Chad Riley. Evidently the switchboard knew about her, for Mr. Riley was available at once. When she mentioned Afghanistan, he interrupted her.

  “But, we’ve just learned about it.”

  “About what?” she asked.

  “The plague in Afghanistan. I can’t talk right now. I’ll get back to you.”

  A surprising someone did get back to her: the First Lady, sounding equally baffled and very slightly amused. “Yes, Intermediary. We’re told that all the women in Afghanistan have gone bald. Overnight. Not only that…the women…they…”

  “What!” she demanded.

  “They’ve grown long noses and long chins and hairy moles. They’ve lost half their teeth. Any of them past puberty are ugly as sin; even the young ones look like the Wicked Witch of the West, or that old hag in Snow White. Each one has a tattoo on her forehead in the local dialect that says, The lustful who punish beauty would be wiser to control lust. The Afghanis are claiming we did it!”

  “Of course we didn’t. The aliens did! They’ve fixed it so the Taliban won’t have any excuse for covering them in robes and veils and locking them up all the time!”

  “That’s what the Secretary of State says. She says now that they’re really ugly, they can go to the market or school or leave the house and get a job. Is that why you called, Intermediary? Or was there something from you know who?”

  “Am I supposed to talk on the phone?”

  “They tell me it’s a secure line. The people who did up your living quarters saw to things.”

  Oh, they most certainly did, Benita commented to herself before taking a deep breath and delivering the message.

  Long silence. “I’ll tell…the president. What do you think they’re going to say on TV?”

  “I haven’t even a hint, ma’am. They said I can say to you anything they said to me, but in this case they didn’t tell me what they have in mind. They did say the Old City still exists, that they’ve put it on another world…no, in another realm, is what they said. They said they can selectively put all the Jews or all the Palestinians in that same place, if they choose, and they hinted that the people in the Middle East can get Jerusalem back if they’ll quit killing each other.”

  “It still exists?”

  “They said they didn’t destroy it, just moved it. They also said to tell the president that Afghanistan is reversible, but I didn’t know what they meant until now.”

  Long silence. Then the FL said, “The only thing I’m sure of at the moment is there has to be a press conference. This has gone way beyond keeping to ourselves. Even if McVane hadn’t broken security, there are too many things happening. If they’re going to broadcast on Sunday night, we have to let the public know before then. People have to know that we’re not hiding anything.”

  “They also need to know you have little or no control over what’s happening,” cautioned Benita. “Otherwise, you may get blamed for it. Will the president be back in time?”

  “He’ll be back late tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Did the recordings come out? The ones you all made at the dinner?”

  “You knew about that?”

  “Well, they said so, remember? They said they’d allowed it.”

  “The recordings came out. They don’t show Indira and Lara, however. They show two sort of humanoid creatures with corrugated heads and several sets of eyes. Can you explain that?”

  She thought about it. “They appeared as women in saris because we could be comfortable with that. And, probably, because they’re practicing being human in order to figure us out. They wouldn’t want to stir up animosity against India, however, and being two women in saris could have done that. So, they were women in saris to us, but to the rest of the world they’ll look like something definitely extraterrestrial.”

  “They told you this?”

  “No. I’m only guessing.”

  “Very sensible for guessing. Have you seen them again?”

  “They visited me here in the apartment.” She thought about telling what they’d appeared as, then discarded the notion. Everyone was confused enough. “I can’t pronounce their real names, so they’re using nicknames, from when they were children. Chiddy and Vess. They’ve promised to stick with that.”

  “Well, I’d better pass all this along,” murmured the FL. “Ten P.M., Eastern time, day after tomorrow. By the way, Sasquatch is en route. General Wallace had him picked up at the kennel, and he should be with you tomorrow.”

  Sasquatch arrived on Saturday morning. The phone rang at eight, as she was having her breakfast, and an anonymous voice said somebody was waiting with the dog at the outer door. Before she unlocked and opened it, she gave the man a good looking-over, recognizing him as one of the security people present at the dinner. There was no trouble recognizing Sasquatch. He lunged through the door when she barely opened it, jerking the man at the other end of the leash off balance so that he stumbled in after the dog.

  “I’m sorry,” she cried, around the mess of fur that had reared up and put his paws on her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  He picked himself up, unwinding the leash from his hand. “He’s a big one. It’s hard to make him go anywhere he doesn’t want to, isn’t it? Are you okay with him, or do you need some help?”

  “I’m fine with him,” she replied, easing
Sasquatch into a more suitable position, with all four feet on the ground. “Thank you for bringing him.”

  “That’s all right,” he said, saluting as he backed away to let the door swing closed.

  As she pulled the door shut and locked, she saw him trudging away toward a station wagon parked behind the store. Sasquatch followed her into the elevator, albeit unwillingly, where he howled until it reached the roof. There she took the leash off and allowed him to move about, sniffing and marking territory on every protruding vent pipe or aerial. He put his front feet up on the parapet, which was quite high enough to prevent anyone falling over by accident, and looked over the edge several times, commenting sotto voce when he saw something interesting, such as another dog. Then he went over to the big planter and had a drink from the pan beneath the air conditioner. Someone had hooked up the watering tubes, Benita noticed. The soil was moist and translucent green frills were coming up very quickly, already several inches high. Benita had been on the roof the day before, and she hadn’t noticed anything growing then.

  Sasquatch went down the metal steps onto the lower roof of the other building and went through the same routine there. When he ran out of pee, she led him back into the elevator and took him down to the apartment, where she showed him his bed, his food dish—already stocked with kibble—and his water bowl.

  He roved the apartment, smelling every piece of furniture and along the edge of every rug. He found the open living room window at the center of the row, one of the two in that room that actually opened. Benita let the windows stand open when it was cool and dry outside, for the illusion of fresh air if not the reality. Sasquatch put his front feet on the deep sill and stood for a while looking at cars moving on the street below.

  Finally, the dog found the bedroom. He ignored the large dog bed in the corner, leaping immediately upon her bed, where he circled twice, lay down and went to sleep.

  On Saturday evening, the president held a press conference. He said the Earth was being visited by extraterrestrials, he explained that a recording had been made at a recent meeting, and he showed the tape, though without sound. The president explained that neither he nor the vice president had been able to be present at the hastily arranged affair, but he introduced each of the participants, Mr. Riley from the FBI, representing the Attorney General; General McVane from the Pentagon; General Wallace, a well-known and loved representative of the American People; the First Lady, representing the president; the Secretary of State, representing the U.S. government; and the two envoys. Also, a woman he called, “Jane Doe, the intermediary selected by our visitors.”

  Someone, perhaps the ETs, had morphed Benita’s face and hair on the tape, making her a blonde, twenty pounds heavier, with a different nose and mouth. Benita, while being glad she wasn’t recognizable, didn’t appreciate the disguise. When the tape came to the after-dinner speeches, the sound came on so everyone could hear the speeches: the FL, the SOS, the general, and then the envoys. The tape stopped moments before the visitors disappeared.

  The president went on in his serious voice. “Since the dinner last Wednesday evening, we have had one further message from our visitors. Tomorrow night at ten o’clock, Washington time, seven Pacific time, the envoys will address the nation on television, explaining their intentions. Prior to that occurrence, I will be meeting with various congressional committees. I know many of you have questions. Foremost among them will no doubt be the question of whether our visitors were responsible for the recent events in Israel and Afghanistan. The intermediary tells us they say they are responsible, though they have not told her how it was done. They assure her Jerusalem was not destroyed but remains whole, elsewhere. They assure her the so called ugly-plague in Afghanistan is reversible.

  “I would ask you to keep in mind that no one has died in either Israel or Afghanistan as a result of these happenings. At this point, I am as much in the dark as you are, and I cannot answer any questions. We should all be patient. We have detected no malicious intent in our visitors. We believe they are what they represent themselves to be. All questions will eventually be answered, and it would be helpful if speculation were kept to a minimum.”

  He started to leave, to a babble of “Mr. President, Mr. President,” stopping when one reporter shouted: “Tell us about Jane Doe, Mr. President, you can tell us that!”

  He turned back to the lectern. “Jane Doe is an American housewife. She is married and has children. I cannot tell you why the extraterrestrials picked her, and she doesn’t know. Both the envoys and Jane Doe herself have asked that she remain anonymous. She is not a celebrity, she has not chosen to be a public figure. As the envoys made clear, they chose someone who would have no personal agenda concerning their actions or ours, rather than some head of state or government employee or political figure who might have an ax to grind. She knows no more than we do. Think of her as a kind of telephone line between them and us. She’s not responsible for what comes and goes over the line, so let us set aside our prurient, window-peeping greed for the private details of others’ lives and leave her alone.”

  This time he departed, refusing any other questions.

  “Fat chance they’ll leave me alone,” Benita remarked to Sasquatch. “The Sunday papers will be full of speculation, ninety-nine percent of it useless! Some politicos will say it’s all fake.”

  The bookstore didn’t open until noon on Sunday. Early in the morning, however, the Washington Post and the New York Times were delivered through a chute from the side street into the stockroom, along with half a dozen other papers from around the country. Around eight o’clock, she went down to get herself copies of several, bringing them back upstairs to read. The outcry was predictable. Her least favorite columnist’s prissy face sneered above his usual malicious column, and a good many others decried the president’s “unwillingness” to answer questions, raised the possibility that Jane Doe might be either the president’s mistress or a foreign agent, or offered the idea that the whole thing had been done by special effects and that the president no doubt knew more than he admitted to knowing.

  Various other pedants offered opinions ranging from the necessity for an immediate declaration of war against any one or several of five foreign countries to the novel idea, expressed by one fat talk show host, that the envoys were simply Democrats in ET suits, trying to distract the nation from more pressing matters such as cutting taxes. Photo excerpts from the dinner tape were used and reused on page after page of the newspapers. The many-eyed monsters, however, who should have seemed ogreish, actually appeared to be rather loveable, like a cross between a sharpei puppy and a jumping spider done by Disney animation artists.

  The furnishings of the apartment included a television, something Benita hadn’t thought to order for herself. At a quarter to ten that night she was poised on the edge of the couch with Sasquatch at her feet. No one had said which station, and she was prepared to surf them all. At five to ten, however, the show she was watching faded away and soothing music began to play over a pattern of moving fronds, like a forest. Every channel including the shopping and religious networks had the same music, the same fronds. At precisely ten o’clock, the music faded, the fronds parted to disclose the images of Chiddy and Vess, larger and smaller, side by side. They had the same form as in the tape of the dinner, though now the mouths seemed to be more flexible. They were wearing clothing that did not look at all like a uniform. When they spoke, the lips moved the way human lips move, and when not moving, they smiled. The skin around the largest pairs of eyes crinkled warmly.

  “We bring greetings from the people of Pistach to the people of Earth,” said Chiddy. “As we have explained to your officials, we have come to assist you in meeting the prerequisites for galactic coexistence, what we call Tassifoduma, what you in the United States would call Being Neighborly. Tassifoduma is a prerequisite for planets wishing to join the Confederation of intelligent life-forms. We have chosen to start with your country because it will serve as a pat
tern for all the rest.

  “The first prerequisite of Being Neighborly is to have a society in which almost all individuals achieve contentment, since discontented societies often explode over their borders into other people’s space, causing great trouble and woe. You have many examples of these disruptions in your own history. There are some such going on in your world even now, so we need not belabor the point.

  “To begin with, therefore, we will help you balance your country among its many needs and demands to provide greater comfort and contentment to all your people, greater care and attention to your environment. The first step in any project is to find out what is happening to cause woe. The second step is to discontinue the cause! To stop a flood, one must find out where the water is coming from and then shut off the water. To stop a fire, one must find out what is burning and then remove the fuel. So, we will first find out what conditions are most distressing for the people, then we will help you discontinue the conditions which lead to pain, frustration, and misery.

  “Being Neighborly means not upsetting people! In order for us to avoid upsetting you, we must first determine what you value and believe and want. This week, each person over the age of eight will receive a questionnaire designed to elicit that person’s beliefs and wants. This questionnaire must be completed with promptness and complete honesty. If people were to tell us untruthfully that they wanted longer working hours for less pay, and if we were to set up conditions requiring longer working hours at less pay, those people might be most distressed. Each questionnaire will be in your language, whatever your language is, just as this program is in your language, whatever your language is. If you have any difficulty, you may call the number printed at the bottom of the questionnaire and an assistant will be provided for you. When the questionnaires have been returned in the envelopes provided, we will tabulate them, and only then will we take the first step.