The Fresco

by Sheri S. Tepper

  When the four nonartists/nonactors got tired of poker (the Big SA was the big winner, fourteen dollars and twenty cents, and the president accused him of having had help), they watched, fascinated, as weapons disappeared from the Fresco to be replaced by symbols of peaceful progress, as Mengantowhai became a sage and guide instead of a bloodthirsty oppressor, and as the Pokoti race was differentiated from the Jaupati race. Since both races were extinct, it didn’t really matter what they’d looked like so long as they were different from one another. Kasiwees was murdered all over again, this time by a vengeful Pokoti. Mengantowhai passed on his virtue and power to Canthorel, who now had a very high-caste blue aura painted around him. The wine jars that had turned into assaulted Jaupati turned back into wine jars being virtuously fractured by abstemious Pistach.

  The level of artistry exhibited that night was very, very high—a little slick, Chad murmured—but very high. Chiddy had been quite right when he said humans excel in artistry. There was simply no comparison between these painters and the original painter of the Fresco. The earlier panels had had no composition, no perspective, they were deficient in color, and no Pistach had ever heard of chiaroscuro. Perhaps it was the way the Pistach eyes interpreted their world, or perhaps representational art just wasn’t their thing. Whatever talent the Pistach lacked, human people had had it from their infancy. Benita found herself imagining all those old Cro Magnons sitting around the fire talking about Ugh’s lampsoot technique with mastodons, and how beautifully Glub used ocher to shade the flanks of the horse.

  She also wondered what Chiddy would say when he saw it, as he eventually would. The president asked, “Will they understand what they see, or are their eyes too different?”

  “They’ll understand,” Benita murmured. “They’ve been raving about the Sistine Chapel ever since they arrived.”

  Along a couple of hours before sunrise, the artists finished up their panels and began circulating, critiquing one another’s work, catching little bits of this and that, symbols that weren’t clear, and so forth. Oddly enough, the Inkleozese did a fair bit of this too, suggesting a change here, an emphasis there. Benita watched them closely, and if she had had to say what they were thinking, she would have guessed they were amused, interested, and approving.

  When everyone was finished, anyone would swear the Fresco had always been that way. Panel number sixteen, where Canthorel leaves Jaupat, had been considerably modified. He still left Jaupat, but with him went a winged symbol of the future, fluttering at his shoulder, and from the winged figure’s mouth came a ribbon lettered with the Pistach words that meant, In time I will return. There were also ideograms for the name Glumshalak, which Chiddy had included in his journal. As foreshadowing, it was neatly done.

  It was, all in all, an excellent job, one so far above the original that its divine inspiration could hardly be doubted, particularly by Pistach who had never seen Earthly art. There was still a final step, however. When all the supplies had been put away, Chad unpacked a sprayer that contained a mix of soot, grease, and odds and ends of other pollutants mixed with a chemical dispersant. Standing well back, he went from panel to panel, spraying goop into the air until they were all just slightly hazed, nothing completely veiled, but nothing looking new, either, about the way they would have been in a few more weeks of candle smoke. A second spray gun contained piñon smoke mist, to eliminate any lingering paint smells. Benita had suggested piñon smoke, because it was one totally unfamiliar to the Pistach, or so Chiddy had told her.

  When all the equipment was packed up, everyone got back into his or her robes. The actors assembled their devices and the Pistach were nudged into wakefulness among smells of incense and sounds of drums and chimes. The room was dimly candlelit.

  “Oh, Canthorel, come to us,” intoned the Big SA, in passable Pistach. “Show us the truth!”

  T’Fees pushed himself higher on his legs. The Pistach elders shifted, staring at one another. One of them asked Chad, through his translator, “Is this evocation of the sacred persons of other races customary?”

  “Only after hours of meditation,” Chad responded. “Oh. Look there!” He pointed into the gloom.

  In the dim glow of the candle flames the figure of Canthorel emerged from the darkness, garbed in a radiant blue aura, taller than a normal Pistach, an absolute replica of the Canthorel figures in the Fresco. The figure bowed, only slightly, gestured widely, then opened its mouth and cried, in Pistach:

  “I have returned to restore my work and to reestablish the teachings of Mengantowhai.”

  The Pistach opened their eyes wide. T’Fees muttered in an ugly voice, and three of the more robust elders silenced him.

  The image of Canthorel went on. “Into this place came an evil-doer to change my works and cast doubt upon our purpose. The infamy of this evil-doer was foreseen. Glumshalak came to cover the false works so they might not hinder the spiritual progress of my people. Into this place, another evil-doer has come, and there the miscreant stands, the one who wished to negate Glumshalak’s virtuous deeds. Now, I have returned to reassert the value of Pistach life, the work they do, the order they bring. Go forth and assist the worlds of the galaxy, remembering always the commandments given me by Mengantowhai:

  “Where you see an unfruitful tree, make it bear.

  “Do as little as possible.

  “Do it as painlessly as possible.

  “Be responsible for having done it.”

  The voice dwindled away, the aura faded, the figure moved toward the altar. A smoke lit from within, as by blue fire, exploded in the House, and Chad and Benita ran to thrust open the doors to let in the first pale rays of dawn. When the smoke cleared, Canthorel was gone.

  Half a dozen Earthians went about the room, extinguishing the few candles, leaving it virtually dark. Tambourines and drums continued their tinka-tinka-tinka, bom bom bom.

  The Pistach were soundless, speechless. T’Fees struggled with the three elders who were holding him down. The humans chanted, swaying in time to the drums, giving the Pistach time to recover.

  Eventually, the leader of the Pistach elders asked the president, “Did you see Canthorel? Was he indeed present among us?”

  The president nodded, saying truthfully, “I saw a marvelous figure emerge from the Ground of Canthorel. One moment he was not there, the next moment, he was.”

  “Did you hear him speak?”

  The president said yes, he had heard the figure speak, but he was not sure he understood all that Canthorel had said. Would the elders explain it to him?

  “Later,” murmured the elder. “Oh, yes, but later.”

  The sounds of drums and tambourines faded. The Pistach rose from their reclining boards, all of them still staring at the place Canthorel had been, before he disappeared. Since their sleeping position was no different from their resting or sitting position, there was no indication they had drifted off. Even T’Fees seemed unaware of having done so.

  Through her own translator, Benita heard one say to another, “I’m afraid I dozed off there for a moment. Did I miss anything?”

  The other answered, “Just sitting and meditating until Canthorel came. You saw that!”

  “Oh, yes. I saw that.”

  The room was dim, the darkness broken only near the top of the dome where the clerestories admitted a pale glow. All the Pistach, including T’Fees, were so occupied with the vision of Canthorel that none of them glanced at the walls, and had they done so, it was still too dim to see anything. Benita remembered Chiddy’s description of the first time he had seen it. People came in and went out, they didn’t really look.

  As the Pistach moved toward the door, she wandered toward the wall, peering at the Fresco, reaching with tentative fingers to stroke the dim figures that bright morning would disclose. The True Fresco of Canthorel.

  53

  the morning after

  The Pistach elders were on the stairs before the humans emerged in the same order as they had gone in, fo
llowed by the Inkleozese. All of them moved slowly downward toward T’Fees’s supporters, who were gathered below. As T’Fees neared them, he hastened his steps to join his colleagues. The rest of the group paused not far away.

  The elder Inkleozese, the Assessor Emeritus, turned to face the human delegation and cried:

  “Do you consider that your meditation has been successful?”

  The crowd grew silent as Chiddy translated this question. The president nodded, smiled, and intoned, “We spent the night praying the meaning of the Fresco would be clear to us. When morning came, we saw a vision of Canthorel. All of us saw it. The human race is very grateful for Canthorel’s return.”

  Chiddy turned pale green. His mouthparts trembled, as did his voice as he translated this statement. The crowd around T’Fees stirred ominously. Several of them cried out in objection, but an elder silenced them with a sharp reproof, as though to say the translation was accurate.

  When the crowd stilled, the president continued. “We are reassured that the Pistach may go on assisting the human race. As Canthorel said, it is their job. We are reassured to know that the previous misunderstanding was caused by an evil-doer in an attempt to obscure both Canthorel’s great artistry and the authority that had been passed through him to the current athyci in a direct line of descent from Mengantowhai.

  “The Fresco makes it perfectly clear,” the president concluded. “There can be no question about it.”

  Chiddy, who was by now almost ashen, translated once more.

  Confusion. Consternation. Pallor. Babble.

  “Heads up, people,” said Chad, tapping the president on the arm. “To the ship, now.”

  As the Earthians started for the ship, a mob of Pistach with T’Fees in the vanguard surged up the stairs toward the House of the Fresco at an eight-legged gallop, all shrilling at one another like locusts. The humans ignored this rather ostentatiously, as they strode confidently toward the ship with heads up, drums beating, tambourines chinking, and the president reaching out to shake the manipulators of every Pistach that he passed while the Big SA God-blessed them right and left. While the others blocked the doorway, the artists went aboard, opened up the altars and took out all the paint cartons, brushes, rollers, smocks, projectors, and drop cloths and put them down the conversion chutes along with the lighting equipment and the elaborate animatronic figure of Canthorel, complete with aura. Also down the chutes went the voice recording in Pistach provided earlier by the Inkleozese. It had been done, so the Assessor Emeritus had told Benita, by a Pistach actor who happened to be on tour in Inkleoza. He had been well paid for the work, and for keeping his mouthparts fastened thereafter.

  Robes, candles, bells, drums and other ritual impedimenta went into the altars, which were left conveniently close to the loading ramp, wide open, so anyone could see the contents. The artists split off, some toward food, some toward beds, while the president, the Big SA, Chad and Benita went into the dining room, which was near the hatch. The first two nonhumans into the ship were the Inkleozese, who also entered the salon.

  “I take it you don’t disapprove of our actions,” said the president to the elder one, the Assessor Emeritus, as he led the way to the kitchen where Chad was starting a pot of coffee.

  The assessor rubbed her forelegs together, pondering. “I am not appointed to approve or disapprove of human conduct. I merely observe. What you have done breaks no rule of our people. Because this effort of yours aligns the Pistach with their traditional inclinations, those of self-approving benignity, and because we owed a debt to the intermediary, we cooperated in this effort. We are unaware that it disrupts any galactic trend.”

  A few other weary humans trickled into the dining room, broke out Earthian stores and began fixing breakfast. Through the view screen they could see arguments erupting all up and down the Fresco stairs. After about an hour, Chiddy came trudging up the ramp into the ship, along with a few of T’Fees’s followers, who stopped just inside the door to run their pincers through the stuff inside the hollow altars, chattering in confusion. Eventually Chiddy came to the dining area.

  “There has been a miracle,” Chiddy said, giving Benita a strange, almost doleful look.

  “Oh?” she asked. “What miracle was that.”

  “The Fresco changed, overnight.”

  “That couldn’t be,” the president said. “It was dark when we went in last night, so we couldn’t really see the Fresco, but we were there the whole time and we didn’t see a miracle. When daylight came this morning, the Fresco was exactly as Glumshalak’s Compendium describes it, though far better done, of course. I’m afraid Glumshalak was no artist.”

  “Canthorel spoke to you!”

  The president said, “We saw a figure who resembled the Canthorel in the Fresco, though ai offered us no proof of identity. The figure said it had come to repeat aisos message to the Pistach people. Presumably Canthorel’s Fresco is as it is by the will of Aitun.”

  “It could be any way at all by the will of Aitun,” snapped Chiddy. “Aitun lets everything happen that can happen! It is up to intelligence to select!”

  “Well, then,” said the Big SA, “Something selected it the way it is. Something that we know is very good because it chooses to avoid death and pain and horror and hurting creatures, which the false Fresco certainly would have caused. I can’t imagine Canthorel being on the side of predators eating humans, or eating Pistach, can you? On Earth we say, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “It wasn’t the way we remembered it from when T’Fees cleaned it,” mumbled Vess. “Benita and Chad were there, they know!”

  “Well,” Benita said, with considerable hauteur, “what I remember most about the way it was before was that there was a tree in every panel, and there’s still a tree in every panel. And I saw the form of Canthorel in a burst of smoke and light saying the work was originally beautiful.”

  “So I had always believed,” said Chiddy.

  “Well, the one I saw when I was here before wasn’t all that beautiful, which means some evil-doer must have come along and painted over it. That was when Canthorel inspired Glumshalak to provide the Compendium in its place. And when Glumshalak’s efforts were thwarted by T’Fees, someone—and I’d like to believe it was Canthorel—put it back the way it was supposed to be.”

  “The way it was at first?” said Chiddy, still sounding somewhat indignant.

  “Well, Chiddy,” she said, “it certainly didn’t make sense the way it was when T’Fees cleaned it. Would you choose to put something like that on your walls to guide your people?”

  Chiddy gestured, no.

  “And it was badly painted, too,” said the president thoughtfully. “Chad took pictures of it, and it was quite dreadful. If I had been Canthorel, I’d have been as upset at the lack of artistry as at the misrepresentation of what I was teaching! We feel so fortunate that Canthorel came to set things right. Even T’Fees saw it happen!”

  Chad voiced agreement, backed by all the little SAs.

  “T’Fees did see it happen,” Chiddy agreed. “T’Fees just isn’t willing to believe any of his own eyes!”

  The Big SA took this as a cue to speak at length on the subject of belief, quoting Scripture to the point, citing several of the Fresco panels as exemplary. Benita thought he should have been an actor instead of an SA, though maybe one had to be an actor to be a Big SA. In any case, Chiddy had to stand there listening out of Pistach politeness, until the president whispered in the SA’s ears, and he let Chiddy escape dazedly back down the exit ramp.

  Benita watched Chiddy go. He seemed depressed. She felt a little sorry for him, the way she had felt sorry for the children, sometimes, when she had had to say “no playing until homework” or go “write your spelling words.” One had to do it, but one still regretted the sadness it caused. Of course later, at least in Angelica’s case, there had been the jubilation at getting an A, so it was all worth it. She wondered when Chiddy would realize he was getting an A.


  He evidently passed along the comment that T’Fees had wilfully chosen to restore an evil version of the Fresco, for a little later they saw T’Fees led by in shackles. Benita said she hoped they wouldn’t hurt him, and was assured they intended only to regress him to age twelve, select him as a quality improvement consultant—for which job they already knew he had skills—and provide him with rigorous training.

  Despite the combined feelings of weariness, relief, and subdued elation that most of the humans felt, there was also unspoken agreement among them that getting out before too many questions could be asked might be an excellent idea. Chad saw a number of the Chapter members standing at the foot of the stairs, and he walked over to suggest the immediate departure of the Earthians. The Chapter members seemed more than willing to see them go as soon as possible. It was obvious that the members needed to get their heads together and talk about what had happened. They were shifting from one set of feet to another, twitching their mouthparts, exhibiting all the signs of distraction. They were not too distracted, however, to summon Chiddy and Vess and the two Inkleozese, who seemed even jollier than usual as they agreed it was time to leave Pistach-home.

  Benita and Chiddy were standing beside the ramp when Carlos came from the direction of the village, walking beside a Pistach whom Benita thought she knew. As they came closer, she identified Chiddy’s nootch, Varsi, the one she’d given the scarf to on her first trip to Pistach-home. Varsi, the nice one.

  “Ke greets someone,” called the nootch.

  “Mother,” said Carlos. “It’s wonderful to see you. Is everything working out well? Varsi tells me there’s been a miracle.”