The Fresco

by Sheri S. Tepper

  The place was like a graveyard.

  “Hey,” he yelled. “Gimme a little service here.”

  Wilkes came out of the office and stared at him in astonishment. “Bert? I thought you was dead.”

  “I’m not dead, Jim,” Bert replied testily, repeating: “Never was dead.”

  “Well, I be damned,” said the sergeant. “Hey, you hear about Benita?”

  “Larry tole me.”

  “That was somethin, wasn’t it? Remember how she used to go down to the shelter to hide out when you was on a rampage? Boy, you two used to get into it. You used to whack her a good one, ever now and then.” He shook his head sadly. “None of that stuff happens anymore.”

  “Whatta you mean, none of that stuff? Wives don’t drive men crazy anymore? That’d be the day.”

  The sergeant shook his head. “Hardly ever. It just don’t happen like it used to. I think it’s something in the air, you know. Like the antidrunk dust.” He rearranged some papers on the desk, raising a cloud of ordinary dust in the process. “Heard your house got sold.”

  “Damn Benita! She didn’t pay the mortgage.”

  “You know, if you need a job or a place to sleep, you should go down to that shelter where she used to go. It’s not for women anymore. They call it a Glusi Center now. Like a homeless shelter. Got some real good programs for people sort of…at loose ends, you might say.”

  Bert figured he was at loose ends. Until he could get hold of Benita. Make her pay him some alimony or something. He’d have to think about that.

  His feet remembered the way to the shelter, even if his brain didn’t. It was still right where it had been, in back of the old Methodist church, but it had a new sign.

  Glusi Center

  Life Plans for the Needy

  Inside, a pleasant young woman helped him fill out a questionnaire, had him hold his ideogram in front of a machine, then gave him a card that told him where to get his clothes washed, where to get dinner that night, and a bed to sleep in, where to breakfast tomorrow, and where to go to work the next morning. “Free.” She smiled. “All the services are free. And when you go to work tomorrow, you’ll get another card with the next day’s schedule on it, and on weekends, you get weekend cards for recreation activities, movies, or sports. All free.”

  “Wha’f I don’t feel like working?” he asked, summoning truculence.

  “That’s fine. You do what you like. If you’d rather lie around all day, you can do that, but it gets pretty boring, you know, when you can’t drink or smoke and there’s no TV until evening and you can’t loiter.”

  “Whadda you mean, can’t loiter?”

  “Loitering isn’t allowed. Streets are for transit. Everyone is happier if he’s going somewhere and doing something. If one isn’t working, one should be enjoying life, meditating, recreating, relaxing in some appropriate place. If you’d rather meditate or relax than work, that’s fine, here’s a list of meditation and relaxation centers.”

  “And if I don’t want to meditate?” he cried, outraged.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “That’s perfectly fine. We’ll find something else for you to do.”

  Bert wandered out, feeling aimless. He should, he felt, be really angry about moocow, but somehow, it was all too much effort. The streets were empty except for people obviously going somewhere. And he couldn’t drink beer, or anything alcoholic. And he couldn’t smoke, he wasn’t even fifty yet.

  The address sheet said there was a meditation center a block away. He turned left and found the entrance, a plain door with a symbol on the doorway that looked like a head with rays coming out of it. He remembered the building first as a warehouse and then later as a place where Larry’s friend used to store bales of marijuana. Now, however, rows of pillows were lined up on the floor, a few of them occupied by quiet people. Bert sat down.

  A voice spoke to him, very softly. “Let’s think about things,” it said. “Let’s decide what we can do today that will be useful….”

  Bert tried to get up, but his legs wouldn’t work, and the voice in his head said, “That’s fine, we can go when we’ve finished, but we don’t want to go just yet, do we? No. We want to think about being useful…” And the voice went on, and on, and on, until it was time for lunch.

  “That’s fine,” said the smiling lady at the lunch counter when he complained about too much salad. “Tomorrow, you choose something else.”

  “That’s fine,” said the man at the shelter that night. “Here’s your card for tomorrow and a list of other shelters.”

  “That’s fine,” said the boss the next morning, when Bert reported and said he didn’t want to work. “You can go to the meditation center.”

  “That’s fine,” said Bert a week or so later, looking at himself in the mirror of the room that had his name on it, room 502 at Glusi Housing Center #10. His boss on the painting crew had told him he was doing really well. The food at the center tasted better all the time. “That’s just fine,” he said, trying to identify the strange feeling he had. Really weird. After a while, he decided he felt contented.

  55

  benita

  ONE YEAR LATER

  About a year later, Benita was in her new office in Washington, D.C., talking to her assistant, Jewel.

  “Did you get monthly reports from the Glusi Centers?” she asked, checking a previous item off her list.

  Jewel referred to her notebook. “Finished this afternoon, Bennie. Leonard says he’ll bring them up as soon as they’re printed. Preliminary indications were, glusi population requiring assistance was down maybe three percent.”

  “Three percent down,” she breathed. “That’s a first! That’s wonderful. We started with four percent of the total population as glusi, and Chiddy said the total shouldn’t exceed one percent of the population, so we’re on our way down. Great!”

  “Let’s hope Chiddy was right. Can I get you some coffee, Bennie?”

  “I’m fine, thanks. Have we had any more media fallout from the lawsuits those pregnant guys brought?”

  “Not particularly. There was some case law involving rapists who’d been sued, but the courts just won’t call what the Inkleozese did rape. There’ve been a few columns advocating recompense for their time and trouble, or in the case of the guys who didn’t make it, payment to families. All the survivors are back now, all in good health, all returned to their homes. Of course, a number of their wives went elsewhere during their absence.”

  “The wives surely didn’t blame their husbands.”

  “As a matter of fact, some of them did. In the morning paper, Mrs. Morse was quoted as saying her husband asked for it, talking the way he did. If he didn’t want to be raped, he should have been more careful what he said.”

  “Which Mrs. Morse was that?” Benita asked.

  “The first one. The second one was nicer. She seemed to be really fond of him.”

  “Lupé?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, Lupé has always been said to be fond of a lot of people. She’s a very…gregarious person. Anything else?”

  “Your daughter called. She says she hasn’t seen her brother in weeks, and have you heard from him?”

  “Oh, my goodness, yes. Jewel, I’m such an idiot. I should have let her know. He called me three months ago to ask if I’d recommend him for the patterner’s job. He got through the interviews, last time I talked to him, and then Vess called me to say he’d been selected! I’ll call Angelica the minute I get home. Is that it?”

  “That’s it. No reason you can’t take off for the weekend with a clear conscience.”

  Benita nodded, tucked some of the paperwork on her desk into the top drawer, put on her jacket, and left, turning in the doorway to admire the office. It was a splendid office. The furniture was elegant, all in Pchar wood, from the planet of the Vixbot. The rug was soft and beautifully colored, woven from the wooly integument of Oumfuzzian swamp plants. The plants in the window were from half a dozen diffe
rent planets, all of them in gorgeous bloom, and the Confederation changed them for new ones, every few days.

  Being Confederation Link wasn’t a big job yet. Important, but not big. Once Earth was a full member of the Confederation—which seemed certain now, so much progress had been made—the Link liaison job would be a big, big job concerned with making import-export regulations, interspecies employment agreements, passport restrictions, all kinds of things. She was working closely with the new president, and she still saw the old president and First Lady every now and then. He was writing a book, and she was running for office. They both kept very busy and, like Benita, looked forward to the future with great anticipation. As for Benita’s future, since she’d been appointed as Link by Confederation ETs on terms no other person was able (or maybe willing) to meet, it wasn’t a political thing and she could look forward to being Link for life, if she liked.

  Home was still the apartment above the bookstore. It was convenient and efficient, though it wouldn’t be long before they’d need a larger place. She really wanted more country around her. Entertaining was part of the job, and having a buffet for fifty, mixed human and alien, wasn’t something easily done in an apartment on the third floor with a wheezy elevator. They needed a place with a yard, with a big patio, maybe even a swimming pool.

  When she parked behind the bookstore and opened the back door, the stockroom door was open. Hearing Simon’s voice, she leaned in and cried, “Hi, Simon. See you later?”

  “I’ll be up in a bit,” he yelled from behind a pile of books.

  She took the elevator up, thinking that when they moved, she’d really miss the creaky old elevator. It rather punctuated her days, creak in the morning, creak in the evening, creak when anyone came or went. She dropped her things on the couch and sat down by the phone and called Angelica.

  “Hi, Mom. Sorry to bother you, calling you at work, but I haven’t been able to reach Carlos. He hasn’t…reverted or anything, has he?”

  “Angel, no. No, he’s on top of the world. He called me about three months ago to ask if I’d recommend him for a job with the Confederation. Evidently, he’d discussed it with Chiddy and Vess before they dropped him off in California after we got back from Pistach-home last year.”

  “What Confederation job? He never mentioned it to me.”

  “There are two Confederation jobs that have to be filled by Earthians. One is the Link job, that’s the one I’m doing. The other one they call the Pattern job. It only opened up a few months ago, after we met the preliminary requirements for membership.”

  She smiled, thinking about it. American culture was indeed tasty and catching. What started in the U.S. had rapidly spread across the world. Conflict was down. Destruction of habitat was down. Incivility was down. All schools had classes on good citizenship and polite conduct, and if a student failed that class, they went to remedial school until they passed it, and if they acted out after passing it, they went back into class again. Freedom of speech was unabridged, but one could not yell in other people’s faces, harass them, or use easy-speak to cover up unpleasant facts. Food distribution systems had been worked out to minimize famines; a new pregnancy immunization process was being distributed worldwide, making women increasingly infertile the more pregnancies they had. Gender selection had been perfected, so everyone could have the gender child they wanted, which had made Chiddy exult. In many countries everyone would have boys, by preference; the number of boys would exceed the number of girls by up to a third, and that would really drop the population during the next generation. World human population was too high, everyone agreed, but individual choice had to be respected.

  The Inkleozese had petitioned formally for a meeting with the UN, during which they had said how gratified they were at the progress Earth had made and pointed out that in order to join the Confederation, Earth was required to provide two humans to work with the Confederation, and the first one had been selected, someone with intimate knowledge of and feelings of kinship for alien peoples, Benita Alvarez.

  Previous to the announcement, Benita had been asked to take the job by the Confederation ambassador, another jolly Inkleozese, and after considering the requirements for a week or so, she had agreed. She had become quite uniquely qualified, after all. At least, so the Inkleozese had told her.

  Now Carlos had been approved for the other position.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t talk to you before he left, Angelica.”

  “He left a message, but it was all garbled. And I’ve had finals. I guess I was too busy to worry about him until now.”

  “Well, you needn’t worry at all. He’s got the job.”

  Angelica asked, “What is the job? I don’t get it.”

  “The Confederation needs one of us to travel among the Confederation worlds for the other races to study. The rules provide that new planets shouldn’t submit anyone who has family because the job will take a large chunk of their lives. They like to have someone young, who isn’t involved in professional work or some long-planned career.”

  “Travel around the galaxy?” Angel said. “Carlos?”

  “That’s right. So that all the races out there can record our parameters so that our people won’t get into situations that are dangerous for them. If we have limited ability to withstand deterioration during long flights, the Confederation needs to know that. If our race has an adverse reaction to some botanical found on Vixbot, they need to know that.”

  “A lab rat!” exclaimed Angelica.

  “Not really, Angelica. Chiddy says Patterns have a wonderful time. They have people paying attention to them all day, every day. They get to see things other people of their races may never see. They get the best of everything, amusements, housing, food…”

  “How long will he be gone?”

  “He should be back within two to four years. And he’ll be in demand, Angel. I should imagine he’ll be offered a book deal, at the very least. You may expect to see him on 20/20 or Primetime.”

  “Wow,” she said doubtfully. “I can’t believe it’ll be Carlos.”

  “I can tell you’re glad for him. Ah…I’ve got some news. Your father’s back. He’s in a glusi support program back in Albuquerque. I’ve got the number, if you want to call him.”

  “A program for the needy? Oh, Mom, that’s sad.”

  “Well, so far as I’m concerned, he always was in a program for the needy, and I was it! I could go back to supporting him, I suppose, Angelica. I can’t see that it did him any good before.”

  “Oh, no, no. Don’t you dare! I’m just…sorry for him, that’s all. My father in a program for the needy! Well.”

  So far as Angelica and the rest of the human race was concerned, glusi meant “needy” or “homeless.” That’s what Chiddy had defined it as, and only Chad and Benita and the people who’d read Chiddy’s journal knew it had ever meant anything different. Everyone knew, of course, that glusi included former drunks who couldn’t drink anymore and former nutters who had been smoothed out enough not to be agonized or dangerous, but otherwise left to do precisely what they chose. It included the occasional displaced person, for whom assistance could be both immediate and effectual, and also the occasional tormented eccentric for whom some form of mediation with the world was necessary, though the attempt was always made to ease the pain without interfering with creativity. The Confederation had a high regard for Earthian creativity, particularly in the graphic, musical and theater arts, and though suffering as a way of life was foreign to the Pistach, they had accepted that a certain amount of excruciation often went along with imagination.

  Glusi also included runaway children, a no-longer-frequent category, along with women whom Chiddy still called “erotic stimulators for hire,” who wished to do something else. Erotic stimulators for hire who liked their work, however (and a surprising number did), had their own support network offering medical and social benefits and assistance.

  Angelica and Benita talked a while longer, though
Angelica seemed unconvinced about Carlos, still finding it hard to believe he was doing anything important.

  Benita had no sooner hung up than the phone rang. Chad.

  “How are you?” she cried, joyously. “Haven’t seen you in…weeks.”

  “Well, I’ve been…occupied,” he said in a strained voice. “Merilu decided to come back. With the boys.”

  She took a deep breath. “Well…Chad. That’s…what is that? Wonderful?”

  “Ah…yes, in a way. She’s written herself a new life-script, and it fits her to a tee. You know, behind every famous man there’s a woman? Well, she’s it.”

  “And you’re the famous man?”

  “If she has her way, I will be. As she keeps pointing out, I’m one of only two people who’ve ever seen a number of other planets. Since we have a ten-year probationary period before humans will be allowed to travel to other worlds, except the patterner, that is, no other human will see other planets for at least that long, and she’s working on a book deal for me. ‘Chad Riley as told to Merilu Riley.’ Either that, or she wants to go to Pistach-home so we can write it together. She thinks with my influence, the Pistach would be happy to take us there. I’ve tried to explain, but she’s not listening.”

  “Tell her about the toilets.”

  “The ones on Pistach-home?”

  “Right. And tell her about the iglak, and what the food is like. All those squirmy things you have to eat to be polite. And how they won’t let her wear anything but caste clothes, and how receptors are rather low caste…you get the idea.”

  “Benita, you’re a lifesaver.”

  “Is it still worth it?”

  Long silence. Sigh. “You pointed out to me once that she’s a very beautiful woman.”

  “I did that,” she admitted, wondering how long that would be enough for him. “Of course, the Pistach won’t think so. They think all humans are odd looking. Tell her that, too.”