The Fresco

1

Things That Go Bump in the Night

2

Benita

3

Incidents

4

Benita

5

From Chiddy's Journal

6

Benita

7

Senator Byron Morse

8

Benita

9

Benita

10

Angelica

11

Local Law Enforcement

12

Chad Riley

13

General McVane

14

From Chiddy's Journal

15

Jerusalem

16

Afghanistan

17

Benita

18

Jerusalem

19

Washington

20

From Chiddy's Journal

21

Mrs. Chad Riley

22

Bert Shipton

23

From Chiddy's Journal

24

Benita

25

From Chiddy's Journal

26

Pistach Management

27

Law Enforcement

28

Incident in Virginia

29

From Chiddy's Journal

30

Senator Morse

31

Pistach Management

32

From Chiddy's Journal

33

Benita

34

Bert

35

Benita

36

From Chiddy's Journal

37

Benita

38

Law Enforcement

39

Benita

40

Senator Byron Morse

41

From Chiddy's Journal

42

Among the Shizzalizaquosmni

43

Benita, Bound

44

Benita

45

In Afghanistan

46

From Chiddy's Journal

47

Benita

48

On Pistach Home

49

Revelation

50

Benita

51

The Cabal

52

Benita

53

The Morning After

54

On Inkleoza

55

Benita

Eos Spotlight

Praise

Other Books by Sheri S. Tepper

Copyright

About the Publisher

Along the Oregon coast an arm of the Pacific shushes softly against rocky shores. Above the waves, dripping silver in the moonlight, old trees, giant trees, few now, thrust their heads among low clouds, the moss thick upon their boles and shadow deep around their roots. In these woods nights are quiet, save for the questing hoot of an owl, the satin stroke of fur against a twig, the tick and rasp of small claws climbing up, clambering down. In these woods, bear is the big boy, the top of the chain, but even he goes quietly and mostly by day. It is a place of mosses and liverworts and ferns, of filmy green that curtains the branches and cushions the soil, a wet place, a still place.

A place in which something new is happening. If there were eyes to see, they might make out a bear-sized shadow, agile as a squirrel, puckering the quiet like an opening zipper, rrrrip up, rrrrip down, high into the trees then down again, disappearing into mist. Silence intervenes, then another seam is ripped softly on one side, then on the other, followed by new silences. Whatever these climbers are, there are more than a few of them.

The owl opens his eyes wide and turns his head back
wards, staring at the surrounding shades. Something new, something strange, something to make a hunter curious. When the next sound comes, he launches himself into the air, swerving silently around the huge trunks, as he does when he hunts mice or voles or small birds, following the pucker of individual tics to its lively source, exploring into his life's darkness. What he finds is nothing he might have imagined, and a few moments later his bloody feathers float down to be followed by another sound, like a satisfied sigh.

 

Near the Mexican border, rocky canyons cleave the mountains, laying them aside like broken wedges of gray cheese furred with a dark mold of pinon and juniper that sheds hard shadows on moon glazed stone, etched lithographs in gray and black, taupe and silver.

Beneath feathery chamisa a rattlesnake flicks his tongue, following a scent. Along a precarious rock ledge a ring-tailed cat strolls, nose snuffling the cracks. At the base of the stone a peccary trots along familiar foot trails, toward the toes of a higher cliff where a seeping spring gathers in a rocky goblet. In the desert, sounds are dry and rattling: pebbles toed into cracks, hoofs tac-tacking on stone, the serpent rattle warning the wild pig to veer away, which she does with a grunt to the tribe behind her. From the rocky scarp the ring-tailed cat hears the whole population of the desert pass about its business in the canyon below.

A new sound comes to this place, too. High in the air, a chuff, chuff, chuff, most like the wings of a monstrous crow, crisp and powerful, enginelike in their regularity. Then a cry, eerie and utterly alien, not from any native bird ever heard in this place.

The peccary freezes in place. The ring-tailed cat leaps into the nearest crevice. Only the rattler does not hear, does not care. For the others, staying frozen in place seems the appropriate and prudent thing to do as the chuff, chuff, chuff moves overhead, another cry and an answer from places east, and west, and north as well. The aerial hunter is not alone, and its screams fade into the distance, the echoes still, and the canyon comes quiet again.

And farther south and east, along the gulf, in the wetland that breeds the livelihood of the sea, in the mangrove swamps, the cypress bogs, the moss-lapped, vine-twined, sawgrass-grown, reptile-ridden mudflats, night sounds are continuous. Here the bull gator bellows, swamp birds call, insects and frogs whir and buzz and babble and creak. Fish jump, huge tails thrash, wings take off from cover to silhouette themselves on the face of the moon.

And even here comes strangeness, a great squadge, squadge, squadge, as though something walks through the deep muck in giant boots on ogre legs, squishing feet down and sucking them up only to squish them down once more. Squadge, squadge, squadge, three at a time, then a pause, then three more.

As in other places, the natives fall silent. The heron finds himself a perch and pulls his head back on his long neck, letting it rest on his back, crouching a little, not to be seen against the sky. The bull gator floats on the oily surface like a scaly buoy, fifteen feet of hunger and dim thought, an old man of the muck, protruding eyes seeing nothing as flared nostrils taste something strange. He lies in his favorite resting place near the trunk of a water-washed tree. There was no tree in that place earlier today, but the reptilian mind does not consider this. Only when something from above slithers sinuously onto the top of his head does he react violently, his body bending, monstrous tail thrashing, huge jaws gaping wide…

Then nothing. No more from the gator until morning, when the exploring heron looks along his beak to find an intaglio of strange bones on the bank, carefully trodden into the muck, from the fangs at the front of the jaw to the vertebra at the tip of the tale. Like a frieze of bloody murder, carefully displayed.

SATURDAY

It had rained a lot in August, warm wet air pouring up from the Pacific, across Mexico, into New Mexico, on north into Colorado and Wyoming. Another year of it coming, said the lady-with-the-graceful-hands, posturing in front of her weather map, bowing to the highs and lows, tracing the lines of cold and hot with balletic gestures. So simple, on the map. So simple on the TV. Not so simple when the rain came down two inches in half an hour and the arroyos filled up with roaring brown water, washing away chicken coops and parked cars, filling up the culverts and running over the road to deposit unknown depths of gooey brown.

Benita Alvarez-Shipton had negotiated two such mud flows in a fine frenzy, just not giving a damn, determined to make it up the canyon, but by the time she reached the third one, her fury had cooled, as usual. Her daughter Angelica told her that was her trouble—she couldn't stay mad. Angelica, now, she stayed mad. Something inherited from her grandma on one side or grandpa on the other, no doubt, and probably far healthier for her than Benita's continual doubts. Benita herself was plagued by voices, mostly Mami's, counseling prudence, counseling patience.

You made your bed, Bennie, now lie in it. God gives us strength to bear, Bennie. The stallion prances, but it's the mare that nurses the colt. You've wasted so much, daughter. You can't afford to waste another bit.

So, caution. The goo covering the road was suspiciously smooth and untouched. Things that were untouched might be so for a reason.
If it looks too good to be true, Bennie, it probably is. If it was possible, Bennie, somebody would have done it already.
Mami hadn't always been right, thank heaven, but she scored high, nonetheless. In this case she would have asked,
What if you get stuck, Bennie? What if somebody comes along, someone, you know, not a nice person?

Not long after Angelica was born, Benita had begun to realize she'd made a major mistake. By the time the kids were in school, she was seeking hiding places from the ghosts in her head, learning ways to cope without money, without help. Solitude was easier to live with than people. Books were less threatening than relatives. The fewer things she said to them, the fewer things she did with them, the fewer mistakes she would make, the fewer hurtful memories there would be.

When the children were little, she'd taken them into the mountains, put up the tent borrowed from her father, and camped for a week at a time without any bad memories. In the mountains you walked, admired birds, smelled flowers, threw rocks in the river and picked up pretty stones. Nothing happened to come back and haunt you in the night. Sleeping on the ground wasn't Bert's kind of thing, especially not in the mountains, miles from the nearest bar. Back then, as now, the predator she feared most was the one she lived with. Other risks paled in comparison.

At the side of the road a slightly higher stretch of ground offered itself. She drove atop it and killed the engine. Even if another flash flood came down the arroyo, it wouldn't come as high as the wheels. She rolled up all the windows and locked the doors—not that it would stop anyone stealing the car if they were of a mind to, but no use wishing somebody would! The old wreck was beginning to cost more than it was worth, just to keep it going. Unlike Bert, who could cheerfully rob Peter to pay Paul, and then rob
Paul to bet on football, Benita's ghosts wouldn't let her risk it. In her life there were no discretionary expenditures. Every penny was committed.

She studied the clouds massing in the west, readying themselves for a full-scale downpour, checking to be sure she had both a hooded rain poncho and a sweater in her pack. She didn't plan to go more than a half hour away from the car. Gingerly, she placed one foot on the mud flow, which turned out to be a false alarm: only half an inch of clayey goo spread over silt that had settled into a bricklike mass.

Just ahead of her the road turned up the canyon between two groves of ponderosa pine. This world was empty, no people, no sounds of people talk or people machines. Saturdays people slept in, read the papers, did yard work, maybe had a barbecue or went to visit family. Since Mami died, she hadn't had any local family except Dad. Since she'd become a recluse outside of working hours, she hadn't had any real friends. Anyhow, she wouldn't want to see anyone, not for a few days.

Half a mile up the road the pines gave way to aspen and fir around grassy glades, and within a hundred yards she saw the first mushrooms gleaming from the dappled shade. She knew what they were. Mami had taught her what to avoid as well as what to pick, but she walked over to them anyhow, admiring the picture they made, like something out of a child's fairy tale.
Funga demonio,
Mami had said.
Amanita muscaria,
said the mushroom guide. Red with wooly white spots on the cap. Also
amanita phailloides,
white as a dove's wing, graceful and pure. She stood looking at them for a long time, pretending not to think what she was thinking.

With a heaving sigh, she left the death caps behind and wandered among the trees parallel to the road. One winy, plate-sized bolete crouched in a hollow among some aspens, a triple frill of tan
pleurotus
fringed a half-rotted cottonwood stump, half a dozen white domes of
agaricus
poked through dried pine needles in a clump, gills as pink as flamingo feathers. There wasn't a single wormhole in any of them. That was enough. She had learned a long time ago not to take
more than she could eat in one day, unless she was drying them for winter.

Lately she hadn't been in the mood to do anything for winter, or for any future time. No more planning. No more preparation. No more dedication. Getting through each day was enough. No use drying mushrooms when she'd be the only one to eat them. Bert had never cared for mushrooms, not even on pizza, and the kids weren't here to eat them. Benita had always imagined the summers between college terms as a time of homecoming, but it had been only imagination, not thought. Thought would have told her that once they were gone, they would stay. Angelica had a job she couldn't leave. Carlos said he was getting a job. Cross your fingers and pray. He needed to work, at something, not to go on doing…whatever it was he did. Angelica begged her to come visit them, but somehow…it hadn't seemed to be the right time.

She glanced at her watch and went on upward, strolling now, relaxed by the quiet, the soft air, the bird murmur in the trees, keeping an eye on the shadows. When they said near enough to noon, she sat down on a flat rock and unpacked her lunch. Diet soda. Turkey sandwich. Two white peaches from the orchard behind the house—apricot trees, peach trees, plus plums, pear, apple, cherry. This year the peach trees bloomed even earlier than usual, but instead of the blossoms being killed by the April frost, they'd managed to set fruit before it happened. Pears, apples and cherries bloomed later. July was for pitting cherries, night after night, to freeze for pies. August and September were for making applesauce, apple jelly, and putting up pears.

That was then. Other years had been other years, and now was now.

She dallied with her food, small bites, little swallows, not wanting to think about going home, reluctantly packing away the scraps and the empty can in the pack with the mushroom bag on top. The clouds had moved swiftly from the west to make a dark layer almost overhead, and it was time to head back to town, go to the market, pick up some groceries. Maybe she'd stop at the bookstore for a couple of
books. One nice thing about working there was borrowing new books freebies. Or, she had a free pass to the movies. Something light and fun with no chance it would make her cry. Lately, if she got started, it was hard to stop.

She left the trees behind and stepped out onto one of the parallel tracks in the grass that passed for a road, looked up at the sky once more, lowered her eyes and was confronted by the aliens.

Thinking it over later, she blamed the TV and movies for her immediate reaction. The media gobbled everything that happened or could happen, then spit it out, over and over, every idea regurgitated, every concept so mushed up that when anything remarkable actually occurred it was already a cliché. Like cloning or surrogate mothers or extraterrestrials and UFOs. The whole world had heard about it and seen movies about it, and had become bored with the subject before it even happened!

So, when the aliens walked out of the trees across the rutted road and asked her what her personal label was, her first thought was that she'd stepped into the middle of TV movie set. She looked around for cameras. Then she thought, no, she'd seen ET arrivals done better, far more believably, and certainly with better actors playing the abductee than herself, so it was a joke. A moment's consideration of the creatures before her, however, told her they couldn't be humans in costume. Entirely the wrong shape and the wrong size.

Her final reaction was that she'd wanted to get away from home, sure, but an alien abduction was ridiculous.

The lead alien, the slightly taller one, cocked its head and repeated in the same dry, uninflected tone it had used the first time, “Please, what is your identity description?” Then, as though recognizing her uncertainty, “My designation is mrfleblobr'r'cxzuckand, an athyco, of the Pistach people.”

Benita had to clear her throat before she could speak. “I'm sorry, but I can't possibly pronounce your name. I am Benita, that is Benita Alvarez-Shipton of the…Hispanic people.”

A rather lengthy silence while the alien who had spoken turned to the other alien and the two of them focused their attention on a mechanism the first one was holding in one
of its pincers. Claws? No, pincers. Very neat, small, rather like a jeweler's tools, capable of deft manipulation.

The first alien turned to ask, “Are we mistaken in thinking this is America area? We are now in Hispanic area?”

She fought down an urge to giggle and almost choked instead. “This is the southwest part of
North
America, yes, but there are many Hispanic people in this area as well as Caucasian people and Indian people. This country also has Afro-American people, ah, Hawaiian people, Chinese people…” She caught herself babbling, and her voice trailed off as the two went back into their huddle. Could two huddle? She sucked in her cheeks and bit down hard, trying to convince herself she was awake. Half hidden in a grove of firs beyond the two aliens a gleaming shape hovered about two feet above the ground. The alien ship: a triangular gunmetal blue thing, flat on the bottom, rounded like a teardrop above. It looked barely big enough to hold the two beings, who were about her height, five foot six, though much lighter in build, each with four yellow arms and four green legs, and what seemed to be a scarlet exoskeleton covering the thorax and extending in a kind of kangaroo tail in back, like a prop. Or maybe wing covers, like a beetle. So, maybe they were bugs. Giant bugs. And maybe they weren't. The exoskeleton could be armor of some kind, and they had huge, really huge multifaceted eyes, plus several smaller ones that looked almost human. The mouths didn't look like insect mouths, though there were small squidgy bits around the sides. She couldn't see any teeth. Just horny ridges. They couldn't make words with inflexible mouths like that, so evidently they talked through the little boxes they had hanging around their…middles.

“Are you receptor person?” the taller one asked. “That is, provider of sequential life with or without DNA introduced by another individual or individuals?”

She thought about this, sorting it out, flushing a little as she thought, Oh, Lord, are they going to ask me about sex? She swallowed. “I'm a woman, female, yes, and I have two children.” With DNA introduced by another individual. Which explained a lot, if one was looking for explanations.

“Are you recently injured?” the other, slightly shorter alien asked, reaching out with a pincer foot to stroke the swollen purple skin around her left eye.

It felt rather like being touched with a pencil eraser: not hard, but not soft, either. Possibly very sensitive, she supposed, and the gesture was delicately nonintrusive. “A small accident,” she murmured, putting her hand protectively over the bruise. “It'll heal up very soon.”

“Ah. You have our sympathy for being marred,” this one said.

“Are you person of good reputation?” asked the taller one, with an admonitory glance toward its companion. “You have done no foolish or evil thing that would make others consider your words false or unbelievable?”

“All of us do foolish things,” she said. “None of us are perfect. I've never done any purposeful evil…”

You didn't mean to, Benita, but you hung your life out on the line like an old towel, to get faded and ragged. I wish you could go back, daughter, but we can't do that.

“…I don't think I've done anything too ridiculous.” She sighed, and looked at her shoes.

“Will you help us make contact with your people, so we may do so peacefully, without injury to anyone?”

This was real! The idea went off like a roman candle, pfoosh, whap! Honest to goodness real! Good Lord, of course she would help avoid injury, though what could she do? “I will if I can,” she equivocated, trying to wet her mouth and lips. They were dry, achingly dry.

“We ask only what you can,” the tall one said. “We will first give you names you can pronounce. We will simplify our own names from our youth, our undifferentiated time. You may call me Chiddy, and my companion is Vess.” Chiddy held out a bright red cube about six inches square. “This is our declaration. Our investigation shows that this America section is the section most interested in search for extraplanetary intelligence, so you will go to your authorities of this America section, and you will give them this. When it is in the hands of authority, it will automatically do all necessary convincing, advising, and preparing.” It nodded, well satisfied with this exposition.