The Fresco (31 page)

SATURDAY

The Fluiquosm, the Wulivery and the Xankatikitiki had long been associated with certain other predatory races in a League of Devourers, or Shizzalizaquosmni [SHIZzah-LIZzah-kwah-zumnee, many-joined-eaters], which league members called simply ShLQ [sh-lok-wuh]. When engaged in joint hunting expeditions on any planet, the league was headed by a committee made up of the eldest or most powerful of each race. On Earth, this group had found the planet to be a predator's paradise.

“Oh, it needs some work, of course,” gurgled the Wulivery chief known as Odiferous Tentacle. “Cities are not a proper venue for the hunt. The country makes prey so much more delicious. One has little food-things gathering around one's legs, thinking one is a tree! They squeak delightfully when one seizes them up!”

The Wulivery were fond of trees, and at least partially in response to Wulivery sensibilities, the Fluiquosm and Xankatikitiki leaders had agreed to set up their headquarters near the old farm in Virginia where they had met the cabal. It was a convenient place, one kept secure by intelligence agencies who had no idea what was going on there, and the humans who
kept the place under observation had been easily persuaded that they saw everything except the predators. While the signal towel flapped its continuous message of safety, while each footstep of other casual visitors was closely observed, the predators came and went without being noticed.

It was to this location that the one male and two female Fluiquosm involved in the abductions of Benita's family brought the two young people, and later Bert himself, following his unsuccessful role as bait. Fluiquosm females often accompanied the hunters though they did not usually hunt, and in certain cases they might be sent alone, for it was the females who convinced captured prey that safe release would follow if the prey would only lie quiet. It was the females who convinced the prey it did not see what its eyes claimed to see or hear what its ears claimed to hear. In short, the females cast the veil behind which much bloody work was done, and in return for their talents, their thirsts were among the first satisfied.

The two young humans picked up in California were convinced they had seen nothing and heard nothing and needed only to sleep for a lengthy while. Though bringing them to Virginia had involved a lengthy roundtrip flight, the two Fluiquosm, Quosmlizzak and Kazzalamgah, had badly needed the exercise. They had placed breathing capsules over the noses of the boy and girl, wrapped them in egg film as protection against high-altitude winds, and during the flight had amused themselves by dangling the bodies just in front of airliners in midair, scaring the pilots witless. They did not desist until one plane lost altitude and almost crashed, which would have been a waste of blood, and therefore shameful.

Bert had also been obtained by subterfuge, though his female abductor had chosen to bring him back via commercial carrier and store him temporarily in a hotel. The airline ticket counter person, the clothing store personnel, the barber, the hotel clerk, all had been mind fogged into assisting the operation, and the Fluiquosm who had managed the trip remembered the whole process as having been great fun.

Bert had now joined the two youngsters, all three care
fully cocooned in egg film and hung upright in the well-stocked larder tree where they could remain without damage for some days, until they were needed for something or, if that became appropriate, were sucked dry or eaten. Now that all the family except the woman had been brought under control, the predators assumed that Bert and the young people could be consumed immediately after the woman was in their hands.

To that end, a small but representative group of predators left the farm in Virginia and flew in a tiny shuttle to Washington, D.C., where they set themselves down in a small park not far from Benita's apartment. The Wulivery had reconnoitered the woman's lair during their previous attempt, and they knew it was vulnerable, though not in a way that would avoid detection. Each hunt had its rules as to number, age and type of prey, method of capture, how many points for particularly difficult captures, and so on. The rule-setter for this particular hunt had clearly stated that the woman had to be removed without any sign of violence. The prey was to be lured out with threats to the welfare of its offspring. Pistach nootchi, Xankatikitiki glafimmilox, even Wulivery vullaters would respond mindlessly to threats directed at offspring they had nurtured or borne. It was assumed human females would be the same, even though the ploy wouldn't work on Fluiquosm themselves. Fluiquosm were without progeny pride, sometimes going so far as to drain their offspring when other blood was unavailable.

The shuttle was set down in a thick copse of trees, and the group exited, including Odiferous Tentacle, a Xankatikitiki chief called Mrrgrowr, and the two Fluiquosm females, Quosmlizzak and Kazzalamgah. It was in the wee hours of the morning and the city was quiet enough that the Wulivery and one of the Fluiquosm felt they could collect Benita without attracting attention. While the mind-fogger stood by to confuse anyone who might witness any part of the abduction, the Wulivery pretended to be a tree while making a phone call from a sidewalk booth. Wulivery were skilled at languages and particularly good at picking up conversational idiom, though they could make vocal sounds only through a machine.

 

Benita's phone rang at three
A.M.
on Sunday, so her digital clock told her as she came groggily awake. “Hello,” she muttered, staring witlessly at the clock and wondering what new threat or confusion was happening. “Hello?”

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” demanded a mechanical voice.

The person who owned that voice wasn't anyone Benita knew, or wanted to know, but she realized immediately what it wanted.

“Hello,” she said again, sitting upright, forcing herself to waken. “Do you have the right number?”

“Alvarez,” the voice said. “This is the right number. We have you located. We have possession of your mate and offspring. Harm will come to them if you don't go downstairs and come out the back door right now…”

Shaking off her stupor, Benita gritted her teeth and said what she and Chad had agreed she would say. “I can't,” she said. “The president has asked me to appear before Senator Morse's committee on Monday morning. I've promised I'll be there.”

There was a snort at the other end, like an aborted curse, a moment's mumbling, as though to someone else, then a disconnect. She hung up, tears running down her face as she prayed she was doing the right thing. Whoever or whatever the voice was, it would have to report to Morse. And once Morse knew she'd testify before the committee, he'd have no reason…well, less reason to hang on to her children. Or to Bert.

She pulled herself out of bed, stumbling through the dark, banging one hand against the bathroom door hard enough to break a nail straight across, and then scratched herself with it when she splashed cold water on her face. She dressed in jeans and a knit shirt with a roomier flannel shirt over it, then went to the phone in the bedroom and called Chad, who said he would be over in a few minutes, with weapons.

“Can you shoot?” he asked.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” she muttered, digging through the drawer of the bedside table for a nail file. “My brothers and I used to shoot at cans and rats, out at my Dad's salvage
yard. Back then, it was out in the country…” Her voice trailed off. Back then had no point to it at the moment.

 

Odiferous Tentacle was annoyed. The result of the call was not as planned. The official, Morse, wanted the woman to appear before him, but the woman was already committed to appearing before Morse. Did Morse still want her taken secretly? This possibility had not been covered in the rules of engagement! Sending the Fluiquosm to report back to the group, the Wulivery found another phone and called General McVane, feeding a small tentacle up through the coin return to ding the coin mechanism as many times as required.

General McVane, wakened from a sound sleep, growled into the phone. “Call me back in an hour. I'll get ahold of Morse!”

While they waited, the predators continued their previous conversation.

The toothy Xankatikitiki chief, Mrrgrowr, remarked, “You're right that there is more meat here than seems possible, but a lot of it is flab. The flesh is too soft. Tiki's jaws will atrophy. Tiki's teeth will rot.”

Odiferous Tentacle shrugged, a gesture which took him from a height of four meters to one of about eight, followed by the emission of a lengthy stink. “Not all of them are flabby. In other parts of the world, the peasants are quite solid. A few generations of unlimited predation will take care of those that aren't. We'll make a practice of allowing the more fit to escape us. That way they'll reproduce disproportionately and improve the species.”

“It'll take generations,” complained Mrrgrowr.

“Let the young clean out the flabby ones!” said Quosmlizzak. “You know kids. They'll eat anything, what!”

“Your young, perhaps,” said Mrrgrowr, with a snarl. “Not ours. We Xankatikitiki care about our progeny.”

“Our young, then,” laughed Quosmlizzak. “We have them by the clutch, a dozen or so. And as for our good friends like Stinky here, the Wulivery young are spawned in the sea, what? A million at a time?”

“Only a few hundred thousand at even the most splendid
spawning,” murmured Odiferous Tentacle. “And only a few hundred survive to the parasitic larval stage when they cling to vullators. One does not consider them to be Wulivery until the vullator-clinging stage, and one does not name them until the second metamorphosis. Our young wouldn't be useful in culling the flabby humans for they become land creatures only after the fifth stage, at which point they are almost adult.”

“You'll want access to the oceans for your young, then?” asked Mrrgrowr.

The Wulivery waved its tentacles in negation. “No. Alas! Have you looked at their seas? Filthy! Also, the humans have so badly overfished them that our young would find little to eat and might themselves end up as food for the few remaining whales! So amusing! The humans pretend to save the whales while they go on stealing the whales' food until the whales starve! Ha ha. This world will have dead oceans, shortly. We have already planned to restock them with hybrids of the poisonous earthly puffer fish and equally noxious imported sea-creatures. Then we will eat the coastal humans who sully the sea while the new fish become food for our young but not for mankind. Until that is done, one fears this planet is too squalid for us to reproduce here.

“Hunting, however, will be good. We prefer hunting in shade, near clean water, as otherwise we get overheated. There's plenty of prey along the sides of the jungles and woods. Enough to last us for years.”

“Then you believe the humans will make an agreement with us?” asked Mrrgrowr.

“Oh,” murmured Odiferous Tentacle, “one thinks they will. They'll ask us to eat the people in some other country, of course, so we'll have to predate secretly in this country. Luckily, many of their people
drop out
or
run away
, so a few disappearances won't be suspected.”

“Have any of the rest of you preyed on a smokeweed ingestor?” queried Quosmlizzak. “One tried to suck an ingestor a few days ago. It tasted so absolutely foul one had to disgorge the juices, and one is sure it would be deleterious to one's health to eat many of them…”

“You're quite right,” shuddered the Wulivery. “Terrible taste, and it stays with one so! The man, Bert, is one such. He stinks terribly! Do not ask me to share his flesh, thank you, no.”

“We'll have to get rid of the bad ones,” remarked Mrrgrowr.

“Will the dear Pistach let us do that?” asked Odiferous Tentacle. “Will they go on causing us trouble?”

“The Pistach!” The Xankatikitiki barked with laughter. “The Wulivery haven't heard? The Pistach may have no time to cause us anything! They'll soon have a civil war on their hands.”

“What?” cried Quosmlizzak.

“No! The Pistach?” laughed Odiferous Tentacle. “How delicious!”

Mrrgrowr snarled, “It's true. A rebel has built an army and taken ships! He has made an alliance with us. We have given him weapons and ships. Our people heard of him last on his way to Pistach-home. To conquer the planet!”

“Could that be why the Pistach brought Inkleozese with them when they returned?” asked Quosmlizzak.

Silence. The Wulivery made a spitting noise. The Xankatikitiki growled in their throats. “Is that true? Inkleozese? Drat them! What business did they have coming here?”

“We knew they'd come sooner or later,” soothed Odiferous Tentacle. “We'll just stay out of their reach, that's all.”

“Easier asserted than accomplished,” muttered the Xankatikitiki. “We went to considerable trouble wooing that Pistach rebel. Who would have thought of Inkleozese!”

“Well, they're not allowed to…you know, not to members of the Confederation.”

“They do it to members of the Confederation,” asserted Quosmlizzak. “They find a legal precedent first, but they do it. Like, for instance if they come after us, they'll claim we're not actually members of the Confederation because if we were we wouldn't be contravening its laws by being here…”

“They wouldn't!” said Odiferous Tentacle. “Not to us.”

“Don't bet on it,” said the Fluiquosm. “Stranger things have happened.”

“Time to reach out to the general again,” said Mrrgrowr, reversing his head to examine a steeple clock.

Odiferous Tentacle grunted and went off toward the phone, returning almost immediately.

“I have reached,” sighed the Wulivery. “The general is very upset. He has tried to find the senator, but the senator does not answer his phone, and there is no one at his office. The general thinks we had better take the woman anyhow, even if we must break in to do so. He feels the senator will probably want her, so it will be best to have her on hand.”