The Fresco Read online

  Sheri S. Tepper

  The Fresco

  Contents

  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

  1

  things that go bump in the night

  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 backwards, 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.

  2

&n
bsp; benita

  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 be
fore 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.