The Fresco (41 page)

“But, the Fresco does define our belief about ourselves and our worlds. Your Scripture defines men and women as unique children of God and it defines the world as the center of God's attention. Because of your Scripture, you behave as though that is true, unfortunately from our point of view, for it leads you to destructive, hurtful excesses. Our Fresco defines us as a people who amend other worlds and bring them to peace, but I confess, we are that people only because the Fresco says so.”

Chad said, “I'm a student of languages, and in our world, seminal works of ethics are almost always written. In fact, I know of no culture in which moralities are conveyed by picture, though certainly many histories are memorialized in that way. What is it that makes you so concerned?”

Chiddy came close and confided in them, telling them all about the dropped cleaning rag and the flap that followed. He told them about Glumshalak and the Compendium. He told them how the Chapter had refused to look any deeper at the Fresco itself.

“How far back does the cleaning taboo go?” Chad asked.

“To the time of Glumshalak,” Chiddy said. “It was that athyco who forbade us to fiddle with the Fresco evermore. We have always believed that Glumshalak considered the possibility the Fresco might be changed by some political or tribal faction to gain power for themselves, and so ai forbade it.”

Chad nodded, asked a few more questions, and looked exceeding thoughtful.

“Do you understand what's going on?” Benita asked him when they were alone.

“You reminded me about the Dead Sea Scrolls. The reason there was such a tizzy was that many religious groups really don't worship God, they worship the Scriptures. Christians,
Jews, they both do it. So do the Moslems. Even though the commandment says ‘You shall have no other God before me,' the Scripture worshippers put the writings ahead of God. Instead of interpreting God's actions in nature, for example, they interpret nature in the light of the Scripture. Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture.

“The Pistach could be like that. Totally governed by what's on that wall.”

“That's a happy thought,” said Benita, finding it anything but. If anything, the discussion amplified the atmosphere of pending danger, one sufficiently disturbing that none of them, except for Carlos, slept really well that night.

In the morning they were given a meal of tea and a fruit that looked like a spherical, faceted eggplant and tasted like nothing they had ever tasted before. Rhubarb, maybe, Benita suggested. Chad thought sweetened asparagus. Carlos merely smiled and ate it without complaint. Even as they climbed the stairs to the House of the Fresco, Carlos had a smile on his face and was humming under his breath. The stairway was wide and gracefully curved, with flowers growing along the edges of the terraces and flat areas where Pistach gathered and sang. Their singing, Benita thought, was like an evening chorus of crickets and night birds and frogs, repetitive and soothing and, after a time, so subliminal as to be totally disregarded. The House at the top of the stairs rose in a lovely domed line, like the breast of a young girl. They went through the center one of three bronze doors.

She had expected dirtiness, dark colors, ominous shadings something akin to the look of the Sistine Chapel murals before they were cleaned, but it was far worse than she had imagined. The room was lofty, well proportioned and clean, but the painted panels were only dark smears, shapes barely discernable through a varnish of soot. Above the Fresco was a narrow circular gallery on which a number of Pistach were gathered. Though she wasn't sure what old age looked like among the Pistach, she got the immediate impression that
these were very old ones. Perhaps it was the way Chiddy and Vess bowed to them and walked with their eyes down beneath the gaze of those above.

The humans were led to the center of the room, to the “Ground of Canthorel,” a plot of fragrant leafed plants where a bench had been provided for them.

“The plants are actually grown in a greenhouse,” whispered Vess. “They bring in fresh ones each morning, take the bottoms off the pots so the roots can actually touch the Ground of Canthorel, which is where his ashes were spread, thus sanctifying the plants. Visitors nip off a leaf as a remembrance. There'd be nothing left unless they put new ones in each day.”

Several Pistach carrying buckets and mops were gathered between the center door and the one to the right, and a tall Pistach in blue apron and hood (a curator, they were told) stood behind a lectern. Benita thought he looked nervous, though she couldn't tell why she thought so until she noticed the tiny fringy bits around his mouth trembling, as though he had Parkinson's disease. T'Fees emerged from the group with the mops and signaled the curator, who began to read. Chiddy, beside her, translated.

“Panel number one,” he said. “
The Meeting.
This panel portrays the welcoming of Mengantowhai by the Jaupati. We see the ship in the background, and in the foreground several of the Jaupati, gazing with wonder at the great vessel. In the middle distance, we see Mengantowhai approaching, carrying his staff. Stepping forward from among the Jaupati is the person of Bendangiwees, leader of the Jaupati and first friend of the Pistach. To the rear, right, we see three amorphous figures assaulting wine jars. This is a teaching against drunkenness.”

At this point in the reading, T'Fees shouted a command, and his minions began sloshing liquid over the amber/ocher haze that hid the subject matter. As the curator went on with the details of commentary, the liquid ran down the wall, carrying the soot away, disclosing the bright colors of the wall. Runnels of dark cleanser gathered on the floor to be sponged up by the cleaners and squeezed into empty buckets. Again
and again the mops stroked fresh cleanser across the panel between the doors, and the cleaning Pistach moved back and forth, taking buckets away and bringing new ones.

On the gallery, the old Pistach murmured among themselves, sometimes crying out in feeble voices. Benita saw them point and shiver and point again, as though they saw some great disaster they were impotent to avert.

Since the cleaners worked from the top down, the first part of the picture to emerge was an expanse of bluish violet sky. The ship emerged next, coming out of the sooty haze as a great lumpy thing with what looked like gun turrets all over it. Next was Mengantowhai, a strong, stern-looking Pistach carrying…well, the curator had called it a staff, but it was obviously a weapon. The huddled things in the middle right background were not wine jars or any kind of vessels, but people, presumably Jaupati, who were being beaten by uniformed Pistach.

Finally, they saw the foreground Jaupati emerge from the veil, a furry people rather like large six-legged cats. Their mobile faces showed expressions of terror and loathing of the Pistach. Their gestures were aversive, and their leader, Bendangiwees, thrust out his four-fingered forehands, warningly.

“Look at it, curator!” called T'Fees, when the last of the mopping and sponging had been done. “What does it show?”

“As I said,” the curator intoned, his voice shaking only slightly. “It shows Mengantowhai's first meeting with the Jaupati. The Jaupati were afraid, at first, but this emotion was soon replaced with gratitude.”

“And the ones being beaten?”

“Probably…criminals. People…who had attempted to disrupt the order of the meeting ceremony…”

“Or perhaps simple citizens who didn't get out of the way fast enough,” trumpeted T'Fees. “Second panel! Read, curator!”

The curator looked at the page before him, hesitantly, letting his eyes drift upward to the aged Pistach on the gallery.

“Read!” demanded T'Fees again.

He read.

“
The Descent of the Steadfast Docents
. We see the docents descending into the society of the Jaupati, spreading through
out their society in order to civilize them and make them orderly….”

This time the sloshing was done more quickly, the wiping away more efficiently. This panel was not crowded between bronze pillars, more cleaners could work at once, and they were falling into the routine of it. Everyone saw armored figures moving out from the ship, crushing any who stood in their path. In the picture, one of the Pistach carried a lance with a Jaupati head on it, and when he saw this, Chiddy stopped translating. He was shaking. The Pistach do not weep outwardly, Benita knew, but something very similar was going on with him.

“Third panel,” cried T'Fees. “Read!”

“
The Uniting of the Tribes
,” read the curator. “Seeing the peaceful Pistach willing to help them, the tribes voluntarily gave up their independence to join into a union…”

On the wall, they saw the tribes united, by force, and marched off into the next three panels,
Peaceful Work, Civilization
and
The Offerings
, where they saw slaves laboring for the Pistach to build mighty monuments and estates and finally a great palace.
The Offerings
was panel number six, and it purported to show the voluntary offerings of the Jaupati to King Mengantowhai at the time of his crowning. It was, however, the Jaupati who were being offered up, and in panel seven,
The Adoration
, the Jaupati were being slain at Mengantowhai's feet. Among the slain was the leader Bendangiwees, and dragged along to observe his murder was his obviously pregnant mate.

Panel eight was the
Birth of Kasiwees
. The mother was the same female as in the preceding panel (the Jaupati had distinctive skin markings that enabled one to identify individuals). When the soot was removed, they saw the gifts brought to the child by his family; many types of blades and weapons, sharp edges to turn against the conquerors who had murdered his father. Panel nine,
The Evangelism of Kasiwees
, could have been better named the Vengeance of Kasiwees, for it showed the young Kasiwees raising up a rebel force under a banner bearing the word
UmaPokoti
, or Avengers.

“We were told the Pokoti were another people entirely,”
whispered Chiddy in a depressed and horrified voice. “We have been taught they were envious of the peaceful Jaupati.”

“It looks like to me they were simply fighting against invaders,” said Chad. “But that was centuries ago. Many races begin as warlike.”

Chiddy was not comforted. And so it went through panels showing the kidnapping of Mengantowhai, the rescue of Mengantowhai by Canthorel, the reprimands given to Mengantowhai by several of his own aged athyci who told him slavery and murder were wrong. It was impossible to misunderstand the panels, for many of them contained written quotations of those pictured.

In Panel fourteen,
The Fearful Faithless,
the abolitionists left the planet at the head of a schism that erupted over the question of slavery. The teaching of the panel had always been that these were traitorous Pistach, afraid of the Pokoti. In Panel fifteen,
The Blessing of Canthorel,
which was supposed to show Mengantowhai's work affirmed and blessed by Canthorel, it actually showed him confessing to Canthorel that he had underestimated the Jaupati's desire for freedom, that more force and greater atrocities would be needed to put down the rebellion. This was clearly conveyed by a transcript of their conversation written down the sides of the panel, no interpretation needed. In panel sixteen,
Departure of Canthorel,
Canthorel left the planet after telling the Jaupati they had been greatly wronged. And, in the final panel, between the left and center doors, the one called the
Martyrdom of Kasiwees,
they saw Kasiwees being murdered yes, but by Mengantowhai himself. Around Kasiwees were scattered the stones and arrows of his battle, and he held a long dagger in his hand. In the upper left, they could see the last of the Pistach flying away, and in the middle foreground stood a device easily identifiable as a
planet stripper,
one that would destroy all life upon the Jaupati world.

This was the story Canthorel had painted in the House of the Fresco. No matter how one looked at it, it was an accusation and a warning. It said as clearly as paint could say, “Woe and Tribulation, this is an offense before the universe, do not do this again!”

The curator had long since given up reading the orthodox version. The room was as hushed as a tomb. Only T'Fees trumpeted on, “You see, you see, you damned interfering blobs of worthless guts! You had no right! You have no right! Pistach peace is based on a lie!”

He threw open the bronze door and stormed out into the light of a bloody sunset, his minions behind him, leaving the observers among the guttering candles.

“I'm hungry,” said Carlos.

Vess rose, saying in a toneless voice, “I'll take you back to the guest house. There'll be food there.” They went out, soundlessly.

Benita stood wearily and turned, looking upward at the gallery. Many of the old Pistach still leaned upon the railing, their normally bright green-, yellow-, and red-colored bodies pale.

“They had no idea, did they?” Benita asked, almost whispering.

Chiddy did the little rotation of the upper body that passed for a negative headshake. “We thought…we knew some things would be different. We thought they would be
matters of interpretation. A wine jar versus another kind of vessel. A springtime symbol versus an autumnal one. But not this. None of us thought this.” He made the sound of Pistach laughter, harshly rasping.

“Benita, athyci give sermon cycles at the great festivals, seventeen sermons on seventeen days, to accord with the number of panels, one sermon on each panel subject. I have done it myself. I have quoted Glumshalak's Commentaries to explain why we do what we do. And now…now, what can I base my beliefs upon?”

He turned and walked sadly toward the door. She started to follow him, but then detoured to her left, toward panel thirteen. Something had been bothering her about the panel in which Mengantowhai was reprimanded by his athyci. The counselors were gathered beneath a tree that had a few bare branches but was mostly leafy, with both blossoms and fruit. There were words along the bottom of the panel. She took out her little notepad and copied the words down, being thankful Pistach lettering was phonetic, not ideographic.

She noticed there was a similar tree in the panel to the left,
The Rescue
, in which Mengantowhai was rescued from the Pokoti. It was the same tree, same number of branches, same shape of trunk, but this tree was completely dead. She turned to the right, to panel fourteen,
The Fearful Faithless
. The same tree was there as well, partly alive.

“Chad,” she called. “Come look.”

He came over and they walked back, counterclockwise, around the House of the Fresco. Every single panel had the same tree in it, either dead or leafing out, or in flower or fruit.

“The two growing trees are in panels where Pistach people disdained Mengantowhai,” she said.

Chad murmured, “And they were painted after the rest of the Fresco. See, the overlap here? You can see what was painted underneath. That's why most of the trees are small, they're fitted into whatever vacant space was left.”

They had come to the first panel, and even there they found a tree. Chad shrugged and she returned the gesture. It
was interesting, but they didn't know what it meant, if anything. They went out onto the terrace where Chiddy waited in morose silence.

“What does a fruiting tree symbolize?” she asked.

Chiddy looked at her, sighing. “Well, it's a sign of fruition, of course. Of something long in growth that has ripened. Like a head of grain. Or a pomego, like the ones you had for breakfast.”

“Is that an accepted meaning among Pistach?”

“Oh, yes. The Pistach revere edible fruit. They regard it as a great gift. The fruiting tree is carved on some of our most ancient monuments, some that go back long before the House of the Fresco was built.”

They went back to the guest house, to an evening meal that none of them tasted, and then to another restless night. Sometime in the dark house, Benita got up to find Chad wandering about, at loose ends, as she was. They went out into the dark drenched garden, following the firefly glow of tiny lanterns to a bench that had been put there for them, one of the Pistach leaning boards laid across two stones to make it flat and low enough to sit on.

“You know what I think,” she said to Chad. “I think that historian, Glumshalak, purposely changed the Fresco in his Compendium, diametrically changed it. And he forbid the Pistach to clean the Fresco so they'd never know.”

“Why would he have done that?”

“Do you ever go to church, Chad?”

“Not often. My parents were Methodists, at least at Christmas and Easter. Merilu was reared Episcopalian, but that was more a social thing with her parents than it was religious.”

“My mother was Catholic for weddings and burials and funerals. At other times she was a pagan I guess. She believed in spirits of the trees and mountains and rivers, not that they would do anyting for her, rather that she should be protective of them. Her father was a history professor, in Mexico. He wrote several books about the bloody gods of Mexico, and she read them all. When I was a kid, Mami told me the Mexican gods weren't the only bloody ones, and we should never serve gods that had been invented to take the
blame for everything bloody, painful, primitive and unenlightened that people wanted to do.
Why did we Israelites kill every man, woman, child and beast in that city? Why, the Lord Jehovah commanded it. Why do we Spaniards steal food from these Indian people, and mutilate them, and use them as slaves? Why, we do it so they will love Christ! Why do we Aztecs torture and sacrifice people? Huitzilopotchli demands it
!

“Whether it was the Israelites invading Canaan or the Spanish invading the Southwest, or one Mexican tribe warring against another, the answer was always the same.
We enslave and torture and mutilate and kill in the name of our god
.

“My grandfather said people who can learn, learn morality the way they learn everything else, by building on history. He also said that some people cannot learn from history, so they cannot change. For them, there's only one book or tradition or whatever it's called in their religion, and in that book God is eternal and whatever the book says God commanded two or three or four thousand years ago, God still commands today. That may be kill homosexuals or kill nonbelievers. It may say enslave your enemies. It may say mutilate or sequester women, or sell your ten-year-old daughter for somebody's third wife.

“But suppose back in A.D. two or three hundred, we had had a Glumshalak, and he had blanked out all the Old Testament. Suppose he had written a commentary that purported to tell us what was in the book, but the book itself was eliminated. Suppose the commentary was devoted to tolerance and persuasion, suppose it forbade violence. We wouldn't have a god who kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden for intellectual curiosity, or the destruction of the whole world by flood, or the slaughtering of innocents right and left. The commentary would tell us about a God who triumphed through peace and paying attention to history instead of bloodshed and horror.”

“You think we'd have sweetness and light?” asked Chad.

“Maybe, if there was no bloody scripture for the evangelists to quote.”

“It would make a big dent in self-righteousness, but it wouldn't change human nature.”

“It might not change human nature, but it would eliminate a whole set of alibis. I think that's what Glumshalak did. He didn't want his people to be bound by the cruelty and violence in their history. He wanted his people to
believe
they were good. So he destroyed all the records that said what was really there…”

“How do you know?”

“He had to have done, otherwise they'd have turned up before now. He certainly didn't repaint the Fresco, he didn't have the talent. That's obvious. He forbade anybody cleaning the Fresco, and he wrote down what he thought should have been there. I think Glumshalak's commentary made the Pistach the people they are. A good people. Not perfect, but good, because they've been selecting toward goodness for generations and generations. When the president told me not to let anything interfere with their coming back and finishing the job, he was saying that they're a good people.”

“You think the Pistach won't go back to Earth?”

“You heard T'Fees. I think this throws their whole interventionist policy into the toilet and leaves us at the mercy of the Fluiquosm, the Wulivery, the Xankatikitiki and the American Congress.” Her voice shook a little as she remembered the Wulivery and Morse trying to devour her. Not a good experience, either of them.

“I hadn't thought that far,” he said in a hollow voice.

“There's a problem,” she said. “You haven't been around the Pistach as much as I have, but one thing is very clear to me and it frightens me. They're selected for their jobs, and when one of them is selected to do a certain specific job, that one has little or none of the flexibility a generalist would bring to the same job. The Pistach pretty much go by the book.”

“By the Fresco.”

“Right.”

He sighed. “What's the significance of the tree?”

“Just what Chiddy said: fruition, growth, change. In our Bible, Jesus says you know trees by their fruits. I think Glumshalak realized someday people might clean that Fresco. He put the trees there, to indicate why he was doing
what he was doing, showing what incidents were deadly and which ones were fruitful, coding the history they should put behind them, in order that they might grow up and bear good fruit.”

She leaned wearily on his shoulder and he put his arm around her. They sat there, deep in thought, sharing their mutual humanity in a place far, far from home.

“Oh, that's really nice,” said a sarcastic voice behind them. Carlos.

She got up without haste and turned to face him. “We think there's a tragedy coming, Carlos. Human companionship helps when contemplating tragedy.”

“What tragedy?”

“The possibility that the Pistach may not return to Earth.”

“So long as they get me home, I should give a shit?” he commented.

“You know,” said Chad, in a conversational voice, “I really don't like your son, Benita.”

“I know,” she said, looking into Carlos's surprised face. “I don't like him either.”

“What d' you…” Carlos gargled. “You're still…”

“Go to bed, Carlos,” said Chiddy, from the open door.

Carlos made a threatening move, there was a spark, and he fell down. Chiddy said, “The euphoric wore off. His manner is partly a reaction to that fact. Put him in the ship, in the cubby.” He came to the bench. “I've been listening.”

“We were talking about the Bible,” Benita said, her voice trembling a little. Her first instinct had been to go to Carlos, then to yell at Chiddy for hurting him, even though she knew Chiddy hadn't hurt him. The Pistach lugging him away weren't hurting him either. “What did you do to him?”

“Silenced him for the moment,” said Chiddy. “It's something we do with our own children occasionally. Shut their bodies down to let their minds calm themselves. I don't have time to deal with him now. Neither do you.”

“What's going on?” asked Chad.

“The Chapter have been meeting. They are adrift. They lack any sense of direction. I wish you could come talk to them, dear Benita, but they won't listen to a
nootch! Oh, if only you could say to them what I have just heard you saying…”

“Then tell them I am an athyco in disguise,” she said. “Hell, tell them we're both athyci. Appointed by our government to assess the help you're giving us!”

“They have already seen,” he said. “Your clothing. Your manner. It…they wouldn't accept it. I can tell which way the decision is going. I came tonight, because if I wait for morning, they will have decided I may not return to Earth at all. They will have decided on nonintervention. They will forget Tassifoduma. There is something base in each of us, something we keep hidden and quiet. Now it will bubble up, like tar in a pit, and people will say to themselves, well, we are something other than we thought. We are violent, we are conquerors. We will return to the time of weapons, the time of disorder, the time of slavery. They are already saying that is what we are, and we can't fight what we are!”

“What you are is what you choose to be,” Benita cried.

He choked with bitter laughter. “Oh, Benita, even as tiny ones, we are taught not to choose, not to want. Choosing is not what we do.”

She fumbled about for a reason, finally suggesting, “But you have to take us back, Chiddy!”

“I know. That's what I'm saying. I have to take you back.”

“And you have to stay on Earth a while…”

“No, I must return at once. They won't let—”

“The Inkleozese! They're still on Earth, awaiting the emergence of their larvae! They have no spaceships. You have to wait and bring them back. Otherwise you're intervening, aren't you?”

“This is true,” he said haltingly. “I had forgotten the Inkleozese.”

“And Vess has to come with you, just in case something goes wrong.” Over Chiddy's shoulder she saw T'Fees approaching.

“A little redundancy,” said Chad. “Every venture requires a little redundancy. She's right.”

T'Fees came within hearing distance. “What are you discussing?”

“Benita says we have to go back and pick up the Inkleozese,” said Chiddy. “We really are committed to doing so.”

“Benita is correct,” said T'Fees, after a moment's thought. “But we will insist upon holding a hostage, just to be sure Chiddy and Vess return to their home!”

The large Pistach came closer, peering into Benita's face. “It is true that you must be returned to your homes and the Inkleozese must be fetched, but now that we have proved Pistach interventionism to be nonhistoric, we have no intention of letting it start up again.”

“What do you mean, hostage?” she asked.