“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!”