Since being here, I have learned to value the experience as it helped me understand Earth people better than I could otherwise have done. They, too, are often suffused by shame at what reproductive nature has compelled them to do. They are reminded, and they cringe. They wish to forget.
I know, for example, that your young people, and those of mid years, also, often cannot help the sexual foolishness they commit, and assisting them in this matter would be wise. I know your rapists cannot help what they do, but I also know they cannot be allowed to do it. Since the physically stronger half of your race are inceptors, and since they are disproportionately represented at various levels of government, they have elevated inceptorhood above all other states of being, holding it above even the right to live. Inceptorhood is so holy that it forbids changing rapists into campesi or even proffi, though they would be happier so. You may kill a rapist, but you may not change him into something noninceptorish. It is a great trouble in your society, one Vess and I are at present much concerned with.
Which is beside the point. After a period of convalescence, I continued my term at the House of the Fresco, and it was there that a second trauma occurred. I was reminded of it anew by something you said not long ago, Benita, about the Sistine Chapel.
I have spoken of the grime that covers the interior of the House of the Fresco, most of it deposited as soot from candles and oil lamps, thousands of which are burned by worshippers and seekers after truth and pilgrims from Pistach’s far-flung worlds. It would be heresy to clean the Fresco, yes, but the room that contains it has to be cleaned at least annually. A large scaffolding is erected, and teams of proffi and athyci come in to wash down the inside of the dome, the pillars, the wall space above and below the Fresco, and finally the floor itself. At the time of which I speak, the Chapter of the Fresco House had recently ruled that the traditional cleaning utensils, animal skins and a ritual soap made from wax plants and scented with flowers, could be replaced by a more convenient and effective cleansing agent. The new stuff was a grime specific solvent, and we were given large jugs of it, each labeledDanger, do not drink, w ith a picture of a dried thorax and crossed leg armor.
The stuff stank, but it worked almost miraculously, needing little if any rinsing and leaving virtually no streaks. In half the usual time, we had the inside of the dome done, the pillars washed down, and it was time to do the walls above the Fresco, which had been carefully, so we assumed, draped to avoid any damage. As it happened, I was the one who committed the offense. I was working above the final depiction,The Martyrdom ofKasiwees, w hen someone tried to open the left-hand door from the outside, bumping the scaffolding and making me drop the cleaning cloth as I grabbed for support. The cloth dropped between my body and the Fresco, and in the effort to catch it, I pressed it against the drapery with a lower appendage. When I retrieved it, I saw to my horror that it had been pressed against the Fresco itself, through a gap in the drapery.
My cries brought assistance, and we carefully redraped the area, leaving no holes at all. It was not until the job was done and the drapes were removed that we saw, high on the Fresco of Kasiwees, a rag-sized area of blue sky dotted with figures we had been taught were flosti, returning from their wintering grounds. With the grime removed, one needed no magnification to see that the figures were not flosti. They were Pistach, winged Pistach who, from their dress, were from the Imperial Houses, the house from which Mengantowhai had come. Also, the figures were not arriving,- they were departing.
The shock was palpable. The Fresco Chapter, all those currently charged with the care of the Fresco, met in lengthy sessions to determine what should be done about the disclosure. Whose fault was it? Though they were kind enough not to blame me for dropping the cloth, they were thrown into great confusion by the contents of the Kasiwees commentary, the one that referred to symbols of springtime and renewal, i.e., flosti, when in fact the flosti were not there!