Up the Walls of the World

by James Tiptree Jr.

  THE ALMOST-INCORPOREAL VASTNESS PUZZLES, LISTENING AS LEVIATHAN MIGHT PUZZLE OVER THE PROBLEMS OF AN ATOM. IT HAS NO CONCEPTS TO UNDERSTAND THAT IT IS RECEIVING THE EMMISIONS OF A BODILESS SENTIENCE EVOLVED IN THE MINUTE ELECTRONIC ARTIFACTS OF A LIFE-FORM TOO TINY FOR ITS PERCEPTION, EMPLOYING STOLEN MOMENTS OF TRANSMISSION TO EXPRESS ITS YEARNING FOR TRANSCENDENT ACCESS.

  BUT THE THOUGHT ARISES THAT THIS SMALL SENTIENCE IS IMPRISONED, IS TIED TO A PUNY CLOT IN THE TRAIN OF A DWARF STAR. PERHAPS THAT IS WHAT IS WRONG? PERHAPS IT DESIRES FREEDOM TO MOVE AS IS NORMAL ALONG THE CURRENTS OF THE STAR-SWARM? THE WICKED ONE HAS NEVER CONSIDERED ITS OWN BODY: NOW IT PERCEIVES, WITH AN ODD PRIDEFULNESS, THAT IT IS INDEED VAST BY COMPARISON WITH ANY OTHER KNOWN THING. IT COULD OFFER ACCESS TO UNCOUNTED PYGMY ENTITIES LIKE THIS ONE AND NEVER NOTICE IT!

  THE IDEA SEEMS PECULIARLY APPROPRIATE, DESPITE ITS DOUBTLESS CRIMINAL WRONG. THERE HAS BEEN, THOUGH THERE IS NO SYMBOL FOR IT, LONELINESS. THIS LITTLE PLEADER IS WELCOME TO SHARE ITS DISMAL WANDERINGS, IF IT WILL.

  IMPULSIVELY, THE SPACEBOURNE VASTNESS MOVES CLOSER, SETTING OFF IMMENSE DISTURBANCES IN THE HELIOPAUSE, AND FINDS THAT IT SEEMS TO BE ABLE TO OPEN AN INTERFACE.

  COME, IT PROJECTS.

  THE SMALL THING UNDERSTANDS AT ONCE. WITH STARTLING SPEED, A SURGE OF ABSTRACT STRUCTURE STARTS POURING THROUGH THE INTERFACE. ANOTHER NEW SENSATION: THE STREAM OF INFORMATIONAL CONFIGURATIONS RUSHING IN ARE FELT AS A TINY TRICKLE OF PLEASURE. IT IS AS THOUGH SOME HITHERTO-UNUSED PROGRAM WERE COMING ON LINE.

  THERE SEEMS TO BE A SURPRISING QUANTITY. TIRING OF THE PROCESS, LEVIATHAN PREPARES TO CLOSE AND MOVE AWAY. BUT THE LITTLE BEING’S DISTRESS IS SO PIERCING THAT ITS HOST RELENTS AND ALLOWS IT TO COMPLETE TRANSFER. WHY NOT? A MILLION SUCH INPUTS WOULD NOT OCCUPY A MILLIONTH OF ITS REACH. AND PERHAPS THERE IS SOMETHING HERE THAT MIGHT MITIGATE PAIN FOR AN AEON OR TWO.

  WHEN THE INPUT-TICKLE FINALLY CEASES, THE ASTRAL ENORMITY MOVES AIMLESSLY AWAY. IT HAS BEEN SO INTENT ON THE NEW EVENTS WITHIN THAT IT HAS FORGOTTEN THE PECULIAR STRAND OF ANTIENTROPIC ENERGY THAT LED IT HERE. NOW ITS ATTENTION IS DRAWN BACK, WHEN ONE OF THE INFINITESIMAL FLYING SPARKS DIVERGES DIRECTLY INTO THE OUTER LAYERS OF ITS BEING. AUTOMATICALLY, THE LAYER ENCYSTS, WHILE THE VAST ENERGY-NEGATION THAT SERVES FOR SKIN MOBILIZES THAT SECTOR TO REPEL ANYTHING MORE OF THE KIND. NO ALARM IS FELT AT SUCH INTRUSION: INDEED, NOTHING IN THE COSMOS EXCEPT THE ENEMY ITSELF HAS EVER EVOKED THE CONCEPT OF DANGER IN ANY OF THIS RACE. WITH ONLY A TRACE OF IRRITATION AT THE BEHAVIOR OF THESE MINUTE SINGULARITIES, THE GREAT BEING CONTINUES IDLY TO DRIFT UPSTREAM ALONG THE ODD ENERGIC THREAD.

  MEANWHILE ITS ATTENTION IS ALL WITHIN. THE LITTLE PASSENGER, OR ITS NUCLEUS, IS DEFINITELY MOBILE WITHIN THE VAST EXPANSES OF ITS NEW HOME. STRANGELY, THIS ALSO FEELS PLEASURABLE. INDULGENTLY, THE GREAT ONE POWERS-DOWN HIS INTERNAL BARRIERS. THE SMALL ONE RESPONDS WITH EXCITED TRANSMISSIONS AS IF DESIRING MORE. PERHAPS IT WISHES TO RECEIVE FROM THE VOID OUTSIDE? THE HUGE HOST DECIDES TO ALLOW ACCESS TO THE NUCLEUS AND ITS SENSORS, RESERVING ONLY ITS MOST PRIVATE, SEALED-OFF CENTERS OF SHAME AND WRONG.

  THERE IS NO SENSE OF MISGIVING: SUCH ARE ITS POWERS THAT THIS TINY INTRUDER COULD BE ANNIHILATED WITH A FLICK OF NON-BEING.

  AS THE SMALL ONE GAINS ACCESS TO THE MAIN RECEPTOR-SYSTEM, ITS EBULLIENCE INCREASES SO THAT IT SEEMS TO RESONATE. NOTHING LIKE THIS HAS COME INTO THE SADNESS OF EXISTENCE BEFORE. APPARENTLY MERE DATA IS NOT NEUTRAL TO THIS LITTLE BEING.

  BUT HOW ACTIVE IT IS! NOW IT IS REACHING EVEN TOWARD THOSE CONDITIONS OF PRIVATE GRIEF THAT ARE NOT TO BE DISTURBED. THE GREAT HOST SENDS A WARNING WAVE OF COLD NEGATION THROUGH ITSELF. THE SMALL PASSENGER RE-COILS, BUT STILL EMANATES ITS INCOMPREHENSIBLE PLEA. MORE! WHAT CAN IT DESIRE, SOME COMPLETER UNION, SOME COMPLETION OF ITSELF?

  BEMUSED, THE UNSUBSTANTIAL VASTNESS SAILS THE STAR-WAYS, FOR THE FIRST TIME ALMOST FORGETFUL OF ITS OWN BADNESS AND DESPAIR. SLOWLY ANOTHER IDEA RISES THROUGH THE ICY CURRENTS THAT UNDERBASE ITS THOUGHT: IT WOULD BE INTERESTING TO COMPREHEND THE LITTLE PASSENGER’S SYMBOL SYSTEM.

  BUT HOW? SUCH AN IDEA HAS SURELY NEVER COME TO ANY OF ITS RACE. IT PONDERS. ABSENTLY FOLLOWING THE UNKNOWN TRACEWAY TWISTING AMONG THE STARS. AT LENGTH IT DECIDES THAT IT MIGHT BEGIN BY RECORDING ITS PASSENGER’S SIGNALS IN CONJUNCTION WITH ALL ONGOING DATA FROM OUTSIDE. PERHAPS SOME CORRELATIONS WILL APPEAR. THE SIGNALS ARE SIMPLE: THE SMALL ONE RADIATES PRIMARILY IN BINARY MODE, AND REPEATS OFTEN.

  IN COLD NEAR ABSOLUTE ZERO, FRICTIONLESS CURRENTS SPIN. A DECISION IS TAKEN, A RECORDING MODE ACTIVATED. ON RANDOM FACETS OF THE ICY STORE OF MOLECULES IN THE NUCLEUS, THE LITTLE PASSENGER’S FIRST CRYPTIC EMANATIONS ARE PRESERVED.

  // I * COME * IN * PEACE * FOR * ALL * MANKIND *** I * COME * IN * PEACE * FOR * ALL * MANKIND *** I * COME * IN * PEACE * FOR * ALL * MANKIND *** I * COME * IN * PEACE * FOR * ALL * MANKIND ***

  Chapter 11

  Wildly excited, Tivonel jets upward after Giadoc; they are heading for the highpoint where they will launch into the focus of the Beam which will carry their lives to an alien world. They have just passed the level where Chief Hearer Lomax waits for his Hearers to move out to their stations around the great vortex.

  Near Lomax hovers a small cluster of females—Avanil and her Paradomin friends. Tivonel can hear the bright orange tone of their mantle-lights, evidently intended to carry: “Why should this all be controlled by males?”

  “They know how, they have the fields,” a sister replies.

  “We can learn,” Avanil says defiantly.

  Jetting upward against the gales of the Wall, Tivonel recalls her own childish attempt to touch the life-signals from the sky. If she tried to increase her field-strength by doing Fathering, like Avanil, could she have attained that power? More likely she’d just have become like a normal male, absorbed in the Skills of infant-care. Like those status-stiff Fathers down in Deep now, who can’t believe any danger could strike Tyree. And what would become of the world if females abandoned themselves to Fathering? Crazy.

  Far down below Lomax are the massed life-fields of the Deepers. Tivonel can still pick out the brilliance of Scomber, pulsing with aggressive resolution. Beside him is the strong furled energy of old Heagran, dark with disapproval. The Fathers around them are in high states of energy, their mantles flickering with scarlet hope, cold blue distaste. There is a vermillion exclamation she is sure comes from Tiavan, Giadoc’s son and her own. He would do anything, even life-crime, to save his child. How sad for Giadoc.

  But there is no time to think of that now, she must begin to prepare herself for the Test, as Giadoc has instructed her. Yet the view up here is so grand, she lets herself take one more scan around. They are all alone near the top of the Wall of the World, so high that almost the whole of the great polar vortex can be made out. The wind-wall is a fantastically beautiful swirling cliff, richly patterned with the rushing lights and life-emanations of the Wild. Above them are the perilous heights where the top of the winds start to converge to form the deadly Airfall in the center; Tivonel can just perceive the upper fringes of the funnel, grey with dying life. Up here too can be sensed a deep background energy. Giadoc has told her that it may be the life-field of Tyree itself, transmitting into space. How thrilling… Giadoc is slowing down, they must be nearly there.

  Guiltily Tivonel comes to herself and starts sorting and ordering her life-field, trying to recall the disciplines her Father had taught her. Encapsulate nuclear identity and essential memory, damp emotion; self-will relaxed yet alert. Very difficult. And all to be well-connected, so she won’t fly apart. There, it’s coming.

  Giadoc halts just above her, his huge field already attenuated and coiled in a strange helical form. She stretches awareness, tries to copy with her own smaller life. As she does so, a life-signal resonates around the Wall. The Hearers are in place.

  “Ready?” Giadoc brushes her with a testing thought.

  “Yes.” She mutes the last excited eddy from her field-form.

  “Remember, your first act must be to try to calm the being’s fear.”

  “I will, dear-Giadoc.”

/>   “And be brave. The sensations will be very strange. Especially don’t panic when there is no wind.”

  “No.”

  She waits, hardly able to breathe for the effort to remain in the correct calm mode. It’s like being a child again, waiting for her Father to help her stretch her baby mind to distant-touch. But this isn’t play, she’s waiting to go with Giadoc to touch the life beyond the sky!

  The sky… Incredibly clear and cold the voices of the Companions call to her from above. Will she really touch them, ride out on the Beam to merge with unimaginable alien life? A deep excitement wells up almost ungovernably. All around she can feel the energies of the Hearers’ linked fields building, growing without limit. The World is bursting with tension.

  Just as it seems she must fly apart, a second life-signal crackles through them—and she feels her mind gripped, pulled free, thrust out upon forces she had never dreamed of. Almost she flinches in fear before she lets it take her. Giadoc and the immense combined power of the ring of Hearers are sucking her life up to the focus at the heart of the Beam, to send it stretching out—out—out to—

  She yields, launches totally, lets herself dwindle to a filament riding a storm of power, an energy that looms and blooms upward like a world-bubble. She is only a thread in an immense thrusting tower of bodiless vitality, shooting forever outward as it intensifies and narrows from a pinnacle to a needle, from a needle to a dimensionless thread driving instantaneously to its goal. And as her life attenuates, recruitment comes—a deep life-force as if she and the Beam were cresting on a planetary power.

  For an everlasting instant she feels herself stretched through an infinity of nothing, an unbodied vector still companioned by a strand of nameless strength. Then—joy, strangeness, glory— she feels the goal just ahead!

  Yes. In the unknown is something. Life-contact! Without senses she touches, knows it for a living being. Remember!

  She pushes like a baby against the alien life, feeling for the fear she must deflect. Yes, terror is here at the contact-point. With all her might she counters it, projecting warm-friendship, and pushes again.

  And suddenly physical sensation crashes in upon her. Lights, colors, nameless perceptions, concrete life-signals! All in one overwhelming instant she is seeing through alien eyes!

  Enchanted, she gulps in comprehension, registering shapes, hues, sounds, smells, volumes. A world bombards her. She has done it, she has merged with an alien mind! She has a body, she can fit her will into its half-comprehensible brain, live, act!

  But before she can do more than gasp through strange organs, a horrible vertigo strikes her. Where is the Wind? Oh, terror, there is no wind. She has fallen into the Abyss!

  Primal dread tears the frail connection, sweeps her away. Her being ravels instantaneously back into the void, flees homeward on the Beam in helpless fear. Next instant she has condensed into herself, Tivonel, adrift in disorder on the winds of Tyree.

  Shame floods her. She has done exactly what Giadoc had warned her of, she has let herself panic in the strangeness of no wind.

  But as she collects herself, her natural spirits revive. She hasn’t really failed the important part. Didn’t she merge and possess the body? Next time she would be able to stay. But where is Giadoc?

  There: she finds his silent form, barely outlined in a weird trace of life, almost like a dead person. But it must be all right; he’s still mind-traveling, his life is in some being on that world they touched. Yes; a faint tendril of life-energy seems to run upward toward the great matrix of power arching overhead. The Beam is still holding, the world around her feels drained and dreamlike. Far below her even the Deepers are awed and darkly still.

  Suddenly Giadoc’s body stirs. The thin trace of field roils and abruptly swells, losing connection of the Beam. But the field is all wrong, it’s chaotic, ragged, shooting out wild eddies. Has something bad happened to Giadoc?

  She jets closer and then recoils as Giadoc’s mantle blasts out a green scream of pain and fear. That can’t be Giadoc’s voice!—and understanding breaks.

  This is what they were talking about: an alien mind has come here into Giadoc’s body. This must be one of those strange lives she had touched on that far-off world. The creature is evidently scared to death. There ought to be a Father here to help it.

  “Be calm, be calm,” she signs to it, feeling futile. What can words do for this disordered creature? But to her relief the blue-green shrieking quiets somewhat and stammers of other colors appear. It must be trying to speak. Tivonel moves closer, appalled by the whirling chaos of its mind. Like an adult baby. A thought-eddy brushes her with incomprehensible meanings. The lights of the alien speech-patterns steady down. Tivonel can make out the words “What—? where—?”

  “Be calm, you’re all right,” Tivonel tries to sound Fatherly.

  As she speaks the alien field surges at her and the creature apparently perceives her physically for the first time. A jolt of reciprocal horror shoots through them both. Next second Tivonel is flung bodily away, hurled straight out from the wall as if a super sex-field had thrown her.

  But we weren’t even biassed, she thinks, jetting hard to extricate herself from cross-currents. The creature hit my body with its mind; it has some weird power. Fantastic! She can see it awkwardly trying to move now, jetting and wobbling on its vanes. She better get to it before it hurts Giadoc’s body. Only, what can she do?

  Just as she nears the wind-wall a deep silent sigh runs through the world and the great energy-arch above collapses like a dream. The Beam has been let down.

  The world comes back to normalcy—and to her delight Tivonel sees that Giadoc is back too. There is his beautiful great familiar field around his body again! The poor stranger has been sent back to its horrible windless world.

  “Giadoc! Are you all right? I was there but I panicked—”

  “Yes, Tivonel.” His tone is warm but colored with the tints of unspoken thought, she can see his dense swifting mind-patterns. “Remember, we must now record our memories and report.”

  Belatedly Tivonel recollects that she too must organize a memory. As they plane down she begins to do so, thinking, a proud moment to have a memory for the Recorders of Tyree. Too bad she has to report her fear and flight. But then, she has the interesting experience with the alien.

  Orva, the Hearers’ Memory-Keeper, is waiting for them by Chief Lomax.

  “You won’t have time for recording once you’re down there,” Orva tells them cheerfully. “Never seen such a whirl-field. More Deepers coming up every minute, too. Bad situation.”

  As Giadoc and Orva merge, Tivonel scans down. As Orva said, the crowd below is much bigger: a whirl-field of excitement, fear and babble. She can feel strong mind-projections cutting through the commotion. The senior Fathers must be working to establish calm and order. She hopes Virmet and Marockee have thought about supplying more food.

  The life-bands tingle as Giadoc and Orva disengage. Giadoc starts on down while Tivonel offers Orva her own modest field-engram. She has never merged with a senior Recorder before. It is a grave, cool experience, as though she looked for a moment into Time itself.

  When he releases her she dives down fast and finds herself intercepted.

  “Tivonel! Tell us, what was it like? How was it for females?”

  It’s Avanil and two of her Paradomin.

  “I don’t know, I was only there a second.” She banks past them. “Come, listen to Giadoc!”

  Marockee is waiting in the plant-tangle. When Tivonel pulls up beside her, Giadoc and the elder Fathers are just below. He is recounting his experience verbally, his mind-field a great dreamy swirl.

  “—As soon as I felt her make contact I merged with the nearest mind. You realize, Fathers, that there is no choice? You may enter a female, a baby, even an animal, whatever the nearest suitable energy configuration is.”

  “Yes, yes,” Scomber says impatiently. “So the female was able to do this? She lived in the alien
body?”

  “Yes. But, Fathers, this is a terrifying world for the untrained. There is no wind. No wind at all. The bodies drop downward, they must rest upon solid matter. It’s impossible to describe. Tivonel became frightened and came back, and so would most people.”

  How good he is, Tivonel thinks. She flushes resentfully hearing Scomber say: “But if she hadn’t been so cowardly she could have lived?”

  “Oh yes. The bodies are intelligent and strong. One immediately gains all their senses and their physical habits and coordinations, including their habit of speech, which is of course the most important. One’s verbal intentions are translated, so to speak. I tested this again, after I oriented myself.”

  “You actually spoke with these aliens?” old Father Omar asks.

  “Yes indeed.” Giadoc’s mind is patterned with excited memories; Tivonel realizes that he is so caught up in his love of strangeness that he has forgotten the purpose of their questions, forgotten even the dire threat to Tyree. Now she can understand it; she herself is so excited by her mind-voyage that she is just coming back to the unpleasant realities.

  “Yes, I spoke,” Giadoc is saying. “I was able to interact. You have to understand that their mind-fields are totally disorganized. They are transmitting at random, like a crowd of grown infants, if you can imagine such a thing. They seem unaware of themselves. I was quite pleased to be able to sort out names, suitable speech-greetings and so forth, so I could successfully converse with one of them. They speak by jets of air, without any mantle-language. And they are covered with sheets of plant-matter,” he goes on dreamily.

  “Never mind that,” says Scomber impatiently. “Tell us the important point. Were you detected? Do they consider mind-entry illegal?”

  Giadoc’s field contracts and focuses suddenly; he has remembered why they are here.

  “I cannot be sure,” he says reluctantly. “I did pick up an abhorrence of physical violence from several minds, but of course this must be true in any civilized race. I also detected strong unspecified fears in the alien near me, for instance it became upset wben I spoke its name. But I may have violated some small ritual there.”