Up the Walls of the World

by James Tiptree Jr.

  “What? You mean… if it touched like that, you can read my mind?”

  “Well of course.”

  “I don’t believe it,” he says wonderingly.

  “Well, I’ll show you, but you have to hold perfectly still. Can you hold your field still now?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll try.” Watching his awkwardly eddying life energies, he recalls he had once tried to learn a meditation technique. It didn’t help then; maybe it will now. Effortfully he strives to concentrate, to recapture the deep quietude. Shrink consciousness to a point, watch nothing. But he is still aware that an eddy of her field is flowing toward him. Don’t watch. At the tangible nudge in his mind he reacts helplessly.

  “Ouch!” She is swirling up into the wind.

  “I’m sorry. I did that wrong.”

  “It’s all right, you weren’t too bad. Only you’re so much stronger than a baby. Did you get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “The memory I gave you, silly. Look in your memory. Where are you?”

  Where, indeed? Does ur-reality have a name, am I actually somewhere? Where?

  —And he realizes he knows. He knows!

  “Why, I, I’m on T-Tyree—that’s your world. Tyree.”

  “You see!” She curves closer again, mischievous.

  “My God,” he tries to say, but it comes out “Great winds!”

  “See if you got the rest. Think about Tyree.”

  “Tyree… Oh, yes, you’re in trouble. Radiation is—” But this language has no words, he hears himself babbling about burning in the Wind and intolerable loudness of the Sound. The Sound? Sunlight? Of course, they think in other modes. “And wait, yes—you’re trying to escape by sending your minds away somehow—no, that’s wrong—”

  “Very good! Very good!” Her laugh is so merrily coral, laced with empathic mockery it lifts Dann’s leaden spirit. Why, this little Tivonel is indeed an attractive one. Bright spirit of the wind.

  “But you, your world is in danger. You may die.”

  “Maybe.” Undismayed, a brave little alien being who is every instant less alien. And then Dann learns something else.

  “Don’t worry. Giadoc will come back and send you home. He won’t commit life-crime, he said so.”

  The melting tones are unmistakable; across the light-years he recognizes the colors of love. Love and sharing unto death, she and this Giadoc whose body he has somehow acquired. And will he, Dann, be thrown back to his grey private death, leaving her on a burning world? The memory of the inferno he had glimpsed… So the charming ur-life is tragic after all. Pity… if he believed any of this.

  “Please! Hey, please, your field!”

  Confused, he perceives that his “mind-field” has eddied strongly toward her, is coalescing into a peculiar surface whose vibrancy suddenly thrills him. An excitement his own old human body had long forgotten, a potent shivering delight—

  “Stop that! You don’t know what you’re doing!” She is laughing wildly, her life-field suddenly intensified, recoiling yet linked to his by ever-increasing intensities. Urgency flames up in him, he needs to drive her higher into the wind, to push her away upon the power of his desire. Wild incomprehensible images of wind and energy flood through him, he is about to do he knows not what—but in a rush of flashing jets she shoots aside, and the tension breaks.

  Shaken and roiled, it takes him a moment to locate her below him down the wind.

  “You—you—!” She splutters unintelligibly. “You almost, I mean, you biassed, in a minute we would have—”

  “What? What happened?” But he suspects now. The joy!

  “Well!” She planes up nearer. “I don’t know how to explain. Made a repulsion.” She giggles. “Whew! Giadoc is very energic. We call it sex.”

  He hangs there astounded, conscious of himself as a monster riding an alien gale who has somehow committed an indelicacy. The etiquette of apocalypse. It was so good.

  “We call it sex too,” he tells her slowly. “Only with us the two people touch.”

  “How weird.” Her vanes bank gracefully, he notices her beautiful command of the wind. Something else, too; his body seems to know that her position relative to him has changed things. With the wind coming from him to her she is still a charming one, but not dangerously so. Neutralized. Of course; they live in the wind, function evolves to its direction. Mysteries…

  “But how do your eggs get exposed?” she is asking curiously.

  He is about to enter on new fascinations, but his senses are assaulted by a dreadful scream. Terror! Someone is shrieking intolerably.

  Dann peers about, discovers they have drifted closer to the pair of aliens he had noticed before. The large one is uttering the nerve-shattering green wail. It is thrashing about and tumbling, its energies wild. A smaller alien is in pursuit.

  “What a shame,” Tivonel says above the uproar. “I thought Avanil had it calm.”

  “What is it? What’s happening?”

  “I forgot to tell you. That’s one of your people, there in Terenc’s body. You better start Fathering it right away.”

  “One of my people?”

  All at once the screamer shoots toward him and long streamers of its flaring field lash out. A jolting sbock—his mind is inundated with a kaleidoscope effaces, smells, bulkheads and valves, a foreshortened human penis against blue blankets, a Gatorade bottle—while over everything a face that he remembers, shrieks “RICKY—RICKY—HELP—”

  The scene clears, leaving him reeling in twinned realities. The strange body is still before him, blasting out green screams.

  “It’s Ron!” Dann exclaims. “It’s Ron from the, the water—’

  “You better Father it before is loses field. You can, can’t you? However you do it?”

  “RICKY! RICKY, WHERE ARE YOU? HELP ME!”

  The pain is intolerable. “I’m a doctor,” Dann tries to say absurdly, moving toward the agonized form with no idea what he can do.

  “Ron! You’re all right, calm down! Listen to me, it’s Doctor Dann.”

  —BLOOIE!

  The next few moments or years exist only as a terror beyond all drug nightmares, beyond anything he has imagined of psychosis—rape—disaster. He is invaded, frantic, rolling in dreadful pounding synchrony of panic, sensing only in flashes that he is howling RICKY—RICKY-TRICKY—is also yelling RON SHUT UP YOU’RE ALL RIGHT I’M DOCTOR DANN—only to be swept under the terrified crashing chaos, reverberating insanity. How long it lasts he never knows, understands only a sudden immense cool relief, like a great scalpel of peace cutting him free. Sanity returns.

  As his separate existence strengthens Dann finds his body pumping air. He lets the scene steady into the strange-familiar world around him, is again his new self riding the gentle gales beside a wall of beautiful storm.

  “Control yourself, Tanel, it’s all right now.”

  The words are warmly golden; his friend Tivonel is hovering nearby.

  Before him floats a great disarrayed dark mass, its small energy-field pale and calm. This seems to be the alien body containing Ron. Is he unconscious or dead? Not Dead; jets are pulsing. The smaller alien is helping it keep steady on the wind.

  Dann’s gaze turns upward.

  Looming above them hovers a huge energic alien form, its vanes half-spread, its mantles and aura a deep, rich glory. It—no, unmistakably he— seems to be surveying them severely. Dann has a momentary memory of his school coach separating furious small boys.

  “In the name of the Wind, Father Ustan, thank you.” Tivonel’s light-speech is in a new, formal mode.

  “Thanks be that you were nearby, Father,” the other alien adds, in the same mode. Dann senses that it is another female.

  “What happened? Is my friend all right?”

  “You made a panic vortex,” the great stranger says in grave violet lights. “If I had not separated you in time you would both have been damaged for life. The being you call Ron is drained and sleeping. Avanil her
e will guard it. But you, Tanel, are you not a Father? Why did you permit this disorder to happen?”

  “We, we have no such skills on our world,” Dann says weakly.

  The great being, Ustan, flickers a wordless grey sign in which Dann reads skepticism, scornful pity—the equivalent of a raised eyebrow. Majestically, he tilts up into the wind. But the female Avanil calls to him.

  “Father Ustan, wait! Don’t you notice the Sound is getting very strong up here? I feel burning, that’s why I started to move Terenc’s body. Look at all the dead life above us, too. I don’t think this level is safe anymore.”

  “The Sound doesn’t rise here now,” Tivonel objects.

  “Well, something up here is wrong. Look at the Airfall, it’s all dead, too. I think we should go down to where Lomax and Bdello are.”

  Dann, “listening,” realizes he has been noticing a rising hiss of light, or sound. It has a wicked feel, like a great subsonic machine-whine running wild.

  Big Ustan has paused, spreading internal membranes.

  “Avanil is correct,” he announces. “I too sense dangerous energies. By all means, move them down to Chief Hearer’s station to wait. I will take the distraught one.”

  “I can take him, Ustan,” Avanil protests.

  But Ustan has floated down to Ron’s sleeping body, furling out the membranes under his main vanes. Dann has a glimpse of small, soft-looking flexible limbs. Then Ustan is covering him, swooping away like an eagle with its trailing prey. Next moment his great complex vanes fan out side, tilt up—and he becomes suddenly an abstract shade of flight, falling away from them on an awesome dwindling curve, down—down—

  It is so dazzling Dann finds himself pumping air. Next moment the far-flying form has changed again and fetched up floating calmly by the two other presences below.

  “That’s Lomax and Bdello,” Tivonel says. “Now you go.”

  “Me? Down there? I—” Dann is stammering, aware that his voice has a greenish squeak. His human senses have brushed him with vertigo. “I don’t think—”

  “Well, try” Tivonel says severely. “Giadoc was able to move around on your awful world. With no wind. You don’t have to go that fast,” she adds more gently. “Just tell yourself to go down, the body remembers. We’ll help if you need it. Oh, I forgot. This is Avanil. I mean Avan. Avan, meet Tanel. He’s a male so I call him that.”

  “Greetings, Tanel.” The other’s tone is like a curt handshake, he is reminded of a girl on a vanished world.

  “Hello, Avan,” Aware that he is delaying the awful drop, he lets himself take a last look at the grandeur of these heights. A million Grand Canyons of the wind, he thinks. No, far more beautiful. But that sound, that faint deadly roaring… All in a moment the beauty drops away, he recalls his momentary vision of this world and its raging sun, the terrible exploding shells and angry streamers of a star gone mad. It was blowing up—that’s what he “hears.” Hard radiation. And these people, these real people, are on a planet about to be incinerated. Terrible… His mood is broken by a tangible nudge.

  “Let’s go,” says Tivonel.

  Down. Okay.

  Focussing with all his might on the dots below, Dann lets himself spread something. His vanes adjust, he’s dropping, swooping down While his body takes the air-rush, seeming to steer itself. Faster, intoxicatingly! The dots swirl, are lost and recaptured, the wind is full in him, is his element—it is glorious! The dots have grown to bodies, he realizes he must stop now. Stop! But how? Gales call him!

  From nowhere two figures cut in before him, changing the rushing air. His vanes manage to bite the right angle. He slows, has stopped, hearing laughter all around.

  Three figures that must be Ustan and the Hearers are above him. He feels a double nudge at his vanes, and finds himself lurching upward, with a ludicrous mental image of his staggering human self supported by two giggling girls.

  “Thanks, Avan,” Tivonel is saying. “Whew, wow! Tanel, I thought you were going all the way to Deep.”

  “I thought I did rather well.” Dann finds himself chuckling too, all nightmare gone. He hasn’t felt happy and strong like this in years. How great must be this life on the winds of Tyree!

  They stop discreetly side-wind of the three big males. Dann stares curiously; from two of them the life-energy is radiating upward in a focussed, almost menacing way. Like high voltage.

  “What are Hearers?” he asks.

  “Oh, they listen to the Companions and the life beyond the sky. That’s how they do the Beam, you came here on it.” She goes on, something about “life-bands” which Dann finds unintelligible. He sees now that these energies are merged with shafts of others from far out around the Wall. Something to do with their weird psionic technology. They brought me here… What about time, he wonders idly, not really caring. If I went back, would it be centuries ahead? No matter; he is delighted with this new mystery. Astronomers, that’s what they are. Astro-engineers of the mind. This Lomax is something like Mission Control, perhaps.

  Avan, or Avanil, has gone to get Ron’s body, and now comes struggling back to them, looking absurdly like a sparrow-hawk trying to tow a goose. When she has him positioned satisfactorily on the wind she turns to Dann, exuding determination.

  “Tanel, if you’re a male, you don’t seem to know much about Fathering. How old are you? Haven’t you raised a child yet?”

  “Oh Avan, for Wind’s sake,” Tivonel protests.

  “It’s all right, I don’t mind,” Dann says. Pain flicks him, but it’s far off; he has died since then. “I’m quite old as a matter of fact. I did have a child.” To his embarrassment his words have changed color.

  “Now see what you’ve done, Avan,” Tivonel scolds. “These are people, you don’t know what could be wrong.”

  “I’m sorry,” Avan says stubbornly. “But I can’t understand how you could be a Father and be so helpless with that one.”

  Dann hesitates, puzzled. Some extra meaning is trying to come through here. Father? “Well, I’m not sure, but you have to understand we don’t have this kind of mind-contact on our world. And our females do most of the child-raising. In fact we call it—” he tries to say mother but only garble comes out. “It really isn’t done by many males at all.”

  Before his eyes Avan has lighted up with delighted astoundment.

  “The females do the Fathering! Tivonel, did you hear? It had to be, that’s the world we want! Oh, great winds!”

  Both females are pulsing excitedly, Dann sees, attention locked on him. But Avan is by far the more excited.

  “Why? Is that so strange here?”

  “Calm down, Avan,” Tivonel says. “Yes, Tanel, it’s pretty strange. I’ll explain if I get time. But look, they’re starting the Beam now. Giadoc will be back any minute and you’ll be home.”

  “The females do the Fathering,” Avan repeats obliviously. “Think what that means. So they’re bigger and stronger, right?”

  “Well, no, as a matter of fact—

  “Listen, Avan, what does it matter? You better calm down before you lose field.”

  But Avan only flashes, “I’ll be back!” and has suddenly whirled away and down. Dann looks after her. From here he can see or sense the crowd quite clearly, hundred of aliens scattered or clustered thickly in the wall of wind, among what seem to be plants. Big ones, little ones—but he sees them now quite differently. People are there, old, young, all sorts—even kids, jetting excitedly from group to group. An emanation comes from them, a tension. Under the excitement, fear.

  “More Deepers all the time,” Tivonel comments. “Look at those young Fathers heading up here. That’s Giadoc’s son, Tiavan, that big one. Never mind, watch Lomax. See, the beam is starting up. Giadoc will be here soon and you’ll be far away. Goodbye, Tanel,” she adds warmly.

  “You mean I have no choice? I’ll just go snap, like that?”

  “Yes. Don’t you want to?”

  “I don’t know,” he says unhappily. “I want—I
want to understand more about you before I go. At least can’t you explain more, give me a bigger memory like you did before? Yes! Give me a memory! For instance, about Fathering. And what are Deepers, what’s life-crime? What do the Hearers learn?”

  “Whew, that’s complicated. I’d have to form it, there isn’t much time.” She scans about nervously.

  He sees that the energies above Lomax and his Colleague are thickening, building up and out, towering toward the zenith in a slow, effortful way.

  “Please, Tivonel. From your world to mine. You should.”

  “Well, I guess they have a long job to get it up and balanced right. And they’re tired. But it would be awful if we got caught in the middle.”

  “Please. Look, I’ll stay as limp as Ron over there. Watch.”

  Eagerly he tries to collapse all awareness, focussing on the dim sense of air moving in his internal organs. It’s difficult. Suddenly he is distracted by a giggle.

  “Excuse me Tanel. That’s very good but you don’t have to do it all over, you’re in what we call Total-Receptive. Never mind. Just don’t jump when you feel me.”

  Concentrate, think about nothing. But the thought of being sent back to Earth intrudes chillingly. Is it really true? Don’t think of it, all a dream. He is trying so hard that he scarcely notices the mind-push, reacts late.

  “Tanel! You’re terrible.” She is floating nearby, laughing.

  “Did I do something awful again?”

  “No, you missed me. I think you’re learning. Did you get it? I don’t know where I put it, you were as mushy as a plenya. Think, what’s life-crime?”

  “Life-crime…” Suddenly, the words convey a kind of remote abomination to him. Of course, stealing another’s body. “Yes,” he says. “But you know, I don’t quite feel it—it’s so far from our abilities.”

  “You better,” she says, suddenly sober. “Look down there, that Father Scomber coming up. And Heagran behind him. Did you get it all about that?”

  He looks, and marveling, knows them. The huge energic oncoming form is Father Scomber, leader of the move to flee by life-crime. And the even larger shape behind him, veiled and crusted with majestic age: Father Heagran, the Conscience of Tyree. Incredible! Enlightenment, understanding opens in him like a true dream—the wonders of Deep City, the proud civilization of the air; joys, duties, deeds innumerable, the wild life of the upper High—a world, Tyree, is living in his mind!