Up the Walls of the World

by James Tiptree Jr.

  But I’ll have Valeree, Tivonel comforts herself. She’s almost like a Tyrenni, she loves to explore. And so does the old female-Father Winona, and maybe that sad Frodo will cheer up. And the funny human male Kris. Thinking of him, she notices the soft signal that means a quarter-Kris has passed. She better hurry. The signal must be coming from the node near the nucleus. She changes course slightly, and an idea comes to her. Why not ask Tanel to have his mysterious friend put markers on the different nodes, so we could really tell where we are? That way we could build up a real mental map of this enormous dark world, and explore out to the very end without danger of being lost. I wonder what we’ll find when we get to the edge, she muses. Will the Saver have a thick wall, or will it just thin out to nothing so we can begin to sense the lives of the sky through it?

  Ahead of her the dim form of the nucleus and the mind-sparks near it are now faintly perceptible. Another life-group is converging on them—Ustan and the others. Good, she’s come just in time. There’s no real need for her presence, it’ll be all a solemn conference of Heagran telling the Fathers how to conduct themselves out there on New Tyree or whatever they’re going to call it. Responsibility, life-reverence, ahura, etcetera and so on. And Orva saying goodbye. But she loves to listen in to Heagran. So old, so wise; he was a child when New Deep was founded. His mind isn’t bounded by Fathering anymore. He’s been mind-caught by the wonders of the sky, like Giadoc. We’re so lucky to have him.

  As she damps herself for a courteous arrival, she thinks ahead to the next, the really exciting conference there is to be. After the main group of Tyrenni go out to their new world and take up their lives, those who are staying here will gather around Tanel. Heagran has explained it. “The Saver wishes us to help it think upon a new Life-Task, since its race has left this part of the universe, and it is here alone.”

  A great new task, here in limitless space among all these stars and worlds? Whew!

  Tivonel has picked up many thought-fragments about this, enough to know that everyone has a different dream. Only the two old Fathers Sastro and Panad are united; typically, they want to find a young race and Father it to wise maturity. But the others! Averting cosmic cataclysms, reviving dead races—and Giadoc of course always wanting to learn more, to find ways of actually visiting other worlds… A vagrant notion of what it would be like to have real sex again in an alien body rises in her mind; she relegates it to storage.

  She knows that old Heagran and that double yuman Waxman both dream of finding strange new kinds of minds among the worlds, but their visions aren’t alike. And Father Ustan wants to go on saving endangered races. Issalin and Jalifee will probably want to find some way of helping females, while the yuman Winona wants to rescue any person who is in terrible pain on whatever world. Valeree wants to invent a way of making strange races able to know and feel each other’s minds, like the Tyrenni. When Waxman heard her telling that he said, “Not too much empathy. I know.” The two yumans Tivonel knows least, Frodo and the dreamer Ted Yost, probably have still more wild notions of their own. And Giadoc’s friend Kris has the wildest one of all—he thinks they should search for whatever made or hatched the Saver!

  Tivonel settles discreetly beside Heagran’s group, thinking, I haven’t any big idea of my own. But I know how I’m going to respond, because I’m the most practical one of the lot. What they forget is that we’re going to be here a long, long, long time.

  A slow, coldly exciting shudder travels through her immaterial form. It’s not in her cheerful mind to use big words like “eternity” or “forever.” Let’s just say our journey will be of enormous length and duration, she thinks. And in her experience of long journeys it isn’t a good idea to plan everything too carefully. Not to go rigidly seeking one goal when maybe others you haven’t thought of are right ahead. Look at her last life-journey; she had started out to look for some exciting sex and found a child to be helped, Hearers to be fed, new friends, a trip to another world, and the end of her own Tyree. So, after all these grand shcemes and possibilities are unfolded, she knows what her own contribution will be.

  If only I can put it right, she thinks, preparing to attend to Heagran, unaware that her own life-field is aglow with vitality. If only I can think of the right forms to reach these big-minds. Well, the mind who’s with the Saver is a female; maybe she’ll understand.

  The main thing to get across to them is that there will be so much time. Maybe all the time there is. And as we go ever on and on in this great journey, however long it lasts, different possibilities will appear, different acts will seem more urgent or right. We don’t even know all our own powers. So let us rescue what we find to rescue, experience what we can, change what seems good to change. That way we will learn and grow. My vote won’t be for one plan or another, not even Giadoc’s explorations or Heagran’s mighty dreams. There is so much time. Why limit ourselves or the Saver? So she knows what she will say: “Let’s try it all!”

  Chapter 29

  ALONE BUT NOT LONELY IT ROVES THE DARK IMMENSITIES, NEW-BORN AND STRANGEST BEING OF ALL: PART ANIMATE, PART PASSIONLESS CAUSALITY, WHOSE VAST POWERS CAN UNDO TIME ITSELF. SO FAR AS IT KNOWS, IT IS IMMORTAL, AND SUBJECT TO NO IMPERATIVE BUT ITS OWN. IT IS MOVED BY DISCRETE IMPULSES OF CURIOSITY, PITY, IRRITATION, OR WONDER, NOW TRIVIAL, NOW SUBLIME: IMPULSES WHICH ARE ALWAYS LESS PARTICULATE AND ALWAYS MORE A MERGING OF PREPOSTEROUSLY FINITE LITTLE LIVES BECOMING MELDED TO FOREVER. IT IS A PROTO-PRONOUN, AN IT BECOMING SHE BECOMING THEY, A WE BECOMING I WHICH IS BECOMING MYSTERY.

  CONFUSED, JOYFUL, GRIEVING, INQUISITIVE, RANDOMLY BENEVOLENT, AND NOT ENTIRELY SANE, IT SETS FORTH TO ITS DESTINY AMONG THE ORDINARY DENIZENS OF SPACE AND TIME: A CHANCE-BORN FALLIBLE DEITY WHOSE POWERS MAY ONE DAY FOCUS WITHOUT WARNING UPON THE TINY LIFES OF ANY NESCIENT EARTH.

  THE END

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  Document creation date: 29.01.2011

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