Up the Walls of the World

by James Tiptree Jr.

  Kirk’s absence greatly improves the tone. Noah expands, plays father to his little band, and tells a funny tale of a long-ago subject who kept receiving a mysterious number that turned out to be his girl’s bank balance. Somehow it conveys the old man’s long struggle. “That was before we had a computer capability, Miss Omali.”

  She actually smiles. Dann wonders if TOTAL knows all the numbers in America .

  Ted Yost recounts a tale of being thrown out of shipboard poker games for winning too often. “Never was that hot again,” he admits. Even Costakis ventures in with a yarn about opening a safe in which the urgent secret turned out to be an executive’s rotting lunch. The girls and Winnie laugh unforcedly.

  “They must think we’re practicing the obstacle course,” Winnie pokes the monstrous portions of pot roast. “You know, we should call this Noah’s ark.”

  It has to be a tired joke, but Noah chuckles benignly. “We’ll show them tomorrow.”

  Only Rick has been silent and withdrawn. Now Dann sees his face clear. He sits up straighter and starts eating. Has his parasitic brother been tranquillized again?

  I’m getting to believe this, Dann thinks. I’m acting as if it’s true. Do I actually believe they can—whatever it is? He doesn’t know, but he is enjoying the pleasant in-group atmosphere. They’re feeling free, he thinks. Unimpinged on. If any of this is true they must lead miserable lives. Don’t think of it. No way to help.

  Suddenly everyone falls silent: a car has stopped outside and a tall thin man is heading for them. But it isn’t Major Fearing, it’s a stranger with a flat cowlick of white hair. The tension relaxes. Dann spots the caduceus on the man’s fatigues and pushes back his chair.

  “Good evening, ah, Doctor Catledge’s party? I’m Doctor Harris. Just dropped by to see if you need anything.”

  Dann introduces Noah. Harris looks curiously around the table; he has a thin, dry, long-upper-lipped face.

  “Our medical station is right in the next area, Doctor Dann, you’ll find the number on your phone. Wait—” He extracts a blank card and scribbles on it. “We have a pretty complete little facility if you have any problems.” Harris’ manner is cheery but the lines in his face suggest weary compromises in the face of many peculiar demands.

  “Thanks.” Dann pockets the card. Harris looks around the table again, still casual.

  “An odd thing happened this afternoon,” he remarks. “About fourteen-fifty, ah, ten to five. You didn’t notice anything, by any chance? A feeling of disorientation, say?”

  They watch him silently. Just as Noah opens his mouth, Rick speaks up.

  “Oh, you mean the blip.” He nods reassuringly at Harris. “Not to worry. It merely means we’re near the end of this sequence.”

  “Blip? Sequence!” Harris’ insectile upper lip pulls down.

  “Yes. You remember Admiral Yamamoto in World War Two? Very important, boss man on the Japanese side. He was torpedoed off Rabaul in 1943. Changed the war and all that.”

  Harris frowns. “Excuse me, young man. I was in the Navy. It happens Yamamoto was shot down, over Bougainville .”

  “Oh, that’s in this sequence,” Rick smiles. “In the original sequence he was sunk. That’s why you felt the blip this afternoon. Don’t worry, you won’t know a thing.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Look.” Rick leans forward confidentially. “Japanese scientists, see? Very bright, very gung-ho. Took it to heart. So they secretly worked out a temporal anomalizer thingie. Like a time machine, to you. To go back and change it, see? But they’ve only managed to change the details, yet, he’s still getting killed. So they keep on trying. When you feel a blip like this afternoon it means they’re ready again, they’re testing. Then they wrap up this sequence and start over. You’ll be back in the Navy any time now. Have fun.”

  Harris stares at him. The air around the table quivers.

  “The thing is,” Rick lowers his voice, “some of us with psi powers remember other sequences, see? Different things happen—I think Dewey got elected once. We figure it’s rerun at least twelve times. But like I said, you won’t feel a thing.”

  “I see.” Harris closes his chitinous mouth. “Ah. Well. Good to meet you, Dann. You have our number. Anything we can do.”

  He leaves, walking fast. Everybody breaks up except Costakis, who looks shocked.

  “Sssh,” Valerie gasps, “he’ll hear you.”

  “He can’t, his car’s started.”

  “That was ba-a-ad.” Ted Yost sighs happily, thinking maybe of the great Pacific. Even Margaret’s carved mouth twitches.

  “Marvelous idea for a science-fiction story,” Noah chuckles.

  “Do you read science fiction, Doctor Catledge?” Valerie asks.

  “Indeed I do. Always have. Only people with ideas.”

  “Flying saucers,” Costakis grunts.

  “Not at all, Chris. Science fiction is quite another thing from UFOs, whatever they may be. But I certainly do believe there’s life on other worlds. Shall I tell you my secret dream?”

  “Oh, please do!” Winona’s popeyes are shining.

  “To live long enough to experience man’s first contact with aliens. Oh, my!” The old man bounces involuntarily. “Imagine, the day a voice comes out of space and speaks to us! Of the advent of a ship, a real spaceship!”

  He isn’t joking, Dann sees astonishedly. Real yearning in that voice.

  “And out gets a big blue lizard,” Frodo adds, “and he says, ‘Taake me to your an-thro-po-lo-gee dee-partment.’ ” She gives a happy, sizzling chuckle, like a different person.

  “She gets out,” says Valerie quietly.

  “Why not? Why not?” Noah laughs.

  There is an odd, breathy silence. Faces glow. Dann, who does not read science fiction, is amazed.

  “But we’d shoot them,” Winona says.

  “It won’t happen,” Costakis says in his sour voice.

  “No,” Rick agrees. The glow is gone.

  “Who knows,” Noah says stubbornly. “It could happen any time. The Indians didn’t expect Columbus .”

  “Speaking of voices from space,” says Dann, who has been ransacking his druggy brain, “didn’t I read that they’re listening for signals around Tau Ceti? By satellite, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, but it’s laser signals,” Noah says, and the conversation breaks up.

  Costakis catches Dann’s eye. “That medic was sent to check us out. Rick shouldn’t have done that. Could be trouble.”

  The little man has resumed his irritating fake-tough tone.

  “Oh surely not, Chris. Professional courtesy, nothing more.”

  “Sure, sure, Doc.”

  It’s time to go.

  “Well, no movie for us high security risks,” Ted Yost says.

  “Probably be an old John Wayne,” Frodo grimaces.

  It’s still light as they come out, a lovely evening. Dann loiters hopefully, but Margaret heads for the bus without a backward look.

  “I’d love to walk,” Winona exclaims, “why don’t we all?”

  The others are trooping aboard, leaving her between him and the bus. Dann barely checks the impulse to bolt around her.

  “I know you’re a fast walker, Doctor Dann. Don’t wait for me, you go right ahead.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” he makes himself say genially.

  She smiles happily and steps out beside him, blue hair, turquoise bosom and buttocks, bounding at random.

  “How sweet of you… Margaret says you saw the deer. Oh, I hope we see one… Isn’t it strange this place is so peaceful, like a park?… Whatever they do down here, it’s nice for the animals. I wonder how big it is?”

  She’s already puffing; he makes himself slow down.

  “Well, if all the areas are a square mile, that’s at least six square miles. Say four thousand acres.”

  “My goodness!”

  It’s going to be a long mile, Dann thinks, remembering Margaret�
��s queenly stride. Stop that now. Talk to this idiot woman.

  “Tell, Mrs. ah, Eberhard, what do you do when you’re not, ah, telepathizing?”

  “Oh, Winona , please, Winnie.”

  “Winnie.” He smiles cautiously. Watch it. Widow, divorcee?

  She puffs along. “Oh, I keep busy. Right now I’m on a committee for part-time worker retraining. We refer older women who have to go back to work.”

  “That sounds interesting,” he lies.

  “Yes.” She inhales and lets it out hard. “If you want the truth, I’m an absolutely surplus human being.”

  He gets out some polite objection, thinking in panic, Oh no. Not another. She’s marching determinedly, the smile firmly in place; Dann has a moment’s hope.

  “In fact, I’m not sure I’m a human being.” She gives her automatic titter. But he knows he’s in for it. “I never learned how to do anything. Except raise kids and take care of my sick mother and my husband with diabetes. Poor Charlie, he passed on three years ago. My sons are in California . Their wives haven’t a use in the world for me; I don’t blame them. My younger daughter is in Yugoslavia digging up skulls. Next year she’s going to New Guinea , wherever that is. My oldest girl married a foreign service man. They—they never write. I wanted them to be, to be free—” She breaks off for a minute, stumping heavily along. “Now people think having four kids was bad. I never went anywhere or learned anything for myself. Now it’s too late.”

  “Oh, no, surely—” His voice utters platitudes while his insides shrivel at the pain behind her words. Isn’t there a single normal person here? He can’t take much more.

  “I’m sixty-two, Doctor Dann. I have a high school diploma and arthritis of the spine, you remember.”

  Oh God, that’s right; he’d forgotten. Outpatient at the Hodgkins Clinic.

  “They tell me I’ll be in a wheelchair in a couple of years. It won’t shorten my life, but it’s starting to hurt. That’s why I do all I can now.” She gives her laugh. “Oh, I can do simple work, like the committee. I can be a Grey Panther for a while— No use kidding. I missed the bus called life… Doctor, I—I’m so afraid of what’s ahead.

  “I saw an old woman in a wheelchair when I was in the clinic. She was all wasted and twisted up, helpless. She kept moaning ‘No… no… no’ over and over. Nobody went near her, they’d just parked her there. She was still there when I came out— I tried to talk to her, but—Doctor Dann, I’ll be like that.”

  Her face is frightening, he is sure she is going to cry, God knows what. But no; her features compose themselves, she stumps on determinedly amid her ludicrous bouncing flesh. He can say nothing, his heart is choking him.

  “I would have loved it,” she says in a low, different voice. “Oh, I would have loved to have done it all differently. Really lived and been free. To know things. When you’re old and sick it really is too late, you don’t understand that when you’re young.”

  The pain, the longing hurts him physically, in the way others’ pain always does, as he assumes they hurt everybody. She’s right, of course. No way out. The woman’s dilemma, an old story. Don’t think of it.

  “It’s an old story, isn’t it?” Her voice is resolutely normal. “I shouldn’t have cried on your shoulder. You—we’re so glad you’re with us.”

  “Not at all,” he mumbles, wondering if she’s reading his mind. Suddenly he sees relief. “Well now—look! There’s your wish.”

  In the sunset light ahead of them two does are leaping leisurely across the blacktop.

  “Oh-h-h!”

  They watch as the creatures browse idly and then suddenly soar erratically into the woods, their white flags high. As they disappear a fawn bounds after them.

  “How could anybody shoot them!” Winona exclaims.

  “It doesn’t look as if anybody does.”

  “Oh yes, they hunt here. Lieutenant Kirk said he was going to, even if it’s not the season.”

  He sighs, refusing empathy, and they walk on.

  “Doctor Dann, sometimes I think there’s two different kinds of people.” Her tone is surprisingly hard. “The ones who like to hurt things, and—”

  He is tired of it all, tired of pain, tired of holding back. “A politician I used to know would agree. He used to say, there’re two kinds of people—those who think there are two kinds of people and those who have more sense.”

  To his surprise she replies slowly, “You mean if I’d been brought up like Lieutenant Kirk I’d see them as something to shoot?”

  “Yes. Or if you got hungry enough. Or other factors.”

  “But I’m not,” she says stubbornly. “Just because something good can, can fail, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

  Well, well. Trapped under the blue curls is a brain, or what might have been one.

  “I think you’ve just enunciated a philosophical principle I’m not equipped to deal with.”

  “Oh my goodness!” The flutter is back.

  Their slow progess is finally reaching the last corner. His legs are cramping with impatience.

  “Do walk on, please, Doctor Dann.”

  Damn, she is reading his mind. No, it must be body-signals, she’s sensitive. Effortfully he asks, “How did you get into Noah’s, ah, ark?”

  “He put an ad in the Star. I’ve always known I’m psychic. But—” She frowns. “The things he wants, numbers, letters—it’s so hard. They don’t mean anything.”

  “You pick up meaningful thoughts more easily?”

  “Oh yes, of course. And people’s feelings. It’s so hard at the office when people are angry. People get mad with me a lot.” She giggles deprecatingly.

  Remorse bites him. “Do you pick up any, ah, emanations from this place?”

  “I certainly do, Doctor Dann. I’ll tell you something. This place is a portal. There’s a presence here. You felt it this afternoon, that was a projection from the spirit plane.”

  The language of mysticism. He imagines her giving seances, fortune readings.

  “Did you ever think of going into business as an, uh, medium?”

  “Oh, I’m too erratic. You see, my gift comes and goes. And I couldn’t pretend.”

  “I see.” His own gift of chemical tranquillity is going fast. Thank God they’re almost at the barracks. The roadway is empty, no cars are parked outside. Music is coming from a group sitting on the front steps: Rick’s radio.

  “Thank you, Doctor Dann.” Winona reaches up and pats jerkily at his upper arm before she toddles on.

  It’s Ted Yost, Costakis, and Rick on the steps. Rick turns a glum face to Dann and says listlessly, “Somebody went through our stuff.”

  “What do you mean?” Dann’s hand goes involuntarily to his breast pocket, touches the kit.

  “The place got searched while we were eating,” Costakis says in his sneering tone.

  Dann is frantically reviewing the plausibility of the supplies in his bag. “Did they take anything? How do you know?”

  “My smokes,” says Rick. “It was in my right sneaker. It moved. And I think they opened this.” He holds up the radio. “The battery case was in wrong. Clowns.”

  “Checking electronics,” Costakis says wisely. Dann can’t help noticing how he is perched apart from the other two. Ever on the fringe.

  Ted Yost sighs. “I think I’ll take a walk.”

  The door bursts open above them and Noah charges out. “Somebody has unplugged half our equipment! Everything’s moved around,” he explodes. “Really, what extraordianary people. Chris, can you help me sort it out?”

  “Check.”

  Dann hurries to his room. His bag seems to be intact but his other possessions look vaguely different. Have strangers been through? He can’t be sure. Absurd.

  He sits on the cot with a capsule in his hand, noticing that the forest beyond the barracks looks quite lovely in the sunset light. Like the woods of his Wisconsin boyhood. Golden spotlights are picking out the floating delicacy of birches,
the shadowy oak-trunks, the ferns and moss-cushions.

  Why do I need this stuff, he thinks. Why can’t I take it? All these others, Rick, Costakis, Winona, each in their private misery without relief. Ted Yost. What kind of selfish coward am I?

  As so many times before the resolve to throw away his chemical crutches wells up in him. Quitting would be physically rough, but he believes he can take that. But then to go on, to face the daily reality of life, the assaults of pain, to—to—

  To remember.

  —And as he gazes at the woods, the sunset rays turn rose and red like torches behind the trees, lighting them into dark silhouettes against the fiery sky. Fingers of fire—his gut lurches, he clenches his eyes, gasping, and fumbles the capsule into his mouth. That’s why. Yes, I’m a coward.

  Shaking, he goes to the latrine for water, grateful only for his access to relief. How many of the others would resist, if they had this escape from the pain of their lives? He only knows he cannot.

  When he comes out the flaming light has faded. Rick’s transistor is playing somewhere, but no one is in sight. Dann strolls around to the pool and finds the two girls in the water again. He sits down to watch.

  Fredericka—Frodo—attacks the water with her scrawny arms, thrashing along like a spider. Beside her Valerie swims effortlessly. The warm evening light lingers, harmless now. Presently they climb out and come over to Dann, sharing a towel. Frodo goes through her solicitous routine and sits beside Val on the grass. Their smiles, their every gesture, say Mine. We two together.

  Unwelcomely the intuition of their vulnerability comes to Dann. To cherish, to defend their little fortress of union. To love, in the face of the world’s mores and the threat of every egotistical male. So fragile.

  As Val combs her hair the two of them start humming, glancing at him mischievously. Presently their voices rise in harmony, parodying an old ridiculous tune. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine—”

  It’s a lovely moment; the sweet mocking voices touch him dangerously. When the song ends he can only say roughly, “I wouldn’t sit on that grass too long, Frodo.”

  “Why not?”