Up the Walls of the World

by James Tiptree Jr.

  Impressed and curious, Tivonel moves closer, keeping a side scan to make sure Giadoc’s body is still quiescent.

  “Calm, calm, don’t be afriad,” Avan is sending hypnotically. “You’re all right, I’m here. I’ll help you understand, just be calm. Smooth yourself, be round like an egg, little one. Speak to your Father Avon. Who are you, little one? Tell Father Avon, are you a female?”

  To Tivonel’s awed surprise, the green wailing quiets. Then the creature lights a wobbly cry, “No!” Presently it starts mewling incomprehensible questions: “Where is—I want my—? Help! Rit! Rip! Rik!”

  “You’ll have Rit soon,” Avan soothes it, continuing to enfold and drain its field. “Only a little while, now tell me who you are, speak to your Father Avan.”

  But the creature jerks in terror and wails anew; apparently it has tried to scan and terrified itself. Fascinated, Tivonel watches Avan Father it back to calmness.

  Then she remembers Giadoc’s body—and sees, shocked, that it has drifted out from the wall. While she was preoccupied an alien field has formed around it, and—Oh, no, it’s unfurling Giadoc’s vanes!

  Cursing her inattention, Tivonel starts after it. There’s no danger, of course; the currents that flow to the Airfield here are no more dangerous than a baby’s jets. But Giadoc’s big form is catching so much air, it’s tumbling away from her at increasing speed. Better hurry.

  As she jets hard across the updraft, Tivonel sees that the alien field around the body is even larger than before, and terribly disorganized. But there seems to be something really wrong; the strange field is lax and trailing weakly, like a dying creature. Giadoc’s mantle is dark, except for a faint blue murmur, “Marg… Marget…”

  At any rate it doesn’t appear violent. She’ll be able to haul it back easily, she’s quite near now.

  But as she comes in reach, the strange field flares crazily, and Giadoc’s great vanes fan out, catching all the air. A stronger current takes hold and to her utmost horror she sees Giadoc’s body go whirling away, headed straight out to the lethal Airfall.

  It’s a race for life now; heedless of her own safety Tivonel pumps all her jets and shoots herself cross-wind, after the huge wheeling form, chasing the body of beloved Giadoc that is carrying the dying alien to both their deaths.

  Chapter 12

  —Pain multiform, unbearable, unending: a gale of knives slashing at helpless flesh, a grey pain-seared universe that bleeds. Daniel Dann is struggling to awake from another of his nightmares. A hell of alien torments assaults his own locked miseries, he is drowning in pain. Oh Christ, stop it!

  He struggles up, finds himself in pallid dawnlight in the hot cubicle. The nightmare recedes, leaving him shaking. He tries to focus on the tacky maple chair, the plywood wall. Outside the window mist is wreathing the dim trees.

  He is here in this improbable Deerfield, caught up in this insane experiment to take place today. He and the others, who are no longer safe, numbered phantasms but real living people, trapped in their individual predicaments. Oh, no, he doesn’t want this. His hands have found his bag, produced a capsule. Better make it two. Yes, and an antiemetic. Swallow, wait thirty minutes. Why doesn’t he go to the needle? But that he won’t, it’s his last self-respect.

  He sits on the sweaty bed looking into the shrouded woods. Beautiful; concentrate on it. Like Oriental art.

  But the faces of last night pour relentlessly through his mind. The girls frightened to rigidity, Winona crying bleakly, Costakis cursing and hitting the air with his little fists, Rick hysterical. Noah running about muttering, “A psychic storm, a psychic storm. We may have tapped forces beyond our control!” Only Ted Yost seemed relatively untouched; immunized by his private death perhaps. What the hell had they experienced— each other? The unknown minds in this place? Dann did not inquire but simply distributed phenothiazine shots. “Help us, help us,” Valerie kept whispering. Help us? Save us from this chintz, this plywood, which to her are the tentacles of hostile power. The tentacles perhaps of that Byzantine presence so aptly named Fearing. But what can be do?

  He summons up sensible, soothing phrases, fending off a worse threat that he will not, will not think of. This place, this test is inducing mass delusion. Let’s get back to sanity. Since he clearly isn’t going to sleep any more, the thing to do is to get dressed.

  But as he lifts a sock, memory bursts through him. Oh God, Margaret! He collapses on the bed, the sock clutched to his face; he is riven by the memory of helplessness and pain and shame! It happened to her. My father went crazy. To mutilate a child. His hand remembers the obscene wound his/her hand had touched. In his head are ghastly clinical photos of ritually mutilated girls. Clitoridectomy. Some tribes practiced it. They did that to her. Unspeakable, bestial.

  His throat convulses, threatening nausea. He rubs his fists roughly across his face, thinking, to live on in so damaged a body. What her life must be, the never-ending tension. No relief, no release. I have nothing in common with women… But the beauty of her. The strength. I like cool things…

  And Oh God, worse, she knows him now, his shame. I let them burn. The unending instant comes back to him: the smoke and turmoil, the hands gripping his arms that he could have pulled away from, the terrible pause, just long enough, if—if—

  If I’d had the guts.

  His heart is clenched around a knife-blade, he wishes only that it would finally burst and let him die. An aeon passes so… and then, incredibly, the anguish dims, the cutting edge slides away. The first pearly ease of chemical unreality is sliding into his brain.

  His eyes water with gratitude, he takes long shuddering breaths. Presently he cautiously gets up and resumes dressing. Heaven for a shilling; de Quincy knew.

  By the time he is splashing water on his face in the latrine he can wonder almost coolly, why, really, so much pain? Other doctors habituated. He never had quite; he has had to hide it and watch that his medical judgment wasn’t affected. But it seems to be worse now, much worse. As if he were some kind of a receiver. Crazy!

  Safe in his chemical armor he goes back to his room, playing with the thought. He doesn’t believe it for a minute. But it’s a fact, he could fancy he can still feel them. From around him, emanations of Rick’s complex misery, Ted Yost’s steady grief, Costakis’ painful self-hatred. And from the barracks next door, Winona’s despair, the two girls’ fear-filled struggle in a world that doesn’t want them. Quiet desperation, Thoreau said. But it’s worse than that. These ordinary people hurt. They can’t bear their lives. And there’s no escape.

  No escape either from the most hurtful life of all: Margaret. Even behind his magic shield he daren’t dwell on that. But it’s curious; he seems to understand certain things now, as if he’d shared—don’t think it. Yet he senses the answer to the puzzle of her child. She must have tried the one thing she could try. And it was no good. Dann can almost feel the intrusive physicality, the hurtful warmth and contact of the baby. Mother-love is sensual. She couldn’t take that. She can only bear distance, be like a machine. Even color is dangerous; those neutral clothes, that snow-bound apartment. And no reminders of Africa, never. To her, he thinks, neither white nor black is beautiful. To become a machine… hideous.

  The sun is gilding the green leaves, people are stirring. In the world of dreams I have taken a part, to sleep for an hour and hear no word/Of true love’s truth or of light love’s art; only the song of a secret bird. Who, Swinburne? Dann wants no part of love nor secret birds, he hopes only for the world of dreams. He gets up and puts a couple of emergency capsules loose in his pocket. People are in the corridor; it’s time for breakfast.

  The bus carries them through a meaninglessly beautiful morning. The others are strained and silent. At breakfast only Winona makes a brief try at normalcy. The two girls pick at their food, heads down. Ted and Rick say nothing. Little Costakis’ eyes keep up a wary vigil; he jerks his head cryptically and rearranges his knife and fork. Old Noah makes a hopeful reference to �
�last night’s psychic experience” and is met by heavy silence. What the hell visited them, what did they hallucinate?

  It comes to Darin that he’s irrational. He accepts that he and Margaret experienced—something; but it hasn’t disturbed his conviction that this is all nonsense. The inconsistency amuses him in a remote way. He takes more coffee. All nonsense; hold onto that.

  At the far end of the table is the still presence at whom he dare not look. To mutilate a child…

  The doors bang and Lieutenant Kirk is with them, proclaiming the imminent arrival of the cable crew. He has had a bright idea. In lieu of the missing biomonitors, why can’t they use some of Deerfield’s polygraph equipment? “Really sophisticated stuff,” he grins significantly.

  “No, no,” says Noah impatiently. “Quite unsuitable. Dan, tell him.”

  Dann rouses and finds pleasure in explaining that security-type “sophistication” would not be comparable to the multichannel qualitative EEG feedback transcribers Noah has developed. Kirk frowns and goes off to institute another search. Dann winks at Frodo; how reassuring that Deerfield can’t keep track of a dozen crates.

  As they get up he risks a glance down the table. Margaret’s gaze passes over him, severe, unchanging. The beauty of her. Does she despise him now? His own face changes uncontrollably.

  When they get back to the barracks a Navy communications van and a cable trailer are pulling up. A pickup is parked nearby, holding what looks like a mobile transformer. Two men are hauling wire up the outside pole.

  Dann wanders off, thinking; preposterous. God knows how many miles of cables, equipment, man-hours, money—just to isolate eight harmless Americans from setting eyes on the rest of Deerfield. And the whole fantasia is considered routine. There seem to be aspects of his country he had not encountered before. He shakes his head in genial wonderment, safe in his opiate cocoon.

  And even more surreal—somewhere off Norfolk an actual submarine is moving out, containing Rick’s unhappy brother. Waiting for this absurd test. Surely he is privileged to view an epic madness. Poor Noah, when all this peters out. Enjoy it while it lasts.

  But as he gazes at the limp volleyball net, some residue of last night, or perhaps a curious tension in the air, pierces him.

  What if the tests—succeed?

  The memory of a sliding glass of water erupts in his head, his knees feel weak. And last night—last night he actually, undeniably fell into another’s mind, and she knew his. A clammy coldness invades him. Is it now so inconceivable that these people could pull numbers out of a distant mind? And if they do? He has taken nothing seriously, he has never considered that they might be in real danger here in this paranoid place—He should—Traitorously his hand has brought a capsule to his lips. He swallows, waits.

  “Dann! Dann!” Noah is shouting. The missing biomonitors have arrived.

  Unreality closes back around him. He goes inside to find the dayroom in a tangle of wires and opened crates. Men are carrying the recorders into the cubicles which will serve as test stations. The new doors now close off the corridor.

  “Help me get these right, Dann. I want the placement of everything as close as possible to the configuration we had. We don’t know what may be important.”

  With Costakis’ help Dann goes from room to room, making the final adjustments, trying to remember relative positions of chairs, cabinets, walls. It’s surprising how well Noah has recreated the laboratory setup. “Get it right, Dann,” the old man urges. Dann has forgotten his cold moment and feels only a benevolent glow for the old maniac. Kendall Kirk is being obnoxiously helpful about getting the wires taped out of the way. His Labrador watches from outside the screen door.

  Presently it’s time to call the subjects in for their base-line runs. Safe in his official persona Dann beams and nods, refusing to notice their tension, the arousal readings on the tapes. This is just another day in Noah’s fantasy-lab.

  As Val goes out she whispers, “Remember.”

  Remember what? He brushes it away.

  When he is unhooking Rick the boy says suddenly, “Listen. I’m not going to tell them anything. They can shove it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Navy. That fucking Fearing. I tell you, Ronnie’s scared. I’m not going along.”

  “But Noah Catledge isn’t in the Navy,” Dann says confusedly, still bemused by good will for the old man. “This is his test just like all the others. It would be a shame to let him down now.”

  “I don’t give a shit,” Rick mutters. His tone sounds indecisive.

  Dann forgets him. Margaret has come into the dayroom, where the teleprinter is being installed.

  As soon as he can Dann hurries out and finds her alone except for an electrician finishing a junction-box by the door. She’s standing by the console, tapping out some message which produces mysterious blue symbols on the read-out screen.

  “Testing?” Dann dares to ask.

  To his delight she nods serenely. “Checking in.”

  “You have a connection to our office computer from here?”

  “I have access to the probability program. Your EEG correlations will have to wait till we get back.”

  The teleprinter clacks extendedly. She takes the printout, frowns thoughtfully.

  “What’s it telling you?” he asks like an idiot.

  “Users’ advisory. There’s been some accident in the main banks at Holloway, a lot of cores got wiped. Suspected tampering, etcetera… It doesn’t affect us.”

  Her tone is peaceful, quietly amused. The beautiful thing is back, the fragile link between her sad world and his. He stands there watching her ply her magic.

  Suddenly she shakes her head at the screen. “Look at that.”

  “Something wrong?” He peers at it, identifying what looks like an integral sign surrounded by a great many Ts.

  “It keeps giving the date as plus or minus infinity. The ghost.” She chuckles. “I thought I had that fixed.”

  She sits down at the console and starts incomprehensible rites.

  Feeling marvelously better, Dann strolls back through the corridor and goes outside. Nobody in sight but Ted and Rick shooting baskets again. The sunlight on the greenery is pulsating, vibrant; there’s a brilliance to every outline. Dann hopes he hasn’t dosed himself into some kind of psychedelic domain. It’s after eleven. The first test starts at noon. It will run one hour, a letter every ten minutes. So slow; supposed to be safer in case the submarine group aren’t synchronized exactly. Fantastic…

  “Ready, Dann? It’s time to set up.” Noah bounces by with file folders under his arm. Kendall Kirk starts shouting “Come on in, gang!” his voice ringing with false camaraderie.

  Even Dann’s muffled senses can’t ignore the painful tension in the air when the subjects are finally in place and being connected up. Rick is dead silent, Ted Yost wears a weird little smile, Costakis is maniacally squaring off his pad into tiny grids. Even Winona is flinchy about her hair. Frodo’s cubicle is empty; she has to be coaxed to leave Valerie. Dann lets his hands work automatically, trying to stay numb. He is still seeing too many colors and he is feeling, or hearing, a peculiar silent humming in the air. It’s me, he thinks. I’ve overdosed.

  “Eleven fifty-five!”

  Noah takes up his usual place in midcorridor. Dann and Kirk go to the dayroom. Margaret is waiting at her console; she will have nothing to do until the run is over. Dann stands by the closed corridor door; it’s so thin he can hear chairs scrape in the cubicles. Kirk scowls at Margaret and Dann, and takes up a watchdog stance by the front door. Outside on the porch the real dog’s tail thumps. It’s growing hot in the barracks.

  At eleven fifty-eight a car stops outside. Major Fearing comes in quietly and sits down by the desk where he can watch everybody. He nods minimally at Dann. Curious how obtrusive the covert style becomes, Dann thinks. There’s an envelope in Fearing’s pocket. Is that the “answers,” the list of numbers actually transmitted? Like a game
.

  Is there really a submarine lying underwater out at sea, with Ron in it waiting to be shown a card?

  “Twelve o’clock!” Noah says briskly in the corridor. “First letter, go!”

  Dead silence. The tension is a subsonic thrum, Dann can almost feel his fillings buzz. He will not let it remind him of last night.

  Suddenly Rick’s voice bleats out a high-pitched laugh. Dann can hear Noah rushing in and shushing.

  “Ronnie’s afraid to go to the can,” Rick says. “He’s so constipated, he’s afraid the water will run up his ass.”

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” Says Noah. “Please try to concentrate. I’m sure he’s attempting to transmit a letter.”

  “Oh, he’s attempting,” Rick says sarcastically.

  The trembling silence closes back.

  Sounds of movement in the cubicles. The subjects must be writing their imaginary letters. They do it differently, Dann knows; the girls produce big single letters ornamented with curlicues; Costakis writes a whole alphabet and circles one. Ted Yost scrawls and crosses out… Dann realizes he is trying to ignore the humming in the air. It’s like an itch, it has to be coming from outside him. His eye falls on the wires running along the walls. That’s it, he has heard about people feeling what is it, a sixty-cycle hum. He feels better.

  “Second letter, start!” Noah calls out.

  In that submarine, somebody has shown Ron a different card. Dann blinks, trying to suppress the colored haloes on the outlines of things. Scrapings and rustling from the cubicles. Ten minutes is an eternity to wait. Kirk shifts his feet, Fearing sits still. The Labrador’s tail thuds on the steps.

  “Third letter, start.”

  “Loud and clear!” Costakis calls out suddenly, startling everyone.