Up the Walls of the World

by James Tiptree Jr.

  Inappropriate term for the visibly female Labrador; Dann recalls the little man’s mysognyny. I can’t pick up anything from a woman. Was this what old Omar meant?

  The alien body before him seems to be coming more alive; subvocal murmurs flicker across its mantle. But its field is still furled close. Suddenly Chris whispers sharply: “Doc. Are these characters all—you know—can they read your mind?”

  A sick telepath indeed.

  “Only if you want them to, Chris. See that hazy stuff around my body? They call it your field. No one can see your thoughts unless your field touches theirs. Then you can read them too.”

  At these words the little man’s life-aura contracts even closer, his great form furls so that he drops abruptly into the nearest; plant.

  “Wait, Chris.” Dann follows, trying to think of some way to calm him. “They never do it unless you want them to. It’s considered rude. I assure you, there’s nothing to be frightened of here, in that way.”

  Incomprehensible pursing from the body in the thicket. A telepath frightened of telepathy. Get his mind off it.

  “By the way, Chris, it may interest you to know that you’re in the body of a very large young male. You should come out and try the air. I’ve had a glorious time, flying. Look at your wingspread, you’re huge.”

  More mutters, but presently Dann sees one big vane spread cautiously out. “Yeah? You mean I’m, I’m not…?” The secondary vanes lift, the big body lofts upward. After a moment of confusion Costakis is hovering over the plant-roots, tilting and testing his jets.

  “Hey, you meant it.” The life-field has expanded raggedly, the cursing has stopped.

  “Yes, you got the best bargain of us all. Watch it, it’s intoxicating.” It comes to Dann that he isn’t talking to a dream or even a patient, but to a fellow human in a situation that however fantastic is dreadfully real. How sad that this new deal for poor Costakis won’t last.

  Chris seems to be slowly scanning round. Dann becomes conscious that the background drone from the sky has risen, and the painful signals of dying life seem much stronger.

  “What were you and big boy there talking about?” Costakis asks.

  “Well, there’s a problem here, Chris. The energy, I mean, the transmissions from the Sound—this language doesn’t have words. I’m trying to say that this world is getting too much sky-energy. Can you get what I mean at all?” An idea strikes Dann; Costakis knew electronics, maybe some physics. Perhaps the facts will distract him from his other fears. “The people here don’t understand these things. I—we need your advice.”

  The scanners of the big body before him extrude, membranes shift.

  “You’re not telling me the whole story, Doc.”

  The voice is so exactly that of the lonely, suspicious, jaunty little man that Dann can almost see his balding head.

  “Yes. I think it’s bad. I didn’t want to alarm the others, I haven’t told anybody else. You know more than I about energy. I’d be grateful for your help. For instance, how much time do you think we have?”

  At this moment an inarticulate cry flares from the female body beyond the thicket. Overhead, big Omar gives a monitory grunt, spreading his field.

  “T-T-Tokra! Docra! Tann!”

  Someone is clearly trying to call him.

  “I’m coming. Excuse me, Chris.”

  He jets over to the wakening form, so intent that he almost forgets to keep his mind away from its big, out-reaching field.

  “Who are you? I’m Dann, Doctor Dann. Who’s there?”

  “Oh, Doctor! Can’t you tell, I’m Valerie!”

  He surveys the writhing manta-form—vanes, membranes, strange stalked appendages—and a sudden visual revulsion strikes him. Valerie, in that! A poignant memory rises of the girl in her own form, the darling curves of breast and waist, the little yellow-covered mons, the charming smile. To be in this thing—this giant monster that has eaten a human girl. Oh, vile!

  He reels on the wind—and without warning, literally falls through her mind.

  He has no idea what is happening, though afterwards he thinks it must have been like two galaxies colliding, two briefly interpenetrating webs of force. Now he knows only that he is suddenly in another world—a world named Val, a strange vivid landscape in space and time, composed of a myriad familiar scenes, faces, voices, objects, musics, body sensations, memories, experiences—all centered round his Val-self. His self incarnated in a familiar/unfamiliar five-foot-three body; tender-skinned, excitable, occasionally aching, with sharp sight and and hearing and clever, double-jointed hands; the only, the normal way to be. And all these are aligned in a flash upon dimensions of emotion—hope, pride, anxiety, joy, humor, aversion, a force-field of varied feeling-tones, among which one stands out for which his mind has no equivalent: fear, vulnerability everywhere. This world is dangerous, pervaded by some intrusive permanent menace, a lurking, confining cruelty like an occupying enemy. A host of huge crude male bodies ring it, rough voices jeer, oblivious power monopolies all free space, alien concepts rule the very air. And yet amid this hostile world hope is carried like a lamp in brave, weak hands; a hope so bound with self that it has no name, but only the necessity of going on, like a guerilla fighter’s torch.

  All this reality unrolls through him instantly, he is in it—but it is background for one central scene: Five bare toes in sunlight, his living leg cocked up on the other knee above a yellow spread. And on his/her/my naked stomach is resting an intimately known head of brown hair. A head which is We Love—is a complex of tenderness, ambiguous resentments, sweet sharing, doubts, worry, wild excitements, resolves, and dreams. All existent in a magic enclave, a frail enchanted space outside which looms the injustice called daily life—and within which, gleaming in the sunshine, lie two Canadian travel folders and a box of health biscuits, about to be shared with love.

  Almost as all this penetrates Dann, the vision of strange self shimmers, dissolves its overwhelming reality. Doubleness slides back and grows. The invading mental galaxy is withdrawing itself out and away.

  Daniel Dann comes back to himself, spread on the winds of Tyree beside another alien form.

  But he is not himself; not as he was nor ever will be again. For the first time he has really grasped life’s most eerie lesson:

  The Other Exists.

  Cliché, he thinks dazedly. Cliché, like the big ones. But I never understood. How could I? Only here, forever removed from Earth in perishing monstrous form, could I have felt the reality of a different human world. A world in which he is a passing phenomenon, as she was in mine. And to have mistaken that charged world-scape for a seductive little belly in a yellow bathing suit! Shame curdles him.

  But now he must act, repair his irreparable blunder, attend to the business at hand.

  “Valerie? I, I’m sorry—”

  “It’s all right. You aren’t… You didn’t…” Gently, her thought brushes his. How could he have thought her wind-borne form ugly? The mind is all, it really is.

  “But listen,” she is saying, her voice tinged pale with fear. “Major Fearing isn’t here, is he? The one you were talking to?”

  “No. It’s Chris Costakis.” Irrationally he feels cheered that at least one of these telepaths has made the same mistake. Maybe he’s learning. “I don’t think you have to worry about Fearing ever anymore.”

  “Oh.” Her voice-color mellows. “But we are in some kind of trouble, aren’t we? I mean, this isn’t a dream?”

  “I’m afraid not. Didn’t your guardian up there tell you where we are?”

  “He started to, I think, but I went to sleep.”

  “Well, so far it’s been rather pleasant, believe it or not. Winona is here, she’s in a crowd of Fathers who want to talk with her about raising babies. Kirk is here too, but they regressed him to infancy. Winona thinks he’s cute. And Rick and Ron have found each other, they call themselves one person named Waxman now. Only Chris seems to be horrified that someone will read his mind
.”

  Time enough to mention the bad stuff later. He watches her glow and stretch her new body, becoming more fully awake. She must be in that state of dreamy euphoria that seems to attend waking up oh Tyree. Come to think of it, he’s still in it himself.

  “Now who’s this, do you know?” He floats over to the body lying close by big Omar’s protective field. It has to be a much younger person; the mantle is short, the vanes half-grown. Protruding from the central membranes are a set of strong-looking claspers. Do Tyrenni children make much more use of their manipulative limbs? A section of pouch is exposed too, this must be a male child, one of the children he had seen carried up and away. He remembers to look at the life-aura; it seems to be sizable, cautiously eddying out. But odd, lop-sided.

  “I dreamed something,” Val is saying, “before I got so scared. But then I went to sleep. They do that, don’t they?”

  “Yes. It’s their way of fixing up fear and bad feelings.”

  “How wonderful!” She stretches again, laughs gaily. “Don’t worry about what happened, you know. Oh, I feel so free!” She makes an experimental caracole above the plants, lifts all her vanes. “Free and strong—why, I could go miles and miles, couldn’t I? Anywhere in the sky!”

  “That’s right. As a matter of fact, on this world the females seem to do all the traveling and exploring while the males tend the kids.”

  “Oh, wow!” Then she sobers. “But we should wake up—whoever this is.”

  They hover together over the quiet form. Dann notices again the peculiar tight-held formation of parts of its life-energies. Another frightened one like Costakis?

  Suddenly the dark, mantle lights concisely.

  “Don’t bother,” says the voice of Fredericka Crespinelli. “Are you all right, Val?”

  “Frodo! I dreamed, I was sure you were here.”

  “I heard you. Hello, Doc.”

  “Hello Frodo. Have you been awake long?”

  “Awhile. Listen, what in the name of the Abyss—now why did I say that? What did they do to me?” The words glimmer with the tinge of fear.

  “Don’t be scared, Frodo,” Val says loftily. “They didn’t do anything, to your mind, it’s just that you can say what they have words for. I figured that out right away.”

  “All right.” Dann can see she is much more disturbed than Val. “What are we here for, Doc? What’s going on?”

  To distract her he says the first thing that comes into his head.

  “Well, for one thing you’re a young male now. Your body, I mean. A boy, like twelve or fifteen I’d guess.”

  “Who, me?”

  She twists in midair, trying to see all of herself at once, and succeeds in blowing into a tangle of vanes and vines. Val laughs merrily, trying to help, but there seems to be no easy way of physical assistance in this world. Frodo finally jets free.

  “When you grow up you’ll be like that enormous old chap up there. He’s a Father, that’s the highest rank here.” Grinning to himself, Dann can’t resist adding, “As a male your main job will be raising babies. It’s the high-status thing here. The females like Val aren’t allowed to touch them.”

  “What?!” The rainbow-hued exclamations end in delicious laughter. Dann joins in. Enjoy while we can, the absurd delight in the magical winds of Tyree. The others are experimentally flying barrel-rolls.

  “Wait a minute, you two. I suggest you learn more about this world before you make the mistakes I did. The way you do it is to ask someone for a memory.”

  “A memory?”

  “The most amazing teaching method you ever saw. Wait. Father Omar!” he calls. “May I present Valerie and Frodo, two former females of my world? They would like to be given a memory, but we are ignorant of the correct way to receive. Would you instruct them?”

  “Very well,” the old being replies, and a sad sigh gleams on his sides. “Perhaps I too will ask a memory of your world, since my Janskelen has gone there.”

  “Now you’ll be fine,” Dann tells them. “Just do what he says and you’ll be astounded. I’m going to check on the others. Maybe I can bring back my friend to meet you, a real young female of Tyree.”

  … And so it had gone, a dreamlike happiness in the high beauty of the Wall. But then another fireball had crashed close, and started a precipitous exodus down, and down again.

  Tivonel will not stray far from Lomax and the old Hearer stays bravely above the rest, still reaching his mind to the sky.

  Dann feels duty-bound to stay near, since he has Giadoc’s body; privately he is sure all this is futile. Meantime his human friends are one by one beginning to feel the burning in the wind.

  “Chris, will you take charge? Make them get under what shelter they can and get them lower down the Wall. I have to stay by the Hearers because the person who owns my body may be trying to come back.”

  “You leaving us, Doc?’

  “I doubt it. I even doubt I want to, believe it or not.”

  Suddenly Costakis displays an unChrislike opalescent laugh; a true laugh of human acceptance.

  “I believe you, Doc.”

  He planes off down the wind, to round up Winona’s group. Costakis “believes”? Dan has a momentary realization of what sheer size and strength has done for Chris. The simple fact of presence that he himself unthinkingly enjoyed so long. To be listened to, to have no need to strive.

  It is in fact Chris who gives them concrete help.

  He presently reappears by Dann and Heagran, towing a thorny-looking bundle of plant-life.

  “Doc, I’ve been looking around. This stuff must have some, what’s the word, hard matter in it, it blocks off the energy pretty well. You know, the sky-sound. If we make a big raft of it we’d have a shelter from the burning. Trouble is, I’ve got everything but, uh, manipulators.”

  He flaps his mantle, wiggling his weak claspers as if to say, “No hands.” Several nearby Fathers color embarrassedly.

  “What are you doing with that frikkon-weed?” Tivonel jets up. “That’s awful stuff, it tears your vanes.”

  “Yeah, but it’ll stick together without weaving,” Chris replies. “You have that long vine, too. We can throw lines over the mats to hold them down by. Doc, these people ought to make some for themselves if they want to last much longer. Tell them.”

  Heagran has been following the conversation with distant puzzlement. Now he says haughtily, “Stranger, it seems you do not know that making objects and weaving is children’s work. This is no time for child-play!”

  “Suit yourself. I’m trying to show you how to keep from being burned alive.”

  “Wait, Chris,” Dann puts in. “They won’t understand at all, we’ll never get anywhere with words. Can you form a mental picture of the danger and exactly the kind of shelters you mean?”

  “And let them read my mind?” Chris jets backward nervously.

  “Just that one single item, Chris. I guarantee it, these people have deep respect for privacy. Just form a picture of the damage from the energy, and how the mat should be made to hold it off. Show it protecting children.”

  “I don’t want anyone in my head,” Chris says. Dann hears the shifting colors of indecision.

  “Please, Chris. At least for the kids’ sake. Father Heagran, my friend here is expert at such energy-dangers. He wishes to show you how to protect your young. But he is frightened that his whole life will be known. Can you assure him that you will take only this information?”

  Big Heagran is a rainbow of exasperation, weariness, skepticism, and worry.

  “If you can form an engram, stranger, naturally no Tyrenni would seek more.” His tone carries convincing repugnance.

  “See, Chris? An engram, he means a kind of concentrated image—”

  “I know what an engram is,” Chris says sullenly. “All right. But not til I say go.” His big body has become quiet, the immaterial energy of his life tight-held around it. Then Dann sees the hazy field begin to bulge toward Heagran, swirling and condensi
ng a small nucleus, rather like an amoeba preparing to divide. Heagran’s field extends a leisurely energy-tendril toward the bulge.

  “Remember about the children,” Dann calls.

  “Go,” says Chris muffledly, and at that instant his bulge seems to explode toward Heagran.

  Dann is blinded by a sudden brilliant stop-sequence like a film display—pictures of the radiation-storm, and progressively burned bodies, extraordinary, detailed images of the making of protective floating rafts, with ropes of gura-vine to anchor them. It’s like a vivid how-to book, even to insets showing enlarged details. The final image shows a raft holding off the burning rays above a crowd of bodies who are odd amalgams of human and Tyrenni children.

  “Whew!” Tivonel is exclaiming. “Tanel, your friend is one fierce sender!”

  “Well done, Chris! I think everybody around got that. Father Heagran, do you now see the usefulness of his plan?”

  The great being muses for a moment. “Yes,” he admits. “I am sorry to say, I understand. Yet it seems a hopeless hope, if matters are as bad as he shows. Unless the Destroyer moves away soon we will all die. And how are we Tyrenni to construct such things?”

  “Any hope is better than none,” a young Father says firmly. “This will protect our children as long as possible. What if Lomax succeeds, after the children are all dead? I say we do it. We Fathers can shelter our young ones while they weave the plants.”

  “Very well. So be it.”

  “And we females can go get the stuff?” Tivonel flexes her blistered vanes. “Whew! I never thought I’d be hauling in frikkon-weed. Marockee! Iznagel!” She jets off. “Round up a team. You won’t believe this.”

  “I better get our people started on ours.” Chris sails away. Dann looks after his expanding life-field. Clearly, a leader has been born. Or a potential dictator? Well, there won’t be time to worry about that. The raft-making scheme strikes him as useful only for morale.

  It has in fact occupied many hours of the timeless time, while Lomax searches the skies in vain. The Destroyer still lingers, blocking the sky, and the scream of the Sound becomes all-pervasive. But once working, the Tyrenni sort themselves out well. They soon find that the raft-shelters offer perceptible comfort. The chief problem has been to persuade the adults to take their turns under cover before they become too painfully exposed. Dann circulates about trying to persuade them of the reality of the danger and to make Heagran take some shelter himself.