Up the Walls of the World

by James Tiptree Jr.

  “Hi there,” the mental construct of Tedyost says cheerfully.

  Giadoc finds himself so caught up he must struggle for reality.

  “Are you still in contact with the Destroyer? Remember! The brain, your ‘captain’?”

  “I’m the captain,” Tedyost’s mind replies peacefully.

  The creature is mad. Effortfully Giadoc pushes through the bewildering pseudo-reality, sends a jolt of life-force into the other nucleus. Remember!

  But to his dismay the visionary world only grows stronger; he is still in bird-form, teetering for balance as the breeze and the hissing spray blow past the craft. The only trace of his efforts is that Tedyost’s dream now contains an image of the Destroyer’s speaking-screen, fixed to the edge of one pod. It shows blue lights and symbols, but Tedyost’s attention does not turn to it.

  The alien will not rouse at this level, Giadoc sees. He himself is too weak to do more. He must disengage at once.

  With more difficulty than he expects, Giadoc disentangles himself from the charming dream-world. When he reports to the others what he has found, Heagran’s mind-tone is grave.

  “This place has dangers. The fantasy mode is very strong here. Without true senses we must all be on our guard. We must keep each other sane.”

  They are all silent a moment, scanning the enigmatic brain so close yet so unreachable.

  “We must understand and control the reality of this place,” Heagran transmits again. “If not, we will one by one drift into dreaming and be lost. Giadoc, you must devise means of contact. I will summon the surviving Fathers here to help.”

  With grave formality he sends the ancient Tyrenni council-call out to the nearest minds. Giadoc can sense it being taken up and passed on.

  “We should get the other aliens here too,” Tivonel puts in excitedly. “Maybe Tanel knows how to reach this one. Oh, I hope he’s alive.”

  “Again this female has a sound idea.” Heagran’s tone is benevolent. “Young Tivonel, go quest for them in my name.”

  With a warm touch she disengages, and Giadoc can sense her life-field flowing away from point to point among the throng of Tyrenni. He and Heagran wait, contemplating the pale cryptic forms writhing within the nucleus and the passive emanation of Tedyost.

  All at once they notice that the structures of energy within the huge brain are changing, fading from their scan. It seems to be becoming wholly opaque. As it does so, a new surface configuration glimmers into being, very close, definite and stable; apparently a shallow energy-pattern. As they watch, it coalesces sharply to a field of brilliant points: Giadoc is reminded of something—the sky, seen from Tyree’s Near Pole.

  “Heagran! It is showing us the Companions.”

  As if in confirmation, the pattern lingers, then begins to change as though receding in a steady, unliving way. New sparks pour in on all sides while the familiar sky-field shrinks until it is only a part of what seems a huge globular mass of brilliance. Then that too shrinks further and is lost in a great flattened swirl, like a big plant of light spinning in an eddy. At the center of the slow light-whirl is a disorderly bright flare.

  As Giadoc studies this he receives the impression of wrongness, danger; it is insistent, like the warning engrams that explorers sometimes impose on poisonous plants.

  “This is some kind of message or communication, Heagran. Perhaps it is showing the true shape of the whole sky.”

  “Can you decipher it, young Giadoc?”

  “No. But maybe it is warning us of trouble among the Companions, or the death of Sounds.”

  “We know that already.”

  “Wait. See!”

  Into the strange cold swirl of unliving light a squadron of dark shapes have come. They appear small, but Giadoc realizes they must be huge by comparison with the lights that represent a myriad Sounds, They remind him of the schools of mindless animals that feed on the plant-rafts of the high winds. As he attends, they spread out, deploy in ranks, and in fact begin something that looks like feeding. The Companions before them seem to vaporize or disappear at their approach; the black ranks are cutting a slow swathe of darkness through the brilliance of the central fires. Soon a zone or arc of empty deadness is being carved out of the great glowing swirl, between the inmost center and the roots of the streaming, spangled arms. A flare from the center washes toward the dark zone and subsides, and still the “feeding” goes on.

  “Heagran, I believe it is showing us the other Destroyers. The eaters of Sounds.”

  “ We know that too. To what purpose?”

  “I can’t tell. It seems unliving, like a dead engram.”

  Old Heagran churns angrily, and transmits with all his force straight at the brain behind the image.

  “WHY? WHY DO YOU KILL?”

  No reaction. The strange panoramic engram continues to unfold. The dead zone of destruction continues to expand around the center; now it has almost enclosed it. Giadoc is sure this is some recording, but a vastly speeded-up image or diagram of unimaginable scope. And now he notices a new detail of the scene: here and there among the shoals of the Destroyers are a few of different sort, moving in advance of the general line. They pause now and again, and from them come faint simulacra of the signals of life. Then these few turn and speed out beyond the area of annihilation, only to return and repeat.

  Giadoc can make nothing of this, yet he senses it is intended as significant. He has not long to wonder; now the globe or shell of darkness has been joined around the central fires of the image. As if this were a signal, the dark shapes of the Destroyers draw together like a school of flying animals, then turn as one and flee outward from the scene. In a moment they have dwindled to a vanishing point in the void beyond all light.

  The image holds for a moment, then darkens and expands back to the original sky-field, showing again the familiar Companions. Then this begins to shrink and condense as before. Giadoc realizes that it is about to repeat the entire sequence all over again. Can this be communication, or a fantastically detailed engram impressed somehow on unliving energy?

  But as he puzzles, “watching” the dark shapes come again into the great sky-swirl, a faint subliminal unease comes to him, as if something is changing in the real, or unreal, world around him. The sensation is not strong enough to break his concentration, until he notices that the faint blur below the image which is the dreaming mind of Tedyost is no longer still. It has begun to roil restlessly. Presently it flares out weakly, as if seeking contact. Perhaps the dreaming one has waked?

  Cautiously Giadoc extends contact, only to find he need not have bothered.

  With startling intensity the alien transmits directly at him:

  “Help! Mutiny! The Captain needs help!”

  The symbols are only half-intelligible. Tedyost subsides to passivity again. But Giadoc has no time to puzzle over this: He has suddenly become aware of what is bothering him: Alarm!

  Out beyond them, all through the vast expanse of the Destroyer, the sense of life has lowered. Gradually but perceptibly the sustaining energies are sinking, ebbing, seeping away.

  “Heagran! Do you not sense that these energies are beginning to fail? In the periphery, coming closer?”

  The old being scans intently. “Yes. I do. So your space-animal is dying after all, young Giadoc. A brave try, but doomed.”

  But suddenly into Giadoc’s mind come his experiences on the alien world, the nonliving energy systems he has known.

  “No, Heagran. I believe this is something different. I believe that this entity is turning us off. If we could break through and change its power-set, perhaps we are not doomed.”

  Chapter 24

  Among the incoming life-rush of the Tyrenni are eight minds that had been human and one that had been a dog.

  The entity which calls itself Daniel Dann loses contact with everything as his life is whirled up on the strange Beam, leaving his dying body behind. He feels himself a swimmer shot through a turbulent millrace, swirled and spewed
out to the shallows of the throng. A moment later he strands on something, he can’t tell what, but only clutches at it and finds that it sustains his life.

  He has had practice in wild discarnations, but this is the most alien of all. He is still alive, still seemingly himself, but bodiless. Now he has no limbs, no senses, nothing—yet he lives.

  A fearful aloneness strikes him. As it threatens to rise to panic, he perceives that his naked mind is receiving input, vague but insistent. This void is not empty. All around him is a sense of calling, or signaling, in some mode he can’t quite receive. Others are here, he realizes. They have all come somewhere, life is near him now. But he has no idea how to make contact. The terror of isolation hammers in him; he strains to hang onto himself, to face the menace of this weird escape from death.

  Or is it escape? A new terror takes hold. Has he died, is this what the dying mind feels as it leaves life forever? Will the sense of presence fade, and float away forever, leaving him in eternal isolation in the dark?

  He tries to “listen” again. Whatever the elusive susurrus whispering around him is, it does not seem to be fading. Hold onto yourself, Dann. The others must be here too, wherever this is. Are they, too, frightened? Try to reach them.

  But how can he? He has no idea.

  Experimentally he forms the thought of Valerie—no yellow-bikinied body, but Valerie’s world as he had touched it—and tries to project her name. Valerie, he wills, VALERIE, ARE YOU HERE?

  Nothing answers him. Ignorant of the mad commotion he is generating, Dann runs through the names. FRODO! RICK, RON WAXMAN! Can you hear me? WINONA! CHRIS?

  Still no answer he can detect. Is he doomed never to make contact, to continue so horribly alone in nowhere?

  Perhaps the Tyrenni, he thinks, and imagines himself shouting with all his might. TIVONEL! HELP ME PLEASE!

  This time something does happen. He has been mindlessly lunging forward as he tries to call, and now a sensory image blooms in his mind. For an instant he is blown by the great gales of Tyree. “Heagran!” says a soundless voice.

  He grasps at it, but it is gone, leaving a sense of scandalized disapproval. He understands that he has blundered into a Tyrenni mind-field. Well, at least there is some sort of reality here. Encouraged, he tries again. “Tivonel?”

  For a moment he thinks he is rewarded—the image of winds comes again, he hears merry coral laughter. But it does not hold, it splinters and dissolves into an Earthly street scene; he sees a red VW pull away, revealing a cream-colored Continental. Next instant he is at his familiar desk, then a quick flash to his old body stretched out in his home armchair.

  Oh god: Hallucinations. This place must be psychogenic in some way, he can feel illusory powers. Will he lose himself in fantasies or go mad from sensory deprivation?

  Pulling himself together, he concentrates outward and tries to shout silently into the rustling void. VALERIE! RICK! IS ANYBODY THERE?

  And almost he thinks he feels himself reach somebody, when the most amazing sensation he has ever known invades, or rather, surrounds his mind.

  It is a feather-light authoritative presence which seems to press swiftly, gently, irresistibly around the circumference of his whole life-being. The urgency of his need evaporates away and vanishes; indeed, he can no longer even try to call. A myriad frantic half-thoughts of which he had been only dimly aware are suddenly resolved and gone too, folded back somehow into his central mind. His great half-admitted terror of this place drains away, leaving in its place a growing calm. Stealing over him, enfolding him, is an almost palpable wave of reassurance and relief.

  For a moment he thinks he is going under some immensely powerful opiate. But that comes from within—this is coming on him from outside.

  Fear flares again. Who’s there? he tries to cry, Wait! What are you doing? The only answer is another wave of the calming pressure, in which he can now read a coloring of reproof. Something out there has been offended and is taking steps to quieten him. His mind casts up wild pictures of djinns or angels or extraterrestrial what’s-its, and then understanding comes: Tyree, their techniques of the mind.

  Can he be experiencing the ministrations of a Father of Tyree?

  Yes, he is sure of it now. He is being Fathered, englobed and “drained” as he had seen it done to others. As if he were an angry child!

  Human resentment erupts in him. Struggling to resist the tranquilizing currents he yells mentally, Stop! I must reach my friends! Where are they?

  But the pacifying presence is much too strong. He feels his protest dissipate, subside back into itself and melt away. It’s not like going under anaesthesia, not at all. He is perfectly conscious, only calmer, more unified and centered. At peace. Really very pleasant, he acknowledges; these people have the only technology here in the naked realm of mind. What was it Tivonel had told him? Think yourself round, like an egg. Awkwardly he tries that again.

  He is rewarded by a majestic sense of approval. Father is pleased, he thinks wryly. Is this what a soothed infant feels like?

  Fathering, we call it mothering. What an extraordinary art, why have I not considered its significance before? Surely of all the things people do to each other this is one of the most remarkable.

  Into his musings comes a concrete image: the picture of a gyrating cloud of mind-stuff, frantically contorting and emanating violent blasts in all directions, intruding promiscuously into others and on the verge of disrupting itself. He understands. This is how he had been. “Ahura!” The mental echo is freighted with admonition.

  Very well, ahura, whatever that is. But what to do? And who is his invisible mentor? As quietly as he can he shapes the question.

  He “hears” no reply, but suddenly finds himself recalling big Father Ustan, who had separated him from Ron in the winds of Tyree. At first he takes it only for memory, until something in its insistence tells him it is communication. Dear God, if this is mind-speech, how will he ever learn?

  In answer, his surface thought is suddenly invaded by a point that unfolds into a picture or diagram, an abstract multidimensional web-work glimmering in his mind. He puzzles, finally guesses that he is being shown a field-organization, a teaching picture of how to shape himself to function here. But it means nothing to him; he has not the concepts.

  For a moment he fully appreciates his barbarous mental state. The Tyrenni train themselves from childhood in all this. Random human exhortations recur to him: Brace up, Relax, Concentrate, Make up your mind, Forget it, Think positively, Cool it, Meditate. How ludicrously inadequate, even the portentous admonitions of psycho-therapy! Here before him are precise instructions on how to organize his mind-self—and he doesn’t know how.

  He has no pride left; pride is not the issue here.

  Help me, he cries or pleads.

  Next second he has an experience so astounding he forgets to be terrified. What he has felt as gentle external pressure becomes suddenly a real invasion—some part of his inmost being is grasped and shifted. He feels moods being seized and compressed, memories manipulated; his very focus of attention suddenly seems to dissolve, to flow in unknown directions and recover itself on some unexperienced dimension. Tensions he was unaware of melt with a snap, events on the borders of consciousness careen about and disappear. It is intimate, clinical, appalling, nothing at all. Beyond description.

  He yields. He has no choice nor concepts to define what is happening to him. One last panicky thought wonders if he is going mad or has forever lost himself. Then that too vanishes.

  With a twist like a chiropractor’s jerk he finds himself precariously stabilized in what feels like an internal gymnastic pose. His dizzied awareness comes back to him in a ludicrous picture of himself twisted into a pretzel with his heels behind his ears.

  “There. Thus.”

  He receives the “voice” distinctly but at some receptor-focus separate from his normal center, like an ear held out.

  “Speak so. I have assisted you to form a receptor-node. P
lace a thought here to pass it on.”

  Good grief, is this what telepaths do? Feeling like an untrained contortionist, Dann tries to form a thought of gratitude and hold it apart, “there,” at this new center of his mind. “Where are my friends?”

  “They are nearby. You are Tanel. A message: You must all join Father Heagran. That way.” A sense of direction imprints itself together with the words, coupled with an impression of stretching or flowing across points.

  “Where are we? What is this place?” he tries to ask, but in his urgency forgets the correct procedure. When he recovers himself and goes through the new convoluted channel, nothing answers him. He receives only a sense of disapproving departure. Father Ustan has gone away.

  Very well. To go that way. Trying to hold his strange new configuration, he reaches out and finds himself able to flow from base to charged base. As he masters this mode of locomotion, he tries to call or send out as discreetly as he can the names of the others. “Someone from Earth, are you there? Please answer if you can.”

  And suddenly, delightingly, someone is here, saying soundlessly at his new “ear.” “Doctor Dann!”

  It’s Valerie, he’s sure of it, the warmth, the indefinable flavor of personality. Forgetting composure, he rushes at the touch and is rewarded by a startling buffet of reproof-laughter-drawing-away, coupled with a picture of himself, absurdly shaggy, falling in a bear-hug onto Valerie’s figure.

  “Excuse me, please, I’m sorry I don’t know how—” Awkwardly he pulls back, reforming his configuration, terrified that he will lose her.

  “Think about just touching hands lightly.” The tiny gentle “voice” comes in his brain.

  It is like Tyree all over again, with no body. He tries to comply, and is rewarded by a definite sense of impalpable contact.

  “Frodo is here. And Chris is around but he won’t talk. Now we better go. I’ll lead, right?”

  “Yes.”

  He feels the touch pull or draw delicately, and flows himself with it, marveling. The quality of the contact is Valerie’s but not the same defensive young mind he had known before. Strength flows gently from her, and—something like elation. Leading them through this lightless, soundless, senseless place beyond life she is excited, unafraid. And far more skilled than he. The vulnerability was left on Earth, he thinks. Here nothing scares her.