Up the Walls of the World

by James Tiptree

  Noah is telling him that the trip to the secret Navy installation is set for Thursday. They must be prepared to stay two nights. He cannot bring himself to ask if she will come along.

  “We’ll assemble at the M.A.T.S. terminal at National, at oh-nine-hundred, Dan. The place is called Deerfield—Oh dear, I probably shouldn’t have said that, it’s classified.”

  “I won’t tell anyone, Noah,” he says gently, an echo aching in some obsolete part of him.

  Chapter 4

  IT WAS NOT ALWAYS CRIMINAL.

  THE VAST SPACE-BORNE BEING REMEMBERS ITS YOUNG LIFE ON DEDICATION TO THE TASK. ONCE IT HAD FELT, IN WHAT IS NOT A HEART, ONLY EAGERNESS TO RESPOND TO THE LONG TIME-PHASED SEQUENCES BOOMING THROUGH THE VOID. UNTIRINGLY IT HAD ALIGNED ITSELF TO THE ALLOTTED SECTORS AND POURED OUT ITS MIGHTY DEVASTATIONS IN CONCERT WITH ITS KIND. DEFEND, DESTROY—DESTROY, DEFEND!

  HAPPINESS THEN, IMMERSED IN THE TASK THAT IS THE LIFE OF ITS RACE!

  THE ENEMY, OF COURSE, IS GROWING: HAS GROWN AND WILL GROW FIERCER AND MORE RAVENOUS AEON BY AEON. BUT INEXORABLY TOO THE PLAN IS UNFOLDING WITH IT, STAGE BY FORESEEN STAGE: THE TASK-PLAN DESIGNED BY SUPREME EFFORT TO CONTAIN THE SUPREME THREAT.

  DEFEND, DEFEND—DESTROY, DESTROY! GRIPPED BY MILLENNIAL FERVOR, IT OBEYED.

  BUT SOMEHOW WRONGNESSES BEGAN.

  THEY STARTED AS BRIEF INVADING SLACKENINGS. UNPREDICTABLY, INTO ITS ALMOST EMPTY EXPANSES, WOULD COME INSTANTS OF DOUBLENESS OF ATTENTION THAT SEPARATED IT FROM THE TASK.

  FRIGHTENED, THE HUGE BEING HAD REDOUBLED LINKAGE, REFUSED TO FOCUS ON THE DISQUIET. THIS MUST BE A MINOR MALFUNCTION. MALFUNCTIONS, EVEN ERROR, ARE FORESEEN BY THE PLAN. WITH THE LIMITLESS POWERS OF TIME ITSELF, ALL CAN BE DULY COMPENSATED. HIS TROUBLE MUST BE ONE SUCH.

  BUT THE MALFUNCTION PERSISTS, DEVELOPS TO MORE THAN A STIR OF UNEASE. LABORING ON THE ASSIGNED VECTORS OF THE TASK, THE GIANT ENTITY WOULD FIND ITS SENSORS HAD SLIPPED FOCUS, SO THAT ITS NAME MUST ECHO REDUNDANTLY UPON THE BANDS. SHOCKED, IT THRUSTS ITSELF BACK INTO LINK. BUT THE TROUBLE RECURS, RECURS AGAIN AND AGAIN.

  SLOWLY THE TERRIFYING REALIZATION COMES: THIS IS SELF-GENERATED! DELIBERATELY IT IS LETTING ITS SENSORS SLIDE FROM SYNCHRONY, ALLOWING ITSELF TO SCAN EMISSIONS NOT OF THE TASK, AS IF CRAVING SOME UNKNOWN INPUT.

  THIS APPALLS, HERE IS NO MINOR MALFUNCTION, HERE IS DEPRAVITY INCARNATE! AGONIZED, THE ENTITY HURLS ITS IMMATERIAL ENORMITY BACK INTO CORRECT ALIGNMENT, SUPPRESSING ALL BUT THE MOST NEEDFUL RECEPTION. BUT DESPITE ALL IT CAN DO, THE DISTRACTION PERSISTS AND GROWS. TEMPTATION WELLS AGAIN, AND AGAIN IT YIELDS, LETTING AWARENESS QUEST THROUGH MEANINGLESS SPECTRA, GUILTILY AWARE OF AN OBSCURE SATISFACTION OVERWHELMED BY PANIC AND PAIN.

  AND WORSE: AS THE LAPSES CONTINUE, IT FINDS THAT IT IS DRIFTING EVER FARTHER FROM THE CENTRAL AREA, THE ZONE OF THE TASK. NOW THE VOICES OF ITS RACE ARE FADING, EVEN AS IT WILLS ITSELF TO OBEY THEM, TO RETURN AT ONCE. CLOUDS OF GAS AND MATTER DENSER THAN ITS OWN BODY ARE THICKENING BETWEEN HIM AND THE OTHERS. RETURN INSTANTLY! BUT STILL IT FINDS ITSELF SEEKING UNKNOWN, NONEXISTENT STIMULATION, SEEKING ANYTHING THAT IS NOT ITSELF OR ITS SHAME.

  IT DOES NOT AT FIRST NOTICE THE SMALL INPUTS, THE TINY CRYPTIC SIGNALS IN THE ULTRATEMPORAL RANGE. WHEN IT DOES, IT CAN FIND NO MEANING IN THEM. ARE THEY NEW FORMS OF TORMENT RESULTING FROM ITS CRIME? BUT THEY ARE STRANGELY ATTRACTIVE. SLOWLY, SLOWLY. EXCITATION STIRS THE PARSECS-LONG IMMATERIALITY OF ITS NUCLEUS. AN INEXPLICABLE STRESS-PATTERN IS BORN.

  THIS IRRITATES: IT SAILS AWAY, ITS MOTION CHURNING THE LOCAL FABRIC OF SPACE-TIME. BUT WHEN IT COMES TO REST, MORE OF THE TINY INPUTS ARE STILL PERCEPTIBLE. INDEED, THEY SEEM TO BE ALL ABOUT, VARYING IN AMPLITUDE AND COMPLEXITY, BUT ALWAYS MULTIPLE, MINUTE AND MEANINGLESS. IDLY THE IMMENSE DARK BEING SAMPLES THEM. THEY ARE, IT SEEMS, LAGLESS OR TIME-INDEPENDENT: THEY DO NOT VARY WITH APPROACH OR RETREAT.

  AND THEIR RECEPTION IS FAINTLY DIVERTING, A WEAK ANODYNE FOR THE PAIN IN WHAT SERVES IT FOR A SOUL. IT LETS ITSELF ATTEND MORE AND MORE. BUT THE SIGNALS WILL NOT COME CLEAR, EVEN THOUGH NEW, DEPRAVED SENSITIVITIES SEEM TO BE DEPLOYING THEMSELVES WITHIN. EXASPERATED, TANTALIZED, THE GREAT SENSOR-SYSTEM STRAINS TO RECEIVE, UNAWARE THAT THE MOST PRODIGIOUS OF THE FORMS OF BEING IS LISTENING TO THE EMANATIONS OF THE MOST ORDINARY.

  PRESENTLY A CLOUDY QUESTION SHAPES ITSELF IN THE REACHES ON ITS SLOW, SIDEREAL MIND: COULD IT BE THAT THESE ACTIONS ARE SOMEHOW A PART OF THE PLAN? PERHAPS IT IS DESIGNED TO ELIMINATE THESE PYGMY DISTURBANCES, TO CLEANSE THEM FROM EXISTENCE. THERE WOULD BE NO PROBLEM, DESPITE THEIR DISTRIBUTION DENSITY. IN FINITE TIME, IT COULD SWEEP ALL AWAY.

  BUT NO INFORMATION HAS BEEN RECEIVED, AND THERE IS AN ODD RELUCTANCE. A COUNTERTHOUGHT OCCURS: PERHAPS, IT BROODS, PERHAPS I AM SO DEFECTIVE THAT I AM ONLY INVENTING A FALSE PLAN, A TASK TO JUSTIFY MY GUILT.

  UNABLE TO RESOLVE THIS COMPLEXITY, IT LETS ITSELF DRIFT FARTHER AND FARTHER, LETS THE NEW RANGES OF AWARENESS RECRUIT AND GROW. FOR LONG WHILES TOGETHER IT CEASES ALL ATTENTION TO THE THUNDEROUS CALLING OF ITS NAME, UNTIL THE TIME COMES WHEN THERE IS ONLY SHOCKING SILENCE ON ITS PROPER RECEPTORS. ITS RACE, THE TASK, ALL ARE NOW TOO FAR AWAY TO RECEIVE!

  DESPAIRING THEN, AND MIGHTY BEYOND COMPARE, IT ABANDONS ITS ALMOST UNBODIED VASTNESS TO THE TIDES OF SPACE, OPEN TO ASSUAGE ITS PAIN BY WHATEVER EVIL DEED IT WILL.

  Chapter 5

  Tivonel jets upwind on her way to the Hearers, on her way to Giadoc, savoring the wild morning. Her aura radiates life-zest, her flying body is a perfect expression of wind-mastery as she darts and planes against the eternal gales of Tyree.

  Soon she begins to register a slight magnetic gradient along the trail. It’s coming from a long frail strand of gura-plant evidently anchored far upwind. Her new memory tells her that the Station people arranged it as a rustic marker for the trail. Very ingenious. She tacks effortlessly beside it, recalling her Father telling her that it was such natural interface guides that first led her people down to Deep.

  How daring they’d been, those old ones! Braving hunger when they ventured below the life-rich food streams, braving darkness and silence. Above all, braving the terror of falling out of the Wind. Many must have fallen, nameless bold ones lost forever in the Abyss. But they persevered. They dared to explore down to the great stable up-welling, and founded the colony that became Old Deep. In that calm, Tyree’s high culture had developed.

  Tivonel’s mantle glints in appreciation; her year in the high Wild has made her more reflective. Now she’s actually known the brutish, primitive life from which her people freed themselves. Tbe Lost Ones were reverting fast. She has touched their hideous mind-savagery and experienced the total impermanence of life in the wild Wind, tumbling endlessly through the food-rich streams, gorging, communicating, mating at random; knowing nothing beyond the small chance group which might at any moment be separated forever. We lived in animal chaos while the centuries rolled by unmarked, Tivonel thinks, shuddering. Much as she enjoys the Wild, that view of the real thing had been too much.

  A pity the names of the early pioneers aren’t known. They must have been females like herself. The Memory-Keepers of Deep have engrams only of the generations after the Disaster, when the present Deep was reestablished on another updraft safe from abyssal explosions. Twisting and jetting into the great gales, Tivonel muses on history. Perhaps there were many lost colonies before one succeeded. Achievements go like that, look at the efforts to bring the podplants up.

  A turbulence in the trail breaks her revery. She scans ahead. The far point of life that must be the Hearers is still barely discernible, almost lost in the soupy plant-life of the winds. The biosphere is still rich down here. As the chiming lights of a raft of sweet-plants rush by Tivonel checks the temptation to dart out and scoop in a snack. Really, my manners. She sets vanes and jets in closer to the gura-lattice, thinking that it will take an effort to get used to civilization. What if she forgets herself and eats somebody’s garden, down in Deep?

  But there’s wildness in her heart, and the mission to the Lost Ones has given her a taste for real achievement. Maybe I won’t stay with the food-hunting teams,
she thinks. Maybe I’ll volunteer for one of the real exploration trips down to the dangerous ultradeep above wind-bottom. Whew! That would be something real. We females should do things with all our spare time. At least I can argue Ellakil into trying my scheme of using counters to organize the food trade. But I’m not like the Paradomin radicals. I don’t want to try unfemale things like Fathering. After seeing Ober and the rest in action I know I haven’t the Skills. I haven’t the sensitivity, the patience. What female has? Adventure, travel excitement, work is what we like!

  But first I want to see Giadoc again. Maybe—maybe—

  Suddenly she is aware of a small, weak life-signal straight ahead. It’s coming fast downwind at her. Hello, it’s a child!

  The young one comes into range. He’s bowling downstream, shepherding a raft of fat-plants. Must be one of the Station children bringing in supples. Very young, too, his claspers are showing, his tiny life-aura barely extends beyond his mantle. And he’s moaning purple with strain. What’s wrong?

  As he nears her she sees his trouble: a small fragment of his life-energy is detached and riding just ahead of him. The child is lunging to catch it up but it veers in toward the magnetic plant. He can’t swerve in after it without losing his flock of plants.

  Tivonel grins to herself. The child was experimenting with adult field-detachment, as young ones will. Now he’s in real trouble.

  She suppresses her amusement and flashes a formal greeting. Never add to another’s pain, how often her Father has told her. The child flickers a muffled response, bright blue-green with shame at having to pass her in this state.

  As he and his erring life-field come abreast of her, Tivonel deftly extrudes a thought-filament, blocks the stray energy and flicks it out at him. Done like a Father!

  The child rejoins himself with a jolt, too embarrassed to do more than stammer broken colors. Then he herds his flock out to the fast stream and is gone in a rush.

  Tivonel jets on amused, recalling her own early indiscretions. All youngsters worth their food try to manipulate their fields too early. So boring, waiting for their Fathers’ supervised practice. It’s dangerous; her own Father had to reassemble her once. Every so often a young one mutilates its field that way. Sad. The Healers say the loss of the natural energy-configuration can be regenerated in time. Like most people, Tivonel doesn’t quite believe it. Who can tell what the person would be like if they hadn’t lost field?

  Her thoughts go back to Giadoc; in the privacy of the trail she can let her field bias and tingle as it will.

  Dear Giadoc! She has thought much of him in the long noisy nights of the Wild. His strangeness, his strong mysterious mind.

  Their mating had been a routine first-child one. I was too ignorant to appreciate him truly, she thinks, though I’m older than he. I just saw him as sexually exciting. And a wonderful Father for my first egg. In the years since, of course, she hasn’t seen him at all, save for the annual ceremonies of greeting their child Tiavan.

  Now she has come to realize Giadoc was someone special. So unexpectedly tender and underneath it something she can’t define, like a delicious wildness new to her. His son is grown now, his first Fatherhood is over. Will Giadoc have changed too, become still stranger and more exciting?

  She jets harder, striving to retain composure by organizing a condensed engram of her year in the Wild. Surely Giadoc will be interested in the Lost Ones and the strange wild life-forms she’s seen.

  But oh, those memories of their mating!.

  How strong-sensitive he’d been, a perfect match from the start. The opposing polarity had snapped into being with their first ritual gestures and gone to both their heads. Young fools—they’d actually raced up into the winds above Deep to mate. Giadoc hadn’t even waited to select co-mates.

  Up there, alone, the strength of his field amazed her. At first she’d hoverèd conventionally close upwind of him. And then his amazing power had built up and thrust her physically far out into the wind—had held her there thrillingly helpless while he played with her out of sheer vitality. The repulsion between them was perfect. Every least eddy of her life was countered and teased to resonance, and she knew her own field was doing the same for him. And then came the climax, when he had pushed her unbelievably far away into the wind’s teeth, held her off perilously while the orgasmic current boiled through them both!

  Even in her ecstasy she had been terrified as the force of her spasm expelled the precious egg. How far away he was! She could still see it sailing downwind, receiving as it flew the life-giving exposure to Tyree’s energy which would ready it for his fertilization. What if he missed it? Without co-mates it would be lost, they were totally alone!

  But he caught it hurtling, pouched it like a master male—and in a rush the sustaining fields, collapsed and they both went tumbling dishevelled down the Winds, laughing for the egg safe in its Father’s pouch. Winds knew how far they blew, guilty and joyous, before they recovered to make their slow way back.

  That was when he had done the rare thing, had stayed in partial merger with her, so that she feld a deep sharing of his sensitive Father soul, his mystery. She hadn’t realized how extraordinary it was for a male to do that. They had been so happy, coming home; over and over he told her how good the long exposure-time would be for the egg, how it would make a strong-fielded child. And of course Tiavan was a fine young one, a potential Elder certainly. But Giadoc—

  Suddenly Tivonel realizes that she is so shamelessly polarized that the gura-plant is swirling wildly. And the Hearer’s signal ahead has grown much stronger. Ahura! What will Giadoc think of her if she arrives this way?

  She damps herself hard, remembering that Giadoc is probably absorbed in his work and hasn’t thought of her at all. And maybe he won’t think her experiences are enough to benefit a second egg. But the Elders believe that the mother’s memories help the egg’s field, and aren’t hers unusual? Well, at any rate she has a formal excuse for the visit; he can’t criticize her asking for news of Tiavan after a year away.

  She jets on energetically—and is suddenly struck by weirdness. A ghostly clamor of light invades the natural hush. She checks, disoriented—and finds herself among dim forms. Why, there is Ober … and the others! She’s in the floater with them, going down. What’s happening?

  Panicked, she pumps her mantle and the hallucination fades. She is back by the trail. But ahead of her is the blue mantle of the young one she’d met—he is approaching again, his field-fragment bowling ahead. Oh, no! She forces more air through herself to clear her senses—and she’s back in ordinary reality, sailing downwind in disarray.

  Not really frightened, she snaps herself back on course. She knows now what has hit her—one of the so-called time-eddies Mornor’s daughter warned her about. They’re strange pockets of hallucination or alternate time, who knows?—not dangerous unless one gets blown while in them. Her father said they started to be noticed in his youth, and only near weird places like the poles.

  So she must be getting close. Yes—the signal is much stronger, and the wind-streams are subtly roiling and losing direction. It’s the beginning of the enormous turbulence of the Polar Vortex. Here at the pole the planetary winds circle forever around a great interface, where the Hearers work. Tivonel remembers the conditions from long ago when her Father had taken her to see Near Pole. The Hearers there have a dense wealth of sky-life to study. Tivonel jets energetically through the cross winds, wondering why Giadoc has chosen to come and Hear here at Far Pole where the Companions must be few and faint.

  The plant-marker is ending in a great luxuriant tangle, balanced on a standing eddy. The winds are omnidirectional now, it’s the start of the interface zone. Tivonel’s mantle-senses automatically analyze the complex gradients of the pressures around her; she cuts across local wind-loops, steering by the life-signals ahead and above. The point-source has opened out to several separate groups of life-emanations. The Hearers must be spread all over the Wall. It is still silent,
a beautiful day, still dark and silent although she has been traveling well into normal night. Untired, alight with anticipation, she sends herself shooting through another huge cloud of plant-life—and emerges at the End of the World.

  What a scene!

  Forgetting her eagerness, forgetting Giadoc, Tivonel stops and hovers, awe-struck.

  It isn’t really the end of the world, of course, but merely the edge of the biosphere in which her people live. It is a place of wonders.

  She is in the side of an enormous wind-funnel, a planetary hurricane called the Wall of the World. It is a great curved wall, a tapestry of life-signals and murmuring, shimmering light that spins around the Pole. Ahead of her stretches an empty space, a zone of turbulent updrafts which to her is stable air. Out in the center of the great ampitheater she can perceive the lethal polar Airfall, an immense column of down-pouring winds. It descends eternally from the converging winds high above and falls into the unimaginable deeps of the Abyss below, there to spread out over the unknown dark, and ultimately rise in upwellings like that of Deep. The Airfall is dense dying with life, sighing grey on its fall to dread wind-bottom. Around her, spreading into the empty zone, is a screen of lovely airborne jungles that ride the standing air beside the Wall. It is here that the Hearers work, because of the clear view above.

  Tivonel lifts her scan, and is again awestruck. She had expected it to be interesting, but not as impressive as the musical brilliance of Near Pole’s sky, not as dense with life-signals. Now she sees the Companions are indeed fewer, but against their silent background, how individually splendid, how intense! At Near Pole they had been so massed as to seem a close web; she remembers making a childish effort to signal to it with her tiny field. Here she sees how far they are, how they burn alone in the immense reaches of the void.

  For the first time she really grasps it. Each Companion is indeed a Sound like Tyree’s own, she is hearing the light-music poured from a million far-off Sounds. And the beacon-points of life with them, how individually clear and strange! Are there worlds up there, worlds like her own, perhaps? Is another Tivonel on some far-off Tyree at this moment scanning wonderingly toward her? Her normally wind-bound soul expands and something of the lure of Giadoc’s work comes clear to her. If only she were not a female, if only she had the strong far-reaching Father’s field!