Up the Walls of the World

by James Tiptree

  “No, it’s more complex than that. For example, a subject might give a wrong letter which is right for the letter before or after. If this occurs in a series, it’s significant. Do you remember J-70; that Chinese girl? She read letters ahead, five out of six sometimes. Dr. Catledge calls it precognition. The program has to analyse correspondence against increasing distance in time forward or back.”

  “But what about chance?” he asks, floundering in this rarified air.

  “The basic program computes against chance probabilities,” she tells him patiently. “Including each subject’s tested letter-probability base.”

  “Oh.” His poisoned cortex reels, makes a desperate effort to please her. “So—even if a subject gets them all right you have to subtract something for chance.”

  “That’s right.” She smiles, really pleased. He is ridiculously elated.

  “I can see it’s complicated.”

  “Some of the math gets quite interesting. Take repeated letters—”

  “Thank you for explaining.” He is enchanted by her mysterious competence, but he cannot cope with repeated letters. “Look!”

  Three deer are browsing in the verge ahead. They bound across the blacktop, showing their white, flame-shaped scuts.

  “One of them was all spotted,” she says wonderingly. A city girl.

  “Yes. A fawn, a young one. The spots help camouflage it while it lies still.”

  “Oh, I wish my Donnie could have seen that,” she says very low.

  He recalls the bare apartment. “Your son? He doesn’t live with you?”

  At the words, the bottom of his world shivers, threatens to drop him into his private hell. For one second, he had been back in another life of simple joy. Stop it. Vaguely he hears her saying, “No. He’s with my mother in Chicago.”

  Her tone has changed too. The Keep Out signs are up.

  The magic is gone. But before he can feel it, a car roars up behind them and they have to jump aside. It’s a grey panel truck.

  She laughs. “I knew that terminal wasn’t there.”

  They walk on, the bad thing is over. He wants to hear her voice, even if it means computers.

  “Tell me, is it true that computers are now so complicated that no human mind can really know what one is up to?”

  “Oh, yes.” The smile comes back. “And of course TOTAL, well, it can access any government computer, and whenever it wants data it can interface with almost any computer network in the country, if you have the code. Some foreign ones too. It got into CBS once.” Her face takes on a dreamy, tender look, eyes more beautiful than Sheba’s queen. “I love to think of it. The wonderful complexity, yet all so cool and logical. Like a different kind of life trying to expand and grow.”

  “Sounds a little scary.” But Dann isn’t scared, he’s delighted. The tall alluring creature strolling the wildwood, talking mysteries. “I won’t ask you if they think. I gather that’s silly. But since our life is a function of the complexity of our internal connections, maybe it could be alive in a way. Maybe it likes you too.”

  She chuckles. “Oh, I’m not that crazy, I know it’s a machine. But sometimes I wonder if certain programs aren’t just a little alive. Do you know TOTAL has ghosts?”

  “What?”

  “Ghost programs. It’s hard to flush a really big computer, and a network is impossible. Nobody is going to shut down TOTAL. People make mistakes, see. Their programs generate self-maintaining loops.” She actually unbends enough to give him a teasing look. “Tapes spin when nobody is using them. Ghosts.”

  He grins back like a kid. “What kind of ghosts?”

  “Well, there’s a couple of war-games, nobody knows their address, and some continuing computations. And there’s supposed to be a NASA space-flight simulation still running. It doesn’t do anything most of the time because it’s still traveling through space. When it lands or whatever it’ll show up. It could to part of the ghost in my program. I found out we’re using an old NASA link.”

  “Our ghost?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Every so often it acts up on anything to do with time. Like printing out the date.”

  “NASA … Now you’re getting close to my friends.”

  “The stars?” She remembers, she remembers!

  “Yes. The air’s so clear here. If you like, I could show you some this evening.”

  “Maybe.” The reserve is back, but no hostility. Beautiful Deerfield! They round the last corner and see the barracks with two trucks outside. Men are carrying in a door. Margaret quickens pace.

  When they come into the day-room, equipment and cables are everywhere. Two Cuban-looking men are hanging the door across the corridor. Margaret heads for crates in the corner. Above the hammering Noah and Costakis can be heard yelling to each other.

  “Okay! Plug in.”

  There is a flash and all lights go out. The air conditioners have stopped and the corridor is now too dark to see. Lieutenant Kirk comes in and Noah trots up to him.

  “Kendall, we simply have to have more power here.”

  “You need a bigger pot up there,” Costakis points at the electric pole outside.

  Ted Yost puts his head in and says unexpectedly, “If there’s a laundry here maybe they have one. Laundries use a lot of juice.”

  Margaret Omali says nothing, she is probing into crates.

  Dann takes himself outside, follows the sound of desultory activity around to the back. Rick Waxman is shooting baskets at the edge of the woods. Ted Yost comes out the back door and joins him.

  Dann sits down on a white-washed bench. After a few minutes the ensign has to quit; he walks away toward the pool, trying not to show distress. Presently Rick comes over to Dann, idly spinning the ball on one finger.

  Dann is surprised to see that Rick’s expression and posture are quite different. His face is clear and friendly, he is a normal, attractively muscular young man with his hair tied back like an early American patriot. Dann, who has no extra senses, receives a strong impression of one from whom a burden has been lifted.

  “Is your brother better?” He surprises himself, acting as if he believed all this.

  “Popped a bunch of tranks and passed out.” Rick grins. “I hope it doesn’t mess up the test.”

  “You mean, he might not be able to, ah, transmit?”

  “Oh, he’ll be able to transmit, all right.” Rick’s grin fades. “The question is, what. He hates those numbers.”

  Rick bounces the ball a few times, then sits down beside Dann and stretches in the sunshine. Like a man enjoying respite, like a prisoner let out, Dann thinks. He recalls Ron Waxman, of whom he has seen little. A shade larger, a more taciturn Rick. Probably because of the size difference Dann has assumed that Ron was the dominant brother.

  “Tell me, have you two always been together? I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. Yeah, our folks tried to split us up. Ronnie couldn’t take it.”

  Rick’s eyes have changed, the statement has some meaning. Dann puzzles, unhappily divining pain.

  “Your brother is more, more sensitive?”

  Rick looks down at the grass. “Sensitive,” he says in a low, pentup voice. “My brother is so fucking sen-si-tive. All my life, he can’t take it. He can’t take anything. He can’t listen to the news, he can’t go on the street. There’s an accident on the road, we have to turn around and go back.” He sighs, looks up sideways at Dann. “We tried to take a trip to Denver last year, he picks up vibes somebody died in the motel room. We had to go right home. I wanted to see the Rockies, you know?”

  He laughs shortly. “All the things I want, he can’t take. I was pre-med, we both had scholarships. Oh, he’s smart. But he couldn’t take that at all. So we tried law school. Two semesters, that lasted.”

  Oh, God. Weakly, Dann asks, “Can’t you go on by yourself, Rick? You could leave Ron with your folks.”

  “No way. They crashed in a plane five years ago.”

  “Oh …” />
  “No way,” Rick repeats somberly. “He needs me. And he’s sending all the time. Whatever I’m doing. I read him.” He laughs meaninglessly, bounces the ball.

  Dann is appalled, resentful. Why do they do this to him? His hand goes to his pocket, he touches the magic that will turn Rick back into a phantasm.

  “Women, it’s a disaster,” Rick goes on. “Half the time he can’t and when he can it’s worse.” He gives Dann a clear, open look as if he were explaining a sore back. The change in him is amazing. “Funny, I can talk to you…. Of course, he’ll wake up pretty soon.” He sighs bleakly.

  “What do you do for a living, Rick?”

  “Pit. We work in the pit at Honest Jack’s. Ronnie’s good with his hands and I can watch out he doesn’t get back wrecks.”

  “You mean, auto mechanics?”

  “Yeah.” Rick looks down at the stained, callused hands that might have done other work.

  “And how did you get into this, ah, project?”

  “Catledge bought his car at Jack’s. I guess he has his eye out for twins. The bread helps.”

  “Rick, what if your brother were, well, in a—”

  “You mean if he was dead? If I had him put away? I guess I could.”

  “So?”

  “If he wasn’t dead I’d have to go to China. Maybe that’s not far enough, if he was really unhappy. While out folks were alive I rode to Buffalo on the bus once, you know, just to get away. While I was gone our dog got hit by a car. I could hear Ron like he was in the room. I guess he could make me hear him in China if he wanted. And his being … dead, that wouldn’t solve anything. It’s more complicated …”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not just him.” Rick twirls the ball again, looks at Dann. “See, it’s not like I was all right except for him. I’m not. He’s part of me.” His voice is almost a whisper. “He’s the part of me that can’t take it. Can you dig that? It’s like he’s part of me, only outside where I can’t fix anything. He got—left out. We’re, I’m not, I’m not okay without him. I mean, I need this break. But if he doesn’t wake up pretty soon, I, I can’t …”

  He falls silent, rolling the ball between his coarsened hands. Above them a mockingbird is trilling arpeggios. Dann sees Rick is talked out, wants to be left alone to enjoy his respite. He touches Rick’s shoulder, unaware that the boy has derived comfort from their talk, and gets up and walks aimlessly away.

  Dear God. The pain in Rick’s eyes. The waste. He is reminded of the pitiful history of a patient, a friend, who had an intermittently and inconspicuously mad husband. The dead dragging the living down. Or is it possible Rick and his twin are in some weird sense one person, cruelly sorted into two bodies? Life’s savage jokes. No matter. He dry-swallows the capsule. In a few minutes the chemistry of his bloodstream will carry reality away. He listens to the mockingbird, and discovers that his feet are carrying him around the end barracks, to the pool.

  A man and three women are in the pool. Dann sits on one of the tin loungers on the shady side.

  “Hi, Doctor Dann! Come on in!” The splashing turquoise-capped figure is Winona.

  Dann makes benign, avuncular excuses and sits watching Valerie and Fredericka—Frodo—climb out on the sunny side. Frodo’s skinny, swarthy form is clad in a blood-red tank suit. Valerie is in sunny yellow, a seductive young body. She stretches out to sun. Frodo ceremoniously lets down the back of the chair for her, fetches a coke, lights her cigarette, sits cross-legged on the grass alongside. A pixie cavalier. It occurs to Dann that he is watching romantic love. He smiles, safe back in his cocoon.

  The bearded figure of Ensign Yost climbs out and walks toward Dann, toweling vigorously. His bushy face laughs, he is every inch the folly mariner. Hard to remember the death working in that bone marrow. He sits down by Dann and lights a cigarette.

  Dann starts the automatic rebuke, checks himself. Yost notices it, grins more broadly. They watch Winona’s determined progress up and down the pool. She splashes womanfully. Above them the mocker is still singing, varying his repertory with blue-jay shrieks.

  “Peaceful here,” Dann offers.

  Yost grunts. “I’d still rather be out in that sub.”

  “I should think it would be extremely confining.”

  “Yeah … But, a ship.”

  Winona climbs out, fussily spreads out in a lounge by the girls.

  “I got a couple thou put away, Doc,” Yost says meditatively. “If it gets bad again, I’m not going in hospital. No way, no sir. I’m going to lease me a little motor sailor and stay aboard, down the bay. Live there. Even if it’s winter.”

  “I see.” Dann has heard something like this before, but the cocoon is holding. Something about this place seems to make for unfortunate confidences, he thinks remotely.

  “On the water.” Yost’s voice is dreamy. “I don’t care if it snows. But they say this may last ’til next Spring. How about it, Doc?”

  Dann is surpirsed; Yost seems to have come to believe in his disease.

  “No one can predict, Ted,” he says, more or less truthfully. “What about your family?” Instantly, he regrets the question. No more revelations, no more.

  “Don’t have one now,” Yost says inexorably. “When I got better last time Marie took the kid and split. I didn’t tell her it was temporary, see? Better for Dorothy that way.”

  “Dorothy is your little girl?” Dann shudders, can’t help himself.

  “Yeah. She’s six last week. I think Marie knew, she figured it was better for Dorothy too. Sometimes I feel bad, holding out the money for the boat. But Marie has a good job, she’s a GS-seven. That’s good security.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Ted Yost talks on, describing the boat he plans to get. His deathship. But he is not morbid, he is looking forward with his whole soul to being on the water again, even if it is only the murk off Chesapeake Bay. Back to the sea, the oldest drive of all. Within his insulation, Dann winces. He knows none of this will happen, he knows how the relapse will come. Yost will find himself on the VA wards, trapped in tubing. Not the sea. Pity …What tragic flotsam has Noah collected here? Yost, Rick, Costakis—all in their different intolerable miseries. Well, he, Dann, can positively not take much more of this. And she has not appeared.

  Announcing his intention to see how the equipment installation is coming along, he gets up to go.

  “Thanks, Doc,” Yost says unexpectedly. What for?

  As he rounds the end of the pool Valerie calls to him. Frodo is coughing evilly over her cigarette; Dann makes a mental note to check her and scratches it off again. Surprising how many of them smoke. Does it correlate with—whatever?

  When he gets close he is momentarily bemused by Valerie’s bursting young breasts, her vulnerable little belly, and does not take in her whisper.

  “Doctor Dann, that man is here again. What does he have to do with us?”

  Dann stares around, finally spots a grey sedan beside the trucks in front of the barracks.

  “You mean your Black Rider?”

  “Yeah,” says Frodo. “What’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” Dann smiles.

  “You could find out,” Valerie suggests. “Please, Doctor Dann. I’m so worried. He frightens me.”

  “We didn’t agree to, to whatever he’s into,” Frodo adds rebelliously.

  “I expect it’s some formality. They’re having trouble with equipment, you know.”

  “Do you think we’ll do a test tonight?”

  “I tend to doubt it. That’s what I’m on my way to find out.”

  “Find out about him, please.” Valerie’s big blue eyes plead, her round cheeks tremble.

  “I wish they’d get it over with and let us out of here.” Frodo stubs out her cigarette savagely. “This place is scaring Val. Me too.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Dann promises. “But truly I wouldn’t worry.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Valerie breathes inten
sely.

  Dann’s reassuring smile feels painted on. No more, no more. He all but lopes around the corner of the barracks, wondering how this peaceful place could scare anybody. They’re insane, of course. The mockingbird is still gurgling melodies.

  On the steps of the test barracks Kirk’s black Labrador is sitting in the sun. Her tail thumps heavily as Dann goes by; he touches the big, hot head. Her eyes never turn from the door. Amazing how undiscriminatingly dogs give their devotion. Does it mean that Kirk has some good in him somewhere? Dann doesn’t perceive it.

  He opens the door into Kirk’s back, generating a flurry of false apologies. The place is still a mess and Margaret is not there. But the tall grey-haired civilian is, apparently taking leave of Noah.

  “Dan, I want you to meet Major Drew Fearing.” Noah waves, beaming. “Major, Doctor Daniel Dann is in charge of our psychobiological correlations. That is, the neural and physical changes that characterize successful transfer. Dan, Major Fearing is here from the Department of Defense. Do help me convince him that we can’t start tests without proper instrumentation. It would be a dreadful error, half the value would be lost. Really—”

  Under Noah’s barrage Dann and Major Fearing have been looking each other over, or rather, Dann has received the impression of having been instantly and completely recorded on some device behind the veiled grey eyes. The eyes at once drift away, leaving him to examine Fearing’s exterior. Major Fearing—if that’s his real name, Dann recalls Costakis’ lesson—does not look military. Or Naval. Or foreign service. In fact, Dann has seldom met a less classifiable man. His former impression of Waspish aquilinity tinged with some exotic flavor is confirmed: Fearing’s lips and nostrils have a thin, baroque curve. His formal half-smile was gentlemanly and transient. Beyond that he conveys nothing except an intensely neutral quality.

  Dann has been trying to sort his neurones into a orderly argument, but it proves unnecessary.

  “Quite all right, Doctor Catledge,” Fearing says at Noah’s first pause. “Lieutenant Kirk will see that you have your equipment. We will signal the ship to delay the first test until, say, noon tomorrow?”