Up the Walls of the World

by James Tiptree

  “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.

  “Sssh, sshhh, Chris!”

  The wait is excruciating, the room seems to be brimming with invisible energies. Have these crazy tests attracted some alien power, as Noah said? Is a monster forming itself back there in the corridor behind him? Dann can no longer keep himself from staring at Margaret. She looks composed, her eyes downcast; but there’s a line between her brows as if she is hearing something. Is she trembling or is it the quivering air.

  “Fourth letter, start!”

  Noah’s voice sounds miles away, like an echo chamber.

  “Five by five!” Costakis calls out again, and then Winona exclaims in a strained voice, “Doctor Catledge, this is wild! I know we’re getting them.”

  “Shshsh! Shsh!” Noah hisses desperately.

  Kirk is glaring at the corridor door; Fearing has no expression. Dann sees Margaret shudder and put a hand out to grip the edge of her console. He is sweating in the thickening, pulsing air, he can no longer fool himself about sixty-cycle hums. This is the same terrible tension that surged through them last night, and he is scared to death. It strengthens, rises, as though the room was at the focus of some far-off nameless intensity—

  “Fifth letter, start!”

  —And at that instant he feels—feels—a presence as palpable as an animal’s nose poking at his mind. Terror spurts up in him, he jerks around to the wall expecting to see something unimaginable coming out, trying to enter his head. But there is nothing. He stares at the varnished wood, one hand frantically clasping his forehead, while under his fingers something—something immaterial—pushes into him.

  Hallucination; he is going mad here and now. And then he becomes aware of the strangest fact of all—he is no longer afraid.

  He stands dazed, all terror gone, aware only that the invisible intrusion in his head exudes a puppylike friendliness and harmlessness. A bright eager feeling washes through him, like a young voice saying Hello. Transfixed, astounded, he hears from a great distance meaningless words.

  “Sixth letter, start!”

  The push on him strengthens overpoweringly, the anchors of his mind yield, tear loose—and he is suddenly nowhere, whirling through a void that becomes delirium. For one vertiginous instant he rides an enormous whirlwind, is swamped in a howling, soundless gale above a dark-light world shot with wild colors that are sounds—he is aware of unknown presences in a gale of light that beats like music on his doubled senses, he is soaring in tempests of incomprehensible glory—

  —And next instant he is telescoped back across limitless blackness into himself, Daniel Dann, his body striking hard surfaces by the familiar dayroom wall. His head is empty. He realizes he is down on one knee. Someone is calling his name.

  He gets to his feet. There seems to be a commotion back in the corridor. Kirk gallops past. “Dann! Come back here!” Noah calls again.

  But Dann cannot respond, he is staring at Margaret Omali.

  She is holding herself braced upright, looking at Fearing. Her mouth writhes oddly, she swallows with a croak. Fearing watches her intently.

  “Hello, hello …” The voice is coming from Margaret but it isn’t like anything Dann has heard before. “Hello? Char-les, yes? Charles Ur-ban Sproul.”

  Fearing suddenly gets up. For a moment Dann thinks he is going to attack her, but he only goes to the corridordoor, pulls it shut, and locks it, without taking his eyes off her. The room is like a humming vacuum. Dann takes a step toward Margaret and runs into Fearing’s arm.

  “Lind-say?” says the weird voice from Margaret’s throat. “Lindsay Barr? Major Drew Fear-ing, yes.” Her mouth stretches in imitation of a smile. “I respect your culture, your concern. Ah, undertow.” The voice trails off in meaningless syllables.

  Fearing stands motionless, studying her as if she were a wild animal.

  Margaret takes an unsteady step away from the computer, looking around the room. Her gaze fixed on Dann, and she utters what sounds like “Tivel?”

  The next second she is sagging, crumpling toward the floor.

  Dann lunges just in time to save her face from the teleprinter bar. Her body slides away and hits the floor beside the couch. Dann starts toward her and has his breath knocked out by a solid blow from Fearing’s elbow.

  “Keep away.” The feral intensity of the voice is as shocking as the blow.

  “She—Miss Omali—has a cardiovascular history,” Dann gasps. It hurts him physically to see her on the floor, alone. He pushes futilely, caught between the console and the stronger, furious man. “Let me through, Major!”

  Margaret is sighing shudderingly. Her eyes open, her head lifts and falls back.

  “The wind,” she says faintly.

  “It’s all right, Margaret,” Dann tells her across Fearing’s shoulder. “I felt it too. You’re here.”

  “The wind,” she repeats. Then her hand grasps the couch and she scrambles up and sits.

  Fearing is instantly in front of her.

  “Who sent you here? Where did you learn those names?”

  “She’s had a shock. Major, for God’s sake stop this nonsense.” Dann moves, summons authority back to his voice. But it isn’t nonsense, he has a hideous suspicion what has happened.

  Loud noises are coming from behind the locked door. “Major Fearing!” Noah’s voice shouts. “We need your transcript at once, we’ve had extraordinary results!” He pounds harder, rattles the door. “Dann! What’s the matter?”

  Fearing straightens up, suddenly calm. “Stand away from her, Doctor.” The tone is deadly. Imagining weapons, Dann lets himself be backed away. Fearing goes to the door and unlocks it. His cold, pleasant voice rides over Noah’s expostulations as he hands the envelope through.

  “Doctor Catledge, a matter of concern to me has come up here. I would appreciate it if you will evaluate your results in the other section of the building. The doctor must remain here. Kirk, stay with them and see that this door stays closed.”

  Margaret is whispering something. “I was … away.”

  “I know. It’s all right,” he whispers back.

  But it’s not all right. That gibberish she uttered, those names—they were meaningful to Fearing. Some of his secrets, like last night, she read things out of his mind. And Fearing, what can he think but that she’s some sort of spy? Oh God—the crazy bastard is dangerous—

  The door is closed; Fearing is surveying them thoughtfully. “Doctor, I suggest you sit down.”

  Still studying Margaret, Fearing straddles the computer chair and sits down facing her, apparently perfectly at ease.

  “Look, Major—”

  Fearing holds up his hand, smiling. He seems to have dismissed Dann from some calculation. “Miss Omali, your approach puzzled me.” His face is a mask of patient sympathy. “I believe I understand. Please be assured that we have an excellent record of protecting people who come to us. Perhaps you’d like to meet one or two, to reassure yourself? I think that could be arranged.”

  She stares at him. Her control is back. “I have not one idea what you’re talking about.”

  Nor has Dann—and then suddenly he sees. This maniac Fearing has decided that Margaret is, what do they call it, a defector. Trying to defect to “our side.” He thinks her ravings were an attempt to signal him by revealing knowledge. Nightmare proliferates around him. What can he do to her, lock her up? Ruin her life? But she doesn’t know anything—

  “You’re crazy,” Margaret is saying remotely. Dann can sense the fear under her calm. The air is flickering with tension.

 
Fearing smiles charmingly. “Perhaps you are concerned about your little boy? We could have him here with you in an hour or so.”

  Oh God. Dann sees the cords in her neck spring out.

  “Don’t you dare touch my son.”

  “Look here, Major, as this woman’s doctor I’m telling you to stop this right now. You’re on the wrong track, you—”

  Fearing doesn’t look at him, but goes on contemplating Margaret as if she were an algebra problem.

  “This is not the appropriate setting, perhaps,” he says patiently. “You would feel more secure away from these people.” He touches his wristwatch.

  “No!” Margaret cries.

  Dann plants himself in front of her. “I tell you you’re endangering her heart. If you don’t believe me, get Harris over here to check.”

  Footsteps outside. Dann swings around to see a heavy-set man in fatigues at the front door.

  “An excellent idea, Doctor,” Fearing says unruffledly. “Deming, put in a call for the ambulance and tell Doctor Harris to meet us.”

  “No!” Margaret jumps up. “I’m not going anywhere!”

  Dann is struggling with horror, the room seems brimming with fear. How can this maniac have so much power? He’s so relaxed, he’s sure we’re helpless. But not Margaret, not unless they’re prepared to shoot me—I mean that, he realizes, hearing himself say “You will not—”

  The front door opens again and Kendall Kirk bursts in saying urgently, “Sir! Excuse me, sir, but you have to know this.” He halts in back of the couch, behind Margaret. “They did it. I tell you those weirdoes picked up the whole six-letter group. They can do it, they can read your mind. They’re dangerous as hell. She’s reading your mind right now.”

  Dramatically he points at Margaret.

  “You’re out of your mind, Kirk,” Dann protests. “Miss Omali isn’t even one of Noah’s subjects.”

  “She’s hiding it,” Kirk says savagely. “She’s one of the strongest psis in the bunch. I know.”

  Fearing continues studying Margaret impassively. His nostrils are tightly curled in, as if there were a nasty od or in the throbbing, thickening air. Dann can guess the revulsion going through that secretive mind. But-surely he will reject Kirk’s lunacy?

  “Those, ah, terms you mentioned, Miss Omali,” Fearing says at last. “Am I to understand that you, ah, divined them from my mind?”

  Oh God, paranoids accept magic. This is bad. And the damned humming feeling is worse every minute. He can’t get hallucinations now, he has to protect her—

  “I don’t read minds,” says Margaret coldly. But she is shaking.

  Fearing just goes on watching her. Maybe he has, what, psi powers himself, Dann thinks. Horrified, he feels the energy in the room building, pouring into him. The air resonates. Stop it, stop it.

  The teleprinter suddenly clacks, making everyone start. Fearing didn’t change his level stare.

  “Major, you have to believe it!” Kirk clamors. “They’re dangerous! Look—watch this!”

  He lunges over the couch and lays desecrating hands on Margaret’s wrists, jerking them together behind her, prisoning them in one hand while his other hand goes high over her head. Fire spurts—a flaming butane lighter is falling straight into her lap.

  Dann doesn’t know he has jumped until his fist connects with Kirk’s face. He hears Margaret make a dreadful sound. From the side of his eye he sees the lighter swerve in midair and fly at Fearing’s head.

  And Margaret herself—goes away.

  Staggering in abnormal dimensions in the pulsing room. Dann sees her go. Her bodily eyes roll up and pale complex fire streams out of her, an energy which he instantly understands is her, her life. He sees it form and shoot away meteorlike into a dark abyss of non-space which for an instant is open to his senses—she is going, going—

  “Margaret!” he cries, or tries to cry out, knowing that he is losing her forever, feeling some unearthly focus of power brush him, unmoor him—

  —And he wrenches free, breaks out, gathers himself and his fifty years and his wretched useless love and hurls his life wholly after her through the closing gap to nowhere.

  An instant or eternity later he regains something like consciousness. He is hurtling through blackness that is empty of time or space, seeing only before him with what are no longer mortal eyes the pale fleeing spark that is her life. He tries to call out to her, having no voice but only his bodiless will to comfort her, to slow her terrified flight. He does not wonder, he knows only that his life continues, that he is able to race after her through dimensions of unbeing that may be, for all he cares, Hell or a dream or interstellar space. “Margaret!”

  Far ahead, the living spark seems to curve course, and he swerves after. Is there some faint structure to this darkness? He cannot tell nor care. He is gaining, closing on her! “Margaret, love—”

  But suddenly everything is gone—he has crashed into stasis, is assualted by light, colors, sensations. Floundering, he perceives dimly that this is embodiment. His naked life has become incarnated. A sense which isn’t vision is showing him the image of a landscape in which are immense, trembling globes. Utterly bewildered, he rolls or tumbles, his mind filled with jelly life. “Margaret!” he bubbles weakly, and then sees—knows—her radiance is there, flaring among the moving gelatinosities.

  He tries to wabble toward her. But as he does, her pale light gathers itself and spins out and away to nowhere—and he wrenches his life free and follows, is again only a hunger in the void pursuing a fleeing star.

  Hunter and hunted, their bodiless energies flash across blackness which is light-years, ricochetting down a filament of negative entropy which they cannot know supports their lives—interlopers on a frail life-beam extended toward Earth from a burning planet a hundred million million miles away. Of all this the essence that was Daniel Dann knows only that the spark of Margaret’s life is still there, still attainable if he can force his being to greater speed or whatever the unknown dimension is.

  He is gaining again! The path through nothing has curved, he cuts the vector—and then with an inertialess crash he finds himself once more embodied in matter, stunned by the impact of alien senses.

  This time it is all greyness, lit by a watery blue spear; he is in some sort of crowded cavern. “Margaret!” he whistles, or emits in molecules, striving to sense her. And yes. She is there too, her lacy living energy is springing out among a thicket of grey folds. He lunges toward her on nonlimbs.

  But again she gathers herself, is gone—and he launches after her into unbeing, finding the impossible familiar now. This hallucinatory after-life seems to have some sort of regularity or dreamlike laws. Are they passing through real space, existing briefly on alien planets?

  No matter; the chase accelerates, she caroms wildly down the structured lightlessness in which is nothing, not even a star. It comes to him with joy that he is holding out, can hold out. He will not lose her! But as he exults, he becomes suddenly aware that the void they fly in is not quite empty. Somewhere ahead or to one side, he cannot tell, lies a huge concentration of darker darkness—something blacker than mere absence of light, a terrifying vast presence colder than death. It is Death incarnate, he thinks, he is gripped by fear for her. With all his might he tries to send a voiceless warning to her frail flying star.

  Next instant their flight bursts into stasis again. But this time it’s shockingly comprehensible. He is incarnated in a sunlit green world under a blue sky. Earthlike meadows are around him, a bird sings. He feels breath, muscles, heartbeat—yes, these are his strong gold-furred limbs. He is a big animal crouched in a small tree.

  And there below him—so close!—a white deerlike creature is cropping the grass; pale energies are streaming about its silver horns.

  It is she, he has caught her at last!

  “Margaret!”

  But to his horror he hears himself uttering a fanged roar, and feels his carnivore’s muscles-exploding him into a murderous lea
p. His huge talons are unsheathed, descending on her! He screams, trying to wrench himself aside in midair as her white head comes up. One glimpse of her dark eyes staring—and then she has gone out of that body, fled away on the wind of nowhere.

  He flings, his life free of the beast-form barely in time to follow her dwindling spark. She is doubly frightened now, in total flight from everything, from life itself. He must push all his waning strength to hold her in reach.

  And closer now, too close, the huge eclipsing black dreadfulness he had sensed before is looming through the dimensions at them. Is she aware of it! Turn, turn away!” He tries to hurl warning, willing her to veer aside.

  For an instant he thinks she has heard him, she is turning—but no; appalled he sees that she has turned not away but toward the deathly presence, is flying straight at it.

  He throws himself after her, understanding that she has chosen. Too much pain, too much; she is fleeing from life forever, she wants only to cease.

  “Margaret, don’t! Come back, come back!”

  But the rushing life-spark does not turn, the great destroying blackness looms ahead. Desperately he tries to intercept her course, he is racing terrified in the icy aura of the thing. “Margaret!”

  It is no use, he is too slow, too far behind; he sees the glimmering meteor that is her life plunge into black, be swallowed, and wink out. He has lost her. He is alone.

  And at that instant the huge shadow before him changes subtly, takes on the semblance of raging lurid smoke—and he sees again the image burned across his life. The black flame-spouting walls, the walls into which he had not gone, in which he had once let perish all that he loved.

  It is all there again, the burning darkness and the death; his being recoils in mortal fright. He cannot—

  But her brightness has gone in there! He no longer knows who she was or what he is, but only that something intimately precious has again, been devoured by evil—and this time he cannot bear to fail. He will follow, he will get her out or die trying.