James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

“Well, first see that bright one just rising above the trees. That’s not a true star, it’s Mars, a world like ours, shining by reflected sunlight. Notice how red it is. It comes very close, say thirty-four million miles—” He rattles through every picturesque fact he can think of.

“How far are the others?”

“Take that very bright blue-white star right overhead there. It’s a sun called Vega, it’s bright because it’s comparatively close. The light that just reached your eyes took only twenty-six years to get here. Call a light-year six million million miles, Vega is about a hundred and fifty million million miles away.”

“Fifteen times ten to the thirteenth. Um.” In the starlight he can see her flawless profile.

“Wait. That reddish one just moving up from that oak, that’s Antares. It’s four hundred and forty light-years—

A man’s figure has emerged from the woods right behind them.

“Hi.” It’s Ted Yost’s voice. Dann is gripped by fury.

“Hi, Ted. Doc’s showing me some stars.”

“Hello, Ted.” Dann can scarcely control his voice, he is in such dread that the boy will sit down. “Having a stroll?” he croaks.

“Yeah. Well, goodnight Doc,” Ted says to Dann’s infinite relief. “I thought you might be somebody else.” His footsteps fade away.

“Ted’s good,” Margaret remarks.

Dann would call him a saint for his absence, he starts an involuntary word of pity and stops.

“I know about him. I have all your records.”

“I see… What did he mean?”

“Oh, Ted kind of watches. He breaks up the lieutenant’s games.”

“I see,” Dann repeats, thinking with loathing of Kendall Kirk. And be himself has done nothing to help her, has let that barbarian persecute her while he festered in his selfish fogs.

She is still staring dreamily upward. The sky is magnificent here, even the air seems charged with mysterious energy. Beautiful Deerfield.

“How did you mean, about stars rising? I thought they stayed fixed.”

“Well, the earth is turning so the whole sky is moving over us toward the West. About fifteen degrees an hour. They rise and set like the sun or the moon.”

“I didn’t know that. Fifteen degrees, twenty-four hours; three hundred sixty degrees. Hey, neat.”

Is this what cool means, reducing everything to number?

“But of course we’re moving around the sun too, so we don’t see them in the same place every night.” He pommels his memory for the star-books of his boyhood. “They rise about four minutes earlier every evening, I believe. That’s about twice the width of the full moon. I’m sorry I can’t give you more figures for your mathematics.”

She laughs faintly. “Oh, that’s not math, that’s only computation… I count things. Like, there were thirty-four tables in that messhall. Sixteen at each table, allowing two feet each. Five hundred and forty-four.”

In that beautiful head, numbers whirling endlessly. “I’m surprised,” he says, and catches the glint of change in her eyes. Is she thinking he’ll comment about her being a woman, or a Black? “I’m surprised you haven’t gone metric.”

She really laughs this time and her gaze goes back to the stars. The air seems to be humming with some kind of energy. He hasn’t felt so happy, so alive in… years.

“That’s east, right?” she says meditatively. “Yeah, I can almost see them rise. Only it’s really the trees that are sinking down. They just stay there. Cool— Do those stars coming up have names? They’re not much.”

“Ah, but you’re looking toward the very center of our Galaxy. Those stars are called the Archer. Behind them are clouds of dark gas and dust, and beyond that is a tremendous glory we shall never see. Thousands upon thousands of blazing stars packed in a great central mass. If the clouds weren’t there they would light up our whole sky, and the light would have been on its way thirty thousand years.”

He makes his mind produce numbers, dimensions, rotations, anything he can summon up in the brimming, tingling night. He is so happy that he has a momentary image of the Archer beaming rays at him, like an astral Cupid. Stop it, calm down.

She gazes quietly toward the Milky Way, apparently pleased with his talk. The noble poise of her head, the exquisite line of her throat and shoulders exposed by the grey wrap are almost unbearable to him. Daughter of the starry night; he has the absurd feeling that he is introducing her to her proper domain.

“Funny,” she says when he runs down, “it’s like I can feel them, almost… something out there, a million million million miles away. Cool.”

It’s touching her, he thinks; she’s dropped the exponents. He rubs his brow to damp the tension. But it doesn’t ease, it seems to be thrumming up around them. I’ve overdone it, he thinks. Must ease off.

And suddenly it’s worse, a surging, inflooding feeling so strong that he flinches and peers at Margaret under the delusion that she must be feeling it too. She’s sitting quietly, her hand at her throat. Next second it lets go of him; they are alone in the night.

How wonderful to have her here, resting so companionably. He searches the sky for something else to intrigue her. Perhaps the great circumpolar clock of Dubhe and Merak?

“Look north, up there—”

—Oh God, it’s back. A frightening thrum is pouring through him, collapsing his world—a silent tumult that whirls him out of his senses. And he is rushed into total blackness in which a spark blooms into a vision so horrifying that he tries to cry out.

The shape of horror is a white kitchen table, chipped and cracked; he has never seen anything so evil. He wants only to flee from the ghastly thing, still knowing with some part of him that it is unreal, is only on his inner eye.

Next instant reality goes entirely, he is swamped by dreadfulness. His limbs are wrenched out, he is struggling, gagged and spreadeagled, trying to scream at the sweating crazy dark faces above him in the smokey glare. A knife shines above him. Mother! Mother! Help me! But there is no help, the unspeakable blade is forced between his young legs, he can’t wrench himself away. Hideous helplessness. Father! No! No! NO! The face that is Father laughs insanely and the knife rips in, slices agonizingly—it is cutting into the root of his penis. Through the pain and screams his ears echo with drumbeats and vile beery stuff splashes onto his face.

Then everything lets go and he clamps into a knot around his mutlilated sex, rolls and falls hard to the floor in a gale of loud male voices. An old black woman’s face peers into his. He is dying of pain and shame. But as he clasps his gushing crotch he feels alien structure, understands that he is female. His childish body has breasts, his knees are dark-skinned—

And abruptly he is back in the empty night, back to his old familiar body: Daniel Dann huddled in a tin chair gasping “No—no—no—”

He shuts his mouth. Margaret is still there beside him, her hands over her face. The pain in his groin is so real that for a crazy moment he thinks she has done something to him. His hand must feel himself, find his genitals intact under the cloth before he can speak.

“M-Margaret. Are you all right?”

Through her fingers he can see the whites of her eyes. She’s shaking.

“The fire,” she whispers intensely.

“It’s all right, it’s all right.” He reaches clumsily for her arm.

What in God’s name happened?

“The fire,” she repeats. “Burning—the baby—Mary. Mary! Oh-h-h—” Slowly her hands come away from her face, she shakes his arm off, staring at nothing.

“There isn’t any fire,” he manages to say. But he’s lying, a dread suspicion is flaring up in Daniel Dann, former skeptic. The name she said. He is afraid to think what fire she means.