James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

THERE IS NO SENSE OF MISGIVING: SUCH ARE ITS POWERS THAT THIS TINY INTRUDER COULD BE ANNIHILATED WITH A FLICK OF NON-BEING.

AS THE SMALL ONE GAINS ACCESS TO THE MAIN RECEPTOR-SYSTEM, ITS EBULLIENCE INCREASES SO THAT IT SEEMS TO RESONATE. NOTHING LIKE THIS HAS COME INTO THE SADNESS OF EXISTENCE BEFORE. APPARENTLY MERE DATA IS NOT NEUTRAL TO THIS LITTLE BEING.

BUT HOW ACTIVE IT IS! NOW IT IS REACHING EVEN TOWARD THOSE CONDITIONS OF PRIVATE GRIEF THAT ARE NOT TO BE DISTURBED. THE GREAT HOST SENDS A WARNING WAVE OF COLD NEGATION THROUGH ITSELF. THE SMALL PASSENGER RE-COILS, BUT STILL EMANATES ITS INCOMPREHENSIBLE PLEA. MORE! WHAT CAN IT DESIRE, SOME COMPLETER UNION, SOME COMPLETION OF ITSELF?

BEMUSED, THE UNSUBSTANTIAL VASTNESS SAILS THE STAR-WAYS, FOR THE FIRST TIME ALMOST FORGETFUL OF ITS OWN BADNESS AND DESPAIR. SLOWLY ANOTHER IDEA RISES THROUGH THE ICY CURRENTS THAT UNDERBASE ITS THOUGHT: IT WOULD BE INTERESTING TO COMPREHEND THE LITTLE PASSENGER’S SYMBOL SYSTEM.

BUT HOW? SUCH AN IDEA HAS SURELY NEVER COME TO ANY OF ITS RACE. IT PONDERS. ABSENTLY FOLLOWING THE UNKNOWN TRACEWAY TWISTING AMONG THE STARS. AT LENGTH IT DECIDES THAT IT MIGHT BEGIN BY RECORDING ITS PASSENGER’S SIGNALS IN CONJUNCTION WITH ALL ONGOING DATA FROM OUTSIDE. PERHAPS SOME CORRELATIONS WILL APPEAR. THE SIGNALS ARE SIMPLE: THE SMALL ONE RADIATES PRIMARILY IN BINARY MODE, AND REPEATS OFTEN.

IN COLD NEAR ABSOLUTE ZERO, FRICTIONLESS CURRENTS SPIN. A DECISION IS TAKEN, A RECORDING MODE ACTIVATED. ON RANDOM FACETS OF THE ICY STORE OF MOLECULES IN THE NUCLEUS, THE LITTLE PASSENGER’S FIRST CRYPTIC EMANATIONS ARE PRESERVED.

// I * COME * IN * PEACE * FOR * ALL * MANKIND *** I * COME * IN * PEACE * FOR * ALL * MANKIND *** I * COME * IN * PEACE * FOR * ALL * MANKIND *** I * COME * IN * PEACE * FOR * ALL * MANKIND ***

Wildly excited, Tivonel jets upward after Giadoc; they are heading for the highpoint where they will launch into the focus of the Beam which will carry their lives to an alien world. They have just passed the level where Chief Hearer Lomax waits for his Hearers to move out to their stations around the great vortex.

Near Lomax hovers a small cluster of females—Avanil and her Paradomin friends. Tivonel can hear the bright orange tone of their mantle-lights, evidently intended to carry: “Why should this all be controlled by males?”

“They know how, they have the fields,” a sister replies.

“We can learn,” Avanil says defiantly.

Jetting upward against the gales of the Wall, Tivonel recalls her own childish attempt to touch the life-signals from the sky. If she tried to increase her field-strength by doing Fathering, like Avanil, could she have attained that power? More likely she’d just have become like a normal male, absorbed in the Skills of infant-care. Like those status-stiff Fathers down in Deep now, who can’t believe any danger could strike Tyree. And what would become of the world if females abandoned themselves to Fathering? Crazy.

Far down below Lomax are the massed life-fields of the Deepers. Tivonel can still pick out the brilliance of Scomber, pulsing with aggressive resolution. Beside him is the strong furled energy of old Heagran, dark with disapproval. The Fathers around them are in high states of energy, their mantles flickering with scarlet hope, cold blue distaste. There is a vermillion exclamation she is sure comes from Tiavan, Giadoc’s son and her own. He would do anything, even life-crime, to save his child. How sad for Giadoc.

But there is no time to think of that now, she must begin to prepare herself for the Test, as Giadoc has instructed her. Yet the view up here is so grand, she lets herself take one more scan around. They are all alone near the top of the Wall of the World, so high that almost the whole of the great polar vortex can be made out. The wind-wall is a fantastically beautiful swirling cliff, richly patterned with the rushing lights and life-emanations of the Wild. Above them are the perilous heights where the top of the winds start to converge to form the deadly Airfall in the center; Tivonel can just perceive the upper fringes of the funnel, grey with dying life. Up here too can be sensed a deep background energy. Giadoc has told her that it may be the life-field of Tyree itself, transmitting into space. How thrilling… Giadoc is slowing down, they must be nearly there.

Guiltily Tivonel comes to herself and starts sorting and ordering her life-field, trying to recall the disciplines her Father had taught her. Encapsulate nuclear identity and essential memory, damp emotion; self-will relaxed yet alert. Very difficult. And all to be well-connected, so she won’t fly apart. There, it’s coming.

Giadoc halts just above her, his huge field already attenuated and coiled in a strange helical form. She stretches awareness, tries to copy with her own smaller life. As she does so, a life-signal resonates around the Wall. The Hearers are in place.

“Ready?” Giadoc brushes her with a testing thought.

“Yes.” She mutes the last excited eddy from her field-form.

“Remember, your first act must be to try to calm the being’s fear.”

“I will, dear-Giadoc.”

“And be brave. The sensations will be very strange. Especially don’t panic when there is no wind.”

“No.”

She waits, hardly able to breathe for the effort to remain in the correct calm mode. It’s like being a child again, waiting for her Father to help her stretch her baby mind to distant-touch. But this isn’t play, she’s waiting to go with Giadoc to touch the life beyond the sky!

The sky… Incredibly clear and cold the voices of the Companions call to her from above. Will she really touch them, ride out on the Beam to merge with unimaginable alien life? A deep excitement wells up almost ungovernably. All around she can feel the energies of the Hearers’ linked fields building, growing without limit. The World is bursting with tension.

Just as it seems she must fly apart, a second life-signal crackles through them—and she feels her mind gripped, pulled free, thrust out upon forces she had never dreamed of. Almost she flinches in fear before she lets it take her. Giadoc and the immense combined power of the ring of Hearers are sucking her life up to the focus at the heart of the Beam, to send it stretching out—out—out to—

She yields, launches totally, lets herself dwindle to a filament riding a storm of power, an energy that looms and blooms upward like a world-bubble. She is only a thread in an immense thrusting tower of bodiless vitality, shooting forever outward as it intensifies and narrows from a pinnacle to a needle, from a needle to a dimensionless thread driving instantaneously to its goal. And as her life attenuates, recruitment comes—a deep life-force as if she and the Beam were cresting on a planetary power.

For an everlasting instant she feels herself stretched through an infinity of nothing, an unbodied vector still companioned by a strand of nameless strength. Then—joy, strangeness, glory— she feels the goal just ahead!

Yes. In the unknown is something. Life-contact! Without senses she touches, knows it for a living being. Remember!

She pushes like a baby against the alien life, feeling for the fear she must deflect. Yes, terror is here at the contact-point. With all her might she counters it, projecting warm-friendship, and pushes again.

And suddenly physical sensation crashes in upon her. Lights, colors, nameless perceptions, concrete life-signals! All in one overwhelming instant she is seeing through alien eyes!

Enchanted, she gulps in comprehension, registering shapes, hues, sounds, smells, volumes. A world bombards her. She has done it, she has merged with an alien mind! She has a body, she can fit her will into its half-comprehensible brain, live, act!