James Tiptree Jr.: Up the Walls of the World

“Oh, Near Pole!” Tivonel laughs. “They’ve been spreading rumors since I was a baby. They eat too many quinya pods.”

Iznagel chuckles too. Near Pole is a bit of a joke, despite its beauty and interest. Its lower vortex is so near Deep that many young people go on holiday out there, scanning the sky and each other and playing at being Hearers. Some real Hearers are there too of course, but they keep to themselves.

Iznagel’s mind-field is forming for memory-transfer. Tivonel prepares to receive it. But just then a small child jets up, erupting in excited light.

“Let me, Iznagel! Let me! Father—say I can!”

Behind her comes the large form of Mornor, her Father, twinkling indulgently. Tivonel respects him doubly—a Father enterprising enough to come up here and give his daughter experience of the Wild.

“If the stranger doesn’t mind?” Mellowly, Mornor flashes the formal request for child-training contact. He must have few chances for his child to practice, up here at Station.

“Accept with pleasure.” Tivonel bends her life-field encouragingly toward the child. After months of receiving the chaotic transmissions of the Lost Ones, she is unafraid of being jolted by a child.

The young one hovers shyly, marshalling her mind-field, pulsing with the effort to do this right. Jerkily her little thoughts gather themselves and extend a wobbly bulge.

Tivonel guides it to correct merger with her own field and receives a nicely organized sensory memory of the trail, quite clear and detailed. It contains only one childish slip—a tingling memory of an effort at self-stimulation. After the tumult and suspicion of the Wild Ones’ minds Tivonel finds her charming.

She flashes formal thanks to the little one, showing no awareness of the slip.

“Did my daughter warn you of the time-eddies?” Mornor inquires.

Tivonel consults her new memory. “Yes indeed.”

“Then farewell and may the Great Wind bear you.”

“Farewell and come again, dear Tivonel,” Iznagel signs.

“To you all, thanks,” Tivonel replies, warmly rippling Iznagel’s name-lights as she turns away. “Goodbye.” As she had suspected, the start of the trail is indeed that upwind interface.

She jets out past the Station, remembering to start at decorous speed. As she passes the Station rafts, her field brushes an unnoticed life-eddy from the group beyond. She reads a genial appreciation of the rescue mission—and a very clear, unflattering image of her own wild self, dirty and food-smeared as they had arrived here. Tivonel chuckles. People up here aren’t so careful to control their minds. Ahum!

How will she really stand being back in crowded, civilized Deep?

No matter! As the first wind-blast takes her she forgets all worry in the exhilaration of using her strong body. Twisting and jetting hard, she reaches the interface and shoots upwind along it, the lights of her mantle laughing aloud. Why worry about anything? She has so much to do, marvels to see, life to live, and sex to find. She is Tivonel, merry creature of the Great Winds of Tyree, on her life way.

Doctor Daniel Dann is on his life way too. But he is not merry.

He finishes dating and signing the printouts from Subject R-95, thinking as usual that they don’t need an M.D. on this asinine project. And telling himself, also as usual, that he should be glad they do. If he decides to go on existing.

Subject R-95 is wiping imaginary electrode-paste out of his hair. He is a husky, normal-looking youth with a depressed expression.

“All the dead aerosols,” he remarks tonelessly.

Nancy, the assistant technician, looks at him questioningly.

“Great piles of them. Mountains,” R-95 mutters. “All the bright colored aerosol cans, all dead. You push them but they don’t spray. They look fine, though. It’s sad.”

“Was that what you received?” Nancy asks him.

“No.” R-95 has lost interest. It’s only another of his weird images, Doctor Dann decides. R-95 and his twin brother R-96, have been with Project Polymer three years now. They both act stoned half the time. That makes Dann uneasy, for the best of reasons.

“Doctor! Doctor Dann!”

The front-office girl is rapping on the cubicle glass. Dann goes out to her, ducking to make sure he clears the substandard doorway.

“Lieutenant Kirk has cut his leg open, Doctor! He’s in your office.”

“Okay, Nancy , hold the last subject. I’ll be back.”

Dann lopes down the corridor, thinking, My God, a genuine medical emergency. And Kendall Kirk—how suitable.

In his office he finds Kirk crouched awkwardly in a chair, holding a bloody wad of paper towel against his inner thigh. His pant leg is hanging cut and sodden.

“What happened?” Dann asks when he has him on the table.

“Fucking computer,” Kirk says furiously. “What’d it do to me? Is—Am I—”

“Two fairly superficial cuts across the muscle. Your genitals are okay if that’s what you mean.” Dann investigates the trouser fabric impressed into the wound, meanwhile idly considering the fury in Kirk’s voice, the computer room, and, obliquely, Miss Omali. “You say a computer did this?”

“Ventilator fan-blade blew off.”

Dann lets his fingers work, visualizing the computer banks. Motors somewhere behind the lower grills, about thigh level, could be fans. It seems bizarre. Much as he dislikes Kendall Kirk, the man has come close to being castrated. Not to mention having an artery sliced.

“You were lucky it wasn’t an inch one way or the other.”

“You telling me.” Kirk’s voice is savage. “Does this mean stitches?”

“We’ll see. I’d prefer to make do with butterfly clamps if you’ll keep off the leg awhile.”

Kirk grunts and Dann finishes up in silence. At this hour of the morning his hands move in pleasing autonomy—maximum blood level of what he thinks of as his maintenance dosage. A normal working day. But the accident is giving him odd tremors of reality, not dangerous so far. He dislikes Kendall Kirk in a clinical, almost appreciative way. Specimen of young deskbound Naval intelligence executive: coarse-minded, clean-cut, a gentleman to the ignorant eye. Evidently not totally impressive to his seniors or he wouldn’t be assigned to this ridiculous project. Since Kirk came, ah, on board, Project Polymer has begun to exhibit irritating formalities. But old Noah loves it.

He sends Kirk home and goes back to release the remaining subject. En route he can’t resist detouring past Miss Omali’s computer room. The door is, as usual, closed.

The last subject is T-22, a cheery fiftyish blue-haired woman Dann thinks of as The Housewife: she looks like a million TV ads. For all he knows she may be a lion-tamer. He does not compare her to the one housewife he has known intimately and whom he hopes never to think of again.

“I’m just dying to know how many I got right, Doctor Dann!” T-22 twinkles up at him while he detaches her from Noah’s recording rig. “Some of the letters were so vivid. When will we know?”

Dann has given up trying to persuade her that he’s not in charge. “I’m sure you made a fine score, Mrs.—uh…”

“But when will we really find out?”

“Well, it, ah, the data go through computation first, you know.” Vaguely he recalls that this test has something to do with coded messages and multiple receivers, redundancy. No matter. Noah’s so-called telepathic sender is at some secret Navy Place miles away. Kirk’s doing; he seems to have friends in the intelligence establishment. Part of his charm.

Dann bids farewell to The Housewife and ducks out, nearly running over Noah. Doctor Noah Catledge is the father of Polymer and all its questionable kin. He skips alongside down the corridor, taking two steps to Dann’s long one.