James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

“Father Tynad, Father Padar, will you not help?”

“What harm can come to his body in so short a time?” asks Tynad.

“The alien could hurl his body into the Abyss,” Tivonel says. “Besides, don’t you understand? The poor person who was brought here was terrified, it almost fragmented. It has need of your Fatherly skill.”

“We have no duty to Father animals.” Glinting sarcastically, Padar and Terenc move away.

“They’re not animals,” Tivonel cries. “It was a person like us, it spoke! And we are stealing them from their world. Very well—if none of you great ones will help, I will go up again and try, female though I am.”

From behind her a male voice speaks. “This female shames us. I am Ustan. Though I am not skilled enough to climb the heights of your wild winds, I will try to make my way to Hearer Lomax. If you are in need, perhaps I can reach you from there, Tivonel.”

“Honour to you, Father Ustan,” Tivonel flashes gratefully.

As she turns away there is an angry flare of argument around Lomax and Scomber.

“I insist on going with Giadoc,” Father Terenc is saying. “I shall not become fearful and flee, like your female.”

“It is easy enough to send you, Terenc,” Lomax replies. “But you don’t realize the danger. You may be lost forever when the Beam withdraws.”

“So be it,” Terenc signs firmly. “With great respect, Hearer Lomax, I see that this entire test is being conducted by Hearers who, as you say, hope that it will fail. I feel it would be well for Giadoc to be accompanied by one who will try to make it succeed.”

Lomax has been paling and flushing with insult, his field is furled around him like a storm. But he only replies curtly, “Very well. Follow Giadoc if you wish instruction.”

The big male spreads vanes and pumps upward after Giadoc, making up in determination what he lacks in skill.

Tivonel flaps her mantle to clear her mind; never has she heard such dissension among the Fathers of Tyree. Anyone would take them for squabbling females! Then she planes skillfully out onto a slender updraft and soars up past him, thinking, Now I have two bodies to watch over. Well, Terenc’s can look after itself.

As she climbs toward Lomax’ eddy her name is called.

“Wait, Tivonel! I’ll go with you and help watch!” It’s Avanil, with one of her Paradomin.

“Welcome, Avan.” Tivonel uses the unfamiliar name carefully, pleased by the chance to learn more of this strange young female. But what about the plenya encumbering her pouch?

“A moment.” With odd formality, Avanil turns to her friend, and her field alters. Tivonel sees that she is transferring the young plenya to the other with ritual reassurances—exactly like a small Father! It gives her a weird shudder.

“Let’s go.”

They jet upward together. Tivonel enjoys the sense of comradeship, like the old days on the hunting teams. She’s been away from female things too long.

“We mustn’t get too close until they’re actually on the Beam,” she warns. “You’ve no idea what it’s like, your field could get pulled in. Afterwards they look almost dead. It’s uncanny.”

“I envy your trip on the Beam,” says Avan/Avanil. “Listen. I intend—”

At that moment a life-signal bursts at them. Someone is jetting fast out through the Wall. As the mind-field appears, Tivonel exclaims.

“Iznagel! What are you doing here? She’s my friend from High Station,” she explains to Avanil.

“Well met, Tivonel.” Iznagel hangs panting below them. “I seem to be a little off course, don’t I? The time-eddies are getting so bad I’m not sure I’m here. I came to warn Hearers that something terrible is wrong with our Sound. Last night the high stream from mid-world veered over us; it’s full of death. Whole packs of curlu are burnt, they’re screaming so you can’t think. Two of our people went up to investigate and got burned too. Look at me!” She unfurls her vanes to show fresh blisters.

“The path you came on isn’t even safe by day now, Tivonel. Father Mornor is taking the children down to Deep and the rest of us are trying to move the Station lower down, if we can find a stable crest. Everybody should get out of the High—What in the name of the Wind is going on down there, Tivonel? What are all those Deeper Fathers doing here?”

“They’ve come here because there’s trouble all over,” Tivonel says. “It’s complicated, Iznagel, I can’t explain right now. I have to go.”

“They should go down at once!” Iznagel dives abruptly away from them down the wall of the wind.

“It’s beginning,” Avanil says somberly. “Soon there’ll be no safe place. The Sound doesn’t reach here at nights now, but when Tyree turns it’ll burn here too.”

“Feel the Beam starting,” Tivonel says. “It’s as if they drained the whole Wind—Oh, look at Lomax.”

They are passing Chief Hearer Lomax; Hearer Bdello from Near Pole is beside him. The two Hearers’ huge fields are streaming up in an arc toward the juncture far above; spectacular. Lomax’ power is an awesome sight; even Avanil must doubt that females could ever develop such life-sensitivity.

But a curious thing is happening: the mantles of both Lomax and Bdello are murmuring with light-speech. Surely they aren’t talking to each other in their state? No; it must be unconscious fragments, like sleep-talk. Suddenly Lomax forms a word with such blue-green hatred that Tivonel stops in mid-jet.

“The Destroyer!”

And Bdello echoes, “The Destroyer… the Beam…”

Great winds, she forgot that Destroyer out there somewhere. Can it be intruding on the Beam? She recalls Giadoc’s memory, the cold, vast alien deathliness. Could it attack Giadoc?

As the two females hover, Lomax’ dreaming voice flickers clearly, “No … but near… Something intrudes… disturbance…”

“Disturbance,” Bdello seems to agree, amid a mumble of meaningless lights. Then Lomax signs, “Gone… small, what?… Wait… no: clear. Clear…” And the two unconscious glimmers sink to a low hum of concentration.

Tivonel scans up to where Giadoc and Terenc are. Their life-fields look normal.

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t the Destroyer,” she tells Avanil. “We better get moving; they’ll get it fixed.”

As they jet on upwards through a world growing strange and hushed, Avanil asks, “That alien you touched—was it a female?”

“I haven’t an idea, it was all over so quick. Avan, I hate myself for getting scared.”

“You’re not a coward. But listen, Tivonel: The one you saw in Giadoc’s body, was it female or male?”

“I couldn’t tell. It was a mess, it was too scared to make sense. And then it threw me. You better watch out for that, you know.”

“But it had a big field?” Avanil persists.

“Oh yes—at first I thought it was Giadoc, until I saw how weird it was.”

“So it could have been a female with a big field.”

“Maybe the males are even bigger,” Tivonel says teasingly.

“Be serious, Tivonel. Somewhere out there must be a world where we aren’t like this. Where the females are able to do Fathering and all the high-status activities… Of course the egg has to be exposed before it’s fertilized,” she goes on reflectively. “That’s so basic. And I guess that means the males have to catch it. But the rest could be different. Maybe where there isn’t any wind, females could get their eggs back and raise them!” She laughs fiercely. “Maybe there’s a world where the females are so strong they just hold the males and squeeze them out onto the egg and keep the eggs themselves! And we’d have all the Skills and respect!”

Both young females are laughing now, the picture is so ludicrous. But Tivonel has been noticing that Avanil’s field really is unusually large and complex. Is her mock-Fathering really changing her? Could a female develop the sacred Fatherly skills? Infant-Empathy, Developmental-Responsibility, Mind-Nurture, all those big things?