James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

Dann forgets him. Margaret has come into the dayroom, where the teleprinter is being installed.

As soon as he can Dann hurries out and finds her alone except for an electrician finishing a junction-box by the door. She’s standing by the console, tapping out some message which produces mysterious blue symbols on the read-out screen.

“Testing?” Dann dares to ask.

To his delight she nods serenely. “Checking in.”

“You have a connection to our office computer from here?”

“I have access to the probability program. Your EEG correlations will have to wait till we get back.”

The teleprinter clacks extendedly. She takes the printout, frowns thoughtfully.

“What’s it telling you?” he asks like an idiot.

“Users’ advisory. There’s been some accident in the main banks at Holloway, a lot of cores got wiped. Suspected tampering, etcetera… It doesn’t affect us.”

Her tone is peaceful, quietly amused. The beautiful thing is back, the fragile link between her sad world and his. He stands there watching her ply her magic.

Suddenly she shakes her head at the screen. “Look at that.”

“Something wrong?” He peers at it, identifying what looks like an integral sign surrounded by a great many Ts.

“It keeps giving the date as plus or minus infinity. The ghost.” She chuckles. “I thought I had that fixed.”

She sits down at the console and starts incomprehensible rites.

Feeling marvelously better, Dann strolls back through the corridor and goes outside. Nobody in sight but Ted and Rick shooting baskets again. The sunlight on the greenery is pulsating, vibrant; there’s a brilliance to every outline. Dann hopes he hasn’t dosed himself into some kind of psychedelic domain. It’s after eleven. The first test starts at noon. It will run one hour, a letter every ten minutes. So slow; supposed to be safer in case the submarine group aren’t synchronized exactly. Fantastic…

“Ready, Dann? It’s time to set up.” Noah bounces by with file folders under his arm. Kendall Kirk starts shouting “Come on in, gang!” his voice ringing with false camaraderie.

Even Dann’s muffled senses can’t ignore the painful tension in the air when the subjects are finally in place and being connected up. Rick is dead silent, Ted Yost wears a weird little smile, Costakis is maniacally squaring off his pad into tiny grids. Even Winona is flinchy about her hair. Frodo’s cubicle is empty; she has to be coaxed to leave Valerie. Dann lets his hands work automatically, trying to stay numb. He is still seeing too many colors and he is feeling, or hearing, a peculiar silent humming in the air. It’s me, he thinks. I’ve overdosed.

“Eleven fifty-five!”

Noah takes up his usual place in midcorridor. Dann and Kirk go to the dayroom. Margaret is waiting at her console; she will have nothing to do until the run is over. Dann stands by the closed corridor door; it’s so thin he can hear chairs scrape in the cubicles. Kirk scowls at Margaret and Dann, and takes up a watchdog stance by the front door. Outside on the porch the real dog’s tail thumps. It’s growing hot in the barracks.

At eleven fifty-eight a car stops outside. Major Fearing comes in quietly and sits down by the desk where he can watch everybody. He nods minimally at Dann. Curious how obtrusive the covert style becomes, Dann thinks. There’s an envelope in Fearing’s pocket. Is that the “answers,” the list of numbers actually transmitted? Like a game.

Is there really a submarine lying underwater out at sea, with Ron in it waiting to be shown a card?

“Twelve o’clock!” Noah says briskly in the corridor. “First letter, go!”

Dead silence. The tension is a subsonic thrum, Dann can almost feel his fillings buzz. He will not let it remind him of last night.

Suddenly Rick’s voice bleats out a high-pitched laugh. Dann can hear Noah rushing in and shushing.

“Ronnie’s afraid to go to the can,” Rick says. “He’s so constipated, he’s afraid the water will run up his ass.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Says Noah. “ Please try to concentrate. I’m sure he’s attempting to transmit a letter.”

“Oh, he’s attempting,” Rick says sarcastically.

The trembling silence closes back.

Sounds of movement in the cubicles. The subjects must be writing their imaginary letters. They do it differently, Dann knows; the girls produce big single letters ornamented with curlicues; Costakis writes a whole alphabet and circles one. Ted Yost scrawls and crosses out… Dann realizes he is trying to ignore the humming in the air. It’s like an itch, it has to be coming from outside him. His eye falls on the wires running along the walls. That’s it, he has heard about people feeling what is it, a sixty-cycle hum. He feels better.

“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—