James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

—Which coalesces, unthinkably, into light and feeling, into what he finally recognizes as the old human body of Daniel Dann, lying propped up on a bare floor.

Machinery is humming near him. He isolates an active hammer at his sternum, and his human mind vaguely identifies an emergency cardiac stimulator. Did he dream? No; it was all real, only elsewhere. He is, he supposes, really dying now; he has received a mortal blow, though he is not in pain. He has lost something vital, lost it forever. Memory of black burning comes to him. But strangely it has no power. I tried, his failing mind thinks. Even if it was too late, I did try.

Movement is visible through his eyelashes, his lids are in terminal tremor. While he waits to die he lets himself look, identifies a moving whiteness as the legs of medics. Incredibly, he seems to be still in the dayroom at Deerfield, on the floor. No one is attending to him. At the end of his vision a figure suddenly rises away, revealing the side of the dayroom couch.

A long dark arm is trailing from it. The hand rests limp on the floor.

Her arm. She is here. His heart thuds against the mechanical stimulation.

“Sorry, Major,” says a voice. Dann recollects a white-haired blur: Doctor Harris. “We’re much too late,” Harris goes on. “She’s gone.”

Dann can feel nothing more, he is only dully grateful for a glimpse of her pure young profile, as they lift her onto the stretcher. The blanket drops. Touch her carefully, damn you, treat her with reverence. He remembers what he knows and wishes fiercely that he could protect her body from the obscene curiosity to come.

“Hey, the doc’s coming around,” says a loud voice over his head.

With horror Dann realizes that it is referring to him. Why isn’t he dead? Is it possible that he has to live? To go on and face the emptiness, the grief and wretchedness of his days? No. He wills himself to let go. Cease, heart.

But hands are moving him, medication is traitorous in his blood, he cannot slip away. And yet he can still feel the weird humming tension in the air. Is it possible somehow to wrench loose, to flee out of his body as he had before. Was that delirium, or his drugged cortex raving, a stroke? Whatever, he is too weak now, he cannot find the way. He is trapped here, to suffer the grey years. No way out.

Involuntarily he groans aloud, and a miracle happens.

The push that he had felt before presses into his mind—an invisible invading presence that somehow takes away all fear. But this time it is far stronger, more resolute. A real yet friendly power is thrusting him out of himself as a knife scoops out an oyster. Perhaps it is death; he feels only infinite relief as he lets himself be unbodied. And as he dissolves, a voiceless message seems to form in his mind: “Don’t be afriad, a short time only. I am Giadoc.”

Madness! But so real and warm is the presence that with his last human consciousness he feels sympathy for the alien thing, wishes to warn it. Then his life slides out of the world.

—Into darkness, bodiless speed; he is whirling instantaneously through a void he seems to have known before. But this is velocity so great it is simple being, he is only a vector hurtling somewhere, sucked to a destination—and then he is there, telescoping into some order of unreal reality.

As he coalesces into what might be existence, his vanished human senses form one last perception: he is falling into a world-wide inferno, lit by jagged radiance, a blizzard of radiance from an exploding sun: For a noninstant he is aware of great gales howling, of a storm inhabited by monster flying forms, great bats or squids that trail terrifying fires. He is collapsing or condensing into hell.

Next moment the vision is gone, he is in, is a corporeal something under peaceful daylight. But is is all too much, entirely too much, he is worn out. Something vital has gone, he does not recall what, only knows he can bear no more.

All but dead with grief and terror, the being that had been Daniel Dann abandons consciousness. His forty-meter vanes fan out in disarray, his jets are lifeless. He tumbles limply while the currents take hold and carry him helpless toward the lethal downfall of the eternal winds of Tyree.

COLDLY IT RIDES THE STARWAYS, PREOCCUPIED BY NOVEL SENSATIONS FROM WITHIN ITS VAST AND INSUBSTANTIAL SELF. SINCE THE ADVENT OF ITS SMALL PASSENGER, EXISTENCE HAS DEFINITELY BECOME MORE INTERESTING, DESPITE THE IRREMEDIABLE SADNESS OF ITS GUILT.

THE PROJECT OF LEARNING TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE LITTLE ENTITY SEEMS LIKELYTO REQUIRE INFINITE TIME; BUT INFINITE TIME IS AVAILABLE. REFERENTS FOR THE SYMBOLS STILL ELUDE IT. HOWEVER, THE GREAT HOST COMES TO UNDERSTAND IN A GENERAL WAY THE SMALL THING’S ZEST FOR ACCESS, AS THOUGH THE MERE EXPERIENCE OF EMBODIMENT WERE A SOURCE OF JOY. STRANGE, UNFATHOMABLE! WHEN ACCESS TO ALL SENSOR-SYSTEMS IS ALLOWED, THE TINY BEING RESPONDS EXCITEDLY, SEEKING, PEERING, LISTENING, MAGNIFYING NOW THIS, NOW THAT PHENOMENON OF THE VOID. AND ALWAYS WITH AN INFECTIOUS VIVACITY THAT MAKES THE HUGE ONE’S BLEAK EXISTENCE BRIEFLY MORE BEARABLE.

AGAIN, THERE IS THE RECURRENT PROBLEM OF KEEPING ITS PASSENGER AWAY FROM TOO-CLOSE APPROACH TO ITS PRIVATE NEXUS OF GRIEF AND WRONG. THE LITTLE PRESENCE SEEMS TO WANT TO MEDDLE IN THE WHOLE CENTRAL NUCLEUS, AS THOUGH TO INITIATE SOME ACTION, OR DEMAND MORE OF SOMETHING UNKNOWN. WHAT COULD THIS BE?

EXPERIMENTALLY, A MORE INTIMATE CONTACT IS ONCE ALLOWED. BUT NOTHING HAPPENS EXCEPT A REPETITION OF MEANINGLESS SYMBOLS: // ACTIVATE ***//. THIS CORRELATES WITH NOTHING, AND PRESENTLY THE SMALL PASSENGER CEASES AND REGATHERS ITSELF ELSEWHERE.

IT HAS BEEN ACTIVE IN THE VAST PERIPHERY, TOO. AT LEAST ONCE IT HAS VENTURED TO THE OUTER LAYERS AND MADE CONTACT WITH AN ENCYSTMENT. SUBSEQUENTLY IT ACHIEVES A NEW KIND OF MOVEMENT, AS THOUGH IT HAS SEPARATED OR DOUBLED ITSELF: THE INTERNAL SENSORS OUT THERE ARE NOT SO PRECISE. TOLERANTLY, THE HUGE HOST REFRAINS FROM DAMPING THIS TINY COMMOTION, MERELY CONTENTING ITSELF WITH WARNING SWEEPS.

AND SHORTLY IT FINDS ITSELF REWARDED FOR INDULGENCE: THIS SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN THE PRELUDE TO SOMETHING NEW. THERE IS A SENSE OF STRAIN ON THE NUCLEUS, AND THEN THERE ERUPTS FROM WITHIN IT A WONDROUS, NAMELESS SENSATION SO UNHEARD-OF IT CANNOT BE IDENTIFIED AT ALL, EXCEPT AS A STARTLING SENSE OF COMING ALIVE IN A NEW UNAUTHORIZED WAY: THIS HAS TO DO WITH CERTAIN SCANNERS, IT PERCEIVES. IT DEPLOYS THEM MORE FULLY, AND THE SENSATION AMPLIFIES. MARVELMENT, DELIGHT!

NOTHING IN ITS IMMENSE COLD BEING HAS PREPARED IT FOR BEING DAZZLED BY BEAUTY. THE NEUTRAL, UNREGARDED STARFIELDS TAKE ON INTEREST. GLORIES, LARGE AND SMALL, FOR WHICH IT HAS NO CONCEPTS CREATE A BRILLIANT STIR. TO ITS AMAZEMENT, THIS ASPECT OF ITS GREY EXISTENCE BECOMES FOR A TIME INTENSELY SATISFYING.

IT FLOATS ON CONSIDERING THESE EVENTS, HALF-PLEASED, HALF-HORRIFIED. IT SPECULATES: PERHAPS IT WAS TO THE GOOD OF THE TASK, THE RACE, THAT I DEFAULTED BEFORE I BECAME SO ACUTELY DERANGED?

SO DISTRACTED, THE VAST BEING FAILS TO NOTICE THAT IT IS MOVING CLOSER TO THE PECULIAR NEG-ENTROPIC STRAND WHICH IT HAD SET COURSE AUTOMATICALLY TO FOLLOW. IT IS SUDDENLY ALERTED WHEN A BURST OF MINUTE ENERGIES IMPINGE UPON ITS OUTER SKIN. IT SEEMS TO HAVE INTERSECTED, OR DISRUPTED, THE STREAM. APPARENTLY IT IS QUITE CLOSE TO THE EMISSION END, BECAUSE OTHER PARTICULATE ENERGIES CONTINUE TO ARRIVE, QUITE STRONG FOR SUCH TINY SENDS. INDEED, ONE OR TWO MAY HAVE PENETRATED THE DEEPER LAYERS BEFORE BEING SEALED OUT. THE SENSATION IS MILDLY TITILLATING, ENOUGH SO THAT IT REMAINS FLOATING IN PLACE, VAGUELY RECALLING THAT IT HAD WONDERED IF SOME APPROPRIATE ACTION WOULD SUGGEST ITSELF WHEN IT NEARED THE OUTPUT END.