James Tiptree Jr.: Up the Walls of the World

“Well Dan, we’re about to make you earn your keep any day now,” Noah burbles. He seems unusually manic.

“What, are you going to publish?”

“Oh, heavens no, Dan. We’re much too classified. There will be some controlled internal dissemination of course, but first we have the formal presentation to the Committee. That’s where you come in. I tell you I’m damn glad we have highly qualified people to certify every step of the procedure this time. No more stupid hassles over the paradigm.” He swats up at Dann’s back in his enthusiasm.

“What have you actually got hold of, Noah?” Dann asks incuriously.

“Oh, my!” Noah’s eyes beam with hyperthyroid glee. “I really shouldn’t, you know.” He giggles. “Dan, old friend, the breakthrough!”

“Good work, Noah.” Dann has said it a dozen times.

“The breakthrough…” Noah sighs, dream-ridden. “We’re getting multiple-unit signals through, Dan. Solid. Solid. Redundandcy, that’s the key. That’s the golden key! Why didn’t I think of it before?”

“Congratulations, Noah. Great work.”

“Oh—I want you to be ready to leave town for a couple of days, Dan. All of us. The big test. They’re actually giving us a submarine. Don’t worry, you won’t be in it, ha ha! But I can’t tell you where we go. Navy secret!”

Dann watches him bounce away. What the hell has happened, if anything? Impossible to believe that his pop-eyed tuft-haired little gnome has achieved a “breakthrough” in whatever he thinks he’s doing here. Dann refrains from believing it.

He turns into his office, considering what he knows of Project Polymer. Polymer is Noah’s last, forlorn hope; he has spent a lifetime on psi-research, parapsychology, whatever pompous name for nothing. Dann had met him years back, had watched with amused sympathy as the old man floundered from one failing budgetary angel to the next. When his last university funding dried up, Noah had somehow wangled a small grant out of the National Institute of Mental Health, which had recently expanded into Polymer.

It was in the NIMH days that he asked Dann to join him, after the—after the events which are not to be recalled. The old man must have realized Dann couldn’t bear to go back to normal practice. Not even in a new place. Something, god knows what, had held Dann back from suicide, but the idea of coming close to normal, living people—was—is—insupportable. Rough sympathy lurks under Noah’s grey tufts; Dann is grateful in a carefully unfelt way. The impersonal nonsense of Parapsychology, this office and its crazy people, have been a perfect way to achieve suspended animation. Not real, not a part of life. And never to forget Noah’s narcotics locker and his readiness to try any psychoactive drugs.

Dann’s work has turned out to be absurdly simple, mainly hooking Noah’s subjects onto various biomonitoring devices and certifying the readouts, and serving as house doctor for Noah’s tatty stable of so-called high-psi subjects. Dann neither believes nor disbelieves in psi powers, is only certain that he himself has none. It was a quiet, undemanding life with a handy-dandy prescription pad. Until Polymer and Kendall Kirk came along.

How the hell had Noah connected with the Department of Defense? The old man is smart, give him A for dedication. Somehow he’d ferreted out the one practical application of telepathy that the D.O.D. would spring for—a long-wanted means of communicating with submerged submarines. Apparently they actually tried it once, and the Soviets have reported some results. Always unreliable of course. Now Noah has sold the Navy on trying biofeedback monitoring and redundancy produced by teams of receivers. The project has always seemed to Dann exquisitely futile, suitable only for a madman like Noah and a dead man like himself.

But it seems his underwater tranquility is about to be disturbed. Dann will have to go somewhere for this crazy test. Worse, he’ll have to support Noah before that committee. Can he do it? Dread shakes him briefly, but he supposes he can; he owes something to Noah. The old man was stupid enough to use his unqualified mistress for the previous medical work and was accordingly pilloried. Now he has the highly-qualified Doctor Dann. The highly irregular Doctor Dann. Well, Dann will come through for him if he can.

He finds himself still shaking and cautiously supplements his own psychoactivity with a trace of oxymorphone. Poor Noah, if that comes out.

The afternoon is passing. Thursdays are set aside for screening potential subjects. This time there are two sets of twin girls; Noah is strong on twins. Dann takes their histories, dreamily amused by their identical mannerisms.

The last job is the regular check on E-100, a bearded Naval ensign who is one of the Polymer team. E-100 is a lot younger than he looks. He is also tragic: leukemia in remission. The Navy has barred him from active duty but Noah has got him on some special status. E-100 refuses to believe the remission is temporary.

“I’ll be back at sea pretty soon now, right Doc?”

Dann mumbles banalities, thankful for the dream-juice in his bloodstream. As E-100 leaves, Dann sees Lieutenant Kirk limp by. Devotion of duty, or what? Well, the cuts aren’t serious. What the devil went on in that computer room, though? Fans flying off? Incredible. The lesions aren’t knife cuts, say. Vaguely stimulated, Dann suspects events having to do with a certain tall, white-coated figure. Kendall Kirk and Miss Omali? He hopes not.

He is packing up for the day when his door moves quietly. He looks around to find the room is galvanized. Standing by his desk is a long, slim, white-and-black apparition. Miss Margaret Omali herself.

“Sit down, please—” Lord, he thinks, the woman carries a jolt. Sex…yes, but an unnameable tension. She’s like a high-voltage condenser.

The apparition sits, with minimal fuss and maximal elegance. A very tall, thin, reserved, aristocratic poised young black woman in a coarse white cotton lab coat. Nothing about her is even overtly feminine or flamboyant, only the totality of her shouts silently, I am.

“Problems?” he asks, hearing his voice squeak. Her hair is a short curly ebony cap, showing off the small head on her long perfect neck. Her eyelids seem to be supernaturaly tall and Egyptian. She wears no jewelry whatever. The flawless face, the thin hands, stay absolutely still.

“Problem,” she corrects him quietly. “I need something for headaches. I think they must be migraine. The last one kept me out two days.”

“Is this something new?” Dann knows he should get her file but he can’t move. Probably nothing in it anyway; Miss Omali was transferred to them a year ago, with her own medical clearance. Another of Noah’s highly qualified people, degree in computer math or whatever. She has only been in Dann’s office once before, for the October flu shots. Dann thought her the most exotic and beautiful human creature he had ever laid eyes on. He had immediately quarantined the thought. Among other reasons—among many and terminal other reasons—he is old enough to be at least her father.

“Yes, it’s new,” she is saying. Her voice is muted and composed, and her speech, Dann realizes, is surprisingly like his own middleclass Western white. “I used to have ulcers.”

She is telling him that she understands the etiology.

“What happened to the ulcers?”

“They’re gone.”

“And now you have these headaches. As you imply, they could be stress-symptoms too. If it’s true migraine, we can help. Which side is affected?”

“It starts on the left and spreads. Very soon.”

“Do you have any advance warning?”

“Why, yes. I feel… strange. Hours before.”