James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

BUT AT THAT MOMENT THERE ARISES FROM WITHIN A NEW SIGNAL. THE SEND IS WEAK, BUT ITS NATURE IS SO STRANGE, YET ALMOST-KNOWN, THAT THE HUGE BEING FEELS THAT THE CAUSE OF ITS TORMENT IS ALL BUT OPEN TO ITS MIND. SOME LOST TRUTH IS HIDDEN HERE, SEPARATED BY ONLY THE MOST FRAGILE OPACITY, ALL BUT TO BE GRASPED. IT STRAINS AT THE TINY VOID IT CANNOT BRIDGE.

STRESS MOUNTS UNENDURABLY. AGAIN THE WEAK CRY COMES FORTH. YES! I MUST—I MUST DO—DO WHAT’?

DOES THE SMALL ONE, PERHAPS, KNOW?

CARING FOR NOTHING BUT RELIEF, THE MONSTER OF THE SPACEWAYS IMPULSIVELY LOWERS ALL INTERNAL BARRIERS, LAYING OPEN ACCESS EVEN TO ITS MOST PRIVATE WELLS OF WRONG AND SHAME. IF THE LITTLE ONE KNOWS WHAT WILL ALLAY THIS TORMENT, ANYTHING IS ENDURABLE. LET IT ONLY REVEAL THE CLUE.

BUT THERE COMES ONLY REPETITION OF THE MEANINGLESS SYMBOL:

//ACTIVATE***ACTIVATE***ACTIVATE//

THIS IS INTOLERABLE! GOADED BEYOND THOUGHT, THE ENORMOUS ONE GATHERS ITSELF TO WREAK A GENERAL DEVASTATION THAT WILL END ALL AFFLICTIONS FROM WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

—WHEN, WITHOUT WARNING, THE UNIVERSE IS TURNED UPSIDE DOWN.

Bad…

It is very bad. Radiation poisoning is unbelievably painful, Dann is discovering that His brave jokes about being used to dying have ceased to comfort him; they were all part of the euphoric haze, the happy unreality of his first life in the winds of Tyree.

Now he is meeting instead the reality of searing sonic gales, of burned and poisoned flesh; nausea and hemorrhage and the ruin of his glorious new body. The reality of shortly dying, with Tivonel and his fellow-humans, in those same winds turned lethal.

He looks at them, his six once-human patients—seven if he counts the dog—huddled in the useless shelter of the few plants that grow here at the bottom of the wind-wall. They are quiet now. Hours, or days ago, he doesn’t know which, they had moved down by stages to this final refuge from the blasting radiation of the sky. Useless; the Sound is growing every minute fiercer even here. They are in a storm of audible light. And from above he can hear the grey death-moaning of stricken plant and animal life. A world is dying around him.

Nearby is another cluster of giant alien forms: Hearer Lomax and the senior Tyrenni, their bodies scorched and dark. Only their life-fields now and again gather strength to flare strongly upward. Dann supposes they are still desperately searching for some means of psychic escape. He does not feel hopeful. The loathesome Destroyer, it seems is still blocking the sky.

Tivonel hovers near them, silently intent. Still hoping for her lost Giadoc, no doubt. It hurts Dann to see the damage to her once-graceful form, the warped and blistered vanes. Scattered beyond are groups of the surviving Tyrenni. Frantic Fathers are still trying to protect their young, or reaching put to shelter some orphaned youngster. A cluster of females hovers together, giving each other comfort in their pain. Dark bodies hang all the way up the vegetation-zone above, grim markers of their painful trek down here. The Tyrenni had been slow to grasp the danger of the sky.

One of his human patients stirs; a green flicker moans. Oh God; soon it will be time to use his dreadful “gift” again. Doctor-Dann-that-was laughs at the irony of it, a laugh that is a dull crimson gleam on his injured mantle. To discover now the “gift” that had apparently made him a doctor once, and that will do nothing but make his death more agonizing still.

Not to think about it. Wait till they awaken.

To distract himself he lets himself think back to how it was. A lovely time then, a time of beauty, comedy and surprise, high up in the winds of Tyree.

He and Tivonel had been beside a big male body when the mind within it woke. The body was that of Colto, one of the two young Fathers he had seen fleeing on the beam. Now it houses, incredibly, a human mind. Whose? A Deerfield guard, Major Fearing? the president of General Motors, for all Dann knows. Its mantle is glimmering with vague golden words. “Where… ? What…?”

“Ah, hello,” says Dann, feeling ridiculous. “Don’t be alarmed, I’m here like you. We seem to have got—mixed up. I’m a doc—a Healer, Daniel Dann. Can you tell me your name?”

The huge being sighs or grunts colorfully, and then seems to come more alert. “Oh, Toctor-Tann,” it says in dreamy high light yellows. “You look just the way I always saw you! Can’t you tell? I’m Winona.”

The light-signs that are her voice ring so Winonalike that he is staggered. Winona as this great male thing? He begins a confused joke about not knowing he had looked like such a monster.

“No, I mean your—” she interrupts him, the alien language garbling. “You, your mind. I could always see it, you know. It’s lovely.”

“Well, thank you,” he says helplessly. These telepaths seem to be more prepared for alien transmogrifications than he. “Have they, ah, told you where we are?”

“Why, I can see that,” Winona says. “We’re in the spirit world.”

The tone is so exactly like her voice when they walked together talking of seances, auras, ectoplasm, telepathy—she’s right at home; he almost chuckles. But he ought to prepare her somehow.

“It’s also a real world, called Tyree,” he says gently. “They have a bad problem here, Winnie. That’s why some of them have stolen our bodies, trying to escape.”

“Oh no,” she says, troubled now. “Stolen? You mean—” her speech stumbles, sounds a green plaint of fear.

At this Tivonel exclaims, and the big Father who has been watching them commands sharply, “Do not upset him, Tanel!”

An edge of his field flows to hers, the green hue dies.

“Right,” says Dann. “But she’s not a male. May I introduce you? Winona, this is my young friend Tivonel, a female of Tyree.” There doesn’t seem to be any politer term. To the huge presence above he says, “I’m sorry I don’t know your name. This is Winona, a female of my world.”

“Greetings. I am Elix. But how can you say this?” he demands. “Do I not know a male when I see one? Look at him. Untrained, but obviously a Father.”

“But I’m not!” Winona protests. “I’m a female, a—a—I’m a female Father!”

“Nonsense!” Elix says loftily. “Is he insane?”

Tivonel is laughing incredulously, and several Tyrenni who have been watching the exchange jet closer. “See his field,” one says. Dann recalls his lessons, and scans the life-energies streaming from Winona’s big form. There does seem to be a lot of it, in intricate play. In fact it’s more copious than his own.

“But she’s a female,” he says stubbornly. “I swear it.”

“A female Father!” Tivonel’s mantle laughs amazedly. “Whew! Marockee, Iznagel! Come over here!”

Huge Elix has dropped down closer, scanning hard.

“If this be true, stranger, how many children have you Fathered?”

“Four,” Winona signs firmly. “And seven, ah, children’s children.’’

“And you’re really a female!” Marockee demands. “Really, truly?”

“I certainly am! What’s wrong about that?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Dann tells her, trying not to laugh. “They’re surprised because on this world raising children seems to be done by males. That’s why they haven’t a word for you. And your, ah, your mind-aura seems to be very large, like a Father’s, and since you’re in a male body, they can’t believe you’re not.”

“The males here raise babies?”

“That’s right. I believe you’ll find you have an, ah, a pouch.”

“You mean, they feed them and cuddle them and clean them and take care of them every day, all day!” Winona demands in tones of glittering skepticism. “And teach them to talk and do everything, all the time for years? I don’t believe it.”