James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

“Whew!” Tivonel is exclaiming. “Tanel, your friend is one fierce sender!”

“Well done, Chris! I think everybody around got that. Father Heagran, do you now see the usefulness of his plan?”

The great being muses for a moment. “Yes,” he admits. “I am sorry to say, I understand. Yet it seems a hopeless hope, if matters are as bad as he shows. Unless the Destroyer moves away soon we will all die. And how are we Tyrenni to construct such things?”

“Any hope is better than none,” a young Father says firmly. “This will protect our children as long as possible. What if Lomax succeeds, after the children are all dead? I say we do it. We Fathers can shelter our young ones while they weave the plants.”

“Very well. So be it.”

“And we females can go get the stuff?” Tivonel flexes her blistered vanes. “Whew! I never thought I’d be hauling in frikkon-weed. Marockee! Iznagel!” She jets off. “Round up a team. You won’t believe this.”

“I better get our people started on ours.” Chris sails away. Dann looks after his expanding life-field. Clearly, a leader has been born. Or a potential dictator? Well, there won’t be time to worry about that. The raft-making scheme strikes him as useful only for morale.

It has in fact occupied many hours of the timeless time, while Lomax searches the skies in vain. The Destroyer still lingers, blocking the sky, and the scream of the Sound becomes all-pervasive. But once working, the Tyrenni sort themselves out well. They soon find that the raft-shelters offer perceptible comfort. The chief problem has been to persuade the adults to take their turns under cover before they become too painfully exposed. Dann circulates about trying to persuade them of the reality of the danger and to make Heagran take some shelter himself.

As he is helping stabilize a protective shield for Lomax, a body comes cartwheeling down the wind—and at the same instant Dann becomes aware of a searing pain through his own left side. Half-dazed by agony, he watches three females wind-block the body, as he himself had once been halted. It is screaming blue with pain; someone has been badly burned.

But why does he himself hurt so? Painfully he scans himself, finding no damage.

“Healer! Healer Tanel!”

Slowed by the burning in his side, Dann manages to jet over.

Oh God, it’s Chris. The fine young body is horribly burned, the left mantle and vanes are black and shriveled. What can he do? In Dann’s mind the image of his old office with its dermal sealants and analgesics glimmers like a lost jewel.

And elder Father is watching him.

“Father,” Dann says through his pain, “have you no substances to relieve this hurt, to cure wounds?”

“Substances?” the other echoes, “but are you not a Healer?”

“Yes. But in my world injuries like this are treated with, with relieving materials.”

“I know nothing of this. If you are a Healer, heal.”

Heagran and others have drifted up, looking agitated. Scarcely able to think above the screams and the pain, Danri moves toward the mutilated body.

“Chris? Chris, what happened?”

“I guess I went too high,” the other gasps. “I—I—

But what he is saying Dann will never know. Pain unbelievable shoots through him, his whole side from head to vanes is aflame, scorching, raked by steel claws. His body contorts in air, infolding itself around the torment. He realizes dimly that his field must have touched Chris’. It is an eternity before the fiery contact breaks, leaving him choking on pain, trying to control the screaming from his mantle.

When he masters himself somewhat he finds old Heagran beside him, transmitting a wave of calm.

“A true Healer!” the old being exclaims solemnly. “Fathers, observe! Is this not Graph, come again from the skies?”

Writhing in subsiding agonies, Dann understands nothing of this.

“Hey, Doc. Thanks.”

That seems to be Chris before him. But what’s happened? The burn-damage looks minimal, even the mantle has smoothed out. All vanes are opening normally as Chris’ body rides the air.

“Our Healers today can do nothing like this,” Heagran is saying. “To drain another’s pain so that the damage is undone! The legend of Graph lives again before our eyes. Healer Tanel, I salute you. Your gift will be of great value to your people at the end.”

“My gift?” Confusedly, Dann inspects his still-burning side. It appears perfectly intact. Only the pain is real. What the hell kind of “gift” is this?

Suddenly his old years of useless empathy flash before him. His weird troubles with other people’s pain. Had he actually done—something? Probably not, he thinks; only here in the mind-world of Tyree. Doomed Tyree. Oh Jesus, what lies ahead?

Is he expected to share seven other radiation deaths before his own?

“The Great Wind has sent him, Heagran,” an old Father is saying. “He alleviates our guilt at the fate of his people. But we must not ask his aid, even for our children; we who brought them here.”

“Winds forbid,” says Heagran. “He is theirs alone.”

But what about me, Dann laments to himself. The Great Wind doesn’t seem to give a damn about doctors. Oh Christ, can I really make myself take that much pain again—and again and again?

But even as he cringes, there is obscure satisfaction. At least he hadn’t been crazy. His joke about being a receiver; apparently true. Specialized to pain, I’m pain’s toy. But at least it’s real. Probably a lot of doctors have it. I’m a doctor—and the sole materia medico here is myself. I’ll have to try. Chris is telling him something.

“—so I went up to look the situation over. It’s bad. We have to get deeper, fast.”

They move the clumsy rafts downward, with the children beneath them. And later move down again, and again down, til they end here, almost at dread wind’s bottom. Lower than this the updraft is too weak to support their great forms, and the protective rafts are now barely airborne in the feeble wind. Here is where they will die.

On the way down Dann has to exercise his horrid “gift” twice more; first Winona becomes badly seared, then Val. Her pain is especially fierce; he has to force himself to the utmost to hold contact. And she is so ashamed. Val alone seems to understand that the pain is not abolished but merely exchanged, while the mysterious healing works.

And now he can hear weak moaning from the sleeping form of Ron and Rick; blisters are suppurating on “Waxman’s” vanes. When he wakes up Dann will have to help him, will have to do the whole damn bit again.

Unfair, unfair; the oldest plaint: Why me? Isn’t one death all a mortal should be asked to bear? Why can’t he end it all, soar out on the updraft to his own single, personal incineration? The prospect strikes him as blissful, the temptation is strong.

Well, but I’m a doctor, he thinks. At least I can hold on long enough for one more try. Maybe if I take them earlier, before the burns are so bad, maybe I can stand smaller, more frequent increments of pain? Physician, kid thyself… There’s no way to make it anything but awful.

Dully, he watches the slow action around the raft where the Hearers are. Through the burning murk Dann can see Lomax and his surviving aides bravely taking turns outside the shelter, their weakened fields combined in brief attempts to probe the sky. Nearby Tivonel hovers under a little bundle of frikkon-weed, still keeping watch for a sign from Giadoc. Her once-charming form is blackened and scarred. Dann has persuaded her to let him help her once only. Overhead, the fire-storm from the Sound is a torrent of angry roaring.

Suddenly it stills, and the whole landscape shudders through a dreamlike change. Startled, beyond thought, Dann finds himself riding again the high winds of Tyree, seeing a Tivonel grown sleek and graceful. Coral laughter rings out—why, there is Winona’s form, and Father Elix! He hears himself saying, “May I present Winona, a female of my world?”