James Tiptree Jr.: Up the Walls of the World

Her long robe is plain grey silk, crumpled and sweat-stained. What he can see of her face is barely recognizable, grey and wizened with pain. The lower lip is twisted down, the beautiful eyelids are squeezed to slits. The towel’s water runs down her neck unheeded. She is holding herself like one enduring a beating; it hurts him to look. He rips open the packet.

“This is in suppository form so you won’t lose it by vomiting. You know how to use them?”

“Yes.”

“Take two. This one is to stop the pain and this one will control the nausea.”

She clasps them in a grey shaking palm. “How…long?”

“About thirty minutes, you’ll start to feel relief.” As detachedly as he can, he adds, “Try to place them far up so the spasms won’t dislodge it.”

She vanishes, leaving the door ajar. Through it he can see another white-grey room. Her bedroom. Disregarding her friend’s hard stare he walks in. More white gauzy stuff but the windows are closed. Plain white sheets, twisted and sodden. A white basin among the wet pillows. On the bedstand is the Seconal bottle bright red amid the whiteness. He picks it up. Nearly full and the date over a year old. Okay. He opens the night-table drawer, finds nothing more.

The woman has followed him in and is straightening the bedclothes, watching him mockingly.

“You finished?”

“Yes.” He walks back to the windy living room. “I’m going to wait until the medication takes effect.” In fact he has had no such ridiculous intention. He sits down firmly in a white tweed chair. “What I’ve given Miss Omali is quite strong. I want to be sure she’s all right. She appears to be alone here.”

The woman smiles at last, appearing instantly quite different.

“Oh, I understand.” The tone is sarcastic but friendlier. She puts the bags down and closes the windows: the drapes fall limp. As she puts milk away in a corner icebox Dann notices that she is conventionally pretty, despite a minor dermatitis. “Yeah, Marge is too alone.”

The bathroom door opens, a voice whispers, “Samantha?”

“Get her to lie down flat,” Dann says.

The woman Samantha goes in, closing the door. Dann sits stiffly in the white chair, remembering how he had once sat in the apartment of a minor Asian dictator during his military service. The man had been troubled by agonizing hemorrhoids and his aides had been very trigger-happy. Dann had never heard of any of them again.

Samantha comes back through picking up her groceries. “I live down the hall. How come you make house calls?”

“I was just leaving for the day. We try to keep the staff healthy.”

She seems to get some message, looks at him more cordially. “I’m glad somebody cares. I’ll be back later,” she says in final warning and goes out.

Left alone in the now-quiet room, Dann looks about. It’s sparely elegant, shades of white, severe fabrics; it would have been chillingly bleak if it had not been hers. None of the cryptic African art he had expected. He knows he is being a fool, the woman is perfectly healthy aside from more dehydration. Will he be missed at the office? Friday, not much on. No matter. No matter, too, that he has missed his, ah, lunch… A fool.

He picks up a grey periodical, The Journal of Applied Computer Science, and sits trying to puzzle out what an algorithm is.

When he hears retching from the bedroom he taps and goes in. She is lying hooped around the basin like a sick crane, producing nothing but phlegm. Her eyes meet his, sick and defiant. He makes an effort to project his good grey doctor image. It is extraordinary to see her lying down. In her bed.

Afterwards he takes the basin from her, rinses it and brings it back, fills the water glass on her bedstand.

“Try to drink some even if it doesn’t stay down.”

Her chin makes a regal, uncaring gesture; she sinks back onto the wet pillows. He goes out to wait again. He is being an incredible jackass, a lunatic. He doesn’t care. He picks up a paperback at random. The Sufi, by one Idries Shaw. He puts it down, unable to care for ancient wisdom. The clean, spartan room awakens some hurt in him. A poem by someone—Aiken? The scene was pain and nothing but pain. What else, when chaos turns all forces inwards to shape a single leaf?

He doesn’t know about the leaf, only about the pain. The carefully neutral colors she lives in, the bare forms, her controlled quietness, all speak to him of one who fears to awake uncontrollable pain. It doesn’t occur to him that anyone could miss this. He is a crazy, aging man who has missed his lunch.

When he looks in on her again there is a wondrous change. Her face is smoothing out, beauty flowing back. Chemical miracle. The eyelids are still clenched, but she exudes awareness. Daringly he sits on the plain bedroom chair to watch. She doesn’t protest.

When her throat moves he holds a fresh glass of water to her.

“Try.”

She takes it, her hooded eyes studying him from remote lands. The water stays down. He is absurdly happy. How long since he has had a bed patient? How long since he has sat by a woman’s bed. Don’t ask. Never ask— For the first time in how long he feels no need of his own chemical miracle. A sensation he identifies fearfully as life is creeping into him. It doesn’t hurt yet. Don’t trust it. Don’t think about it, it will go away. Unreality, that’s the key, as Noah would say.

His gaze has been resting on her half-shut eyes, a quiet, impersonal communion. Quite suddenly the last wrinkles smooth out, the dark gaze opens wide. She takes a deep breath, relaxing, smiling in wonder. He smiles back. To his pleasure, her eyes look into his. An instant of simple joy.

“It’s really gone.” She moves her head experimentally, sighs, licks her dry lips, still gazing at him like a child. Her hand gropes out for the water glass. He sees he has stupidly put it too far away, and moves to hand it to her.

As his hand nears it he freezes.

The water glass is moving. In an instant it slides nearly six inches toward her across the table top.

His hand jerks high away from the uncanny thing, he makes a sound. The glass stops, is nothing but an ordinary water glass again.

He stands staring down at it, frightened to death. So this is how it starts—Oh Christ, Oh Christ. One too many chemicals in my abused cortex. Slowly he picks up the glass and gives it to her.

As she drinks, a wild idea occurs to his terrified mind. Impossible, of course, but he can’t help asking.

“You aren’t, ah, are you one of Doctor Catledge’s subjects, too?”

“No!”

Harsh, disdainful negative; all rapport fled. Of course she’s not, of course people can’t move things. The only thing that moved was a potential difference across a deranged synapse in his own brain. But it was so real, so mundane. A glass simply sliding. It will happen again. How long will he be able to control it?

He stares into his brain-damaged future hearing her say coldly, “I don’t know what you mean.” Her eyes are bright with opiate animation. “I don’t want anything to do with that. Nothing at all. Do you understand?”

The extraordinary anger of her voice penetrates his fright.

Did something really happen, something more than himself? She’s afraid. Of what?

“Oh, God damn, God damn it,” she whispers, fumbling for the basin. The water comes back up.

Dann takes it away, his mind whirling with impossibilities. When he brings it back he says carefully, “Miss Omali. Please. I don’t know how to say this. I thought I saw—something move. I have reason to be concerned about myself. My, well, my sanity. Forgive me, I know how this sounds. But by any chance did you see—did you see it too?”