James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

He concentrates intently on the void about him. He has no bodily senses; he is in black silence, without pattern or pressure-gradient or change. He can receive nothing here but the emanations of life itself. If any structures of the Destroyer are near him, they give off no life-signs. For a time he receives only emptiness and darkness so deep that despair chills him. He is foolish; what can he hope for here?

But then suddenly— there, in that direction—is a tiny life-transmission, at extreme range. Something living is here besides himself. What is it, can he reach it?

As another had done before him but with infinitely greater skill, he extends himself exploratorily toward the far life-signal. Presently he touches another of the strange unliving energy-points. Without hesitation he flows and coalesces himself around it and reaches out again. Yes; there are more here, he can move as he will! Splendid.

Jubilantly he moves onward through nowhere, wondering as he goes whether he is actually enormous, spread out like a vast space-cloud. Or perhaps he is as tiny as a point? No matter! his essential structure is here, he has emotion, memory, thought. Right now he is feeling an acute joy of discovery-in-strangeness, he is an explorer of the dimensionless void. A mutinous thought of Tivonel intrudes; perhap this is the joy that females speak of, the pleasures of venturing into unknown realms. Certainly it is quite unFatherly, though it requires all his male field-strength. It does not occur to him that he is brave; such concepts are of the female world.

The signal is much stronger now, he is closing on it. It takes on definition: it is a transmission of pain.

He slows, studying it. The pain is bewilderment, despair. Oh, winds—it is only another lost here like himself!

Instantly his Fatherly instincts surge to comfort it, but he makes himself stop. He must be wary, he has no idea of the life-strength of the thing. Cautiously he flows closer ready to leap away, extending only a receptor-node. What manner of life can it be?

The thing seems not to sense him at all. Its field is apparently drifting or flaring hopelessly in all directions like a lost child. His urge to Father it is terribly strong, but he makes himself wait.

Presently a wandering thought-tendril brushes him, too chaotic for comprehension. Then another—and this time he can catch definite imagery among the emanations of woe. Why, he recognizes them! They are of the alien world that Giadoc has just mind-traveled to!

Undoubtedly this is a mind displaced by the life-criminals of Tyree. Certainly it’s not dangerous to him, and it’s in despair.

Giadoc yields to his Father-soul.

All in one motion he flows to a nearer base, forming his life into a Father-field. Working by blind mind-touch alone, he extends himself delicately around the ragged eddies of the other, seeking to envelop its disorder within a shell of calm.

At his first touch the alien flares up in terror, launching frightened demands.

Calm, calm, you’re safe. Don’t be afraid anymore. Giadoc has englobed the other now, he sends in waves of reassurance as he starts the work of resolving the eruptions of fright and draining down the fear.

The other being struggles ignorantly, yielding and subsiding in area after area. As Giadoc penetrates tactfully, he is pleased to notice that a linkage to the language he had used on that world still remains with him. He can make out the recurrent words, I’m dead. And then images of queer pale aliens with wings. Are you an angel? Am I in — ?

He ignores these incomprehensible transmissions and merely encourages it subverbally. Calm, calm. Gather yourself in, be round. I’m helping you. You’re safe, Father’s here. The being is dreadfully disorganized. When he judges its fear is sufficient attenuated, he presses in with a mild counter-bias to stop the topmost commotions. It has another surge of terror, and then accepts a simple surface organization. Is it perhaps a child, or a little crazy from field-stress? For that matter, how sane is he himself now? He finds a functional speech center and links directly to it. “ Be round, little one. Round like an egg. ”

“What — doing to me?” The other leaps, Giadoc taps more fear away from the thought. He does not want to drain it too deeply lest it go into sleeping mode. A part of his mind wonders what in the name of the wind he will do with this helpless alien anyway. But that does not worry him while he is still in Father-mode. “ Calm, round, you’re all right now. I’m here.”

At this moment the alien seems to gather itself internally, and suddenly bursts up in a verbal thought so strong that Giadoc gets every word.

“I’m not an egg! I’m Ensign Theodore Yost. Who are you? Where are we?”

Startled and delighted in his Father-heart, Giadoc perceives that the alien has more field-strength than he had believed. Moreover, he recognizes it now that it is more fully conscious.

It’s the young male with the injured body, Tedyost, the one who had longed for the place of beauty.

He relaxes his Father-field and transmits a careful minimal link, an engram of mind-contact, hoping not to frighten Tedyost further. When this seems to be accepted he transmits through in verbal mode: “ Welcome Tedyost. I too am lost in this place like you. I am Giadoc of the world of Tyree. We have met before.”

Far from being frightened, the other flails toward him questioningly. It seems to be trying to form a crude receptor-node under the deafening tangle of “ Where? Who? What—?”

What can he do with this creature? Giadoc transmits a strong wave of desire for calm. “ Please try to control your thoughts, I am receiving you violently. Will you allow me to help you so we can understand each other?”

“Help!— Yes—” The other all but thrashes into him. Giadoc recalls how totally unaware these aliens are, how he had probed them freely.

Disregarding all courtesy, he gathers the blind demands and disengages their emotion. At the same time he goes into the nearest layers, modeling and firming a proper receptor-field. “ Calm, Tedyost, I hear you. Hold your mind thus, touch slightly and steadily. I will pass you my memory of this place, I will show you all I know.”

At length, in timeless emptiness and darkness, Giadoc has the other quieted into rough receptive-mode. He forms a compact memory of his experiences and passes it into the alien’s mind, ending with his guess about the huge dead space-animal they are in. “ We call it the Destroyer.”

The other being churns with excitement, it seems delighted and astonished by the communication. Then it surges with effort, apparently trying to do likewise. Yes—a projection rushes at him, surprisingly powerful and half-bodied in verbal shreds. “ Destroyer! We’re in a ship!”

Giadoc sorts out the transmission, fascinated by the alien sensory data. As he expected, Tedyost too had found himself rushing through emptiness, then intercepted by dark and dread; almost extinguished. He too had fought back to life with the aid of the strange energy. But he had thought himself marooned, unable to move. The information that they are mobile fills him with such pleasure that Giadoc suspects again that Tedyost is not entirely sane.

Moreover, his image of their predicament is bizarre; where Giadoc deduces an animal, Tedyost believes they are in a huge lifeless pod, cold hollow “ship” moving through space. With this comes the intense yearning Giadoc had read before, the beautiful vision of streaming wind or liquid, vast and rushing with a myriad lights—a tremendous turbulent glory outside the darkness. Tedyost longs toward this with a pure fervor. “ I want to see out!”