James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

Giadoc hangs in nothingness, waiting for his companion to cease his foolish endeavors. He is close to what must be the central life of this killer of worlds. His hatred gathers, still dreamlike, remote, but growing fiercer, penetrating his core of calm. How can he act against this monstrous thing? How can he pierce its wall? And if he can, how his own puny force disrupt it? Neither Giadoc nor his forefathers have ever killed sentient life, but he remembers now the old savage sagas of his race: He must burst into and explode its central organization, without becoming it himself. Well, he has one resource. If they can get at it, he will draw without pity on poor Tedyost. Their combined strength may be enough. After all, Tedyost’s own world might be threatened soon. He nerves himself and starts carefully to feel about the surface of the deathly barrier, looking for some chink or gap. Since energy comes out, energy can go in.

Suddenly something happens.

Between him and Tedyost a small ghostly disturbance forms and spreads. It seems to be at no particular place; perhaps only in their minds. A transmission of the Destroyer?

The disturbance spreads, stabilizes to a phantom surface. On it appear quivering blue signals:

// TED // IS * THAT * YOU *//

“Yes, Captain, it’s me!” Tedyost’s joyous bellow deafens Giadoc.

// YOU * WANT * TO * SEE * OUT//

“ Yes sir, Captain please — where are we?”

At that the spectral panel slowly expands, blossoming into a richly tinted tapestry of lights in slow, majestic motion, swirled here and there in crests of cloudy foam.

Tedyost emits a great mental grasp of gratitude. Even Giadoc is distracted from his anger, seeing in this streaming glory the echo of the lost winds of his home.

“Oh, thank you, Captain. Please, Sir, who are you? What ship is this?”

The glorious dream-window densens, takes on jewel colors. And over it appear for an instant the flickering words:

// YOU * MAY * CALL * ME * TOTAL * OMALI//

But Giadoc has ceased to attend. A new signal is reaching him, a far faint diffuse cry on the life-bands, that reawakes his helpless fury. Grimly he recognizes it—it is the beginning of the death-cry of a distant world, penetrating even to their black isolation here in the Destroyer. Yes—it grows in intensity as he attends. Is it the very Destroyer in which he is imprisoned who is doing this, or one of his distant kin? No matter.

“Murderer!” he sends with all his force against the brain behind its wall. “ Murderer! Why do you kill? Have you no reverence for life?”

The brain seems to roil confusedly, and an odd sense of stress comes into the empty space around him. Yet the serene grandeur in the visionary panel flows on, only bearing the momentary letters.

//NEGATIVE//NEGATIVE// I * DO * NOT * KILL//

“You kill! Hear the death-cry!”

No reply, except that the pressure around him seems to thicken and churn.

Giadoc is receiving all too clearly now, the hideous wailing has intensified. And then to his ultimate horror he recognizes not only death, but whose—this is Tyree, his own beloved Tyree whose dying throes are radiating out to him! Appalled, he fancies he can catch the extinction of individual known beings. All his world, animals, plants, people—his people—are dying in flames and torment.

“Murderer!” He lashes the Destroyer’s brain with his mind-send. Vivid pain courses through him, wakening all his faculties, breaking the trance in which he has been moving. This is real, his world is dying while he floats safe within the very Destroyer itself.

Floats… safe? A dread idea takes root in him and grows.

He has moved here unharmed across a myriad points of energy that sustained his life. He has entered—and lived. It is not life as life should be, but it is not death: he can think, feel, speak, move. And far away his people are actually dying, being consumed on a burning world. Would not this strange refuge be better than none?

Is it not his duty to call to them, to guide them here?

He quails, understanding what such a call would mean. It would drain his last strength. Even if he draws ruthlessly on Tedyost—and he is desperate enough for that unethical act—there will be nothing left of them but husks.

At that moment the far cry rises to ultimate despair and he can endure no longer. He will do it.

Gently he takes hold upon the life of poor, unsuspecting Tedyost, who is still enchanted by his oceanic vision, and begins to align both their energies to readiness. He is vaguely conscious that the darkness around them seems to be pulsating under some sort of tension; the meaningless words //QUERY * WRONG * I * DO * NOT // cross the phantom screen. Giadoc focuses only on the direction of the sad cry of death. He must send right, he will have no second chance.

The death-wail pierces him again and he is sure. He grips the other’s mind without pity and hurls both their energies out into one tremendous shout on the life-bands:

COME TO ME, PEOPLE OF TYREE! SAVE YOURSELVES HERE!

At his call the very darkness seems to boil around him, as though a monstrous strain is seeking release. Giadoc is too terribly drained to feel fear. Gathering their last strength, he manages one more cry:

USE THE BEAM! COME!

With that he falls fainting in upon his extinguished self, while the unknown pressure crests to culminance around him.

//ACTIVATE * ACTIVATE * ACTIVATE// the ghostly screen pleads.

And beyond the barrier, within the nucleus, what had been a woman’s phantom hand yields to overpowering urgency and goes at last to the spectral key.

On.

The world changes around them.

In each mind, what happens then strikes differently.

The dying senses of Ted Yost hear a woman’s scream that ends in dark laughter, and feels salt spray sting his face.

Giadoc of Tyree, fainting into death, hears his cry echoed and amplified a millionfold, and knows that he has reached.

The sentience that had been born in the electronic artifacts of a minor planet succeeds at last in gaining access to the full circuitry of its new home.

The mind that had been Margaret Omali feels itself racked upon unearthly dimensions of experience, expanded to unhuman potency.

And the great being who for so long had drifted half-alive comes to full function around them.

A huge newborn voice speaks silently and with joyful wonder:

YES. NOW I UNDERSTAND.

The strange symbiosis holds, the improbable interfaces mesh and spread. From spacebourne vastness through a small unliving energy-organization to the residual structure of a human mind with an odd relation to matter, information cycles. And power.

Enough of Margaret Omali is still left to cloak her new perceptions in human imagery. What happened? Some intolerable stress occurred, some great contradiction of underlying realities. The strain of incongruence had moved her to press to final activation, in whatever unearthly mode. She understands that her touch was needed: the problem or entity could not heal itself. Now it is done. She, or what was once she, puzzles remotely, trying to comprehend.

Stress is still present; she feels it. But now it is localized, a demanding something in the great starfield. She attends, and it focusses and magnifies the signals of a single small star. The star is throwing off shells of energy. That is correct, she feels; it has to do with some Plan.

But one aspect is wrong. It is that the peculiar emanations of life from a nearby mote of matter have risen, attained unbearable criticality. Action is overdue.

And as she perceives this, she perceives also that her action is taking place. Dreamily she feels herself stretch forth an arm across the light-years toward the angry little sun. Her phantom finger lifts: it freezes the explosion. As easily as she would fold back the petals of a flower, she feels herself folding back the flames spreading around the crying mote. The enormous powers of time are in her fingers, but she does not know this; she only feels the correctness of the act.