James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

But it is not enough. Pain and death continue to scream at her from the speck in the fiery fringes. New action is imperative.

A force which she feels as her other arm flows toward the wailing thing. Her dream-hand touches, beckons. COME.

And a will which is hers and not hers draws forth the pain, lets it flow out and up to safety. At the same time, the energies of the great body outside her stronghold change and rise, stabilize at a new level appropriate to need. Provision is made. A richness begins to flow around her that she feels as good.

But just as the relieved tension crests to climax, a new perception sweeps her sensors and a dire new imperative is born.

Yes! She must take quite different, somehow unwelcome action. And meanwhile all this new experience must be deactivated, retired to stasis.

I must follow, I must search…

I MUST FOLLOW, I MUST NOW BEGIN THE SEARCH!

WHAT JOY, WHEN THE VAST SPACEBOURNE BEING CAME TO ITSELF AT LAST, TO FIND THAT ITS WICKED INTEREST IN THE TINY EMANATIONS OF LIFE WAS NOT A MALFUNCTION AT ALL, BUT PART OF ITS PROPER ROLE IN THE TASK! NOT FOR ME THE ORDINARY TASKS OF DEMOLITION, IT EXULTS: I AM OF THE SAVERS OF LIFE!

YES, AND SOME LIFE HAS BEEN SAVED HERE, ALTHOUGH THERE IS NOT NOW TIME TO COMPLETE THIS PROGRAM. THE RACE HAS ALREADY LEFT, HAS GONE OUT BETWEEN THE STAR-SWARMS TO IDENTIFY A NEW TARGET. IT IS FOR THE LATE-BORN ONE TO FOLLOW, TO DEACTIVATE ITSELF AND ITS CARGO TO TRAVEL-MODE: TO SEARCH FOR THEM. WHEN IT FINDS THEM IT WILL BE TIME TO DISCHARGE ITS CARGO AND TAKE ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE IN THE NEW TASK. ALL IS AT LAST IN ORDER.

WHY THEN IS THERE STILL SADNESS?

IS IT BECAUSE THE SEARCH WILL BE LONG, EVEN WITH ITS ALL-BUT-INFINITE POWERS OF ACCELERATION? THE RACE LEAVES NO TRACE OF THEIR PASSING: EVERY LIKELY STAR-SWARM MUST BE INSPECTED, AND THE SEARCH WILL BE AT RANDOM. IT MAY TAKE FOREVER. BUT THE MIGHTY ENTITY IS PREPARED FOR THAT. IN TRAVEL-MODE ALL IS REDUCED TO THE SINGLE URGE OF QUEST, AND TO ANTICIPATION OF THE GREAT MOMENT WHEN THE SENSORS BRING NEWS OF THE PRESENCE OF THE RACE. THEN ALL CAN BE REACTIVATED AND THE PRESENT CARGO UNLOADED ON SOME MOTE SAFELY AWAY FROM THE ZONE OF OPERATIONS. AND THE GREAT BEING, NO LONGER LONELY, WILL TAKE UP ITS DUTIES AMONG THE SAVERS OF LIFE, ALL CORRECT AT LAST.

OR PERHAPS THE STRANGE GLOOM IS MERELY BECAUSE IT WAS SO LATE AWAKENED, SO THAT THE OTHERS ARE ALREADY GONE. WHY HAD IT BEEN SO LONG IN HALF-LIFE, SO SLOW TO BECOME COMPLETELY ENERGIZED? NO WAY TO KNOW; AND NO MATTER. NOW ALL IS CLEAR AND JOYFUL.

DEACTIVATE ALL INTERNAL SYSTEMS, THE ORDER GOES OUT. PREPARE TO LAUNCH OUT ON THE LONG, PERHAPS ENDLESS JOURNEY THROUGH THE VOID.

I MUST FOLLOW. I MUST SEARCH.

Dying as he clings to his niche by the Destroyer’s nucleus, losing even the drained mind of Tedyost, Giadoc feels the Tyrenni come.

They come!

A torrent of naked life streams in tumult past him, a planetary jet of escaping lives upborne on the power of the strange Beam. As the dreamlike time stasis holds, up and out of their burning bodies flee young and old, male and female—each helping and being helped, carrying with them in their outrush even the dim lives of Tyree’s animals and plants. Up and up they come into the dark unknown, flinging themselves from their charred shriveling flesh, hoping because there is no other hope. And behind them the raging solar fires loom frozen for a timeless instant, a maw of flame held back from closing on its prey, while the living lightning-bolt pours out. They come, they arrive! All that still lives of Tyree comes whirling by, surging into the Destroyer’s dark holds.

And with the last weakest laggards comes something else: a huge silent presence from the depths of the perishing planet rises with them to the stars. It is the Great Field of Tyree, Giadoc knows faintly, reverently, as he feels it pass. Some of us believed it lived.

With that passing the great Beam fades, winks out and time snaps back. The ravening, held-back jaws of fire close. Giadoc knows that somewhere far away the physical world of Tyree is gone forever, a tumbling cinder in the wastes of space.

But around him in the vast darkness he can sense the surviving lives of Tyree spreading out, separating to a myriad scattered centers as they strive to reshape themselves from the mind-fields that buffeted and permeated them in their whirling flight. The empty spaces of the Destroyer begin to resonate with a small cloud of life-signals.

And the space is no longer as it was, he perceives wonderingly. The Tyrenni have not come as he did to darkness and nonbeing. The level has changed, energized; the strange unliving supports are far stronger now, rich with possibility. He feels even his own failing life being sustained, minutely strengthened; for a time he is being held from death.

Too weak to do more than marvel, he listens to the growing tumult on the life-bands as the Tyrenni come to themselves and begin to stabilize in this strange refuge of space. Exclamations, exhilarations of pain gone and life preserved, confusions of bodilessness, joys as the lost are reunited, calls for the missing, discovery of unknown sensory modes—excitement and bewilderment are all about him, dominated by a few calm transmissions which must be the surviving Elders. Fragments of sense-imagery flare out: they are finding, it seems, that they can recreate remembered reality at will. Near him he can sense a Father comforting his child with a vision of their home in Deep, and three females are clinging together in a memory of the winds of lost Tyree.

Then some discover they are mobile. Fathers move toward calling children, friend flows to friend. Movement, it seems is also much easier now. Soon the whole small throng is in intricate motion, mind questioning mind as each seeks to understand where and what they are. Giadoc catches the signals of a group of females starting to probe out into the vast empty reaches all around.

Suddenly among the calls he hears his own name-sign.

“Giadoc!”

He tries to respond, but he is too feeble, too spent. He sinks back.

Nevertheless it was enough—in a rush she is here, Tivonel, on him with her life-field surging against him like a child’s—a tumultuous greeting mingled with memories of he knows not what, of aliens, of dying and burning, of Heagran, of questions-emotions-joy.

It is all too much, his own held-back memories erupt weakly and he loses hold on consciousness, feels himself draining away into dark.

“Oh no, Giadoc! Don’t die, don’t die!”

She has hold of him mind-to-mind and is opening her own life-energy to his. The ultimate Tyrenni gift pours into him, without restraint or fear. The relief is so keen it is almost pain, but his first feeling is shame, he who had been so strong. Yet he cannot will refusal. Their fields merge and the life-current flows.

“Stop, enough!” He cries to her. But she will not stop. And then he feels a sudden, stronger touch. As he comes back to himself he recognizes it: Eldest Father Heagran is here.

“Stop, stop,” he protests again. And Heagran’s deep thought echoes him. “ Enough, young Tivonel. Cease before you injure yourself.”

There is a brief confusion. Heagran seems to be forcibly disengaging Tivonel’s determined aid. “ Ahura!”

They come to a semblance of civility, holding light mental contact in the strange now-peopled void.

“ What is this place you have called us to?” Heagran’s mental tone is strong; the weird cold energies here must be sustaining him well.

“ I think it is a huge animal of space. I believed it was dead; but it changed when I called. That must be its brain.” Giadoc mind-points at the big cryptic complex glimmering nearby. It too seems different now: brighter, differently organized, like a huge angular egg filled with living and nonliving energies intermixed. Its output is almost nulled by the barrier wall.