James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

But as he puzzles, “watching” the dark shapes come again into the great sky-swirl, a faint subliminal unease comes to him, as if something is changing in the real, or unreal, world around him. The sensation is not strong enough to break his concentration, until he notices that the faint blur below the image which is the dreaming mind of Tedyost is no longer still. It has begun to roil restlessly. Presently it flares out weakly, as if seeking contact. Perhaps the dreaming one has waked?

Cautiously Giadoc extends contact, only to find he need not have bothered.

With startling intensity the alien transmits directly at him:

“Help! Mutiny! The Captain needs help!”

The symbols are only half-intelligible. Tedyost subsides to passivity again. But Giadoc has no time to puzzle over this: He has suddenly become aware of what is bothering him: Alarm!

Out beyond them, all through the vast expanse of the Destroyer, the sense of life has lowered. Gradually but perceptibly the sustaining energies are sinking, ebbing, seeping away.

“Heagran! Do you not sense that these energies are beginning to fail? In the periphery, coming closer?”

The old being scans intently. “ Yes. I do. So your space-animal is dying after all, young Giadoc. A brave try, but doomed.”

But suddenly into Giadoc’s mind come his experiences on the alien world, the nonliving energy systems he has known.

“No, Heagran. I believe this is something different. I believe that this entity is turning us off. If we could break through and change its power-set, perhaps we are not doomed.”

Among the incoming life-rush of the Tyrenni are eight minds that had been human and one that had been a dog.

The entity which calls itself Daniel Dann loses contact with everything as his life is whirled up on the strange Beam, leaving his dying body behind. He feels himself a swimmer shot through a turbulent millrace, swirled and spewed out to the shallows of the throng. A moment later he strands on something, he can’t tell what, but only clutches at it and finds that it sustains his life.

He has had practice in wild discarnations, but this is the most alien of all. He is still alive, still seemingly himself, but bodiless. Now he has no limbs, no senses, nothing—yet he lives.

A fearful aloneness strikes him. As it threatens to rise to panic, he perceives that his naked mind is receiving input, vague but insistent. This void is not empty. All around him is a sense of calling, or signaling, in some mode he can’t quite receive. Others are here, he realizes. They have all come somewhere, life is near him now. But he has no idea how to make contact. The terror of isolation hammers in him; he strains to hang onto himself, to face the menace of this weird escape from death.

Or is it escape? A new terror takes hold. Has he died, is this what the dying mind feels as it leaves life forever? Will the sense of presence fade, and float away forever, leaving him in eternal isolation in the dark?

He tries to “listen” again. Whatever the elusive susurrus whispering around him is, it does not seem to be fading. Hold onto yourself, Dann. The others must be here too, wherever this is. Are they, too, frightened? Try to reach them.

But how can he? He has no idea.

Experimentally he forms the thought of Valerie—no yellow-bikinied body, but Valerie’s world as he had touched it—and tries to project her name. Valerie, he wills, VALERIE, ARE YOU HERE?

Nothing answers him. Ignorant of the mad commotion he is generating, Dann runs through the names. FRODO! RICK, RON WAXMAN! Can you hear me? WINONA! CHRIS?

Still no answer he can detect. Is he doomed never to make contact, to continue so horribly alone in nowhere?

Perhaps the Tyrenni, he thinks, and imagines himself shouting with all his might. TIVONEL! HELP ME PLEASE!

This time something does happen. He has been mindlessly lunging forward as he tries to call, and now a sensory image blooms in his mind. For an instant he is blown by the great gales of Tyree. “ Heagran!” says a soundless voice.

He grasps at it, but it is gone, leaving a sense of scandalized disapproval. He understands that he has blundered into a Tyrenni mind-field. Well, at least there is some sort of reality here. Encouraged, he tries again. “ Tivonel?”

For a moment he thinks he is rewarded—the image of winds comes again, he hears merry coral laughter. But it does not hold, it splinters and dissolves into an Earthly street scene; he sees a red VW pull away, revealing a cream-colored Continental. Next instant he is at his familiar desk, then a quick flash to his old body stretched out in his home armchair.

Oh god: Hallucinations. This place must be psychogenic in some way, he can feel illusory powers. Will he lose himself in fantasies or go mad from sensory deprivation?

Pulling himself together, he concentrates outward and tries to shout silently into the rustling void. VALERIE! RICK! IS ANYBODY THERE?

And almost he thinks he feels himself reach somebody, when the most amazing sensation he has ever known invades, or rather, surrounds his mind.

It is a feather-light authoritative presence which seems to press swiftly, gently, irresistibly around the circumference of his whole life-being. The urgency of his need evaporates away and vanishes; indeed, he can no longer even try to call. A myriad frantic half-thoughts of which he had been only dimly aware are suddenly resolved and gone too, folded back somehow into his central mind. His great half-admitted terror of this place drains away, leaving in its place a growing calm. Stealing over him, enfolding him, is an almost palpable wave of reassurance and relief.

For a moment he thinks he is going under some immensely powerful opiate. But that comes from within—this is coming on him from outside.

Fear flares again. Who’s there? he tries to cry, Wait! What are you doing? The only answer is another wave of the calming pressure, in which he can now read a coloring of reproof. Something out there has been offended and is taking steps to quieten him. His mind casts up wild pictures of djinns or angels or extraterrestrial what’s-its, and then understanding comes: Tyree, their techniques of the mind.

Can he be experiencing the ministrations of a Father of Tyree?

Yes, he is sure of it now. He is being Fathered, englobed and “drained” as he had seen it done to others. As if he were an angry child!

Human resentment erupts in him. Struggling to resist the tranquilizing currents he yells mentally, Stop! I must reach my friends! Where are they?

But the pacifying presence is much too strong. He feels his protest dissipate, subside back into itself and melt away. It’s not like going under anaesthesia, not at all. He is perfectly conscious, only calmer, more unified and centered. At peace. Really very pleasant, he acknowledges; these people have the only technology here in the naked realm of mind. What was it Tivonel had told him? Think yourself round, like an egg. Awkwardly he tries that again.

He is rewarded by a majestic sense of approval. Father is pleased, he thinks wryly. Is this what a soothed infant feels like?

Fathering, we call it mothering. What an extraordinary art, why have I not considered its significance before? Surely of all the things people do to each other this is one of the most remarkable.

Into his musings comes a concrete image: the picture of a gyrating cloud of mind-stuff, frantically contorting and emanating violent blasts in all directions, intruding promiscuously into others and on the verge of disrupting itself. He understands. This is how he had been. “ Ahura!” The mental echo is freighted with admonition.