James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

There is a short time of confusion. He has lost contact, but he can feel their lives all about him, and waits, trusting that someone will link up with him again. Presently he feels a vague, cloudy presence, and tries hopefully to “receive” at it. But nothing comes to him.

Then through the bewilderment cuts Tivonel’s mind-send, so clear that it seems to revive his memory of her speech:

“Winds! Can’t you people get into communication-mode at all?”

Communication-mode, what could that be? Another mental gymnastic stunt? A ghostly outstretched hand comes into his consciousness and a human voice speaks strongly in his mental ear.

“Waxman here. Let me help. I have like hands to spare.”

Slowly Dann succeeds in imagining himself clasping the hand, wondering if it is Ron or Rick. As he does so, an odd kind of extended clarity comes into being. He has a sudden weird picture of them each clasping one of the joined twins’ four hands, as if Waxman were making himself into a kind of astral conference hook-up. Is this perhaps literally true? It would be logical, he thinks daftly.

“That seems to be a plant you’re in, Dann. Better get loose.”

He manages to retract himself or shake free from the nebulous presence, without losing Waxman’s grip. As he does so, a mental voice says faintly, “ I’ll hang in with Doc here.”

It’s Chris, he’s sure. So shyness continues into astral realms. He imagines his other hand outstretched in that direction, and feels a small, oddly hard touch.

“Ready,” says Waxman’s “voice.”

Next moment Dann is receiving a clear formal transmission which seems to be echoing through Waxman to them all.

“Greetings, all, and to you, Doctordan. I am Giadoc of Tyree.”

So this is Giadoc, lost sky-traveler and late occupant of Dann’s own human body! He seems to be sending in English, too. But there is no time for curiosity, the transmission is going on, part-speech, part-pictures.

“Eldest Heagran and others are with me. We are in what we call the Destroyer.” Image of a great, too-familiar huge blackness, and then in rapid sequence Giadoc’s story unrolls through their linked minds; his awakening and finding Ted Yost, their search for the brain, and Ted Yost’s strange apparent communication with it; then the tale of Giadoc’s own call to them and its consequences. “ It came alive as you find it now.”

During the recital Dann is irresistibly reminded of certain eager young interns he has known. A good type. Well, the young belong to each other, even in darkness and supreme weirdness.

He is jerked from his benevolence by Giadoc’s urgent news. “ The energies around us are sinking back to death or turning off. Unless we can contact this brain again and reverse its condition we are all doomed. Ted Yost seems our only link. We cannot rouse him. Can you help?”

Before Dann can react, Waxman’s thought comes. “ Cryostasis. Maybe it’s packing us up for a trip. Like thousands of years.”

Dann recalls Rick’s tale about the Japanese time-machine. The imagination is still alive in Waxman but it doesn’t sound so fantastic here. Not at all. He now senses, or thinks he senses, a slow but definite ebbing-down of energies around their perimeter. The murmurs of life seem to be slowing, lessening. Is it drawing closer? He shudders.

“ I don’t want to be put to sleep for thousands of years,” Val protests. Frodo’s thought echoes her.

“Why did it bring us here if it didn’t want to rescue us?” Winona’s mind asks. The sense of normal conversation is so absurdly strong in this incredible situation; for an instant Dann is back in the Deerfield messhall.

“Maybe it wants to use us as fuel,” Frodo suggests. “ Maybe it runs on life.”

“No…” Winona “says” hesitantly. “ No, I don’t get that feeling.”

“ Whatever, we have to get through to it before it turns us all off,” Waxman’s thought comes decisively. “ Who wants to try contacting Ted?”

“It’s dangerous,” Val comments. “ Ted’s a strong dreamer.”

There is a pause filled with almost-speech, and suddenly Chris sends right through Dann, so loudly it makes him resonate: “ I’ll try if Doc’ll hold onto me.”

“Right, good,” Waxman replies. “ Over here, Chris. Be careful.”

Dann can only marvel at their sense of organization in this weird modality. He feels more tugging, and their misty constellation seems to revolve slowly, until the half-seen life that must be Chris hanging to him converges toward a vague small pallor. Can that be poor Ted’s mind, curled around an isolated node? Chris seems to change balance, accompanied by a tightening mental hand-clasp; surprisingly, Chris’ “hand” feels bigger now, a full man’s hand.

“Hang tight, Doc.”

Dann strengthens the imaginary grip, beginning roughly to understand what is involved here. Chris is proposing to enter a hallucinated mind, perhaps as dangerous as the panic-vortex he himself had experienced. Belatedly, he remembers to cling hard onto Waxman’s grip too.

“Okay.”

There is a sense of he knows not what happening at Chris’ end, and all at once Dann finds himself invaded by a brilliant vision of sunlit tropical waters, streaming foam. The vision comes in fragmentary bursts; through it he manages to maintain his mental holds. But it is hard. Now he is feeling his own body rush through the water, flinging spray from his flanks as he leaps. Good God, is he a porpoise? Hang on. Even though with flippers splashing, he is hanging on through sun and green water and a confused sense of shouting—until suddenly the vision snaps out, and he is back in dark space, feeling Chris’ mind-touch tremble against his own.

“No good.” Chris transmits weakly, like a man gasping. “ I couldn’t break him out. He made me into a goddamn fish. The computer screen’s still there, I could see the words NEGATIVE and HELP CANCEL. He won’t look anymore, he’s in heaven.”

A dismayed silence, humming with stray half-thoughts. Then Giadoc’s “voice” repeats clearly, “ He is our only link.”

“If we all try to break him out together I think he’d go crazy,” Waxman sends. Other minds agree. “ That wouldn’t help.”

They fall silent again, conscious of the ominous quietude creeping closer and closer, conscious of the cryptic fortress of energies so near at hand yet so impregnable. Abruptly Winona’s thought explodes in their minds:

“Look! Look, inside that brain or whatever! Don’t you see?”

What, where? Dann tries to “look” at the thing, loses it, finally gets a focus long enough to see that its interior is now in slow, intricate motion, as if strands of pale, cold light mingled in complex dance. One spot seems brighter than the rest.

“That’s Margaret in there?” Winona shakes them all. “ It’s Margaret! I’d recognize her anywhere.”

Margaret?

Margaret, his lost one, here? All at once Dann’s human life comes pouring back through him as if an inner dam had broken. The bits and pieces he has been idling with suddenly fall together, making overwhelming order.

The great black shape that swallowed her, the Destroyer, that’s where they are. She fled into this. Is it possible she’s still alive, in whatever mode of life this is, is she trapped in there?

He focusses with all his might in the crazy indirect way he can “see” here. That bright spot. Can it be the very flame, the life-spark he had followed so desperately? Yes! Yes—it is she! He is sure.