James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

“Doctor Dann, is Margaret all right in there? I’ve been so worried about her. Could I see her for a moment? I don’t want to bother her, I just want —”

“ I understand,” he tells her. And he does, he cannot mistake pure friendship, or whatever odd human quality “worries” about another so gratuitously. “ I’ll ask her. It’s difficult. She’s… busy.”

The mild presence withdraws patiently.

When the Earthly incarnation of Margaret comes again into his sight, he asks her. “Can Winona, ah, make contact with you for a few minutes? She was your friend, you know. She’s worried.”

“Winona?” The dark priestess of the computer hesitates remotely. But her mood seems favorable. “Yes. You can let her by.”

Dann has a selfish moment of gladness at her acceptance of his role of guardian of her gates. Cerberus-Dann. He does not know exactly how to “let” Winona in, but moves his imaginary self aside, calling her name. It seems to work. He feels life coming inward.

Shockingly, what materializes at the imaginary door is not Winona—it is the trim lush figure of a dark-haired woman in early middle life, with a brilliant, unlined, eager face. His Earthly memories leap up. Here is the incarnation of young mother, a woman he has seen step laughing from a thousand stationwagons full of kids.

But as he leaps to bar this stranger’s way, she changes. The firm flesh pales and sags, the raven hair goes grey. It is Winona as he knows her, going toward Margaret with both hands held out.

For an instant he flinches, expecting the giggle and rush of words. But she only takes one of the tall figure’s hands in hers, and holds it to her old bosom, peering in wonder at the strangeness all around. For a moment some contact seems to flow, and then Winona releases the hand and turns away.

As she passes Dann there is another shimmer of change; it is the radiant young matron who vanishes out through the immaterial chink.

Dann muses on the dreadful mysteries of time; that which he had seen was really Winona, not the puffy arthritic scarecrow of Deerfield.

And what is he, really? Some earnest figure of a young MD? No; he is ineluctably old. His dead are dead. He is… content.

Outside, Winona has gone away. She understands, Dann knows, however she conceives it. Margaret is not to be worried about.

And something else has happened, he notices. As he resumes his watchman’s pose he senses that the guarded gate of the stronghold seems a little wider now. Less fortified. The Margaret who has her being here will perhaps tolerate contact with life a little more. But she is, Dann realizes, changing. Life is no longer to her what it was. His soul is chilled by foreboding. Will she change beyond recognition, will everything he knows as Margaret disappear into some cloudy matrix of immensity?

He remembers the calm voice saying, Perhaps, in time, I will take counsel with life. But will it be Margaret who does so? He hopes so; he can do no more.

His sad thoughts are interrupted by a merry greeting he knows instantly—his little friend Tivonel. She has been by before, to his delight. But this time she brings Giadoc to speak with him.

“Greetings, Tanel,” comes the strong, sure “voice” of the young Hearer. “ Waxman has told us of the great powers your friend wields here.”

“ Yes.” Dann tries to convey a smile; he finds it impossible not to like this mind.

“As you know, my son Tiavan was among those who did that criminal deed to your people. Yet I left him, and the others, in danger. Is it possible that your friend’s power can discover anything of what happened to them, back on your world?”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask. It may take some time.”

But as it happens the incarnation he knows as Margaret comes soon, and he is able to ask.

“I’ll put TOTAL on it,” she says quite humanly. “ It stored a lot of telecommunications before we were out of range. Tell me their names.”

Their names? So far, so very far she has drifted away, he thinks. He recites the eight: Winona, the two girls, the twins, Ted, Chris, and Kirk. Only bodies now, housing alien minds; while the real people are out here with him in this uncanny place between the stars.

“ I’ll set it to type out anything it finds, in case I’m… not here.”

So normal, so efficient a sweet ghost. She does something to the small console and vanishes away.

The strong compact presence of Giadoc hovers near. Dann asks him again about his stay on Earth, and learns for the first time that the mind he had known as Fearing had ended in the body of the dog. So an elder female, Janskelen, whom he never knew, is the dread Fearing now! The computer won’t search for that name; no matter, it probably wasn’t his real one.

But whatever can have become of them? How did Noah, not to mention the Navy, take the eruption of nine alien minds? Thinking of it all again, Dann’s memories strengthen around him. He questions Giadoc, fascinated by his alien ability to guide himself by reading human thought. It seems unbelievable; how could they manage to make out? What could they do, send and receive messages for the military? Or be persecuted as a menace?

And the mix-up of identities: Kirk with the mind of, in effect, a little girl; Winona housing his Father. Frodo as really the son of the Father who is in little Chris. How to stay together? Can they perhaps marry? And the cosmic joke of the rebel Avanil in Valerie’s body, defiantly claiming the right to rear children. And Ron and Rick, no longer twins but Terenc and Palarin, an alien male and female he never knew. And, poetic justice, the wicked Scomber inheriting the moribund body of Ted Yost.

Funny, Dann reflects, he doesn’t really see Scomber as “wicked.” He can recall so clearly the heart-lifting moment when Scomber offered his life as the pathway to escape from burning Tyree and his own empathy with the young Fathers bearing their children out of the flames.

And has it all turned out so badly for his kidnapped friends? Not so, he thinks. Whatever this ur-life may prove to be, we were rescued from great mortal misery; we knew our hours of joy in the winds of Tyree.

He tries to convey some of this to Giadoc, in their shared Tyrenni-English pidgin. But the proud young alien is hard to persuade; he is too deeply ashamed of what his son has done. Just as Dann thinks he is getting the point across, there is a sense of activity from within. He turns to find the spectral teleprinter at work. What looks absurdly like an ordinary printout is emerging. What has TOTAL intercepted? Dann finds that his dream-hands can take it, his “eyes” can read.

//LAS VEGAS JAN 19 SPECIAL AP. SPIRITUALISTS PULL GAMBLING COUP. A TEAM COMPOSED OF A HOUSEWIFE, A RETIRED ARMY OFFICER AND AN EX-LOCKSMITH BROKE THE BANK AT FIVE MAJOR LAS VEGAS RESORTS OVER THE WEEKEND, PILING UP A POKER TAKE ESTIMATED IN THE MILLIONS. //THE THREE IDENTIFIED THEMSELVES AS PARTNERS IN CATLEDGE ESP CONSULTANTS FIRM. “IT WAS PRIMARILY AN ADVERTISING STUNT,” MRS. EBERHARD, THE HOUSEWIFE, SAID. “WE WANTED TO SHOW WHAT A QUALIFIED ESP CONSULTANT CAN DO,” MAJOR CHARLES SPROUL ADDED. THE THIRD MEMBER, CHRISTOFER COSTAKIS, STATED THAT THEY INTEND TO USE PART OF THE MONEY FOR A NEW HEADQUARTERS AND RESEARCH ESTABLISHMENT. //CATLEDGE ESP CONSULTANTS HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AS A TIGHTLY KNIT, CLOSE-MOUTHED GROUP OF SEVEN MEMBERS UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF DR. NOAH CATLEDGE. DR. CATLEDGE, WHO DISCLAIMS ANY MYSTIC ABILITIES, BUILT UP THE TEAM AFTER A LIFETIME IN ESP RESEARCH. “OUR SERVICES ARE AVAILABLE FOR ANY PRIVATE PARTIES WHO MEET OUR FEES,” HE SAID TODAY. “HOWEVER, WE EXPECT TO BE PRIMARILY USEFUL AS CONSULTANTS TO NEGOTIATORS IN BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT.” THE LAS VEGAS HOTEL MANAGERS ASSOCIATION ADMIT THAT NO ILLEGALITY APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN THE WEEKEND ACTION. “WE WERE REALLY WATCHING THESE PEOPLE AS SOON AS THEY STARTED TO ROLL,” ONE MEMBER SAID. “SO FAR AS WE’RE CONCERNED THEY’RE CLEAN.” HOWEVER THE ASSOCIATION STRESSES THAT NO ONE ASSOCIATED WITH THE CATLEDGE FIRM WILL BE ADMITTED TO PLAY IN FUTURE. “THEY’RE AT THE TOP OF OUR S… LIST,” A MANAGER CONCLUDED.// //WILLAMETTE, ILL. JAN 19. TWO UNSEASONAL TORNADOES SWEPT—