James Tiptree Jr.: Up the Walls of the World

She knows that old Heagran and that double yuman Waxman both dream of finding strange new kinds of minds among the worlds, but their visions aren’t alike. And Father Ustan wants to go on saving endangered races. Issalin and Jalifee will probably want to find some way of helping females, while the yuman Winona wants to rescue any person who is in terrible pain on whatever world. Valeree wants to invent a way of making strange races able to know and feel each other’s minds, like the Tyrenni. When Waxman heard her telling that he said, “ Not too much empathy. I know.” The two yumans Tivonel knows least, Frodo and the dreamer Ted Yost, probably have still more wild notions of their own. And Giadoc’s friend Kris has the wildest one of all—he thinks they should search for whatever made or hatched the Saver!

Tivonel settles discreetly beside Heagran’s group, thinking, I haven’t any big idea of my own. But I know how I’m going to respond, because I’m the most practical one of the lot. What they forget is that we’re going to be here a long, long, long time.

A slow, coldly exciting shudder travels through her immaterial form. It’s not in her cheerful mind to use big words like “eternity” or “forever.” Let’s just say our journey will be of enormous length and duration, she thinks. And in her experience of long journeys it isn’t a good idea to plan everything too carefully. Not to go rigidly seeking one goal when maybe others you haven’t thought of are right ahead. Look at her last life-journey; she had started out to look for some exciting sex and found a child to be helped, Hearers to be fed, new friends, a trip to another world, and the end of her own Tyree. So, after all these grand shcemes and possibilities are unfolded, she knows what her own contribution will be.

If only I can put it right, she thinks, preparing to attend to Heagran, unaware that her own life-field is aglow with vitality. If only I can think of the right forms to reach these big-minds. Well, the mind who’s with the Saver is a female; maybe she’ll understand.

The main thing to get across to them is that there will be so much time. Maybe all the time there is. And as we go ever on and on in this great journey, however long it lasts, different possibilities will appear, different acts will seem more urgent or right. We don’t even know all our own powers. So let us rescue what we find to rescue, experience what we can, change what seems good to change. That way we will learn and grow. My vote won’t be for one plan or another, not even Giadoc’s explorations or Heagran’s mighty dreams. There is so much time. Why limit ourselves or the Saver? So she knows what she will say: “ Let’s try it all!”

ALONE BUT NOT LONELY IT ROVES THE DARK IMMENSITIES, NEW-BORN AND STRANGEST BEING OF ALL: PART ANIMATE, PART PASSIONLESS CAUSALITY, WHOSE VAST POWERS CAN UNDO TIME ITSELF. SO FAR AS IT KNOWS, IT IS IMMORTAL, AND SUBJECT TO NO IMPERATIVE BUT ITS OWN. IT IS MOVED BY DISCRETE IMPULSES OF CURIOSITY, PITY, IRRITATION, OR WONDER, NOW TRIVIAL, NOW SUBLIME: IMPULSES WHICH ARE ALWAYS LESS PARTICULATE AND ALWAYS MORE A MERGING OF PREPOSTEROUSLY FINITE LITTLE LIVES BECOMING MELDED TO FOREVER. IT IS A PROTO-PRONOUN, AN IT BECOMING SHE BECOMING THEY, A WE BECOMING I WHICH IS BECOMING MYSTERY .

CONFUSED, JOYFUL, GRIEVING, INQUISITIVE, RANDOMLY BENEVOLENT, AND NOT ENTIRELY SANE, IT SETS FORTH TO ITS DESTINY AMONG THE ORDINARY DENIZENS OF SPACE AND TIME: A CHANCE-BORN FALLIBLE DEITY WHOSE POWERS MAY ONE DAY FOCUS WITHOUT WARNING UPON THE TINY LIFES OF ANY NESCIENT EARTH.