James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World

To H. D. S.

For dreams that never die.

COLD, COLD AND ALONE, THE EVIL PRESENCE ROAMS THE STAR-STREAMS. IT IS IMMENSE AND DARK AND ALMOST IMMATERIAL: ITS POWERS ARE BEYOND THOSE OF ANY OTHER SENTIENT THING. AND IT IS IN PAIN.

THE PAIN, IT BELIEVES, SPRINGS FROM ITS CRIME.

ITS CRIME IS NOT MURDER: INDEED, IT MURDERS WITHOUT THOUGHT. THE SIN WHICH SHAMES AND ACHES IN EVERY EDDY OF ITS ENORMOUS BEING IS DEFALCATION FROM THE TASK OF ITS RACE.

ALONE OF ITS RACE IT HAS CONCEIVED THE CRIMINAL ACT OF SKIPPING LINK, OF DRIFTING AWAY IN PURSUIT OF NAMELESS THIRSTS. ITS TRUE NAME TOLLS UPON THE TIME-BANDS, BUT TO ITSELF IT IS THE EVIL ONE.

FROM THE DEBRIS AROUND THE CENTRAL FIRES OF THIS STAR-SWARM IT HEARS THE VOICES OF ITS RACE REVERBERATE AMONG THE LITTLE SUNS SUMMONING EACH TO THE CONFIGURATIONS OF POWER. DEFEND—DESTROY, DESTROY! ALONE, IT DOES NOT, CAN NOT OBEY SOLITARY AND HUGE, IT SAILS OUT ALONG THE DUSTY ARMS, A HURTING ENTITY SLIGHTLY DENSER THAN A VACUUM ON THE CURRENTS OF SPACE-VAST, BLACK, POTENT, AND LETHAL.

The evil strikes Tivonel in the bright joy of her life. But she is not at first aware of its coming.

Zestfully she hovers above High Station, waiting for the floater coming up from Deep. Her mantle is freshly cleaned and radiant, she has fed in civilized style for the first time in a year. And it’s a beautiful morning. Below her, three females of the Station staff are planing out to the edge of the updraft in which High Station rides, looking for the floater. The bioluminescent chatter of their mantles chimes a cheery orange.

Tivonel stretches luxuriously, savoring life. Her strong, graceful jetter’s body balances effortlessly oh the howling wind-rush, which to her is a peaceful wild meadow. She is thirty miles above the surface of the world of Tyree, which none of her race has ever seen.

Around her corporeal body the aura of her life-energy field flares out unselfconsciously, radiating happiness. It’s been a great year; her mission to the upper Wild was such a success.

And it’s time now for the treat she has been promising herself: before returning to Deep she will go visit Giadoc at the High Hearers’ Post nearby.

Giadoc. How beautiful, how strange he was! What will he be like now? Will he remember her? Memories of their mating send an involuntary sexual bias rippling through her life-field. Oh, no! Hastily she damps herself. Did anyone notice? She scans around, detects no flicker of laughter.

Really, Tivonel scolds herself, I have to mend my manners before I get down among the crowds in Deep. Up here you forget field-discipline. Father would be ashamed to see me forgetting ahum, mind-privacy-smoothness…

She forgets it again immediately in her enjoyment.

It’s such a lovely wild morning. The setting Sound is sliding behind Tyree’s thick upper atmosphere, fading to a violet moan. As it fades comes the silence which to Tivonel is day, broken only by the quiet white tweet of the Station’s beacon. Above her in the high Wild she already hears the flickering colorful melody that is the rich life of Tyree’s winds. And faintly chiming through from the far sky she can catch the first sparks of the Companions of the Day. Tivonel knows what the Companions really are, of course: the voices of Sounds like her own, only unimaginably far away. But she likes the old poetic name.

It’s going to be a fine long day too, she thinks. High Station is so near Tyree’s far pole that the Sound barely rises above the horizon at this time of year. At the pole itself, where Giadoc and the Hearers are, it won’t rise at all, it’ll be endless silent day. Vastly content, Tivonel scans down past the station at the dark layers below. They are almost empty of life. From very far down and away she can make out a tiny signal on the life-bands; that must be the emanation of the far, massed lives in Deep. Where’s the floater? Ah—there! A nearby pulse of life, strengthening fast. The station team is jetting down to help; moments later Tivonel catches the faint yellow hooting of its whistle. Time for the males to leave.

The big males are grouped by the woven station rafts, their mantles murmuring deep ruby red. Automatically, Tivonel’s mind-field veers toward them. They were her companions in the years’ adventure, she has monitored and helped them for so long. But of course they don’t notice her now that they are Fathers. Safe in their pouches are the proud fruits of their mission, the children rescued from the Wild. The little ones were frightened by their first taste of relatively quiet air here; Tivonel can detect an occasional green squeal of fear from under the edges of the males’ mantles. The Father’s huge life-fields furl closer, calming the small wild minds. At a respectful distance hovers the Station staff, trying not to show unseemly curiosity.

The males were tremendous, Tivonel admits it now. She didn’t really believe how superior they were until she saw them in action. So fantastically life-sensitive, such range! Of course they had to get used to the wild wind first—but then how brave they were, how tireless. Tracking the elusive signals of the Lost Ones while they tumbled free down the thickly whirling streams of the Great Wind itself, gorging themselves like savages. They must have circled Tyree a hundred times while they searched, found, followed, lost them, and searched again.

But they couldn’t have done it without me guiding them and keeping them in contact, she thinks proudly. That takes a female. What a year, what an adventure up there! The incredible richness of life in the Wild, an endless rushing webwork of myriads of primitive creatures, plants and animals all pulsing with energy and light-sounds, threaded with the lives of larger forms. The rich eternal Winds where our race was born. But oh, the noisy nights up there! The Sound blasting away overhead through the thin upper air—it was rough even for her. The sensitive males had suffered agonies, some of them even got burned a little. But they were brave; like true Fathers, they wanted those children.

That was the most exciting part, she thinks: when the males at last made tenuous mind-contact with the Lost Ones and slowly learned their crude light-speech. And finally they won their confidence enough to achieve some merger and persuade them to let the children be taken down to be properly brought up in Deep. Only a male could do that, Tivonel decides; I don’t have the patience, let alone the field-strength.

And how pathetic it was to find the Lost Ones had preserved patchy memory from generations back, when their ancestors had been blown up to the Wild by that terrible explosion under Old Deep. These are surely the last survivors, the only remaining wild band. Now the children are saved. Very satisfactory! But tell the truth, she’s sorry in a way; she’d love to do it again.

She’ll miss all this, she knows it. The Deep is getting so complicated and ingrown. Of course the mates want to stay down there and let us feed them, that’s natural. But even some of the young females won’t budge up into the real Wind. And now they have all those tame food-plants down there… But she’ll never stay down for good, never. She loves the Wild, night-noise and all. Father understood when he named her Tivonel, far-flyer; it’s a pun that also means uncivilized or wild-wind- child. I’m both, she thinks, her mantle flickering lacy coral chuckles. She casts a goodbye scan up to where Tyree’s planetary gales roar by forever, unheard by any of her race.

“The floater’s here!”

The flash is from her friend Iznagel, the Station’s eldest-female. They’re wrestling the floater into balance on the Station updraft.