Up the Walls of the World

Chapter 28

Tivonel, bright spirit from the winds of Tyree, is still on her life-way although in dark and surpassing strangeness among the stars. The energy-configuration that is her essence glides from point to point in the vastness of the Destroyer—no, we have to call it the Saver now, she thinks—with the skill with which her winged body had once breasted Tyree’s gales.

Gladly she would travel faster, but she is not alone. Her friends Marockee and Issalin flow alongside, equally impatient. They must all keep to the slow pace of the unskilled Fathers they bring with them.

She and the others are returning from the great mind-dream of Tyree, or Tyree-Two as the humans call it. They are escorting Father Daagan and Mercil to confer for a last time with Eldest Heagran. Behind them all comes the big life-field of Father Ustan. And thanks to the winds he was with us, Tivonel thinks; Ustan had remained outside the dream-world to ensure they would be able to pull free.

“Whew, that was strong. Again, thanks, Tivonel.”

It is Marockee’s mind-touch. Marockee had almost lost herself in the beauty of the dream-winds, the magic of remembered life. Tivonel had to pull her to Ustan’s grasp. And all three of them had to use their strengths to help break out the two young Fathers who had stayed so long in the powerful multiminded fantasy of home.

Tivonel herself had reveled in the false Tyree, in the zestful illusion of flight and her visit to the rich recreation of Deep where the Fathers and children stay. With so many orphans, the surviving Paradomin and any others who wish to try are caring for them under the supervision of real Fathers. They’re doing a pretty good job, too, Tivonel thinks, but of course the children don’t grow. It’s good practice, they’ll all have to do it when they go to that new world.

But she herself hadn’t been trapped in Tyree-Two, not to forgetfulness.To her it had remained a lovely mirage, a tiny island created by living minds in a corner of huge dark reality.

I’ve changed, she thinks. I used to be just like Marockee, all female action and fun. It’s because of Giadoc; I’ve caught something from him. And maybe my time with that kind, funny alien, Tanel. But I’m not getting Fatherly, I don’t care about status like the Paradomin. And it isn’t sex—yearning for Giadoc, either. Not anymore, not here.

She chuckles ruefully to herself, acknowledging that she will never know again the ecstasy of physical sex in the Wind. Marockee told her that some couples tried that in Tyree-Two. But of course it didn’t work. With no egg, what could you expect?

No, it’s not sex, what she feels for Giadoc. It’s the Hearer part of him I’ve caught, she thinks, gliding effortlessly onward in the strange, exciting dark. Yes, and it’s more than that too, it was the waiting and thinking of him, it made me understand more. And when I found him so near death and we merged. Things like that never ordinarily happened on Tyree. Males were just exciting to have sex with until they became Fathers and you sparcely saw them again. I know Giadoc in this deep, funny way, she thinks, not understanding that her language has no word for a yuman sense of love. She wonders briefly if old Omar felt something like that for Janskelen. Whatever, she will stay here with Giadoc no matter what the others do. She suppresses the mixed tingle of fear and excitement the thought brings.

“Are you really staying in the Destroyer when everybody goes out to that new world?” It’s Marockee again.

Tivonel notices that they have outpaced the slower males, and checks.

“You mean the Saver. Yes, I am.” Again the slight shiver.

“How can you, Tivonel? What’ll there be to do?”

“Oh, there’ll be plenty of adventures among the Companions. Ask Giadoc or Tanel. Besides, how do you know they’re going to like being big white plenyas, or whatever those bodies are?”

“But they’ll have real bodies and real winds. And the Great Field of Tyree will be with them.” Marockee’s mind-tone is full of ambiguous longing. Tivonel knows her friend is in agonies of indecision whether to go or stay. Well, she’ll just have to make up her own mind about that. She replies only. “We’ll have Heagran. He’s the spirit of Tyree, too.”

“Well, I’m staying here,” puts in Issaliri firmly. “You wait, when they get out there the males will take all the eggs again, just like Tyree. Even if those bodies are supposed to be combined male and female, they’ll find some way. And I know the mind that works with the Saver is female, so I’m staying with you.”

“Well said in friendship,” replies Tivonel. Privately she considers that Issalin’s head is a little wind-blown if those are her reasons, but she’s glad of the company.

“If we ever find the yuman world where Avan went maybe I’d go there,” Issalin goes on. “I’ve been talking a lot with that female-Father Winona. I’d see they got the status!”

“More power to you. Speaking of things to do,” Tivonel interrupts herself, “There’s Sastro and that wild alien, over that way. I’m going to check on them. Father Ustan!” she sends politely. “I’ll rejoin you later. Eldest Heagran will want news of what they have found.”

And that’s a fact, she thinks, shooting off at high speed while the others continue on their decorous way. But the real fact is I’m curious.

From this distance she can just pick up the calm life-signal of big Sastro, one of the elders who are staying with Heagran in the Saver. His signal is modulated by the uncanny flickering emanation of the creature they had picked up out of space. The pulsations were thought to be fear by those who first went out to help him, but now it’s clear that his life-energy is periodic in this odd way. Weird!

As she approaches she picks up also the emanations of one of tlhe Saver’s pictorial nodes or screens, which for some time now have been showing scenes of the world the Tyrenni will go out to. The group seems to be clustered around it. And now Tivonel can recognize another big life-field—the yuman Valeree with whom she’s had many friendly contacts. Valeree is trying to learn the alien creature’s language—good luck to her. Beside her in the queer flicker of the alien’s field are two other Tyrenni energies; a male and female Tivonel doesn’t know well, from Tyree-Two.

“Greetings, Father Sastro and to you all.” She extends a decorous receptor-node, ignoring the alien.

“Hello Tivonel,” Valeree replies. “Listen, try touching it carefully. I think it will answer.”

Winds, they must have really calmed it down! Cautiously, Tivonel extends a tentative probe. “Greetings.”

“Gree—tin” it sends faintly, accompanied by such a flash of mental green that Tivonel jumps away.

“It’s scared to death! Why haven’t you fixed it?”

“Do not be foolish,” Sastro reproves her. “Do you imagine a Father does not know his work? It appears, young Tivonel, that on this being’s world the color you sensed is the hue of harmony and life.”

“It’s a good color on ours too, Tivonel,” Valeree adds. “Your people may have to get used to some strange effects when they go down. I see that world as your colors of pain and fear, but on ours they mean fair winds and joy.”

“Whew.”

Tivonel slides onto a node near the projection and studies the mental picture again. It’s a beautiful scene, even if it’s at wind-bottom. Great mounds or crags are looming way up into the wind. She can sense feathery spume whirling by. Far below is a great wet foaming surface, what the yumans call an ocean or sea. A huge, pale six-limbed flying form plummets down past her to snatch something from a floating raft, then soars up to perch on solidity, eating the thing from its claspers. High overhead a dozen others are soaring, evidently rejoicing in the gales. The scene is radiant. It does look like a suitable home for life. Of course if all that is going to turn out to be green and blue the Tyrenni will be in for an adjustment. Well, maybe the bodies’ sensors will take care of that.

“Good that you came by, young Tivonel.” Sastro’s mind-touch cuts short her reverie. “Tell the Eldest that this alien has decided to go to the new world with our people. Tynad and Orcavel here brought word that it is accepted. It seems that it has skills which may be useful to them. For example, it knows how to handle much hard matter. And how to generate heat should that be needed. I confess I understand little of this, but your friend Valeree assures me it could be needed on such a world.”

“We call it ‘fire’,” Valeree puts in. “Yes, it could be very useful. That’s what got it out here, things made of hard stuffs and fire.”

“Is it a male or a female?” Tivonel asks, studying the curiously pulsing glow of the alien’s life.

“It’s both. They mate together and both bear eggs, like those animals down there. So that’s another reason it would fit in. It had eight limbs, like some creatures on my world, and it used to fly on a bag or thread. It showed me mind-pictures, that’s how I learned its words. Their sky was full of flyers. But you have no idea how strange. It says it was sent out of its world as a punishment.”

“But our people don’t want to take a criminal with them!”

“I don’t think you’d call it a crime. It seems to have questioned some command about not flying too high.”

“Great winds, that’s not a crime!”

“It was there. So they built a, a pod, and sent it out of the sky. They’ve done it before, this being expected it. It hoped to reach another world. It had no idea how far they were.”

Tivonel digests this extraordinary oddity. “It sounds like a crazy female to me. Wanting to explore right through the High.”

Valeree laughs. “More like you, Tivonel. We have a word for what it’s really like. Tell Tanel, he’ll explain. It feels like a jock, a typical jock. It’ll do much better in a real place than this mind-world. Like our Kirk and his pet animal, they’re going down too.”

“A jock? I will, Valeree-friend.” Tivonel makes her farewells, remembering she will never meet the other two Tyrenni again. “Fair winds on your new world.”

“Fair winds to you who stay, Tivonel.”

She glides off, reflecting. It’s going to be a lonesome moment when all the other Tyrenni leave. Giadoc has explained how it will be: a sort of wall or shield will form around the nucleus, separating those who stay from the pull of the outgoing Beam. She’ll be inside with Giadoc and the others. But it’ll be lonesome—think of feeling all the lives of her people, the life of Tyree itself, sliding out forever to the dark, down to that strange world, never to be known again. Brr. It’ll be sad for us all.

But we’ll see them lodge in the bodies of those flying things, come to themselves and take up real life again. They say it will be gentle; people will have time to choose the ones they want. It won’t be like the time she had voyaged to the yuman world and just fallen into the nearest mind. Tanel says that the Destroyer—the Saver—knows how to do this. It was the thing it was supposed to do, if it hadn’t been asleep or crazy or whatever it was before Tanel’s friend came.

Yes, it’ll be a lonely feeling, she thinks again, counting over those who will remain. Giadoc and Heagran, of course. And Ustan has decided to. And the two elders Sastro and Panad, who won’t part from Heagran. And the young, bitter Father Hiner, whose child was so tragically lost at the last minute on Tyree. We could have Orva the Hearer’s Memory-Keeper too, but Heagran says he must go with the others to carry Tyree’s history to the new world, since Kinto was lost. Hiner is studying with him to be Memory-Keeper here.

Well, six Fathers counting Hiner, that’ll be a lot of strength if and when new crazy aliens come along. Maybe she’ll have to try a little Fathering herself, as she had with Tanel. Heagran says we’ll get more like each other with all this mind-touching. But she wishes she had more female company. Only Issalin the Paradomin is staying, and her friend Jalifee. And Marockee— maybe. The other Tyrenni females are so short-sighted, they just see the adventure of that real new world down there. They can’t grasp the long mysterious Giadoc-type adventures we’ll have here. Maybe I wouldn’t either, she thinks, shivering half-pleasurably again, if it weren’t for Giadoc.

But I’ll have Valeree, Tivonel comforts herself. She’s almost like a Tyrenni, she loves to explore. And so does the old female-Father Winona, and maybe that sad Frodo will cheer up. And the funny human male Kris. Thinking of him, she notices the soft signal that means a quarter-Kris has passed. She better hurry. The signal must be coming from the node near the nucleus. She changes course slightly, and an idea comes to her. Why not ask Tanel to have his mysterious friend put markers on the different nodes, so we could really tell where we are? That way we could build up a real mental map of this enormous dark world, and explore out to the very end without danger of being lost. I wonder what we’ll find when we get to the edge, she muses. Will the Saver have a thick wall, or will it just thin out to nothing so we can begin to sense the lives of the sky through it?

Ahead of her the dim form of the nucleus and the mind-sparks near it are now faintly perceptible. Another life-group is converging on them—Ustan and the others. Good, she’s come just in time. There’s no real need for her presence, it’ll be all a solemn conference of Heagran telling the Fathers how to conduct themselves out there on New Tyree or whatever they’re going to call it. Responsibility, life-reverence, ahura, etcetera and so on. And Orva saying goodbye. But she loves to listen in to Heagran. So old, so wise; he was a child when New Deep was founded. His mind isn’t bounded by Fathering anymore. He’s been mind-caught by the wonders of the sky, like Giadoc. We’re so lucky to have him.

As she damps herself for a courteous arrival, she thinks ahead to the next, the really exciting conference there is to be. After the main group of Tyrenni go out to their new world and take up their lives, those who are staying here will gather around Tanel. Heagran has explained it. “The Saver wishes us to help it think upon a new Life-Task, since its race has left this part of the universe, and it is here alone.”

A great new task, here in limitless space among all these stars and worlds? Whew!

Tivonel has picked up many thought-fragments about this, enough to know that everyone has a different dream. Only the two old Fathers Sastro and Panad are united; typically, they want to find a young race and Father it to wise maturity. But the others! Averting cosmic cataclysms, reviving dead races—and Giadoc of course always wanting to learn more, to find ways of actually visiting other worlds… A vagrant notion of what it would be like to have real sex again in an alien body rises in her mind; she relegates it to storage.

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!”