It isn’t really the end of the world, of course, but merely the edge of the biosphere in which her people live. It is a place of wonders.
She is in the side of an enormous wind-funnel, a planetary hurricane called the Wall of the World. It is a great curved wall, a tapestry of life-signals and murmuring, shimmering light that spins around the Pole. Ahead of her stretches an empty space, a zone of turbulent updrafts which to her is stable air. Out in the center of the great ampitheater she can perceive the lethal polar Airfall, an immense column of down-pouring winds. It descends eternally from the converging winds high above and falls into the unimaginable deeps of the Abyss below, there to spread out over the unknown dark, and ultimately rise in upwellings like that of Deep. The Airfall is dense dying with life, sighing grey on its fall to dread wind-bottom. Around her, spreading into the empty zone, is a screen of lovely airborne jungles that ride the standing air beside the Wall. It is here that the Hearers work, because of the clear view above.
Tivonel lifts her scan, and is again awestruck. She had expected it to be interesting, but not as impressive as the musical brilliance of Near Pole’s sky, not as dense with life-signals. Now she sees the Companions are indeed fewer, but against their silent background, how individually splendid, how intense! At Near Pole they had been so massed as to seem a close web; she remembers making a childish effort to signal to it with her tiny field. Here she sees how far they are, how they burn alone in the immense reaches of the void.
For the first time she really grasps it. Each Companion is indeed a Sound like Tyree’s own, she is hearing the light-music poured from a million far-off Sounds. And the beacon-points of life with them, how individually clear and strange! Are there worlds up there, worlds like her own, perhaps? Is another Tivonel on some far-off Tyree at this moment scanning wonderingly toward her? Her normally wind-bound soul expands and something of the lure of Giadoc’s work comes clear to her. If only she were not a female, if only she had the strong far-reaching Father’s field!
But perhaps there is no one up there, only mindless plants or animals. She has been told that Tyree is exceptionally favorable for intelligent life with its rich eternal Wind. Perhaps only here could minds develop and look toward other worlds? How lonely…
But her buoyant spirit will not be dashed. How lucky to live at the time when all these mysteries are becoming known! In the old days people believed the Companions were spirits above the Wind, mythical food-beasts, or dead people. Even today, some people down in Deep hold that there are good and bad spirits up here: idiots who’ve never been out of Deep, never sensed the sky except through thick life-clouds. Her Father warned her that such beliefs may grow, now that Deep is becoming so self-sufficient. Tivonel is in no danger of such stupidities, up here where she can receive the blazing music and life-emanations of the sky!
But another life-signal has grown strong and jolts her from her musings. Hearers, quite close above! Tivonel realizes abashedly that her own emanations must be equally clear to them, perhaps impinging on their work. Hurriedly she compacts her awareness, nulling her output as much as possible. How awful if she has already offended Giadoc!
She jets slowly up along the Wall, very cautiously scanning for Giadoc’s distinctive field. She can always recognize that characteristic intensity, so open yet so focused-beyond.
At the end of a line of other fields she detects him—Giadoc, but grown even stronger and more strange! He must be preoccupied, experimenting with something unheard-of. All the Hearer’s emanations are weird, intense but muted. Bursting with curiosity, she pushes through a tangle of vegetable life and hears the lights of his voice. How deep and rich, a true Father! Yet strange, too.
His tone becomes more normal, is answered by other Hearers. They seem to be finished with whatever they are doing. Keeping herself as null as possible, she clears the plants and lets her mantle form his name in a soft rosy light-call. “Giadoc?” No response. She repeats, embroidering with the yellow-green of her own name. “Giadoc? It is Tivonel here.”
To her joy comes an answering deep flash. “Tivonel, Egg-bearer-of-my-child!”
“Do I disturb? I came to see you, dear-Giadoc.”
“Welcome.” In a moment he appears, swooping toward her. How huge he is! Overjoyed, she lets her own field stream at him, her mantle rippling questions.
“Are you well? Have you discovered many marvels? Do you recall—” She checks herself in time and changes it to, “Is Tiavan well? I have been away. I was up in the Wild, we rescued the Lost One’s children.”
“Yes, I heard.” He hovers before her, resplendent. “Tiavan-our-child is well. He has decided to study with Kinto, to become a Memory-Keeper—when his Fatherhood is over, of course. Was your mission successful?”
His signals are in the friendliest mode, but so formal. He can’t have thought of at all, she tells herself, meanwhile shyly proffering her field-engram. “I have prepared a memory for you, dear-Giadoc. I thought you would like to know of our discoveries.”
He hesitates, then signals “Accept with pleasure.” A dense eddy of his mind-field comes out and touches hers.
The contact jolts her deliciously; she has an instant of struggle to keep unformed thought from pouring into the memory. Then she becomes aware that he is passing her a terse account of Tiavan. Loathe to break the exciting contact, she accepts it lingeringly. Just as he separates himself she finds the impudence to let a tiny tickle of polarization tickle his withdrawing field. They snap apart, but he makes no acknowledgment. Instead he only says, deep and Father-like, “Truly praiseworthy, dear-Tivonel. You have learned how to apply your wild energies.”
She doesn’t want a Father. And his field wasn’t really Fatherly at all.
“Thank you for the news of Tiavan,” she signs. How can she get closer to him? Impulsively, she flashes, “Is anything wrong, Giadoc? You seem so reserved. Is it that I intrude?”
“Nothing personal, dear-Tivonel,” he replies, still formal. Then his tone softens. “Much has been happening here. You have been out of touch a long time. There has been news from Near Pole which has affected us all.”
Near Pole! It’s the last thing she wants to hear of. But he sounds so serious, and he has never attracted her more. Groping for a topic to keep him from leaving, she asks, “Is it true that you have actually touched the lives of beings on other worlds? How incredible, Giadoc, how fascinating.”
“You don’t know how incredible,” he answers quietly. “You can have no true concept of the distances. Even I find it hard to, grasp. But yes, we have touched. Some of us have even been able to merge briefly.”
“What did you learn? I was just hoping that other intelligences are out there. Are they like us?”
“Very unlike. Yes, a few are intelligent. But very, very strange.”
His tone has become warmer, more intense. “If only I could try it,” she laughs flirtatiously to remind him of her femaleness, and allows another tiny potential-bias to tease at his field.
But he only signs somberly, “It is dangerous and harsh. Much more painful than your Lost Ones, dear-Tivonel.”
“But you do it for pleasure, for strangeness, don’t you, Giadoc? Perhaps you are a bit of a female at heart!”
“It is interesting.” Suddenly his field changes, his mantle signs in deep red emotion, “I do love what you call strangeness. I love exploring the life beyond my world. It will be my work so long as we all survive.”
To her surpirse, he ends on an archaic light-pattern meaning over-mastering devotion. But this is not what she was hoping for at all.
“How unFatherly,” she almost says—and then something in his tone reaches her. “What do you mean, as long as we survive?”