Dark Universe

CHAPTER TEN

Jared flinched from the absurd impressions, from the contradictory composites of physical orientation. He was certain he still lay in the corridor near the dripping needle of rock. Yet, he was equally sure he was somewhere else.

The drip-drip of the water changed to a weary taptap-tap and back to a drip-drip again. The coarse hardness of stone under his feverish body was, alternately, the soft fibers of manna husks piled upon a sleeping ledge.

In the next phase of the here-there alternation, the distant tap-tap-tap commanded his attention. And its sharp echoes conveyed the impression of someone seated on a ledge absently drumming his finger on stone.

Light, but the man was old! Had it not been for the movement of his hand, he might easily have been mistaken for a skeleton. The head, trembling with an affliction ot senility, was like a skull. And the beard, unkempt and sparse, trailed to the ground, losing itself in the inaudibility of its thinness.

Tap-tap-tap… drip-drip…

Jared was back in the corridor. And, like commingling sounds, the straggly beard had metamorphosed into the moist hanging stone.

“Relax, Jared. Everything’s under control now.”

He almost lurched out of the dream. “Kind Survivoress!”

“It’ll be less awkward if you just call me Leah.”

He puzzled over the name, then thought flatly, “I’m dreaming again.”

“For the moment — yes.”

Another anxious, soundless voice intruded, “Leah! How’s he doing?”

“Coming around,” she said.

“So I can hear.” Then, “Jared?”

Jared, however, had returned to the corridor — but only for a moment. Soon he was back on the manna fiber mattress in a minor world where the vague outline of a woman bent over him and an inconceivably ancient man sat against the far wall tapping his finger.

“Jared,” the woman offered, “that other voice was Ethan’s.”

“Ethan?”

“You knew him as Little Listener before we changed his name. He’s been out after game, but he’s coming back now.”

Jared was even more confused.

More to soothe him than for any other reason, he felt sure, the woman said, “I can’t believe you found your way here after all these gestations.”

He started to say something, but she interrupted, “Don’t explain. I heard everything from your mind — what you were doing in the passages, how you were bitten by—”

“Della!” he shouted, remembering.

“She’ll be all right. I reached you in time.”

Abruptly, he realized he was awake now and that Kind Survivoress’ last words had been spoken.

“Not Kind Survivoress, Jared — Leah.”

And he was astonished by his audible impression of the woman. He sent his hands groping over her face, across her shoulders, along her arms. Why — she wasn’t the least bit old!

“What did you expect — someone like the Forever Man?” She sent her thoughts to him. “After all, I was really practically a child when I used to go to you.”

He listened more closely at her. Hadn’t she once told him she could reach his mind only when he was asleep?

“Only when you’re asleep if you’re far away,” she clarified. “When you’re this close you don’t have to be asleep.”

He studied her auditory reflections. She was perhaps a bit talller than Della. But her proportions, despite her nine or ten gestations’ seniority over the girl, suffered none in comparison. She was closed-eyed and kept her hair clipped shoulder-length on the sides, reaching to her eyebrows in front.

Turning his ears on his surroundings, he listened to a small, dismal world with a scattering of hot springs, each surrounded by its usual clump of manna plants; an arm of a river flowing out of and right back into the wall; another slumber ledge nearby — Della there, asleep. All these impressions he sifted from the echoes provided by the finger tapping of — the Forever Man?

“That’s right,” Leah confirmed.

He rose, feeling not as weak as he thought he would, and started across the world.

Leah cautioned, “We don’t disturb him until he stops tapping.”

He came back and stood in front of the woman, still rejecting the fact that he was actually here, in his preposterous dream setting. “How did you know I was out in the corridor?”

“I listened to you coming.” And he heard the unspoken explanation that listen, in this case, didn’t mean hearing sound.

She placed a solicitous hand on his shoulder. “And I also hear from your thoughts that this Della is a Zivver.”

“She thinks I’m one too.”

“Yes, I know. And I’m afraid. I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.”

“I—”

“Oh, I know what you have in mind. But I still don’t understand it. I realize you want to get to the Zivver World so you can hunt for Darkness.”

“For Light too. And using Della is the only way I can get in.”

“So I hear. But how do you know what her plans are? I don’t trust the girl, Jared.”

“It’s just because you can’t listen to what she’s thinking.”

“Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m so used to hearing feelings, intentions, that I’m lost when outer impressions are all I have to go by.”

“You won’t tell Della I’m not like her?”

“If that’s the way you want it. We’ll just let her go on believing you’re the only Zivver whose mind I can reach. But I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Little Listener came storming into the world and it was remarkable that his exuberant shouts failed to rouse Della and were ignored by the Forever Man, who merely continued his tapping.

“Jared! Where are you?”

“Over here!” Jared was suddenly swept up in the excitement of renewing an acquaintance he hadn’t even known was real.

“He can’t hear you — remember?” Leah reminded.

“But he’s running straight toward us!” Then he puzzled over the scent of — -crickets? — that was coming from Little Listener.

“Ethan,” Leah corrected. “And those are crickets. He keeps a pouch filled with them. Unhearable cricket noises make just as good echoes for him as clickstones do for you.”

Then the other was upon him and, in a bone-crushing embrace, swung him around and around as easily as he would a bundle of manna stalks.

Jared’s gratification over the reunion was dulled by his awed appreciation of Ethan’s tremendous proportions. It was just as well that Little Listener had been banished from the Upper Level because of his uncanny hearing. Otherwise, he most certainly would have been expelled later for his almost inhuman size.

“You old son of a soubat!” Ethan chortled. “I knew you’d come some period!”

“Light, but it’s good to—” Jared broke off in midsentence as blunt, trembling fingers came to rest lightly against his lips.

“Let him,” Leah urged. “That’s the only way he can find out what you’re saying.”

They spent the better part of a period talking about their childhood meetings. And Jared had to tell them about the worlds of man, how it felt to live with many people, what the Zivvers’ latest tricks were, whether there had been any more Different Ones recently.

They interrupted their session once to haul food from a boiling pit and bring a portion to the Forever Man. But the latter, still not talkatively disposed, ignored their presence.

Later, Jared said in answer to Leah’s question, “Why do I want to go to the Zivver World? Because I’ve got a hunch that’s the right place to hunt for Darkness and Light.”

Ethan shook his head. “Forget it. You’re here; stay here.”

“No. This is something I’ve got to do.”

“Great flying soubats!” the other exclaimed. “You never had ideas like that before!”

At this point Jared, from the edge of his hearing, caught the impression of Della stirring on her ledge.

He hurtied over and knelt beside her. He felt her face and it was cool and dry, signifying that she had slept off the fever.

“Where are we?” she asked weakly.

He started to tell her, but before he got halfway through he heard that she had drifted into normal sleep.

During the next period Della more than made up for her inactivity of the previous one. That she had been pensively silent on hearing Jared explain about the world they were in and on meeting Leah and Ethan was a prelude to something or other.

When they were alone later, kneeling beside a hot spring and applying fresh poultices to their spider bites, he learned the reason for her reticence.

“When was the last time you were here?” she demanded.

“Oh, so many gestations ago that I—”

“Manna sauce!” She turned away and the Forever Man’s tapping sounds blunted themselves against the cool stiffness of her back. “I must say, your Kind Survivoress is quite a surprise.”

“Yes, she—” Then he understood what she was intimating.

“Kind Survivoress — I’ll bet she was kind!”

“You don’t think—”

“Why did you bring me along? Was it because you thought that awkward giant might be interested in a Unification partner?’

Then she relented. “Oh, Jared, have you forgotten about the Zivver World already?”

“Of course not.”

“Then let’s get on our way.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t just run off. Leah saved our lives. These are friends!”

“Friends!” She cleared her throat and made it sound like the lash of a swish-rope. “You and your friends!”

Her head insolently erect, she strode off.

Jared followed, but drew up sharply when the world was suddenly cast into silence.

The Forever Man had stopped tapping! He was ready for company!

Unaccountably hesitant, Jared advanced cautiously across the world. Leah and Ethan had been credible. But the Forever Man loomed like a haunting creature from a fantastic past — someone whom he could never hope to understand.

Orienting himself by the asthmatic rasps that came from ahead, he approached the ledge.

“This is Jared,” Leah’s unspoken introduction rippled the psychic silence. “He’s finally come to hear us.”

“Jared?” The other’s reply, carried weakly on the crest of the woman’s thoughts, was burdened with the perplexity of forgetfulness.

“Of course, you remember.”

The Forever Man tapped inquisitively. And Jared intercepted the impression of a thin, finger delving almost its entire length into a depression in the rock before producing each tap. Over untold generations his thumping had eroded the stone that much!

“I don’t know you.” The voice, a pained whisper, was coarse as a rock slide.

“Leah used to sort of — bring me here long ago.”

“Oh, Ethan’s little friend!” A hand that was all bone set up an audible flutter as it trembled forward. It seized Jared’s wrist in a grip as tenuous as air. The Forever Man tried to smile, but the composite was grossly confused by a disheveled beard, skeletal protuberances and a misshapen, toothless mouth.

“How old are you?” Jared asked.

Even as he posed the question he knew it was unanswerable. Living by himself, before Leah and Ethan had come, the man would have had no life spans or gestations against which to measure time’s passage.

“Too old, son. And it’s been so lonely.” The straining voice was a murmur of despair against the stark silence of the world.

“Even with Leah and Ethan?”

“They don’t know what it means to have listened to loved ones pass on countless ages ago, to be banished from the beauties of the Original World, to—”

Jared started. “You lived in the Original World?”

“ — to be cast out after hearing your grandchildren and their great-great-grandchildren grow into Survivorship.”

“Did you live in the Original World?” Jared demanded.

“But you can’t blame them for getting rid of a Different One who wouldn’t grow old. What’s that — did I live in the Original World? Yes. Up until a few generations after we lost Light.”

“You mean you were there when Light was still with man?”

As though exhuming memories long laid to rest, the Forever Man finally replied, “Yes. I — what was it we used to say? — saw Light.”

“You saw Light?”

The other laughed — a thin, rasping outburst cut short by a wheeze and a cough. “Saw,” he babbled. “Past tense of the verb to see. See, saw, seen. Seesaw. We used to have a seesaw in the Original World, you know.”

See! There was that word again — mysterious and challenging and as obscure as the legends from which it had come.

“Did you hear Light?” Jared enunciated each word.

“I saw Light. Seesaw. Up and down. Oh, what fun we had! Children scampering around with bright, shiny faces, their eyes all agleam and—”

“Did you feel Him?” Jared was shouting now. “Did you touch Him? Did you hear Him?”

“Who?”

“Light!”

“No, no, son. I saw it.”

It? Then he, too, regarded Light as an impersonal thing! “What was it like? Tell me about it!”

The other fell silent, slumping on his ledge. Eventually he drew in a long, shuddering breath. “God! I don’t know! It’s been so long I can’t even remember what Light was like!”

Jared shook him by the shoulders. “Try! Try!”

“I can’t!” the old man sobbed.

“Did it have anything to do with the — -eyes?”

Tap-tap-tap…

He had returned to his thumping, burying bitter recollections and haunting thoughts under a rock pile of habit and mental detachment.

Leaving Kind Survivoress’ world now was out of the question — not with the Forever Man’s senile memory offering the hope of opening new passageways in Jared’s search for Light. Yet, he couldn’t tell Della why he had to extend their stay. So he simply pretended he was still physically unfit for immediate travel.

Apparently satisfied with this explanation for his postponement of their attempt to reach the Zivver World, Della grudgingly settled down to await his complete recovery.

That her original distrust of Leah had been an impulsive, passing thing was manifest in the subsequent lessening of tension between the two women. At one point, she even told Jared she might have been wrong in her first impression of Leah and Ethan. Why, it wasn’t at all as she had initially assumed, she confessed. And Ethan, despite his handicap, wasn’t the awkward, clumsy lout she had imagined him to be — not in the least.

Tactfully, Leah refrained from mind-to-mind contact with Jared and Ethan while they were in the girl’s presence. To the effect that Della either forgot the woman’s ability or gave it little thought.

Leah, too, had adjustments to make. Although she treated Della hospitably, Jared could always sense her misgiving over not being able to listen to the Zivver girl’s mind.

These developments Jared traced with interest while he waited for the Forever Man to abandon his solitude and seek company once more. Light! What he might learn from that ageless one!

During the fifth period after their arrival, Della was splashing in the river with Ethan while Jared was sharpening his spear points on a coarse rock when Leah’s thoughts came to him:

“Please forget about the Zivver World, Jared.”

“You know my mind’s made up.”

“Then you’ll have to change it. The passages are full of monsters.”

“How do you know? You told me you were afraid to listen to their minds.”

“But i’ve listened to other minds — in the two Levels.”

“And what did you hear?”

“Terror and panic and queer impressions I can’t understand. There are monsters all over. And the people are running and hiding and creeping back to their recesses, only to flee again later on.”

“Are there monsters near this world?”

“I don’t think so — not yet anyway.”

This posed another complication, Jared realized. Starting out for the Zivver World might not be a matter of leisure choice. It might well be that he should leave as quickly as possible.

“No, Jared. Don’t go — please!”

And he detected more than selfless concern for his welfare. Lying at the base of Leah’s thoughts were desperate pangs of loneliness, laced with the fear of having her simple, forlorn world cast back into the terrible solitude that had existed before he and Della arrived.

But he had made up his mind and he regretted only not having had the chance for a second talk with the Forever Man.

Just then, however, the latter’s tapping came to an abrupt halt.

Jared raced across the world this time.

And, as he passed the river, Della quit splashing to ask: “Where are you running?”

“To hear the Forever Man. Afterward we’ll be on our way.”

Perching on the ledge, Jared asked anxiously, “Can we talk now?”

“Go away,” the Forever Man groaned in protest. “You only make me remember. I don’t want to remember.”

“But compost! I’m hunting for Light!” You can help me!”

Only the rasps of the other’s labored breathing ifiled the world.

“Try to remember about Light!” Jared pleaded. “Did it have anything to do with — the eyes?”

“I — don’t know. It seems I can remember something about brightness and — I can’t imagine what else.”

“Brightness? What’s that?”

“Something like — a loud noise, a sharp taste, a hard punch maybe.”

Jared heard the uncertainty on the Forever Man’s face. Here was someone who might even tell him what he was searching for. But the man spoke only in riddles which were no clearer than the obscure legends themselves.

He tried to pace off his frustration in front of the nodding skeleton. Right before him might be the entire answer to how Light might benefit man, how it could touch all things at once and bring instant, inconceivably refined impressions of everything. If only the curtain of forgetfulness could be pierced!

He struck out in another direction: “What about Darkness? Do you know anything about that?”

And he heard the other shudder.

“Darkness?” the Forever Man repeated, hesitancy and sudden fear hanging on the word. “I — oh, God!”

“What’s the matter?”

The man was trembling violently now. His wry face was a grotesque mask of terror.

Jared had never heard such fright before. The other’s heartbeat had doubled and his pulse was like a wounded soubat’s thrashing. Each shallow, erratic breath seemed as though it would be his last. He tried to rise, but fell bank onto the ledge, burying his face in his hands.

“Oh, God! The Darkness! The awful Darkness! Now I remember. It’s all around us!”

Confounded, Jared backed off.

But the recluse grabbed his wrist and, with the strength of desperation, pulled him forward. Then his anguished cries shrilled through the world and spilled out into the passageway:

“Feel it pressing in? Horrible, black, evil Darkness! Oh, God, I didn’t want to remember! But you made me!”

Jared listened alertly, fearfully about him. Was the Forever Man sensing Darkness — now? Or was he just remembering it? But no, he had said it was “all around us,” hadn’t he?

Uneasily, Jared retreated and left his host fighting terror and sobbing, “Can’t you feel it? Don’t you see it? God, God, get me out of here!”

But Jared felt nothing except the cool touch of the air. Yet he was afraid. It was as though he had absorbed some of the Forever Man’s strange fear.

Was Darkness something you felt or perhaps seed — rather, saw? But if you could see it, that meant you could do the same thing to Darkness that the Guardian believed could be done to Light Almighty. But — what?

For a moment Jared was desperately afraid of an indefinite menace he could neither hear, nor feel, nor smell. It was an evil, uncanny sensation — a smothering, a silence that wasn’t soundlessness at all but something both alien and akin to it at the same time.

When he reached Della she was with Leah and Ethan. Nothing was said. It was as though a bit of the incomprehensible terror had spread to all of them.

Della had already packed some food in her carrying case and Leah, resigned to his decision, had gotten his spears for him.

The silence, uncomfortable and grave, persisted as they all walked to the exit. No good-bys were offered.

A few paces down the corridor Jared turned and promised, “I’ll be bank.” Casually letting his spears strike the wail, he sounded out the way and pushed on.

The somber world of Kind Survivoress and Little Listener and the unbelievable Forever Man slipped softly back into the immaterial depths of memory. And Jared felt a sense of poignant loss as he realized that recollections were fed by the same stuff of which dreams were made and that the only proof he would ever have of the existence of Leah’s world would be in the echoes of his reflections.