Dark Universe

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Throughout most of the travel period Della tagged silently along. That she was troubled with a restive hesitancy was evident in the worrisome expression Jared could hear on her face. Was she anxious over something he had said or done? Light knew he had already given plenty of cause for misgiving.

Since leaving Leah’s world, though, he had devised an artful echo-producing system which he felt certain had escaped Della’s suspicion. It consisted principally of filling the corridors with one whistled tune after another.

Eventually, the passageway pinched in on them and there was a stretch through which they had to crawl. On the other side, he rose and thudded his spear against the ground.

“Now we can breathe easier.”

“Why?” she drew up beside him.

“Our rear’s protected against soubats. They can’t get through a tunnel that small.”

She was silent momentarily. “Jared—”

Here came the question he knew she had been putting off. But he decided to forestall it. “There’s a big passage up ahead.”

“Yes, I ziv it. Jared, I—”

“And the air is heavy with the scent of Zivvers.” He skirted a narrow chasm whose outline was carried on his reflected words.

“It is?” She pushed ahead eagerly. “Maybe we’re close to their world!”

They reached the intersection and he stood there trying to determine whether they should go to the right or left. Then he tensed, instinctively gripping his spears. Mingled with the Zivver scent was a hidden, evil smell that fouled the air — an unmistakable fetor.

“Della,” he whispered, “monsters have just been this way.”

But she didn’t hear him. Enthused, she had already strode off along the right-hand branch of the corridor. Even now he could hear her rounding the bend a short way off.

Abruptly there was the grating sound of a rock slide, punctuated by a scream.

With the corridor’s composite frozen in his memory by the shrill reflections, he raced toward the great, gaping hole that had swallowed the girl’s terrified outcry.

Reaching the area of loose rock, he snapped his fingers to gain an impression of the pit’s mouth. There was a solidly embedded boulder rearing up out of the rubble right next to the rim. He laid his spears down and one of them slid away, plunging over the edge and striking the wall repeatedly as it plummeted into the depth. The clatter persisted until the sound lost itself in remote silence.

Casting the other lance back onto solid ground, he frantically shouted, “Della!”

She answered in a terrified whisper, “I’m down here — on a ledge.”

He thanked Light that her voice came from nearby and that there might be a chance of saving her.

Securing a grip on the boulder, he swung himself out over the chasm and snapped his fingers once more. Reflections of the sound told him she was huddled on a shelf close to the surface.

His extended hand touched hers and he gripped her wrist, lifting her out of the hold and shoving her past the area of loose rock onto firm ground.

They backed away from the pit and a final rock rolled off the incline, chattering down into the abyss. Echoes of the sharp sounds fetched the impression of the girl’s calm melting away.

He let her cry for a while, then took hold of her arms and drew her erect. The sound of his breathing reflected against her face and he listened to the manner in which exposed eyes dominated her other features. He could almost feel their sharp, intense fixedness and, momentarily, he thought he might be on the verge of guessing the nature of zivving.

“It was just like what happened to my mother and father!” She nodded back toward the abyss. “It’s like an omen — as if something were telling us we can take up where they left off!”

Her hands pressed down on his shoulders and, remembering the firm softness of her body against his in that other corridor, he drew her close and kissed her. The girl’s response was eager at first, but quickly faded off into a perceptible coolness.

He retrieved his spear. “All right, Della. What is it?”

She wasted no time framing the question she had held back:

“What’s all this about hunting for — Light? I heard you shouting at the Forever Man, asking him about Darkness too. And it scared the wits out of him.”

“It’s simple.” He shrugged. “Like you heard me say, I’m hunting for Darkness and Light.”

He sensed her perplexed frown as they started down the corridor. A manna shell thumped the side of her carrying case with each step and the sounds were sufficient to gather impressions of the passageway.

“It’s not something theological,” he assured. “I just have an idea Darkness and Light aren’t what we think they are.”

He could tell that her puzzlement had given way to mild doubt — a refusal to believe the explanation was that simple.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” she protested. “Everybody knows who Light is, what Darkness is.”

“Then let’s let it go at that and just say I have a different idea.”

She fell silent a moment. “I don’t understand.”

“Don’t let it bother you.”

“But the Forever Man — Darkness meant something different to him. He wasn’t frightened over ‘evil’ being all around him. He was scared of something else, wasn’t he?”

“I suppose so.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

Again she said nothing for a long while, until they had passed several branch corridors. “Jared, does all this have anything to do with going to the Zivver World?”

To a certain extent, he felt, he could be outspoken without laying his zivvership open to further suspicion. “In a way, yes. Just like zivving concerns the eyes, I believe Darkness and Light are in some way connected with the eyes too. And—”

“And you think you can find out more about them in the Zivver World?”

“That’s right.” He led her along a sweeping curve.

“Is that the only reason you’re going there?”

“No. Like you, I’m also a Zivver; that’s where I belong.”

He heard the girl’s sudden relief — the relaxation of her tenseness, the quietening of her heartbeat. His candor had evidently allayed her misgiving and now she was ready to shrug off his quest as a whim that posed no particular threat to her interests.

She eased her hand into his and they continued on around the bend. But he pulled up sharply as be caught the scent of monsters ahead. At the same time he shrank away from the left wall. For, even as he listened to its featureless surface, an indiscernible patch of silent echoes had begun playing against the moist stone.

This time he was almost prepared for the uncanny sensation. Experimentally, he closed his eyes and was instantly no longer aware of the dancing sound. He opened them again and the noiseless reflections returned immediately — like the soft touch of a shouted whisper spreading itself thin against a smooth rock surface.

“The monsters are coming!” Della warned. “I ziv their impressions — against that wall!”

He half-faced her. “You ziv them?”

“It’s almost like zivving. Jared, let’s get away from here!”

He only stood there concentrating on the weird, soundless noise that flowed back and forth against the wall, never reaching his ears but making his eyes feel as though someone had thrown boiling water into them. She had said she zivved the impressions. Did that mean zivving was something like what was happening to him now?

Then he listened to the purely audible impressions that were coming from around the bend. There was only one monster approaching. “You go back and wait in the first side corridor.”

“No, Jared. You can’t—”

But he propelled her down the passage and eased into a niche in the wall. When he heard there wouldn’t be enough room to draw his spear, he laid it on the ground. Then he closed his eyes, blocking off the distracting impressions the monster was hurling.

The creature had reached the bend and Jared could hear it hugging the near wall. He pressed farther into the recess.

The thing’s awful, alien smell was overpowering in its nearness now. And clearly audible, too, were the numerous folds of flesh — if that’s what they were — fluttering about its body. If the breathing and heartbeat were of tie same intensity and frequency as the average person’s, then it must be drawing even with his hiding place just about — now.

Lunging into the corridor, he drove his fist into what he judged to be the creature’s midsection.

Air exploded from the monster’s lungs as it fell forward against him. Bracing himself against what he had expected to be a slimy touch, he pounded another fist into its face.

Anxiously, he snapped his eyes open as he heard the monster collapse on the ground. He had half-expected there would be no more strange, soundless noise spreading out from the thing now that it was unconscious. And there wasn’t.

Kneeling, he sent his hands out reluctantly to explore the creature. And he discovered there were no folds of flesh festooning its body. Rather, its arms, legs, torso were all covered by loosely fitting cloth of a texture even finer than the piece he had fçund at the entrance to the Lower Level. No wonder he had received the impression of sagging hide! Who ever heard of chestcloths or loincloths that didn’t fit skintight?

His hands groped upward and encountered a duplicate of the rougher cloth he had buried in the corridor outside his world. It was drawn taut over the monster’s face and held there by four ribbons tied behind its head.

He snatched the cloth away and ran his fingers over — a normal human face! It was much like a woman’s or child’s, smooth and completely hairless. But the cast of the features was masculine.

The monster was human!

Jared rose and his foot met a hard object. Before touching it, he bent and snapped his fingers several times. And he had no difficulty recognizing the thing. It was identical to the tubular devices left behind by the monsters in both the Upper and Lower Level.

The creature stirred and Jared dropped the object, diving for his spear.

Just then Della came sprinting down the corridor. “More monsters — coming from the other way!”

Listening around the bend, he could hear the sounds of their approach. And he was aware of the play of their mysterious mute noises along the right wall of the corridor.

He seized the girl’s hand and raced on up the passage, letting his spear thump the ground so it would produce sounding impulses.

From ahead he heard the composite of a smaller branch passage. He slowed and headed cautiously into it.

“Let’s go this way awhile,” he suggested. “I think it’ll be safer.”

“Is the Zivver scent strong in this passage too?”

“No. But we’ll pick it up again. These smaller tunnels usually curve back.”

“Oh, well,” she said, comforting herself, “at least we shouldn’t be bothered by monsters for a while.”

“Those aren’t monsters.” He surmised that, like hearing, zivving impressions weren’t refined enough to distinguish between loose cloth and flesh. “They are humans.”

He heard her startled expression. “But how can that be?”

“I suppose they are Different Ones — more different than all the others put together. Superior even to the Zivvers.”

He let the girl lead the way and anxiously gave his attention to the enigma of the monsters. Perhaps they were, after all, devils. It was commonplace to speak of the Twin Devils. But some of the lesser legends referred to, not two, but many demons who dwelled in Radiation. Even now he could call to mind several of them, all of whom were usually represented in personified form. There were CarbonFourteen; the two U’s — Two Thirty-Five and Two ThirtyEight; Plutonium of the Two Thirty-Nine Level, and that great, sulking, evil being of the Thermonuclear Depth — Hydrogen.

Of Radiation’s demons there were many, now that he thought of it. And ascribed to all of them were the capacities of insidious infiltration, ingenious disguise and complete and prolonged contamination. Could it be that the devils, emerging from mythology, had finally decided to exercise their powers?

The girl slowed to pick her way over loose, uneven ground. And the noise of rocks shifting beneath their feet made it even easier to hear the way.

He found himself recalling his recent encounter with the being in the corridor. The silent sound it had cast on the wall was most remarkable, once one managed to overcome the initial horror it brought. Dwelling on those sensations, he remembered how clearly he had seemed to hear — or was it feel, or, perhaps, even ziv? — the details of the wall. He had been completely aware of each tiny ridge and crevice, each protuberance.

Then he stiffened as he drew from memory something the Guardian of the Way had said not too long ago — something about Light in Paradise touching everything and bringing to man total knowledge of all things about him. But, certainly, that material the monsters produced and hurled against the wall couldn’t be the Almighty! And that corridor couldn’t have been Paradise!

No. It was impossible. That meager stuff thrown so casually about the passageway by the manlike creature hadn’t been Light. Of that he was finally and unalterably positive.

As they continued on along the rugged tunnel, his reflections turned to another matter of concern. For the moment it seemed he could almost put his finger on something that there was less of in this very passage! But it was too vague a concept to encourage further speculation. It must have been only wishful thinking, he decided, that was suggesting he might accidentally stumble upon Light’s opposite, Darkness, in this remote, deserted corridor.

Della drew up before an opening in the wall and pulled him over beside her. “Just ziv this world!” she exclaimed buoyantly.

The wind rushing into the hole was cool against his back as he stood there listening to the delightful music of a gurgling stream and using the echoes of that sound to study other features of the medium-sized world.

“What a wonderful place!” she went on excitedly. “I can ziv five or six hot springs and at least a couple of hundred manna plants. And the banks of the river — they’re covered with salamanders!”

As she spoke her rebounding words set up an audible composite of their surroundings. And Jared appreciatively took in several natural recesses in the left wall, a high-domed ceiling that insured good circulation, and smooth, level ground all around them.

She locked her arm in his and they walked farther into the world. The wind sweeping in from the corridor gave the air a refreshing coolness that was superior to the Lower Level’s.

“I wonder if this was the world my mother was trying to reach,” the girl said distantly.

“She couldn’t have found a better place. I’d say it would support a large family and all its descendants for several generations.”

They sat on a steep bank overhearing the river and Jared listened to the swishing of large fish beneath the surface while Della parceled out food from her case.

After a while he probed audibly beneath her silence and caught the suggestion of yet another area of uncertainty.

“There’s something bothering you, isn’t there?” he asked.

She nodded. “I still don’t understand about Leah and you. I can hear now that she did visit you in your dreams. Yet, you yourself said she couldn’t reach the mind of a Zivver.”

Now he was certain she didn’t know he couldn’t ziv. For if she were out here for some treacherous reason, the last thing she’d do would be to let him find out she suspected him.

“I’ve already told you I think I’m a little different from other Zivvers,” he reminded. “Right now I’m zivving a halfdozen fish in the river. You can’t ziv a single one.”

She lay back on the ground and, out of crossed arms, made a cushion for her head. “I hope you’re not too different. I wouldn’t want to feel — inferior.”

Her words struck home with unintended mockery. And he knew that being inferior to her was what he had resented all along.

“If we weren’t hunting for the Zivver World,” she offered, yawning, “this would be a nice place to settle in, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe staying here is the best thing we could do.”

He stretched out beside her and, even from the negligible echoes of his breathing, he could hear the attractive composite of the girl’s face, the gentle, firm contours of her shoulders, hips, waist — all veiled in the whispering softness of near inaudibility.

“It might be a — good idea,” she said drowsily, “if we — decided—”

He waited. But from her direction came only the slight body murmurs of sl p.

He turned over, crooked an arm under his head and banished the maudlin, wistful thought that had begun to obscure his purpose. He had to concede, though, that it would be pleasant to remain here in this remote world with Della and put out of his mind forever the Zivvers, human monsters, soubats, Upper and Lower Levels, Survivorship, and all the chains of formality and restrictions of communal law. And, yes, even his hopeless quest for Light and Darkness.

But such an arrangement was not for him. Della was a Zivver — a superior Different One. And he would always have to listen up to her and her greater abilities. It would never do. What was it he had once overheard one Zivver tell another during a raid? — “A Zivver down here is the same as a oneeared man in a world of the deaf.”

That was it. He would always be like an invalid, with Della to lead him around by the hand. And in her incomprehensible world of murmuring air currents and psychic awareness of things he could never hope to hear, he would be lost and frustrated.

Even from the depths of sleep he could tell that he had lain there beside the girl a long while — perhaps the equivalent of a slumber period or more. And he surely must have been close to wakefulness when he heard the screams.

Had they been Della’s, they would have jolted him from sleep. That he continued to hear them without awakening was a measure of their psychic quality. They seemed to come from deep within his mind, spawned in a vortex of projected terror.

Then he recognized Leah behind the desperate, silent outcries. He tried to distill concrete meaning from the hodgepodge of frantic impressions. But the woman was in such a panic that she couldn’t put her fright into words.

Digging into the emotions of terrible astonishment and dismay, he intercepted piecemeal impressions — shouting and screaming, rushing feet and roaring bursts of silent sound that played derisively across walls which had been such a warm and real part of his childhood fantasies, an occasional zip-hiss.

The composite was unmistakable: The human monsters had finally found Leah’s world!

“Jared! Jared! Soubats — coming in from the passage!” Della shook him awake.

He grabbed his spear and sprang to his feet. The first of the three or four beasts that had winged into the world was almost upon them. There was scarely time to hurl Della to the ground and plant his spear in readines for the initial impact.

The lead creature screeched down in a vicious dive and took the point of the weapon full in its chest. The lance snapped in half and the beast struck the ground with jarring impact.

The second and third hateful furies began their plunge.

He hurled the girl into the river and leaped in after her. In less than a beat the current, immensely swifter than he had estimated, was sweeping her away — toward the side wall where the stream rushed into a subterranean channel.

He heard that he couldn’t overtake her in time, but he swam ahead anyway. A soubat’s wingtip thrashed the water in front of him, talons barely missing their mark in a swooping attack.

At the beginning of his next stroke, his hand touched Della’s hair, frothing on the surface of the water, and he secured a grip on it. But too late. The current had already sucked them into the subsurface channel and had drawn boulders of water in behind them.