Dark Universe

CHAPTER TWELVE

Savage undercurrents flung him to the right and left and finally sent him plunging into the depths. He caromed against the jagged bed of the stream, then swirled upward. Jared found no air for his bursting lungs as he crashed into the submerged ceiling. Yet, he managed to maintain his grip on Della’s hair.

Again and again the girl was dashed against him while he choked down the terrifying realization that the stream might rush on eternally through an infinity of rock without ever again flowing up into an air-filled world.

When he could hold his breath no longer, his head grazed a final stretch of ceiling, slipped under a ledge and bobbed to the surface. He pulled the girl up beside him and gulped great draughts of air. Sensing the nearness of the bank, he grabbed a partially exposed rock and anchored himself against it while he shoved her ashore. When he heard that she was still breathing, he crawled out and collapsed beside her.

Gestations later, after his pounding heartbeat slowed to a tolerable pace, he became aware of the roaring spatter of a nearby cataract. The noise and its distant reflections traced out the broad expanse of a high-domed world. But he started as he detected a variety of other sounds that barely pierced the audible curtain of cascading water — the remote clatter of manna shells, the thumping of rock against rock, the bleat of a sheep, voices, many voices, far and indistinct.

Confounded, he sneezed more water out of his nose. He rose, dislodging a pebble and listening to it chatter down an incline that sloped off alongside the waterfall. Then he caught a powerful, unmistakable scent and sat up, alert and excited.

“Jared!” The girl stood up beside him. “We’re in the Zivver World! Just ziv it! It’s exactly as I thought it would be!”

He listened sharply, but the composite, etched only by the dull sound of failing water, was fuzzy and confusing. Yet, he could hear the soft, fibrous tones of a manna orchard off on his left, a gaping exit to the corridor on the far right. And he picked up the impressions of many queer, evenly spaced forms in the center of the world. Arranged in rows, each was shaped like a cube with rectangular openings in its sides. And he recognized them for what they were — flying quarters fashioned after those in the Original World and possibly made out of manna stalks tied together.

Della started forward, her pulse accelerating in a surge of excitement. “Isn’t it a wonderful world? And ziv the Zivvers — so many of them!”

Not at all sharing the girl’s enthusiasm, he followed her down the incline, gaining his perception of the terrain from echoes of the waterfall.

It was indeed a strange world. He had managed by now to gamer the impressions of many Zivvers at work and play, others busy carrying soil and rocks and piling them up in the main entrance. But all that activity, without the reassuring tones of a central echocaster, gave an uncanny, forbidding cast to the world about him.

Morever, he was sorely disappointed. He had hoped that on stepping into the Zivver domain the difference he had been hunting all his life would fairly leap out at him. Oh, it was going to be so easy! Zivvers had eyes and, in using them, they materially affected the universal Darkness, eating holes in it, so to speak — just as hearing sound ate holes in silence. And, simply by recognizing what there was less of, he was going to identify Darkness.

But he could hear nothing unusual. Many persons were down there zivving. Yet, everything was exactly the same here as in any other world, except for the absence of an echo caster and the presence of the sharp Zivver scent.

Della quickened her pace but he restrained her. “We don’t want to startle them.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. We’re both Zivvers.”

Near enough to the settled area to intercept impressions from the rebounding sounds of communal activities, he followed the girl around the orchard and past a row of animal pens. Discovery finally came as they approached a party working on the nearest geometrical dwelling place. Jared heard an apprehensive silence fall upon the group and listened to heads twisting alertly in his direction.

“We’re Zivvers,” Della called out confidently. “We came here because we belong here.”

The men advanced silently, spreading out to converge on them from several directions.

“Mogan!” one of them shouted. “Over here — quick!”

Several Zivvers lunged and caught Jared’s arms, pinning them to his sides. Della too, he heard, was receiving the same treatment.

“We’re not armed,” he protested.

Others were gathering around now and he was grateful for the background of agitated voices that, in the absence of an echo caster, sounded out the more prominent details of his surroundings.

Two faces pushed close to his and he listened to eyes that were wide open and severe in their steadiness. He made certain his own lids were fully raised and unblinking.

“The girl’s zivving,” vouched someone off to his left.

An open hand fanned the air abruptly in front of his face and he was unable to keep his eyelids from flicking.

“I suppose this one is too,” the owner of the hand attested. “At least, his eyes are open.”

Jared and Della were hustled ahead between the rows of dwelling units while scores of Zivver Survivors collected from all over the world. Concentrating on vocal sounds and their reflections, he caught the impression of an immense figure pushing through the crowd and instantly recognized the man as Mogan, the Zivver leader.

“Who let them in?” Mogan demanded.

“They didn’t get by the entrance,” someone assured.

“They say they’re Zivvers,” offered another.

“Are they?” Mogan asked.

“They’re both open-eyed.”

The leader’s voice boomed down on Jared. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

Della answered first. “This is where we belong.”

“We were attacked by soubats beyond that far wall,” Jared explained. “We jumped into the river and washed up in here.”

Mogan’s voice lost some of its severity. “You must have had a Radiation of a time. I’m the only one who’s ever gotten in that way.” Then, boastfully, “Made it through against the current a couple of times, too. What were you doing out there?”

“Looking for this world,” Della replied. “We’re both Zivvers.”

“Like compost you are!” Mogan shot back. “There was only one original Zivver. All of us are his descendants. You’re not. You came from one of the Levels.”

“True,” she admitted. “But my father was a Zivver — Nathan Bradley.”

Somewhere in the background a Survivor drew in a tense breath and started forward. It was the anxious, heavy gasp of an elderly man.

“Nathan!” he exclaimed. “My son!”

But someone held him off.

“Nathan Bradley?” the man on Jared’s left repeated uncertainly.

“Sure,” answered another. “You heard about hun. Used to spend all his time out in the passages — until he disappeared.”

Then Jared felt the blast of Mogan’s words directed down at him again. “What about you?”

“He’s another original Zivver,” Della said.

“And I’m a soubat’s uncle!” the leader blurted.

Once more Jared’s self-confidence slid off into doubt over the ability to carry off his disguise as a Zivver. Groping for something convincing to say, he offered, “Maybe I’m not an original Zivver. You do have people who desert your world from time to time and who might be responsible for other spurs. There was Nathan and there was Estel—”

“Estel!” a woman exclaimed, pushing through the crowd. “What do you know about my daughter?”

“I was the one who sent her back here the first time I zivved her out near the Main Passage.”

The woman seized his arms and he could almost feel the pressure of her eyes. “Where is she? What’s happened to her?”

“She came to the Lower Level listening — zivving for me. That was how everybody found out I was a Zivver. After that I couldn’t very well stay down there.”

“Where is my child?” the woman demanded.

Reluctantly, he related what had happened to Estel. A condoling silence fell over the world while the Survivoress was led away sobbing.

“So you swam in under the rocks,” Mogan mused. “Lucky you didn’t get caught in the waterfall on this side.”

“Then we can stay?” Jared asked hopefully, trying to keep his eyes steady just as Mogan was doing.

“For the moment, yes.”

In the silence that followed, Jared sensed a subtle change in his perception of the Zivver leader. For some reason, Mogan was unconsciously holding his breath and his heartbeat had increased slightly. Jared concentrated on the effects and detected, even more faintly, that particular physical tension which claims a person intent on some crafty purpose. Then he caught the almost inaudible impression of Mogan’s hand rising slowly before him. He coughed casually and, in the reflections of the sound, discerned that the hand was slyly waiting to be clasped.

Without hesitation, his own hand shot forward and grasped the other. “Did you think I wouldn’t ziv that?” he asked, laughing.

“We’ve got to be careful,” Mogan said. “I’ve zivved Levelers who could hear so well that they might easily be mistaken for one of us.”

“What reason would we have for coming here if we weren’t Zivvers?”

“I don’t know. But we’re not taking any chances — not with those creatures stalking the passages. Even now we’re sealing the entrance before they can find it. But what good would that do if they learned there was another way to get in — a way that can’t be blocked?”

Mogan stepped between Jared and the girl and led them off. “We’re going to keep an eye on you until we’re sure we can trust you. Meanwhile, I know how you feel after swimming under those rocks. So we’ll give you a chance to rest.”

They were led to adjacent dwelling units — “shacks,” Jared had heard one of the Zivvers call them — and were ushered in through rectangular openings. Guards were posted outside each structure.

Standing uncertainly within the enclosure, Jared cleared his throat rather loudly. Echoes of the sound brought details of a recess strikingly different from any of the residental grottoes he had known. Here, everything was an adaptation of the rectangle. There was a dining slab whose remarkably level surface was composed of husks woven tightly together and stretched across a framework of manna stalks. He laid his hand casually upon it and traced the weave. Four other stalks, he heard, served as legs to hold the leveF section off the floor.

He yawned as though it were a quite spontaneous expression of weariness — in case anybody should be listening or zivving — and studied the reflected auditory pattern. Arranged around the dining slab were benches of similar construction. The slumber ledge, too, was a flimsy thing supported on the apparently traditional four legs.

Then he drew up sharply, but tried not to give any indication he had discovered he was being listened to — zivved, he reminded himself. There was an elevated opening in the right wall, beyond the slumber ledge. And through that space he caught the sound of breathing purposely made shallow to insure concealment. Someone was standing out there zivving everything he did.

Very well, the safest course would be to move about as little as possible and thereby reduce the chances of betraying himself.

He yawned noisily once more, fixing in mind the position of the slumber ledge. Then he went over and lay down. They expected him to be exhausted, didn’t they? Then why not be exhausted?

Comfortable against the softness of the manna fiber mattress, he realized that swimming the underground river had been an ordeal. And it wasn’t too long before he was asleep.

Scream after scream crashed in on his slumber and once again he recognized the impressions as nonaudible.

Leah!

Forcing himself to remain in the dream, he tried to pry more deeply beyond the communicative link with Kind Survivoress. But the erratic contact conveyed only the essence of horror and despair. He tried to work his way psychically toward the woman and succeeded in tightening somewhat the bond between them.

“Monsters! Monsters! Monsters!” she was sobbing over and over again.

And through her torment he caught the sensation of her eyelids being closed so tightly that the inner portions of her ears were roaring under the presure; strong, determined hands gripping her arms and pulling her first this way, then that; a sharp point jabbing brutally into her shoulder; odors so frightfully offensive in their alien quality that he felt like gagging with her.

Then he intercepted the impression of fingers digging into the flesh above and below her eyes and forcing the lids open.

And instantly all Radiation screamed at him through the woman’s conscious. He recognized the stentorian blare of silent sound as being identical to the stuff the monsters had hurled against the corridor walls. Only, now it was overpowering as it crashed against Leah’s eyes. He feared the woman would be driven insane.

With that single convulsive sensation he lurched out of the nightmare which he knew had been no nightmare at all.

What he had heard through Kind Survivoress’ eyes certainly could have been nothing but the Nuclear Fire of Radiation itself. It was as though he had crossed the boundary of material existence to share part of the torture the Atomic Demons were meting out to her beyond infinity.

Trembling, he lay motionless on the slumber ledge while the bitter aftertaste of his pseudo dream experience persisted like a fever.

Leah — gone.

Her world — empty.

The corridors — populated with monstrous humans who hurled derisive, screaming echoes that carried no sound at all. Fiendish creatures who struck their victims with paralysis before carrying them — where?

A Zivver came in, placed a shell of food on the dining surface and left without speaking. Jared went over and picked at the ration. But his interest in the meal was submerged in the remorseful realization that, during his foolhardy quest for Darkness and Light, his familiar worlds had crumbled all about him.

The pace of irrevocable change had been furious and relentless. And he grimly suspected that things would, could never be the same. Certainly, the malevolent beings in their outlandish attire of loosely fitting cloths had laid claim to all the worlds and passages and were now taking over with vehement determination. He was sure, too, that the design of hot spring failures and dwindling water level was but another phase of their scheme.

And while all these things had happened he had squandered his time searching for something trivial, nursing the belief that Light was desirable. He had let the solid things of material worth slip from his grasp as he chased a whimsical breeze down an endless corridor.

Things may have been different had he, instead, organized the Levels and led the fight for Survival. There might even have been hope of returning to a normal pattern of existence, with Della as his Unification partner. Perhaps he might not even have found out she was — Different.

But it was too late now. He was a virtual prisoner in the very world which he had expected would provide the key to his futile quest for Light. And both he and the Zivvers were themselves helpless captives of the monsters who ruled the corridors.

He pushed the food aside and ran a hand through his hair. Outside, the world was animate with the audible effects of an activity period in full swing — loud conversation, children at play and, more remotely, the sound of rocks being piled on rocks as workers continued sealing off the entrance. Listlessly, he made a note of the fact that the latter noises were an excellent echo source.

But, more directly, he concerned himself with the despair which came with his conviction that he would find nothing different here — nothing to justify having extended his search for Darkness and Light to this world.

Among the nearer audible effects he recognized Della’s voice coming from the next shack. It was a happy, excited voice that leaped from subject to subject with a bubbling rapidity and was at times obscured by the effusive words of several other women. From bits of the conversation he gathered that she had quickly located all her Zivver relatives.

The curtains parted and Mogan stood in the entrance. His bulky form, silhouetted only by back sounding, coarsely punctured the silence of the shack.

The Zivver leader beckoned with a distinctive twist of his head. “It’s about time we made sure you’re one of us.”

Jared feigned an indifferent shrug and followed him outside.

Mogan led the way alongside a row of dwelling units as many other Zivvers fell in behind them.

They reached a clearing and the leader drew to a halt. “We’re going to have a little rough-and-tumble — just you and me.”

Frowning obtusely, Jared listened up at the man.

“That’s the surest way to find out whether you’re really zivving, don’t you agree?” Mogan said, spreading his hands.

And Jared heard that they were huge hands, altogether commensurate with the size of the man. “I suppose it is,” he agreed, with just a tinge of futility.

A figure broke out of the crowd and he recognized Della as she started toward him, concern heavy in the shallowness of her breathing. But someone caught her arm and drew her back.

“Ready?” Mogan asked.

Jared braced himself. “Ready.”

But apparently the Zivver leader wasn’t ready — not just yet.

“All right, Owlson,” he shouted, facing the party that was still working at the entrance. “I want complete silence over there.”

Then he turned to those around him. “Nobody makes a sound — understand?”

Jared concealed his hopelessness and said sarcastically, “You’re forgetting I can still smell.” He realized gratefully that Mogan had also forgotten about the noise of the waterfall which, thank Light, couldn’t be silenced.

“Oh, we’re not finished with the preparations,” the other laughed.

Several Zivvers seized Jared’s arms while another caught his hair and twisted his head back. Then wads of coarse, moist substance were stuffed into his ears and forced up his nostrils — mud!

Released into an odorless, soundless void, he brought his hands up to his face. But before he could dig the clay from his ears, Mogan closed in and locked his neck in a rocklike grip. He was wrenched off his feet and hurled violently to the ground.

Disoriented because there was no sound or scent to guide him, he sprang up and delivered a blow that landed on nothing and succeeded only in throwing him off balance again.

Dimly, he heard the laughter that ifitered through the mud in his ears. But the sound was too vague to bear any impressions of Mogan’s whereabouts. Fists swinging, Jared stumbled forward, circling — until the Zivver leader clouted him on the back of his neck and flattened him once more.

When he tried to rise this time, a fist pounded into his face, almost taking his head off. And he would have been convinced the following blow did accomplish that purpose if unconsciousness had not deprived him of the ability to be sure of anything.

Eventually, he responded to the stinging splash of water against his face and raised himself on an elbow. The mud had fallen from one of his ears and he could hear the circle of men who stood zivving menacingly down on him.

From within the crowd came the voices of Mogan and Della:

“Of course I knew he wasn’t a Zivver,” the girl was maintaining.

Irately, Mogan reminded, “And yet you brought him here.”

“He brought me.” She laughed scornfully. “I couldn’t have made it by myself. My only chance was to let him think I believed he was a Zivver too.”

“Why didn’t you tell us the truth before this?”

“And give him a chance to turn on me before you could stop him? Anyway, I knew you’d find out for yourself sooner or later.”

Jared shook his head dully, remembering Leah’s warning against the girl and his own doubts from time to time. If he had been able to listen beyond the lobe of his ear, he might have heard that she was using him all along merely as an escort in her search for the Zivver World.

He tried to rise, but someone planted a foot on his shoulder and pressed him back against the ground.

“What’s he doing here?” Mogan asked the girl.

“I don’t know exactly. He’s hunting for something and he thinks he might find it here.”

“What?”

“Darkness.”

Mogan made his way over and hauled Jared to his feet. “What did you come here for?”

Jared said nothing.

“Were you trying to find this world so you could lead a raid on it?”

When that drew no response, the leader added, “Or are you helping the monsters locate us?”

Still Jared offered no reply.

“We’ll let you think it over awhile. You might realize a frank tongue could make things easier for you.”

Jared, however, sensed there would be no leniency. For, as long as he was alive, they would always fear he might escape and carry out whatever purpose they suspected he was concealing.

Trussed with fiber rope, he was taken halfway across the world and shoved into a dwelling unit not too far from the roaring cataract. It was a cramped shack whose wall openings were barred with stout manna stems.