Dark Universe

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Hardly aware Mogan was no longer with him, Jared welcomed the intimate security of the Passageway’s walls as they closed in about him once more. The zip-hiss that had accounted for the Zivver leader’s absence was only an insignificant memory against his greater dismay.

Stumbling, he pushed on toward the first bend. His eyes, boiling and dripping tears of protest, were still feeling the awful presure of the monster stuff that had crammed all the empty space in that horrible infinity of Radiation.

He collided with a boulder, fell, picked himself up and raced on around the curve, only dimly aware that he was making his way among the hazards without the benefit of audible impulses.

Eventually he drew up and clung uncertainly to a slender hanging stone, waiting for his breathing to come under control.

Everything was clear now, ironically clear. All that stuff in infinity was — Light. It was the same Light he had spent a lifetime seeking. Only, it had turned out to be an evil thing because it was part of Radiation itself.

Then suddenly he felt the impact of yet another incredible realization:

Now he knew what Darkness was too!

It was here — in this very corridor — in all the corridors he had ever known, all the worlds he had ever visited. In his entire lifetime he had never been out of the Darkness, except for those few occasions on which he had encountered the monsters. There had been no way of recognizing it until he had first experienced Light.

But it was so simple now.

The infinity behind him was filled with Light. In the corridor ahead was a decided lessness of the stuff. And, around the next curve, there would be an absolute absence of Light, a totality of Darkness — so complete, so universal that he might have lived in it for ten thousand gestations without ever knowing it was there.

Reeling under the perplexing weight of strange, new concepts, he continued down the corridor, hands extended uncertainly. And, through the medium of his eyes alone, he could fully sense the Lightiessness that loomed ahead, stark as the most profound silence he had ever known — a heavy, thick curtain of Darkness.

With hesitant steps, he negotiated the bend and edged into the immaterial barrier, flinching as the Darkness closed inexorably in about him. Now, in feeling his way forward, his hands maintained a steady, probing motion. And, humiliated, he was reminded of how his less sensitive brother Romel had to grope his way into a dense silence.

With his next step his foot fell off into the emptiness of a shallow depression and he pitched forward clumsily. Before rising he gathered up a pair of pebbles and rattled them in his hand.

But now the clicks seemed remote and alien. Only with great concentration could he refine from the echoes the impressions of what lay ahead. And he wondered whether faulty hearing might be one of the immediate effects of Radiation sickness. Then he felt a fear as intense as the Darkness around him when he recalled another legend: Anyone who encountered Radiation could expect all kinds of severe illnesses — fever, deafness, fatal vomiting, shedding of the hair and blindness, whatever that was.

Yet, physical self-concern was buried under a bitterness that engulfed him like the stifling vapor of a boiling pit. Ahead stretched only a future as empty of material things as the vast infinity from which he had just escaped.

His every purpose was now nothing more than a shattered dream — his worlds decimated; Della gone; his search for Light ended in the agonizing remorse of disappointment and delusion. All his life he had chased a ringing hope down an intriguing corridor, only to overtake it finally and find that it was no more than a wisp of air.

Plodding on into the Darkness, he rattled his pebbles desperately, paying the price of severe attention for each impression he wrung from the no longer familiar echoes. In a frenzy, he wrested as much perceptive content as he could out of each reflected tone. And even then he had to pause occasionally and send a hand fumbling ahead to touch out an indistinct obstacle.

He reached the intersecting passage through which he and Mogan had arrived at this larger corridor and, a few steps farther, the reflections of his clicks began gathering impressions of the Original World’s resonant hollowness off to his left.

Then he clamped his fist around the rattling stones and snuffed out their noises. Tensing, he backed off before the sounds that were coming from ahead — direct sounds he should have heard many beats earlier.

Voices — many of them. The corridor was loud with monsters! He could even pick up their scent. And mingled with it was the characteristic odor of Zivvers — unconscious captives, no doubt, who were being borne by the demons.

He retreated from the center of the passage and crouched between two outcroppings, making certain he was in an echo void. It occurred to him, however, that if he wanted to conceal himself from the creatures, he would have to make sure he was in a Light void too. So he backed even farther into the recess.

Now he was becoming aware of the Light that was beginning to seep into the fissure. But, determined to have nothing further to do with the monster stuff which had already begun to rob him of his hearing, he closed his eyes tightly.

With the auditory composite of the monsters and Zivvers firmly in mind, he turned his attention to the conversation between a pair of demons passing by:

“…glad we decided to finish up with the Zivvers.”

“So am I. They’re not too hard to bring around, since they already know how to use their eyes.”

“They indoctrinate easy. Now you take that last group from the Upper…”

That conversation was superseded by another as two more monsters filed by:

“…damned intriguing, this zivving phenomenon. Thorndyke says he wants to study it closely.”

“It’s not all that peculiar. Once Radiation stimulates genetic change, you can expect any kind of mutation, including vision in the infrared range, I suppose.”

Many of the words were meaningless. Nor could Jared remember the name “Thorndyke” listed among the hierarchy of Nuclear demons.

The last of the procession passed and he only crouched there, lost in disappointment. He had listened intensely and sniffed avidly. But there had been no trace of Della among the captives.

He had almost decided to continue on toward the Lower Level when he heard yet another demon coming from the direction of the Barrier, however. And he almost bolted from concealment as he caught the scent of Della at the same time.

Keeping his eyes firmly closed so there would be no distraction from the Light impressions, he waited tensely. Finally the creature drew abreast of the fissure and Jared hurled himself upon it, driving his shoulder into its ribs.

Della’s inert weight came down upon him, but he shook free and lunged after her captor. He managed to catch the thing’s throat in the bend of his arm, but decided against wasting the time it would take to throttle the life out of it. Instead he pounded his fist againt the creature’s jaw until it went limp.

Lifting the girl onto his shoulder, he snapped his fingers to sound out his bearings, then raced on into the temporary security of the Original World. As best he could, he interpreted the reflections of the snaps and made his way across the central clearing. At random, he selected one of the shacks for further concealment.

Inside, he deposited Della on the floor and sat just within the opening, alertly listening for suspicious sounds.

Hundreds of breaths passed before he sensed the girl’s return to consciousness and heard her draw in an erratic breath. He hurried over and clamped a hand across her mouth in time to block a scream.

Against her terrified struggling he whispered, “It’s Jared. We’re in the Original World.”

When the fright had drained away he released her and told her what had happened.

“Oh, Jared!” she exclaimed after he had finished. “Let’s go find our hidden world while we still have the chance!”

“As soon as we can be sure there aren’t any more demons out in the corridors.”

Wearily, she rested her head against his arm. “We’ll find a pleasant world, won’t we?”

“The best. If it isn’t just like we want it, we’ll build it over to suit ourselves.”

“We’ll carve out a grotto first and then—” She hesitated. “Listen! What’s that?”

At first he heard nothing. Then, as their attentive silence deepened, there came a faint thump-thump, thump-thump. It was as though rocks, or something even harder, were striking one another. But, at the moment, he was more concerned over the fact that Della had heard it first. Could his encounter with Radiation have produced that degree of deafness already? Or was it merely that he was confused by the memory of having gained impressions through Light impulses and was forgetting how to use his ears?

“What is it?” she asked, rising.

“I don’t know.” He groped his way out of the residential structure. “It seems to be coming from this next shack.”

Homing in on the sound, he followed it through the entrance of that other living unit and stood listening to it flow up from a square opening in the floor. Della clung to his hand and he felt her start as she zivved the presence of the artificial pit.

He moved closer and listened sharply into the hole that descended at an acute angle instead of boring straight down. Now he could hear the thump-thump being distinctly modulated by an abrupt, regular series of elevations that stretched along the entire lower surface of the slanting tunnel.

“There are steps going down as far as I can hear,” he said.

“To where?”

He shrugged inadequately.

“Jared, I’m frightened.”

But he was rigid with thought, one foot poised above the first step. “The legends say Paradise isn’t far from the Original World.”

“There’s no Paradise down there! If we’re going to go anywhere, let’s get on with the search for our own world.”

He took the first step, reached for the next. He had found, to his distress, that Radiation was close to the Original World. But that didn’t mean Paradise, too, wasn’t somewhere around here.

Moreover, his attention was so firmly attached to the thump-thump, thump-thump that he had no incentive to consider anything else. It was a peculiar, enchanting sound that drew him down, down.

Thump-thump-throb, thump-thump-throb…

The clacks were crude, yet delicate. They were sharp and precise, profoundly clear. It was as though a super echo caster were sounding far in the distance — a caster whose reflections were so perfect that there wasn’t a detail of setting they couldn’t wring out of one’s surroundings.

Even with his hearing so dulled by having experienced the vast infinity of the Nuclear devils, he could discern features of the stones around him that he would never have been able to detect otherwise. Each crack and niche in every step, each fissure in the walls, all the minute rises or depressions of the surfaces — everything was clearly audible. Why, the sonic composites he was receiving now were almost as perfect as those weird ones which had come in through his eyes when all the Light in Radiation had engulfed him!

Impotent before the allurement of that marvelous caster, he hastened his descent. It was like approaching the most perfect artificial echo producer ever devised. Such a caster could, of course, exist only in Paradise.

Thump-throb, clank-chunk… Thump-throb, clankchunk, spat…

His ears opened in fascination to the subtle counterpoints that swam closer to the surface of the dominant sound as he neared its origin. The volume of the whole swelled about him like a soft embrace. The perfection and precision of these tones were incredible.

Thump-throb, ping-spat, sssss…

The bold, bass tones sounded out the exact pattern of every major prominence about him. Even without attentive listening he could keep track of each insignificant motion of Della’s arms and legs as she treaded the steps. And the finer, more highly pitched notes filled in the composite to a degree of completion that was exquisite. Take that delicate pinkle-twang — - it required no concentration at all to listen to each strand of hair that comprised the girl’s banded tress which now hung casually over her shoulder.

Thump-throb, ping-spat, chunk, tut-tut-tut-tut…

He tuned his ear to the minor stuttering vibration. Listening to its unbelievably distinct tones, he heard even the imperceptible creases of flesh that comprised the girl’s frown. The impressions that came from her long eyelashes were as clear as though he had scores of tiny fingers feeling each one individually.

He began taking the steps two at a time, fearing for a while that, in racing toward the infinite sonic beauty of Paradise, he might also be descending an infinitely long flight of stairs. But, then, the steps curved to the right and at last he could hear the opening at the bottom of the pit, not too far ahead.

“Let’s turn around!” Della pleaded, huffing. “We’ll never get back up all these steps!”

But he only went faster. “Don’t you hear this might be what I’ve been searching for all along? I wasn’t trying to find Light. I was really hunting for Paradise, but I didn’t realize that until now.”

He reached the bottom of the stairs and drew the girl to a halt beside him. They stood under a broad arch of stone that opened up on a vast enclosure, many times more expansive than even the spacious Zivver domain. Enraptured, he swayed before the rich, tremolant sound and let the mighty avalanche of ideal tones pour down upon him. It was easily the most entrancing experience of his life. He had found an auditory beauty beyond imagination. And such unbounded excellence of concord and rhythm transported him with delight, filled him with intense emotions of gratification, self-assurance.

Constraining his exuberant reaction, he listened to the world that stretched before him.

A Paradise that was practically — all water?

Impossible! Yet, there it was — one vast, level expanse that modified the reflecting tones with nothing but liquid fluidity.

He heard now that he was standing on a ledge only slightly higher than the surface of the water. And there was no other dry ground his ears could detect. From the far end of the world came the profound roar of an immense cataract that poured out of the ceiling.

The ledge extended but a few paces to his right. On his left it followed the natural curvature of the wall and he traced its audible details around to the very origin of the perfect sounding tones.

Paradise’s echo caster was a cluster of tremendous cubic structures. Each was many times the size of even the largest shack in the Original World. And they were smothered in a complicated pattern of huge tubes that stretched up out of the water, coiling and intertwining, and disappeared into the sides of the structures.

From the tops of the super shacks reared hundreds of tubes that shot straight up and bored into the ceiling in many directions.

Confounded, he studied the thump-throb, tut-tut-tut-tut that was bringing all these details to his ears.

“What is this place?” Della whispered apprehensively. “Why is there so much heat?”

Now that she had mentioned it, he was aware of the clinging warmth. And it all seemed to be coming from the huge shacks that were producing the ideal sounding echoes. Somehow he had begun to doubt seriously that he was in Paradise.

“What do you ziv, Della?” But even as he asked the question, he sensed that her eyes were closed.

“I’m not zivving — not with all this heat. It’s too much.” She seemed frightened and confused.

“Try it.”

She hesitated a long while before he caught the impression of her eyes flicking open.

But she only gasped and threw her hands in front of her face. “I can’t! It’s too painful!”

Then he realized that, all the while, his own eyes hadn’t been open. He raised his lids and saw (that would be the proper word for it, he remembered) nothing.

“Didn’t you ziv anything at all?” he asked.

Stubbornly, she continued shielding her face. “Some shacks — enormous ones. And a lot of stems reaching up from the water. Everything after that was too hot. I couldn’t keep my eyes on it.”

Impulsively, he swung his head back in the dierction of the shacks. There was Light over there now! Not the kind he had experienced in infinity, but the kind the monsters carried — two cones darting here and there among the noisemaking structures.

Puzzled over his silence, the girl asked, “What is it?”

“Monsters!”

Then he heard one of the creatures shouting to the other above the clamor of the multiple echo caster:

“Did you dampen the fourth reactor?’

“I shut it down completely. That takes care of the last few hot springs in the Upper Level, according to the diagram.”

“How about those scattered springs — the ones fed by the second reactor?”

“Thorndyke says to let them go on flowing. If we miss anybody, they’ll have a place to stay until we can find them.”

Heartsick, Jared retreated toward the stairs. He had been right all along. The monsters were responsible for the boiling pit failures. And now he heard how precarious had been the position of the Survivors through all the generations. At any chosen moment the demons could have deprived them of their principal means of existence!

Abruptly the cone of light swung in his direction. He turned and bolted for the stairs, prodding Della ahead of him.

“They’re coming!” he warned.

At full speed they bounded upward. There was a moment, after he had climbed hundreds of steps, that he considered slowing the pace so they could catch their breath. But he realized just then that he was also receiving faint Light composites of the things around him. Which meant the monsters were already on their way up!

His lungs boiling in protest, he put on a burst of speed nevertheless and dragged the girl along. Desperately, he wondered how far they were from the top.

“I — I can’t go on!” she complained.

When she collapsed, the sudden resistance of her weight against his grip almost pulled him off balance. He helped her up and, with an arm around her waist, resumed his dash up the stairs.

Despite his help, she fell again and, when he tried to lift her, he dropped beside the girl. He would have lain there forever. But this was their last chance; if they failed now, there would never be a secure, secluded world for them.

He struggled erect, cradled the girl in his arms and forced his numb legs back into motion. Each step sent a new throb of pain through his side. Each frantically gulped lungful of air seemed like it would be his last.

Then, finally, he heard the opening above and drew a scant measure of encouragement from the nearness of his goal. Only vaguely did he wonder, however, where he would muster the strength to find concealment after they reached the Original World.

An eternity later he hauled himself and the girl up over the last step and crawled onto the floor of the shack. He gave Della a shove forward. “Hide in one of the other units — quick!”

She dragged herself ahead, staggering on through the entrance. Outside, she pitched forward and he heard only the violent rasping of her breath as she lay there motionless.

He managed to pull himself erect. But paralyzing exhaustion sent him reeling against an inner wall. He collided with a bulky object and his auditory impressions of the shack spun dizzily about him. He crashed into something else and collapsed, retaining his consciousness not even long enough to feel the impact of all the furnishings that tumbled down on top of him.