Dark Universe

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

At first Jared thought he was receiving touch-sound impressions from Leah. He found himself listening — through the woman’s consciousness, he felt certain — to many voices made indistinct by distance. Too, the current of vocal impulses, passing through the “window,” flared out to bounce against nearby square walls.

Undoubtedly, the composite was that of the shack in which Leah was being held prisoner. The experience this time, though, was most vivid. He could almost feel the straps cutting into the flesh above her elbows as they pinned her arms to the “bed.”

“Leah?” he thought.

But there was no response.

Then he realized the perceptions were not secondhand. It was he who was confined in the shack. And if he hadn’t recognized that fact until now, it was possibly because he was stifi undergoing some of the effects of the zip-hiss that had robbed him of his senses.

He listened sharply and determined that that there was no one else, human or otherwise, with him. Cautiously, he turned his ears toward the window and heard the rustling of the heavy curtain hanging over that space. A breeze was opening occasional cracks in the folds, through which the voices entered more strongly but still unclearly.

A brisker current caught the curtain, sweeping it partly aside, and he received the sonic impression of a great wall of rock rearing to unguessable heights. It was a composite he was sure he had listened to before and he pressed his memory for the association.

Of course — it was the same wall through which he and Mogan had stumbled into Radiation. Before the curtain fluttered back into place, he even heard the remote hollowness of the passageway’s gaping end as it flared out on infinity.

There was no doubt about it now. He was somewhere in the terrifying vastness of Radiation. His eyes opened and he flinched before the onslaught of impressions. Yet, the sensation was not as fierce as he had expected. And he supposed its mildness was due to the fact that the walls of the shack were keeping out most of the Light.

His head rolled toward the window but snapped instantly back. In the split beat before his lids had clamped shut he had gotten a frightening impression. It was as though part of Hydrogen had leaped in through a rift in the curtain to cast Himself in a long, narrow streak on the relative Darkness of the floor!

Many beats later he forced his eyes open again and began struggling against his bonds. His arms, free below the elbows, thrashed upward as far as they could, but to no avail. Against the lingering aftereffects of the zip-hiss he was still powerless.

In the next moment he stifled a fearful cry and brought trembling lids back down over his eyes. He had received the composite of something menacing and horrible — right there before him! Something bulbous with five curving protuberances that reminded him vaguely of the sonic impression of a -

But, no, it couldn’t be! Yet -

He opened his eyes and experimentally wiggled a finger on his left hand. And one of the protuberances on the bulbous thing wiggled too. Relieved, he lowered the hand. But he was even more puzzled. The legends had said Light would touch all things and bring incredibly refined impressions. None of the beliefs, however, had even hinted that a Survivor might receive composites of his own body!

He brought the hand back up where he could see it and studied the impressions. How unbelievably perfect they were! Why, he could recognize each individual crease in the palm, each hair on the back!

Then he tensed in stark disbelief. The hand had abruptly split into two, as though the original had given birth to another just like it! The two drifted back into one, then separated again, moving farther apart!

At the same time he was aware of a shifting pressure on the muscles of his eyeballs — a tenseness that crossed the bridge of his nose whenever the hand divided, then relaxed again as the parts rejoined. And he found that with concentration he could prevent the confusing and certainly false impression of two members when all his other senses told him there could be only one.

Voices in the immediate vicinity of the shack put Jared on guard and he had time to feign an attitude of sleep before he heard the door open. Listening to two of his captors enter, he remained rigid as they came over and stood by the bed. And as they spoke he could hear their words filtering through the cloth face masks:

“This the new one?”

“The last brought out. Incidentally, as best we can determine, he’s the one who slugged Hawkins over that infraredsensitive girl.”

“Oh, that one. Fenton — Jared Fenton. His old man’s been waiting for this day.”

“Want me to go tell Evan we got him?”

“Can’t. He’s been moved to advanced reconditioning.”

Jared hoped the pair hadn’t detected his start at the mention of his father. Convincing them he was asleep was his only hope of forestalling torture.

“Well, Thorndyke,” said the closer of the two, “let’s get on with it.”

Jared couldn’t help starting again on learning Thomdyke Himself was there.

“Has he had his primary shots yet?” the latter asked.

“All of them.”

“Then I guess we can shuck these without touching off another cold epidemic.”

Jared heard them remove the cloths from their faces. Then a hand came down unexpectedly on his shoulder.

“All right, Fenton,” Thorndyke said. “I’m going to hit you between the eyes with a lot of stuff you won’t even usderstand — at first. But it’ll seep through gradually.”

When Jared didn’t answer, the other captor asked, “You suppose he’s still out?”

“Of course not. All those who don’t bounce up screaming put on the sleep act. Come on, Fenton. As I get it, you’ve had more experience with light than any of them. You ought to take this in stride.”

Perhaps it was the calculated smoothness of the voice. Or, it may have been that, without realizing it, Jared had grown tired of holding his eyes shut. At any rate, in the next beat light was pouring into his conscious and carrying a succession of inseparable impressions with it.

“That’s better,” Thorndyke sighed. “Now we’re moving.”

But Jared’s lids ificked shut, blocking out the disturbing sensations. And he compared the Light composite he had stored in that brief instant with the audible impulses he was still receiving.

Thorndyke was a big man (briefly, he questioned his description of the monster as human) with a blunt face whose bone structure suggested strength and determination. Those traits, however, were a puzzling contrast to the femininity implied by his hairless chin.

Loose folds of cloth that fluttered with each minor movement confused the over-all composite. But Jared conceded that, for beings who lived in the vastness and relative warmth of infinity, tight-fitting cloths would be both uncomfortable and inconvenient.

“Throw back those drapes, Caseman,” Thorndyke said, “and let’s get some light in here.”

“You sure he’s ready for it?” the other asked, going over to the window.

“I think so. He’s holding up almost as well as a Zivver. Probably had more brushes with light than we know about.”

A surge of apprehension shuddered through Jared as he listened to the curtain being drawn aside and sensed the assault of fierce light against his closed lids.

Thorndyke’s hand came back to rest on his shoulder. “Easy now, Fenton. Nothing’s going to hurt you.”

But, of course, it was only deceit. They were going to soften him, give him a false sense of confidence. Then, when they smothered his hope with torture, their amusement would be complete.

He opened his eyes. But he could hardly brave the fury of light pouring into the shack now. When he relowered his lids, however, it wasn’t as much because he feared the light as it was because he had seen two Thorndykes standing side by side! It made him tremble.

Thorndyke laughed. “Lack of optical co-ordination makes thmgs confusing, doesn’t it? But you’ll learn the finer points of focusing sooner or later.”

He drew up a framework bench and sat beside the bed. “Let’s set a few things straight for the record. Some of it will go over your head. The rest will rub against logic. Take whatever you can on faith. You’ll get it all eventually. First — this is not Radiation. We’re not demons. You’re not dead and lost on the way to Paradise. In the sky outside is the sun. It’s quite an impressive thing, but it’s not Hydrogen Himself.”

“It’s not Light Almighty either,” Caseman added.

“No, Fenton,” Thorndyke affirmed. “Contrary to what you believe now, you may later start thinking of this outside world as Paradise.”

“Actually,” said Caseman, “you’ll learn to conceive of Paradise in another way — yet unattainable in a material sense, still beyond infinity, but beyond a new kind of infinity. Which leads up to the fact that you’re going to have to trade in a bunch of old beliefs for new ones.”

There was a moment of silence that played heavily against Jared’s patience. Then Thorndyke asked, “You still with us? Want to say anything?”

“I want to go back to my Level,” Jared managed without opening his eyes.

“There!” Caseman laughed. “He does talk!”

“I thought you’d want to go back,” Thorndyke said wearily. “Can’t be done. However, how about this: Would you like to, ah, hear — what’s the girl’s name?”

“Della,” Caseman supplied.

Jared strained against his bonds. “What are you doing with her? Can I — see her?”

“Say! This one even knows what he’s doing with his eyes! Caseman, what about the girl? How’s she making out?”

“Taking things in stride like the other Zivvers, since sight isn’t completely alien to them. Of course, she doesn’t understand what it’s all about. But she’s willing to accept things as they are for the moment.”

Thorndyke slapped his thigh. “All right, Fenton. You’ll see the girl tomorrow — next period.”

There it was — the beginning of the torture. Offer him something, then tantalize him by holding it just out of his reach.

“So much for the preliminaries,” Thorndyke said finally. “Now, here’s a whole bunch of facts you can file away against the time when they’ll all start making sense:

“Your two levels and the Zivver group are descendants of U. S. Survival Complex Number Eleven. Consider a whole world — not the kind you know, but one many, many times greater with billions-you know what a billion is? — bilions of people crammed in it. They’re divided into two camps, ready to hurl themselves at one another with weapons deadly beyond imagination. Even to use them would mean to, ah — poison all the air for many generations.”

Thorndyke paused and Jared got the impression it was a story he had told hundreds of times.

“This war does start,” he resumed, “but, fortunately, not until preparations are made for the survival of a few groups — seventeen, to be exact. Sanctuaries are established beneath the ground and are sealed off against the poisoned atmosphere.”

“Actually,” Caseman put in, “even making it possible for a handful to survive was a remarkable achievement. It wouldn’t have been possible without adaptation of nuclear power and development of a type of plant life that functioned through thermosynthesis instead of photo—”

The flow of words came to a halt, as though Caseman had sensed his listener’s inability to cope with them.

“Manna plants to you,” Thorndyke explained curtly. “At any rate, the survival complexes were prepared; the war started, and the selected few fled from their — Paradise, so to speak. For the most part, things went along as planned. All equipment worked properly; knowledge and familiar institutions were preserved, and life went on with everybody knowing where they were and why they were there. Generations later, after the outside air had purged itself, the descendants of the original survivors determined it was safe to return outside.”

“Except in Complex Eleven,” Caseman amended. “There, things didn’t go so smoothly.”

“Indeed they didn’t,” Thorndyke agreed. “Let’s back up, though. From what I hear, Fenton, you’re a nonbeliever — never accepted the idea light was God. By now you probably even have a pretty good idea just what it really is, even though you’re stubborn as hell about opening your eyes. At any rate, we’ll take it from there:

“Light is as natural a thing as, say, the sound from a waterfall. In its primary form it comes in abundance from what you’ll swear is Hydrogen Himself when you see it. We also have ways of producing it artificially, as you know by now. And each of the survival complexes had their own lightproducing systems right up until the time they were able to return to the outside world.”

Caseman, leaning closer to the bed, interrupted, “Except yours. After a few generations you lost your ability to maintain those systems should anything happen. And something did happen.”

“There was a minor fault shift,” Thorndyke resumed. “And — well, the lights went out. At the same time most of the superheated water conduits leading to your basic chamber were snapped off. Your people had to push farther into the complex, occupying other chambers that were partly prepared to receive possible population overflows.”

Vaguely, Jared was beginning to construct a composite of what they wanted him to believe. But it was so incredible — the parts he could understand — that logic revolted against it. For instance, who could comprehend all infinity jammed with hostile people? Yet, there had been nothing menacing in either Thorndyke’s or Caseman’s voices. As a matter of fact, the words, though meaningless for the most part, were soothing in their own way.

But no! That was just the reaction they were trying to get out of him! They were using trickery to gain his confidence. Nevertheless, he was determined they wouldn’t break his resolve to free himself and find Della so they could escape from Radiation.

He opened his eyes, but let them linger only briefly on Thorndyke’s composite. To one side of that central impression he could see the window with its drapes drawn back. Beyond reared the huge wail of rock and earth with its gaping hole of darkness that was the mouth of the passageway.

Then he tensed as the light impressions achieved even more clarity. Off in the distance were scores of moving figures — figures he was certain were either Survivors or monsters, but which were no bigger than his little finger! And he also saw now that the mouth of the corridor leading back to his world was as small as the nail on that finger!

Caseman must have gotten a composite of his face twisting with dismay. “What’s wrong with him, Thorndyke?”

But the other only laughed. “He’s having his first experience with perception. Don’t be afraid, Fenton. You’ll get used to things in the distance seeming small. Aren’t voices closer to you louder than those far away?”

“He can see pretty well for a beginner,” Caseman offered.

“I’d say he’s even several leaps ahead of the others at this point. He’s probably been outside before now. That right, Fenton?”

But Jared didn’t answer. Eyes closed, he was bemoaning the fact that the horrors of infinity were even more awful than he had suspected. He had to get back to his own worlds!

“About Survival Complex Eleven—” Thorndyke interrupted his anxious thoughts. “When your people left their basic chamber they left knowledge and reason behind. We found that out after we broke the seal and made our first trip into the passages. Incidentally, we’re members of an expedition from Survival Complex Seven, released from our caves almost a generation ago. As I was saying, we happened upon a lone Survivor in one of your corridors. After I finally managed to get a half nelson on him, we pretty much guessed what the score was.”

“That was an Upper Level Survivor,” Caseman noted. “It took weeks to pound some logic into his head. At the same time we realized that getting the rest of you out under the sun wouldn’t be a simple matter of walking up and saying, ‘Here we are and this is light and let’s go outside.’ ”

“That’s right,” Thorndyke affirmed. “Until we could study the situation, we had to take it slow, collaring a Survivor at a time, while we mapped the general layout. We couldn’t move in in force until we knew all the niches and crannies you would hide in if we should scare you out of your chambers.”

Some of the account was making sense now and Jared forced himself to lie back and listen.

Thorndyke rose and laughed briefly. “We had planned to educate a few Survivors to the facts and let them go back inside, without light, to break the news gently to the others.”

“Wouldn’t work though,” Caseman disclosed. “After one of you fellows gets used to using his eyes, he finds he can’t get around in the dark without light. Most of them are even afraid to go back.”

Thorndyke rubbed his hands together. “That ought to be enough for the time being, Fenton. Think it over. I’ve an idea that the next time around you’ll have some questions to ask. To help answer them, we’ll bring along some people you know and trust.”

Jared reopened his eyes in time to see them leaving the shack. And he noted, to his consternation, that they had been right about that matter of perspective at least. The farther away they got, the smaller they became.

He strained desperately against his bonds, but to no avail. Then, pausing to rest, he turned his head toward the opposite wall. Instantly a great flood of intense light bored into his eyes and he cried out in dismay. Screaming at him from one corner of the window was an edge of that great disc which Thorndyke had denied was Hydrogen! Was it maneuvering toward his shack — trying to come in after him?

Frantically, he threw all his strength into a final attempt to release himself. The bonds snapped and flew off, even as he felt the heat of that — sun, Thorndyke had called it, intensifying against his back.

He lunged for the door and clawed unavailingly at the solid curtain until his fingernails cracked. After a moment of hesitancy, he sprinted across the floor and hurled himself through the window.

Landing on his feet, he saw that the sun was not as close as he had feared. But there were other complications. The impressions entering his eyes told him his shack was merely one in a row. Only, each successive shack was a little smaller than the one immediately preceding it, until the last was scarcely bigger than his hand!

Moreover, all those people he had seen and heard in the distance were shouting and racing toward him. And, even though they were shorter than his finger, the closer they came the taller they grew!

Confounded, he turned and raced up the incline toward the towering wall of earth that embraced the passageway entrance.

“Survivor on the loose! Survivor on the loose!” was the cry that rose behind him.

He stumbled over a minor obstacle he hadn’t heard and scrambled bewildered to his feet. The heat from that great thing called the “sun” beat mercilessly down on his bare shoulders and back as he groped his way up the incline, working ever closer to the mouth of the corridor.

The gaping hole of darkness split in two and the parts drifted away from each other as he swore at his eye muscles, trying to force strength into them. Eventually, the pair of holes flowed back into one and stood out more distinctly as he drew up before the mouth of the passageway, gasping for breath.

But he couldn’t force himself to push on into the tunnel!

The darkness was too thick and threatening!

There could be a soubat waiting around the first bend!

Or he might plunge into an unfathomable pit which he would neither see nor hear!

With his pursuers almost upon him, he spun impulsively and raced off alongside the immense wall of rock. He stumbled repeatedly and, at one point, found himself rolling down a steep incline until a thick growth of low, rough plants checked his momentum.

He thrashed through the insubstantial obstruction and pushed on, running half the time with his eyes closed and crashing into the broad stems of the Paradise plants that were in his way. But, at least, the’ voices behind him were becoming more distant and the heat of Hydrogen on his arms and back was not as severe as it had been for innumerable beats.

He ran and paused for breath and ran again and again until finally he fell and rolled helplessly down through another stretch of plants that hugged the ground. When he came to a halt he scurried farther into the thick growth and lay there exhausted, his face pressed against moist earth.