Dark Universe

CHAPTER TWO

“Good Light! Let’s get out of here!”

Owen’s whisper jarred him awake and Jared struggled erect. Then, remembering the Original World and its terror, he lurched back.

“It’s gone now,” the other assured.

“You certain?”

“Yes. I heard it listening all around out here. Then it left. What in Radiation was it — Cobalt? Strontium?”

Jared crawled from among the boulders and reached for a pair of cickstones. But then he thought better of making any noise.

Owen shuddered. “That smell! The sound of its shape!”

“And that other sensation!” Jared swore. “It was like something — psychic!”

He snapped his fingers softly, evaluating the reflected sounds, and continued around a great hanging stone that cascaded in graceful folds, flowing into a mound which strained up from the floor like a rearing giant.

“What other sensation?” Owen asked.

“Like all Radiation breaking loose in your head. Something that wasn’t sound or smell or touch.”

“I didn’t hear anything like that.”

“It wasn’t hearing — I don’t think.”

“What made us pass out?”

“I don’t know.”

They went around a bend in the passage. Now that they had put some distance behind them, Jared began using his clickstones. “Light!” he exclaimed, relieved. “But I’d welcome even a soubat now!”

“Not without weapons you wouldn’t.”

And, as they crossed the Barrier and continued on alongside the wide river, Jared wondered why his friend hadn’t experienced the same uncanny sensation he had. As far as he was concerned, that phase of the incident was even more frightening than the monster itself.

Then his lips grew grimly taut as an alarming possibility suggested itself: Suppose his Original World experience had been a punishment from the Great Almighty for his blasphemous belief that Light was something less than God?

They headed into more familiar territory and he announced, “We’ve got to report this to the Prime Survivor.”

“We can’t!” Owen protested. “We broke the law in coming here!”

Which was a complication Jared hadn’t considered. Owen, to be sure, was in enough trouble as it was, having let the cattle get in the manna orchard last period.

Several hundred breaths later, Jared led the way around the final major hazard — a huge pit without bottom. He put his pebbles away. Not long afterward he hissed for silence, then drew Owen over to a recess in the wall.

“What’s wrong?” the other demanded.

“Zivvers!” he whispered.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“You will in a few heartbeats. They’re going down the Main Passage ahead. If they turn this way we may have to run for it.”

The sounds in the other tunnel were more audible now. A sheep bleated and Jared recognized the pitch. “That’s one of our animals. They raided the Lower Level.”

The Zivver voices reached maximum volume as the pillagers passed the corridor intersection, then fell off.

“Come on,” Jared urged. “They can’t ziv us now.”

He went not more than thirty paces, however, before he drew up and cautioned in his lowest voice, “Quiet!”

He held his breath and listened. Besides his own pounding heartbeat and Owen’s fainter one, there was yet a third — not too far away, weak, but pumping violently with fright.

“What is it?” Owen asked.

“A Zivver.”

“You’re just getting the scent from that raiding party.”

But Jared edged forward, weighing the auditory impressions, sniffing out other clues. The scent of the Zivver was unmistakable, but it was of minor proportions — that of a child! He drew in another whiff and detained it in his nasal chamber.

A girl Zivver!

Her heartbeat was distinct as he clicked his pebbles once to sound out the details of the cleft in which she was hiding. She stiffened at the noise, but didn’t try to escape. Instead, she started crying — plaintively.

Owen relaxed. “It’s only a child!”

“What’s the matter?” Jared asked solicitously, but got no reply.

“What are you doing out here?” Owen tried.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Jared promised. “What’s wrong?”

“I — I can’t ziv,” she finally managed between sobs.

Jared knelt beside her. “You’re a Zivver, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I mean — no, I’m not. That is—”

She was perhaps thirteen gestations old. No older, certainly.

He led her out into the passageway. “Now — what’s your name?”

“Estel.”

“And why are you hiding out here, Estel?”

“I heard Mogan and the others coming. I ran in here so they wouldn’t ziv me.”

“Why don’t you want them to find you?”

“So they won’t take me back to the Zivver World.”

“But that’s where you belong, isn’t it?”

She sniffled and Jared heard her wiping her cheeks dry.

“No,” she said despondently. “Everybody there can ziv except me. And when I’m ready to become a Survivoress there won’t be any Zivver Survivors who’ll want me.”

She began sobbing again. “I want to go to your world.”

“You can’t, Estel,” Owen tried to explain. “You don’t understand what the sentiment is against — I mean — oh, you tell her, Jared.”

Jared brushed the hair off her face when the reflection of his voice told him it was hanging there. “Once in the Lower Level we had a little girl — just about your age. She was sad because she couldn’t hear. She wanted to run away. Then, one period, all of a sudden she could hear! And she was glad she had been smart enough not to run away and get lost before then.”

“She was a Different One, wasn’t she?” the girl asked.

“No. That’s just the point. We only thought she was Different. And if she’d run away we never would have found out she wasn’t.”

Estel was silent as Jared led her toward the Main Passage.

“You mean,” she asked after a while, “you think I might start zivving?”

He laughed and halted in the larger corridor beside a gurgling hot spring that sent its moist warmth swirling all around them. “I’m sure you’ll start zivving — when you least expect it. And you’ll be just as happy as that other little girl.”

He listened in the direction of the Zivver raiders and readily picked up the sound of their receding voices. “What do you say, Estel — want to go home?”

“Well, all right — if you say so.”

“Good girl!” He gave her a pat and propelled her in the direction of the other Zivvers. Then he cupped his hands and filled the passage with his voice. “There’s one of your children back here!”

Owen shifted nervously. “Let’s get out of here before we get stomped.”

But Jared only laughed softly. “We’ll be safe long enough to make sure they pick her up.” He listened to the girl groping toward the returning Zivvers. “Anyway, they can’t ziv us now.”

“Why not?”

“We’re standing right by this hot spring. They can’t ziv anything too close to a boiling pit. That’s something I learned on my own, gestations ago.”

“What’s a hot spring got to do with it?”

“I don’t know. But it works.”

“Well, if they can’t ziv us, then they’ll hear us.”

“Point Number Two about Zivvers: they rely too much on zivving. Can’t hear or smell worth a damned.”

Soon they reached the entrance to the Lower Level World. Jared listened to Owen strike off for his own quarters, then he headed toward the Administration Grotto. He had made up his mind to report the Original World menace without implicating his friend.

Everything seemed normal — too normal, considering that Zivvers had just staged a raid. But then, the attacks were not so infrequent that the Survivors couldn’t take them in stride when they did come.

Off to his left he caught Randel’s scent and traced his climb up the pole to rewind the echo caster’s pulley. Presently there was a speed-up in the mechanical clacking of the stones. And Jared listened to the more complete impressions the accelerated echoes provided. He made out the details of a work party spreading compost in the manna orchard, another digging out a new public grotto. Against the distant wall women were washing cloths in the river.

What struck him most, though, was the relative silence, which testified that something had happened. Even the children were drawn into small, voiceless clusters in front of the residential recess.

There was a groan on his right — from the Injury Treatment Grotto — and he altered course. The central caster’s reflected clacks told him someone was in front of the entrance. When he got closer he heard the feminine outline of Zelda.

“Trouble?” he asked.

“Zivvers,” she said tersely. “Where were you?”

“Out after a soubat. Any casualties?”

“Alban and Survivor Bridley. Just roughed up though.” Her voice ifitered through hair that protectively draped her face.

“Any Zivvers get hurt?”

She laughed — a bitter outburst, like the twang of a bowstring. “You kidding? The Prime Survivor’s been listening for you.”

“Where is he?”

“Meeting with the Elders.”

Jared continued on over to the Administration Grotto, but quietened his steps as he neared the entrance. Elder Haverty had the floor. His high-pitched, faltering voice was easily recognizable.

“We’ll close up the entrance!” Haverty pounded the slab. “Then we won’t have to worry about either the Zivvers or the soubats!”

“Sit down, Elder,” came the authoritative voice of the Prime Survivor. “You’re not making sense.”

“Eh? How so?”

“We’re told that was tried long ago. It only choked off the circulation and ran the heat up into the sweltering range.”

“Least we could do,” Haverty persisted, “is close it up some.”

“Ought to be bigger as it is.”

Jared eased up to the grotto entrance, but stood to one side so he wouldn’t block any of the direct sounds from the caster. That would betray his presence even to the most insensitive ears.

The Prime Survivor was absently tapping the meeting slab with his fingernail, producing unobtrusive echoes.

“However,” he said, “there is something we can do.”

“Eh? What’s that?” Survivor Haverty asked.

“We couldn’t do it by ourselves. It’s too big a project. But we might undertake it as a joint enterprise with the Upper Level.”

“We never had any joint enterprises with them before.” It was Elder Maxwell’s voice that entered the discussion.

“No, but they know we’re going to have to pool our resources.”

“What’s the pitch?” asked Haverty.

“There’s one passageway we might seal off. It wouldn’t disturb the circulation in either the Upper or Lower Level. But, still, it would block us off from the Zivver World, as far as we know.”

“The Main Passage,” Maxwell guessed.

“Right. It’d be quite a job. But with both Levels working at it, we could do it in maybe half a pregnancy period.”

“What about the Zivvers?” Haverty wanted to know. “Won’t they have anything to say about that?”

Jared heard the Prime Survivor shrug his shoulders before continuing: “The two Levels far outnumber the Zivvers. We could keep adding material to this side of the barricade faster than they could haul it away from the other side. Eventually they’d give up.”

Silence around the slab.

“Sounds good,” Maxwell said. “Now all we got to do is sell the Upper Level on the idea.”

“I think we can do that.” The Prime Survivor cleared his throat. “Jared, come on in. We’ve been waiting for you.”

The Prime Survivor might be getting old, Jared conceded, entering. But his ears and nose hadn’t aged any. From the uninterrupted fingernail tapping, Jared received a composite impression of all the faces at the slab turned in his direction. There was a figure standing behind the Prime Survivor, he sensed.

The man moved into the clear and Jared picked up his features — short and somewhat stooped despite the comparative youthfulness his breathing suggested; hair flowing down past his forehead and around the sides of his face, with irregular openings to accommodate his ears and nose-mouth region. The fullest fuzzy-face in the Lower Level — Romel Fenton-Spur, his brother.

After the amenity of Reasonable Time for Recognition and Reflection had been observed, the Prime Survivor cleared his throat. “Jared, it’s about time to apply for your Survivorship, don’t you think?”

Jared’s impulse was to brush aside the prosaic matter and launch into his revelation of the menace lurking in the Original World. But his presentation would have to be rational, so he decided to put it off a while. “I suppose so.”

“Ever think of Unification?”

“Radiation no!” Then he pinched his tongue. “No, I haven’t given it any thought.”

“You realize, of course, that every man must become a Survivor and that the principal obligation of a Survivor is to survive.”

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

“And surviving doesn’t mean merely preserving your own life, but also passing it down through the generations.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“And you’ve found no one with whom you’d like to Unify?”

There was Zelda; but she was a fuzzy-face. There was Luise, who was both open-eyed and bare-faced to the clickstones. But she was always tittering. “No, Your Survivorship.”

Romel snickered in anticipation of something or other and reproachful gestures were audible around the slab. For Jared, the sardonic giggle was reminiscent of earlier days when Romel’s malicious pranks usually took the form of a swish-rope that would lash out from behind a boulder, twine around his ankles and snatch him off his feet. The fraternal antagonism was still there. Only, now it managed to find other adult — well, almost adult — forms of expression.

“Good!” the Prime Survivor enthused, rising. “I think we’ve found a Unification partner for you.”

Jared sputtered a moment, then shed his respect with an oath. “Not for me you haven’t!”

How could he tell them he had no time for Unification? That he had to be free to continue what he had started out to do long pregnancy periods ago? That he doubted their religious beliefs? That he wanted to spend his life proving Light was something physical, attainable in this existence — not something restricted to the afterlife?

Romel laughed and said, “That’s for the Elders to decide.”

“You’re no Elder!”

“Neither are you. And, Jared, you’re forgetting the Eminence of Seniority Code.”

“To Radiation with the code!”

“That’ll be enough,” interrupted the Prime Survivor. “As Romel suggests, your Unification is for us to decide. Elders?”

Maxwell proposed, “Let’s hear more about this arrangement first.”

“Very well,” the Prime Survivor went on. “Nieither I nor the Wheel have let this get out yet, but we’re both sold on the idea of joining hands between the two worlds. The Wheel thinks that end can be helped along by Unification between Jared and his niece.”

“I won’t do it!” Jared vowed. “The Wheel’s just trying to pass off some spook of a relative!”

“Have you ever heard her?” the Prime Survivor asked.

“No! Have you?”

“No, but the Wheel says—”

“I don’t care what the Wheel says!”

Jared drew back and listened. The Elders were rumbling impatiently. They weren’t too happy over his stubbornness. If he didn’t do something — anything — soon, they’d have him hooked!

“There’s a monster in the Original World?” he blurted. “I was out chasing a soubat and—”

“The Original World?” asked Elder Maxwell incredulously.

“Yes! And this thing — it reeked like Radiation and—”

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” the Prime Survivor demanded severely. “Crossing the Barrier is the worst possible offense, besides Murder and Misplacement of Bulky Objects!”

“But this creature! I’m trying to tell you I heard something evil!”

The Prime Survivor’s voice drowned out even the central caster’s clacks. “What in the name of Light Almighty did you expect to find in the Original World? Why do you think we have laws, the Barrier?”

“This calls for severe punishment,” Romel suggested.

“You keep out of it!” snapped the Prime Survivor.

“The Punishment Pit?” Maxwell prompted.

“Eh? What?” clipped Haverty. “I imagine not. Not with a Unification arrangement pending.”

Jared tried again. “This thing — it—”

“How about Seven Activity Periods of Detachment and Servility?” Haverty went on. “If he does it again — two gestations in the Pit.”

“Lenient enough,” Maxwell agreed. But he left unexpressed the general knowledge that only one prisoner had ever spent more than ten activity periods in the Pit and that he had had to be tied down for a whole gestation before he became harmless.

The Prime Survivor spoke up. “We’ll make Jared’s token punishment contingent on his accepting Unification.”

The Elders eagerly smote the slab in approval.

“While serving your sentence,” the Prime Survivor told Jared, “you can condition yourself for a visit to the Upper Level for the Five Periods Preparatory to Declaration of Unification Intentions.”

Still snickering, Romel Fenton-Spur followed the Elders out.

When they were alone, Jared told the Prime Survivor, “That was a Radiation of a trick to play on your own son!”

The elder Fenton gave an expressionless shrug.

“Why tie in with that bunch up there?” Jared went on querulously. “We’ve fought Zivvers on our own this long, haven’t we?”

“But they’re multiplying, outgrowing their food supply.”

“We’ll set traps! We’ll produce more food!”

Jared listened to the other shaking his head dourly. “On the contrary. We’re going to produce less. You forget those three hot springs that dried up not thirty periods ago. That means dead manna plants — not as much food for the animals and ourselves.”

Jared felt a touch of concern for the Prime Survivor. They were standing in the entrance to the grotto now and the sounds his father was reflecting conveyed their impressions of thinning limbs that had reluctantly yielded ample muscular development of a more active era. His hair was thin, but still swept proudly back over his head, evidencing an obstinate rejection of facial protection.

“It didn’t have to be me,” Jared grumbled. “Why not Romel?”

“He’s a spur.”

Jared didn’t understand why the accident of illegitimate birth should make any difference in this situation. But he let the point go. “Well, anybody else then! There’s Randel and Many and—”

“The Wheel and I have been discussing closer relations since you were hip high. And I’ve been building you up in his estimation until he thinks you’re almost the equal of a Zivver.”

Silence was perhaps the severest penalty of Jared’s punishment.

Silence and drugery.

Hauling manure from the world of the small bats, trudging to the cricket domain to collect insect bodies as compost for the manna orchard. Rechanneling overflow from the boiling pits and getting steam-shriveled flesh in the process. Tending livestock and hand-feeding chicks until they could feel around for their own food.

And all the while never to be allowed a word. Never a word spoken to him except in direction-giving. No clickstones for fine hearing. Completely isolated from contact with others.

The first period lasted an eternity; the second, a dozen. The third he spent tending the orchard and consigning to Radiation everyone who approached because they came only to give orders — all but one.

That was Owen, who relayed instructions to begin excavating a public grotto. And Jared heard the troubled lines on his face. “If you think you ought to be working alongside me,” Jared said, violating Vocal Detachment, “you’d better forget it. I made you cross the Barrier.”

“I’ve been worrying about that too,” Owen admitted distantly. “But not nearly as much as about something else.”

“What?” Jared spread more compost around the manna plant stalk.

“I’m not worthy o being a Survivor. Not after the way I acted out there in the Original World.”

“Forget the Original World.”

“I can’t.” Owen’s voice was filled with self-reproach as he moved off. “Whatever courage I had I left beyond the Barrier.”

“Damned fool!” Jared called softly. “Keep away from there!”

He spent the fourth period languishing in solitude, without even a single person bringing instructions. The fifth he tried congratulating himself on at least having escaped the Pit. But throughout the sixth, as he bemoaned aching muscles and insufferable fatigue, he realized he might as well have gotten the more severe punishment. And before the final stint of exhausting drudgery ended, he wished to Radiation he had been sentenced to the Pit!

He finished wresting a final slab into place for one of the new grottoes, then pegged the echo caster into silence for the sleep period. Numb with weariness, he dragged himself to the Fenton recess.

Romel was asleep, but the Prime Survivor was still lying awake. “I’m glad it’s over, son,” he comforted. “Now get some rest. Tomorrow you’ll be escorted to the Upper Level for the Five Periods Preparatory to Declaration of Unification Intentions.”

Lacking strength to argue, Jared collapsed on his ledge.

“There’s something you ought to know,” his father went on soberly. “The Zivvers may be taking captives again. Owen went out to collect mushrooms four periods ago. He hasn’t been heard from since.”

Suddenly wide awake, Jared wasn’t as exhausted as he had imagined. When the Prime Survivor fell asleep, he retrieved his clickstones and stole out of the Lower Level World, tempering condemnation of Owen’s addleheaded pride with concern for his safety.

Fighting the impulse to drop in his tracks and sleep there forever, he pushed on past the place where he had encountered the Zivver child, along the bank beside the swift stream and into the smaller tunnel. Sounding the depths of each pit along the way, he reached the Barrier and dragged himself over it. On the other side his foot brushed across something familiar — Owen’s quiver!

Beside it were a broken lance and two arrows. The bow, his clickstones told him, lay against the wall, cracked almost in half. Sniffing what might have been the lingering scent of the Original World creature, he backed off toward the Barrier.

Owen didn’t even have a chance to use his weapons.