Dark Universe

CHAPTER FOUR

Guided by clickstones, Jared went cautiously down the passageway. The inconsistencies before him were distressing. The corridor itself was both familiar and strange. He was certain he had been here before. There was that slender stone dripping cold water into the puddle below with melodious monotony, for instance. He had stood beside it many times, running his hands over its slick moistness and listening to the beauty of the drOps.

Yet, even as he aimed his clicks directly at it now, it changed like a living thing, growing until its tip actually touched the water, then shrinking back into the ceiling. Nearby, the mouth of a pit opened and closed menacingly. And the passage itself contracted and expanded as though it were a giant’s lung.

“Don’t be afraid, Jared.” A gentle, feminine voice stirred the deep silence. “it’s just that we’ve forgotten how to keep things in place.”

Her tone was soothing and familiar, yet unfamiliar and disturbing at the same time. He sent out precise clicks. The impression returning from nearby was like a silhouette — as though he were hearing the woman only with back sounding. Her features were blank. And when he reached out, she wasn’t there. Yet she spoke:

“It’s been so long, Jared! The details are all gone.”

He went hesitantly forward. “Kind Survivoress?”

And he sensed her amusement. “You make it sound so — stiff.”

Instantly, an entire flight of misplaced childhood memories rushed back. “But you — weren’t even real! You and Little Listener and the Forever Man — how can you be anything but a dream?”

“Listen around you, Jared. Does any of this sound real?”

The hanging stone was still squirming. Rock brushed against his arm as the right wall closed in, then pulled away again.

Then he was only dreaming — just as he had dreamed, oh, so many times, so many gestations ago. He remembered with a pang of nostalgia how Kind Survivoress would take him by the hand and lead him off. it wasn’t a hand he could always feel. And she didn’t really take him anywhere, because he would be asleep on his ledge all the while.

Yet, suddenly he would be scampering in the familiar passage or in a nearby world with Little Listener, the boy who heard only the inaudible sounds of the minor insects. And Kind Survivoress would explain, “You and!, Jared, can keep the Listener from being lonesome. Just think how awful his world is — all pitch silent! But I can bring him into this passage, as I can bring you. When I do, it’s as though he wasn’t deaf any more. And the two of you can play together.”

Jared was fully back in the familiar-strange passageway now.

And Kind Survivoress offered, “Little Listener’s a grown man. You wouldn’t know him.”

Confused, Jared said, “Dream things don’t grow!”

“We’re special dream things.”

“Where’s the Listener?” he asked skeptically. “Let me hear him.”

“He and the Forever Man are fine. The Forever Man’s old now, though. He’s not really a Forever Man, you know — just almost. But there’s no time to hear them. I’m worried about you, Jared. You’ve got to wake up!”

For a moment he almost felt as though he were going to break out of the dream. But then his thoughts went calmly back to his childhood. He remembered how Kind Survivoress had said he was the only one she could reach — and, even then, only when he was asleep. But he wouldn’t stop telling people about her. And she was afraid because she knew others were beginning to wonder whether he might be a Different One. She didn’t want the fate that befell all the Different Ones to befall him. So she had quit coming.

“You must wake up, Jared!” She interrupted his reminiscences. “You’re hurt and you’ve been unconscious too long!”

“Is that all you came back for — just to wake me up?”

“No. I want to warn you about the monsters and about all the dreams I’ve heard you have — dreams of hunting for Light. The monsters are hideous and evil! i reached out and touched one’s mind, it was so full of horrible, strange things that I couldn’t stay in it for more than a fraction of a heartbeat!”

“There’s more than one monster?”

“There are many of them.”

“What about hunting Light?”

“Don’t you hear, Jared, you’re only chasing more dream stuff? There’s no such thing as Darkness and Light, as you think of them. You’re just trying to escape responsibility. There’s Survivors hip to think of, Unification — things that really mean something!”

He had always been sure that if his mother had lived she would have been quite like Kind Survivoress.

He started to answer her. But she was no longer there.

Jared rolled against the softness of a manna fiber mattress and felt the bandage on his head.

From somewhere in the distance, rising above the audible background, came a reassuring paternal voice pacing itself through the monotonous patter of the Familiarization Routine:

“…Here we are under the echo caster, son. Hear how loud it sounds? Notice the direction of the clacks — straight up. We’re in the center of the world. Listen to how the echoes come back from all the walls at practically the same time. This way, boy…”

Jared elevated himself on an unsteady elbow and someone caught his shoulders, easing him down again.

It was Adviser Lorenz, who turned his head the other way and urged, “Go tell the Wheel he’s coming around.”

Jared caught Della’s receding scent as she left the recess. It had to struggle through the heavier odors clinging to everything around him — odors that identified Wheel Anselm’s grotto.

From outside, the tutoring father’s spiel bore back in on Jared’s conscious, complicating his attempts to reorient himself.

“…There, directly before you, son — can you hear that empty space in the sound pattern? That’s the entrance to our world. Now we’re going over to the poultry yard. Watch it, boy! There’s an outcropping about five paces in front of you. Let’s stop here. Feel it. Get an idea of its size and shape. Try to hear it. Remember exactly where it is. And you’ll save yourself many a bruised shin…”

Jared tried to banish the distracting voice and compose his thoughts. But the effects of his recent dream lay heavily upon him.

It was most odd that Kind Survivoress should emerge from his forgotten fantasies all of a sudden, as though he had reached back into the abyss of his past and brought forward a warm, memorable slice of childhood. But he recognized the manifestation for what it was — no more than a wistful yearning for the security he hadn’t known since his own father had taken him by the hand and Familiarized him with his world, as that attentive father outside was doing now.

“What in Radiation happened?” he managed.

“You took a lance broadside on the temple,” Lorenz reminded. “You’ve been out like an echo caster for a whole period.”

Suddenly he remembered — everything. And he lurched up. “The monster! The Zivvers!”

“They’re gone — all of them.”

“What happened?”

“Best we could make out was that the monster seized a Zivver at the entrance. Two other Zivvers tried to save him. But they just collapsed in their tracks.”

Clacks from the central caster entered through parted curtains and bounced off the Adviser’s face, carrying away a composite of his apprehensive expression. Something else was hidden among the wrinkles, adding further tautness to his closed eyelids — an uneasy hesitancy. The Adviser appeared to be deciding whether to say something.

Jared, however, was more concerned over the monster’s having invaded the Upper Level. Until now, he had been certain the Barrier was adequate to keep the creature on the other side. He felt that he and Owen deserved whatever they had gotten for violating the taboos. But it didn’t end there. Rather, the monster had crossed the Barrier to enter one of the worlds of man. And once more Jared wondered whether he might not be responsible. He had invaded the Original World first, hadn’t he? And hadn’t the monster picked a most convincing time to strike again — just when he was beginning to compound blasphemy by giving thought to resuming his search for Light?

The Adviser drew in a decisive breath. “What were you doing when you got hit by that spear?”

“Trying to reach the Zivver on guard at the entrance.”

Lorenz stiffened audibly. “Then you admit it?”

“What’s there to admit? I heard a chance to carry off a hostage.”

“Oh.” The word was shaded with disappointment. Then the Adviser added dubiously, “The Wheel will be glad to learn that. A lot of us wondered why you stole away.”

Jared swung his legs over the side of the ledge. “I don’t hear what you’re trying to prove. You mean you think—”

But the other continued, “So you were going to attack a Zivver? That’s a little hard to believe.”

First there had been Lorenz’s open hostility. Then there was his jestful — or perhaps only superficially jestful — suggestion that Jared’s abilities were Zivverlike. Now this latest obscure insinuation. It all added up to something.

He caught the man’s wrist. “What do you suspect?”

But just then Wheel Anselm swept the curtain aside and strode in. “What’s all this about attacking a Zivver?”

Della followed him inside and Jared listened to her almost soundless motions as she came over to the slumber ledge.

“That’s what he was trying to do when he made his way over to the entrance,” Lorenz explained skeptically.

But Anseim missed the inflection. “Isn’t that what I said he had in mind? How are you feeling, Jared my boy?”

“Like I was clouted with a lance.”

The Wheel laughed patronizingly, then became serious. “You were closer to that thing than any of us. What in Radiation was it?”

Jared considered telling them about his previous experience with the monster. But the Law of the Barrier applied as rigidly here as in the Lower Level. “I don’t know. I didn’t have much time to listen to it before I took that lance.”

“Cobalt,” Adviser Lorenz murmured. “Must have been Cobalt.”

“Might have been Cobalt and Strontium,” Della suggested distantly. “Some got the impression there were two monsters.”

Jared stiffened. Hadn’t his dream, too, intimated there were more than one of the incredible creatures?

“Light — it was awful!” Anselm agreed. “It must have been the Twin Devils. What else could throw such uncanny things into your head like that?”

“It didn’t, as you say, ‘throw things’ into everybody’s head,” the Adviser reminded officiously.

“True. Not all felt what I felt. For instance, none of the fuzzy-faces remember anything that odd.”

“I don’t either, and I’m not a fuzzy-face.”

“There were a few besides the fuzzy-faces who didn’t feel the sensations. How about you, my boy?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jared lied, sparing himself the necessity of going into details.

Anseim and Lorenz fell silent while Della laid a hand gently on Jared’s forehead. “We’re preparing something for you to eat. Is there anything else I can do?”

Confused, he trained an ear on the girl. She’d never spoken that charitably before!

“Well, my boy,” Anselm said, backing off, “you take it easy for the rest of your stay — until you’re ready to return home for Withdrawal and Contemplation Against Unwise Unification.”

The curtains swished as he and the Adviser left.

“I’ll hear about that food,” Della said, and followed them out.

Jared lay back on the ledge, exploring the soreness beneath the bandage. Still fresh in memory was his encounter with the monster — or monsters. In their presence, he had experienced the identical sensation he had felt in the Original World. For a moment, as he recalled the impression of uncanny pressure on his face, it seemed as though his eyes had received most of the force. But why? And he was still puzzled that Owen hadn’t experienced the peculiar feeling. Could his friend’s closed-eyes preference possibly have had anything to do with his not having sensed the psychic pressure?

Della returned and he heard that she was carrying a shell filled with — he listened to the consistency of the liquid and sniffed its faint aroma — manna tuber broth. But he sensed more than that. There was something he couldn’t identify in her other hand.

“Feel well enough for some of this?” She extended the bowl.

Her words had been feather-edged with concern and he was at a loss to explain her sudden change of heart.

Something warm dripped on his hand. “The broth,” he cautioned, “you’re spilling it.”

“Oh.” She leveled the bowl. “I’m sorry.”

But he listened sharply at the girl. She hadn’t even heard the liquid running down the outside of the shell. It was as though she were practically deaf!

Improvising a test, he whispered almost subvocally, “What kind of broth is this?”

There was no response. She had no fine hearing at all! Yet, after the formal dinner, she had heard well enough to use as a target the swirling fluidity of a pool so small and so silent that he hadn’t even been aware of its presence.

She put the bowl on a nearby shelf and extended the object in her other hand. “What do you think of this, Jared?”

He inspected the thing. Clinging to it was the scent of the monster. It was tubular, like a manna stalk, but cut off on both ends. The smooth face of the larger end, however, was shattered. He ran a finger into the break and felt a hard, round object within. Withdrawing his finger, he cut it against something sharp.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I found it at the entrance. I’m sure one of the monsters dropped it.”

Again he felt the round thing behind the broken surface. It reminded him of — something.

“The big end was — warm when I picked it up,” she disclosed.

He cast his ears warily on the girl. Why had she hesitated before the word “warm”? Did she know it was heat that Zivvers zivved? Was she furtively bringing up the subject so she could hear his reaction — perhaps even trying to test the Adviser’s insinuation that he might be a Zivver? If that was her intention, it was well hidden.

Then he jolted erect. Now he remembered what the round object in the broken end of the tube reminded him of! It was a miniature version of the Holy Bulb used during religious services!

And he shook his head in bewilderment. What sense did that fool paradox make? Wasn’t the Holy Bulb associated with Light — with goodness and virtue — rather than with hideous, evil monsters?

His remaining periods in the Upper Level were uneventful to the point of monotony. He found the people not at all friendly. Their experience with the monsters had left them apprehensive and distant. More than once his words had gone unheard while quickened heartbeats reflected lingering fear.

If it hadn’t been for Della’s presence, he might have returned home before his scheduled departure. As it was, though, the girl was a challenging enigma.

She stuck close by all the while. And the friendship she extended was so profuse that he often felt her hand slipping into his as she took him about the world acquainting him with the people.

On one occasion Della added to the mystery when she paused and whispered, “Jared, are you hiding something?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m a pretty good marksman myself, don’t you think?”

“With rocks — yes.” He decided to nudge her on.

“And I’m the one who found that thing the monsters left behind.”

“So?”

Her face was turned eagerly toward his and be studied her in the sound of the central caster. When he said nothing more, he heard her breathing become heavy with exasperation.

She turned to walk away but be caught her arm. “What do you think I’m biding, Della?”

But her mood had changed. “Whether or not you’ve decided to Declare Unification Intentions.”

That she was lying had been obvious.

Yet, throughout the final two periods she seemed to hang onto everything he said, as though his next words might be the very ones she wanted to hear. Even up to the moment of his departure her disposition was one of restrained expectancy.

They were standing by the manna orchard, with his escort party waiting at the entrance, when she said reproachfully:

“Jared, it isn’t fair to hold anything back.”

“Like what?”

“Like why you can — hear so well.”

“The Prime Survivor spent all his time training me to—”

“You’ve told me all about that,” she reminded impatiently. “Jared, if we’re of the same mind after Withdrawal and Contemplation, we’ll be Unified. It wouldn’t be right to keep secrets then.”

Just when he was at the point of demanding to know what she was driving at, Lorenz walked up with a bow slung over his shoulder.

“Before you leave,” he said, “I thought you might give me a few pointers on archery.”

Jared accepted the bow and quiver, wondering why Lorenz should suddenly want to improve his marksmanship. “Very well, I don’t hear anybody over on the range.”

“Oh, but the children will be playing there in a few beats,” the Adviser dissented. “Listen at the orchard. Can you hear that tall manna plant right in front of you, about forty paces off?”

“I hear it.”

“There’s a fruit shell on the highest stalk. It ought to make a good enough target.”

Backing well away from the vapors of the nearest boiling pit, Jared rattled a pair of clickstones. “With a stationary target,” he explained, “you first have to sound it out clearly. The central caster doesn’t give a precise impression.”

He strung an arrow. “Then it’s important not to move your feet, since you’re oriented only in your original position.”

Releasing the bowstring, he listened to the arrow pass more than two arm lengths above the shell.

Surprised that he should miss by that much, he sounded the stones again. But from the corner of his hearing he caught Lorenz’s reaction. The Adviser’s expression was one of nearly irrepressible excitement. Della, too, wore an almost ecstatic tone on her face.

Why should they be overjoyed because he had failed to hit the shell? Bewildered, he strung another arrow and let it fly.

It went astray by the same distance.

Now the Adviser and the girl sounded even more jubilant. But Lorenz exuded triumph, whereas Della seemed intenseiy gratified.

He missed with two more shots before he wearied of their incomprehensible game. Annoyed, he dropped the bow and quiver and headed for the exit where the escort party awaited. After he had gone several paces he realized why his aim had been off. Standard bowstring tension here was greater than in his world! It was that simple. He even remembered now that the string had felt stiffer.

Then he stopped short. Abruptly he heard everything clearly. He knew why Lorenz had reacted as he had when the arrows missed — even why the archery exhibition had been arranged in the first place.

In order to protect his status as Adviser, Lorenz was intent on disqualifying him from Unification with Della. What better way than to prove him a Zivver?

The Adviser must have known Zivvers couldn’t ziv in the heat of an orchard-hot springs area. And, since Jared had consistently missed the target there, Lorenz must now be certain he was a Zivver.

But what was the girl’s interest? Evidently she also knew of the Zivvers’ limitation. And she had recognized what the test might prove, even though she may not have known it was contrived specifically for that purpose.

But, then, she had actually been elated over his failure to hit the shell. Why?

“Jared! Jared!”

He listened to Della running forward to overtake him.

She caught his arm. “You don’t have to tell me now. I know. Oh, Jared, Jared! I never dreamed anything like this would happen!”

She drew his head down and kissed him.

“You know — what?” he asked, drawing her out.

She went on effusively, “Don’t you hear I suspected it all along — from the moment you threw the spears? And when I brought you that tube the monster dropped I all but said I had found it by its heat. I couldn’t make the first move, though — not until I was certain you were a Zivver too.”

From the depths of his astonishment, he managed to ask, “Too?”

“Yes, Jared. I’m a Zivver — just like you.”

The Captain of the Official Escort came over from the entrance. “We’re ready whenever you are.”