Dark Universe

CHAPTER SIX

“…We therefore humbly invoke the guidance of Light Almighty as we rededicate ourselves under new leadership.”

Survivor Averyman, as Senior Elder, was bringing his speech to a close. He paused and listened out over the Assembly.

Standing behind him, Jared too heard the silence, relieved only by the soft flow of many tense breaths. It was an anxious stillness, rather than one that bore respect for the Investiture Ceremonies.

Nor could he himself muster much attention for the Elder’s words. His thoughts were overburdened with bitterness. It wasn’t as much that Light had broken the covenant as it was that He had decided on so ruthless a means of making that fact clear.

That the Prime Survivor was gone forever from the worlds of man was, for Jared, a tragedy. On several occasions over the past two periods he would have gone charging defiantly up the passageway had it not been for the remote possibility that the loss of his father was only temporary, to test the sincerity of his repentance. A more practical reason he hadn’t tried to track down the monster was that Protectors had been stationed at the entrance.

He sneezed and sniffled, evoking a disdainful pause in Survivor Averyman’s speech. After a moment, the Elder resumed:

“We must not expect from our new Prime Survivor the forehearing and wisdom that we came to associate with his late father. For what could compare with an understanding deep enough to hear ahead to the imminent necessity of preparing his successor?”

Jared listened impatiently over toward the guarded entrance. There was yet another reason he couldn’t go plunging beyond the Barrier in search of his father. That would only call the wrath of the Elders down on his head and they would make Romel the Prime Survivor — a development which could bring only chaos to the world.

Someone nudged him forward and he found himself standing in front of the Guardian of the Way.

“Repeat after me,” Philar said solemnly, “’I swear that I will bend all effort to the Challenge of Survival, not only for myself but in behalf of every individual in the Lower Level.”

Struggling through the vow, Jared interrupted his flow of words with a sniffle.

“’I dedicate myself,’” the Guardian went on, “’to the needs of all who depend upon me and I will do whatever I can to draw aside the Curtain of Darkness — so help me Light!’”

Jared punctuated the final word with a sneeze.

Investiture over, he remained in front of the Official Grotto receiving perfunctory handshakes.

Romel was the last to approach. “Now the fun begins,” he said facetiously. The words were not as relaxed as they might have been, though, and they offered no clue as to what expression was silenced by the obscuring veil of hair.

“I’ll need a lot of help,” Jared admitted. “It won’t be easy.”

“I didn’t think it would.” Romel wasn’t successfully concealing his envy. “Of course, the first thing will be to finish the hearing.”

Interrupted by Investiture, the hearing wasn’t Jared’s concern, however. It was being conducted by the Elders, who were even now ffling back into the Official Grotto. And there was no doubt that its mention had been subtly intended to lead to something else. For a moment Jared could almost hear the familiar hiss of the swish-rope.

“Do you suppose,” Romel continued, unnecessarily loud, “that the monster that got the Prime Survivor was anything like the one you heard in the Original World?”

There it was — the tightening of the coils around his ankles. Romel wasn’t going to let anyone forget Jared had violated the Barrier taboo. Slack was being taken on the rope. The violent tug would come later.

“I wouldn’t know,” he rapped out, following the last of the witnesses into the Official Grotto.

A portable caster had been set in operation and Jared, taking his place at the meeting slab, concentrated on its clicks as modified by the persons in the recess. All the Elders were in their places while the witnesses were grouped off to one side.

“I believe we were listening to Survivor Metcalf,” Elder Averyman said. “He was telling us what he heard.”

A lean, nervous man came forward and stood beside the slab. Quite audibly, his fingers enmeshed, squirmed against one another, freed themselves and locked again.

“I couldn’t catch its sound too clearly,” he apologized. “I was just coming from the orchard when I heard you and the Prime Survivor shouting. I picked my impression of the thing off the echoes from your voices.”

“And what did it sound like?”

“I don’t know. Something about the size of a man, I suppose.”

It was disconcerting the way the witness kept moving his head from side to side. He was a fuzzy-face and the rippling motion of the hair streaming down in front reminded Jared of the fluttering flesh of the Original World monster.

“Did you hear its face?” Averyman asked.

“No. I was too far away.”

“What about an — uncanny sound?”

“I don’t recall anything like a silent sound, like some of the others heard.”

Metcalf was a fuzzy-face. So was Averyman, as were two others who had testified. And not one of those four had gotten psychic impressions of a roaring silence, Jared remembered. Even in the Upper Level none of the fuzzy-faces had heard the incredible, inaudible noise made by the monsters.

Jared cleared his throat, and swallowed painfully, coughed several times and gripped his neck. He’d never felt like this before.

Averyman dismissed the witness and called another.

By now, the two periods of hearings had become tedious. After all, there were really only two categories of witnesses — those who had heard the supernatural sound and those who hadn’t.

More important, as far as Jared was concerned, was the personal matter of his growing uncertainty. He wasn’t so sure now that the monsters were a punishment for his defiance of the Barrier. That the horrible menace had not ended with his sincere atonement could mean only one of two things: Light would accept no degree of repentance, or his visit to the Original World had not, after all, aggravated the monsters.

Then he drew attentively erect as a third possibility suggested itself: Suppose he was right about Light and Darkness being physical things. Suppose, in his search for the two, he had almost uncovered a significant truth. And suppose the monsters, assuming that they were opposed to his success, were aware of how close he had come. Wouldn’t they do everything possible to discourage him?”

A violent sneeze snapped his head back and elicited a reproving silence from Averyman, who had been in the middle of a question.

The new witness was a young boy whose excited account left no doubt that he had heard the impossible sounds.

“And how would you describe these — sensations?” Elder Averyman completed the question.

“It was like a lot of crazy shouts that kept bouncing against my face. And when I put my hands over my ears I kept on hearing them.”

The child’s head had been turned toward Averyman and Jared couldn’t hear the details of his face. But suddenly it seemed vitally important that he should know the boy’s characteristic expression. So he went around the slab, seized his shoulders and held him with his features fully exposed to the portable caster.

It was as he had expected — the child’s eyes were wide open.

“You have something you’d like to say?” Averyman asked, not quite concealing his resentment over the interruption.

“No — nothing.” Jared returned to his place.

The boy was an open-eyed type. Jared, himself, was openeyed. Three other witnesses had fallen into the same category. And all of them had felt the strange sensations!

Was it as he had guessed once before — that the silent sound might in some way be connected with the eyes, provided they were exposed? And now he recalled how strangely his own eyes had reacted during Excitation of the Optic Nerve Ceremony. The weird rings of noise had clearly seemed to be dancing beneath his lids, hadn’t they?

But what significance could be drawn from all this? If the eyes were intended only for feeling Light, then why was it they could also sense the evil of the monsters? He was both excited and confused by the flood of inspirational questions. And he was annoyed that the same inspiration would produce none of the answers.

Since the eyes seemed to be the common element between Divinity and Devil, he asked himself queasily, could Light be in some sort of evil conspiracy with the monsters?

There! He had entertained the sacrilegious thought! And he braced himself for the wrath of the Almighty.

But, instead, there came only a direct question from Elder Averyman: “Well, Jared — rather, Your Survivorship — you’ve heard these various descriptions. How do they compare with your impressions of that monster in the Original World?”

He decided to play it a bit shrewder. “I’m not so sure I heard a monster. You know how your imagination can run away with you.” There was no sense in calling attention to his experience with the creature. Nor did he hear where he would gain anything by telling them about the beings that had invaded the Upper Level.

“Eh? What?” Elder Haverty inquired. “You mean you didn’t hear a monster in the Original World? You did go there, didn’t you?”

Jared tried to clear his throat, but the painful roughness persisted. “Yes, I went there.”

“And a lot has happened since then,” Survivor Maxwell reminded. “We’ve lost some hot springs. A monster has carried off the Prime Survivor. Do you suppose you’re to blame for those misfortunes?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Why incriminate himself?

“Some think you might be,” Averyman said stiffly.

Jared sprang up. “If this is an attempt to remove me from—”

“Sit down, son,” Maxwell urged. “Elder Averyman said we had to make you Prime Survivor. But there’s nothing to keep us from easing you out if we think that’s best.”

“The question,” Haverty repeated, “is whether you’re the cause of all that’s happened to this world.”

“Of course I’m not! Those first three hot springs went dry long before I crossed the Barrier!”

There was a speculative silence around the slab. But Jared was more surprised than any of them by the truth he had spontaneously spoken. It had opened his ears to a whole flood of realization.

“Don’t you understand?” He leaned tensely over the slab, letting sound from the portable caster play over his face so the others could hear his sincerity. “What’s happening now couldn’t be because I went across the Barrier! The Upper Level’s having the same troubles! They lost some boiling pits and one of their Survivors turned up missing before I even went to the Original World!”

“We’d be more likely to believe that,” Averyman pointed out cynically, “if you’d told us about it earlier.”

“I didn’t realize I had crossed the Barrier after those things had happened. And I figured that if I told you about them you’d only be more certain I was to blame.”

“Eh?” Haverty put in. “How do we know you’re telling the truth about the Upper Level having trouble too?”

“Get the Official Escort to ask about it when they take me back up there.”

Jared felt like a Survivor who had been freed from the depths of Radiation. He had cast off shackles of superstition that would have thrown a curtain of fear over the rest of his life.

His relief was almost boundless — knowing that his trip to the Original World to hunt for Darkness and Light had not provoked the vengeance of an aggrieved Almighty Power. It meant there was no dire necessity of relinquishing that search. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to devote as much effort to the quest as he had planned — not with his Prime Survivorship a reality and with Unification hanging over his head. But, at least, he could go on with it.

A depression that he had known for many periods melted away before his exuberance. He would have felt like shouting had it not been for the fact that his throat was bothering him again.

He sneezed and his head started throbbing.

A few moments later Elder Maxwell sneezed too, then sniffled.

Abruptly there was a disturbance in the world outside and Jared tensed as he caught a whiff of the monster’s stench.

Someone swept into the grotto and quickly placated, “Don’t be alarmed by the smell.” The voice was Romel’s. “It’s coming from something in my hand — something the monster dropped when it carried off the Prime Survivor.”

Jared intercepted the clicks from the portable caster as they echoed against the object his brother was displaying. It was the cloth he had buried in the passageway. Romel was firming his grip on that imaginary swish-rope. And Jared waited for the tug that would jerk him off his feet.

The Elders had had time to study the reeking object, and Maxwell asked, “Where did you get this thing?”

“I listened to Jared hide it. And I dug it up.”

“Why would he do a thing like that?”

“Ask him.” But before Maxwell could, Romel went on, “I think he was covering up for the monster. Don’t get me wrong now. Jared’s my brother. But the interest of the Lower Level comes first. That’s why I’m exposing this conspiracy.”

“That’s ridiculous—” Jared began.

“Eh? What?” Haverty interrupted. “Conspiracy? What conspiracy? Why should your brother conspire with the monster? How could he conspire with it?”

“He stole off and met it in the Original World, didn’t he?”

Echoes fetched only the impression of hair hanging down over Romel’s face. But Jared knew that the smile concealed beneath the veil was as sardonic as it had been each time the swish-rope accomplished its mischievous purpose during an earlier era.

“I hid the cloth,” he began, “because—”

But Haverty persisted. “What would he gain by conspiring with a monster?”

There was yet another tug to be had from the swish-rope. “He’s Prime Survivor now, isn’t he?” Romel reminded with a laugh.

Jared lunged up. But two Elders halted his charge.

“That kind of outburst,” Averyman assured, “only makes the accusation seem more reasonable.”

Jared relaxed before the slab. “I hid the cloth because I wanted to study it later. I couldn’t very well bring it into the world without having to answer the same questions I’m answering now.”

“Reasonable,” Averyman grumbled. “And what about this matter of conspiring with the monster?”

“Would you say I’d have anything to gain if a monster kidnaped a Zivver?”

“Not personally, no.”

He told them about the invasion of the Upper Level by the two monsters.

“And why didn’t you say anything about this before?” Averyman asked somewhat indignantly after he had finished.

“For the same reason I’ve already given — I didn’t realize then that I wasn’t responsible for what was happening.”

After a moment Maxwell warned, “We certainly intend to check that story about the Zivver being carried off by monsters.”

“If you find out I’m lying, give me any length of sentence in the Punishment Pit.”

Averyman rose. “I think this hearing has taken up enough time for one period.”

“Hearing? Compost!” Jared swore. “Let’s quit sitting on our hands and go after the Prime Survivor!”

“Easy now,” Haverty soothed. “We don’t want to do anything rash. We may be dealing with Cobalt and Strontium themselves.”

“But they’ll be back!”

“At which time we’ll rely both on the Protectors we’ve posted at the entrance and on the Guardian for Exorcism.”

It was a stupid position born of deaf superstition. But Jared heard that he wouldn’t be able to budge them from it.

Later that period he withdrew to the Fenton Grotto to work on a formula for reallocating the remaining manna husk output among survivors and livestock. Hunched over the sandbox, he brushed the writing area smooth and began all over again with his stylus. But a violent sneeze swept the surface clean and he threw the instrument down in disgust.

He pushed the box aside and laid his head on the slab. Not only were the sniffles driving him out of his mind, but he also felt as though his head were stuffed with warm, moist wooL He’d had fever before, but not like this. Nor had he ever heard of anyone else being sick in this manner.

Leading his thoughts away from physical discomfort, he took cheer from the still unbelievable realization that no Divine Being stood in the way of his quest for Light. The monsters might resent his seeking Darkness and Light. But they could be resisted — if he could only find some way to get around their sleep-dealing powers.

It was tantalizing, too, how everything seemed to point toward some vast and incomprehensible pattern into which were woven so many material and immaterial things. What was the obscure relationship between the eyes and Light, Light and Darkness, Darkness and the Original World, the Original World and Radiation? The apparent linkage extended to the Twin Devils then, in a great circle, back again to the eyes and the Light-Darkness arrangement.

He found himself recalling Cyrus, the Thinker, who spent his time meditating in his grotto at the other end of the world. He remembered that gestations ago he had heard the old man express some novel ideas on Darkness. Perhaps it was those philosophic sessions that had suggested the search for Darkness — and Light — in the first place. And Jared knew he must talk with the Thinker again — soon.

The curtains parted, admitting Many, one of the new Survivors.

“For a P.S. of only a few heartbeats’ experience,” he chided, “you’ve sure carved out a chunk of trouble for yourself — popping off before the Elders about chasing after the monster.”

Jared laughed. “Guess I should have kept my mouth shut.”

Many perched on the slab beside him and sneezed. “The Guardian hit the dome when he heard about it. He says now he’s sure Romel would make a better P.S.”

“After I hear my way clear with this hot-springs emergency, I’ll straighten him out.”

“He’s saying the way you acted at the hearing proves you haven’t atoned. And he’s predicting more misfortune for the world.”

As though Many’s words had also been a cue for fulfillment of Guardian Philar’s prophesy, distressed voices began ifitering through the curtain.

Plunging outside, Jared snagged one of the men who were racing by. “What’s all the commotion?”

“The river! It’s running dry!”

Even before he reached the bank, the central caster’s clacks fetched a composite of the situation. The river had fallen so alarmingly below its normal level that the liquid softness of its reflected sound was completely hidden in the echo void of the bank. And there came only the enfeebled gurgling of water around rocks that had never before been exposed.

A terrified scream shrilled from the direction of the main entrance and, without breaking stride, Jared altered course.

With the central caster behind him, he began getting a better impression of what lay ahead. The Protectors stationed at the mouth of the passageway were in a state of agitated disorder.

“Monster! Monster!” someone over there was shouting.

Then Jared checked his charge as the entire tunnel abruptly began roaring with the soundless noise of the monsters. The sensations he received were like Effective Excitation amplified a thousandfold. But now there were no fuzzy half rings of inaudible sound touching his eyeballs, as in the Optic Nerve Ceremony. Instead, the screaming silence was like a detached, impersonal thing — something associated not with any part of himself, but rather with the mouth of the tunnel!

It was more than that, however. The noiselessness leaked off, much like valid sound, and touched many things — the dome, the wall on his right, the banging stones beside the entrance.

Starting forward again, he threw his hands in front of his face. The distant, whispering roar of Effective Excitation left him immediately. Then that proved it — the uncanny stuff that came from the monsters did inflict its weird pressure on his eyes!

Spared the confusing sensations, he concentrated now on the echoes coming from ahead. There was no monster in the entrance. That one had been there only a few beats earlier was borne out by the loitering scent. And his ears picked out the tubular object that lay on the floor of the tunnel. Even from this distance he could hear it was like the One Della had found in the Upper Level.

Just as he reached the entrance, one of the Protectors raised a rock over his head and raced toward the tube.

“No! Don’t!” Jared shouted.

The guard hurled the rock.

Eyes exposed again, Jared reached down for the remains of the object. It was warm and it rattled and tinkled when he shook it.

He noticed, too, that there were no more traces of the screaming silence.