Dark Universe

CHAPTER NINE

Half a period later, with long stretches of unfamiliar passages behind them, Jared paused and listened tensely.

There it was again! A distant flutter of wings — much too faint for Della’s ears, though.

“Jared, what is it?” She pressed close against him.

Casually, he said, “I thought I heard something.”

Actually, he had suspected for some time that the soubat was trailing them.

“Maybe it’s one of the Zivvers!” she suggested eagerly.

“That’s what I hoped at first. But I was mistaken. There’s nothing there.” No sense in alarming her — not just yet.

As long as he could keep the conversation going, he had little to worry about insofar as pitfalls were concerned. The words provided a steady source of sounding echoes. But subject matter was not inexhaustible and eventually there came lapses into silence. It was then that he had to resort to artifice to keep the girl from discovering he wasn’t a Zivver. An ingeniously timed cough, an ostensibly awkward clatter of the lances, an unnecessary scuff that sent a loose stone rattling along the ground — all these improvisations helped.

He let a spear strike rock and was rewarded with the reflected composite of a bend in the corridor. As he negotiated it, Della warned, “Watch out for that hanging stone!”

Her alarmed words fetched him an impression of the sliver of rock in all its audible clarity. But too late.

Clop!

The impact of his head snapped the needle in two and sent fragments hurtling against the wall.

“Jared,” she asked, puzzled, “aren’t you zivving?”

He feigned a groan to avoid answering — not that the instant swelling on his forehead wasn’t justification enough for the expression of pain.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.” He pushed forward briskly.

“And you aren’t zivving either.”

He tensed. Had she guessed already? Was he about to lose his only means of entry into the Zivver World?

Even convinced that he wasn’t zivving, however, she only laughed. “You’re having the same trouble I did — until I said, ‘To Radiation with what people think! I’m going to ziv all I want!’ ”

Using the reflections of her clearly enunciated syllables, he planted firmly in mind the details of the area immediately ahead. “You’re Tight. I wasn’t zivving.”

“We don’t have to deny our ability any longer, Jared.” She held on to his arm. “That’s all behind us now. We can be ourselves for the first time — really ourselves! Oh, isn’t it wonderful?”

“Sure.” He rubbed the lump on his forehead. “It’s wonderful.”

“That girl who was waiting for you at the Lower Level—”

“Zelda?”

“What an odd name — and a fuzzy-face too. Was she a — friend?”

At least the echo-generating conversation was under way again. And now he could readily hear all the obstacles.

“Yes, I suppose you’d call her a friend.”

“A good friend?”

He led her confidently around a shallow pit, half-expecting a complimentary “Now you’re zivving!” But it didn’t come.

“Yes, a good friend,” he said.

“I gathered as much — from the way she was waiting for you.”

With his head turned away, he smiled. Zivvers, it appeared, were not lacking in normal human sensitivity. And he felt somewhat gratified over the pout-formed distortion of her words when she asked, “Are you going to — miss her much?”

Hiding his amusement, he offered bravely, “I think I’ll manage to get over it.”

He faked another cough and detected a vague hollowness lurking in the rebounding sound. Fortunately, he kicked a loose stone with his next step. Its crisp clatter betrayed the details of a chasm that stretched halfway across the corridor.

Della warned, “Ziv that—”

“I ziv it!” he shot back, leading her around the hazard.

After a while she said distantly, “You had lots of friends, didn’t you?”

“I don’t think I was ever lonesome.” He regretted the statement immediately, suspecting that a Zivver in his position more logically would have been lonesome — dissatisfied with his lot.

“Not even knowing you were — different from all the others?”

“What I meant,” he hastened to explain, “was that most of the people were so nice I could almost forget I wasn’t like them.”

“You even knew that poor Zivver child,” she added thoughtfully.

“Estel. I only heard — zivved her once before.” He told her about encountering the runaway girl in the corridor.

When he had finished she asked, “And you let Mogan and the others get away without even telling them you were a Zivver too?”

“I — that is—” He swallowed heavily.

“Oh,” she said with belated comprehension, “I forgot — you had your friend Owen with you. And he would have heard your secret.”

“That’s right.”

“Anyway, you couldn’t desert the Lower Level, knowing how much they needed you.”

He listened suspiciously at her. Why had she been so quick to provide the answers for which he had been only groping? It was as though she had whimsically put him on a hook, then deftly taken him off again. Did she know he was no Zivver? Somehow it seemed his entire plan to investigate the possible Zivver-Darkness-Eyes-Light relationship might be slipping into an obscure echo void.

Again he was jarred from his thoughts by the portentous sound of fanning wings-still too distant for Della to detect. Without slowing his pace, he concentrated on the ominous flapping. There were two of the beasts trailing them now!

The logical thing to do, he readily heard, would be to dig in and face the soubats promptly — before they attracted others to the pursuit. He held off with the hope that the passage would narrow sufficiently to let him and the girl through but not the soubats.

He slowed his pace and waited for Della to say something so there would be more sounding echoes.

Clop!

The impact of shoulder against hanging stone wasn’t quite as jolting this time. It merely spun him half-around.

Angered, he snatched a pair of clickstones out of his pouch and rattled them furiously. To Radiation with what she thought! If the truth that he wasn’t a Zivver was going to come out, let it come!

Della only laughed. “Go ahead and use your stones if it’ll make you feel any more secure. I went through the same thing when I first started zivving steadily.”

“You did?” he stepped off at a brisk pace now that what lay ahead was so sharply audible.

“You’ll soon get used to it. It’s the air currents that cause all the trouble. They’re beautiful but tiring.”

Currents? Did that mean there was some way she could be aware of slow, swirling air in the corridor — something he could hear only when it was further agitated by the passage of a spear or arrow?

It was Della who tripped this time. She fell against him, throwing them both off balance and sending them reeling against the wall.

She clung to him and he could feel the moist warmth of her breath on his chest, the cleaving softness of her body against his.

He held her for a moment and she whispered, “Oh, Jared — we’re going to be so happy! No two people ever had more in common!”

Her cheek was smooth where it pressed against his shoulder and her banded tress of hair lay softly across his arm, dancing as it moved with the slight motions of her head.

Dropping his spears, he touched her face and felt the even flow of trim features, firm and fine from hairline to chin. Her waist, molded to the concavity of his other hand, was evenly curved and supple, flaring out to modestly rounded hips.

Not until then had he fully realized she might quite easily become more than just a means to an end. And he was certain he had been wrong in suspecting she was trying to deceive him — so certain that he found himself thinking of forgetting everything else and settling down with her in some remote, lesser world.

But sobering logic barged in on his reverie and he retrieved the lances abruptly, shoving off down the passage. Della was a Zivver; he wasn’t. She would find happiness in her Zivver World and he would have to be content with his quest for Light — if he managed to survive his bold invasion of the Zivver domain.

“Are you zivving now, Della?” he asked cautiously.

“Oh, I ziv all the time. Soon you will too.”

Experimentally, he listened sharply with the faint hope that he would notice some indiscernible change in the things about her. But he heard nothing. It must be as he had previously suspected: The lessness he sought was so minor that he would have to be in the presence of a number of Zivvers before its cumulative effect would be noticeable.

But, wait! There was a more direct approach.

“Della, tell me — what do you think about Darkness?”

And he could hear her echo-conveyed frown as she repeated the question and added uncertainly, “Darkness abounds in the worlds—”

“Sin and evil, no doubt.”

“Of course. What else?”

It was evident she knew nothing of Darkness. Or, even if she could perceive it, she still didn’t recognize it for what it was.

“Why are you so concerned over Darkness?” she asked.

“I was just thinking,” he improvised, “that zivving must be something opposite to Darkness — something good.”

“Of course it’s good,” she assured, following him around a lesser depression and along the shore of a suddenly emerged river. “How could anything so beautiful be bad?”

“It’s — beautiful?” He tried to eliminate the questioning inflection at the last beat. But, still, the words came out more interrogation than statement.

Her voice was animate with expressiveness. “That rock up ahead — ziv how it stands out against the cool earth background, how warm and soft it is. Now it’s not there, but just for a beat — until that breath of warm air goes by. Now it’s back again.”

His mouth hung open. How could the rock be there and not there in the next instant. It had continued to cast back clicks from his stones all the while, hadn’t it? Why, it hadn’t moved even a finger’s width!

The passage, he could hear, was wide and straight, with few hazards. So he put his stones away.

“You’re zivving now, aren’t you, Jared? What do you ziv?”

He hesitated. Then, impulsively, “Out there in the stream — I ziv a fish. A big one, standing out against the cool river bed.”

“How can that be?” she asked skeptically. “I can’t ziv it.”

But certainly it was there! He could hear the swishing of its fins as it stabilized itself. “It’s there, all right.”

“But a fish is no colder or warmer than the water around it. Besides, I’ve never been able to ziv rocks or anything else in water — not even when I’ve just thrown them in.”

Covering over the blunder would call for boldness. “I can ziv fish. Maybe I ziv different from you.”

She was audibly concerned. “I hadn’t thought of that. Oh, Jared, suppose I’m not really a Zivver after all!”

“Youre a Zivver, all right.” Then he lapsed into a troubled silence. How could anyone expect to outsmart a Zivver?

The fearsome rustle of leathery wings overtook him and he marveled that anything that distinct could escape the girl’s attention. The creatures had reached an enlarged stretch of the passage and, making the most of ample flying room, were streaking forward.

Then he pulled up and trained his ears acutely on the rearward sounds. No longer were there only two soubats stalking them. It was clearly audible that their number had at least doubled.

“What is it, Jared?” Della questioned his alert silence.

One of the creatures filled the air with its strident cry.

“Soubats!” she exclaimed.

“Just one.” No point in alarming her when, with a little luck, they might lose the beasts entirely. “You take the lead. I’ll bring up the rear — in case it gets in position to attack.”

He prided himself on having worked a temporary advantage out of the situation. With her in front, he no longer had to prove occasionally that he was zivving. Now, with her hand in his, he had only to follow her lead. Still, vocal sounds were even more desirable for fetching obscure impressions, so he primed the conversation.

“Leading me by the hand like this,” he offered facetiously, “you remind me of Kind Survivoress.”

“Who’s that?”

Trailing Della along a ridge that ran beside the stream, he told her of the woman who, in his childhood dreams, used to take him to visit the child who lived with her.

“Little Listener?” she repeated the name after he mentioned it. “That’s what the boy was called?”

“In my dreams it was. He couldn’t hear anything except the soundless noises some of the crickets made.”

“If they were soundless, how did you know the crickets were making any noise at all?” She led him over a minor chasm.

“As I remember, the woman used to tell me such noises existed but only the boy could hear them. She heard them too whenever she listened into his mind, however.”

“She could do that?”

“Without strain.” His chuckle made it clear that he was merely poking fun at the absurdity of his imagination. “That’s how she was able to reach me. I remember how she used to say she could listen in on almost anybody’s mind anywhere — except a Zivver’s.”

Della paused beside a rock column. “You’re a Zivver. She reached your mind. How do you account for that?”

There! He’d stumbled over his tongue again. And at a time when he was merely making conversation so he could hear the way. But he recovered instantly. “Oh, I was also the only Zivver whose mind she could hear. Don’t take this too seriously. Dreams don’t have to follow logical patterns.”

She led the way into a broader stretch of passage. “Parts of yours did.”

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose I told you I knew of a baby who never listened in the direction of a voice, but whenever his mother caught him listening at the wall, she always found a cricket clinging there.”

Somehow that had a familiar ring. “Was there such a baby?”

“In the Upper Level — before I was born.”

“What happened to him?”

“They decided he was a Different One. He was let out in the passages before he was even four gestations old.”

Now he dimly remembered how his parents used to tell him the same story about the Different child of the Upper Level.

“What are you thinking about, Jared?”

He was silent a long while. Then he laughed. “About how I finally understand why I used to dream about a Little Listener. Don’t you hear? I had actually been told about such a person. But the memory stayed below the surface.”

“And your — Kind Survivoress?”

Another curtain parted on the sounds of forgotten memory. “Now I can even recall hearing the story of a Different One who had been banished from the Lower Level gestations before I was born — a girl who always seemed to know what other people were thinking!”

“There.” Della continued on around a bend. “Now you have your odd dreams all explained.”

Almost. Left now to be determined was only the psychological origin of the Forever Man in his imaginings.

He turned his attention ahead and listened to a distant, vast hollowness that enveloped the roar of a cataract. They were nearing the end of the passage and ahead, he was certain, lay a huge world — the Zivver World? He doubted it, for he had long ago lost the scent of Zivvers.

“It’s horrible,” Della said pensively, “the way people just banish Different Ones.”

“The first Zivver was a Different One.” He swung back into the lead, using his clickstones. “But when they banished him he was old enough to steal back for a Unification partner.”

They broke out of the passage and Jared listened to the river flowing on across level ground, headed for the far wall. He shouted and the trailing echoes plunged back down from tremendous heights and across forbidding distances. The words rebounded from grotesque islands of tumbled rocks, setting up a clashing dissonance.

“Jared, it’s beautiful!” the girl exclaimed, turning her head in all directions. “I’ve never zivved anything like this before!”

“We can’t lose any time reaching the other side,” he said calmly. “There should be another passage where the stream flows into the opposite wall.”

“That soubat?” she asked, detecting the concern in his voice.

Without answering, he led her swiftly along a level course that had been eroded to smoothness during times past when the river had been fuller than it was now. Many breaths later they plunged through the passageway entrance in the opposite wall — just as the pursuing creatures emerged from the tunnel behind them and hurtled forward, filling the world with their malevolent stridency.

“We’ve got to hide!” he shouted. “They’ll overtake us in a beat!”

They splashed through a bend in the river and echoes of the sound betrayed the presence of an opening in the left wall barely large enough to admit them. He followed Della through and found himself in a recess almost as small as a residential grotto. The girl dropped exhausted to the ground and Jared settled down beside her, listening to the enraged soubats congregating in the corridor outside.

Della rested her head on his shoulder. “Do you think we’ll ever find the Zivver World?”

“Why are you so anxious to get there?”

“I — well, maybe for the same reason you are.”

Of course, she couldn’t know his real reason — or, could she? “It’s where we belong, isn’t it?”

“More than that, Jared. You sure you’re not going there to — find some people too?”

“What people?”

She hesitated. “Your relatives.”

His brow knitted. “I have no relatives there.”

“Then I suppose you must be an original Zivver.”

“Isn’t that what you are?”

“Oh, no. You see, I’m a — spur.” And she quickly added, “Does that make any difference — between us, I mean?”

“Why, no.” But even that sounded too stuffy. “Radiation, no!”

“I’m glad, Jared.” She brushed her cheek against his arm. “Of course, nobody knew I was a spur except my mother.”

“She was a Zivver too?”

“No. My father was.”

He listened outside the recess. Frustrated, the shrieking soubats were beginning to withdraw to the world they had just left.

“But I don’t understand,” he told the girl.

“It’s simple.” She shrugged. “After my mother found out I was going to be born, she Unified with an Upper Level Survivor. Everybody thought I just came early.”

“You mean,” he asked delicately, “your mother and — a Zivver—”

“Oh, it wasn’t like that. They wanted to be Unified. They met accidentally in a passageway once — and many times after that. They finally decided to run off together, find a small world of their own. On the way, though, she fell part way down a pit and he got killed saving her. There was nothing else she could do except return to the Upper Level.”

Jared felt a keen compassion for the girl. And he could understand how fervently she must have longed for the Zivver World. He had placed his arm around her and drawn her comfortably close. But now he released her, acutely aware of the distinction between them. It was more than the mere physical difference between a Zivver and a nonZivver. It was a great chasm of divergent thought and philosophy that encompassed contrary values and standards. And he could almost grasp the disdain a Zivver would feel for anyone to whom zivving was only an incomprehensible function.

There were no more soubats in the corridor, so he said, “We’d better get on our way.”

But she only sat there, rigid and not breathing. And, momentarily, he imagined he heard some faint, scurrying sounds that he hadn’t noticed before. To make certain, he rattled his pebbles. Immediately he received the impression of many small, furry forms. Now he could hear the feather-soft touch of insect feet against stone.

Della screamed and sprang up. “Jared, this is a spider world! I’ve just been bitten on the arm!”

Even as they ran for the exit he heard her falter in stride. As she collapsed, he caught her in his arms and shoved her into the corridor, crawling through after her. But too late. One of the tiny, hairy things had already dropped onto his shoulder. And before he could brush it off he felt the sharp, boiling sting of lethal venom.

Clinging to his lances, he slung Della over his shoulder and stumbled on down the passage. The poison was coursing through his arm now and reaching torturously across his chest, into his head.

But he pushed on for more than one impelling reason: he couldn’t lose consciousness here — the soubats would be back at any moment; nor could there be any stopping until he reached a hot spring where he might fashion steaming poultices and tend their wounds.

He struck a rock, bounced off, stood swaying for a while, then staggered on. Around the next bend he waded through an arm of the river and collapsed when he reached dry land again.

The stream flowed off through the wall and before them stretched a broad, dry passage. Pulling himself forward with the hand that still clutched the spears, he dragged Della along with him. Then he paused, listenihg to a drip-drip that came with a melodious monotony. His spear point touched rock and the thunk provided him with a composite of the passageway.

It was a strangely familiar corridor, with its slender hanging stone dripping cold water into the puddle below, not too far away from a single, well-defined pit. He felt sure he had been here many times before; had stood beside that moist needle of rock and run his hands over its cool, slick contours.

And, in his last impression before he lapsed into unconsciousness, he recognized all the details of the passageway outside the imaginary world of Kind Survivoress.