Dark Universe Page 15

  He clamped his hands over his face and found immediate relief while he listened to monsters pouring in from the passageway. And with them came the familiar zip-hisses.

  "Don't be afraid!" one of the creatures shouted.

  "Throw some Light this way!" another cried.

  The words reverberated in Jared's mind. What did they mean? Was Light actually associated with these evil beings? How could anyone throw Light? Once before he had wildly assumed that the stuff these creatures hurled ahead of themselves in the passages might somehow be Light. And he had at once rejected that possibility, just as he was forced to discard it anew now.

  His eyes flicked open involuntarily but he only stood there, confounded by a new bewilderment. For a moment he could almost detect a deficiency of something-just as he had imagined once before that he was on the verge of putting his finger on the lessness he was seeking. Now the conviction was even firmer that there was not as much of something in the Zivver World as there had been before the evil beings came!

  "The monsters!" Mogan shouted. "They're coming up here!"

  Della screamed and the reflection of her voice brought back the impression of three of the creatures racing up the incline.

  "Jared!" she tugged on his arm. "Let's get-"

  Zip-hiss.

  She collapsed and before he could seize her she went rolling down the incline. Frantically, Jared started after the girl. But Mogan held him back, saying, "We can't help her now."

  "We can if we reach her before-"

  But the Zivver leader swung him around, shoved him into the river and dived in after him.

  Before Jared could shout out in protest, Mogan dragged him beneath the surface and began the desperate underwater swim against the current. He fought stubbornly against the other's grip, but the combination of giant strength and the threat of drowning swamped his struggles and there was nothing he could do but allow himself to be towed helplessly along.

  At a point that he judged to be halfway through the underground stretch, the current hurled him against a boulder and whatever air he had managed to retain in his lungs escaped in an involuntary grunt. Morgan plunged for the bottom and Jared frenziedly staved off the compulsion to release his breath. His resistance snapped finally and a great mouthful of water boiled down his windpipe.

  He revived to the rhythmic motion of the Zivver's broad hands as they pressed down on the small of his back and withdrew, pressed and withdrew. He retched and coughed up warm water.

  Mogan stopped pumping air into his lungs and helped him to a sitting position. "Guess I was wrong about you plotting with those creatures," he said apologetically.

  "Della!" Jared exclaimed between coughs. "I've got to get back in there!"

  "It's too late. The place is filled with monsters."

  Jared listened anxiously for the river. But he heard no water anywhere around them. "Where are we?" he demanded.

  "Out in a lesser passage. After I dragged you ashore I had to haul you off before the soubats got us."

  Listening to reflections of the words, Jared traced out the details of a tunnel that broadened ahead after issuing from the constriction of pinched walls behind them. And from back there came the infuriated sounds of the soubats that couldn't get through.

  "We're not headed toward the main corridor, are we?" he asked disappointedly.

  "The opposite direction. It beats fighting off soubats barehanded."

  Jared rose and steadied himself against the wall. There might have been a chance of overtaking the monsters in the larger passageway, but the soubats had overruled that possibility, he conceded glumly. "Where does this tunnel lead?"

  "Never been this way before."

  Realizing he had no choice, Jared followed the reflections of their voices down the corridor.

  Later, when he stumbled for a second time, he wondered why he was groping around in a noiseless passage without sounding stones. He felt along the ground until he found a pair of pebbles that almost matched, then filled the air with clicks before continuing.

  After a while Mogan said, "You hear pretty good with those things, don't you?"

  "I manage." Then Jared heard he was being abrupt for no reason at all, unless it was because he resented the Zivver's having kept him from trying to reach Della-an attempt which certainly would have failed anyway.

  "I've had practice with the things," he added more affably.

  "I suppose they're all right for someone who can't ziv," Mogan ventured, "but I'm afraid the noise would drive me crazy."

  They traveled in silence for some time. And, as Jared's steps took him farther from the Zivver domain, the possibility that he might never hear Della again burdened him with despair. He knew finally that he would have settled with her in a secluded world and that it would have made no difference whether she was his superior or not-as long as they could be together.

  But now she was gone and another-the most vital-part of his universe had crumbled beneath him. He berated himself for having failed to recognize what she meant to him, for his distorted sense of values that prompted him to attach more importance to an insane quest for Light and Darkness. Finding her, he vowed, would be his single purpose, even if it carried him to the Thermonuclear Depths of Radiation. And if he couldn't snatch her back from the monsters, then Radiation would be his deserved punishment.

  They passed a lesser chasm and the Zivver leader fell in alongside him. "Della said you were hunting for Light and Darkness."

  "Forget it," Jared snapped, determined to forget it himself.

  "But I'm interested. If you had been a Zivver, I was going to have a talk with you."

  Somewhat curious, Jared asked, "About what?"

  "I don't put any stock in the legends either. I always thought the Great Light Almighty was unnecessary glorification for something commonplace."

  "You did?"

  "I've even decided what Light is."

  Jared halted the march. "What is it?"

  "Warmth."

  "How do you figure that?"

  "There's warmth all around us, isn't there? Greater warmth we call 'heat'; lesser warmth, 'cold.' The warmer a thing is, the more impressions it sends to a Zivver's eyes."

  Jared nodded pensively. "And it lets you know about things without feeling, hearing, or smelling them."

  Mogan shrugged. "Which is what the legends say Light does."

  There was something inconsistent here, but Jared couldn't quite decide what. Perhaps it was just his reluctance to admit Light might be something as prosaic as heat. He resumed the march and stepped more briskly as he heard a larger corridor ahead.

  At the same time Mogan said, "I ziv another passage up there, a big one."

  Jared trotted forward, sounding his clickstones more rapidly to accommodate the greater speed. But he jolted to a stop as he broke into the larger tunnel.

  "What's wrong?" Mogan paused beside him.

  "This place reeks with the scent of monsters!" Jared flared his nostrils, sucking in samples of air. "That's not all. There's the smell of Upper and Lower Level people too- almost as strong as the other odor."

  From his clickstone echoes he received an impression of the Zivver leader running a hand over his brow.

  "This corridor's Radiation on the eyes!" Mogan exclaimed. "Too much warmth. It's hard to ziv one thing from another."

  Jared, too, had felt the heat. But he was concerned with a different consideration. There was something familiar about this stretch of passage, about its formations of tumbled rocks. Then it struck him, Of course-they were just outside the Original World! He clicked his stones again and detected the slab behind which he and Owen had hidden from his first encounter with a monster. Around the bend to his right would be the Original World entrance and, beyond that, the Barrier and the Levels.

  "Which way should we go?" Mogan asked.

  "To the left," Jared suggested impulsively, shoving off.

  After a few paces, he said, "So you think heat is Light."


  "I do."

  "And Darkness?"

  "Simple. Darkness is coolness."

  Now Jared had his finger on the inconsistency. "You're wrong. Only Zivvers can sense heat and cold from a distance. Tell me one legend that holds Light will be the exclusive property of Zivvers. All the beliefs say everybody will be Reunited with Light."

  "I've got that figured out too. It's just that the Zivvers are the first step toward general Reunion."

  Jared was going to protest that assumption also. But he had just negotiated a bend in the corridor and now he drew back reflexively. Riding the crest of his clickstone echoes were the details of another curve ahead. And he was profoundly aware of a tremendous flow of silent sound pouring from around that bend. It was as though a thousand inhuman creatures were marching in his direction, all hurling screaming silence before them.

  "I can't ziv a thing!" Mogan complained desperately.

  Jared listened but heard no audible sounds of monsters around the bend. Cautiously, he pressed forward, determined this time to keep his eyes open. His face contorted in protest to volition and muscles grew taut as they tried unsuccessfully to close the lids they controlled. Squinting and trembling, he found himself going ahead and forgetting to use his stones.

  Mogan came along, trailing by a considerable distance, though, and emitting an occasional distressed oath.

  Jared reached the bend and plunged swiftly around it, afraid that if he hesitated he might turn and flee. Now the dreadful stuff was flowing into his eyes with the force of a hundred hot springs and he could no longer keep them open. Tears streaming down his cheeks, he stumbled forward, relying once more on his pebbles.

  His steps, however, were mired in terror. For, from ahead came no echoes of his clicks- none at all! But that was impossible! Never had anyone heard a noise that didn't reflect from all directions. Yet, here was a great, incredible gap in a sound pattern!

  His fear finally became an absolute barrier and he could go no farther. Standing as motionless as though he had been planted there like a manna tree, he shouted.

  There were no reflections of his voice from ahead, from above, from either side! From behind, the returning sound etched the presence of a great wall of rock that towered many times the height of even the Zivver World dome. And in this wall he detected the muffled hollowness of the corridor he had just left.

  The decision struck him with the force of a falling boulder: He was in infinity! And it was not an endless stretch of rock that surrounded him, but an unbounded expanse of- air!

  Terrified, he backed toward the passage. For all beliefs had held that there were only two infinities-Paradise and Radiation.

  Another step and he collided with Mogan.

  The Zivver leader exclaimed, "I can't even keep my eyes open! Where are we?"

  "I-" Jared choked on his words. "I think we're in Radiation."

  "Light! I smell it!"

  "The smell of the monsters. But it's not their scent at all-just the odor of this place."

  Dismayed, Jared retreated again toward the passageway. Then he became more aware of the intense heat and readily understood why the other's zivving ability had been deafened. Mogan was used to the normal range of warmth in the worlds and corridors. Here, the heat of all the boiling springs in existence was pouring down from above.

  And, abruptly, Jared knew he could not leave this infinity without definitely identifying it. Already he suspected which one it was. The heat was a more than sufficient clue. But he had to make certain. Bracing himself against the expected pain, he opened his eyes and let the tears out.

  The uncanny impressions that assailed him were fuzzy this time and he wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand.

  Then the composites came-sensations that he suspected were something like ziv impressions. He was uncannily aware-through the medium of his eyes themselves-that the ground sloped away in front of him toward a patch of tiny, slender things that swayed this way and that in the distance. Vaguely, he was reminded of manna trees. Only, their tops were lacy and delicate. And he remembered the Paradise plant legend.

  But this was an infinity of heat, not at all suggestive of heavenly things.

  Between the trees he zivved the details of small, geometrical forms, arranged in rows like the shacks in the Original World. Another supposed feature of Paradise.

  But monsters dwelled here.

  Suddenly he directed his attention to one paramount fact:

  He was receiving detailed impressions of an infinite number of things at one time, without having to hear or smell them!

  Which was a capability possible only in the presence of the Great Light Almighty.

  This, then, was it.

  This was the end of his search.

  He had found light. And Light was, after all, the stuff the monsters hurled ahead of themselves in the passageways.

  But Light was not in Paradise.

  It was in the infinity of Radiation with the Nuclear monsters.

  All the legends, all the tenets were bitterly misleading.

  For man there was no Paradise.

  And, with the Atomic Demons roaming the passageways at will, humanity had reached the end of its material existence.

  He threw his head back in desperation and full against his face crashed the deadliest silent sound imaginable.

  It was an impression so fierce that it seemed to boil his eyes right out of their sockets.

  Screaming at him in all its fury was a great, round, vicious thing that dominated Radiation with incredible force and heat and malignant majesty.

  Hydrogen Himself!

  Jared spun around and bolted for the passage, hardly aware that he had, at the same time, heard a noise on the incline before him.

  Mogan shouted. But the anguished outcry was interrupted by a zip-hiss.

  Jared made it back into the corridor, racing frantically after the echoes of his clickstones.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hardly aware Mogan was no longer with him, Jared welcomed the intimate security of the Passageway's walls as they closed in about him once more. The zip-hiss that had accounted for the Zivver leader's absence was only an insignificant memory against his greater dismay.

  Stumbling, he pushed on toward the first bend. His eyes, boiling and dripping tears of protest, were still feeling the awful pressure of the monster stuff that had crammed all the empty space in that horrible infinity of Radiation.

  He collided with a boulder, fell, picked himself up and raced on around the curve, only dimly aware that he was making his way among the hazards without the benefit of audible impulses.

  Eventually he drew up and clung uncertainly to a slender hanging stone, waiting for his breathing to come under control.

  Everything was clear now, ironically clear. All that stuff in infinity was-Light. It was the same Light he had spent a lifetime seeking. Only, it had turned out to be an evil thing because it was part of Radiation itself.

  Then suddenly he felt the impact of yet another incredible realization:

  Now he knew what Darkness was too!

  It was here-in this very corridor-in all the corridors he had ever known, all the worlds he had ever visited. In his entire lifetime he had never been out of the Darkness, except for those few occasions on which he had encountered the monsters. There had been no way of recognizing it until he had first experienced Light.

  But it was so simple now.

  The infinity behind him was filled with Light. In the corridor ahead was a decided lessness of the stuff. And, around the next curve, there would be an absolute absence of Light, a totality of Darkness-so complete, so universal that he might have lived in it for ten thousand gestations without ever knowing it was there.

  Reeling under the perplexing weight of strange, new concepts, he continued down the corridor, hands extended uncertainly. And, through the medium of his eyes alone, he could fully sense the Lightlessness that loomed ahead, stark as the most profound silence he had ever known-a heav
y, thick curtain of Darkness.

  With hesitant steps, he negotiated the bend and edged into the immaterial barrier, flinching as the Darkness closed inexorably in about him. Now, in feeling his way forward, his hands maintained a steady, probing motion. And, humiliated, he was reminded of how his less sensitive brother Romel had to grope his way into a dense silence.

  With his next step his foot fell off into the emptiness of a shallow depression and he pitched forward clumsily. Before rising he gathered up a pair of pebbles and rattled them in his hand.

  But now the clicks seemed remote and alien. Only with great concentration could he refine from the echoes the impressions of what lay ahead. And he wondered whether faulty hearing might be one of the immediate effects of Radiation sickness. Then he felt a fear as intense as the Darkness around him when he recalled another legend: Anyone who encountered Radiation could expect all kinds of severe illnesses-fever, deafness, fatal vomiting, shedding of the hair and blindness, whatever that was.

  Yet, physical self-concern was buried under a bitterness that engulfed him like the stifling vapor of a boiling pit. Ahead stretched only a future as empty of material things as the vast infinity from which he had just escaped.

  His every purpose was now nothing more than a shattered dream-his worlds decimated; Della gone; his search for Light ended in the agonizing remorse of disappointment and delusion. All his life he had chased a ringing hope down an intriguing corridor, only to overtake it finally and find that it was no more than a wisp of air.

  Plodding on into the Darkness, he rattled his pebbles desperately, paying the price of severe attention for each impression he wrung from the no longer familiar echoes. In a frenzy, he wrested as much perceptive content as he could out of each reflected tone. And even then he had to pause occasionally and send a hand fumbling ahead to touch out an indistinct obstacle.

  He reached the intersecting passage through which he and Mogan had arrived at this larger corridor and, a few steps farther, the reflections of his clicks began gathering impressions of the Original World's resonant hollowness off to his left.