David Galouye - Dark Universe

“It’ll be less awkward if you just call me Leah.”

He puzzled over the name, then thought flatly, “I’m dreaming again.”

“For the moment — yes.”

Another anxious, soundless voice intruded, “Leah! How’s he doing?”

“Coming around,” she said.

“So I can hear.” Then, “Jared?”

Jared, however, had returned to the corridor — but only for a moment. Soon he was back on the manna fiber mattress in a minor world where the vague outline of a woman bent over him and an inconceivably ancient man sat against the far wall tapping his finger.

“Jared,” the woman offered, “that other voice was Ethan’s.”

“Ethan?”

“You knew him as Little Listener before we changed his name. He’s been out after game, but he’s coming back now.”

Jared was even more confused.

More to soothe him than for any other reason, he felt sure, the woman said, “I can’t believe you found your way here after all these gestations.”

He started to say something, but she interrupted, “Don’t explain. I heard everything from your mind — what you were doing in the passages, how you were bitten by—”

“Della!” he shouted, remembering.

“She’ll be all right. I reached you in time.”

Abruptly, he realized he was awake now and that Kind Survivoress’ last words had been spoken.

“Not Kind Survivoress, Jared — Leah.”

And he was astonished by his audible impression of the woman. He sent his hands groping over her face, across her shoulders, along her arms. Why — she wasn’t the least bit old!

“What did you expect — someone like the Forever Man?” She sent her thoughts to him. “After all, I was really practically a child when I used to go to you.”

He listened more closely at her. Hadn’t she once told him she could reach his mind only when he was asleep?

“Only when you’re asleep if you’re far away,” she clarified. “When you’re this close you don’t have to be asleep.”

He studied her auditory reflections. She was perhaps a bit talller than Della. But her proportions, despite her nine or ten gestations’ seniority over the girl, suffered none in comparison. She was closed-eyed and kept her hair clipped shoulder-length on the sides, reaching to her eyebrows in front.

Turning his ears on his surroundings, he listened to a small, dismal world with a scattering of hot springs, each surrounded by its usual clump of manna plants; an arm of a river flowing out of and right back into the wall; another slumber ledge nearby — Della there, asleep. All these impressions he sifted from the echoes provided by the finger tapping of — the Forever Man?

“That’s right,” Leah confirmed.

He rose, feeling not as weak as he thought he would, and started across the world.

Leah cautioned, “We don’t disturb him until he stops tapping.”

He came back and stood in front of the woman, still rejecting the fact that he was actually here, in his preposterous dream setting. “How did you know I was out in the corridor?”

“I listened to you coming.” And he heard the unspoken explanation that listen , in this case, didn’t mean hearing sound .

She placed a solicitous hand on his shoulder. “And I also hear from your thoughts that this Della is a Zivver.”

“She thinks I’m one too.”

“Yes, I know. And I’m afraid. I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.”

“I—”

“Oh, I know what you have in mind. But I still don’t understand it. I realize you want to get to the Zivver World so you can hunt for Darkness.”

“For Light too. And using Della is the only way I can get in.”

“So I hear. But how do you know what her plans are? I don’t trust the girl, Jared.”

“It’s just because you can’t listen to what she’s thinking.”

“Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m so used to hearing feelings, intentions, that I’m lost when outer impressions are all I have to go by.”

“You won’t tell Della I’m not like her?”

“If that’s the way you want it. We’ll just let her go on believing you’re the only Zivver whose mind I can reach. But I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Little Listener came storming into the world and it was remarkable that his exuberant shouts failed to rouse Della and were ignored by the Forever Man, who merely continued his tapping.

“Jared! Where are you?”

“Over here!” Jared was suddenly swept up in the excitement of renewing an acquaintance he hadn’t even known was real.

“He can’t hear you — remember?” Leah reminded.

“But he’s running straight toward us!” Then he puzzled over the scent of — -crickets? — that was coming from Little Listener.

“Ethan,” Leah corrected. “And those are crickets. He keeps a pouch filled with them. Unhearable cricket noises make just as good echoes for him as clickstones do for you.”

Then the other was upon him and, in a bone-crushing embrace, swung him around and around as easily as he would a bundle of manna stalks.

Jared’s gratification over the reunion was dulled by his awed appreciation of Ethan’s tremendous proportions. It was just as well that Little Listener had been banished from the Upper Level because of his uncanny hearing. Otherwise, he most certainly would have been expelled later for his almost inhuman size.

“You old son of a soubat!” Ethan chortled. “I knew you’d come some period!”

“Light, but it’s good to—” Jared broke off in midsentence as blunt, trembling fingers came to rest lightly against his lips.

“Let him,” Leah urged. “That’s the only way he can find out what you’re saying.”

They spent the better part of a period talking about their childhood meetings. And Jared had to tell them about the worlds of man, how it felt to live with many people, what the Zivvers’ latest tricks were, whether there had been any more Different Ones recently.

They interrupted their session once to haul food from a boiling pit and bring a portion to the Forever Man. But the latter, still not talkatively disposed, ignored their presence.

Later, Jared said in answer to Leah’s question, “Why do I want to go to the Zivver World? Because I’ve got a hunch that’s the right place to hunt for Darkness and Light.”

Ethan shook his head. “Forget it. You’re here; stay here.”

“No. This is something I’ve got to do.”

“Great flying soubats!” the other exclaimed. “You never had ideas like that before!”

At this point Jared, from the edge of his hearing, caught the impression of Della stirring on her ledge.

He hurtied over and knelt beside her. He felt her face and it was cool and dry, signifying that she had slept off the fever.

“Where are we?” she asked weakly.

He started to tell her, but before he got halfway through he heard that she had drifted into normal sleep.

During the next period Della more than made up for her inactivity of the previous one. That she had been pensively silent on hearing Jared explain about the world they were in and on meeting Leah and Ethan was a prelude to something or other.

When they were alone later, kneeling beside a hot spring and applying fresh poultices to their spider bites, he learned the reason for her reticence.

“When was the last time you were here?” she demanded.

“Oh, so many gestations ago that I—”

“Manna sauce!” She turned away and the Forever Man’s tapping sounds blunted themselves against the cool stiffness of her back. “I must say, your Kind Survivoress is quite a surprise.”

“Yes, she—” Then he understood what she was intimating.

“Kind Survivoress — I’ll bet she was kind!”