David Galouye - Dark Universe

“You don’t think—”

“Why did you bring me along? Was it because you thought that awkward giant might be interested in a Unification partner?’

Then she relented. “Oh, Jared, have you forgotten about the Zivver World already?”

“Of course not.”

“Then let’s get on our way.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t just run off. Leah saved our lives. These are friends!”

“Friends!” She cleared her throat and made it sound like the lash of a swish-rope. “You and your friends!”

Her head insolently erect, she strode off.

Jared followed, but drew up sharply when the world was suddenly cast into silence.

The Forever Man had stopped tapping! He was ready for company!

Unaccountably hesitant, Jared advanced cautiously across the world. Leah and Ethan had been credible. But the Forever Man loomed like a haunting creature from a fantastic past — someone whom he could never hope to understand.

Orienting himself by the asthmatic rasps that came from ahead, he approached the ledge.

“This is Jared,” Leah’s unspoken introduction rippled the psychic silence. “He’s finally come to hear us.”

“Jared?” The other’s reply, carried weakly on the crest of the woman’s thoughts, was burdened with the perplexity of forgetfulness.

“Of course, you remember.”

The Forever Man tapped inquisitively. And Jared intercepted the impression of a thin, finger delving almost its entire length into a depression in the rock before producing each tap . Over untold generations his thumping had eroded the stone that much!

“I don’t know you.” The voice, a pained whisper, was coarse as a rock slide.

“Leah used to sort of — bring me here long ago.”

“Oh, Ethan’s little friend!” A hand that was all bone set up an audible flutter as it trembled forward. It seized Jared’s wrist in a grip as tenuous as air. The Forever Man tried to smile, but the composite was grossly confused by a disheveled beard, skeletal protuberances and a misshapen, toothless mouth.

“How old are you?” Jared asked.

Even as he posed the question he knew it was unanswerable. Living by himself, before Leah and Ethan had come, the man would have had no life spans or gestations against which to measure time’s passage.

“Too old, son. And it’s been so lonely.” The straining voice was a murmur of despair against the stark silence of the world.

“Even with Leah and Ethan?”

“They don’t know what it means to have listened to loved ones pass on countless ages ago, to be banished from the beauties of the Original World, to—”

Jared started. “You lived in the Original World?”

“ — to be cast out after hearing your grandchildren and their great-great-grandchildren grow into Survivorship.”

“Did you live in the Original World?” Jared demanded.

“But you can’t blame them for getting rid of a Different One who wouldn’t grow old. What’s that — did I live in the Original World? Yes. Up until a few generations after we lost Light.”

“You mean you were there when Light was still with man? ”

As though exhuming memories long laid to rest, the Forever Man finally replied, “Yes. I — what was it we used to say? — saw Light.”

“You saw Light?”

The other laughed — a thin, rasping outburst cut short by a wheeze and a cough. “Saw,” he babbled. “Past tense of the verb to see. See, saw, seen. Seesaw. We used to have a seesaw in the Original World, you know.”

See! There was that word again — mysterious and challenging and as obscure as the legends from which it had come.

“Did you hear Light?” Jared enunciated each word.

“I saw Light. Seesaw. Up and down. Oh, what fun we had! Children scampering around with bright, shiny faces, their eyes all agleam and—”

“Did you feel Him?” Jared was shouting now. “Did you touch Him? Did you hear Him?”

“Who?”

“Light!”

“No, no, son. I saw it.”

It? Then he, too, regarded Light as an impersonal thing! “What was it like? Tell me about it!”

The other fell silent, slumping on his ledge. Eventually he drew in a long, shuddering breath. “God! I don’t know! It’s been so long I can’t even remember what Light was like! ”

Jared shook him by the shoulders. “Try! Try!”

“I can’t!” the old man sobbed.

“Did it have anything to do with the — -eyes?”

Tap-tap-tap …

He had returned to his thumping, burying bitter recollections and haunting thoughts under a rock pile of habit and mental detachment.

Leaving Kind Survivoress’ world now was out of the question — not with the Forever Man’s senile memory offering the hope of opening new passageways in Jared’s search for Light. Yet, he couldn’t tell Della why he had to extend their stay. So he simply pretended he was still physically unfit for immediate travel.

Apparently satisfied with this explanation for his postponement of their attempt to reach the Zivver World, Della grudgingly settled down to await his complete recovery.

That her original distrust of Leah had been an impulsive, passing thing was manifest in the subsequent lessening of tension between the two women. At one point, she even told Jared she might have been wrong in her first impression of Leah and Ethan. Why, it wasn’t at all as she had initially assumed, she confessed. And Ethan, despite his handicap, wasn’t the awkward, clumsy lout she had imagined him to be — not in the least.

Tactfully, Leah refrained from mind-to-mind contact with Jared and Ethan while they were in the girl’s presence. To the effect that Della either forgot the woman’s ability or gave it little thought.

Leah, too, had adjustments to make. Although she treated Della hospitably, Jared could always sense her misgiving over not being able to listen to the Zivver girl’s mind.

These developments Jared traced with interest while he waited for the Forever Man to abandon his solitude and seek company once more. Light! What he might learn from that ageless one!

During the fifth period after their arrival, Della was splashing in the river with Ethan while Jared was sharpening his spear points on a coarse rock when Leah’s thoughts came to him:

“Please forget about the Zivver World, Jared.”

“You know my mind’s made up.”

“Then you’ll have to change it. The passages are full of monsters.”

“How do you know? You told me you were afraid to listen to their minds.”

“But i’ve listened to other minds — in the two Levels.”

“And what did you hear?”

“Terror and panic and queer impressions I can’t understand. There are monsters all over. And the people are running and hiding and creeping back to their recesses, only to flee again later on.”

“Are there monsters near this world?”

“I don’t think so — not yet anyway.”

This posed another complication, Jared realized. Starting out for the Zivver World might not be a matter of leisure choice. It might well be that he should leave as quickly as possible.

“No, Jared. Don’t go — please!”

And he detected more than selfless concern for his welfare. Lying at the base of Leah’s thoughts were desperate pangs of loneliness, laced with the fear of having her simple, forlorn world cast back into the terrible solitude that had existed before he and Della arrived.

But he had made up his mind and he regretted only not having had the chance for a second talk with the Forever Man.