David Galouye - Dark Universe

He let her cry for a while, then took hold of her arms and drew her erect. The sound of his breathing reflected against her face and he listened to the manner in which exposed eyes dominated her other features. He could almost feel their sharp, intense fixedness and, momentarily, he thought he might be on the verge of guessing the nature of zivving.

“It was just like what happened to my mother and father!” She nodded back toward the abyss. “It’s like an omen — as if something were telling us we can take up where they left off!”

Her hands pressed down on his shoulders and, remembering the firm softness of her body against his in that other corridor, he drew her close and kissed her. The girl’s response was eager at first, but quickly faded off into a perceptible coolness.

He retrieved his spear. “All right, Della. What is it?”

She wasted no time framing the question she had held back:

“What’s all this about hunting for — Light? I heard you shouting at the Forever Man, asking him about Darkness too. And it scared the wits out of him.”

“It’s simple.” He shrugged. “Like you heard me say, I’m hunting for Darkness and Light.”

He sensed her perplexed frown as they started down the corridor. A manna shell thumped the side of her carrying case with each step and the sounds were sufficient to gather impressions of the passageway.

“It’s not something theological,” he assured. “I just have an idea Darkness and Light aren’t what we think they are.”

He could tell that her puzzlement had given way to mild doubt — a refusal to believe the explanation was that simple.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” she protested. “Everybody knows who Light is, what Darkness is.”

“Then let’s let it go at that and just say I have a different idea.”

She fell silent a moment. “I don’t understand.”

“Don’t let it bother you.”

“But the Forever Man — Darkness meant something different to him. He wasn’t frightened over ‘evil’ being all around him. He was scared of something else , wasn’t he?”

“I suppose so.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

Again she said nothing for a long while, until they had passed several branch corridors. “Jared, does all this have anything to do with going to the Zivver World?”

To a certain extent, he felt, he could be outspoken without laying his zivvership open to further suspicion. “In a way, yes. Just like zivving concerns the eyes, I believe Darkness and Light are in some way connected with the eyes too. And—”

“And you think you can find out more about them in the Zivver World?”

“That’s right.” He led her along a sweeping curve.

“Is that the only reason you’re going there?”

“No. Like you, I’m also a Zivver; that’s where I belong.”

He heard the girl’s sudden relief — the relaxation of her tenseness, the quietening of her heartbeat. His candor had evidently allayed her misgiving and now she was ready to shrug off his quest as a whim that posed no particular threat to her interests.

She eased her hand into his and they continued on around the bend. But he pulled up sharply as be caught the scent of monsters ahead. At the same time he shrank away from the left wall. For, even as he listened to its featureless surface, an indiscernible patch of silent echoes had begun playing against the moist stone.

This time he was almost prepared for the uncanny sensation. Experimentally, he closed his eyes and was instantly no longer aware of the dancing sound. He opened them again and the noiseless reflections returned immediately — like the soft touch of a shouted whisper spreading itself thin against a smooth rock surface.

“The monsters are coming!” Della warned. “I ziv their impressions — against that wall!”

He half-faced her. “You ziv them?”

“It’s almost like zivving. Jared, let’s get away from here!”

He only stood there concentrating on the weird, soundless noise that flowed back and forth against the wall, never reaching his ears but making his eyes feel as though someone had thrown boiling water into them. She had said she zivved the impressions. Did that mean zivving was something like what was happening to him now?

Then he listened to the purely audible impressions that were coming from around the bend. There was only one monster approaching. “You go back and wait in the first side corridor.”

“No, Jared. You can’t—”

But he propelled her down the passage and eased into a niche in the wall. When he heard there wouldn’t be enough room to draw his spear, he laid it on the ground. Then he closed his eyes, blocking off the distracting impressions the monster was hurling.

The creature had reached the bend and Jared could hear it hugging the near wall. He pressed farther into the recess.

The thing’s awful, alien smell was overpowering in its nearness now. And clearly audible, too, were the numerous folds of flesh — if that’s what they were — fluttering about its body. If the breathing and heartbeat were of tie same intensity and frequency as the average person’s, then it must be drawing even with his hiding place just about — now.

Lunging into the corridor, he drove his fist into what he judged to be the creature’s midsection.

Air exploded from the monster’s lungs as it fell forward against him. Bracing himself against what he had expected to be a slimy touch, he pounded another fist into its face.

Anxiously, he snapped his eyes open as he heard the monster collapse on the ground. He had half-expected there would be no more strange, soundless noise spreading out from the thing now that it was unconscious. And there wasn’t.

Kneeling, he sent his hands out reluctantly to explore the creature. And he discovered there were no folds of flesh festooning its body. Rather, its arms, legs, torso were all covered by loosely fitting cloth of a texture even finer than the piece he had fçund at the entrance to the Lower Level. No wonder he had received the impression of sagging hide! Who ever heard of chestcloths or loincloths that didn’t fit skintight?

His hands groped upward and encountered a duplicate of the rougher cloth he had buried in the corridor outside his world. It was drawn taut over the monster’s face and held there by four ribbons tied behind its head.

He snatched the cloth away and ran his fingers over — a normal human face! It was much like a woman’s or child’s, smooth and completely hairless. But the cast of the features was masculine.

The monster was human!

Jared rose and his foot met a hard object. Before touching it, he bent and snapped his fingers several times. And he had no difficulty recognizing the thing. It was identical to the tubular devices left behind by the monsters in both the Upper and Lower Level.

The creature stirred and Jared dropped the object, diving for his spear.

Just then Della came sprinting down the corridor. “More monsters — coming from the other way!”

Listening around the bend, he could hear the sounds of their approach. And he was aware of the play of their mysterious mute noises along the right wall of the corridor.

He seized the girl’s hand and raced on up the passage, letting his spear thump the ground so it would produce sounding impulses.

From ahead he heard the composite of a smaller branch passage. He slowed and headed cautiously into it.

“Let’s go this way awhile,” he suggested. “I think it’ll be safer.”

“Is the Zivver scent strong in this passage too?”

“No. But we’ll pick it up again. These smaller tunnels usually curve back.”

“Oh, well,” she said, comforting herself, “at least we shouldn’t be bothered by monsters for a while.”