David Galouye - Dark Universe

“Those aren’t monsters.” He surmised that, like hearing, zivving impressions weren’t refined enough to distinguish between loose cloth and flesh. “They are humans.”

He heard her startled expression. “But how can that be?”

“I suppose they are Different Ones — more different than all the others put together. Superior even to the Zivvers.”

He let the girl lead the way and anxiously gave his attention to the enigma of the monsters. Perhaps they were , after all, devils. It was commonplace to speak of the Twin Devils. But some of the lesser legends referred to, not two, but many demons who dwelled in Radiation. Even now he could call to mind several of them, all of whom were usually represented in personified form. There were CarbonFourteen; the two U’s — Two Thirty-Five and Two ThirtyEight; Plutonium of the Two Thirty-Nine Level, and that great, sulking, evil being of the Thermonuclear Depth — Hydrogen.

Of Radiation’s demons there were many, now that he thought of it. And ascribed to all of them were the capacities of insidious infiltration, ingenious disguise and complete and prolonged contamination. Could it be that the devils, emerging from mythology, had finally decided to exercise their powers?

The girl slowed to pick her way over loose, uneven ground. And the noise of rocks shifting beneath their feet made it even easier to hear the way.

He found himself recalling his recent encounter with the being in the corridor. The silent sound it had cast on the wall was most remarkable, once one managed to overcome the initial horror it brought. Dwelling on those sensations, he remembered how clearly he had seemed to hear — or was it feel, or, perhaps, even ziv? — the details of the wall. He had been completely aware of each tiny ridge and crevice, each protuberance.

Then he stiffened as he drew from memory something the Guardian of the Way had said not too long ago — something about Light in Paradise touching everything and bringing to man total knowledge of all things about him. But, certainly, that material the monsters produced and hurled against the wall couldn’t be the Almighty! And that corridor couldn’t have been Paradise!

No. It was impossible. That meager stuff thrown so casually about the passageway by the manlike creature hadn’t been Light. Of that he was finally and unalterably positive.

As they continued on along the rugged tunnel, his reflections turned to another matter of concern. For the moment it seemed he could almost put his finger on something that there was less of in this very passage! But it was too vague a concept to encourage further speculation. It must have been only wishful thinking, he decided, that was suggesting he might accidentally stumble upon Light’s opposite, Darkness, in this remote, deserted corridor.

Della drew up before an opening in the wall and pulled him over beside her. “Just ziv this world!” she exclaimed buoyantly.

The wind rushing into the hole was cool against his back as he stood there listening to the delightful music of a gurgling stream and using the echoes of that sound to study other features of the medium-sized world.

“What a wonderful place!” she went on excitedly. “I can ziv five or six hot springs and at least a couple of hundred manna plants. And the banks of the river — they’re covered with salamanders!”

As she spoke her rebounding words set up an audible composite of their surroundings. And Jared appreciatively took in several natural recesses in the left wall, a high-domed ceiling that insured good circulation, and smooth, level ground all around them.

She locked her arm in his and they walked farther into the world. The wind sweeping in from the corridor gave the air a refreshing coolness that was superior to the Lower Level’s.

“I wonder if this was the world my mother was trying to reach,” the girl said distantly.

“She couldn’t have found a better place. I’d say it would support a large family and all its descendants for several generations.”

They sat on a steep bank overhearing the river and Jared listened to the swishing of large fish beneath the surface while Della parceled out food from her case.

After a while he probed audibly beneath her silence and caught the suggestion of yet another area of uncertainty.

“There’s something bothering you, isn’t there?” he asked.

She nodded. “I still don’t understand about Leah and you. I can hear now that she did visit you in your dreams. Yet, you yourself said she couldn’t reach the mind of a Zivver.”

Now he was certain she didn’t know he couldn’t ziv. For if she were out here for some treacherous reason, the last thing she’d do would be to let him find out she suspected him.

“I’ve already told you I think I’m a little different from other Zivvers,” he reminded. “Right now I’m zivving a halfdozen fish in the river. You can’t ziv a single one.”

She lay back on the ground and, out of crossed arms, made a cushion for her head. “I hope you’re not too different. I wouldn’t want to feel — inferior.”

Her words struck home with unintended mockery. And he knew that being inferior to her was what he had resented all along.

“If we weren’t hunting for the Zivver World,” she offered, yawning, “this would be a nice place to settle in, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe staying here is the best thing we could do.”

He stretched out beside her and, even from the negligible echoes of his breathing, he could hear the attractive composite of the girl’s face, the gentle, firm contours of her shoulders, hips, waist — all veiled in the whispering softness of near inaudibility.

“It might be a — good idea,” she said drowsily, “if we — decided—”

He waited. But from her direction came only the slight body murmurs of sl p.

He turned over, crooked an arm under his head and banished the maudlin, wistful thought that had begun to obscure his purpose. He had to concede, though, that it would be pleasant to remain here in this remote world with Della and put out of his mind forever the Zivvers, human monsters, soubats, Upper and Lower Levels, Survivorship, and all the chains of formality and restrictions of communal law. And, yes, even his hopeless quest for Light and Darkness.

But such an arrangement was not for him. Della was a Zivver — a superior Different One. And he would always have to listen up to her and her greater abilities. It would never do. What was it he had once overheard one Zivver tell another during a raid? — “A Zivver down here is the same as a oneeared man in a world of the deaf.”

That was it. He would always be like an invalid, with Della to lead him around by the hand. And in her incomprehensible world of murmuring air currents and psychic awareness of things he could never hope to hear, he would be lost and frustrated.

Even from the depths of sleep he could tell that he had lain there beside the girl a long while — perhaps the equivalent of a slumber period or more. And he surely must have been close to wakefulness when he heard the screams.

Had they been Della’s, they would have jolted him from sleep. That he continued to hear them without awakening was a measure of their psychic quality. They seemed to come from deep within his mind, spawned in a vortex of projected terror.

Then he recognized Leah behind the desperate, silent outcries. He tried to distill concrete meaning from the hodgepodge of frantic impressions. But the woman was in such a panic that she couldn’t put her fright into words.

Digging into the emotions of terrible astonishment and dismay, he intercepted piecemeal impressions — shouting and screaming, rushing feet and roaring bursts of silent sound that played derisively across walls which had been such a warm and real part of his childhood fantasies, an occasional zip-hiss .