David Galouye - Dark Universe

Under other circumstances, he might have eagerly listened forward to bolting captivity. But outside the Zivver domain were nothing but monster-filled corridors. Moreover, the other worlds must certainly have been laid desolate by the hateful creatures. And the only incentive that might have driven him on — the hope of finding a hidden, self-sufficient dwelling area for himself and Della — had been stripped away when the girl had turned against him.

During the second period he stood before the barred opening in the side of the shack and listened to the work crew as it finished blocking off the main entrance. Then, hopelessly, he leaned back against the wall and let the roar of the nearby cataract sweep his attention away from the other sounds.

In self-reproach he wondered what had made him think he might find Light in this miserable world. He had supposed that, since Zivvers could know what lay ahead without hearing, they must be exercising the same sort of power all men could presumably exercise in the presence of Light Almighty. And he had foolishly thought that the result of this activity would be a lessening of Darkness. But he had neglected one possibility: that lessness of Darkness might be something only the Zivvers themselves could recognize — something forever removed from his own perception as a result of sensory limitations.

Stymied in his speculations on the Light-Darkness-Zivver relationship, he went over and lay on the slumber surface. He tried to keep Della from entering his thoughts but couldn’t. Then, objectively, he conceded that what she had done — tricking him into bringing her here — merely reflected a treachery basic to the nature of all Zivvers. Now Leah, on the other hand, never would have…

Finding himself thinking of Kind Survivoress, he wondered what had happened to her. Perhaps she was even now trying to contact him from the depths of Radiation. Unless he were asleep, though, he would never know it.

For the rest of that period, except when they brought his food, he spent as much time in slumber as he could, hoping she would come again. But she didn’t.

Toward the end of his third period of confinement he detected a faint noise outside the shack — a scurrying that was close enough to be audible above the throbbing spatter of the cataract. Then he caught Della’s scent as she sprang forward and flattened herself against the outer wall.

“Jared!” she whispered anxiously.

“Go away.”

“But I want to help you!”

“You’ve helped enough already.”

“Use your head. Would I be free to come here now if I had acted any other way in front of Mogan?”

He listened to her fumbling with the solid curtain’s rope lock. “I suppose you waited for the first opportunity to let me loose,” he said disinterestedly.

“Of course. It didn’t come until just now — when the Zivvers started hearing noises out in the corridor.”

The last rope parted and Della entered as the rigid pathtion of manna stalks swung outward.

“Go on back to your Zivver friends,” he grumbled.

“Light, but you’re thickheaded!” She put a sawbone knife to work on his bonds. “Can you swim back through that river?”

“What difference does it make?”

“There’s the Levels to return to.”

His wrists fell free. “I doubt if there’s enough of the Levels left to go back to, even if they didn’t think I’m a Zivver.”

“One of the secluded worlds then.” And she repeated obstinately, “Can you swim the river?”

“I think so.”

“All right, then — let’s go.” She started out of the shack.

But he held back. “You mean you’d go too?”

“You didn’t think I’d stay here without you?”

“But this is your world! It’s where you belong! Anyway, I’m not even a Zivver.”

She let out an exasperated breath. “Listen — at first I was carried away with the fact that I had found someone like me. Why, I never even stopped to wonder whether it would make any difference if you weren’t a Zivver. Then there you were lying on the ground with Mogan standing over you. And I knew it wouldn’t matter if you couldn’t even hear or smell or taste. Now can we get on our way and start hunting for that hidden world?”

Before he could say anything else, she nudged him toward the incline that would take them above the waterfall. And Jared sensed the pall of fear that lay over the Zivver World. In the distance the settled area was enveloped in a thick, ominous silence. From the indistinct echoes of cascading water, he received a composite of Zivvers drawing apprehensively back from the barricaded entrance.

Halfway up the rise he drew up sharply and his nostrils flared around a disturbing scent drifting down from above. Desperately, he scooped up several pebbles and rattled them in the hollow of his hand. In full audible clarity, Mogan stood waiting at the top of the slope.

“I suppose you think you’re going to escape and tell the monsters how to get in,” he said threateningly.

Jared clicked his stones rapidly, precisely, and trapped impressions of the Zivver beginning his charge downhill.

But just then the noise of a thousand cataracts abruptly rocked the world. At the same time a great, angry burst of the monsters’ roaring silence stabbed into the Zivver domain from the vicinity of the blocked entrance. And, in the next beat, everyone below was screaming and scurrying frantically about as the reopened tunnel belched a mercilessly steady cone of inaudible sound.

Jared scrambled to the top of the incline, tugging Della along. Mogan, stunned, retreated with them.

“Light Almighty!” the Zivver leader swore. “What in Radiation’s happening?”

“I’ve never zivved anything like this!” Della exclaimed, terrified.

Intense, painful sensations assaulted Jared’s eyes, confusing but somehow complementing his auditory perception of the entire world. Noise reflections fetched a more or less complete impression of the fissure-rent far wall. Yet, also associated with that wall somehow were areas of concentrated silent sound that etched every detail of its surface as clearly as though he were running his hand over all of it simultaneously.

Suddenly the wall faded into relative silence and he managed to link that development with the fact that the furious cone had shifted and was at the moment cutting across another segment of the auditory composite. Now he seemed to be aware of the presence and size and shape of each shack in the center of the settlement. The fierce, screaming silence touched every object within hearing range and boiled into his conscious with agonizing ruthlessness.

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 ificked 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!