Dark Universe (2 page)

First--the soubat. Its lingering stench verified that the thing was somewhere in here. But none of the returning echoes carried with it the textural impression of leathery wings or soft, furry body.

"The soubat?" Owen asked anxiously.

"It's hiding," Jared said between _clicks_. Then, to take his friend's mind off the danger, "How good are you? What do you hear?'

"A Radiation of a big world."

"Right. Go on."

"In the space just ahead--softness. A clump or two of--"

"Manna plants. Growing close around a single hot spring. I can hear scores of empty pits too--pits where boiling water used to feed the energy hunger of _thousands_ of plants. But, go ahead."

"Over there on the left, a pool--a big one."

"Good!" Jared complimented. "Fed by a stream. What else?"

"I-- Radiation! Something queer. A lot of queer things."

Jared advanced. "Those are living quarters--stretched all around the wall."

"But I don't understand." Owen, confused-, followed along. "They're out in the open!"

"When the people lived here they didn't have to find their privacy in grottoes. They _built_ walls around spaces out in the open."

"_Square_

walls?"

"They had a flair for geometry, I suppose."

Owen pulled back. "Let's get out of here! They say Radiation isn't too far from the Original World!"

"Maybe they say that just to keep us out."

"I'm beginning to think that you don't believe _anything_."

"Of course I do-whatever I can hear, feel, taste, or smell." Jared changed position and the echoes from his stones aligned themselves with an opening in one of the living quarters.

"Soubat!" he whispered as the stream of _clicks_ brought back an impression of the thing hanging inside the cubicle. "You take the spear.

We'll be ready for it this time!"

Cautiously, he approached within arrow range of the structure, securing his stones. He didn't need them now--not with the sound of the thing's breathing as clear as the snorting of an angry bull.

He strung an arrow and wedged a second under his belt where it would be within convenient reach. Behind him, he heard Owen dig the spear shaft into the ground. Then he asked, "Ready?"

"Let it fly," Owen urged. And there was no quaver in his voice. The last _click_ had sounded. The lines were drawn.

Aiming at the hissing breath, he released the bowstring.

The arrow screamed through the air and thudded into something solid--too solid to be animal flesh. Screeching its rage, the soubat hurtled toward them. Jared strung the second arrow, taking his lead in advance of the winged fury.

He let it fly and ducked.

The beast shrieked in agony as it zipped by overhead. Then there was a _thud_ and a final rush of air from the great lungs.

"For Light's sake!" came the familiar exclamation. "Get this stinking thing off me!"

Grinning, Jared tapped his bow on the solid rock underfoot and, in return, picked up the sonic effects of a disheveled heap--soubat, human, broken lance, and protruding arrow shaft.

Owen squirmed out finally. "Well, we got the damned thing. _Now_

can we go home?"

"As soon as I finish." Jared was already cutting out the tusks.

Soubats and Zivvers. One by one, the Lower and Upper Level people could hope to eliminate the former. But what would prevail against the latter? What _could_ prevail against creatures who used no clickstones but who, nevertheless, knew everything about their surroundings? It was an uncanny ability nobody could explain, except to say they were possessed of Cobalt or Strontium.

Oh, well, Jared mused, prophecy held that man would vanquish all his foes. He supposed that included the Zivvers also, although to him it had always seemed that Zivvers were human too--after a fashion.

He finished prying out the first tusk and some remote recess of his mind dredged up memories of childhood teachings: _What

is

Light?_

_Light is a Spirit_.

_Where is Light?_

_If it weren't for the evil in man, Light would be everywhere_.

_Can we feel or hear Light?_

_No, but in the hereafter we shall all see Him_.

Rubbish! Anyway, no one could explain the word see. What did you do to the Almighty when you seed Him?

He secured the tusks in his pouch and stood up, listening all around.

There was _something_ here that there might be less of than in the other worlds--something man called "Darkness" and defined as sin and evil. But what was it?

"Jared, come here!"

He used clickstones to establish Owen's location. The echoes brought an impression of his friend standing by a thick pole that was leaning over at such an angle as to be almost lying on the ground. He was feeling an object dangling from the upthrust end--something round and brittle that hurled back distinct, ringing tones.

"It's a _Bulb!_" Owen exclaimed. "Just like the Guardian's relic of Light Almighty!"

Jared's memory resurrected more of the beliefs: _So compassionate was the Almighty_ (it was the Guardian of the Way's voice that came back now) _that when He banished man from Paradise, He sent parts of Himself to be with us for a while. And He dwelled in many little vessels like this Holy Bulb_.

There was a noise somewhere among the living quarters.

"Light!" Owen swore. "Do you smell _that?_"

Indeed Jared did smell it. It was so offensively alien that it made the hair bristle on his neck. He rattled his clickstones desperately, backing off all the while.

The echoes brought an incredible, jumbled pattern of sound--impressions of something human, but not human; unbelievably evil because it was different, yet arresting because it seemed to have a pair of arms and legs and a head and stood more or less upright. It was advancing, trying to take them by surprise.

Jared reached into his quiver. But there were no more arrows. Then, terrified, he cast his bow away and turned to flee.

"Oh, Light!" Owen moaned, scrambling back toward the exit. "What in Radiation _is_ it?"

But Jared couldn't answer. He had all he could do trying to find the way out while keeping his ears on the unholy menace. It was reeking more terribly than a thousand soubats.

"It's Strontium himself!" Owen decided. "The legends are true! The Twin Devils _are_ here!" He turned and bolted for the exit, his own bewildered shouts providing the guiding echoes.

Jared only stood there, paralyzed by a sensation altogether beyond comprehension. His auditory impression of the monstrous form was clear: it seemed the thing's entire body was made up of fluttering sheets of flesh.

But there was something else--a vague yet vivid bridge of _noiseless_

echoes that spanned the distance from the creature and boiled down into the depths of his conscious.

Sounds, odors, tastes, the pressure of the rocks and material things around him--all seemed to pour into his being, bringing pain. He clamped his hands over his face and raced after Owen.

A _zip-hiss_ cleaved the air above his head and a moment later Owen's voice rose in a cry of anguished terror. Then Jared heard his friend collapse, falling at the entrance to the Original World.

He reached the spot where Owen lay, slung the unconscious form over his shoulder and plunged on.

_Zip-hiss_.

Something grazed his arm, leaving droplets of moisture clinging to the flesh. In the next instant he was tripping, failing, picking himself up and racing on under the burden of Owen's dead weight. And he was seized by a sudden grogginess he couldn't explain.

Deaf now, he staggered against the piled boulders that formed the passage's left wall and groped his way around one of the huge rocks.

Then he stumbled into a crevice between two outcroppings and fell with Owen on top of him, lapsing into unconsciousness.

"Good Light! Let's get out of here!"

Owen's whisper jarred him awake and Jared struggled erect. Then, remembering the Original World and its terror, he lurched back.

"It's gone now," the other assured.

"You

certain?"

"Yes. I heard it listening all around out here. Then it left. What in Radiation was it--Cobalt? Strontium?"

Jared crawled from among the boulders and reached for a pair of cickstones. But then he thought better of making any noise.

Owen shuddered. "That smell! The sound of its shape!"

"And that other sensation!" Jared swore. "It was like something--psychic!"

He snapped his fingers softly, evaluating the reflected sounds, and continued around a great hanging stone that cascaded in graceful folds, flowing into a mound which strained up from the floor like a rearing giant.

"What other sensation?" Owen asked.

"Like all Radiation breaking loose in your head. Something that wasn't sound or smell or touch."

"I didn't hear anything like that."

"It wasn't hearing--I don't think."

"What made us pass out?"

"I don't know."

They went around a bend in the passage. Now that they had put some distance behind them, Jared began using his clickstones. "Light!" he exclaimed, relieved. "But I'd welcome even a soubat now!"

"Not without weapons you wouldn't."

And, as they crossed the Barrier and continued on alongside the wide river, Jared wondered why his friend hadn't experienced the same uncanny sensation he had. As far as he was concerned, that phase of the incident was even more frightening than the monster itself.

Then his lips grew grimly taut as an alarming possibility suggested itself: Suppose his Original World experience had been a punishment from the Great Almighty for his blasphemous belief that Light was something less than God?

They headed into more familiar territory and he announced, "We've got to report this to the Prime Survivor."

"We can't!" Owen protested. "We broke the law in coming here!"

Which was a complication Jared hadn't considered. Owen, to be sure, was in enough trouble as it was, having let the cattle get in the manna orchard last period.

Several hundred breaths later, Jared led the way around the final major hazard--a huge pit without bottom. He put his pebbles away. Not long afterward he hissed for silence, then drew Owen over to a recess in the wall.

"What's wrong?" the other demanded.

"Zivvers!" he whispered.

"I don't hear anything."

"You will in a few heartbeats. They're going down the Main Passage ahead. If they turn this way we may have to run for it."

The sounds in the other tunnel were more audible now. A sheep bleated and Jared recognized the pitch. "That's one of _our_ animals.

They raided the _Lower_ Level."

The Zivver voices reached maximum volume as the pillagers passed the corridor intersection, then fell off.

"Come on," Jared urged. "They can't ziv us now."

He went not more than thirty paces, however, before he drew up and cautioned in his lowest voice, "Quiet!"

He held his breath and listened. Besides his own pounding heartbeat and Owen's fainter one, there was yet a third-- not too far away, weak, but pumping violently with fright.

"What is it?" Owen asked.

"A

Zivver."

"You're just getting the scent from that raiding party."

But Jared edged forward, weighing the auditory impressions, sniffing out other clues. The scent of the Zivver was unmistakable, but it was of minor proportions--that of a child! He drew in another whiff and detained it in his nasal chamber.

A girl Zivver!

Her heartbeat was distinct as he clicked his pebbles once to sound out the details of the cleft in which she was hiding. She stiffened at the noise, but didn't try to escape. Instead, she started crying--plaintively.

Owen relaxed. "It's only a child!"

"What's the matter?" Jared asked solicitously, but got no reply.

"What are you doing out here?" Owen tried.

"We're not going to hurt you," Jared promised. "What's wrong?"

"I--I can't ziv," she finally managed between sobs.

Jared knelt beside her. "You're a Zivver, aren't you?"

"Yes. I mean--no, I'm not. That is--"

She was perhaps thirteen gestations old. No older, certainly.

He led her out into the passageway. "Now--what's your name?"

"Estel."

"And why are you hiding out here, Estel?"

"I heard Mogan and the others coming. I ran in here so they wouldn't ziv me."

"Why don't you want them to find you?"

"So they won't take me back to the Zivver World."

"But that's where you belong, isn't it?"

She sniffled and Jared heard her wiping her cheeks dry.

"No," she said despondently. "Everybody there can ziv except me.

And when I'm ready to become a Survivoress there won't be any Zivver Survivors who'll want me."

She began sobbing again. "I want to go to your world."

"You can't, Estel," Owen tried to explain. "You don't understand what the sentiment is against--I mean--oh, you tell her, Jared."

Jared brushed the hair off her face when the reflection of his voice told him it was hanging there. "Once in the Lower Level we had a little girl-

-just about your age. She was sad because she couldn't hear. She wanted to run away. Then, one period, all of a sudden she could hear! And she was glad she had been smart enough not to run away and get lost before then."

"She was a Different One, wasn't she?" the girl asked.

"No. That's just the point. We only _thought_ she was Different. And if she'd run away we never would have found out she wasn't."

Estel was silent as Jared led her toward the Main Passage.

"You mean," she asked after a while, "you think _I_ might start _zivving?_"

He laughed and halted in the larger corridor beside a gurgling hot spring that sent its moist warmth swirling all around them. "I'm sure you'll start zivving--when you least expect it. And you'll be just as happy as that other little girl."

He listened in the direction of the Zivver raiders and readily picked up the sound of their receding voices. "What do you say, Estel--want to go home?"