Zivvers and soubats and bottomless pits, Jared reflected — those were the challenges of existence. If it weren’t for them, the Lower Level World and its passages would be as safe as Paradise itself was before man turned his back on Light Almighty and, as the legend had it, came to the various worlds that men and Zivvers now inhabited.
At the moment, though, only the soubats held his concern. One in particular — a vicious, marauding creature that had winged furiously into the Lower Level and snatched away a sheep.
He spat in disgust, recalling the venomous expletives his archery instructor had muttered long ago: “Stinking, Light damned things from the bowels of Radiation!”
“What are soubats?” one of the young archers had asked.
“They started off like the inoffensive little bats whose manure we collect for the plants. But they had truck with the Devils somewhere along the way. Either Cobalt or Strontium took one of them down to Radiation and made it over into a supercreature. From that one came all the soubats we have to contend with now.”
Jared filled the passage with anxious, probing echoes. Owen, stubbornly maintaining the lead, was advancing more cautiously now, sending his feet out in sliding motions rather than pronounced steps.
The other’s closed-eyes preference brought a smile to Jared’s lips. It was a habit that would never be broken. It accommodated the belief that the eyes themselves should be protected and preserved for feeling the Great Light Almighty’s presence on His Return.
But there wasn’t anything objectionable about Owen, Jared assured himself, except that he was too susceptible to literal acceptance of the legends. Like the one which held that Light had resented man’s invention of the manna plant and had cast him out of Paradise and into eternal Darkness, whatever that was.
One click and Owen was there — several paces ahead. Another and he was gone. In the interim there had been a distressed shout and the sound of flesh impacting on rock. Then:
“For Light’s sake! Get me out of here!”
More echoes disclosed the presence of the shallow pit which had, until then, lurked in the echo void ahead of Owen.
Standing on the lip of the cavity, Jared lowered his lance. The other grabbed hold and started to pull himself out. But Jared tensed, wrenched the spear free and cast himself on the ground. He barely escaped clawing talons as the soubat swooped down.
“We’re going to get a soubat!” he shouted exultantly.
By its shrieks, he tracked the animal as it made a ranging turn, gaining altitude, then dived down in a second, screaming attack. Jared lunged up, anchored the spear in a crevice and braced himself along the shaft, aiming it at the onrushing fury.
All Radiation broke loose as three hundred pounds of wrath hit Jared in a single, violent blast and bowled him over. He rose and felt the warmth of blood on his arm where talon had laid open flesh.
“Jared! You all right!”
“Stay down! It might come back!” He ran a hand over the ground and retrieved his bow.
But all was silent The soubat had retreated once more, this time possibly with a spear wound added to its distress.
Owen climbed out of the pit. “You hurt?”
“Just a couple of scratches.”
“Did you get it?”
“Radiation no! But I know where it is.”
“I’m not even asking where. Let’s go home.”
Jared tapped the ground with his bow and listened. “It turned off into the Original World — up ahead.”
“Let’s go back, Jared!”
“Not until I get that thing’s tusks in my pouch.”
“You’re going to get them somewhere else!”
But Jared went on. And, reluctantly, Owen followed.
Later he asked, “Are you really determined to find Darkness?”
“I’m going to find it if it takes the rest of my life.”
“Why bother with hunting evil?”
“Because I’m really listening for something else. And Darkness- may be just a step along the way.”
“What are you hunting for?”
“Light.”
“The Great Light Almighty,” Owen reminded, reciting one of the tenets, “is present in the souls of good men and—”
“Suppose,” Jared broke in boldly, “Light isn’t God, but something else?”
The other’s religious sensitivity was shocked. Jared could tell by his breathless silence, by the slight acceleration of his pulse.
“What else could Light Almighty be?” Owen asked finally.
“I don’t know. But I’m sure it’s something good. And if I can find it, life will be better for all mankind.”
“What makes you think that?”
“If Darkness is connected with evil and if Light is its opposite, then Light must be good. And if I find Darkness, then I may have some kind of idea as to the nature of Light.”
Owen snorted. “That’s ridiculous! You mean you think our beliefs are wrong?”
“Not altogether. Maybe just twisted around. You know what happens when a story passes from mouth to mouth. Just think what could happen to it passing from generation to generation.”
Jared returned his attention to the passage as the clickstone echoes betrayed a great hollow space in the wall on his right.
They stood in the vaulted entrance to the Original World and Jared’s clicks lost themselves in the silence of a vast expanse. He substituted his largest, hardest pair of sounding rocks. These he had to clap together with considerable force to produce reports loud enough to carry to the farthest recesses and back.
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?”