“Someperiod.”
She tightened her grip on his hand. “Jared! What if the Wheel sends a runner to the Lower Level to tell them you’re a Zivver?”
“They wouldn’t—” He paused. He’d started to say they wouldn’t believe it. But, with the Guardian dedicated to stirring up sentiment against him, he wondered.
When they reached his world, he found it odd that there were no longer any Protectors at the entrance. The clear, firm clacks of the central caster did reveal, however, the presence of someone standing there at the end of the passageway. And when he moved closer he received the reflected impression of feminine form, hair-over-face.
It was Zelda.
Hearing them she started. Then, nervously, she probed them with clickstones until they came into the full sound of the caster.
“You sure picked a Radiation of a time to bring a Unification partner back,” she reproved after she had recognized Jared.
“Why?”
“There’ve been two more kidnapings by the monsters,” she answered. “That’s why we’re not defending the entrance any longer. They took one of the Protectors. Meanwhile, the Guardian’s managed to get the whole world worked up against you.”
“Maybe I can do something about that,” he returned irately.
“I don’t think you can. You’re not Prime Survivor any longer. Romel’s taken over.” Zelda coughed several times and it sent the hair flying from in front of her face.
He strode off toward the Official Grotto.
“Wait,” the girl called. “There’s something else. Everybody’s boiling at you. Hear all that?”
He listened toward the residential section. The world was resounding with coughs.
“They blame you for this epidemic,” she explained, “since they remember you were the first to have all the symptoms.”
“Jared’s back!” someone in the orchard shouted.
Another Survivor, farther along the way, took up the cry and passed it on to still a third.
Presently a score of persons could be heard filing out of the orchard where they had been working. Others spilled from the grottoes. And they were all converging on the entrance.
Jared studied the reflected clacks and picked up impressions of Rome! and Guardian Philar in the forefront of the advance. They were flanked on either side by a number of Protectors.
Della seized his arm anxiously. “Maybe it would be safer if we just left.”
“We can’t let Romel get away with this.”
Ze!da added with a crisp laugh, “If you think this world’s in a mess now, wait till you hear what Rome! does to it.”
Jared stood his ground before the approaching Survivors. If he was going to convince them Romel and Phi!ar had merely taken advantage of them in the interest of personal ambition, it would have to be from a position of confidence and dignity.
His brother drew up before him and warned, “If you stay here you’re going to hear things my way. I’m Prime Survivor now.”
“How did the Elders vote on that?” Jared asked calmly.
“They haven’t yet. But they will!” Romel seemed to be losing some of his self-assurance. He paused to listen and make certain he still had the support of the Survivors, who had drawn into a half circle about the entrance.
“No Prime Survivor can be removed,” Jared recited the law, “without full hearing.”
Guardian Philar stepped forward. “As far as we’re concerned, you’ve had your hearing — before a Power more just than any of us, before the Great Light Almighty Himself!”
One of the Survivors shouted, “You’ve got Radiation sickness! That only comes from having truck with Cobalt or Strontium!”
“And you passed it on to everybody else!” another added, coughing spasmodically.
Jared started to protest, but was prdmptly shouted down.
And the Guardian said severely, “There are only two sources of Radiation sickness. Either you did have something to do with the Twin Devils, as Rome! suggested, or the disease is a punishment from Light for your profanity, as I suspect.”
It was Jared who was losing his composure now. “It’s not true! Ask Cyrus whether I—”
“The monster got Cyrus yesterperiod.”
“The Thinker — gone?”
Della tugged on his arm and whispered, “We’d better get out of here, Jared.”
There were the sounds of clickstones and running feet in the passageway and he bent an ear to hear who was approaching.
By his pace, it was clear that the man was an official runner. And, when he broke his stride, it was further evident that he had sensed the congestion of persons at the entrance. He halted, then came forward more slowly, and without benefit of stones, to join them.
“Jared Fenton’s a Zivver!” he disclosed. “Be led the monsters to the Upper Level!”
The Protectors, most of them armed with spears, spread out and encircled Jared and the girl.
Then someone shouted, “Zivvers — in the passage!”
More than half the Survivors turned and fled noisily back toward their grottoes as Jared picked up the scent drifting in from the passageway. Someone redolent with the odors of the Zivver World was approaching — stumbling, falling, rising, and coming forward again.
The Protectors broke ranks as they jockeyed in confusion. The pair nearest the entrance drew back their spears.
Just then the Zivver staggered into the direct sound of the central caster and collapsed on the ground.
“Wait!” Jared shouted, casting himself at the two Protectors who were about to hurl their lances.
“It’s only a child!” Della exclaimed.
Jared made his way to the girl, who was groaning with pain. It was Estel, whom he had returned to the Zivver party in the Main Passage.
He heard Della kneel on the other side of the child and run her hands over the girl’s chest. “She’s hurt! I can feel four or five broken ribs!”
Still, Estel recognized him and he caught the sound of her weak smile. He could sense, too, the animation in her eyes as he listened to them dart up and down in purposeful motion.
“You told me someperiod I’d start z.ivving — when I least expected it,” she managed painfully.
Spear touched spear somewhere behind him and the echoes captured the grimace that twisted the child’s smile.
“You were right,” she continued feebly. “I was trying to find your world and I fell into a pit. When I climbed out again, I started zivving.”
Her head slumped against his arm and he felt the life shudder out of her body.
“Zivver! Zivver!” the incriminating cry rose behind him.
“Jared’s a Zivver!”
He seized Della’s hand and lunged into the tunnel as two spears struck the wall beside him. He paused only long enough to snatch up the lances, then continued on into the passageway.
CHAPTER NINE
Half a period later, with long stretches of unfamiliar passages behind them, Jared paused and listened tensely.
There it was again! A distant flutter of wings — much too faint for Della’s ears, though.
“Jared, what is it?” She pressed close against him.
Casually, he said, “I thought I heard something.”
Actually, he had suspected for some time that the soubat was trailing them.
“Maybe it’s one of the Zivvers!” she suggested eagerly.
“That’s what I hoped at first. But I was mistaken. There’s nothing there.” No sense in alarming her — not just yet.
As long as he could keep the conversation going, he had little to worry about insofar as pitfalls were concerned. The words provided a steady source of sounding echoes. But subject matter was not inexhaustible and eventually there came lapses into silence. It was then that he had to resort to artifice to keep the girl from discovering he wasn’t a Zivver. An ingeniously timed cough, an ostensibly awkward clatter of the lances, an unnecessary scuff that sent a loose stone rattling along the ground — all these improvisations helped.