“She came to the Lower Level listening — zivving for me. That was how everybody found out I was a Zivver. After that I couldn’t very well stay down there.”
“Where is my child?” the woman demanded.
Reluctantly, he related what had happened to Estel. A condoling silence fell over the world while the Survivoress was led away sobbing.
“So you swam in under the rocks,” Mogan mused. “Lucky you didn’t get caught in the waterfall on this side.”
“Then we can stay?” Jared asked hopefully, trying to keep his eyes steady just as Mogan was doing.
“For the moment, yes.”
In the silence that followed, Jared sensed a subtle change in his perception of the Zivver leader. For some reason, Mogan was unconsciously holding his breath and his heartbeat had increased slightly. Jared concentrated on the effects and detected, even more faintly, that particular physical tension which claims a person intent on some crafty purpose. Then he caught the almost inaudible impression of Mogan’s hand rising slowly before him. He coughed casually and, in the reflections of the sound, discerned that the hand was slyly waiting to be clasped.
Without hesitation, his own hand shot forward and grasped the other. “Did you think I wouldn’t ziv that?” he asked, laughing.
“We’ve got to be careful,” Mogan said. “I’ve zivved Levelers who could hear so well that they might easily be mistaken for one of us.”
“What reason would we have for coming here if we weren’t Zivvers?”
“I don’t know. But we’re not taking any chances — not with those creatures stalking the passages. Even now we’re sealing the entrance before they can find it. But what good would that do if they learned there was another way to get in — a way that can’t be blocked?”
Mogan stepped between Jared and the girl and led them off. “We’re going to keep an eye on you until we’re sure we can trust you. Meanwhile, I know how you feel after swimming under those rocks. So we’ll give you a chance to rest.”
They were led to adjacent dwelling units — “shacks,” Jared had heard one of the Zivvers call them — and were ushered in through rectangular openings. Guards were posted outside each structure.
Standing uncertainly within the enclosure, Jared cleared his throat rather loudly. Echoes of the sound brought details of a recess strikingly different from any of the residental grottoes he had known. Here, everything was an adaptation of the rectangle. There was a dining slab whose remarkably level surface was composed of husks woven tightly together and stretched across a framework of manna stalks. He laid his hand casually upon it and traced the weave. Four other stalks, he heard, served as legs to hold the leveF section off the floor.
He yawned as though it were a quite spontaneous expression of weariness — in case anybody should be listening or zivving — and studied the reflected auditory pattern. Arranged around the dining slab were benches of similar construction. The slumber ledge, too, was a flimsy thing supported on the apparently traditional four legs.
Then he drew up sharply, but tried not to give any indication he had discovered he was being listened to — zivved, he reminded himself. There was an elevated opening in the right wall, beyond the slumber ledge. And through that space he caught the sound of breathing purposely made shallow to insure concealment. Someone was standing out there zivving everything he did.
Very well, the safest course would be to move about as little as possible and thereby reduce the chances of betraying himself.
He yawned noisily once more, fixing in mind the position of the slumber ledge. Then he went over and lay down. They expected him to be exhausted, didn’t they? Then why not be exhausted?
Comfortable against the softness of the manna fiber mattress, he realized that swimming the underground river had been an ordeal. And it wasn’t too long before he was asleep.
Scream after scream crashed in on his slumber and once again he recognized the impressions as nonaudible.
Leah!
Forcing himself to remain in the dream, he tried to pry more deeply beyond the communicative link with Kind Survivoress. But the erratic contact conveyed only the essence of horror and despair. He tried to work his way psychically toward the woman and succeeded in tightening somewhat the bond between them.
“Monsters! Monsters! Monsters!” she was sobbing over and over again.
And through her torment he caught the sensation of her eyelids being closed so tightly that the inner portions of her ears were roaring under the presure; strong, determined hands gripping her arms and pulling her first this way, then that; a sharp point jabbing brutally into her shoulder; odors so frightfully offensive in their alien quality that he felt like gagging with her.
Then he intercepted the impression of fingers digging into the flesh above and below her eyes and forcing the lids open.
And instantly all Radiation screamed at him through the woman’s conscious. He recognized the stentorian blare of silent sound as being identical to the stuff the monsters had hurled against the corridor walls. Only, now it was overpowering as it crashed against Leah’s eyes. He feared the woman would be driven insane.
With that single convulsive sensation he lurched out of the nightmare which he knew had been no nightmare at all.
What he had heard through Kind Survivoress’ eyes certainly could have been nothing but the Nuclear Fire of Radiation itself. It was as though he had crossed the boundary of material existence to share part of the torture the Atomic Demons were meting out to her beyond infinity.
Trembling, he lay motionless on the slumber ledge while the bitter aftertaste of his pseudo dream experience persisted like a fever.
Leah — gone.
Her world — empty.
The corridors — populated with monstrous humans who hurled derisive, screaming echoes that carried no sound at all. Fiendish creatures who struck their victims with paralysis before carrying them — where?
A Zivver came in, placed a shell of food on the dining surface and left without speaking. Jared went over and picked at the ration. But his interest in the meal was submerged in the remorseful realization that, during his foolhardy quest for Darkness and Light, his familiar worlds had crumbled all about him.
The pace of irrevocable change had been furious and relentless. And he grimly suspected that things would, could never be the same. Certainly, the malevolent beings in their outlandish attire of loosely fitting cloths had laid claim to all the worlds and passages and were now taking over with vehement determination. He was sure, too, that the design of hot spring failures and dwindling water level was but another phase of their scheme.
And while all these things had happened he had squandered his time searching for something trivial, nursing the belief that Light was desirable. He had let the solid things of material worth slip from his grasp as he chased a whimsical breeze down an endless corridor.
Things may have been different had he, instead, organized the Levels and led the fight for Survival. There might even have been hope of returning to a normal pattern of existence, with Della as his Unification partner. Perhaps he might not even have found out she was — Different.
But it was too late now. He was a virtual prisoner in the very world which he had expected would provide the key to his futile quest for Light. And both he and the Zivvers were themselves helpless captives of the monsters who ruled the corridors.
He pushed the food aside and ran a hand through his hair. Outside, the world was animate with the audible effects of an activity period in full swing — loud conversation, children at play and, more remotely, the sound of rocks being piled on rocks as workers continued sealing off the entrance. Listlessly, he made a note of the fact that the latter noises were an excellent echo source.