“It’s too late. The place is filled with monsters.”
Jared listened anxiously for the river. But he heard no water anywhere around them. “Where are we?” he demanded.
“Out in a lesser passage. After I dragged you ashore I had to haul you off before the soubats got us.”
Listening to reflections of the words, Jared traced out the details of a tunnel that broadened ahead after issuing from the constriction of pinched walls behind them. And from back there came the infuriated sounds of the soubats that couldn’t get through.
“We’re not headed toward the main corridor, are we?” he asked disappointedly.
“The opposite direction. It beats fighting off soubats barehanded.”
Jared rose and steadied himself against the wall. There might have been a chance of overtaking the monsters in the larger passageway, but the soubats had overruled that possibility, he conceded glumly. “Where does this tunnel lead?”
“Never been this way before.”
Realizing he had no choice, Jared followed the reflections of their voices down the corridor.
Later, when he stumbled for a second time, he wondered why he was groping around in a noiseless passage without sounding stones. He felt along the ground until he found a pair of pebbles that almost matched, then filled the air with clicks before continuing.
After a while Mogan said, “You hear pretty good with those things, don’t you?”
“I manage.” Then Jared heard he was being abrupt for no reason at all, unless it was because he resented the Zivver’s having kept him from trying to reach Della — an attempt which certainly would have failed anyway.
“I’ve had practice with the things,” he added more affably.
“I suppose they’re all right for someone who can’t ziv,” Mogan ventured, “but I’m afraid the noise would drive me crazy.”
They traveled in silence for some time. And, as Jared’s steps took him farther from the Zivver domain, the possibility that he might never hear Della again burdened him with despair. He knew finally that he would have settled with her in a secluded world and that it would have made no difference whether she was his superior or not — as long as they could be together.
But now she was gone and another — the most vital — part of his universe had crumbled beneath him. He berated himself for having failed to recognize what she meant to him, for his distorted sense of values that prompted him to attach more importance to an insane quest for Light and Darkness. Finding her, he vowed, would be his single purpose, even if it carried him to the Thermonuclear Depths of Radiation. And if he couldn’t snatch her back from the monsters, then Radiation would be his deserved punishment.
They passed a lesser chasm and the Zivver leader fell in alongside him. “Della said you were hunting for Light and Darkness.”
“Forget it,” Jared snapped, determined to forget it himself.
“But I’m interested. If you had been a Zivver, I was going to have a talk with you.”
Somewhat curious, Jared asked, “About what?”
“I don’t put any stock in the legends either. I always thought the Great Light Almighty was unnecessary glorification for something commonplace.”
“You did?”
“I’ve even decided what Light is.”
Jared halted the march. “What is it?”
“Warmth.”
“How do you figure that?”
“There’s warmth all around us, isn’t there? Greater warmth we call ‘heat’; lesser warmth, ‘cold.’ The warmer a thing is, the more impressions it sends to a Zivver’s eyes.”
Jared nodded pensively. “And it lets you know about things without feeling, hearing, or smelling them.”
Mogan shrugged. “Which is what the legends say Light does.”
There was something inconsistent here, but Jared couldn’t quite decide what. Perhaps it was just his reluctance to admit Light might be something as prosaic as heat. He resumed the march and stepped more briskly as he heard a larger corridor ahead.
At the same time Mogan said, “I ziv another passage up there, a big one.”
Jared trotted forward, sounding his clickstones more rapidly to accommodate the greater speed. But he jolted to a stop as he broke into the larger tunnel.
“What’s wrong?” Mogan paused beside him.
“This place reeks with the scent of monsters!” Jared flared his nostrils, sucking in samples of air. “That’s not all. There’s the smell of Upper and Lower Level people too — almost as strong as the other odor.”
From his clickstone echoes he received an impression of the Zivver leader running a hand over his brow.
“This corridor’s Radiation on the eyes!” Mogan exclaimed. “Too much warmth. It’s hard to ziv one thing from another.”
Jared, too, had felt the heat. But he was concerned with a different consideration. There was something familiar about this stretch of passage, about its formations of tumbled rocks. Then it struck him, Of course — they were just outside the Original World! He clicked his stones again and detected the slab behind which he and Owen had hidden from his first encounter with a monster. Around the bend to his right would be the Original World entrance and, beyond that, the Barrier and the Levels.
“Which way should we go?” Mogan asked.
“To the left,” Jared suggested impulsively, shoving off.
After a few paces, he said, “So you think heat is Light.”
“I do.”
“And Darkness?”
“Simple. Darkness is coolness.”
Now Jared had his finger on the inconsistency. “You’re wrong. Only Zivvers can sense heat and cold from a distance. Tell me one legend that holds Light will be the exclusive property of Zivvers. All the beliefs say everybody will be Reunited with Light.”
“I’ve got that figured out too. It’s just that the Zivvers are the first step toward general Reunion.”
Jared was going to protest that assumption also. But he had just negotiated a bend in the corridor and now he drew back reflexively. Riding the crest of his clickstone echoes were the details of another curve ahead. And he was profoundly aware of a tremendous flow of silent sound pouring from around that bend. It was as though a thousand humaninhuman creatures were marching in his direction, all hurling screaming silence before them.
“I can’t ziv a thing!” Mogan complained desperately.
Jared listened but heard no audible sounds of monsters around the bend. Cautiously, he pressed forward, determined this time to keep his eyes open. His face contorted in protest to volition and muscles grew taut as they tried unsuccessfully to close the lids they controlled. Squinting and trembling, he found himself going ahead and forgetting to use his stones.
Mogan came along, trailing by a considerable distance, though, and emitting an occasional distressed oath.
Jared reached the bend and plunged swiftly around it, afraid that if he hesitated he might turn and flee. Now the dreadful stuff was flowing into his eyes with the force of a hundred hot springs and he could no longer keep them open. Tears streaming down his cheeks, he stumbled forward, relying once more on his pebbles.
His steps, however, were mired in terror. For, from ahead came no echoes of his clicks — none at all! But that was impossible! Never had anyone heard a noise that didn’t reflect from all directions. Yet, here was a great, incredible gap in a sound pattern!
His fear finally became an absolute barrier and he could go no farther. Standing as motionless as though he had been planted there like a manna tree, he shouted.
There were no reflections of his voice from ahead, from above, from either side! From behind, the returning sound etched the presence of a great wall of rock that towered many times the height of even the Zivver World dome. And in this wall he detected the muffled hollowness of the corridor he had just left.