Tossing away his pebbles, he found two large rocks and clapped them resoundingly together again and again. But the reflections of even those vigorous clacks returned practically unmodified, bearing only the meagerest of impressions.
With the next frantic clap, the rocks crumbled in his fists, leaving him clutching only handfuls of dirt. Despondently, he unclenched his fingers and let the particles trickle from his grip. Light! But he couldn’t even hear the impact of the powder on the ground, much less the sound of its falling!
Frightened over his mounting incapacity, he floundered on. A few steps later he came up sharply against the right wall of the corridor and rebounded against a jagged stone formation, taking skin off his elbow.
Then he realized he was once more in the presence of Light.
The patch of silent sound clung to a rock up ahead, just like that other blotch of Light had covered the wall outside the Upper Level. Almost noiseless in volume, it filled the corridor with soft warmth.
Jared went ahead a bit more certainly, letting his eyes intercept the uncanny impressions of stone formations and hazards that were within range of the monster stuff.
The more cautious side of his judgment cried out a warning against using those unhearable composites to pick his way past the obstacles. But his hearing had already been so dulled by exposure to Radiation that, surely, this weak Light could increase the deafening effect but little.
He negotiated that stretch of passageway without faltering, even though he hadn’t used his ears at all. When he turned the next bend, however, he pulled back against a sudden apprehension.
Now there was no more Light touching him. It was as though he were smothering in the great, silent folds of that clinging curtain of Darkness. He could feel it pressing in on him with a force that was strange, ominous, heavy.
He wanted to scream and charge deafly ahead, hoping that when he reached the familiar setting of the Lower Level he would no longer be tormented by this awful fear.
Then he remembered the Forever Man and how that pathetic recluse had cringed in stark terror from something which at the time had been meaningless, as far as Jared was concerned.
But it was different now. Now he knew what Darkness was. And he could fully appreciate the Forever Man’s unreasoning fright. Rigid with dismay, he listened intensely all around him. With his hearing and smell practically gone, Light only knew what might be lurking in the flexures of that impenetrable curtain — waiting to spring upon him!
His ears finally did manage to intercept a distant sound and he shied away from it. But before he could turn and bolt off, the direct auditory impressions resolved themselves into words:
“Light be thanked — the Period of Reunion has arrived.”
He recognized Philar, the Guardian of the Way.
And a handful of voices answered, “Thank Light.”
Philar: “Darkness will be swept away before Survivor.”
Voices: “And Light will prevail.”
It was almost a chant. But the expressions lacked the sincerity of forceful conviction.
Jared went forward to meet the party.
Philar: “We will open our eyes and feel the Great Light Almighty.”
Voices: “And there will be no more Darkness.”
“Go back!” Jared shouted. “Don’t come this way!”
The party halted as he reached them in the Darkness.
“Who’s that?” demanded the Guardian.
“Jared. You can’t—”
“Out of the way. We are told Reunion is at hand.”
“Who told you that?”
“Light’s Emissaries. They said we must all come out of hiding and go beyond the Barrier.”
“It’s a trick!” Jared warned. “I’ve been beyond the Barrier. You’ll find only Radiation out there!”
“When we were unwise enough to conceal ourselves from the Emissaries, that’s what we believed too.”
“But the Emissaries are deceiving you! They’re the ones who turned off the hot springs!”
“Only to make us use our heads and abandon the worlds. That’s why they attached patches of Light to the walls. That’s why they occasionally left behind the Almighty’s Holy Tubular Vessels — so we would be introduced gradually to Light.”
Philar pushed past him and the rest of the party followed.
“Come back!” Jared called desperately after them. “You’re walking into a trap!”
But they only continued.
He swore and resumed his trek toward the Lower Level, even more vehement in his determination to arm himself for a vengeful assault on Radiation.
Some time later he arrived at the Lower Level with more than a few accumulated scratches and bruises, despite his acquaintance with the passageways closer to his world.
Pausing at the entrance, he let the tension drain out of him like a waning fever. Here was a setting so familiar that he could move confidently about without even using clickstones.
But there was no valid relief, no gentle feeling of homecoming, no elation. The stifling, unnerving curtain of Darkness was pierced only by a barren silence that gave the place an air of incongruity, a tinge of almost hostile strangeness.
Without the central caster sounding its familiar clacks, the entire world was a vast, forbidden echo void. He clapped his hands and listened to the awful stillness.
No longer was there the serene gurgling of the hot springs to give literal and audible warmth to his world. And, over there on his left, dying manna plants imposed a crisp, harsh dissonance on the reflections of the clap.
Hanging somewhere out there in the Darkness was the violent fear that had coaxed frantic cries of horror from the Forever Man. Like the Lightlessness itself, Jared could feel the terror closing in on him too. But, wresting his mind back to the task before him, he stepped off briskly for the weapons rack.
He clapped his hands once more to obtain a crude composite of the major landmarks for use as reference points. Then his memory automatically filled in the surface details all about him.
He shouted out in pain when, with his next step, his knee pounded immovable stone. Toppled by his momentum, he went hurtling forward over the obstacle.
He struggled up, massaging his bruised leg. And he swore at the irresponsible Survivor who had violated the Misplacement of Bulky Objects Law. But his anger subsided as he realized that if he had been here when the monsters were decimating the Lower Level, he too would have probably thought of misplacing boulders in the hope that they would serve as hidden obstacles for the invaders.
There was a sound on his right and he spun in that direction. Someone was hidden in a wall fissure, sobbing frantically — a woman. But she had clamped her hands over her mouth to conceal the sounds.
He stepped toward her and she screamed, “No! No! Don’t!”
“It’s me — Jared.”
“Stay away!” she cried. “You’re one of them!”
He held back, recognizing Survivoress Glenn, an elderly widow. Helplessly, he listened down at the ground. There was nothing he could do to quell her fears — no reassurance he could offer.
And, sweeping his ears out over this ghost of a world that had been desolated by the monsters, he readily heard the Lower Level was beyond reclamation and would never be lived in again. The demons who had ushered in Doomsperiod had emptied his world of all the meaning it once held.
But now he would bring the meaning of vengeance into their infinity! This much he resolved in the name of whatever true Divinity the Survivors had slighted by their devotion to the false Light Almighty.