He spun around and strode grimly for the weapons rack.
“No! Don’t go away!” the woman begged. “Don’t leave me here for the monsters!”
He sent his hand plunging into the first compartment, fearing for a moment that he would find nothing within. But his anxious fingers closed on a bow and he slung it over his shoulder. That in reprisal for the Lower Level! Two quivers of arrows took their place beside the bow, hanging against his back. Those for Della and the Prime Survivor. A third quiver he strapped across his other shoulder. For Owen!
Reaching into the next compartment, he found a bundle of spears and gathered them under his left arm. For Cyrus, the Thinker! Another sheaf of lances went under his right arm. For Leah and Ethan and the Forever Man!
“Come back!” the woman implored. “Don’t leave me here by myself! Don’t let the monsters get me!”
She was out of the crevice now and he picked up her sounds as she crawled farther into the world, heading for the entrance so she could cut him off.
Ignoring her, he paused and clapped his hands forcefully for a final hearing of the intimate, for a last indulgence of nostalgia. Then he struck out for the entrance.
He didn’t hear the fluttering of wings until the hateful sound was almost upon him. He caught the scent of the soubat at the same time and bolted into frantic action, trying to relieve himself of his excess weapons in time to meet the infuriated charge.
Slipping the quiver straps off his shoulders, he hurled the bow out of his way and dropped one of the bundles of spears. Before he could even begin fumbling with the rope that held together the other sheaf of lances, the soubat hurled itself through the entrance and launched its first onslaught.
Jared dived to one side. He managed to escape the animal’s initial pass, suffering only a talon-sliced forearm in the maneuver. Hurling himself on the ground, he again tore at the knot on the bundle of spears.
The soubat’s high-pitched shrieks mingled with the terrified cries of the woman, etching every feature of the Lower Level as audibly as though it were the central echo caster itself that was filling the world with sound.
Executing its sweeping turn high against the dome, the marauder plunged down in a second swooping charge. And Jared heard that he couldn’t hope to work a spear free before the fanged thing closed in on him.
In the next instant, as he braced himself to receive the beast’s full clawing impact, he was abruptly conscious of the Light cone that was darting out of the passageway into the Lower Level.
While it bathed him, it also provided his eyes with the impression of a great, screeching form that was hurtling down in all its fury.
A racking shudder of horror passed through him when he identified the impression as that of the soubat. If the creature had seemed hideous in its audible form, the evil ugliness it conveyed through the medium of Light composites was altogether beyond imagination.
The thing was practically within arm’s reach when a tremendous burst of sound roared out of the entrance. At the same time a tiny tongue of odd Light, similar in tone to Hydrogen Himself, lanced into the world.
And Jared sensed that those twin occurrences had something to do with the soubat’s going limp in midflight and plummeting to the ground beside him.
Before he could speculate further on the possible coincidence, however, the cone of Light advanced cautiously and he caught the scent of the monster behind it. Using the Light impressions as a guide, he gave the stubborn sheaf of spears a fierce kick and the lances came free, scattering over the ground.
He seized one and, turning toward the entrance, drew it back.
Zip-hiss.
Sharp pain boiled into his chest and the spear clattered to the ground as he stumbled forward and collapsed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
At first Jared thought he was receiving touch-sound impressions from Leah. He found himself listening — through the woman’s consciousness, he felt certain — to many voices made indistinct by distance. Too, the current of vocal impulses, passing through the “window,” flared out to bounce against nearby square walls.
Undoubtedly, the composite was that of the shack in which Leah was being held prisoner. The experience this time, though, was most vivid. He could almost feel the straps cutting into the flesh above her elbows as they pinned her arms to the “bed.”
“Leah?” he thought.
But there was no response.
Then he realized the perceptions were not secondhand. It was he who was confined in the shack. And if he hadn’t recognized that fact until now, it was possibly because he was stifi undergoing some of the effects of the zip-hiss that had robbed him of his senses.
He listened sharply and determined that that there was no one else, human or otherwise, with him. Cautiously, he turned his ears toward the window and heard the rustling of the heavy curtain hanging over that space. A breeze was opening occasional cracks in the folds, through which the voices entered more strongly but still unclearly.
A brisker current caught the curtain, sweeping it partly aside, and he received the sonic impression of a great wall of rock rearing to unguessable heights. It was a composite he was sure he had listened to before and he pressed his memory for the association.
Of course — it was the same wall through which he and Mogan had stumbled into Radiation. Before the curtain fluttered back into place, he even heard the remote hollowness of the passageway’s gaping end as it flared out on infinity.
There was no doubt about it now. He was somewhere in the terrifying vastness of Radiation. His eyes opened and he flinched before the onslaught of impressions. Yet, the sensation was not as fierce as he had expected. And he supposed its mildness was due to the fact that the walls of the shack were keeping out most of the Light.
His head rolled toward the window but snapped instantly back. In the split beat before his lids had clamped shut he had gotten a frightening impression. It was as though part of Hydrogen had leaped in through a rift in the curtain to cast Himself in a long, narrow streak on the relative Darkness of the floor!
Many beats later he forced his eyes open again and began struggling against his bonds. His arms, free below the elbows, thrashed upward as far as they could, but to no avail. Against the lingering aftereffects of the zip-hiss he was still powerless.
In the next moment he stifled a fearful cry and brought trembling lids back down over his eyes. He had received the composite of something menacing and horrible — right there before him! Something bulbous with five curving protuberances that reminded him vaguely of the sonic impression of a -
But, no, it couldn’t be! Yet -
He opened his eyes and experimentally wiggled a finger on his left hand. And one of the protuberances on the bulbous thing wiggled too. Relieved, he lowered the hand. But he was even more puzzled. The legends had said Light would touch all things and bring incredibly refined impressions. None of the beliefs, however, had even hinted that a Survivor might receive composites of his own body!
He brought the hand back up where he could see it and studied the impressions. How unbelievably perfect they were! Why, he could recognize each individual crease in the palm, each hair on the back!
Then he tensed in stark disbelief. The hand had abruptly split into two, as though the original had given birth to another just like it! The two drifted back into one, then separated again, moving farther apart!
At the same time he was aware of a shifting pressure on the muscles of his eyeballs — a tenseness that crossed the bridge of his nose whenever the hand divided, then relaxed again as the parts rejoined. And he found that with concentration he could prevent the confusing and certainly false impression of two members when all his other senses told him there could be only one.