Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 (36 page)

“Unification Intentions—compost!” Anselm boiled over as he faced Jared with hands on his hips. “At a time like this you’ve got
Unification
on your mind?”

When Jared didn’t answer, he said, “Sorry, my boy. But we’re on edge up here—with monsters running all over the place and hot springs drying up. Five more boiled out yesterperiod. I understand you’ve been having the same trouble.”

Jared nodded, not particularly caring whether the Wheel heard.

Anselm mumbled some more and said, “Unification! Didn’t the runner tell you I’d decided to put things off until we can do something about all these other complications?”

“I haven’t heard the runner. Where is he?”

“I sent him back early this period.”

Jared slumped on the bench, his body boiling like a turbulent spring. The runner had already left but hadn’t reached the Lower Level. And they hadn’t passed him on the way up. Only ominous significance could be attached to the fact that several members of the Official Escort—those with clear noses, at least—had told of smelling the lingering scent of the monster in the passageway.

His lungs convulsed in a coughing spell and when he finished he was aware the Adviser had entered the grotto and was standing there listening intensely down at him.

“Well, Fenton,” Lorenz said bluntly, “what do
you
make of all this monster business?”

Jared trembled with another chill. “I don’t know what to think of it.”

“I’ve told the Wheel what
I
think: The Zivvers have gone back to their old tricks. They’re taking Survivors as slaves. And they’re in league with the Twin Devils to accomplish their purpose.”

“And I say that’s ridiculous,” put in Anselm. “We even
heard
the monsters take a Zivver!”

“How do we know that wasn’t something they
wanted
us to hear?”

Anselm snorted. “If the Zivvers are going to start taking slaves again, they’d just
do
it.”

Lorenz was silent. But it was an adamant silence. It was readily audible he was going to insist the monsters and Zivvers were working together. And Jared could understand why: if the Adviser intended to accuse him of being a Zivver, he was going to make certain the accusation also included indirect blame for the presence of the monsters.

“I’m sure Della will want to hear your decision on Unification, my boy.” Anselm took the Adviser by the arm and swept the curtain aside. “I’ll send her in.”

Jared coughed, spanned his steaming forehead with a trembling hand and shivered.

A short while later the girl entered and drew in a sharp breath as she stood with her back against the curtain.

“Jared!” she exclaimed with deep concern. “You’re boiling! What’s wrong?”

He was surprised at first that she could hear his fever all the way across the grotto. But fever was heat. And heat was the stuff Zivvers zivved, wasn’t it?

“I don’t know,” he managed.

For a moment he had almost generated interest in the fact that she was here and zivving. And that now was his chance to listen closely and perhaps hear whether there was a lessness of something around her
while
she zivved. But his purpose faded away in another jarring shiver.

Della closed the curtain securely behind her and came over. He turned his head and coughed and she knelt before him, feeling the heat in his arms and face. And he heard her features twist with concern.

But she pushed the expression aside for something that was evidently more urgent. “Jared, I’m sure the Adviser knows you’re a Zivver!” she whispered. “He hasn’t come out and said so, but he keeps reminding everybody how remarkable your senses are!”

Jared swayed forward, caught himself and sat there trembling and perspiring, his head roaring, spinning.

“Don’t you hear why he made you shoot at that target among the hot springs?” she went on. “He
knows
what too much heat does to a Zivver! He was just trying to find out if you—”

The girl’s words faded into oblivion as he toppled forward off the bench.

***

When finally he awoke, there was the waning taste in his mouth of medicinal mold and the vague memory of having been forced to swallow the mushy substance several times.

Too, he sensed that during the entire period—or was it longer?—he had lain semiconscious in the Wheel’s grotto, Kind Survivoress had tried to force her way back into his delirious dreams. Perhaps she had even succeeded. But he could recall neither her successful intrusion nor the dreams themselves.

Now he felt only an inner calm and comfort. His throat was smooth again and the pounding fever had left his head. Even if he was not entirely well, he felt certain that only a full return of his strength stood in the way of complete recovery.

Gradually, he became aware of restrained breathing at the other end of the grotto and recognized the rhythm and depth of the breaths as Della’s.

There was the firm, supple sound of thigh and calf muscles working together as she paced—nervously, he could tell by the erratic steps—to the curtain and back again.

Then she came abruptly over to the slumber ledge and shook him desperately. “Jared, wake up!”

He could tell from the urgency in her voice that she had been trying to arouse him for some time.

“I’m awake.”

“Oh, thank Light!” Some of her hair had come out of the band that held it tightly behind her head and had fallen across her face. She brushed it aside and he got a clearer impression of smooth, precise features that were taut with solicitude.

“You’ve got to get out of here!” she went on in a strained whisper. “The Adviser’s convinced Uncle Noris you’re a Zivver! They’re going to—”

There was the sound of nearby conversation in the outside world and Jared heard the soft current of air swirl around her face as she jerked her head toward the curtain, then back again,.

“They’re coming!” she warned. “Maybe we can slip out before they get here!”

He tried to rise but fell back down, weak and puzzled, as he suddenly realized the girl didn’t customarily bend an ear toward an interesting noise, as everyone else did. She always kept her face pointed directly at anything that held her attention. Which meant she didn’t ziv with her ears! But, then, what
did
she ziv with?

The voices outside came more clearly through the curtain now.

Adviser: “Of
course
I’m dead certain he’s a Zivver! As good a marksman as he is, he couldn’t hit a simple stationary target in the manna orchard. And you know as well as I do that Zivvers are confused by excessive heat.”

Wheel: “It
does
seem incriminating.”

Adviser: “And what about Aubrey? We sent him out to cover that silent sound the monster left on the wall outside. That was two periods ago and he’s been missing ever since. Who was the last one to hear him?”

Wheel, coughing hoarsely: “Byron says that when he ran back into the world, Fenton was still out there with Aubrey.”

Adviser, sneezing: “There you are! And if you need any more proof that Fenton’s a Zivver who has conspired with the monsters, you have one of our basic beliefs to go by.”

Wheel: “The one that says any Survivor who consorts with Cobalt or Strontium will become deathly sick.”

They stepped deliberately toward the grotto entrance.

Wheel, with a sniffle: “What’ll we do with him?”

Adviser: “The Pit’ll hold him for the moment.” Another sneeze. “Being a Zivver, he’ll be worth something as a hostage, no doubt.”

When they drew the curtain aside Jared heard several armed Protectors taking their posts outside the grotto.

Wheel Anselm came and stood beside Jared, edging Della aside. “Has he made any wakeful noises yet?”

“He’s not a Zivver!” she pleaded. “Let him alone!”

Jared heard that her face was turned directly toward the Wheel. And again he caught the fleeting impression of her hand brushing hair away from her forehead—away from her eyes, actually.

And now he remembered that just before she had handed him the tubular object the monsters had left behind, she had brought it up before her and held it on a level with her face.

It was her
eyes
that she was zivving with!

Anselm seized his arm and shook him roughly. “All right—up off that ledge! We can hear you’re awake!”

Feebly, Jared struggled to his feet. Lorenz seized his other arm, but he shook off the grip.

“Protectors!” the Adviser shouted anxiously.

And the guards hurried in.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Although he hadn’t thought it possible, the Upper Level Punishment Pit was worse than the one in Jared’s own world. It occurred to him that it would be hard to imagine a more terrible penalty for wrongdoing. As a detention facility, it was escapeproof. The ledge on which he lay was fully two body lengths below the surface. And it was much narrower than his shoulders, so that an arm and leg had to dangle over the abyss.

Lowered there by rope, he lay motionless for hundreds of heartbeats—until his limbs had become numb. Then, cautiously, he had dropped one of his clickstones into the hole. It had fallen—fallen—fallen. And many breaths later, after he had given up hope of listening to the impact, there was the faintest
kerplunk
he had ever heard.

From remote distances came the sounds of late period activity—children at play after their Familiarization session, manna shells scraping slabs during mealtime, and a staccato frequency of coughs.

Eventually, the echo caster was turned off for the sleep period and, still later, Della came.

On a cord she lowered a shell filled with food. Then she lay with her head overhanging the mouth of the Pit.

“I almost convinced Uncle Noris you couldn’t be a Zivver,” she whispered disappointedly, “until that epidemic got him excited all over again.”

“That sneezing and coughing?”

The steady flow of her voice wavered as she nodded her head. “They ought to be taking mold, like we did. But Lorenz’s telling them it won’t work against Radiation sickness.”

She fell silent and he let the manna shell clatter against the wall of the Pit. Intercepting the sharp echoes, he quickly put together a composite of the girl’s features. And even more than before, he liked what he heard.

The general configuration was soft and confident. Her hair, slicked back from her forehead, had a pleasant sound and gave her face a sleek, delicate tonal balance. Somehow the total impression had much in common with the wistful music she had stroked from the hanging stones. And he fully heard now how desirable she was for Unification.

He brought another shelled crayfish to his mouth, but paused when he realized that even now she must be zivving. Again he let the bowl strike rock to produce more sounding echoes. And he heard that her face was directed fixedly toward him. He could almost feel the intense steadiness of her eyes.

Now was hardly the time, though, to listen for whatever happened to the things about her whenever she zivved. If there was a lessening of something or other, he certainly wouldn’t be able to detect it while clinging precariously to the ledge.

Nevertheless, he did seize upon one fact that had, at the moment, become clear: since both Darkness and Light were probably connected with the eyes—perhaps especially with a Zivver’s eyes—then the lessness he was listening for would no doubt have a measurable effect on the eyes.

Wait! There
was
something—back in the Wheel’s grotto, when Della had bent over him to shake him awake. Some of her hair had fallen over her face. And when she had brushed it aside, wasn’t there then
less hair
before her eyes?

He slumped with a tinge of futility. No—Darkness couldn’t be as simple a thing as hair. That would be too ironic—listening for something he had known all his life. Anyway, Cyrus had said Darkness was universal, everywhere. That meant he would have to listen over a broad area, all around the girl.

“Jared,” she said tentatively. “You’re not—I mean you and the monsters aren’t—”

“I haven’t had anything to do with them.”

Her breath escaped with a relieved sound. “Are you from—the Zivver World?”

“No. I’ve never been there.”

The echoes of his words captured her depressed expression.

“Then you’ve spent your whole life hiding the fact you’re a Zivver—just like me,” she said sympathetically.

There was no point in not encouraging her confidence. “It hasn’t been easy.”

“No, it hasn’t. Knowing how much better you can do things, but having to listen to yourself carefully every step of the way so others won’t find out what you are.”

“I pushed it to a fine point—too fine, I suppose. Otherwise I wouldn’t be down here now.”

He heard her hand slide down along the side of the Pit, as though reaching out for him. “Oh, Jared! Does it mean as much to you—finding out you’re
not
alone? I never guessed anybody else had to go through the same gestations of Radiation and fear that I did—always afraid of being found out at the next step.”

He could appreciate the close relationship she must feel for him, the way her loneliness was crying out. And he sensed something within himself straining toward the girl, even though he was no Zivver in need of sympathetic response.

She went on effusively, “I don’t understand why you didn’t go hunting for the Zivver World long ago. I would have. But I was always afraid I wouldn’t find it and would get lost in the passages.”

“I wanted to go there too,” he lied. And it was beginning to appear that he could play the role of a Zivver simply by following her lead. “But I have an obligation to the Lower Level.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I don’t hear—that is, I don’t ziv why you didn’t join up with the Zivvers during one of their raids,” he said.

“Oh, I couldn’t do
that
. What if I tried and the Zivvers wouldn’t take me? Then everybody would know what I am. I’d be driven into the passages as a Different One!”

She rose and stood zivving down into the Pit.

“You’re leaving?” he asked.

“Only until I can figure out some way to help you.”

“How long do they intend keeping me here?” He tried to change position but succeeded only in almost slipping off the ledge.

“Until the monsters come back. Then Uncle Noris is going to let them know we have you as a hostage.”

Listening to her footfalls recede, he was fascinated with the whole range of things that might come out of his association with the girl. Even if Light and Darkness remained elusive, he at least might learn something about this intriguing ability the Zivvers had.

It was past midsleep when Jared, his muscles cramped and aching, finally managed to ease himself into a sitting position. He tapped the manna shell against rock and listened. It wasn’t a very wide hole—about two body lengths across, he estimated. And he could hear that, except for the ledge on which he perched, the sides were barren of fissures and outcroppings that might have provided handholds toward the surface.

He brought a knee up against his chest and secured his foot on the shelf. Then, with arms outstretched against the slick wall, he rose bit by bit until he was standing. Slowly, he turned around, pressing his chest against the rock. Reaching overhead, he produced sharp tones by snapping his fingers. And the sudden drop-off in the sound pattern told him that the rim of the Pit was at least another arm’s length beyond his extended hand.

He remained in that position for several hundred beats before he heard all Radiation breaking loose above. Until then there had been only the normal sounds of a world lying dormant in midslumber, with an occasional outburst of coughs ruffling the relative quiet.

Then everything seemed to boil over into a great excitement and confusion as one of the Protectors sounded the fearful warning, “Monsters! Monsters!”

Hoarse shouts, screams, and the audible agitation of people scurrying frenziedly about poured down the Pit.

Jared almost lost his balance as he tilted his head back and became aware that the entire opening above was whispering with silent sound. Unlike the sensation experienced during Effective Excitation, however, there was only one circle of the weird monster stuff. And it didn’t seem to be actually touching his eyes. Rather, it corresponded in size and shape with his audible impression of the Pit’s mouth.

He tottered on the ledge, flailing his arms to keep from falling, then stood with his face pressed firmly against stone as he listened to someone running in his direction.

In the next instant Jared recognized the Adviser’s voice coming from halfway across the world, “You at the Pit yet, Sadler?”

There was another distant outburst of screams as Sadler drew to a halt overhead. “I’m here!” He thudded his spear against rock to sound out Jared’s position on the ledge below.

This time it was the Wheel’s voice that rose in challenge to the monsters: “We’ve got Fenton! We know he’s working with you! Get back or we’ll kill him!”

Another wave of screams suggested that the monsters were ignoring Anselm’s threat.

“All right, Sadler,” Lorenz roared. “Send him to the bottom!”

The spear tip grazed Jared’s shoulder and he winced, sidling along the ledge. It came back again, slipped between his chest and the wall of the Pit and began prying him from his perch. Jared toppled over backward and his arms threshed air as he fought to keep from plunging into the unfathomable abyss.

His flailing hand touched and gripped the lance. He jerked himself desperately upright. He gave the spear a violent tug and the full weight of the man at the other end came along with it.

Abruptly the spear was free in his hand and he felt the rush of air as Sadler went plunging by, screaming all the way down.

The weapon was more than long enough to span the Pit. Jared used it as a prodding stick to locate a minor recess in the opposite side. Wedging its butt into the depression, he propped the point against the wall above him.

Panic subsided as quickly as it had broken out overhead. Apparently the invaders had accomplished their purpose and withdrawn.

Jared hoisted himself onto the wedged spear, reached up, gained a purchase on the lip of the Pit and pulled himself out.

“Jared! You’re free!”

Echoes from her footfalls brought fragmentary impressions of Della racing toward him. And he could hear the soft
swish
of the coil of rope slung across her shoulder and brushing against her arm.

He tried to get his bearings. But the residual din of dismayed voices was too confusing to indicate which way the entrance lay.

Della caught his hand. “I couldn’t find a rope until just now.”

Impulsively, he started off in the direction he was facing.

“No.” She spun him around. “The entrance is
this
way. Ziv it?”

“Yes. I ziv it now.”

He hung back slightly, letting her remain a step or two ahead and following the tug of her hand.

“We’ll circle wide, along by the river,” she proposed. “Maybe we can reach the passage before they turn on the central caster.”

And he had been hoping someone
would
do just that. Of course he hadn’t realized that the
clacks
which would sound out the obstacles before him would also betray their presence to the others.

His foot contacted a minor outcropping and he stumbled. Eventually righting himself with the girl’s help, he limped on. Then, constraining the anxiety of escape, he composed himself and called upon all the devices he had acquired through gestations of training when he had to learn to detect the subtle rhythm of a heartbeat, the swishing silence of a lazy stream agitated by the motion of a fish beneath its calm surface, the distant scent and slither of a salamander as it crossed moist stone.

More confident now, he listened for sound—
any
kind of sound, remembering that even the most insignificant noise is useful. There! That lurching catch in Della’s breath as she drew in the next lungful of air. It meant she was stepping onto a slight elevation. He was prepared when he reached the rise.

He listened intently to the other things about her. Heartbeats were too indistinct to be useful except as direct sound. But there was something rattling faintly in her carrying case. He sniffed the imperceptible odors of a variety of edibles. She had packed a good deal of food and one morsel was striking the side of her pouch with each step. The slight
flops
meant echoes, if he listened attentively enough. There they were now—almost lost among the greater noises from the rest of the world. But they were sufficiently vivid to relay audible impressions of the things before him.

Now he was sure of himself again.

They left the bank of the river, cutting across behind the manna orchard, and had made it almost to the entrance when someone finally turned on the central echo caster.

Immediately, he caught the full composite of a few faint impressions that had worried him for the last few beats—a guard had just arrived to take his post at the entrance.

A moment later the man sounded the alarm. “Somebody’s trying to get out! Two of them!”

Jared lowered his shoulder and charged. He crashed into the sentry, knocking him breathless and bowling him over.

Della caught up with him and they lunged into the passageway. He let her stay in the lead until they had rounded the first bend. Then he produced a pair of stones and pushed ahead of her.