Dark Universe (24 page)

But the other only laughed. "He's having his first experience with perception. Don't be afraid, Fenton. You'll get used to things in the distance seeming small. Aren't voices closer to you louder than those far away?"

"He can see pretty well for a beginner," Caseman offered.

"I'd say he's even several leaps ahead of the others at this point.

He's probably been outside before now. That right, Fenton?"

But Jared didn't answer. Eyes closed, he was bemoaning the fact that the horrors of infinity were even more awful than he had suspected.

He _had_ to get back to his own worlds!

"About Survival Complex Eleven--" Thorndyke interrupted his anxious thoughts. "When your people left their basic chamber they left knowledge and reason behind. We found that out after we broke the seal and made our first trip into the passages. Incidentally, we're members of an expedition from Survival Complex Seven, released from our caves almost a generation ago. As I was saying, we happened upon a lone Survivor in one of your corridors. After I finally managed to get a half nelson on him, we pretty much guessed what the score was."

"That was an Upper Level Survivor," Caseman noted. "It took weeks to pound some logic into his head. At the same time we realized that getting the rest of you out under the sun wouldn't be a simple matter of walking up and saying, 'Here we are and this is light and let's go outside.'"

"That's right," Thorndyke affirmed. "Until we could study the situation, we had to take it slow, collaring a Survivor at a time, while we mapped the general layout. We couldn't move in in force until we knew all the niches and crannies you would hide in if we should scare you out of your chambers."

Some of the account was making sense now and Jared forced himself to lie back and listen.

Thorndyke rose and laughed briefly. "We had planned to educate a few Survivors to the facts and let them go back inside, without light, to break the news gently to the others."

"Wouldn't work though," Caseman disclosed. "After one of you fellows gets used to using his eyes, he finds he can't get around in the dark _without_ light. Most of them are even afraid to go back."

Thorndyke rubbed his hands together. "That ought to be enough for the time being, Fenton. Think it over. I've an idea that the next time around you'll have some questions to ask. To help answer them, we'll bring along some people you know and trust."

Jared reopened his eyes in time to see them leaving the shack. And he noted, to his consternation, that they had been right about that matter of perspective at least. The farther away they got, the smaller they became.

He strained desperately against his bonds, but to no avail. Then, pausing to rest, he turned his head toward the opposite wall. Instantly a great flood of intense light bored into his eyes and he cried out in dismay.

Screaming at him from one corner of the window was an edge of that great disc which Thorndyke had denied was Hydrogen! Was it maneuvering toward his shack--trying to come in after him?

Frantically, he threw all his strength into a final attempt to release himself. The bonds snapped and flew off, even as he felt the heat of that--sun, Thorndyke had called it, intensifying against his back.

He lunged for the door and clawed unavailingly at the solid curtain until his fingernails cracked. After a moment of hesitancy, he sprinted across the floor and hurled himself through the window.

Landing on his feet, he saw that the sun was not as close as he had feared. But there were other complications. The impressions entering his eyes told him his shack was merely one in a row. Only, each successive shack was a little smaller than the one immediately preceding it, until the last was scarcely bigger than his hand!

Moreover, all those people he had seen and heard in the distance were shouting and racing toward him. And, even though they were shorter than his finger, the closer they came the taller they grew!

Confounded, he turned and raced up the incline toward the towering wall of earth that embraced the passageway entrance.

"Survivor on the loose! Survivor on the loose!" was the cry that rose behind him.

He stumbled over a minor obstacle he hadn't heard and scrambled bewildered to his feet. The heat from that great thing called the "sun" beat mercilessly down on his bare shoulders and back as he groped his way up the incline, working ever closer to the mouth of the corridor.

The gaping hole of darkness split in two and the parts drifted away from each other as he swore at his eye muscles, trying to force strength into them. Eventually, the pair of holes flowed back into one and stood out more distinctly as he drew up before the mouth of the passageway, gasping for breath.

But he _couldn't_ force himself to push on into the tunnel!

The darkness was too thick and threatening!

There could be a soubat waiting around the first bend!

Or he might plunge into an unfathomable pit which he would neither see nor hear!

With his pursuers almost upon him, he spun impulsively and raced off alongside the immense wall of rock. He stumbled repeatedly and, at one point, found himself rolling down a steep incline until a thick growth of low, rough plants checked his momentum.

He thrashed through the insubstantial obstruction and pushed on, running half the time with his eyes closed and crashing into the broad stems of the Paradise plants that were in his way. But, at least, the' voices behind him were becoming more distant and the heat of Hydrogen on his arms and back was not as severe as it had been for innumerable beats.

He ran and paused for breath and ran again and again until finally he fell and rolled helplessly down through another stretch of plants that hugged the ground. When he came to a halt he scurried farther into the thick growth and lay there exhausted, his face pressed against moist earth.

"_I guess I was wrong, Jared. It's not really all that horrible. And, besides, I think maybe the monsters might be trying to help us after all_."

_There was a quality to Leah's thoughts that had been noticeably absent the last few times she had made contact. Now her unspoken words were calm, ordered. It was as though Thorndyke, after somehow breaking her resistance, had established complete control and was using the woman as a lure, Jared imagined_.

"_No, Jared--it's not like that at all. At least, I don't think so. I'm sure they're not making me do this_."

_If they were, Jared assured himself, then the monsters were even more treacherous than he had imagined_.

"_They may not be monsters at all," she went on. "They really haven't hurt me, except to force my eyes open to the light. And I've been in contact with Ethan. He's not afraid at all! He even thinks they're good_."

Jared rolled over and, though still more asleep than awake, recalled that he had fallen exhausted somewhere out among the low, thick growth of infinity.

"_Ethan is satisfied," she oflered, "because he can get around without help from me, without even having to use his pouch of crickets for echoes. He says he doesn't have to hear when he can see what's before him_."

A startling sound erupted somewhere above him and Jared stiffened against the coarse, damp ground. Even though it had been frightening at first, there was a strange enchantment to the trio of sharp, shrill notes that filled infinity with a plaintive pride and forced back the audible emptiness.

"_Don't be afraid," Leah encouraged, evidently having heard the beautiful tones through his ears. "i've listened to it many times. It was one of the things that finally made me decide this can't be Radiation_."

"_What is it?_" he asked as he listened again to the piercingly sweet succession of high, low, and medium notes.

"_It's a winged animal--a bird." Then, as she detected his apprehension, "No--nothing like a soubat. It's a small delicate thing. Ethan says it's one of the original creatures of infinity--the 'outside world,' he calls it--that managed to survive_."

_When he said nothing she went on, "It's what they call 'night' out there now. But it'll end soon and day will return. Ethan says they have to find you before Hydrogen comes up_."

He was aware of a persistent itching, a stinging along his shoulders and back. It was not an intense sensation, but it was disturbing enough to bring him completely and uncomfortably awake.

He opened his eyes and his fingers dug tensely into the soft earth.

There was no great fury of light all around him as there had been before! Now there was only a softness which was pleasing to the eye and drove home the welcome realization that things didn't have to be all light or darkness out here, that there could be an in-between.

The three distinct notes sounded again and he caught their subtle reflections from the stems of the Paradise plants that reared all around him. But out there above the lacy tops of the plants--"trees," he reminded himself--the entrancing notes lost themselves in the vastness overhead.

And now, as his eyes bored out beyond those fragile tree tops, he saw a great disc of cool light that was both like and unlike the sun. It was the same size as the latter. But, whereas Hydrogen was as furious as the sound of a thousand roaring cataracts, this sphere was gentle and captivating, bringing to mind the winsome notes of the winged creature.

His eyes swept the great dome covering this infinity and, breathless, he gave up trying to count the lively little points of light that danced around up there and became stronger or weaker as he studied them.

Beyond and between the gay motes of the dome was a somber darkness that reminded him of the corridors and worlds in which he had spent all his life up until now. But the fascinating bits of light were so elegant that the eye found little time to concern itself with the intervening darkness.

A world without a material boundary, save for the flat ground underneath him. And, enclosing that world, not an infinity of rocks and mud, but an infinity of semidarkness enlivened by pleasant points and a graceful disc of light--at the moment. At other times, it was an infinity of bold, loud light dominated by a great, harsh thing called the "sun."

"A new kind of infinity," Caseman had said.

And indeed it was. A new kind of infinity with tremendous, novel concepts--so different that the language he knew couldn't begin to contain it.

Despite his restrained sense of wonder, he could not hold back a feeling of despair. Now, with the light around him less intense than it had ever been since he was brought to this outside world, he knew he could never again tolerate the pitch darkness of the passages and Levels. He drew back from himself, surprised over the frank admission that he hadn't the courage to return to his familiar worlds. Did that mean he would have to stay out here among the incomprehensible things of infinity for the rest of his life?

"_I'm afraid so, Jared." Leah's silent words were a sober affirmation.

"i've--looked into many minds during this last period. Most of us realize the inner worlds are a thing of the past_."

He sat up sharply. If he was receiving Leah's thoughts while he was awake, then she couldn't be too far from him! But before he could question her, he became almost painfully aware of the irritating sensation along his shoulders and arms. And when he scratched the skin there it felt as though it were boiling.

The bird shrilled its blithesome notes again and he listened to the mellow tones impart their esthetic quality to the pleasant things before his eyes. It was all charming, this bizarre setting--not beautiful in the way that fine sound appealed to the ear, but gracious in the sensations of form and shape and the variations of light and darkness that came to his eyes.

He became gradually conscious, however, of a disturbing element out there in infinity and he turned his head apprehensively toward it. One section of the dome, far out beyond the tree tops, was casting off its darkness. An even flow of light was creeping up from the ground to swallow the points of light that were already up there.

Leah had implied that the present period of "night" was only temporary, that Hydrogen would be back to cast his fury of light over everything. Could this be the end of the calm phase he had been experiencing?

He rose, trembling, and backed away from the lightsmeared portion of the dome, forcing his way through the low growth.

But he started and his head snapped to the right as he saw another kind of light out there between the stems of the Paradise plants--a swinging cone that could only signify the approach of Thorndyke or one of his other captors!

From overhead the sharp notes of the bird stabbed once more into the semilight and Jared tried desperately to sort out the returning echoes.

But, besides hearing that there were actually _four_ persons hidden in the void behind the light cone, he could squeeze no details out of the reflected sound.

He ducked back down into the thick growth, listening intensely to the group draw closer and hoping that the minor plants around him would prevent the light impressions from betraying his presence.

A breeze sprung up and he tensed as all the lacy plant tops as far as he could hear began whispering and swaying. Coming generally from the direction in which he was facing, the gently moving air currents brought the scents of his pursuers.

Thomdyke was among them, which in itself wasn't surprising. Even though he had been in the presence of the man only once before, he easily recognized his personal odor.

But mingled with that scent were three other unmistakable ones--.

Ethan!

Owen!

Della!

He could believe that these beings of infinity had had plenty of time to bend Owen and Ethan to their purpose. But certainly not Della! She had been out here only half a period longer than he!

"_The girl's a Zivver, Jared," Leah pointed out. "She must understand these things much more easily than you or I_."

Ignoring the unsolicited thoughts, he backed off through the low plants, making as little noise as possible. On his left, more light had splashed itself against the distant dome and he was certain now that he was seeing the imminent coming of the dreadful sun.