Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 4: September 2013 (30 page)

Without the central caster sounding its familiar
clacks
, the entire world was a vast, forbidding 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.

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 still undergoing some of the effects of the
zip-hiss
that had robbed him of his senses.

He listened sharply and determined 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 further 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.

Voices in the immediate vicinity of the shack put Jared on guard and he had time to feign an attitude of sleep before he heard the door open. Listening to two of his captors enter, he remained rigid as they came over and stood by the bed. And as they spoke he could hear their words filtering through the cloth face masks:

“This the new one?”

“The last brought out. Incidentally, as best we can determine, he’s the one who slugged Hawkins over that infrared-sensitive girl.”

“Oh,
that
one. Fenton—Jared Fenton. His old man’s been waiting for this day.”

“Want me to go tell Evan we got him?”

“Can’t. He’s been moved to advanced reconditioning.”

Jared hoped the pair hadn’t detected his start at the mention of his father. Convincing them he was asleep was his only hope of forestalling torture.

“Well, Thorndyke,” said the closer of the two, “let’s get on with it.”

Jared couldn’t help starting again on learning Thorndyke Himself was there.

“Has he had his primary shots yet?” the latter asked.

“All of them.”

“Then I guess we can shuck these without touching off another cold epidemic.”

Jared heard them remove the cloths from their faces. Then a hand came down unexpectedly on his shoulder.

“All right, Fenton,” Thorndyke said. “I’m going to hit you between the eyes with a lot of stuff you won’t even understand—at first. But it’ll seep through gradually.”

When Jared didn’t answer, the other captor asked, “You suppose he’s still out?”

“Of course not. All those who don’t bounce up screaming put on the sleep act. Come on, Fenton. As I get it, you’ve had more experience with light than any of them. You ought to take this in stride.”

Perhaps it was the calculated smoothness of the voice. Or, it may have been that, without realizing it, Jared had grown tired of holding his eyes shut. At any rate, in the next beat light was pouring into his conscious and carrying a succession of inseparable impressions with it.

“That’s better,” Thorndyke sighed. “
Now
we’re moving.”

But Jared’s lids flicked shut, blocking out the disturbing sensations. And he compared the Light composite he had stored in that brief instant with the audible impulses he was still receiving.

Thorndyke was a big man (briefly, he questioned his description of the monster as human) with a blunt face whose bone structure suggested strength and determination. Those traits, however, were a puzzling contrast to the femininity implied by his hairless chin.

Loose folds of cloth that fluttered with each minor movement confused the over-all composite. But Jared conceded that, for beings who lived in the vastness and relative warmth of infinity, tight-fitting cloths would be both uncomfortable and inconvenient.

“Throw back those drapes, Caseman,” Thorndyke said, “and let’s get some light in here.”

“You sure he’s ready for it?” the other asked, going over to the window.

“I think so. He’s holding up almost as well as a Zivver. Probably had more brushes with light than we know about.”

A surge of apprehension shuddered through Jared as he listened to the curtain being drawn aside and sensed the assault of fierce light against his closed lids.

Thorndyke’s hand came back to rest on his shoulder. “Easy now, Fenton. Nothing’s going to hurt you.”

But, of course, it was only deceit. They were going to soften him, give him a false sense of confidence. Then, when they smothered his hope with torture, their amusement would be complete.

He opened his eyes. But he could hardly brave the fury of light pouring into the shack now. When he relowered his lids, however, it wasn’t as much because he feared the light as it was because he had seen
two
Thorndykes standing side by side! It made him tremble.

Thorndyke laughed. “Lack of optical co-ordination makes things confusing, doesn’t it? But you’ll learn the finer points of focusing sooner or later.”

He drew up a framework bench and sat beside the bed. “Let’s set a few things straight for the record. Some of it will go over your head. The rest will rub against logic. Take whatever you can on faith. You’ll get it all eventually. First—this is
not
Radiation. We’re
not
demons. You’re
not
dead and lost on the way to Paradise. In the sky outside is the sun. It’s quite an impressive thing, but it’s
not
Hydrogen Himself.”

“It’s not Light Almighty either,” Caseman added.

“No, Fenton,” Thorndyke affirmed. “Contrary to what you believe now, you may later start thinking of this outside world as Paradise.”

“Actually,” said Caseman, “you’ll learn to conceive of Paradise in another way—yet unattainable in a material sense, still beyond infinity, but beyond a new kind of infinity. Which leads up to the fact that you’re going to have to trade in a bunch of old beliefs for new ones.”

There was a moment of silence that played heavily against Jared’s patience. Then Thorndyke asked, “You still with us? Want to say anything?”

“I want to go back to my Level,” Jared managed without opening his eyes.

“There!” Caseman laughed. “He
does
talk!”

“I
thought
you’d want to go back,” Thorndyke said wearily. “Can’t be done. However, how about this: Would you like to, ah, hear—what’s the girl’s name?”

“Della,” Caseman supplied.

Jared strained against his bonds. “What are you doing with her? Can I—
see
her?”

“Say! This one even knows what he’s
doing
with his eyes! Caseman, what about the girl? How’s she making out?”

“Taking things in stride like the other Zivvers, since sight isn’t completely alien to them. Of course, she doesn’t understand what it’s all about. But she’s willing to accept things as they are for the moment.”

Thorndyke slapped his thigh. “All right, Fenton. You’ll see the girl tomorrow—next period.”

There it was—the beginning of the torture. Offer him something, then tantalize him by holding it just out of his reach.

“So much for the preliminaries,” Thorndyke said finally. “Now, here’s a whole bunch of facts you can file away against the time when they’ll all start making sense:

“Your two levels and the Zivver group are descendants of U.S. Survival Complex Number Eleven. Consider a whole world—not the kind you know, but one many, many times greater with billions—you know what a billion is?—billions of people crammed in it. They’re divided into two camps, ready to hurl themselves at one another with weapons deadly beyond imagination. Even to use them would mean to, ah—poison all the air for many generations.”

Thorndyke paused and Jared got the impression it was a story he had told hundreds of times.

“This war
does
start,” he resumed, “but, fortunately, not until preparations are made for the survival of a few groups—seventeen, to be exact. Sanctuaries are established beneath the ground and are sealed off against the poisoned atmosphere.”

“Actually,” Caseman put in, “even making it possible for a handful to survive was a remarkable achievement. It wouldn’t have been possible without adaptation of nuclear power and development of a type of plant life that functioned through thermosynthesis instead of photo—”

The flow of words came to a halt, as though Caseman had sensed his listener’s inability to cope with them.

“Manna plants to you,” Thorndyke explained curtly. “At any rate, the survival complexes were prepared; the war started, and the selected few fled from their—Paradise, so to speak. For the most part, things went along as planned. All equipment worked properly; knowledge and familiar institutions were preserved, and life went on with everybody knowing where they were and why they were there. Generations later, after the outside air had purged itself, the descendants of the original survivors determined it was safe to return outside.”

“Except in Complex Eleven,” Caseman amended. “There, things didn’t go smoothly.”

“Indeed they didn’t,” Thorndyke agreed. “Let’s back up, though. From what I hear, Fenton, you’re a non-believer—never accepted the idea light was God. By now you probably even have a pretty good idea just what it really is, even though you’re stubborn as hell about opening your eyes. At any rate, we’ll take it from there:

“Light is as natural a thing as, say, the sound from a waterfall. In its primary form it comes in abundance from what you’ll swear is Hydrogen Himself when you see it. We also have ways of producing it artificially, as you know by now. And each of the survival complexes had their own light-producing systems right up until the time they were able to return to the outside world.”