The child’s head had been turned toward Averyman and Jared couldn’t hear the details of his face. But suddenly it seemed vitally important that he should know the boy’s characteristic expression. So he went around the slab, seized his shoulders and held him with his features fully exposed to the portable caster.
It was as he had expected — the child’s eyes were wide open.
“You have something you’d like to say?” Averyman asked, not quite concealing his resentment over the interruption.
“No — nothing.” Jared returned to his place.
The boy was an open-eyed type. Jared, himself, was openeyed. Three other witnesses had fallen into the same category. And all of them had felt the strange sensations!
Was it as he had guessed once before — that the silent sound might in some way be connected with the eyes, provided they were exposed? And now he recalled how strangely his own eyes had reacted during Excitation of the Optic Nerve Ceremony. The weird rings of noise had clearly seemed to be dancing beneath his lids, hadn’t they?
But what significance could be drawn from all this? If the eyes were intended only for feeling Light, then why was it they could also sense the evil of the monsters? He was both excited and confused by the flood of inspirational questions. And he was annoyed that the same inspiration would produce none of the answers.
Since the eyes seemed to be the common element between Divinity and Devil, he asked himself queasily, could Light be in some sort of evil conspiracy with the monsters?
There! He had entertained the sacrilegious thought! And he braced himself for the wrath of the Almighty.
But, instead, there came only a direct question from Elder Averyman: “Well, Jared — rather, Your Survivorship — you’ve heard these various descriptions. How do they compare with your impressions of that monster in the Original World?”
He decided to play it a bit shrewder. “I’m not so sure I heard a monster. You know how your imagination can run away with you.” There was no sense in calling attention to his experience with the creature. Nor did he hear where he would gain anything by telling them about the beings that had invaded the Upper Level.
“Eh? What?” Elder Haverty inquired. “You mean you didn’t hear a monster in the Original World? You did go there, didn’t you?”
Jared tried to clear his throat, but the painful roughness persisted. “Yes, I went there.”
“And a lot has happened since then,” Survivor Maxwell reminded. “We’ve lost some hot springs. A monster has carried off the Prime Survivor. Do you suppose you’re to blame for those misfortunes?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Why incriminate himself?
“Some think you might be,” Averyman said stiffly.
Jared sprang up. “If this is an attempt to remove me from—”
“Sit down, son,” Maxwell urged. “Elder Averyman said we had to make you Prime Survivor. But there’s nothing to keep us from easing you out if we think that’s best.”
“The question,” Haverty repeated, “is whether you’re the cause of all that’s happened to this world.”
“Of course I’m not! Those first three hot springs went dry long before I crossed the Barrier!”
There was a speculative silence around the slab. But Jared was more surprised than any of them by the truth he had spontaneously spoken. It had opened his ears to a whole flood of realization.
“Don’t you understand?” He leaned tensely over the slab, letting sound from the portable caster play over his face so the others could hear his sincerity. “What’s happening now couldn’t be because I went across the Barrier! The Upper Level’s having the same troubles! They lost some boiling pits and one of their Survivors turned up missing before I even went to the Original World!”
“We’d be more likely to believe that,” Averyman pointed out cynically, “if you’d told us about it earlier.”
“I didn’t realize I had crossed the Barrier after those things had happened. And I figured that if I told you about them you’d only be more certain I was to blame.”
“Eh?” Haverty put in. “How do we know you’re telling the truth about the Upper Level having trouble too?”
“Get the Official Escort to ask about it when they take me back up there.”
Jared felt like a Survivor who had been freed from the depths of Radiation. He had cast off shackles of superstition that would have thrown a curtain of fear over the rest of his life.
His relief was almost boundless — knowing that his trip to the Original World to hunt for Darkness and Light had not provoked the vengeance of an aggrieved Almighty Power. It meant there was no dire necessity of relinquishing that search. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to devote as much effort to the quest as he had planned — not with his Prime Survivorship a reality and with Unification hanging over his head. But, at least, he could go on with it.
A depression that he had known for many periods melted away before his exuberance. He would have felt like shouting had it not been for the fact that his throat was bothering him again.
He sneezed and his head started throbbing.
A few moments later Elder Maxwell sneezed too, then sniffled.
Abruptly there was a disturbance in the world outside and Jared tensed as he caught a whiff of the monster’s stench.
Someone swept into the grotto and quickly placated, “Don’t be alarmed by the smell.” The voice was Romel’s. “It’s coming from something in my hand — something the monster dropped when it carried off the Prime Survivor.”
Jared intercepted the clicks from the portable caster as they echoed against the object his brother was displaying. It was the cloth he had buried in the passageway. Romel was firming his grip on that imaginary swish-rope. And Jared waited for the tug that would jerk him off his feet.
The Elders had had time to study the reeking object, and Maxwell asked, “Where did you get this thing?”
“I listened to Jared hide it. And I dug it up.”
“Why would he do a thing like that?”
“Ask him.” But before Maxwell could, Romel went on, “I think he was covering up for the monster. Don’t get me wrong now. Jared’s my brother. But the interest of the Lower Level comes first. That’s why I’m exposing this conspiracy.”
“That’s ridiculous—” Jared began.
“Eh? What?” Haverty interrupted. “Conspiracy? What conspiracy? Why should your brother conspire with the monster? How could he conspire with it?”
“He stole off and met it in the Original World, didn’t he?”
Echoes fetched only the impression of hair hanging down over Romel’s face. But Jared knew that the smile concealed beneath the veil was as sardonic as it had been each time the swish-rope accomplished its mischievous purpose during an earlier era.
“I hid the cloth,” he began, “because—”
But Haverty persisted. “What would he gain by conspiring with a monster?”
There was yet another tug to be had from the swish-rope. “He’s Prime Survivor now, isn’t he?” Romel reminded with a laugh.
Jared lunged up. But two Elders halted his charge.
“That kind of outburst,” Averyman assured, “only makes the accusation seem more reasonable.”
Jared relaxed before the slab. “I hid the cloth because I wanted to study it later. I couldn’t very well bring it into the world without having to answer the same questions I’m answering now.”
“Reasonable,” Averyman grumbled. “And what about this matter of conspiring with the monster?”