Della tugged on his arm and whispered, “We’d better get out of here, Jared.”
There were the sounds of clickstones and running feet in the passageway and he bent an ear to hear who was approaching.
By his pace, it was clear that the man was an official runner. And, when he broke his stride, it was further evident that he had sensed the congestion of persons at the entrance. He halted, then came forward more slowly, and without benefit of stones, to join them.
“Jared Fenton’s a Zivver!” he disclosed. “Be led the monsters to the Upper Level!”
The Protectors, most of them armed with spears, spread out and encircled Jared and the girl.
Then someone shouted, “Zivvers — in the passage!”
More than half the Survivors turned and fled noisily back toward their grottoes as Jared picked up the scent drifting in from the passageway. Someone redolent with the odors of the Zivver World was approaching — stumbling, falling, rising, and coming forward again.
The Protectors broke ranks as they jockeyed in confusion. The pair nearest the entrance drew back their spears.
Just then the Zivver staggered into the direct sound of the central caster and collapsed on the ground.
“Wait!” Jared shouted, casting himself at the two Protectors who were about to hurl their lances.
“It’s only a child!” Della exclaimed.
Jared made his way to the girl, who was groaning with pain. It was Estel, whom he had returned to the Zivver party in the Main Passage.
He heard Della kneel on the other side of the child and run her hands over the girl’s chest. “She’s hurt! I can feel four or five broken ribs!”
Still, Estel recognized him and he caught the sound of her weak smile. He could sense, too, the animation in her eyes as he listened to them dart up and down in purposeful motion.
“You told me someperiod I’d start z.ivving — when I least expected it,” she managed painfully.
Spear touched spear somewhere behind him and the echoes captured the grimace that twisted the child’s smile.
“You were right,” she continued feebly. “I was trying to find your world and I fell into a pit. When I climbed out again, I started zivving.”
Her head slumped against his arm and he felt the life shudder out of her body.
“Zivver! Zivver!” the incriminating cry rose behind him.
“Jared’s a Zivver!”
He seized Della’s hand and lunged into the tunnel as two spears struck the wall beside him. He paused only long enough to snatch up the lances, then continued on into the passageway.
CHAPTER NINE
Half a period later, with long stretches of unfamiliar passages behind them, Jared paused and listened tensely.
There it was again! A distant flutter of wings — much too faint for Della’s ears, though.
“Jared, what is it?” She pressed close against him.
Casually, he said, “I thought I heard something.”
Actually, he had suspected for some time that the soubat was trailing them.
“Maybe it’s one of the Zivvers!” she suggested eagerly.
“That’s what I hoped at first. But I was mistaken. There’s nothing there.” No sense in alarming her — not just yet.
As long as he could keep the conversation going, he had little to worry about insofar as pitfalls were concerned. The words provided a steady source of sounding echoes. But subject matter was not inexhaustible and eventually there came lapses into silence. It was then that he had to resort to artifice to keep the girl from discovering he wasn’t a Zivver. An ingeniously timed cough, an ostensibly awkward clatter of the lances, an unnecessary scuff that sent a loose stone rattling along the ground — all these improvisations helped.
He let a spear strike rock and was rewarded with the reflected composite of a bend in the corridor. As he negotiated it, Della warned, “Watch out for that hanging stone!”
Her alarmed words fetched him an impression of the sliver of rock in all its audible clarity. But too late.
Clop!
The impact of his head snapped the needle in two and sent fragments hurtling against the wall.
“Jared,” she asked, puzzled, “aren’t you zivving?”
He feigned a groan to avoid answering — not that the instant swelling on his forehead wasn’t justification enough for the expression of pain.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” He pushed forward briskly.
“And you aren’t zivving either.”
He tensed. Had she guessed already? Was he about to lose his only means of entry into the Zivver World?
Even convinced that he wasn’t zivving, however, she only laughed. “You’re having the same trouble I did — until I said, ‘To Radiation with what people think! I’m going to ziv all I want!’ ”
Using the reflections of her clearly enunciated syllables, he planted firmly in mind the details of the area immediately ahead. “You’re Tight. I wasn’t zivving.”
“We don’t have to deny our ability any longer, Jared.” She held on to his arm. “That’s all behind us now. We can be ourselves for the first time — really ourselves! Oh, isn’t it wonderful?”
“Sure.” He rubbed the lump on his forehead. “It’s wonderful.”
“That girl who was waiting for you at the Lower Level—”
“Zelda?”
“What an odd name — and a fuzzy-face too. Was she a — friend?”
At least the echo-generating conversation was under way again. And now he could readily hear all the obstacles.
“Yes, I suppose you’d call her a friend.”
“A good friend?”
He led her confidently around a shallow pit, half-expecting a complimentary “Now you’re zivving!” But it didn’t come.
“Yes, a good friend,” he said.
“I gathered as much — from the way she was waiting for you.”
With his head turned away, he smiled. Zivvers, it appeared, were not lacking in normal human sensitivity. And he felt somewhat gratified over the pout-formed distortion of her words when she asked, “Are you going to — miss her much?”
Hiding his amusement, he offered bravely, “I think I’ll manage to get over it.”
He faked another cough and detected a vague hollowness lurking in the rebounding sound. Fortunately, he kicked a loose stone with his next step. Its crisp clatter betrayed the details of a chasm that stretched halfway across the corridor.
Della warned, “Ziv that—”
“I ziv it!” he shot back, leading her around the hazard.
After a while she said distantly, “You had lots of friends, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think I was ever lonesome.” He regretted the statement immediately, suspecting that a Zivver in his position more logically would have been lonesome — dissatisfied with his lot.
“Not even knowing you were — different from all the others?”
“What I meant,” he hastened to explain, “was that most of the people were so nice I could almost forget I wasn’t like them.”
“You even knew that poor Zivver child,” she added thoughtfully.
“Estel. I only heard — zivved her once before.” He told her about encountering the runaway girl in the corridor.
When he had finished she asked, “And you let Mogan and the others get away without even telling them you were a Zivver too?”
“I — that is—” He swallowed heavily.
“Oh,” she said with belated comprehension, “I forgot — you had your friend Owen with you. And he would have heard your secret.”
“That’s right.”
“Anyway, you couldn’t desert the Lower Level, knowing how much they needed you.”
He listened suspiciously at her. Why had she been so quick to provide the answers for which he had been only groping? It was as though she had whimsically put him on a hook, then deftly taken him off again. Did she know he was no Zivver? Somehow it seemed his entire plan to investigate the possible Zivver-Darkness-Eyes-Light relationship might be slipping into an obscure echo void.