Again he was jarred from his thoughts by the portentous sound of fanning wings-still too distant for Della to detect. Without slowing his pace, he concentrated on the ominous flapping. There were two of the beasts trailing them now!
The logical thing to do, he readily heard, would be to dig in and face the soubats promptly — before they attracted others to the pursuit. He held off with the hope that the passage would narrow sufficiently to let him and the girl through but not the soubats.
He slowed his pace and waited for Della to say something so there would be more sounding echoes.
Clop!
The impact of shoulder against hanging stone wasn’t quite as jolting this time. It merely spun him half-around.
Angered, he snatched a pair of clickstones out of his pouch and rattled them furiously. To Radiation with what she thought! If the truth that he wasn’t a Zivver was going to come out, let it come!
Della only laughed. “Go ahead and use your stones if it’ll make you feel any more secure. I went through the same thing when I first started zivving steadily.”
“You did?” he stepped off at a brisk pace now that what lay ahead was so sharply audible.
“You’ll soon get used to it. It’s the air currents that cause all the trouble. They’re beautiful but tiring.”
Currents? Did that mean there was some way she could be aware of slow, swirling air in the corridor — something he could hear only when it was further agitated by the passage of a spear or arrow?
It was Della who tripped this time. She fell against him, throwing them both off balance and sending them reeling against the wall.
She clung to him and he could feel the moist warmth of her breath on his chest, the cleaving softness of her body against his.
He held her for a moment and she whispered, “Oh, Jared — we’re going to be so happy! No two people ever had more in common!”
Her cheek was smooth where it pressed against his shoulder and her banded tress of hair lay softly across his arm, dancing as it moved with the slight motions of her head.
Dropping his spears, he touched her face and felt the even flow of trim features, firm and fine from hairline to chin. Her waist, molded to the concavity of his other hand, was evenly curved and supple, flaring out to modestly rounded hips.
Not until then had he fully realized she might quite easily become more than just a means to an end. And he was certain he had been wrong in suspecting she was trying to deceive him — so certain that he found himself thinking of forgetting everything else and settling down with her in some remote, lesser world.
But sobering logic barged in on his reverie and he retrieved the lances abruptly, shoving off down the passage. Della was a Zivver; he wasn’t. She would find happiness in her Zivver World and he would have to be content with his quest for Light — if he managed to survive his bold invasion of the Zivver domain.
“Are you zivving now, Della?” he asked cautiously.
“Oh, I ziv all the time. Soon you will too.”
Experimentally, he listened sharply with the faint hope that he would notice some indiscernible change in the things about her. But he heard nothing. It must be as he had previously suspected: The lessness he sought was so minor that he would have to be in the presence of a number of Zivvers before its cumulative effect would be noticeable.
But, wait! There was a more direct approach.
“Della, tell me — what do you think about Darkness?”
And he could hear her echo-conveyed frown as she repeated the question and added uncertainly, “Darkness abounds in the worlds—”
“Sin and evil, no doubt.”
“Of course. What else?”
It was evident she knew nothing of Darkness. Or, even if she could perceive it, she still didn’t recognize it for what it was.
“Why are you so concerned over Darkness?” she asked.
“I was just thinking,” he improvised, “that zivving must be something opposite to Darkness — something good.”
“Of course it’s good,” she assured, following him around a lesser depression and along the shore of a suddenly emerged river. “How could anything so beautiful be bad?”
“It’s — beautiful?” He tried to eliminate the questioning inflection at the last beat. But, still, the words came out more interrogation than statement.
Her voice was animate with expressiveness. “That rock up ahead — ziv how it stands out against the cool earth background, how warm and soft it is. Now it’s not there, but just for a beat — until that breath of warm air goes by. Now it’s back again.”
His mouth hung open. How could the rock be there and not there in the next instant. It had continued to cast back clicks from his stones all the while, hadn’t it? Why, it hadn’t moved even a finger’s width!
The passage, he could hear, was wide and straight, with few hazards. So he put his stones away.
“You’re zivving now, aren’t you, Jared? What do you ziv?”
He hesitated. Then, impulsively, “Out there in the stream — I ziv a fish. A big one, standing out against the cool river bed.”
“How can that be?” she asked skeptically. “I can’t ziv it.”
But certainly it was there! He could hear the swishing of its fins as it stabilized itself. “It’s there, all right.”
“But a fish is no colder or warmer than the water around it. Besides, I’ve never been able to ziv rocks or anything else in water — not even when I’ve just thrown them in.”
Covering over the blunder would call for boldness. “I can ziv fish. Maybe I ziv different from you.”
She was audibly concerned. “I hadn’t thought of that. Oh, Jared, suppose I’m not really a Zivver after all!”
“Youre a Zivver, all right.” Then he lapsed into a troubled silence. How could anyone expect to outsmart a Zivver?
The fearsome rustle of leathery wings overtook him and he marveled that anything that distinct could escape the girl’s attention. The creatures had reached an enlarged stretch of the passage and, making the most of ample flying room, were streaking forward.
Then he pulled up and trained his ears acutely on the rearward sounds. No longer were there only two soubats stalking them. It was clearly audible that their number had at least doubled.
“What is it, Jared?” Della questioned his alert silence.
One of the creatures filled the air with its strident cry.
“Soubats!” she exclaimed.
“Just one.” No point in alarming her when, with a little luck, they might lose the beasts entirely. “You take the lead. I’ll bring up the rear — in case it gets in position to attack.”
He prided himself on having worked a temporary advantage out of the situation. With her in front, he no longer had to prove occasionally that he was zivving. Now, with her hand in his, he had only to follow her lead. Still, vocal sounds were even more desirable for fetching obscure impressions, so he primed the conversation.
“Leading me by the hand like this,” he offered facetiously, “you remind me of Kind Survivoress.”
“Who’s that?”
Trailing Della along a ridge that ran beside the stream, he told her of the woman who, in his childhood dreams, used to take him to visit the child who lived with her.
“Little Listener?” she repeated the name after he mentioned it. “That’s what the boy was called?”
“In my dreams it was. He couldn’t hear anything except the soundless noises some of the crickets made.”