Clinging to his lances, he slung Della over his shoulder and stumbled on down the passage. The poison was coursing through his arm now and reaching torturously across his chest, into his head.
But he pushed on for more than one impelling reason: he couldn’t lose consciousness here — the soubats would be back at any moment; nor could there be any stopping until he reached a hot spring where he might fashion steaming poultices and tend their wounds.
He struck a rock, bounced off, stood swaying for a while, then staggered on. Around the next bend he waded through an arm of the river and collapsed when he reached dry land again.
The stream flowed off through the wall and before them stretched a broad, dry passage. Pulling himself forward with the hand that still clutched the spears, he dragged Della along with him. Then he paused, listenihg to a drip-drip that came with a melodious monotony. His spear point touched rock and the thunk provided him with a composite of the passageway.
It was a strangely familiar corridor, with its slender hanging stone dripping cold water into the puddle below, not too far away from a single, well-defined pit. He felt sure he had been here many times before; had stood beside that moist needle of rock and run his hands over its cool, slick contours.
And, in his last impression before he lapsed into unconsciousness, he recognized all the details of the passageway outside the imaginary world of Kind Survivoress.
CHAPTER TEN
Jared flinched from the absurd impressions, from the contradictory composites of physical orientation. He was certain he still lay in the corridor near the dripping needle of rock. Yet, he was equally sure he was somewhere else.
The drip-drip of the water changed to a weary taptap-tap and back to a drip-drip again. The coarse hardness of stone under his feverish body was, alternately, the soft fibers of manna husks piled upon a sleeping ledge.
In the next phase of the here-there alternation, the distant tap-tap-tap commanded his attention. And its sharp echoes conveyed the impression of someone seated on a ledge absently drumming his finger on stone.
Light, but the man was old! Had it not been for the movement of his hand, he might easily have been mistaken for a skeleton. The head, trembling with an affliction ot senility, was like a skull. And the beard, unkempt and sparse, trailed to the ground, losing itself in the inaudibility of its thinness.
Tap-tap-tap… drip-drip…
Jared was back in the corridor. And, like commingling sounds, the straggly beard had metamorphosed into the moist hanging stone.
“Relax, Jared. Everything’s under control now.”
He almost lurched out of the dream. “Kind Survivoress!”
“It’ll be less awkward if you just call me Leah.”
He puzzled over the name, then thought flatly, “I’m dreaming again.”
“For the moment — yes.”
Another anxious, soundless voice intruded, “Leah! How’s he doing?”
“Coming around,” she said.
“So I can hear.” Then, “Jared?”
Jared, however, had returned to the corridor — but only for a moment. Soon he was back on the manna fiber mattress in a minor world where the vague outline of a woman bent over him and an inconceivably ancient man sat against the far wall tapping his finger.
“Jared,” the woman offered, “that other voice was Ethan’s.”
“Ethan?”
“You knew him as Little Listener before we changed his name. He’s been out after game, but he’s coming back now.”
Jared was even more confused.
More to soothe him than for any other reason, he felt sure, the woman said, “I can’t believe you found your way here after all these gestations.”
He started to say something, but she interrupted, “Don’t explain. I heard everything from your mind — what you were doing in the passages, how you were bitten by—”
“Della!” he shouted, remembering.
“She’ll be all right. I reached you in time.”
Abruptly, he realized he was awake now and that Kind Survivoress’ last words had been spoken.
“Not Kind Survivoress, Jared — Leah.”
And he was astonished by his audible impression of the woman. He sent his hands groping over her face, across her shoulders, along her arms. Why — she wasn’t the least bit old!
“What did you expect — someone like the Forever Man?” She sent her thoughts to him. “After all, I was really practically a child when I used to go to you.”
He listened more closely at her. Hadn’t she once told him she could reach his mind only when he was asleep?
“Only when you’re asleep if you’re far away,” she clarified. “When you’re this close you don’t have to be asleep.”
He studied her auditory reflections. She was perhaps a bit talller than Della. But her proportions, despite her nine or ten gestations’ seniority over the girl, suffered none in comparison. She was closed-eyed and kept her hair clipped shoulder-length on the sides, reaching to her eyebrows in front.
Turning his ears on his surroundings, he listened to a small, dismal world with a scattering of hot springs, each surrounded by its usual clump of manna plants; an arm of a river flowing out of and right back into the wall; another slumber ledge nearby — Della there, asleep. All these impressions he sifted from the echoes provided by the finger tapping of — the Forever Man?
“That’s right,” Leah confirmed.
He rose, feeling not as weak as he thought he would, and started across the world.
Leah cautioned, “We don’t disturb him until he stops tapping.”
He came back and stood in front of the woman, still rejecting the fact that he was actually here, in his preposterous dream setting. “How did you know I was out in the corridor?”
“I listened to you coming.” And he heard the unspoken explanation that listen, in this case, didn’t mean hearing sound.
She placed a solicitous hand on his shoulder. “And I also hear from your thoughts that this Della is a Zivver.”
“She thinks I’m one too.”
“Yes, I know. And I’m afraid. I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.”
“I—”
“Oh, I know what you have in mind. But I still don’t understand it. I realize you want to get to the Zivver World so you can hunt for Darkness.”
“For Light too. And using Della is the only way I can get in.”
“So I hear. But how do you know what her plans are? I don’t trust the girl, Jared.”
“It’s just because you can’t listen to what she’s thinking.”
“Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m so used to hearing feelings, intentions, that I’m lost when outer impressions are all I have to go by.”
“You won’t tell Della I’m not like her?”
“If that’s the way you want it. We’ll just let her go on believing you’re the only Zivver whose mind I can reach. But I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Little Listener came storming into the world and it was remarkable that his exuberant shouts failed to rouse Della and were ignored by the Forever Man, who merely continued his tapping.
“Jared! Where are you?”
“Over here!” Jared was suddenly swept up in the excitement of renewing an acquaintance he hadn’t even known was real.
“He can’t hear you — remember?” Leah reminded.
“But he’s running straight toward us!” Then he puzzled over the scent of — -crickets? — that was coming from Little Listener.