CHAPTER ELEVEN
Throughout most of the travel period Della tagged silently along. That she was troubled with a restive hesitancy was evident in the worrisome expression Jared could hear on her face. Was she anxious over something he had said or done? Light knew he had already given plenty of cause for misgiving.
Since leaving Leah’s world, though, he had devised an artful echo-producing system which he felt certain had escaped Della’s suspicion. It consisted principally of filling the corridors with one whistled tune after another.
Eventually, the passageway pinched in on them and there was a stretch through which they had to crawl. On the other side, he rose and thudded his spear against the ground.
“Now we can breathe easier.”
“Why?” she drew up beside him.
“Our rear’s protected against soubats. They can’t get through a tunnel that small.”
She was silent momentarily. “Jared—”
Here came the question he knew she had been putting off. But he decided to forestall it. “There’s a big passage up ahead.”
“Yes, I ziv it. Jared, I—”
“And the air is heavy with the scent of Zivvers.” He skirted a narrow chasm whose outline was carried on his reflected words.
“It is?” She pushed ahead eagerly. “Maybe we’re close to their world!”
They reached the intersection and he stood there trying to determine whether they should go to the right or left. Then he tensed, instinctively gripping his spears. Mingled with the Zivver scent was a hidden, evil smell that fouled the air — an unmistakable fetor.
“Della,” he whispered, “monsters have just been this way.”
But she didn’t hear him. Enthused, she had already strode off along the right-hand branch of the corridor. Even now he could hear her rounding the bend a short way off.
Abruptly there was the grating sound of a rock slide, punctuated by a scream.
With the corridor’s composite frozen in his memory by the shrill reflections, he raced toward the great, gaping hole that had swallowed the girl’s terrified outcry.
Reaching the area of loose rock, he snapped his fingers to gain an impression of the pit’s mouth. There was a solidly embedded boulder rearing up out of the rubble right next to the rim. He laid his spears down and one of them slid away, plunging over the edge and striking the wall repeatedly as it plummeted into the depth. The clatter persisted until the sound lost itself in remote silence.
Casting the other lance back onto solid ground, he frantically shouted, “Della!”
She answered in a terrified whisper, “I’m down here — on a ledge.”
He thanked Light that her voice came from nearby and that there might be a chance of saving her.
Securing a grip on the boulder, he swung himself out over the chasm and snapped his fingers once more. Reflections of the sound told him she was huddled on a shelf close to the surface.
His extended hand touched hers and he gripped her wrist, lifting her out of the hold and shoving her past the area of loose rock onto firm ground.
They backed away from the pit and a final rock rolled off the incline, chattering down into the abyss. Echoes of the sharp sounds fetched the impression of the girl’s calm melting away.
He let her cry for a while, then took hold of her arms and drew her erect. The sound of his breathing reflected against her face and he listened to the manner in which exposed eyes dominated her other features. He could almost feel their sharp, intense fixedness and, momentarily, he thought he might be on the verge of guessing the nature of zivving.
“It was just like what happened to my mother and father!” She nodded back toward the abyss. “It’s like an omen — as if something were telling us we can take up where they left off!”
Her hands pressed down on his shoulders and, remembering the firm softness of her body against his in that other corridor, he drew her close and kissed her. The girl’s response was eager at first, but quickly faded off into a perceptible coolness.
He retrieved his spear. “All right, Della. What is it?”
She wasted no time framing the question she had held back:
“What’s all this about hunting for — Light? I heard you shouting at the Forever Man, asking him about Darkness too. And it scared the wits out of him.”
“It’s simple.” He shrugged. “Like you heard me say, I’m hunting for Darkness and Light.”
He sensed her perplexed frown as they started down the corridor. A manna shell thumped the side of her carrying case with each step and the sounds were sufficient to gather impressions of the passageway.
“It’s not something theological,” he assured. “I just have an idea Darkness and Light aren’t what we think they are.”
He could tell that her puzzlement had given way to mild doubt — a refusal to believe the explanation was that simple.
“But that doesn’t make sense,” she protested. “Everybody knows who Light is, what Darkness is.”
“Then let’s let it go at that and just say I have a different idea.”
She fell silent a moment. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t let it bother you.”
“But the Forever Man — Darkness meant something different to him. He wasn’t frightened over ‘evil’ being all around him. He was scared of something else, wasn’t he?”
“I suppose so.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Again she said nothing for a long while, until they had passed several branch corridors. “Jared, does all this have anything to do with going to the Zivver World?”
To a certain extent, he felt, he could be outspoken without laying his zivvership open to further suspicion. “In a way, yes. Just like zivving concerns the eyes, I believe Darkness and Light are in some way connected with the eyes too. And—”
“And you think you can find out more about them in the Zivver World?”
“That’s right.” He led her along a sweeping curve.
“Is that the only reason you’re going there?”
“No. Like you, I’m also a Zivver; that’s where I belong.”
He heard the girl’s sudden relief — the relaxation of her tenseness, the quietening of her heartbeat. His candor had evidently allayed her misgiving and now she was ready to shrug off his quest as a whim that posed no particular threat to her interests.
She eased her hand into his and they continued on around the bend. But he pulled up sharply as be caught the scent of monsters ahead. At the same time he shrank away from the left wall. For, even as he listened to its featureless surface, an indiscernible patch of silent echoes had begun playing against the moist stone.
This time he was almost prepared for the uncanny sensation. Experimentally, he closed his eyes and was instantly no longer aware of the dancing sound. He opened them again and the noiseless reflections returned immediately — like the soft touch of a shouted whisper spreading itself thin against a smooth rock surface.
“The monsters are coming!” Della warned. “I ziv their impressions — against that wall!”
He half-faced her. “You ziv them?”
“It’s almost like zivving. Jared, let’s get away from here!”
He only stood there concentrating on the weird, soundless noise that flowed back and forth against the wall, never reaching his ears but making his eyes feel as though someone had thrown boiling water into them. She had said she zivved the impressions. Did that mean zivving was something like what was happening to him now?