Then he listened to the purely audible impressions that were coming from around the bend. There was only one monster approaching. “You go back and wait in the first side corridor.”
“No, Jared. You can’t—”
But he propelled her down the passage and eased into a niche in the wall. When he heard there wouldn’t be enough room to draw his spear, he laid it on the ground. Then he closed his eyes, blocking off the distracting impressions the monster was hurling.
The creature had reached the bend and Jared could hear it hugging the near wall. He pressed farther into the recess.
The thing’s awful, alien smell was overpowering in its nearness now. And clearly audible, too, were the numerous folds of flesh — if that’s what they were — fluttering about its body. If the breathing and heartbeat were of tie same intensity and frequency as the average person’s, then it must be drawing even with his hiding place just about — now.
Lunging into the corridor, he drove his fist into what he judged to be the creature’s midsection.
Air exploded from the monster’s lungs as it fell forward against him. Bracing himself against what he had expected to be a slimy touch, he pounded another fist into its face.
Anxiously, he snapped his eyes open as he heard the monster collapse on the ground. He had half-expected there would be no more strange, soundless noise spreading out from the thing now that it was unconscious. And there wasn’t.
Kneeling, he sent his hands out reluctantly to explore the creature. And he discovered there were no folds of flesh festooning its body. Rather, its arms, legs, torso were all covered by loosely fitting cloth of a texture even finer than the piece he had fçund at the entrance to the Lower Level. No wonder he had received the impression of sagging hide! Who ever heard of chestcloths or loincloths that didn’t fit skintight?
His hands groped upward and encountered a duplicate of the rougher cloth he had buried in the corridor outside his world. It was drawn taut over the monster’s face and held there by four ribbons tied behind its head.
He snatched the cloth away and ran his fingers over — a normal human face! It was much like a woman’s or child’s, smooth and completely hairless. But the cast of the features was masculine.
The monster was human!
Jared rose and his foot met a hard object. Before touching it, he bent and snapped his fingers several times. And he had no difficulty recognizing the thing. It was identical to the tubular devices left behind by the monsters in both the Upper and Lower Level.
The creature stirred and Jared dropped the object, diving for his spear.
Just then Della came sprinting down the corridor. “More monsters — coming from the other way!”
Listening around the bend, he could hear the sounds of their approach. And he was aware of the play of their mysterious mute noises along the right wall of the corridor.
He seized the girl’s hand and raced on up the passage, letting his spear thump the ground so it would produce sounding impulses.
From ahead he heard the composite of a smaller branch passage. He slowed and headed cautiously into it.
“Let’s go this way awhile,” he suggested. “I think it’ll be safer.”
“Is the Zivver scent strong in this passage too?”
“No. But we’ll pick it up again. These smaller tunnels usually curve back.”
“Oh, well,” she said, comforting herself, “at least we shouldn’t be bothered by monsters for a while.”
“Those aren’t monsters.” He surmised that, like hearing, zivving impressions weren’t refined enough to distinguish between loose cloth and flesh. “They are humans.”
He heard her startled expression. “But how can that be?”
“I suppose they are Different Ones — more different than all the others put together. Superior even to the Zivvers.”
He let the girl lead the way and anxiously gave his attention to the enigma of the monsters. Perhaps they were, after all, devils. It was commonplace to speak of the Twin Devils. But some of the lesser legends referred to, not two, but many demons who dwelled in Radiation. Even now he could call to mind several of them, all of whom were usually represented in personified form. There were CarbonFourteen; the two U’s — Two Thirty-Five and Two ThirtyEight; Plutonium of the Two Thirty-Nine Level, and that great, sulking, evil being of the Thermonuclear Depth — Hydrogen.
Of Radiation’s demons there were many, now that he thought of it. And ascribed to all of them were the capacities of insidious infiltration, ingenious disguise and complete and prolonged contamination. Could it be that the devils, emerging from mythology, had finally decided to exercise their powers?
The girl slowed to pick her way over loose, uneven ground. And the noise of rocks shifting beneath their feet made it even easier to hear the way.
He found himself recalling his recent encounter with the being in the corridor. The silent sound it had cast on the wall was most remarkable, once one managed to overcome the initial horror it brought. Dwelling on those sensations, he remembered how clearly he had seemed to hear — or was it feel, or, perhaps, even ziv? — the details of the wall. He had been completely aware of each tiny ridge and crevice, each protuberance.
Then he stiffened as he drew from memory something the Guardian of the Way had said not too long ago — something about Light in Paradise touching everything and bringing to man total knowledge of all things about him. But, certainly, that material the monsters produced and hurled against the wall couldn’t be the Almighty! And that corridor couldn’t have been Paradise!
No. It was impossible. That meager stuff thrown so casually about the passageway by the manlike creature hadn’t been Light. Of that he was finally and unalterably positive.
As they continued on along the rugged tunnel, his reflections turned to another matter of concern. For the moment it seemed he could almost put his finger on something that there was less of in this very passage! But it was too vague a concept to encourage further speculation. It must have been only wishful thinking, he decided, that was suggesting he might accidentally stumble upon Light’s opposite, Darkness, in this remote, deserted corridor.
Della drew up before an opening in the wall and pulled him over beside her. “Just ziv this world!” she exclaimed buoyantly.
The wind rushing into the hole was cool against his back as he stood there listening to the delightful music of a gurgling stream and using the echoes of that sound to study other features of the medium-sized world.
“What a wonderful place!” she went on excitedly. “I can ziv five or six hot springs and at least a couple of hundred manna plants. And the banks of the river — they’re covered with salamanders!”
As she spoke her rebounding words set up an audible composite of their surroundings. And Jared appreciatively took in several natural recesses in the left wall, a high-domed ceiling that insured good circulation, and smooth, level ground all around them.
She locked her arm in his and they walked farther into the world. The wind sweeping in from the corridor gave the air a refreshing coolness that was superior to the Lower Level’s.
“I wonder if this was the world my mother was trying to reach,” the girl said distantly.
“She couldn’t have found a better place. I’d say it would support a large family and all its descendants for several generations.”
They sat on a steep bank overhearing the river and Jared listened to the swishing of large fish beneath the surface while Della parceled out food from her case.
After a while he probed audibly beneath her silence and caught the suggestion of yet another area of uncertainty.