Released into an odorless, soundless void, he brought his hands up to his face. But before he could dig the clay from his ears, Mogan closed in and locked his neck in a rocklike grip. He was wrenched off his feet and hurled violently to the ground.
Disoriented because there was no sound or scent to guide him, he sprang up and delivered a blow that landed on nothing and succeeded only in throwing him off balance again.
Dimly, he heard the laughter that ifitered through the mud in his ears. But the sound was too vague to bear any impressions of Mogan’s whereabouts. Fists swinging, Jared stumbled forward, circling — until the Zivver leader clouted him on the back of his neck and flattened him once more.
When he tried to rise this time, a fist pounded into his face, almost taking his head off. And he would have been convinced the following blow did accomplish that purpose if unconsciousness had not deprived him of the ability to be sure of anything.
Eventually, he responded to the stinging splash of water against his face and raised himself on an elbow. The mud had fallen from one of his ears and he could hear the circle of men who stood zivving menacingly down on him.
From within the crowd came the voices of Mogan and Della:
“Of course I knew he wasn’t a Zivver,” the girl was maintaining.
Irately, Mogan reminded, “And yet you brought him here.”
“He brought me.” She laughed scornfully. “I couldn’t have made it by myself. My only chance was to let him think I believed he was a Zivver too.”
“Why didn’t you tell us the truth before this?”
“And give him a chance to turn on me before you could stop him? Anyway, I knew you’d find out for yourself sooner or later.”
Jared shook his head dully, remembering Leah’s warning against the girl and his own doubts from time to time. If he had been able to listen beyond the lobe of his ear, he might have heard that she was using him all along merely as an escort in her search for the Zivver World.
He tried to rise, but someone planted a foot on his shoulder and pressed him back against the ground.
“What’s he doing here?” Mogan asked the girl.
“I don’t know exactly. He’s hunting for something and he thinks he might find it here.”
“What?”
“Darkness.”
Mogan made his way over and hauled Jared to his feet. “What did you come here for?”
Jared said nothing.
“Were you trying to find this world so you could lead a raid on it?”
When that drew no response, the leader added, “Or are you helping the monsters locate us?”
Still Jared offered no reply.
“We’ll let you think it over awhile. You might realize a frank tongue could make things easier for you.”
Jared, however, sensed there would be no leniency. For, as long as he was alive, they would always fear he might escape and carry out whatever purpose they suspected he was concealing.
Trussed with fiber rope, he was taken halfway across the world and shoved into a dwelling unit not too far from the roaring cataract. It was a cramped shack whose wall openings were barred with stout manna stems.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Several times during his first period of confinement Jared entertained the idea of escape. Breaking out of the manna shack, he heard, would be relatively simple — if he could manage to free his hands. His wrists, however, were too securely bound.
But escape to — what? With the main entrance already blocked by the work party and the barrier it was erecting and with the savage currents of the underground river facing him in the other direction, freedom from the shack would be meaningless.
Under other circumstances, he might have eagerly listened forward to bolting captivity. But outside the Zivver domain were nothing but monster-filled corridors. Moreover, the other worlds must certainly have been laid desolate by the hateful creatures. And the only incentive that might have driven him on — the hope of finding a hidden, self-sufficient dwelling area for himself and Della — had been stripped away when the girl had turned against him.
During the second period he stood before the barred opening in the side of the shack and listened to the work crew as it finished blocking off the main entrance. Then, hopelessly, he leaned back against the wall and let the roar of the nearby cataract sweep his attention away from the other sounds.
In self-reproach he wondered what had made him think he might find Light in this miserable world. He had supposed that, since Zivvers could know what lay ahead without hearing, they must be exercising the same sort of power all men could presumably exercise in the presence of Light Almighty. And he had foolishly thought that the result of this activity would be a lessening of Darkness. But he had neglected one possibility: that lessness of Darkness might be something only the Zivvers themselves could recognize — something forever removed from his own perception as a result of sensory limitations.
Stymied in his speculations on the Light-Darkness-Zivver relationship, he went over and lay on the slumber surface. He tried to keep Della from entering his thoughts but couldn’t. Then, objectively, he conceded that what she had done — tricking him into bringing her here — merely reflected a treachery basic to the nature of all Zivvers. Now Leah, on the other hand, never would have…
Finding himself thinking of Kind Survivoress, he wondered what had happened to her. Perhaps she was even now trying to contact him from the depths of Radiation. Unless he were asleep, though, he would never know it.
For the rest of that period, except when they brought his food, he spent as much time in slumber as he could, hoping she would come again. But she didn’t.
Toward the end of his third period of confinement he detected a faint noise outside the shack — a scurrying that was close enough to be audible above the throbbing spatter of the cataract. Then he caught Della’s scent as she sprang forward and flattened herself against the outer wall.
“Jared!” she whispered anxiously.
“Go away.”
“But I want to help you!”
“You’ve helped enough already.”
“Use your head. Would I be free to come here now if I had acted any other way in front of Mogan?”
He listened to her fumbling with the solid curtain’s rope lock. “I suppose you waited for the first opportunity to let me loose,” he said disinterestedly.
“Of course. It didn’t come until just now — when the Zivvers started hearing noises out in the corridor.”
The last rope parted and Della entered as the rigid pathtion of manna stalks swung outward.
“Go on back to your Zivver friends,” he grumbled.
“Light, but you’re thickheaded!” She put a sawbone knife to work on his bonds. “Can you swim back through that river?”
“What difference does it make?”
“There’s the Levels to return to.”
His wrists fell free. “I doubt if there’s enough of the Levels left to go back to, even if they didn’t think I’m a Zivver.”
“One of the secluded worlds then.” And she repeated obstinately, “Can you swim the river?”
“I think so.”
“All right, then — let’s go.” She started out of the shack.
But he held back. “You mean you’d go too?”
“You didn’t think I’d stay here without you?”
“But this is your world! It’s where you belong! Anyway, I’m not even a Zivver.”
She let out an exasperated breath. “Listen — at first I was carried away with the fact that I had found someone like me. Why, I never even stopped to wonder whether it would make any difference if you weren’t a Zivver. Then there you were lying on the ground with Mogan standing over you. And I knew it wouldn’t matter if you couldn’t even hear or smell or taste. Now can we get on our way and start hunting for that hidden world?”