Dark Universe

“And what did it sound like?”

“I don’t know. Something about the size of a man, I suppose.”

It was disconcerting the way the witness kept moving his head from side to side. He was a fuzzy-face and the rippling motion of the hair streaming down in front reminded Jared of the fluttering flesh of the Original World monster.

“Did you hear its face?” Averyman asked.

“No. I was too far away.”

“What about an — unca

“I don’t recall anything like a silent sound, like some of the others heard.”

Metcalf was a fuzzy-face. So was Averyman, as were two others who had testified. And not one of those four had gotten psychic impressions of a roaring silence, Jared remembered. Even in the Upper Level none of the fuzzy-faces had heard the incredible, inaudible noise made by the monsters.

Jared cleared his throat, and swallowed painfully, coughed several times and gripped his neck. He’d never felt like this before.

Averyman dismissed the witness and called another.

By now, the two periods of hearings had become tedious. After all, there were really only two categories of witnesses — those who had heard the supernatural sound and those who hadn’t.

More important, as far as Jared was concerned, was the personal matter of his growing uncertainty. He wasn’t so sure now that the monsters were a punishment for his defiance of the Barrier. That the horrible menace had not ended with his sincere atonement could mean only one of two things: Light would accept no degree of repentance, or his visit to the Original World had not, after all, aggravated the monsters.

Then he drew attentively erect as a third possibility suggested itself: Suppose he was right about Light and Darkness being physical things. Suppose, in his search for the two, he had almost uncovered a significant truth. And suppose the monsters, assuming that they were opposed to his success, were aware of how close he had come. Wouldn’t they do everything possible to discourage him?”

A violent sneeze snapped his head back and elicited a reproving silence from Averyman, who had been in the middle of a question.

The new witness was a young boy whose excited account left no doubt that he had heard the impossible sounds.

“And how would you describe these — sensations?” Elder Averyman completed the question.

“It was like a lot of crazy shouts that kept bouncing against my face. And when I put my hands over my ears I kept on hearing them.”

The child’s head had been turned toward Averyman and Jared couldn’t hear the details of his face. But suddenly it seemed vitally important that he should know the boy’s characteristic expression. So he went around the slab, seized his shoulders and held him with his features fully exposed to the portable caster.

It was as he had expected — the child’s eyes were wide open.

“You have something you’d like to say?” Averyman asked, not quite concealing his resentment over the interruption.

“No — nothing.” Jared returned to his place.

The boy was an open-eyed type. Jared, himself, was openeyed. Three other witnesses had fallen into the same category. And all of them had felt the strange sensations!

Was it as he had guessed once before — that the silent sound might in some way be co

But what significance could be drawn from all this? If the eyes were intended only for feeling Light, then why was it they could also sense the evil of the monsters? He was both excited and confused by the flood of inspirational questions. And he was a

Since the eyes seemed to be the common element between Divinity and Devil, he asked himself queasily, could Light be in some sort of evil conspiracy with the monsters?

There! He had entertained the sacrilegious thought! And he braced himself for the wrath of the Almighty.

But, instead, there came only a direct question from Elder Averyman: “Well, Jared — rather, Your Survivorship — you’ve heard these various descriptions. How do they compare with your impressions of that monster in the Original World?”

He decided to play it a bit shrewder. “I’m not so sure I heard a monster. You know how your imagination can run away with you.” There was no sense in calling attention to his experience with the creature. Nor did he hear where he would gain anything by telling them about the beings that had invaded the Upper Level.

“Eh? What?” Elder Haverty inquired. “You mean you didn’t hear a monster in the Original World? You did go there, didn’t you?”

Jared tried to clear his throat, but the painful roughness persisted. “Yes, I went there.”

“And a lot has happened since then,” Survivor Maxwell reminded. “We’ve lost some hot springs. A monster has carried off the Prime Survivor. Do you suppose you’re to blame for those misfortunes?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Why incriminate himself?

“Some think you might be,” Averyman said stiffly.

Jared sprang up. “If this is an attempt to remove me from—”

“Sit down, son,” Maxwell urged. “Elder Averyman said we had to make you Prime Survivor. But there’s nothing to keep us from easing you out if we think that’s best.”

“The question,” Haverty repeated, “is whether you’re the cause of all that’s happened to this world.”

“Of course I’m not! Those first three hot springs went dry long before I crossed the Barrier!”

There was a speculative silence around the slab. But Jared was more surprised than any of them by the truth he had spontaneously spoken. It had opened his ears to a whole flood of realization.

“Don’t you understand?” He leaned tensely over the slab, letting sound from the portable caster play over his face so the others could hear his sincerity. “What’s happening now couldn’t be because I went across the Barrier! The Upper Level’s having the same troubles! They lost some boiling pits and one of their Survivors turned up missing before I even went to the Original World!”

“We’d be more likely to believe that,” Averyman pointed out cynically, “if you’d told us about it earlier.”

“I didn’t realize I had crossed the Barrier after those things had happened. And I figured that if I told you about them you’d only be more certain I was to blame.”

“Eh?” Haverty put in. “How do we know you’re telling the truth about the Upper Level having trouble too?”

“Get the Official Escort to ask about it when they take me back up there.”

Jared felt like a Survivor who had been freed from the depths of Radiation. He had cast off shackles of superstition that would have thrown a curtain of fear over the rest of his life.

His relief was almost boundless — knowing that his trip to the Original World to hunt for Darkness and Light had not provoked the vengeance of an aggrieved Almighty Power. It meant there was no dire necessity of relinquishing that search. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to devote as much effort to the quest as he had pla

A depression that he had known for many periods melted away before his exuberance. He would have felt like shouting had it not been for the fact that his throat was bothering him again.

He sneezed and his head started throbbing.

A few moments later Elder Maxwell sneezed too, then sniffled.

Abruptly there was a disturbance in the world outside and Jared tensed as he caught a whiff of the monster’s stench.

Someone swept into the grotto and quickly placated, “Don’t be alarmed by the smell.” The voice was Romel’s. “It’s coming from something in my hand — something the monster dropped when it carried off the Prime Survivor.”