Dark Universe (25 page)

"_Jared, don't run off--please! Stay where you are!_"

It was Ethan's thoughts, relayed by Leah, that intruded on his conscious this time. That could only mean Ethan and Leah and even Thorndyke must be working together!

"_Yes, Jared," she admitted. "I helped Ethan reach you. He knows what's best. He says that if they don't get you back in the shack soon you're going to be sick_."

"_No, not Radiation sickness," Ethan quickly assured. "Sickness from being in the sunlight too long without being used to it. And other ailments too--ailments Thorndyke wants to protect you from_."

Then Ethan's voice came audibly, in an aside that obviously hadn't been intended for Jared's ears: "He's right up there--in that thicket."

Jared sprang from concealment and hesitated for a moment while the intense light from Thorndyke's caster stabbed into his eyes and prevented him from seeing anything else. Then he whirled to lunge away.

"You wanted to find light, didn't you?" Owen called out sharply. "And now that you've found it you're acting like a squeamish old woman."

Pausing uncertainly, Jared listened to the familiar voice that he hadn't heard in many periods--since before the monsters had crossed the Barrier. But it was what Owen had said, rather than the surprise of hearing his voice, that had had the arresting effect.

It was true. He _had_ spent his whole life searching for light. And all along he had allowed for the possibility that, when he found it, it might be completely unnatural, utterly incomprehensible, frightening.

He had found it. But he had only quailed and tried to hide from his own discovery.

Maybe this infinity--this outside world--might not be so terrifying if he would only give himself the chance to understand it.

"I _could_ shoot you an injection from here." It was Thorndyke's calm voice that reached out to him through the semiight. "But I'm counting on you to respond to reason.',

Yet, as the steady cone of light advanced, Jared backed involuntarily away from it.

His skin was irritating him persistently now and he felt a grimace spread over his face as his hands went up to rub the boiling surface of his arms and shoulders.

"Don't let it bother you too much," Owen laughed reassuringly.

"You're just having your first run-in with sunburn. We'll fix it up if you'll just come back."

Then, as though aware of what was in his mind, Thorndyke said,

"_Of course_ there are things you don't understand. Just as there are things about this outside world not even we know."

The light cone stabbed beyond the tenuous tree tops. "Fee instance," Thorndyke's voice followed the motion of the light caster, "we don't know what's out there. And, when we find out, we still won't know what's beyond it all. Infinity's still infinity--in your cave world as well as in this one. Eternity's eternity. Those are some of the barriers, some of the unknowables."

Somehow Jared didn't feel as helpless, as insignificant as he once had before these beings of the outside world. Thorndyke had called the sprawling region within that towering wall of rock and earth a "cave world."

But, in many respects, this greater creation was merely a greater cave.

One that also had a dome and an infinity beyond that dome and a curtain of darkness separating all the knowable from all the unknowable.

A figure stepped boldly into the cone of light--a tiny human figure.

But he wasn't alarmed. He knew it would grow in size as it approached--until it reached normal proportions.

Calmly now, he watched the figure advance, briefly aware that a light greater than that coming from Thorndyke's caster was falling upon it.

This could only be the light which was intensifying along the edge of the dome behind him.

Another breeze rippled and whispered through the Paradise trees and the personal scent of Della came along with it, clear and strong.

"I don't understand any of these things either," she said, advancing,

"but I'm willing to wait and ziv what happens."

And a satisfying realizatjon unfolded against the background of his current experience: Zivving and seeing were so much alike that, out here, the physical difference between him and Della was negligible. There was no longer any reason for him to feel inferior.

His attention remained steadily on her as she came closer.

Overhead, the bird sang its delightful song and the poignant beauty of the refrain strengthened the appreciation his eyes felt for the girl as she drew up before him.

The delicate, refined impressions he was receiving of Della struck him as being soft as the music of the melodious stones, vibrant like the mighty voice of a great waterfall muffled into modesty by distance.

She extended her hand and he clasped it.

"We'll stay out here and see what happens--together," Jared said, heading back toward Thorndyke and the others.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniel Francis Galouye was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1920.

After graduating from Louisiana State University, he became a test pilot during WW II. Later he was one of the first rocket-plane pilots. In postwar days he became a reporter for newspapers. In 1951 his first novelette,

"Rebirth," was published in _Imagination_. His novels include _Dark Universe_ and _Simulacron-3_, which was filmed as a television mini-

series _Counterfeit World_ by Ranier Werner Fassbinder. Galouye died in 1976.