Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 3, July 2013 (36 page)

Somewhat curious, Jared asked, “About what?”

“I don’t put any stock in the legends either. I always thought the Great Light Almighty was unnecessary glorification for something commonplace.”

“You did?”

“I’ve even decided what Light
is
.”

Jared halted the march. “What is it?”

“Warmth.”

“How do you figure that?”

“There’s warmth all around us, isn’t there? Greater warmth we call ‘heat’; lesser warmth, ‘cold.’ The warmer a thing is, the more impressions it sends to a Zivver’s eyes.”

Jared nodded pensively. “And it lets you know about things without feeling, hearing, or smelling them.”

Mogan shrugged. “Which is what the legends say Light does.”

There was something inconsistent here, but Jared couldn’t quite decide what. Perhaps it was just his reluctance to admit Light might be something as prosaic as heat. He resumed the march and stepped more briskly as he heard a larger corridor ahead.

At the same time Mogan said, “I ziv another passage up there, a big one.”

Jared trotted forward, sounding his clickstones more rapidly to accommodate the greater speed. But he jolted to a stop as he broke into the larger tunnel.

“What’s wrong?” Mogan paused beside him.

“This place reeks with the scent of monsters!” Jared flared his nostrils, sucking in samples of air. “That’s not all. There’s the smell of Upper and Lower Level people too—almost as strong as the other odor.”

From his clickstone echoes he received an impression of the Zivver leader running a hand over his brow.

“This corridor’s Radiation on the eyes!” Mogan exclaimed. “Too much warmth. It’s hard to ziv one thing from another.”

Jared, too, had felt the heat. But he was concerned with a different consideration. There was something familiar about this stretch of passage, about its formations of tumbled rocks. Then it struck him. Of course—they were just outside the Original World! He clicked his stones again and detected the slab behind which he and Owen had hidden from his first encounter with a monster. Around the bend to his right would be the Original World entrance and, beyond that, the Barrier and the Levels.

“Which way should we go?” Mogan asked.

“To the left,” Jared suggested impulsively, shoving off.

After a few paces, he said, “So you think heat is Light.”

“I do.”

“And Darkness?”

“Simple. Darkness is coolness.”

Now Jared had his finger on the inconsistency. “You’re wrong. Only Zivvers can sense heat and cold from a distance. Tell me one legend that holds Light will be the exclusive property of Zivvers. All the beliefs say
everybody
will be Reunited with Light.”

“I’ve got that figured out too. It’s just that the Zivvers are the first step toward general Reunion.”

Jared was going to protest that assumption also. But he had just negotiated a bend in the corridor and now he drew back reflexively. Riding the crest of his clickstone echoes were the details of another curve ahead. And he was profoundly aware of a tremendous flow of silent sound pouring from around that bend. It was as though a thousand human-inhuman creatures were marching in his direction, all hurling screaming silence before them.

“I can’t ziv a thing!” Mogan complained desperately.

Jared listened but heard no audible sounds of monsters around the bend. Cautiously, he pressed forward, determined this time to keep his eyes open. His face contorted in protest to volition and muscles grew taut as they tried unsuccessfully to close the lids they controlled. Squinting and trembling, he found himself going ahead and forgetting to use his stones.

Mogan came along, trailing by a considerable distance, though, and emitting an occasional distressed oath.

Jared reached the bend and plunged swiftly around it, afraid that if he hesitated he might turn and flee. Now the dreadful stuff was flowing into his eyes with the force of a hundred hot springs and he could no longer keep them open. Tears streaming down his cheeks, he stumbled forward, relying once more on his pebbles.

His steps, however, were mired in terror. For, from ahead came
no
echoes of his
clicks—none at all!
But that was impossible! Never had anyone heard a noise that didn’t reflect from
all
directions. Yet, here was a great, incredible gap in a sound pattern!

His fear finally became an absolute barrier and he could go no farther. Standing as motionless as though he had been planted there like a manna tree, he shouted.

There were
no
reflections of his voice from ahead, from above, from either side! From behind, the returning sound etched the presence of a great wall of rock that towered many times the height of even the Zivver World dome. And in this wall he detected the muffled hollowness of the corridor he had just left.

The decision struck him with the force of a falling boulder:
He was in infinity!
And it was not an endless stretch of rock that surrounded him, but an unbounded expanse of
—air!

Terrified, he backed toward the passage. For all beliefs had held that there were only two infinities—Paradise and Radiation.

Another step and he collided with Mogan.

The Zivver leader exclaimed, “I can’t even keep my eyes open! Where are we?”

“I—” Jared choked on his words. “I think we’re in Radiation.”

“Light! I smell it!”

“The smell of the monsters. But it’s not
their
scent at all—just the odor of this place.”

Dismayed, Jared retreated again toward the passageway. Then he became more aware of the intense heat and readily understood why the other’s zivving ability had been deafened. Mogan was used to the normal range of warmth in the worlds and corridors. Here, the heat of all the boiling springs in existence was pouring down from above.

And, abruptly, Jared knew he could not leave this infinity without definitely identifying it. Already he suspected which one it was. The heat was a more than sufficient clue. But he had to make certain. Bracing himself against the expected pain, he opened his eyes and let the tears out.

The uncanny impressions that assailed him were fuzzy this time and he wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand.

Then the composites came—sensations that he suspected were something like ziv impressions. He was uncannily aware—through the medium of his eyes themselves—that the ground sloped away in front of him toward a patch of tiny, slender things that swayed this way and that in the distance. Vaguely, he was reminded of manna trees. Only, their tops were lacy and delicate. And he remembered the Paradise plant legend.

But
this
was an infinity of
heat,
not at all suggestive of heavenly things.

Between the trees he zivved the details of small, geometrical forms, arranged in rows like the shacks in the Original World. Another supposed feature of Paradise.

But
monsters
dwelled here.

Suddenly he directed his attention to one paramount fact:

He was receiving detailed impressions of an infinite number of things at one time, without having to hear or smell them!

Which was a capability possible only in the presence of the Great Light Almighty.

This, then, was it.

This was the end of his search.

He had found Light. And Light
was,
after all, the stuff the monsters hurled ahead of themselves in the passageways.

But Light was not in Paradise.

It was in the infinity of Radiation with the Nuclear monsters.

All the legends, all the tenets were bitterly misleading.

For man there was
no
Paradise.

And, with the Atomic Demons roaming the passageways at will, humanity had reached the end of its material existence.

He threw his head back in desperation and full against his face crashed the deadliest silent sound imaginable.

It was an impression so fierce that it seemed to boil his eyes right out of their sockets.

Screaming at him in all its fury was a great, round vicious thing that dominated Radiation with incredible force and heat and malignant majesty.

Hydrogen Himself!

Jared spun around and bolted for the passage, hardly aware that he had, at the same time, heard a noise on the incline before him.

Mogan shouted. But the anguished outcry was interrupted by a
zip-hiss.

Jared made it back into the corridor, racing frantically after the echoes of his clickstones.

To be continued in Issue Four

A book on virtual reality,
before virtual reality became real