The Myst Reader

by Rand; Robyn Miller; David Wingrove

  “Then why did you give me the phrases to study? Why did you remove the Mist Wall if you were thinking simply of abandoning this Age?”

  “You presume to know my reasons, Atrus?”

  “No, it’s just that I feel your original instinct was right. If we can understand what is going wrong here, we can prevent such things from happening elsewhere.”

  He heard his father’s sharply indrawn breath, but instead of the expected explosion of anger, Gehn was silent.

  Atrus sat forward. He could barely see his father in the darkness. The white moon was still up, but its light barely penetrated the thick canvas. The only real illumination in the tent was the gentle glow of Gehn’s pipe, which cast its faint blue light over his chin and mouth and nose.

  “Father?”

  Gehn turned his head slightly, but still there was no answer.

  Atrus fell silent, waiting. After a moment, his father turned and came across again.

  “What you say has some merit, Atrus, and, as you say, accords with my original intentions. And even should this Age deteriorate further, it might prove useful to investigate the manner of that deterioration. Likewise, the building of a special hut here—for experimental use—is a good one, provided, that is, no books or journals are left here which might fall into the wrong hands. That said, I still cannot permit you to stay here alone, Atrus. It is too dangerous. Besides, we must keep up with your lessons, and as I have other Ages to attend to, I cannot be forever coming here. No. You shall remain on K’veer, but we shall continue to visit this Age from time to time, and while we are here you will continue with your detailed observations.”

  It was far less than Atrus had hoped for, yet it was something. He knew now that his guess had been right. Gehn had been willing to abandon this age and leave it to its fate. Now, at least, he had the chance to do some good here. And if he could discover what was going wrong, then perhaps his father would begin to trust him and allow him greater liberty.

  But that was for the future. As he lay down, the scent of Gehn’s pipe lulling him in the darkness, he recalled the look of astonishment and awe on the islanders’ faces as they stared out at the endless ocean. And as he drifted into sleep one final insight came to him from the darkness.

  He made the ocean warm…

  14

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Gehn stood several paces off, watching as Atrus dug the spade deep into the grassy surface of the meadow, using his booted heel, then pushed down on the handle, turning back the turf, exposing the dark richness of the earth beneath.

  Throwing the spade aside, Atrus knelt beside the hole. Taking a dark blue cloth from inside his pocket, he lay it beside him, then began to lay out the instruments he needed—spatulas and droppers, scoops and pipettes, and four small capped jars containing variously colored chemicals—removing them one by one from the broad leather belt he wore about his waist.

  Finally, he took a slender black case from the inside pocket of his tunic and, opening it, took out four long glass tubes and lay them next to the shining silver instruments. That accomplished, he looked up at Gehn, his glasses glinting in the afternoon sun.

  “I’m ready, father.”

  Gehn lifted his chin slightly, his own glasses opaqued against the brightness. “Then let us see what has resulted, eh?”

  Atrus set to work, using one of the scoops to place a small amount of earth into each of the tubes. That done, he picked up the first of the jars, uncapped it, then set it down again.

  Using one of the droppers, he drew up a measure of the clear amber liquid and, taking the first of the tubes, added it to the earth, swilling the mixture around at the bottom of the tube.

  Lifting it up into the light, he studied it a while, then, nodding to himself, threw the dropper aside and, taking a cork, sealed the tube.

  He went through the motions again, this time taking a heaped spatula of light blue powder to add to the earth in the second tube, mixing the two together thoroughly.

  Twice more he carried out the procedure, until all four tubes lay stoppered on the cloth. Pleased with himself, Atrus looked to Gehn once more.

  “I think it’s worked.”

  “You think?”

  Atrus looked down. “I’m pretty sure it has. The reactions certainly correlate with what I expected, but I’d like to make absolutely sure. I’d like to test them again, back at the hut.”

  Gehn nodded, then turned away, drawing his cloak about him as he went. “I shall see you there then, in a while.”

  Atrus watched his father a moment, then set about packing away his equipment. He had expected more from Gehn, a smile, perhaps, or some small indication, by word or gesture, that he was pleased with what he had achieved, but as ever there was nothing.

  Glancing up, he noticed that the young girl, Salar, was watching from the far side of the meadow, and smiled to himself. He was rather fond of her, in a big brotherly kind of way, but she was not the best of company. It was not as if he could really talk to her; at least not the way he had talked to Anna.

  He pushed the thought away, determined not to be morose. Not today, anyway. For today, if his further tests did prove him right, he had achieved a great thing.

  As he fastened the sample case, then slipped the instruments back into his belt, he allowed himself a smile.

  By rights Gehn should have been inordinately proud of him for finding such an elegant solution; but Gehn was Gehn, his distance part of his intelligence. It had been a full week before Gehn had even read the brief phrase he had written for the Age Thirty-seven book. With a shrug, Atrus stood, looking about him a moment, checking he had not left anything. Then, with a brief wave and a smile to Salar, he started back.

  They had built a new hut close to the old woman’s, extending it, as he’d suggested, to include a separate room where they could carry out experiments. Gehn was waiting for him there, his own equipment already set up.

  “Here,” he said, gesturing to Atrus. “Give me the samples. I shall carry out my own tests.”

  “Father…” He bowed, hiding his disappointment, then handed over the slender case.

  Ut at least Gehn was taking him seriously. When he had first proposed this, Gehn had ridiculed the idea:

  “Why, I have been searching for close to twenty years for such a phrase! And you say you have found one that will solve the problem?”

  It was not strictly true. He had not found it in a book, he had worked it out for himself from first principles, after studying the matter for nearly eight months. But Gehn had not wanted to hear his explanation. Gehn was interested only in whether it worked or not.

  And now it was his turn to watch as Gehn took a little of each sample and, placing each on a separate slide, began to examine the first of them under the big, gold-cased instrument he had brought with him from D’ni.

  For a tense few minutes Gehn barely moved, only the faintest movement of his fingers on the calibrated knobs, then he removed his eye from the long tube and looked across at Atrus.

  “The bacteria are different.”

  “Not all of them.”

  Gehn stared at him silently, as if expecting him to say something more; when he didn’t, he looked away, taking the second of the slides and fitting it into the viewing slot.

  Atrus watched him, smiling now. Adding to the mix of different bacteria had been the final touch—the thing that had finally made it work. Years ago, in the cleft, he had tried a much simpler, purely chemical solution to the same kind of problem, and had failed. Here he had tried to look at the whole picture—chemical and bacteriological—and it had worked.

  It wasn’t the solution to everything that was wrong—and he had been careful, when he’d first presented it to his father, not to offer any form of criticism of the Age—but it was a start. And maybe, if his father trusted him more after this, he could make further changes.

  He longed to see the Age Thirty-seven book to confirm his hypotheses and discuss it with his father, but he knew ho
w sensitive Gehn was.

  He let out a long breath, remembering the long hours he had spent researching the subject. Until he had begun to study the composition of soil, he had not understood the full complexity of it. But now he saw it clearly. One had to build worlds from the bottom up, beginning with what was below the soil.

  Gehn grunted, then looked across again, giving a terse nod.

  “This is good. You must show me the book where you found this. It may have other things we can use.”

  Atrus looked down. Maybe Gehn would forget. Maybe he’d be distracted by something else. Or, if the worst came to the worst and he insisted, the “book” could have an accident somehow.

  “All right,” Gehn said, taking the slide from the viewer, then beginning to pack away the microscope, “let us clear up and get back to D’ni. I think our work is done here for a time.”

  “Done?”

  Gehn nodded, then clicked the lid shut on the box that held the microscope. “I think we should leave this Age alone for a week or two and see how things develop. If there are any side effects, they should show up in that time.”

  “Side effects?”

  But Gehn was impatient to return. “Come, Atrus. Pack your things. I want to be back within the hour.”

  §

  Two days had passed now since their return from the Thirty-seventh Age, and in all that time Atrus had not seen hide nor hair of his father.

  He knew where Gehn was, of course, for the very moment they had linked back, Gehn had rushed up the stairs to his study and locked himself in.

  Atrus had thought his father might reappear at mealtimes, but he had not come down even then.

  And now the darkness was falling on another day, and still he had no idea of what his father was up to.

  Walking over to the desk in the corner of his room, Atrus picked up his journal and, stepping out onto the balcony, opened it at one of the earliest entries; one written when he was barely nine years old:

  Anna says that the cleft is an “environment” and that an “environment” is composed of many different elements, all of which have an effect upon each other. She says that though some of those things—the sun, for instance—are not actually in the cleft itself, they must still be taken into account when we look at how the cleft works. Too much sun and plants die, too little and they never grow. I asked her—how do we manage to live here at all?

  He sat upon the balustrade, looking out toward the great rock and the city beyond, and sighed. Looking back across the years, it was indeed a wonder that they had survived. How much of a wonder, he had not fully realized until now.

  I have come a long way, he thought, but I have still not half the understanding that she had.

  Atrus turned, meaning to go back inside and write a line or two, and saw that Rijus was standing in the middle of the room, looking across at him.

  He had long ago got used to the man’s silence and to his sudden appearances in rooms, yet he found himself still curious about what the man knew, what secrets he had. Yes, and what it was like to inhabit a world of words one could not penetrate.

  Walking through, he set his journal down, then looked across at the man.

  “You have a message for me, Rijus?”

  Rijus bowed his head, then held out the note.

  At last, he thought, knowing it was a summons. What has the man been up to?

  He unfolded it and cast his eyes quickly over the elaborate handwriting. It was terse and to the point.

  “My study. Now.”

  He nodded to Rijus, dismissing him, then went across and slipped the journal into the case he kept it in, locking the clasp with the key. Then, satisfied that all was secure, he hurried out.

  Gehn was waiting in his study, ensconced behind his desk. There was a pile of copy books at his elbow, another five spread out along the front of his desk.

  With a jolt of surprise, Atrus recognized them. They were his!

  “Ah, Atrus,” Gehn said, glancing up, then continuing to write in the open book in front of him, “come and sit down across from me.”

  Atrus took the seat, facing his father, watching as Gehn finished the sentence he was writing, then put the pen back into the ink pot.

  Gehn looked up at him, then nodded toward the books. “As you see, I have been reading your practice books, and I have selected five which, I fee, have some small merit.”

  He waited, tensed now.

  “I want you to choose one.”

  “Father?”

  Gehn passed his hand over the five books. “At present these are but words on paper. But now I am giving you the chance to make one of these books real.”

  Atrus blinked.

  “Yes. I am giving you a blank book, a Kortee-nea. You will choose one of these five books and write it out properly into the Kortee-nea.”

  Here it was, the moment he had dreamed of, and he was unprepared for it.

  “Well?” Gehn said, frowning at him. “Which one is it to be?”

  Atrus leaned forward, looking to see which books his father had selected, surprised by the choice of two of them. But his main book was there. He reached out and tapped it. “This one.”

  Gehn nodded. “A good choice.” Turning in his seat, he reached down, then lifted a big, leather-bound book from the pile beside him, then held it out to Atrus.

  Atrus took it, his mouth suddenly dry, his heart pounding. A book! His father had given him a book!

  “You must be very careful, Atrus. Any mistakes you make in copying will be set into the Age. You must check every word, every phrase after you have copied it. Yes, and recheck it. And if you do make a mistake, then be sure to bring the book to me.”

  He bowed his head. “Father.”

  “Good. Now take your copybook and go. And Atrus?”

  “Yes, father?”

  “You might add that phrase you recently discovered. The phrase about the soil. It will do your Age no harm, after all.”

  §

  Gehn lay the book flat on the desk before Atrus, then opened it to reveal the empty descriptive box on the right-hand page. Until he linked, it would be blank—or almost so, for there was a chaotic swirl of particles, like a snowstorm—yet as soon as he emerged into the new Age, the image would appear, as if by magic, on the page.

  “Shall I go first?” Gehn asked, looking to him, “or would you like that honor?”

  Though he had linked many times now—so often that it had almost become a thing of routine—this once he was afraid: afraid because he had made this age.

  “Well?” Gehn insisted when he did not answer.

  “I’ll go,” he said, then, taking a long, calming breath, he placed his right hand on the empty page.

  There was a crackle of static, as though a faint electrical current had passed through his hand. It seemed drawn into the very fabric of the page, then, with a sudden, sickening lurch, Atrus felt himself sucked into the rapidly expanding whiteness of the page.

  In that instant he felt the familiar “shifting” sensation of the link. For that brief moment it felt as though he were melting. And then, with a shocking suddenness that never diminished, the blackness seeped through until there was nothing but the blackness.

  And as he finally surrendered to that blackness, so he found himself back in his body, standing on the cold damp earth inside a low-ceilinged cavern.

  Relieved, Atrus shook himself, then stepped aside, conscious that his father was linking after him.

  He waited, expecting Gehn to appear at any moment, for the air to take on that strangely fluid quality it had when someone was linking through—a quality that, looking at it, was like a flaw, an occlusion, in the eye itself.

  Strange. Atrus frowned and made to step toward the space he’d just left, even as the air changed and, like a bubble squeezed out of the nothingness, his father appeared.

  Gehn looked about him, eyeing the walls critically. “Good,” he said quietly, taking in a deep breath. “The air smells very fresh.�
�

  Atrus watched his father, conscious that he was being judged, that this was a test of sorts.

  “You have the Linking Book on you, I assume?”

  Slowly, Atrus’s mouth fell open. The Linking Book! In his excitement he had completely forgotten about the Linking Book! He was so used to traveling in Ages where the Linking Books were already in place, that he had overlooked it!

  He groaned, the blood draining from his face.

  Gehn held out a Linking Book before his eyes. “You forgot. But fortunately I did not.”

  Atrus closed his eyes, the thought that he might have trapped them there forever making him tremble.

  “I’m sorry…” he began, but Gehn cut him short with a terse little gesture of his hand. His father’s eyes were livid with rage.

  “Do not tell me how sorry you are, Atrus. Sorry is utterly inadequate. Sorry is for fools and idiots who cannot think straight. I considered you better than that, but your gross carelessness in this instance is a sign of your immaturity. There was but one single, crucial thing you had to remember, and you forgot!” Gehn huffed out a great sigh of exasperation, then smacked the book against the top of Atrus’s head, his voice rising with controlled anger. “What if I had not thought to bring your Linking Book? What then? Where would we be?”

  Herei, Atrus thought. Forever here.

  Gehn thrust the book into his hands, then turned away, making for the entrance.

  Atrus stood uncertainly, then followed his father across.

  “Well,” Gehn said, slowing down to let Atrus catch up, but refusing to look at him. “I suppose you had better show me what you have written.”

  He led his father out, through a narrow stone passage that was very different from how he’d imagined it—how he thought he’d written it—and into a cavelike depression that was open to the sky, bright sunlight pouring down into it from the clear blue heavens. There was a pool to one side, surrounded by lush vegetation and a few light-colored rocks, while on the far side a flight of tiered rocks climbed the rock face.