Stepping forward, Koena stood before the two men, passing his hands over the great pendant in blessing in the way Gehn had shown him. Then, moving back, he looked to Atrus, who had turned to face him.
“And now,” Gehn said, his voice echoing across the black and empty lake, “behold the Great Lord Atrus!”
And as Koena lifted the pendant and placed it around Atrus’s neck, careful not to knock the halo, so Gehn pointed up toward the sky.
There was a great clash of thunder and a flash. For the briefest moment Atrus saw the surprise in his father’s face and knew he moment was sheer coincidence. Yet in an instant Gehn’s face changed, swelling with pride, his eyes blazing with a fierce intelligence.
“Behold, the rain!”
And then, as if he really had commanded it, the heavens opened, the torrent so heavy that each drop seemed to rebound from the earth, drenching things in an instant.
The earth trembled like a beaten drum.
Atrus stared, astonished. Before him on the slope, two hundred faces were turned up in awe as the precious water fell on them like a solid weight.
Koena looked to his Master, as if to ask whether or not he should continue, but Gehn seemed undaunted by the downpour. It was almost as if he had planned it.
“The handmaiden…where is the handmaiden?”
Koena turned, then gestured toward the girl Satar, who was clutching a garland of woven flowers, like the one they had presented to Gehn when Atrus had first come to the Age. But Salar could not move. Salar was petrified. She stared up at the sky, her eyes like tiny, startled beads.
Seeing how it was, Gehn strode down and grasped her by the arm, then began to drag her across the muddy slope toward the hissing torches and the temple beyond.
Appalled by his father’s treatment of the girl, Atrus started forward. “Father! Let her go!”
Coming closer, Gehn glared at him, the fierceness in that look enough to make Atrus lower his gaze.
Gehn threw the girl down at Atrus’s feet. “The garland!” he growled. “Present the Lord Atrus with the garland!”
Atrus wanted to reach down to pick the girl up, but his father’s eyes were on him, defying him to help her.
And still the rain beat down relentlessly.
Slowly Salar got up onto her knees. The garland, which she still held loosely in one hand, was ruined now—mud-spattered and ripped in several places. She glanced up at him, frightened now and tearful.
“Lord Atrus…” she began, her voice almost inaudible beneath the noise of the storm.
“Speak up, girl!” Gehn bellowed. “Let’s hear you now!”
“Lord Atrus…” she began again, her voice struggling to keep an even tone.
There was a great flash, a huge thunderclap. The young girl shrieked and dropped the garland.
“Kerath help us!” Gehn said impatiently, then, placing the heel of his boot against her shoulder, pushed her roughly aside and bent down to pick up the ruined garland. He studied it a moment, then, with a grimace of disgust, discarded it.
Gehn turned, looking to Koena. “Dismiss them,” he said. “The ceremony is over!”
But Koena wasn’t listening. Koena was staring at the lake, watching the precious water drain away into the cracks. The rain fell and fell, but it id no good. It would have to rain for a thousand years to fill that lake, for the lake drained into the sea and the sea into the ocean, and the ocean…the ocean now lay a hundred yards or more below that great ledge of rock that once had been a seabed.
Koena turned, looking to Gehn. “Master, you have to save us! Please, Master, I beg you!”
But Gehn, who had seen what Koena had seen, simply turned away. Throwing off his crown, he unfastened his cloak at the neck and let it fall, then, going over to the tent, ducked inside, everging a moment later with his knapsack, into which he quickly stowed his pipe.
“Come,” he said, gesturing to Atrus. “The ceremony’s over.”
Atrus stared a moment, then, casting aside the pendant, ran after Gehn, catching up with him and grasping his arm, turned him so that he faced him, shouting into his face over the sound of the storm.
“We must get back and change things! Now, before it’s too late!”
“Too late? It is already too late! Look at it! I said it was unstable!”
“No!” Atrus yelled, desperate now. “You can change it. You can erase the changes you made and put things right. You can. You told me you can! After all, you are a god, aren't you?”
That last seemed to hit home. Gehn gave the briefest nod, then, pushing past his son, hurried across the bridge, making his way back up the rain-churned slope toward the cave, leaving Atrus to run after him.
15
~~~~~~~~~~
For an hour now Gehn had sat at his desk in silence, deaf to Atrus’s pleas, staring into the air blankly as he sucked on his pipe.
“You have to do something,” Atrus said, taking up the cause again. “You have to! They’re dying back there!”
Nothing. Not even the flicker of an eyebrow.
Atrus grimaced, trying not to imagine their suffering back there on the Thirty-seventh Age, trying not to think of the old woman and the girl, but it was impossible.
He stared at Gehn. It was the first time he had seen this side of his father; this indecisiveness. This hideous indifference.
“Won’t you help them, father? Won’t you?”
Nothing.
Something snapped in him. Stepping up to the desk, Atrus leaned across, meaning to take the book.
“If you won’t, then let me…”
Gehn’s hand gripped his like a vice. He looked up into Atrus’s face, his eyes hard. “You?”
It was the first thing Gehn had said for ages.
Atrus pulled his hand free. “they’re dying,” he said for what seemed like the thousandth time. “We have to help them. We could make changes.”
Gehn laughed bleakly. “Changes?”
“To fix things.”
Gehn’s eyes held his a moment, then looked away.
In his mind Atrus saw it again, the water pouring from the edge of the great rock table as it rose and rose on a cushion of red hot lava.
“So that’s it, is it?” he said, glaring at his father. “You can’t fix it?”
Gehn straightened up, looking at Atrus, something of the old arrogance in his eyes. “Did I say that?”
For a moment longer Gehn glared back at his son, then, opening the Book of the Thirty-seventh Age, he reached across and, dipping the pen into the ink pot, proceeded to cross out the last few entries in the book, using the D’ni negating symbol.
“There,” he said, handing the book to Atrus. “I have fixed it.”
Atrus stared at it, stunned.
Gehn nodded at the book. “Well? You want to check for yourself?”
He had been almost too afraid to ask. “Can I?”
“That is what you wanted, no?”
Atrus nodded.
“Then go. But try not to be too long. I have wasted enough time already on those ingrates!”
§
The air in the cave was musty, but no more so than on the other occasions he had gone there. It was—and this was the important point—free of the hideous stench of sulfur. The very normality of it raised his spirits.
There, he heard his father say, handing him the book, I’ve fixed it.
Well, now he’d know.
Atrus climbed up out of the cave, then stood on the boulder, overlooking the slope, breathing in the clear, sweet air.
It was true! Gehn had fixed it! There was water in the lake and rich grass on the slopes. He could hear birdsong and the sound of the wind rustling through the nearby trees. Down below the village seemed peaceful, the islanders going about their lives quite normally.
He laughed, then jumped down, hurrying now, keen to ask Salar just what exactly had happened in his absence, what changes she had witnessed—but coming around he hump, he stopped dead, perturbed by th
e sight that met his eyes.
He ran to the ridge, then stood there, breathing shallowly as he looked out across the harbor. The boats were there, moored in a tight semicircle, just as before, and there was the bridge…but beyond?
He gasped, his theory confirmed in a moment. The meeting hut was gone, and the tent. In their place was a cluster of huts, like those on this side of the bridge.
Hearing a noise behind him he turned, facing Koena, surprised to see that the man was in ordinary village clothes.
“Koena?”
The man tensed at the word, the thick wooden club he held gripped tightly. There was fear in his face.
“What is it?” Atrus asked, surprised.
“Usshua umma immuni?” Koena asked, his hostility unmistakable now.
Atrus blinked. What was that language? Then, realizing he was in danger, he put his hands up, signaling that he meant no harm. “It’s me, Koena. Atrus. Don’t you recognize me?”
“Usshua illila umawa?” the frightened native demanded, waving his club.
Atrus shook his head, as if to clear it. What was wrong here? Why was everything so different? Out of instinct he turned back toward the cave, then stopped, realizing that there would be no Linking Book there. He felt in his pocket anxiously, then relaxed. His copy Linking Book was there.
Koena was still watching him, his eyes narrowed. But, of course, he wasn’t Koena, or not the Koena he knew anyway, for his father had never been here to make him his acolyte. No, Atrus thought, and nor have I. For this was not the Thirty-seventh Age—or, at least, not that same Age his father had “created” and he, Atrus, had lived in; this was another world entirely, like it—so like it as to be frighteningly familiar—and yet somewhere else.
His head swam, as if the solid ground had fallen away from him. I am in another universe entirely, in another Age; one that my father tampered into existence.
An Age where he knew everyone and was not known. He nodded to himself, understanding what had happened. His father’s erasures in the Book had taken them back down the central trunk of the great tree of possibility and along another branch entirely.
Atrus took one last long look at the Age, then, knowing he was not wanted, turned and fled toward the cave, where, after he was gone, his Linking Book would never be found.
§
In Atrus’s absence Gehn had lit the fire and had sunk into the chair beside it. That was where Atrus found him, slumped back, his pipe discarded on the floor beside him, his mouth open in a stupor.
Gehn was not sleeping, or if he was, it was a fitful kind of sleep, for his eyelids fluttered and from time to time he would mutter then give a tiny groan.
Looking at him, Atrus felt angry and betrayed. Gehn had said that he was going to fix it, but he hadn’t. That other world, the real Thirty-seventh Age, had been destroyed, or, at least, his link to it. And that was all Gehn’s fault, because he hadn’t understood what he was doing. Atrus stood over his father, feeling a profound contempt for him.
“Wake up!” he shouted, leaning over Gehn and giving him a shake. “I need to talk to you!”
For a moment he thought he hadn’t managed to wake Gehn. Yet as he went to shake him again, Gehn reached up and pushed his hand aside.
“Leave me be!” he grumbled. “Go on…go to your room, boy, and leave me in peace!”
“No!” Atrus said defiantly. “I won’t! Not until this is settled.”
Gehn’s left eye pried open. A kind of snarling smile appeared at one corner of his mouth. “Settled?”
“We need to talk,” Atrus said, keeping firm to his purpose, determined not to let his father browbeat or belittle him this time.
“Talk?” Gehn’s slow laughter had an edge of mockery to it now. “What could we possibly have to talk about, you and I?”
“I want to talk about the Art. About what it is. What it really is.”
Gehn stared at him disdainfully, then, sitting up, reached beside his chair for his pipe.
“Go and get some sleep, boy, and stop talking such nonsense. What do you know about the Art?”
“Enough to know that you’re wrong, father. That your Ages are unstable because you don’t understand what you’ve been doing all this while!”
Atrus had only guessed about most of Gehn’s worlds being unstable, but it seemed he’d hit the bull’s-eye with that comment, for Gehn sat forward, his pallid face suddenly ash white.
“You’re wrong!” Gehn hissed. “You’re just a boy. What do you know?”
“I know that you don’t understand the Whole!”
Gehn roared with amusement. “And you think you have all the answers, eh, boy?”
Atrus leaned over the table, determined to outface his father. “Some of them. But they’re not ones you want to here. You’d rather carry on as you are, stumbling blindly through the Ages, copying this phrase out of that book and that one out of another, as if you could somehow chance upon it that way.”
Gehn’s hands had slowly tightened their grip on the arms of the chair; now, pulling himself up out of the chair, his anger exploded. As Atrus reeled back, Gehn shouted into his face, spitting with fury.
“How dare you think to criticize me! Me, who taught you all you know! Who brought you here out of that godforsaken crack and educated you! How dare you even begin to think you have the answers!”
He poked Atrus hard in the chest. “How long have you been doing this now, eh, boy? Three years? Three and a half? And how long have I been studying the Art? Thirty years now! Thirty years! Since I was four.”
Gehn made a small noise of disgust. “You think because you managed to make one measly Age that you know it all, but you don’t, boy! You do not even know the start of it. Here…”
Gehn turned and went over to the desk. To Atrus’s dismay he picked up Atrus’s book and leafed it open. For a moment or two he read in silence.
“This phrase here…look how unnecessarily ornate it is…that’s how a novice writes, boy. It lacks strength. It lacks economy of expression.” And, reaching across, he took the pen and dipped it in the ink pot.
Atrus watched, horrified, knowing what was to come, yet still unable to believe that his father would actually dare to tamper with his Age.
But Gehn seemed oblivious of him now. Sitting at his desk, he drew the book toward him, then began to delete symbols here and there, using the D’ni negative, simplifying the phrases Atrus had spent so long perfecting—phrases which Atrus knew, from long reading in the ancient D’ni texts, were the perfect way of describing the things he waned in his world.
“Please…” Atrus pleaded. “There is a reason for all those words. They have to be there!”
“In what book did you find this?” Gehn asked, tapping another of his phrases. “This nonsense about the blue flowers?”
“It wasn’t in a book…”
“Ridiculous!” Gehn said, barely masking his contempt. “Frivolous nonsense, that’s all it is! This is overwritten, that’s all! There is far too much unnecessary detail!”
And, without another word, Gehn proceeded to score out the section about the flowers.
“No!” Atrus cried out, taking a step toward the desk.
Gehn glared at him, his voice stern. “Be quiet, boy, and let me concentrate!”
Atrus dropped his head and groaned, but Gehn seemed not to notice the pain his son was in. he turned the page and gave a tiny laugh, as if he’d found something so silly, so ludicrous, that it was worthy only of contempt.
“And this…” he said, dipping the pen into the ink pot once again, then scoring out one after another of the carefully-written symbols. “It’s no good, boy. This description…it’s superfluous!”
“Please…” Atrus said, taking a step toward him. “Leave it be now. Please, father. I beg you…”
But Gehn was unstoppable. “Oh no, and this won’t do, either. This will have to go. I mean…”
Gehn looked up suddenly, the laughter fading from his face. “You understan
d me clearly now?”
Atrus swallowed. “Father?”
Gehn’s eyes were cold now; colder than Atrus had ever seen them. “You must understand one thing, Atrus, and that is that you do not understand. Not yet, anyway. And you don’t have the answers. You might think you have, but you’re mistaken. You can’t learn the D’ni secrets overnight. It’s simply not possible.”
Atrus fell silent under his father’s stern gaze.
Gehn sighed, then spoke again. “I misjudged you, Atrus, didn’t I? There is something of your grandmother in you…something headstrong…something that likes to meddle.”
Atrus opened his mouth to speak, but Gehn raised his hand. “Let me finish!”
Atrus swallowed deeply, then said what he’d been meaning to say all along, whether it angered Gehn or not; because he had to say it now or burst.
“You said that you had fixed the Thirty-seventh Age.”
Gehn smiled. “I did.”
Atrus shook his head.
Gehn met his eyes calmly. “Yes…?”
“I mean, it’s not the same. Oh, the lake’s the same and the village, even the appearance of the people. But it’s not the same. They didn’t know me.”
Gehn shook his head. “It’s fixed.”
“But my friends. Salar, Koena…”
Gehn stared at he cover of the book a while, hen picked it up and turned toward the fire.
Atrus took a step toward him. “Let me fix it. Let me help them.”
Gehn glanced at him contemptuously, then took another step toward the flickering grate.
“Father?”
The muscle beneath Gehn’s right eye twitched. “The book is defective.”
“No!” Atrus made to cross the room and stop him, to wrestle the book from him if necessary, but the desk was between them. Besides, it was already too late. With a tiny little movement, Gehn cast the book into the flames, then stood there, watching, as its pages slowly crackled and curled at the edges, turning black, the symbols burning up one by one, dissolving slowly into ash and nothingness.
Atrus stood there looking on, horrified. But it was too late. The bridge between the Ages was destroyed.
§
The Myst Reader Page 19