The Myst Reader

by Rand; Robyn Miller; David Wingrove

  Leaving the cart hidden in a narrow gully, she set off across the sand toward the circle, the full moon lighting her way. In the moonlight it seemed more inexplicable than ever. What on earth could have caused it?

  Or what in earth.

  Anna crouched at the center of the circle, thinking of what her father had said that first time. It was indeed as if the earth beneath had been not just shaken but vibrated. And what could do that? Sound was pure vibration, but what sound—what mighty echo in the rock—could possibly account for this?

  Perhaps the answer was in the cavern. Perhaps it was there and she had simply not seen it.

  It was madness even to think of exploring again, especially alone, yet the thought of walking away, of never having tried to find an answer, was impossible. She had to go and look.

  In the knapsack on her back she had all she needed. In it were her father’s hard hat, his lamp and tinderbox, the rope. As if she’d known.

  Anna smiled. Of course she’d known. It was compulsion. The same compulsion to know that had driven her father all his life.

  And if you find nothing, Anna?

  Then she would know she had found nothing. And she would go to Tadjinar, and wherever else afterward, and leave this mystery behind her.

  The tunnel was dark—a black mouth in the silvered face of the ridge. The very look of it was daunting. But she was not afraid. What was there to fear, after all?

  Anna lit the lamp then walked into the tunnel. The rock fall was where they had left it, and the gap.

  She studied it a moment, then nodded to herself. She would have to douse the lamp then push the knapsack through in front of her. It would not be easy in the dark, but she had done it once before.

  Taking the hard hat from the sack, she pulled it on, tying the straps securely about her chin, then snuffed the lamp. The sudden darkness was intense. Stowing the lamp safely at the bottom of the sack, she pulled the drawstrings tight, then pushed it through the gap, hearing it fall with a muffled clatter.

  Remembering how difficult it had been, this time she went into the gap face down, her arms out before her. Her problem last time was that she had misjudged how wide the gap was. With her arms outstretched it was much easier. The only problem now was lowering herself on the other side.

  Emerging from the gap, she let her hands feel their way down the irregular surface of the rock face, her feet hooked about he edges of the gap. Then, when she was confident that the drop was not too great, she pulled herself forward, letting her legs slide into the gap, her head tucked in to her shoulders as she rolled.

  In the dark, the drop seemed a lot farther than she remembered it. There was a moment’s inner panic, and then she hit the floor hard, the impact jolting her badly.

  She lay there a moment, the knapsack wedged uncomfortably in her lower back. Her wrists ached from the impact and the back of her head and neck felt bruised, but there seemed to be no serious damage.

  Anna sat up, reaching behind her for the bag, then winced as a sudden pain ran up the length of her left arm from the wrist to the elbow. She drew the arm back, then slowly rotated the wrist, flexing her fingers as she did so.

  “Stupid,” she said, admonishing herself. “That was a very stupid thing to do.”

  Yes, but she had got away with it.

  Only just, a silent voice reminded her.

  She turned herself around, organizing herself, taking the lamp from the knapsack and lighting it.

  In its sudden glow, she looked back at the blockage and saw just how far she had fallen. It was four, almost five feet in all. She could easily have broken her wrists.

  She had been lucky.

  Clipping the lamp onto the hat, Anna slung the bag over her shoulder then eased herself up into a standing position.

  She would have one good look around the cavern, and that was it.

  And if she found something?

  Anna turned, facing the darkness of the borehole, noticing the faint breeze in the tunnel for the first time.

  She would decide that if and when. But first she had to look.

  §

  To the left of the wedge, on the shoulder of that great flattened mass of redness that protruded from the ordinary rock, was a gap. Eight feet wide and two high, it was like a scowling mouth, hidden from below by the thick, smooth lip of the strange material.

  Anna had found it late in her search, after scouring every inch of the cavern, looking for something that clearly wasn’t there. Only this—this made lavatic rock—was different. Everything else was exactly as one would have expected in such a cave.

  Unclipping the lamp from her hat, she leaned into that scowling mouth, holding it out before her. Inside, revealed by the glowing lamp, was a larger space—a tiny cave within a cave—its floor made entirely of the red material, its ceiling of polished black rock, like the rock in the volcanic borehole. Seeing that, she understood. Whatever it was, it had once been in a molten state, like lava, and had flowed into this space, plugging it. Or almost so.

  She squeezed through, crawling on her hands and knees, then stood. The ceiling formed a bell above her. She was in a pocket within the rock.

  It was like being inside the stomach of some strange animal.

  At the far end, the ceiling dipped again, yet did not entirely meet the floor. There was another gap.

  Anna walked across, then crouched, holding out the lamp.

  The gap extended into the rock, ending some ten yards back in a solid wall of the red material.

  Yet there was a breeze, a definite breeze, coming from the gap. She sniffed. It was air. Pure, unscented air.

  It had to lead up again, to the surface. Yet that didn’t quite make sense, for this did not smell like desert air. She knew the smell of the desert. It left a scorched, dry taste in the mouth. This air was moist, almost sweet in its lack of minerals.

  And there was something else. The light was wrong.

  Dimming the lamp almost until it guttered, she set it down behind her, then looked back. Despite the sudden darkness, the wall in front of her still glowed. That glow was faint and strangely dim, as if the light itself was somehow dark, yet she was not mistaken.

  There was light somewhere up ahead.

  Picking up the lamp again, Anna raised the wick until the glow was bright. Then, getting down on her hands and knees, she crawled into the gap, pushing the lamp before her. Sure enough, the red stuff filled the tunnel’s end, yet just before it, to the left, another crack opened up. She edged into it, following its curving course about the swollen wall of red to her right. That curve ended abruptly, yet the crack continued, veering off at ninety degrees to her left. She followed it.

  The breeze was suddenly stronger, the scent of sweet, fresh air overpowering. And there was a noise now, like the hiss of escaping gas.

  The crack opened up, like the bell of a flower. To her right the red wall seemed to melt away. Ahead of her was a cave of some sort.

  No, not a cave, for the floor was flat, the walls regular.

  She climbed up, onto her feet, then held the lamp up high, gasping with astonishment at the sight that met her eyes.

  §

  Alone in his rooms, Aitrus pulled off his boots, then sat down heavily in his chair. It was a typical guild apartment, like all of those given to unmarried Masters. Sparsely furnished, the walls were of bare, unpolished stone, covered here and there with guild tapestries; thick woven things that showed machines embedded in the rock. Broad shelves in alcoves covered three of the four walls, Aitrus’s textbooks—specialist Guild works on rock mechanics, cohesion, tacheometry, elastic limit, shear strength and permeability, as well as endless works on volcanology—filling those shelves.

  There were a few volumes of stories, too, including an illustrated volume of the ancient D’ni tales. This latter lay now on the small table at Aitrus’s side, where he had left it the previous evening. He picked it up now and stared at the embossed leather cover a moment, then set it down.

&
nbsp; He was in no mood for tales. What he wanted was company, and not the usual company, but something to lift his spirits. Someone, perhaps.

  It seemed not a lot to ask for, yet some days he felt it was impossible.

  Aitrus sighed then stood, feeling restless.

  Maybe he should take a few days off to visit his family’s Age. It was some while since he had been there and he needed a break. It would be several days at least before the Council met again and his work was up straight. No one would blame him for taking a small vacation.

  He smiled. Pulling on his boots again, he went over to the door and summoned one of the house stewards. While the man waited, he scribbled a note, then, folding it, handed it to him.

  “Give this to Master Telanis.”

  The steward bowed, then turned and disappeared along the corridor.

  Aitrus turned, looking back into the room, then, without further ado, pulled the door closed behind him.

  §

  The cavern, which had at first glance seemed small, was in fact massive. What Anna had first taken as the whole of it was in fact only a kind of antechamber. Beyond it was a second, larger chamber whose walls glowed with a faint, green light.

  And in that chamber, dominating its echoing central spaces, rested two massive machines, their dark, imposing shapes threatening in the half-dark. Like sentinels they stood, their huge limbs raised as if in challenge.

  Indeed, it had been a moment or two before she had recognized them for what they were. Her first irrational thought had been that they were insects of some kind, for they had that hard, shiny, carapaced look about them. But no insect had ever grown that large, not even under the blazing desert sun. Besides, these insects had no eyes; they had windows.

  Anna walked toward them, awed not merely by their size but by the look of them. She had seen steam-driven machines in her father’s books—massive things of metal plate, bolted together with huge metal studs—but these were very different. These had a smooth, sophisticated look that was quite alien to anything she had ever seen before. These were sleek and streamlined, the way animals and insects were, as if long generations of trial and error had gone into their design.

  There were long flanges running along the sides of the nearest craft and studded oval indentations. Long gashes in its underside—vents of some kind?—gave it a strange, almost predatory air.

  The closer she got to them, the more in awe she felt, for it was only this close that she came to realize the scale on which their makers must have worked. The dark flank of the nearest machine, to her left, rose up at least five times her height. While the second, tucked back a little, was bigger yet.

  She also saw now just how different the two were. As if each had a separate purpose. The nearest was the simpler of the two, its four great limbs ending in cone-shaped vents. The other was much more sinister and crablike, its segmented body heavily armored.

  Standing beneath the first of them, she reached out and touched its dark, mirror-smooth surface. It was cool, rather than cold. Unexpectedly her fingers did not slip lightly over its surface, but caught, as if they brushed against some far rougher, more abrasive material.

  Anna frowned and held the lamp close. Instead of reflecting back her image, the strange material seemed to hold the light, to draw it into its burnished green-black depths.

  Out of the corner of her eye she noted something, down low near the floor of the right-hand machine. She crouched, reaching out to trace the embossed symbol with her finger.

  Symbol, or letter? Or was it merely decoration?

  Whichever, it was not like any written language she had ever seen.

  Taking the notebook from her sack, she quickly sketched it, placing the finished sketch beside the original.

  Yes. Just so.

  She slipped the notebook away, then lifted the lamp, turning slowly to look about her. As she did, she tried to place the pieces of the puzzle together.

  What did she have so far? The circle of rock and dust. The strange red “sealing” material. This other, green-black stone, which gave off a dim but definite light. And now these machines.

  Nothing. Or, at least, nothing that made sense. Were these the remains of an ancient race that had once inhabited these parts? If so, then why had nothing else been unearthed? So great a race as this would surely have left many more traces of its existence. And why, if these were long-lost relics, did they look so new?

  She stared up the huge, smooth flank of the machine toward what seemed to be a control room of some kind. There was a long, slit window up there, certainly, the upper surface of that window flush with the roof of the craft, the lower part of it forming part of the craft’s nose.

  The rope was in her pack. If she could throw it up over the top of the machine and secure it on the other side, perhaps she could climb up there and look inside?

  Anna slipped off her pack and took out the rope. Walking around to the front of the machine, she crouched down, holding the lamp out as she studied the chassis. Some ten, fifteen feet in, there were several small teatlike protuberances just beneath what looked like an exhaust vent. She would tie the rope to one of those.

  She walked back, slowly uncoiling the rope in one hand. She really needed a weight of some kind to tie about the end of it, but the only suitable objects she had were the lamp and the tinderbox, and both were much too valuable to risk breaking.

  Her first throw merely glanced against the side of the machine and fell back to the floor. Her second was better but had the same result.

  Taking the end of the rope she knotted it time and time again, until there was a palm-sized fist of rope at the end of it. Satisfied, she tried again.

  This time the rope sailed over the machine, the lightweight cord whistling through the air as it fell to the other side.

  Laying her pack on the remaining coil, Anna walked around and collected the other end of it, then got down and crawled under the machine, winding the rope around and around one of the small protuberances until the thick end of it was wedged tightly against the machine.

  Edging back, she stood, then tested the rope, tugging at it hard, leaning her full weight back on her heels. It held.

  So far, so good. But the most difficult part was next, for the rope was far from secure. If it were to slip to the side as she was climbing, she could easily find herself in trouble.

  Pulling the rope taught, she placed one booted foot against the hull of the craft and leaned back, taking the strain, feeling the sudden tension in the muscles of her calves and upper arms.

  She began, leaning slightly to her right as she climbed, away from the front of the strange craft, keeping the rope taut at all times, ready at any moment to let go and drop back to the floor if it were to start slipping. But the rope held, almost as if it were glued in place. Perhaps some quality of the material, that abrasiveness she had noticed, helped, but as she continued to climb her confidence grew.

  As she came up onto the broad back of the craft, she relaxed. The top of the great slit window was just in front of her now, some ten or twelve feet distant. Beyond it the nose of the craft tapered slightly, then curved steeply to the floor.

  Getting down onto her hands and knees, Anna crawled slowly toward the front of the craft, until the edge of the window was just in front of her. Leaning forward carefully, she looked down, through the thick, translucent plate, into the cabin of the craft.

  In the oddly muted light from the oil lamp, the cabin seemed strangely eerie, the wavering shadows threatening.

  She frowned, trying to understand exactly what she was looking at. There were two seats—or, at least, they looked like seats; tubular, skeletal things with a kind of netting for the seats—and there was a control panel of some kind just in front of that, but she could make neither head nor tail of the controls, if controls they were.

  The panel itself was black. There were indentations in that blackness, and more of the strange symbols, but nothing in the way of levers or buttons, unless such
things were hidden.

  Anna eased forward a little, trying to see into the back of the cabin, but there was only a bulkhead there, not even a door. Whoever, or whatever, had operated this must have entered the cabin through this window.

  That sudden thought, that the makers of this machine might have been other than human—might have been strange, alien creatures of the rock—sent a tiny ripple of fear through her. Until that moment her awe at her discovery had kept her from thinking what these machines might mean. But now her mind embraced that thought.

  What if those strange webbing seats were designed not for two, but for a single creature: one huge, grotesque being, multilimbed and clawed, like the machines it made?

  No, she told herself. Whoever made this is long dead and gone. It only looks new. But that moment of fear, of vivid imagining, had left its shadow on her.

  She edged back slowly, then, taking hold of the rope again, climbed down.

  Retrieving the rope, Anna stowed it away, then turned to face the second machine. If the function of the first machine was masked from her, this one was self-evident. The great drills at the end of each huge, jointed limb gave it away. This was a cutter.

  Anna walked over, stopping just in front of it.

  A question nagged at her. Why would someone go to such trouble to cut tunnels in the earth and then seal them? Had they found something down there?

  Or was it a tomb?

  The thought of a tomb—a royal tomb, surely, for why else go to all this bother?—excited her. Maybe she had stumbled onto the burial vault of some great ancient emperor. If so, then who knew what was down here? If they could build machines like these, then what riches—what curiosities—might lay buried with him?

  She walked slowly to the right, circling the machine, her eyes going up, searching its massive flanks, taking in every aspect of its brutal yet elegant form. It had the look of a living thing: of something that had been bred in the depths of the rock. Here and there the material of which it was made seemed folded in upon itself, like the wing-casing of an insect. Yet if it had been based on any insect that existed, it was of a strange, muscular, hydraulic kind. And there were blisters—large swellings on the hull, two or three feet in length—that had no apparent purpose.