The Myst Reader

by Rand; Robyn Miller; David Wingrove

  The afternoon was spent in preparation, making up backpacks for each team member, with all-weather clothes and sufficient food. It had been decided that they would camp out in the Ages, if necessary, with one team member remaining at the link point, ready to get a message back to D’ni at a moment’s notice.

  “I don’t expect trouble,” Atrus said, explaining the decision, “but we had best prepare for it.”

  Even so, he would not let them take any weapons into the Ages. Their intentions were peaceful, and should the worst come to the worst and they were taken prisoner and searched, he did not want their captors finding anything upon them that might suggest otherwise.

  “The Ages themselves are harmless. The Maintainers were careful to ensure that. And the survivors, if there are any, will undoubtedly be D’ni. They may not welcome you at first, but they will certainly not harm you.”

  §

  They slept that night in D’ni. In the morning they rose early, while the lake was still dark, and gathered in the space before the makeshift library.

  A month previously, Atrus had had them carry down six of the big stone pedestals from one of the common libraries. These were now spaced out along the harbor front. A lamp had been set up above each, to illuminate the tilted lecterns on which lay the open Books, their descriptive panels glowing softly.

  At a word from Atrus, the six teams of four lined up before their respective pedestals.

  Atrus looked down the line of tense, nervous faces. Then, without a further word, he placed his hand against the panel and linked.

  In less than a minute it was done. They stepped up, one by one, to the lecterns and disappeared, like ghosts vanishing into the air, leaving the harbor front empty, even as the lake began to glow with the faint light of morning.

  §

  Marrim stood at the center of the deserted village and looked about her, her vision darkened. It was six hours now and they had found no sign of life. The plague, it seemed, had taken them all.

  The first sign of it had been in the cave. There, in a heap upon the floor beside the Linking Book, they had found two skeletons, their bones intertwined, their cloaks, rotted by damp, tearing like spiders’ webs beneath her touch.

  Veovis, she thought, and in her mind she saw Veovis and A’Gaeris, masked, their own hands gloved to protect them from contagion, placing the palms of the dead men onto the Book.

  It was horrifying, yet it had been as nothing beside the other sights she’d witnessed. She had gone inside one hut only to find a whole family—mother, father, and their two young children—wiped out, their bones stretched out on the rotting mattress, their fleshless fingers linked in death.

  That small, tender sign of affection in the midst of this horror had unhinged her momentarily. Until then she had been able to harden herself against it, to remind herself that this was what Atrus had warned them might await them. But that…

  The disappointment seared her. She had not realized just how much of herself she had gambled on this venture.

  “Lerral! Allef!” she called, stirring herself.

  She watched the two young men step from the big meetinghouse at the far end of the central space, and saw at once the darkness in their eyes.

  “Come,” she said, walking over to them. “Let’s go. There’s nothing here for us.”

  §

  Six worlds and not a single survivor.

  Atrus had wanted to go back—to pack fresh provisions and have another, more thorough search of those two Ages where they had found nothing at all, not even bones—but Catherine had persuaded him against it.

  “Never mind,” Atrus concluded, when all else had been said. “We’ll try again. We are certain to be more successful next time round. This time, I’ll just check one.”

  “Yes. We need something to raise their spirits, Atrus. They’re feeling very despondent.”

  “This one, I think.” Atrus showed her the cover. It was the Book of Aurack. “It looks as likely as any other. I’ll write our link back tonight. Tell Marrim and Carrad they can come with us. Oh, and Meer and Gavas, too. We’ll take six through this time. It’ll speed the search.”

  Catherine leaned across, kissing him on his bearded cheek. “Good. The news will cheer them.”

  §

  “Is everyone ready?”

  Atrus looked from face to face, his eyes questioning theirs. Then, satisfied with what he’d seen, he smiled and placed his hand against the glowing panel.

  Aurack was hot. Stepping out from the linking cave, Marrim raised her hand to her brow instinctively, shielding her eyes against the sun’s fierce glare. Atrus was up ahead of her, standing on the edge of the escarpment, his special D’ni lenses pulled down over his eyes, their surfaces opaqued.

  “Empty,” he said as Catherine stepped up beside him.

  “It only looks empty,” she answered him. “Why, you could hide a hundred villages in that.”

  He glanced at her, conscious of the others listening. “Do you think that’s what they’ve done?”

  “It’s possible. After what happened to D’ni, it would make sense to take precautions.”

  “Maybe,” he conceded, “but how are we going to find them?”

  Marrim, coming up onto the ledge, saw at once what Atrus meant. What lay below them, covering the landscape from horizon to horizon, was no wood as she had experienced it on Averone, but a forest, a thousand square miles or more of densely packed trees; an ocean of green in which you could hide forever and never be found.

  “Why don’t we light a fire?” she said.

  Atrus looked at her. “If all else fails, we shall. But if they’re here, I suspect they’ll not have gone too far from the linking cave. They would want to know if anyone came through into their Age.”

  “You mean to make a physical search of that?” Catherine asked, gesturing toward the great sprawl of the forest.

  “Only part of it. Once we’ve made our search for the Linking Book, we’ll split up. Each take a small section of it.”

  “What if someone gets lost?”

  But Atrus had thought of that. He’d packed special dye-markers in every knapsack. They were to use these to mark the trees they passed.

  “To prevent confusion, I’ve given each of you a different color.” He turned, looking at the three young men. “Carrad and Meer, you’ll take part in the first sweep. Gavas, you can be our anchor man here on the escarpment. If anything goes wrong, send up a fire flare.”

  Gavas nodded, hiding his disappointment well.

  “Good. Then we’ll concentrate our search on this side first. There’s a river down there—you can see it winking between the trees—so that might be a good site for an encampment. We can make our way down, then split up on the riverbank.”

  Atrus looked about him. “First, however, let’s spread out and search this area. The Linking Book, if there is one, ought to be somewhere nearby.”

  §

  The river was a broad band of green, glimpsed between the straight dark boles of the trees off to the left. Out there, on the river’s bank, it was swelteringly hot, swarms of exotic insects feasting on anything or anyone who strayed near, but here, beneath the branches of the trees, it was much cooler, the insect life less voracious.

  Marrim paused to spray the bole of a tree, then turned, looking about her. The forest was alive with sounds, with the buzz of insects, the endless cries of birds, and the rustle of unseen creatures as they hastened away from her approach.

  Even though it was much cooler here, it was still humid, and Marrim stopped frequently to mop her brow, her clothes sticking to her uncomfortably. It never got this hot on Averone, even during the dry season, and that, as much as the alien life-forms, was beginning to get to her. It was an hour since they had split up at the river, and she had seen nothing at all to indicate that there was any kind of intelligent life in this Age. But each time she thought that, she reminded herself of what it had looked like from the escarpment—how huge an area it was
they were searching—and she felt herself spurred on again.

  She had grown used to the way the ground beneath her gave with each step, a thousand years of leaf fall forming a thick, dry carpet of mold beneath her feet. She had even grown used to the strange quality of the light beneath the leaf canopy, its pellucid greenness that had at first made her think herself at the bottom of some great ocean.

  Marrim scratched at her arm. The bites were heavily swollen and formed a small mountain range of red blotches from her exposed elbow to her wrist. She smiled now, but at the time she had thought they were going to eat her alive!

  They had known that Aurack was a big, primitive world, but it was strange that Atrus hadn’t mentioned the insects. Then again, his briefing hadn’t mentioned a thing about the heat, either, so maybe they had come at an exceptional time—at the height of a hot season, perhaps, or in the midst of a heat wave. But somehow she wasn’t convinced. Nothing here looked as if it didn’t belong in this heat. This was quite clearly a tropical environment.

  She moved on, marking her way as she went, then stopped, whirling about 180 degrees. There had been a cry: a high, inarticulate screech.

  Hurrying, she began to make her way back the way she’d come, following the trail of marked trees.

  Carrad and Catherine were waiting at the meeting point beside the river as she half ran, half walked toward them. Atrus arrived a moment later.

  “Who was it?” he asked, looking from one to the other for an explanation.

  “I thought it was you,” Catherine said, puzzled now.

  Atrus turned, looking back into the trees. “Where’s Meer?”

  They heard a crashing in the trees. Relieved, Carrad laughed. “Here he comes now!”

  But the crashing stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and in the silence that followed, there was no sound of anyone making their way toward them.

  “Let’s go,” Catherine said, touching Atrus’s hand. “His is the blue trail. It should be fairly easy to follow.”

  They went in again, more cautiously now, Atrus leading them, Carrad at the back, his shaven head moving this way and that as he surveyed the jungle close at hand.

  The trail snaked inward, then followed a dip in the land down into a hollow. There, abruptly, it ended, in the middle of a small clearing.

  Insects buzzed and whined in the sultry heat.

  Atrus went from tree to tree, then stopped, looking about him, perplexed.

  Marrim bent down and picked something up. It was a piece of torn cloth. At first she didn’t understand, then it hit her. She held it against her own cloak. The match was perfect.

  “Atrus…”

  She handed him the piece of cloth and watched as his eyes registered its significance.

  “He may have snagged it against something,” Atrus said, meeting her eyes. But that wasn’t what he was thinking.

  “Here!” Carrad said, from the far side of the clearing. “It looks like something was dragged through the bushes at this point.”

  They went across, the four of them standing there, staring silently at the broken branches.

  Something had been dragged through the bushes.

  Turning back, Marrim began to see things she had missed first time round. The way the ground seemed churned up on one side of the clearing. She walked over, then stooped, poking here and there with her fingers.

  A wet stickiness greeted her. She raised her hand and gasped. Blood! Her fingers were covered in blood that had seeped down through the leaves.

  Catherine, standing next to her, knelt down and took her hand, turning it and studying it.

  “Meer?” Atrus called, cupping his hands and yelling into the thick undergrowth beyond the clearing. “Meer? Where are you?”

  But there was no answer. Nothing but the flap of wings and the high, plaintive call of a hidden bird.

  §

  Armed, Atrus and Carrad had linked back to Aurack and returned to the clearing, working their way through the undergrowth, following the trail of broken branches until they had come out beside a waterfall. There, in the mud at the edge of the stream that ran away from the fall, were tracks.

  The tracks of something large.

  Wary, they followed the trail down the narrow valley until they came upon what they had feared they would find: fragments of Meer’s torn and bloody clothes. Of Meer there was no sign, but the tracks led on, and there were clear indications that the beast had settled here to make his meal before moving on, dragging its prize with it.

  Carrad, seeing the sight, had crouched and groaned, utterly distraught. But Atrus had merely stood and looked, his pale eyes carrying the full weight of his grief.

  “Come,” he said at last. “Let’s go back.”

  Back in D’ni, Atrus got out the Book of Aurack once again and read it through. Finally, he closed it and, looking up, shook his head.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “It has the Guild of Maintainers stamp. There ought to be no creatures like that in Aurack.”

  “Then someone must have captured it elsewhere,” Catherine said.

  “But why go to all that trouble? Why not simply go straight to the world the creature comes from?”

  “Perhaps because that was too dangerous,” Catherine answered. “I’ve been thinking about it, Atrus. These were D’ni, right? Scholars and Guildsmen, builders and stonemasons, inkmakers and archivists, not hunters. In which case, Aurack would be the beast they had released for their sport. Or beasts, if my guess is correct, for this creature cannot have survived seventy years without others of its kind to breed with. I guess they would release them and kill them within days. Then, when the Maintainers came to inspect the Age, there would be no sign of them.”

  “Maybe,” Atrus conceded. “But whatever the truth is, one thing is certain: We must take greater precautions in the future. No one must venture alone in the Ages. And we must make the teams bigger. Only two teams, perhaps, of ten or twelve. Yes, and we must arm them.”

  §

  Atrus took charge of the next expedition. Twelve of them were to make the link, the first two armed. If there was any exploring to be done, they were to keep in teams of three, and each team leader carried a fire flare, to be used at the first sign of any trouble.

  A long week had passed since Meer’s untimely death—a week in which Atrus and Catherine had returned to Averone to break the news to Meer’s parents—and now, as they stood before the podium, there was a very different mood—of sobriety rather than excitement—about the job at hand.

  “All right,” Atrus said quietly. “It’s time.”

  Carrad and Gavas went through first. A moment later Atrus followed them.

  The linking cave was long and low, but sunlight from a crevice high up to one side made it seem less oppressive than it would otherwise have seemed. The air was fresh and there was a faint moistness to the air.

  “Islands,” Marrim said, stepping through after Atrus. “I can smell islands.”

  Atrus nodded. There were indeed islands, if the Book was accurate, but that wasn’t what Marrim had meant. She could smell the sea. And other things. It was like Averone. That same mixture of scents.

  They climbed up onto a shelf of rock. Below them the land fell away. A long slope of waist-high grass ending in the silver-blue line of a sunlit shore. And there—immediately visible from where they stood—a village, nestled about a small, natural harbor.

  Seeing it, Atrus felt the heavy burden he had been carrying these past months lift from him. For the first time in weeks he smiled.

  “Come,” he said, looking about him at their eager faces. “Let us go down and greet our cousins.”

  §

  Their laughter was short-lived. The village was deserted. Even so, there were signs that it had recently been occupied. Everything was well tended, the fences in good repair, the pathways swept.

  Inside the cabins the beds were made and clothes lay pressed and folded in the wooden cupboards. The shelves were well sto
cked, the utensils clean and polished. Three fishing boats lay anchored in the harbor, their pots and nets neatly stowed. Everywhere one looked one could see the products of a small but industrious society. Yet of the people there was no sign.

  “They must have seen us emerge from the cave,” Gavas offered. “Seen us and run away.”

  “No,” Marrim said. “There wouldn’t have been time. Besides, where could they have got to?”

  It was true. The village was at the end of a narrow promontory. The only way they could have left and not been seen by Atrus and his party was by sea.

  Atrus walked over to the harbor’s edge and, shielding the top of his D’ni lenses with one hand, stared out to sea.

  “We’ll wait,” he said, a strange confidence in his voice. “We’ll set up camp and wait.”

  §

  The boat approached slowly, long poles hauling the inelegant craft through the water until it was positioned just outside the harbor’s mouth. The craft lay low in the water; a broad-keeled, capacious vessel with more than a dozen separate structures on its long, flat deck, so that it seemed more like a floating village than a normal boat. Those on board were clearly wary of the newcomers and there were heated discussions on board before one of them—an old man, solemn in appearance, D’ni lenses covering his pale eyes—stepped up to the prow and hailed them.