The Myst Reader

by Rand; Robyn Miller; David Wingrove

  “Well done!” he said, looking about him and laughing. But Tarkuk and his son were looking down, silent—strangely, eerily silent.

  “What is it?” he asked after a moment, touching the old man’s arm. At the touch, Tarkuk jerked away.

  Atrus blinked. What was going on here? What had he missed? He had made a mistake, true, but they had survived, hadn’t they? Why, he had forced them to survive! He had made them row when they had given up.

  He reached out, shaking the old man by the arm. “What is it? Answer me! I have to know!”

  Tarkuk glanced at him, then dropped his eyes again. “We have cheated the Whiteness.”

  “Cheated…?” Atrus laughed, astonished. “What do you mean?”

  But the old man would say no more. Slowly Birili got to his feet and, adjusting the sail, turned the boat back toward the island.

  In silence they sailed back.

  As they climbed from the boat and mounted the steps, Atrus made to speak to Tarkuk again, but the old man seemed reluctant even to acknowledge him now.

  Atrus shook his head, perplexed. What had happened out there? Just what exactly had he missed?

  He didn’t know. But he would. He would make it his business to find out, before his father returned.

  §

  Atrus hurried across the bridge, conscious of the gathering clouds overhead, then ran up the slope toward his father’s tent.

  Surprised by his sudden entrance, Koena got up hurriedly, making a little bowing motion, still uncertain quite how to behave toward Gehn’s son. “Young Master? Is everything all right?”

  The girl was sitting on the ground nearby, staring up at Atrus.

  “No,” Atrus answered, walking past Koena and sitting in his father’s chair.

  “Master?” Koena came across and stood before him. “Are there more cracks?”

  “No. But there is something I want an explanation for.”

  “Master?”

  Atrus hesitated, then. “Something happened.”

  “Something?”

  “Yes, when I was out on the boat. The old man said something about cheating the Whiteness.”

  Loena gasped. “You have been out there?”

  “Out where?” Atrus said, knowing where he meant, but wanting to hear it from his lips.

  “To the Mist Wall.”

  Atrus nodded. “We sailed the dark current. And then we rowed back.”

  Koena’s mouth had fallen open. “No,” he said quietly.

  “What is it?” Atrus asked. “What am I missing? What don’t I understand?”

  Koena hesitated, his eyes pleading with Atrus now.

  “Tell me,” Atrus insisted, “or I shall have my father wring it from you!”

  The man sighed, then answered him, speaking reluctantly. “The Whiteness…it was our Master. Before your father came.”

  He fell silent. There was a rumble of distant thunder.

  Atrus, too, was silent for a time, taking in this new piece of information, then he looked to Koena again. “And my father knows nothing of this?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The old man and his son…what will happen to them?”

  Koena looked down. It was clear he did not want to say another word, but Atrus needed to know.

  “Please. You have to tell me. It’s very important.”

  The man shrugged, then: “They will die. Just as surely as if you had left them out there.”

  Atrus shook his head. Now that he understood it he felt a kind of dull anger at the superstitious nonsense that could dream up such a thing. He stood, his anger giving him strength, making him see clearly what he had to do.

  “Listen,” he said, assuming the manner of his father. “Go and fetch the villagers. Tell them to gather outside my father’s hut. It is time I talked to them.”

  §

  The sky was darkening as Atrus mounted the steps of the meeting hut and turned to face the waiting crowd. A light rain fell. Everyone was there; every last man, woman, and child on the island, Tarkuk and Birili excepted. Atrus swallowed nervously, then, raising his hands the way he’d seen his father do, began to speak, trying to make his voice—not so powerful or deep as his father’s—boom in the same sonorous way.

  “This afternoon we went out to the Mist Wall. We sailed the dark current and came back…”

  There was a strong murmur of discontent at that. People looked to each other, deeply troubled.

  “I have heard talk that we have somehow cheated the Whiteness, and it is for that reason that I have summoned you here.”

  He paused, looking about him, hoping that what he was about to say next would not prove too difficult for his father.

  “I understand your fears,” he went on, “but I am proof that the Power of the Whiteness is waning. For did I not sail to the Mist Wall and return? Did the Whiteness take me? No. Nor shall it. In fact, when my father, the Lord Gehn, returns, he and I shall go out beyond the Mist Wall.”

  There was a gasp at that—a great gasp of disbelief and shock.

  “It cannot be done,” Loena said, speaking for all gathered there.

  “You disbelieve?” Atrus asked, stepping down and confronting his father’s man.

  Koena fell silent, his head bowed. Overhead there was the faintest rumble of thunder. Great clouds had gathered, throwing the bowl of hills into an intense shadow.

  Atrus glanced up at the ominous sky, then spoke again. “All will be well,” he said.

  There was a great thunderclap. Lightning leapt between the clouds overhead, discharging itself in a vivid blue-white bolt on the crest of the hill facing them. Atrus stared at its afterimage in wonder, then looked about him, seeing how everyone else had fallen to the ground in terror.

  “It’s nothing,” Atrus said, lifting his voice above the now-persistent grumble. “Only a thunderstorm!!”

  There was a second, blinding flash and one of the trees on the far side of the lake was struck, blossoming in a great sheet of sudden flame.

  “The Whiteness is angry,” someone cried from just below him. “See how it searches for you!”

  Atrus turned, angry now, knowing he must squash this at once. “Nonsense!” he cried. “It’s only the storm!”

  But no one was listening. The islanders were pulling at their hair and wailing, as if something horrible was about to descend among them.

  Then, as a third lightning bolt ionized the air, sending its tendrils of static hissing through the rainfilled darkness as it sought the earth, Atrus saw, in the brilliant flash, the figure of his father, striding down the path between the huts, heading for the bridge.

  13

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Atrus stood, head bowed before his father in his tent as the rain hammered down on the canvas overhead. The terrified islanders had fled back to their huts while the storm raged, but Gehn was in no mood to placate or reassure them. Right now he was sitting forward in his chair, glaring at his son, his hands gripping the edge of his desk tightly.

  “There was trouble, you say. What brought that on?”

  “I wanted to see the Mist Wall. I sailed out to it.”

  “And you found the dark current?”

  Atrus looked up, surprised that his father knew of that. He nodded, then proceeded to tell his father all that had transpired in his absence. When he’d finished, Gehn stared at him thoughtfully, then, loosening his grip, sat back.

  “It is unfortunate, but it seems that the experiment here has failed. This world is unstable.”

  “In what way?”

  “The island is on a kind of pedestal. A massive pedestal of rock reaching up from the ocean floor. Surrounding it there is an ocean—a deep, intensely cold ocean.”

  Atrus frowned. “But the water here is warm. And there’s fresh water in the lake.”

  “That comes up from the crust, far below the surface. There is geothermal warming. That same warming creates the Mist Wall. It is where the hot water from below meets and reacts with the cold
oceanic currents.” Gehn nodded thoughtfully. “As you can imagine, this really is an island, in every possible sense. It is as cut off as a community can be and yet survive.”

  “But now it’s going wrong.”

  “Precisely. Slowly but surely, this Age is deteriorating. I cannot make out why, but it is. I have tried my utmost to find solutions, yet without a radical rewriting of this Age, I fear it is fated to deteriorate still further.”

  “And the cracks, father? What causes those?”

  Gehn shook his head.

  “It must be some fault in the underlying structure. Perhaps the same fault that made the two tiny islands subside.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  Gehn looked to him. “No doubt I could, but I am inclined to leave it. After all, it is only a tiny crack. If it gets any worse, I shall reconsider. Right now, however, we have other problems, like this business with the so-called Whiteness. Let us deal with that first, and then consider other matters.”

  §

  Gehn crouched beside the crack in the meadow as the rain fell, his eyes narrowed.

  He had spent hours back in D’ni, finding the right words in the ancient book, but for some quite incomprehensible reason they had made no difference.

  Gehn stood, combing his fingers back through his rain-slicked hair, then kicked a lump of earth into the crack, the frustration he felt at that moment making him want to hit out at something. The problem was a simple one—he knew that instinctively. It had something to do with the underlying structures, but precisely what it was he didn’t know. Yes, and that was the worst of it, for whenever he thought, finally, that he understood it, something would come along to prove him wrong—to show him that, far from having grasped the solid principles beneath it all, he was as far from understanding it as he had ever been.

  If it had only been written down somewhere. Yes, but the Guild Masters had been too clever for that. Such secrets had been passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. The book did not exist wherein those formulas were written. That was why he had always to search old books, looking for clues, looking to unearth those wonderful, delicate phrases that would best describe this effect or that. But nothing ever said just why this phrase worked and that one did not.

  Gehn huffed, exasperated with it all, then turned, realizing only then that his acolyte was standing there, ten paces off, his cloak drenched, the dyes run, his dark hair plastered to his head.

  “What is it, man?”

  “I…I wondered if you wanted anything to eat, Master.”

  Eat? He waved the man away impatiently. How could the fellow think of food at a time like this?

  Gehn turned, staring out toward the gap in the hills. If only he could remove the Mist Wall…

  He laughed quietly. Of course! It had been staring him in the face all the time! The ocean. He had only to make the ocean warm.

  “One!”

  The man turned, looking back up the slope at him. “Yes, Master?”

  “Tell Atrus I shall return in an hour. In the meantime, have the villagers prepare a feast on the harbor front. A feast such as they have never had before!”

  §

  Atrus stood beside the bridge, watching the islanders go sullenly about their business, while he went over in his head what his father had said to him.

  Gehn’s decision not to stabilize this Age played heavily on Atrus’s mind. He felt somehow responsible for these people. It was not their fault there were flaws in the underlying fabric of their Age. And if there really was a steady deterioration, surely it was their duty, as the Masters of this Age, to set things right.

  Atrus sighed, then walked across, conscious of how, in these last few hours, so much had changed among the islanders. Before now they had been nothing but pleasant to him, but now, as they set up the trestle tables and prepared the food, there was an air of resentment, even of hostility, about them which made him feel uncomfortable.

  If only he could do something…

  He stopped dead, then turned, staring up the slope toward the old woman’s hut. An idea had suddenly come to him: a way both of salving his conscience about these people and of furthering his own first attempts at D’ni Writing.

  What if he were to settle here, rather than K’veer? What if he were to persuade his father to let him continue to observe this world, not simply for a few more days but over a period of months, maybe even years? Why, he could have them build an extra room onto the hut for him to use as a laboratory.

  Yes, but would Gehn agree?

  Atrus took out the map and studied it, tracing the circle of the lake with his fingertips. There was a way of persuading his father that it was a good idea, but it would mean taking a risk. It would mean showing Gehn what he had been working on these past few months.

  He let out a long, shivering breath. Yes, but what if my father doesn’t like what I’ve been doing? What if it only goes to prove to him that I’m not ready yet?

  In truth, Atrus had wanted to wait a lot longer before he showed Gehn the Age he had been writing in his practice book. He had wanted to make sure he’d got things absolutely right before he attempted a proper book, but if doing so meant abandoning this Age, abandoning Koena and the girl and the old woman who looked after him, then surely it wasn’t worth it?

  He slipped the map away again, then stood there, touching the tip of his tongue to his upper lip.

  What would Anna have done?

  He knew the answer without thinking. She would have stayed and tried to help, even if it meant sacrificing her own plans.

  So be it, then. He had only to persuade his father.

  §

  Gehn returned that evening, just as he had promised, appearing on the crest of the hill just as the sun was setting at his back. Silhouetted against that bloodred orb, he raised his arm and called to the islanders gathered below, his voice booming out across the silent lake.

  “Look!” he said, pointing out beyond the gap in the hills. “The Mist Wall is down! The Whiteness is no more!”

  The islanders crowded across to gape, witnessing for themselves the absence of the Mist Wall. In the blazing orange light of sunset they had a vista of endless ocean. They turned, a great murmur of awe running through them, then, almost as one, fell to their knees, staring back up the slope as Gehn strode down toward them.

  Watching from the steps of the temple, Atrus frowned. When his father had not returned within the first few hours he had begun to worry, but now he understood. Gehn had written a new entry in the Book of Age Thirty-seven—something, unseen, unobserved, that had got rid of the Mist Wall.

  Going down to join his father on the harbor front, where the feast had been set up, Atrus felt a tenseness in his stomach. He was determined to ask him tonight whether he could stay here, to get the matter settled and done with at the earliest opportunity, but he remembered the last time he had asked his father for something—that time when he had wanted to go back to the cleft and visit Anna—and was afraid lest Gehn said no again.

  And if he does?

  Atrus sighed, then made his way across he bridge. If Gehn refused, that would be it. There was no way he could defy his father over such an important matter. Besides, all Gehn had to do was refuse him access to the book.

  No one noticed him come out onto the harbor front. All eyes were focused up the hill, watching as Gehn came down among them, magnificently attired in velvet and leather.

  As Gehn stepped out into the open space, his acolyte, Loena, stepped forward to greet him. He bowed low, then scattered a handful of tiny yellow petals at Gehn’s feet.

  Gehn looked about him, coldly imperious at that moment, then, spying Atrus between the tables, gestured for him to come across.

  “Father?” he asked quietly, noting the strange look in Gehn’s eyes, but Gehn was not to be interrupted. Turning to face the crowd, he raised his arm again.

  “From henceforth, there will be no mention of Mist or Whiteness. From this hour the very words
are forbidden! But now let us eat. Let us celebrate this new beginning!”

  Atrus stared at his father’s back, wondering what he meant by that—whether it was, truly, a “new beginning.”

  Yet as the islanders filed past to take their seats at the long tables and begin the evening’s feasting, Atrus saw how their eyes stared at Gehn in awe, scarce able to credit that such a wonder had come to pass.

  §

  It was late—very late—when they finally retired. Making his bed up in the corner of the tent, Atrus was conscious of his father pacing up and down behind his screen, the glowing pipe visible through the thick silk panels. They had barely spoken since Gehn’s announcement, and Atrus had a good dozen questions he wanted to ask his father, but he sensed that now was not the time. Besides, he was tired, and if there were things to discuss, nothing was that urgent that it could not wait until the morning. Not even his idea of staying here.

  He was just settling, turning on his side to face the tent wall, when he grew aware of the scent of Gehn’s pipe close by. He turned, to find Gehn standing over him.

  “We must be gone from here tomorrow.”

  “Gone?”

  “I have things to do elsewhere. Important things.”

  Atrus hesitated, then sat up, staring at his father in the half dark. “I was going to ask you something.”

  “Then ask.”

  “I thought I might be able to help you…you know, if I made some long-term observations of the island. I thought maybe we could have the islanders build a hut for me. I could move my things here from K’veer and maybe have them make me an extra room for my experiments.”

  “No.”

  “No? But…”

  Gehn turned away. “No buts, Atrus. The notion of you being here on your own, unsupervised, is completely out of the question. It does not fit with my plans.”

  “But if we could understand why things are going wrong…”

  “You will not persist with this, Atrus. I have more important concerns than this trifling Age.”