The Myst Reader (102 page)

He returned, then leaned across the table, setting a parcel before each of them, then sat again, waiting for them to open them. But none of them made even the vaguest movement to unwrap the gifts.

“Well?” Atrus said after a moment, clearly trying to understand what was going on. “Have I done the wrong thing?”

It was Marrim who answered him. “We thank you for the gifts, Master Atrus, but we cannot accept them. We have finished with all that now, and we must settle here, in Averone.”

But Catherine saw the look of longing in her eyes, quickly suppressed, and felt almost giddy at the thought of what they were doing here. Atrus and she had not even
begun
to imagine the effect they would have on these young people.

She looked away, unable to bear it any longer. Yet even as she did there was a knock on the door.

Atrus looked up, even as the young Averonese turned in their seats.

The door swung slowly open.

“Gevah!” Atrus said, standing and giving a tiny bow.

The old man looked about him, taking in the situation at a glance, then, with a nod to Atrus and Catherine, he stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

“Forgive me for intruding,” he began, “but I have come direct from a meeting of the elders.”

Catherine saw the three young people deflate at the words. If there had been any glimmer of hope, it had died in that moment.

“They asked me to come at once,” Gevah continued, “before a great mistake was made.”

Atrus blinked, then. “You can tell the elders that I will keep my word. These presents are but a token. I …”

“You misunderstand me, Master Atrus,” Gevah said, interrupting him. “The mistake I am talking of is not yours but ours.
You
have been as good as your word. No, we have discussed the matter at length and are of one mind. The link must remain open.”

Atrus simply stared at the old man. The young people were also staring, but their eyes were bright now and there were the ghosts of disbelieving smiles on their faces.

“Averone must remain Averone,” Gevah said, “so it is right that the workshops should be pulled down. But there have been other changes. Changes that cannot be pulled down and raked over.”

Gevah looked at the three young people who were sitting there and smiled.

“Oh, we are old, but we are not stupid. We have eyes, yes, and imaginations, too. We see how you have changed, and we are proud of you, just as Master Atrus is proud of you.”

Catherine could contain herself no longer. “Then they can come with us? To Chroma’Agana? And D’ni?”

Gevah turned to her. “On one condition. That they return here, one month in two, to serve as teachers to our young, to pass on the skills they have learned.”

And now, as one, the three jumped up, whooping elatedly and hugging each other, crying with joy. Even old Gevah was included in their hugs.

When things had died down, Atrus asked, “What made you change your mind, Gevah?”

The old man smiled. “The fact that you did what you had promised you would do, and without protest. It made us think. It made us see how much we had to lose if you were gone.”

Atrus stood, then came round the table and embraced the old man. “Then let it be so. We shall take great care of these young people. And they will return, to pass on what they know. They will make you doubly proud of them, Gevah.”

“I know,” the old man said, stepping back, his eyes dwelling long on the three young people. “In fact, I am certain of it.”

IT WAS VERY LATE WHEN ATRUS AND CATHERINE
returned to their stall in the great lodge house. Now that the link was to remain, the feast had been a merry one, all of their young helpers in such a mood that it was hard to believe that they had all just volunteered for yet more years of long and grueling work.

Settling down beside Catherine, Atrus yawned, then gave a small chuckle.

“What now?” Catherine whispered, snuggling in to his side.

He looked up at the great raftered roof of the lodge house high above and grinned. “The look on Marrim’s face when she finally opened her present,” he whispered. “Why, you’d have thought I’d wrapped up the sun itself and given it to her!”

Catherine nodded thoughtfully, then. “She’s a hungry one. Starving for knowledge and for strange exotic places. Oh, I know that hunger, Atrus.”

“Yes,” he said quietly, conscious of the hundreds of sleeping Averonese surrounding them. “And now she’ll have a chance. We can teach her, Catherine. Teach her how to write.”

“Yes …”

Atrus was silent for a long time after that. He lay there on his back, his arm curled about Catherine, unable to sleep, staring up into the dark, thinking about what lay ahead.

The breakthrough to D’ni was only the first step. The real work had yet to begin—the gathering in of the Books, the searching of the Ages. It would be a slow, laborious task.

Catherine must have sighed, though she was unaware of it. Atrus lifted himself up onto one elbow and looked down into her face. “What is it?” he whispered.

She met his eyes. “What if no one survived? What if we’re alone?”

“We won’t know—not until we’ve tried. But I can’t believe there aren’t some D’ni somewhere. Can you?”

She smiled, calmed by his certainty. “No.”

“Good,” he said. “We’ll worry about all that in the morning.”

“MARRIM! MARRIM! LOOK AT THIS! HAVE YOU
ever seen the like?”

Marrim squeezed past Irras then stopped dead, astonished by the sight that met her eyes.

“Books!”

The long, low room was filled to bursting with books: on shelves on the walls, in piles on the floor, and on both desks; even stacked up on the tall-backed chair that rested behind the bigger of the desks. More books than she had ever dared imagine. Why, she could spend years in this one room alone and never read half of them!

She turned, excited, to find Atrus standing there.

“Master Atrus …”

He stepped past her, looking about him.

“This was my father’s room,” he said. “His study.”

Atrus walked across and lifted something from among the books on the desk—an elaborate-looking pipe. He lifted it to his nose and sniffed, then placed it back, a strange expression on his face.

“He must have been a clever man,” Irras offered.

Atrus turned. “Clever … yes.” But he said no more.

“There are Books here,” he said after a moment, his pale eyes narrowed. “D’ni Books. There might be functional Ages in some of them. Marrim, go through the shelves and the piles on the floor. Gather them together. But don’t be tempted by them. Some of these worlds are dangerous. That’s why we use the suit, remember? Your task is to locate them and bring them to me. Afterward, when all are gathered in, we can decide which ones to visit.”

The two youngsters nodded.

“By the way,” Atrus said, “where’s Carrad?”

“With Catherine,” Irras answered. “They found a boat. They’re trying to repair it.”

“Ah …” Atrus nodded, but Marrim, watching him, noticed how distant he seemed.

Atrus was silent a moment, then: “My father was a secretive man. Maybe he has hidden things somewhere in the room. Search everything. The walls, the floors, everything.” He paused. “You know what you’re looking for?”

“We know,” Marrim said.

“Good.” Atrus nodded, then quickly left.

Marrim turned full circle, excited once again now that Atrus had gone. “All these books,” she said, looking at Irras. “Just imagine …”

CATHERINE LOOKED ACROSS AS ATRUS CAME
down the stone steps into the lamp-lit cavern.

“Marrim
said
you’d found a boat,” he said, his voice echoing slightly in that enclosed space.

“Yes,” she said, glancing to her side, where Carrad was busy repairing the hull of the ancient craft, his closely shaven head bobbing up and down as he worked. “It needs a little care and attention, but Carrad knows all about making boats.”

“Good.” Atrus stepped down onto the quay. The lamp on the wall behind him threw his shadow across the bright surface of the water. He stood there saying nothing, but something in his manner told her that he wanted to talk.

Reaching beside her, she touched Carrad’s arm. “I’ll not be long.” Then, straightening up, she went over to Atrus.

“Come,” she said. “Let’s go outside.”

The main cavern was dark and silent. “Sepulchral” was the word that sprang to her mind; like a single great building that had been long abandoned by its gigantic owners. Sitting there on the stone ledge, looking out across the still, flat surface of the water toward the ancient city, Catherine understood for the first time why Atrus had been driven to return.

“It must be difficult for you, coming back here.”

“I was only a child,” he answered, his eyes looking past her toward the great twist of rock on the far side of the cavern. “I didn’t understand just how much he had twisted things in his mind. I had to unlearn so much that he taught me. I thought I’d thrown him off, but his shadow is everywhere here. I wasn’t so conscious of it when we made the breakthrough, but today, standing in his room, I could almost see him …”

“Then maybe that’s why you’re here. To throw off his shadow.”

He was silent a while, then: “What I
really
fear is that he’s already destroyed all of the Books.”

“Why should he do that?”

“It’s just something I remember him saying. He used to warn me against using the Books. He said they were unstable and that it would be dangerous to venture into those Ages. But that was a lie. Those Books were all proper Books, approved by the Guilds, checked regularly by the Maintainers. They would have been carefully written—
designed
to be stable. And he would have known that. So why warn me about them unless he didn’t want me going into them and finding other D’ni?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he
destroyed
them.”

“Maybe not. But I know how he thought. He had no respect for them. And on our Book searches, though he never brought back anything but blank Books, he always noted down where the Books were.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I fear that we’ll look and look and find nothing, because there’ll be nothing to find. You know the depth of his malice, Catherine. You of all people should know that he was quite capable of something like that. Even so …”

Atrus turned, the sentence incomplete. Catherine looked up and saw that Marrim was standing in the doorway.

“What is it?” Atrus asked, going over to her.

“This,” Marrim said, handing Atrus a notebook. “I found it tucked away at the back of one of the drawers.”

He stared at it, amazed. “But this …”

“… was your father’s,” Catherine said, stepping up beside him. She opened it, flicking through the pages quickly, then handed it back.

“Maybe it’s here,” she said.

Decades of understanding between the two made him understand her at once. “His journals?”

“One of his journals,” she said. “You say he kept a record of the Book searches. Well, maybe it’s here. If so, we’ll know where to look. It could save us weeks.”