The Myst Reader (22 page)

He yawned, then, knowing how his father hated to be kept waiting, went outside.

Pulling on his glasses, he studied the scene that met his eyes.

Beneath him the slope was a tawny brown, furred like an animal’s back. Beyond it the folds of land that surrounded the lake were revealed in browns and greens—so many different shades that he caught his breath to think of such subtle variation. And the textures! He walked out slowly, onto the ridge. Tall, dark trees, their crowns explosions of jet black leaves, covered the left flank of the nearest hill, ending abruptly in a smooth covering of bright green grass. Atrus laughed.

“Why do you laugh, Master?”

Atrus turned, facing the acolyte, the smile gone from his face. He had not seen him when he’d stepped out.

“I laughed because of that hill there. It reminded me … well, of a half-shaven head. The way those trees end in a straight line …”

The priest stepped up and looked, then nodded; but there was not the slightest trace of amusement in his expression. He looked back at Atrus, then, with a bow, said, “Your father awaits you, Master.”

Atrus sighed inwardly. It was his fourth day on the island and still the man retained his distance.

He walked slowly down the slope, silent now and thoughtful, looking about him at the swell and fold of hills surrounding the lake. As the village came into sight, he stared at it a while, then looked to the acolyte.

“What is your name?”

“My
name?
” The man seemed strangely intimidated by the query.

“Yes, your name. What is it?”

“My name is … One.”

“One?” Atrus gave a small laugh. “You mean, the number one?”

The man nodded, unable to meet Atrus’s eyes.

“And was that always your name?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “My birth name was Koena.”

“Koena,” Atrus said, walking on, his eyes taking in the pleasant shapes of the thatched roofs just below him now, the covered walkways, the delightful contrast of the lake’s vivid blue against the bright greens and russets of the land sloping down to it. “But One is the name my father gave you?”

Koena nodded.

A faint smile appeared at the corners of Atrus’s mouth. Of course. He should have known. He turned his head, studying the man a moment, not disliking his long, rather severe features, noting in the unforgiving daylight just how coarse the cloth of his cloak actually was, how crudely fashioned the symbols on it.

“Have you been my father’s helper long?”

“A thousand days.”

Then this Age was indeed “recent.” Gehn had created it only a matter of three years ago at most. But what about before that? Had it existed in any form at all? Did these people have any memories of a time before the Lord Gehn had come among them? And if they did, were those memories true memories, or were they also
written in?

He knew from his studies that you could not actually
write
such things: not directly, anyway. Yet when you created an Age, with all of its complexities, then a great shadow of cause and effect was thrown back, such that the Age, though new created, still had a “history” of a kind. Not a real history, of course. How could it have a real history, after all? But in the minds and memories of its inhabitants it would seem as if it had. To them, the past would seem as real as it did to him or Gehn.

Or so Gehn argued. For himself he was no longer quite so sure.

A strange, high-pitched cry from somewhere to his left made Atrus start, then turn to look for its source. There was a strange flapping noise in the air, then a shadow whisked past his feet. He looked up in time to see a strange, plump-bodied animal shoot past, swimming, it seemed, through the air.

Koena was staring at him, astonished. “Master?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

“That!” Atrus said, pointing after it. “That …
animal
… what is it?”

“
That?
That is a bird, Master.”

Atrus stared openmouthed, watching the “bird” circle over the lake, the flapping noise coming from the long arms it used to pull itself through the air. He watched it swoop, then dive.

“Amazing!” Atrus said. “I’ve never seen its like!”

Koena was staring at him now.

Atrus shook his head. In the other Ages there had been many birds, but never anything like this. This was simply bizarre. It was more like a small rodent than a bird and seemed far too heavy to fly, and those strange, furred wings.

What did he write?
he wondered.
Why would Gehn create such a creature? Or had he? What if this wasn’t deliberate? What if it was an accident?

Atrus turned, looking to Koena.

“Come,” he said, intrigued by the thought that his father might purposefully have created such a creature. “Let’s go down. My father will be angry if he is kept waiting.”

GEHN, WHO WAS FINISHING HIS BREAKFAST
, sat at a table covered in a thick red cloth edged with golden tassels. He was eating from a golden bowl, a golden goblet at his side. Behind him, on a stand, was a silk pennant, the D’ni symbol of the book emblazoned in black on its pure white background. Atrus stepped into the tent, looking about him, noting the luxuries that were on display on every side. In the far corner of the tent was a massive wooden bed, the headboard clearly of local design. Beside it was a D’ni dressing screen, painted gold and blue and carmine.

He stepped forward. “You sent for me, father?”

“Ah, Atrus …” Gehn said, wiping his mouth with a silken cloth, then threw it aside. “I thought we should continue with your lessons, Atrus.”

“Father?”

Gehn nodded, then took his arm and led him across to a low table in the corner on which a large-scale map of the island had been spread out.

Atrus stretched out a hand and touched the bottom left-hand corner with his index finger. “Where’s that?”

“Gone,” Gehn said, looking at him strangely.

“And that?” he said, noting another, smaller island just beyond the sea passage.

“Gone.”

Atrus looked to his father and frowned. “How?”

Gehn shrugged.

“I …” Atrus shook his head. “Is this what you want me to look for? Things disappearing?”

“No, Atrus. I want you simply to observe.”

Atrus stared at his father a moment, then looked back at the map. As far as he could see everything else was precisely as he recalled it from his preliminary journeys around the island, down to the smallest detail.

Gehn went across to his desk and, opening the leather case he had brought with him from D’ni this time, took a slender notebook from inside and handed it to Atrus. “Here.”

Atrus opened it and scanned a few lines, then looked back at his father. “What are these?”

“What you have there are a number of random phrases from the Age Thirty-seven book. What I want you to do, Atrus, is to try to ascertain what aspects of this Age they relate to, and how and why they create the effects they do.”

“You want me to analyze them?”

“No, Atrus. But I do want you to begin to grip the relationship between the words that are written on the page and the complex entity—the physical, living Age—that results. You see, while our Art
is
a precise one, its effects are often quite surprising, owing to the complexity of the web of relationships that are created between things. The meaning of an individual phrase can be altered by the addition of other phrases, often to the extent that the original description bears no relation whatsoever to the resultant reality. That is why the D’ni were so adamant about contradictions. Contradictions can destroy an Age. Too often they simply make it break apart under the strain of trying to resolve the conflicting instructions.”

Atrus nodded. “Yet if what you say is true, how can I tell if what I am observing relates directly to the phrases in this book? What if other phrases have distorted the end result?”

“That is for you to discover.”

“But if I have only these few phrases …”

Gehn stared at him, then raised an eyebrow, as if to indicate that he ought to be able to work that one out for himself.

“You mean, you want me to guess?”

“Not guess, Atrus. Speculate. I want you to try to unravel the puzzle of this world. To look back from the world to the words and attempt to understand exactly why certain things resulted. It is, you will come to see, every bit as important as learning the D’ni words and phrases that purport to describe these things. Indeed, much of my experimenting over the years has been along these very lines. I have learned a great deal from my observations, Atrus, and so will you.”

“Father.”

“Then go now. And take the map, if you wish. I have no further need of it.”

ATRUS SAT IN THE LONG MEADOW ABOVE THE
lake, the folded map in his lap, his father’s notebook open at his side. Surrounded by the thigh-high grass he could not be seen, unless by someone working on the slopes on the far side of the lake, but right now it was midday and the villagers were in their huts, eating.

He had begun with the simplest of the twenty phrases his father had copied out for him—one which related to the composition of the soil here. From his own studies he knew how important the underlying rock and soil was to the kind of Age that resulted, especially the soil. A good rich soil, full of nutrients and minerals, would produce good harvests, which in turn would allow the people of that Age to spend less time carrying out the backbreaking task of cultivation. That was crucially important, for a people who did not have to spend every daylight hour providing food for their tables was a people that would quickly develop a culture. For culture, Atrus understood, was a product of excess.

Yes, he thought, recalling his days in the cleft. He understood it now. Had Anna been born and raised in the cleft, they would not have survived. Had she been simply a cultivator and no more, they would never have had enough, for there had never been enough growing space, enough seeds, enough water—enough of
anything
—to allow them to survive. What there
had
been was Anna’s talent as a painter and a sculptor. It was that, ironically, which had kept them alive: that had provided them with the salt they needed, the seeds and flour and fuel, yes, and all of those tiny luxuries that had made life there bearable. Without them they would have died.

As it was, he had grown beyond the expectations of such a dry, uninhabitable place. The rich soil of Anna’s mind had nurtured him, bringing him to ripeness.

Only now did he understand that. After years of blaming her, he saw it clearly once again.

The soil. It was all down to the soil. Growth began not in the sunlight but in the darkness, in tiny cracks, deep down in the earth.

Atrus smiled, then looked to the side, reading the D’ni phrase again. By rights, the soil here ought to have been rich and fertile, yet from his own observations he saw that other factors had affected it somehow. There was a slight acidity to it that was unhealthy.

He frowned, wishing that his father had given him the whole book to read and not just random phrases. Yet he knew how protective his father was of his books.

He was about to lay back and think the problem through, when he heard a tiny cry from somewhere just behind him. Setting the map aside, Atrus stood, looking about him at the meadow.

Nothing. At least nothing he could see. He took a few paces, then frowned. He couldn’t have imagined it, surely?

It came again, this time a clear cry for help.

He ran toward the sound, then stopped, astonished. Just ahead of him the thick grass ended in a narrow chasm about six feet across and twelve or fifteen long—a chasm that had not been there the last time he had looked.

He stepped up to its edge, careful not to fall, and peered down into its darkness. It was the girl—the one he’d seen that first morning. She had fallen in and now seemed stuck up to her knees in the dark earth at the bottom of the crack some eight or ten feet down.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you out.”

He turned, looking about him. He needed a rope or a branch or something. Anything he could throw down to her, then haul her up. Yet even as he stood there, thinking about it, he heard the soft fall of earth and, looking back, saw how it had fallen over her, making her position worse.