The Myst Reader (104 page)

Laughter again filled the room.

Atrus once again had to smile. He was not on the right trail.

“The beasts are neither civilized, nor distant, nor hostile, nor seen.” The local was truly enjoying this impromptu contest of wits. In fact, everyone in the entire gathering was smiling, watching.

Except Eedrah. Atrus noted that he was hanging on every word of the exchange, but intensely—deeply staring at Atrus, without a hint of a smile on his face. It was enough of a contrast to the others as to cause Atrus to lose his train of thought. He stared back at Eedrah.

The riddler continued. “The civilized control the civilized
and
the uncivilized. The civilized see the civilized
but
the uncivilized see all.”

Cheers arose from around the room.

Atrus glanced back at the speaker, the last clue simply adding to his confusion. He smiled and raised his hands upward, signaling surrender. The guests erupted in applause as the riddler took a bow.

Ro’Jethhe stepped in. “Atrus, it is not so difficult. You will be surprised at the answer.” He was smiling broadly. “Writers and non-writers, it is merely a riddle of words. Bahro, or beast-people, and ahrotahntee, non-writers, otherworlders. Clever, yes?”

Atrus let the words sink in—still not grasping what the connection was. “Beast people?”

“Why, yes,” Ro’Jethhe replied, reaching across to take a fresh cup of wine. “It is, after all, only we of Terahnee and D’ni who can write. The ahrotahntee have no such talent. It is why things are as they are. Surely it is so in D’ni, Atrus?”

Ahrotahntee. Catherine, grasping the riddle, felt herself go cold. She had not heard the term since Atrus’s father, Gehn, had used it.
Outsiders
, it meant.
Book-worlders
. Those who were not of D’ni blood. Or Terahnee…

Atrus sat up straight. “With great respect, you are mistaken, Ro’Jethhe. The ahrotahntee
can
write. You have only to teach them.”

There was a shocked silence. All eyes were on Atrus now, as if he had spoken something obscene.

Ro’Jethhe looked aside, clearly embarrassed. “You jest with us, Atrus, surely?”

Atrus looked about him, his eyes going from face to face, not understanding what was going on. “But Catherine writes, and
she
is ahrotahntee!”

There was a universal gasp. A look of utter shock had come to Jethhe Ro’Jethhe’s face, while all about the chamber men glared at Atrus and his party with open hostility, while their wives and daughters blushed and looked down. Even several of the stewards, who were not known to react, had glanced up at Atrus’s words and were looking to one another, as if asking what to do.

“Take care what you say,” Ro’Jethhe said, wiping his mouth.

“But it is true,” Atrus said, ignoring Catherine’s hand on his arm. “Indeed, my grandmother and my mother were both ahrotahntee!”

There was sudden uproar. Ro’Jethhe stood, looking to the stewards, who immediately went to the doors and, taking keys from the belts about their waists, proceeded to lock them. Ro’Jethhe watched them, then, his face hard and angry, turned back, facing Atrus.

“Even were such things true,” he said, “they should not be uttered. The unseen…”

“The unseen?” Atrus said, standing and taking a step toward his host. “What is this riddle?”

Atrus stopped, listening suddenly. There were noises in the walls surrounding them. A bumping and then a distinct thud, followed by a curse. Then, suddenly, a door opened in the wall where, but a split second before, there had been no door. Atrus knew that because he had been staring at the spot the very instant it had opened. And through that door, like ghosts, came six pale, silent figures, their shaven heads like ivory, their black, tight-fitting clothes making them seem more like ciphers than men. For they were men, despite their bowed, obedient heads, their averted eyes, their palpable fear of the steward who, with a snarling face, drove them silently across the floor between the Terahnee and out through a second door that opened as though by magic.

Atrus looked about him, wondering for that brief instant why they were not all as shocked as he was shocked, but all he saw were statues—faces that stared but did not see; eyes that, for that moment, were blank as stone. And as he saw them he understood, and that understanding sank into him, deeper and deeper, like a smooth, dark rock tumbling slowly to the ocean floor.

Slaves
. The relyimah—the “unseen”—were slaves. And this whole place…

Atrus’s mind reeled. Looking about him now, he saw not a world of splendor, but a world built to his father’s dark design; a world where the false notion of blood had so blinded its natives that they saw their fellow men as beasts—that was, when they designed to see them at all.

The thought of it staggered him.

Atrus turned, looking to Jethhe Ro’Jethhe, seeing the man suddenly transformed. But his host, this seemingly genial man he had thought so kind, was glaring at him now.

“I spoke but the truth,” Atrus said.

Ro’Jethhe’s answering words were curt, acidic. “You have said enough. Nor will you repeat what you have said. Do you understand me, Atrus of D’ni?”

“Oh, I see now,” Atrus answered, a coldness shaping his words. “I see and understand.”

“Make sure you do.” Ro’Jethhe turned, gesturing to his senior steward. “Kaaru!”

At once the steward was at his side.

“See Master Atrus and his party to their rooms. And make sure they stay there.”

“What is this, Ro’Jethhe?” Atrus protested.

“It appears we cannot trust your lying tongue. That being so, you will be confined to your rooms until I get word from the king.” And with that he turned his back and hurried from the room. Within a minute all the rest of the Terahnee had likewise gone.

Atrus turned, looking to his tiny party, then looked across at the steward. The man had never seemed handsome, but now, studying his features, Atrus thought he could detect something brutish, something almost bestial about him. The steward, however, merely bowed.

“If you would come with me…”

 

 

§

 

 

Back in their room they held a crisis meeting. Catherine, Marrim, Carrad, Oma, and Esel sat in chairs while Atrus paced the floor like a caged animal.

“We cannot stay,” Catherine said.

“I agree,” Esel said. “We should leave here immediately.”

Oma nodded. “Yes, and destroy the Books
and
seal the Great King’s Temple once again.”

Atrus shook his head. “The king gave his word.”

“Yes,” Catherine said, “but that was when he thought we were D’ni. Now we are ahrotahntee.” She laughed bitterly. “Why, it’s a wonder they can still
see
us!”

Atrus turned, facing her. “I do not like this any more than you, Catherine. But Ro’Eh Ro’Dan is a decent man. I believe he will keep his word.”

“You want to stay?”

“Perhaps we should. We might use our influence to change things here.”

“
Change
things?” Catherine looked away. “All right,” she said. “Do what you must. But send Carrad back to tell Master Tamon what we know.”

“And what
do
we know?”

“That this is a slave society. What more do we
need
to know?”

“How they treat their slaves, perhaps?” Atrus said.

“But what
can
we do?” Oma asked. “You heard Eedrah. There are two hundred million of them.”

“We wait. But first we send Carrad back to the plateau.” Atrus paused, then shook his head, clearly distressed. “There has been a misunderstanding, on
both
our parts, but the Terahnee never lied to us.”

“Only because we never asked the right questions!”

Atrus looked to Catherine. “That’s true. We let what we saw seduce us; we mistook the surface for the substance. But that was our fault, not theirs! As I say, they never lied.”

“But this whole world is a lie!”

“Maybe so, but we cannot blame Ro’Jethhe and his like for that. They know nothing else.”

“And that is what I most fear,” Catherine said. “You want to give them eyes, Atrus, but what if they do not want to see? What if we cannot
make
them see? Conditioning is a powerful thing. To break it in an individual is difficult enough, but when that conditioning is social…”

“You forget one thing, Catherine. We have the ear of the king.”

“His ear, yes, but not his eyes.” She stared back at him, then, quieter. “I think you’re wrong, Atrus. I don’t believe they
can
be changed.”

 

 

§

 

 

Atrus woke in the night from a fitful sleep—a sleep plagued by dreams of doors opening and closing before and behind, in rooms that turned and twisted in an unending maze—and turned, expecting to find Catherine there beside him in the bed. But she was gone.

He sat up, then saw her, there on the far side of the room, at the desk, a lamp beside her as she wrote in her journal.

“Catherine?”

She half-turned toward him. “I couldn’t sleep. So I began to reread what I’d written since we came here.”

“And?” He stood, then went across, taking a chair beside her.

“Kitchens. There were no kitchens. That alone should have alerted me. All that food awaiting us wherever we went, and no sign of it ever having been prepared. It was like everything. Magical, it seemed. And we accepted that.”

“We had no reason not to.”

“No. And then there was what Hadre said to us when he first met us. Do you remember? He said, ‘Can I see you?’ And his eyes—I remember it now—they seemed to look straight through us. Until you mentioned D’ni. And then it was like a connection was made. He s
aw
us.”

“And Eedrah, too…” Atrus shook his head. “I’d come to like him. But how can I trust him now? He might have told us. Indeed, he
should
have told us.”

“Maybe he thought we knew.”

There was a knock. Atrus looked to Catherine, then stood and walked over to the door.

“Who is it?” he asked quietly.

“It is I. Eedrah. I need to talk with you.”

Atrus opened the door a fraction. Eedrah was standing there in the half-dark, alone.

“All right,” Atrus said, opening the door more fully.

Eedrah hesitated, then stepped through. As the door closed behind him, he glanced about him nervously. “There’s something I must show you.”

 

 

§

 

 

Silently they followed, down to the end of that long, shadowed corridor and left into a narrow gallery. There, a mere two or three paces in, Eedrah stopped and, leaning into the wall, pushed.

A door opened where a door had not been.

They followed, down three narrow steps and into a dark passage that ran
within
the walls. Atrus reached out and touched the smooth, worn stone. No wonder the walls had seemed so thick.

Two steps in and the door closed silently, depriving them of light. Several seconds passed and then a glow grew in the darkness close by, illuminating first the hand that held the lamp, and then the face, the chest, the walls surrounding them.

Eedrah put a finger to his lips, then turned and walked on.

On, through branching corridors and down a long, straight flight of steps, the stone worn by four thousand years of use. And as they went, Atrus saw it in his mind. Saw the endless silent figures who had passed this way, fetching and carrying, never a word or sound betraying their presence to their masters behind the walls.

The relyimah—the Unseen.

Now and then they would pass a row of niches set into the wall, in which were all manner of things for cleaning and repairs. Elsewhere were built-in storage cupboards, and everywhere doors and tunnels branched off. Here, too, at this lower level, were well-stocked kitchens with long, marble-topped tables and huge stone shelves, and massive pantries, every surface spotlessly clean.

All was revealed in the pale white glow of the lamp, appearing from nothing and vanishing behind them in the dark.

A whole world beneath the world.

Beyond the kitchens the tunnel broadened and four long, broad rails of glistening silver were set into the floor, running parallel into the darkness ahead. They walked between those rails, beneath a high, curved ceiling. A hundred paces they went and then the tunnel opened out into a broad chamber, along both sides of which, on spurs that jutted from the central lines, rested the empty wagons that ran upon the rails. Huge wagons of some dull, rocklike material, thick ropes hanging limply from the great eye-like hooks that studded their sides.

On they went, into a smaller tunnel that turned then briefly climbed. Above them now the ceiling was breached every so often by big circular vents. Glancing up, Atrus had a glimpse of stars—a tight circle of brightly glimmering stars as at the bottom of a deep, deep well.

And on, through a strange gallery that ran away into the darkness on either side. Here, to their right as they passed, a dozen thick ropes stretched down diagonally from a long gash high up on the wall to the far side, where they were tethered to about a dozen big, studlike protuberances, that seemed to swell like mushrooms from the surface of the floor.

Like the taut strings of a huge musical instrument
, Atrus thought, not understanding what he saw.

And then, suddenly, they were standing before a massive studded door, into which was set a grill. Eedrah turned to them, then lightly rapped upon the door.

No noise. No sounds of hurrying feet. Only that same dead silence. So silent, that Atrus did not at first notice that the grill had opened. A face stared out at them for an instant and then the grill snapped shut.