The Myst Reader (25 page)

“That
is
what you wanted, no?”

Atrus nodded.

“Then go. But try not to be too long. I have wasted enough time already on those ingrates!”

 

§

 

The air in the cave was musty, but no more so than on the other occasions he had gone there. It was—and this was the important point—free of the hideous stench of sulfur. The very normality of it raised his spirits.

There
, he heard his father say, handing him the book,
I’ve fixed it.

Well, now he’d know.

Atrus climbed up out of the cave, then stood on the boulder, overlooking the slope, breathing in the clear, sweet air.

It was true! Gehn had fixed it! There was water in the lake and rich grass on the slopes. He could hear birdsong and the sound of the wind rustling through the nearby trees. Down below the village seemed peaceful, the islanders going about their lives quite normally.

He laughed, then jumped down, hurrying now, keen to ask Salar just what exactly had happened in his absence, what changes she had witnessed—but coming around he hump, he stopped dead, perturbed by the sight that met his eyes.

He ran to the ridge, then stood there, breathing shallowly as he looked out across the harbor. The boats were there, moored in a tight semicircle, just as before, and there was the bridge…but beyond?

He gasped, his theory confirmed in a moment. The meeting hut was gone, and the tent. In their place was a cluster of huts, like those on this side of the bridge.

Hearing a noise behind him he turned, facing Koena, surprised to see that the man was in ordinary village clothes.

“Koena?”

The man tensed at the word, the thick wooden club he held gripped tightly. There was fear in his face.

“What is it?” Atrus asked, surprised.

“Usshua umma immuni?”
Koena asked, his hostility unmistakable now.

Atrus blinked. What was that language? Then, realizing he was in danger, he put his hands up, signaling that he meant no harm. “It’s me, Koena. Atrus. Don’t you recognize me?”

“Usshua illila umawa?”
the frightened native demanded, waving his club.

Atrus shook his head, as if to clear it. What was wrong here? Why was everything so different? Out of instinct he turned back toward the cave, then stopped, realizing that there would be no Linking Book there. He felt in his pocket anxiously, then relaxed. His copy Linking Book was there.

Koena was still watching him, his eyes narrowed. But, of course, he wasn’t Koena, or not the Koena he knew anyway, for his father had never been here to make him his acolyte.
No
, Atrus thought,
and nor have I.
For this was not the Thirty-seventh Age—or, at least, not that same Age his father had “created” and he, Atrus, had lived in; this was another world entirely, like it—so like it as to be frighteningly familiar—and yet somewhere else.

His head swam, as if the solid ground had fallen away from him.
I am in another universe entirely, in another Age; one that my father tampered into existence.

An Age where he knew everyone and was not known. He nodded to himself, understanding what had happened. His father’s erasures in the Book had taken them back down the central trunk of the great tree of possibility and along another branch entirely.

Atrus took one last long look at the Age, then, knowing he was not wanted, turned and fled toward the cave, where, after he was gone, his Linking Book would never be found.

 

§

 

In Atrus’s absence Gehn had lit the fire and had sunk into the chair beside it. That was where Atrus found him, slumped back, his pipe discarded on the floor beside him, his mouth open in a stupor.

Gehn was not sleeping, or if he was, it was a fitful kind of sleep, for his eyelids fluttered and from time to time he would mutter then give a tiny groan.

Looking at him, Atrus felt angry and betrayed. Gehn had said that he was going to fix it, but he hadn’t. That other world, the
real
Thirty-seventh Age, had been destroyed, or, at least, his link to it. And that was all Gehn’s fault, because he hadn’t understood what he was doing. Atrus stood over his father, feeling a profound contempt for him.

“Wake up!” he shouted, leaning over Gehn and giving him a shake. “I need to talk to you!”

For a moment he thought he hadn’t managed to wake Gehn. Yet as he went to shake him again, Gehn reached up and pushed his hand aside.

“Leave me be!” he grumbled. “Go on…go to your room, boy, and leave me in peace!”

“No!” Atrus said defiantly. “I won’t! Not until this is settled.”

Gehn’s left eye pried open. A kind of snarling smile appeared at one corner of his mouth.
“Settled?”

“We need to talk,” Atrus said, keeping firm to his purpose, determined not to let his father browbeat or belittle him this time.

“Talk?”
Gehn’s slow laughter had an edge of mockery to it now. “What could we possibly have to talk about, you and I?”

“I want to talk about the Art. About what it is. What it
really
is.”

Gehn stared at him disdainfully, then, sitting up, reached beside his chair for his pipe.

“Go and get some sleep, boy, and stop talking such nonsense. What do
you
know about the Art?”

“Enough to know that you’re wrong, father. That your Ages are unstable because you don’t understand what you’ve been doing all this while!”

Atrus had only guessed about most of Gehn’s worlds being unstable, but it seemed he’d hit the bull’s-eye with that comment, for Gehn sat forward, his pallid face suddenly ash white.

“You’re wrong!” Gehn hissed. “You’re just a boy. What do
you
know?”

“I know that you don’t understand the Whole!”

Gehn roared with amusement. “And you think
you
have all the answers, eh, boy?”

Atrus leaned over the table, determined to outface his father. “Some of them. But they’re not ones
you
want to here. You’d rather carry on as you are, stumbling blindly through the Ages, copying this phrase out of that book and that one out of another, as if you could somehow chance upon it that way.”

Gehn’s hands had slowly tightened their grip on the arms of the chair; now, pulling himself up out of the chair, his anger exploded. As Atrus reeled back, Gehn shouted into his face, spitting with fury.

“How
dare
you think to criticize me! Me, who taught you all you know! Who brought you here out of that godforsaken crack and educated you! How dare you even
begin
to think you have the answers!”

He poked Atrus hard in the chest. “How long have you been doing this now, eh, boy? Three years? Three and a half? And how long have I been studying the Art? Thirty years now! Thirty years! Since I was four.”

Gehn made a small noise of disgust. “You think because you managed to make one measly Age that you know it all, but you don’t, boy! You do not even know the start of it. Here…”

Gehn turned and went over to the desk. To Atrus’s dismay he picked up Atrus’s book and leafed it open. For a moment or two he read in silence.

“This phrase here…look how unnecessarily ornate it is…that’s how a novice writes, boy. It lacks strength. It lacks economy of expression.” And, reaching across, he took the pen and dipped it in the ink pot.

Atrus watched, horrified, knowing what was to come, yet still unable to believe that his father would actually dare to tamper with
his
Age.

But Gehn seemed oblivious of him now. Sitting at his desk, he drew the book toward him, then began to delete symbols here and there, using the D’ni negative, simplifying the phrases Atrus had spent so long perfecting—phrases which Atrus knew, from long reading in the ancient D’ni texts, were the perfect way of describing the things he waned in his world.

“Please…” Atrus pleaded. “There is a reason for all those words. They
have
to be there!”

“In what book did you find this?” Gehn asked, tapping another of his phrases. “This nonsense about the blue flowers?”

“It wasn’t in a book…”

“Ridiculous!” Gehn said, barely masking his contempt. “Frivolous nonsense, that’s all it is! This is overwritten, that’s all! There is far too much unnecessary detail!”

And, without another word, Gehn proceeded to score out the section about the flowers.

“No!”
Atrus cried out, taking a step toward the desk.

Gehn glared at him, his voice stern. “Be quiet, boy, and let me concentrate!”

Atrus dropped his head and groaned, but Gehn seemed not to notice the pain his son was in. he turned the page and gave a tiny laugh, as if he’d found something so silly, so ludicrous, that it was worthy only of contempt.

“And this…” he said, dipping the pen into the ink pot once again, then scoring out one after another of the carefully-written symbols. “It’s no good, boy. This description…it’s superfluous!”

“Please…”
Atrus said, taking a step toward him. “Leave it be now. Please, father. I beg you…”

But Gehn was unstoppable. “Oh no, and this won’t do, either. This will have to go. I mean…”

Gehn looked up suddenly, the laughter fading from his face. “You understand me clearly now?”

Atrus swallowed. “Father?”

Gehn’s eyes were cold now; colder than Atrus had ever seen them. “You must understand one thing, Atrus, and that is that you
do not
understand. Not yet, anyway. And you don’t have the answers. You might
think
you have, but you’re mistaken. You can’t learn the D’ni secrets overnight. It’s simply not possible.”

Atrus fell silent under his father’s stern gaze.

Gehn sighed, then spoke again. “I misjudged you, Atrus, didn’t I? There is something of your grandmother in you…something
headstrong
…something that likes to meddle.”

Atrus opened his mouth to speak, but Gehn raised his hand. “Let me
finish!”

Atrus swallowed deeply, then said what he’d been meaning to say all along, whether it angered Gehn or not; because he had to say it now or burst.

“You said that you had fixed the Thirty-seventh Age.”

Gehn smiled. “I did.”

Atrus shook his head.

Gehn met his eyes calmly. “Yes…?”

“I mean, it’s not the same. Oh, the lake’s the same and the village, even the appearance of the people. But it’s not the same. They didn’t know me.”

Gehn shook his head. “It’s
fixed
.”

“But my friends. Salar, Koena…”

Gehn stared at he cover of the book a while, hen picked it up and turned toward the fire.

Atrus took a step toward him. “Let
me
fix it. Let me help them.”

Gehn glanced at him contemptuously, then took another step toward the flickering grate.

“Father?”

The muscle beneath Gehn’s right eye twitched. “The book is defective.”

“No!”
Atrus made to cross the room and stop him, to wrestle the book from him if necessary, but the desk was between them. Besides, it was already too late. With a tiny little movement, Gehn cast the book into the flames, then stood there, watching, as its pages slowly crackled and curled at the edges, turning black, the symbols burning up one by one, dissolving slowly into ash and nothingness.

Atrus stood there looking on, horrified. But it was too late. The bridge between the Ages was destroyed.

 

§

 

In the blue light of the lantern each object in that quiet chamber seemed glazed in ice—each chair and cupboard, the massive wooden bed, the desk. In contrast, the shadows in the room were black, but not just any black, these were intensely black—the empty blackness of nonexistence.

To a casual eye it might have seemed that nothing there was real; that every object trapped within that cold, unfeeling glare was insubstantial—the projection of some dark, malicious deity who, on a moment’s whim, might tear the pages from the book in which all this was written and, with a god’s indifference, banish this all into the shadow.

All that is, but for the young man seated on a chair at the center of it all, the light reflected in his sad, pale eyes.

Slowly Atrus returned to himself, then looked about him. The last few hours were a blank; where he’d been and what he’d done were a complete mystery. All he knew was that he was sitting in his room once more, the lantern lit, his journal open on the desk beside him. He looked, then read what he had written on the left-hand page.

My father is mad.

Remembering, he shuddered, unable to believe what his father had done. And yet the memory was burned into the whiteness of his mind. If he closed his eyes, he could see the pages slowly charring, each one lifted delicately by the flame, as if the fire had read each phrase before consuming it.

Unless, of course, that memory is false, and I, too, am one of my father’s “creations”…

But he knew beyond question that that wasn’t so. The experience on the Thirty-seventh Age had proved that to him beyond all doubt. Gehn was no god. No. He was simply a man—a weak and foolish man, irresponsible and vain. Yes, and for all his bluster about making D’ni great again, he had forgotten precisely what it was that had made the D’ni extraordinary. The reason why their empire had lasted for so long. It was not their power, nor the fact that they had once ruled a million worlds, it was their restraint, their astonishing humility.

Gehn claimed that he, Atrus, knew nothing, but it wasn’t so. He had read the histories of D’ni, and had seen, in those pages, the long struggle of the D’ni elders to suppress the baser side of their nature; to instill in their people the virtues of patience, service, and humility. Yes, and for the best part of sixty thousand years they had succeeded. Until Veovis.