The Myst Reader (31 page)

Catherine straightened up, then put out her hand to him. “Come. Let me show you something.”

He walked down the slope with her until he stood only a few yards from the edge. Beyond it there was nothing. Nothing but the glow far below them, and the water, spewing up out of the center of that brightness.

“Here,” she said, handing him something small, smooth, and flat.

Atrus looked at it. It was a polished piece of stone, small enough to fit into his hand.

“Well?” she said. “Have you never skimmed a stone before?”

He looked to her, then swung his arm back and cast the stone across the darkness, imagining he was skimming it across the surface of a pond.

The stone skimmed rapidly across the vacant air, and then, as if it had suddenly hit a rock, soared in a steep curve upward, finally disappearing into that mighty rush of water.

Atrus stared, openmouthed, as he lost it in that mighty torrent, then turned, to find that Catherine was laughing softly.

“Your face!”

Atrus snapped his mouth shut, then looked back. He found that he wanted to do it again—to see the stone skim across the imptiness then soar.

“Where does it go?”

“Come,” she said, taking his hand again. “I’ll show you.”

 

§

 

The tunnel through which they walked was small—just big enough for them to walk upright—and perfectly round, like a wormhole through a giant apple, the passage unevenly lit by some property within the rock itself. It led down, continually curving, until it seemed as though they must be walking on the ceiling. And then they came out. Out into brilliant daylight. Out into a landscape as amazing as the one they had left at the far end of the tunnel.

Atrus winced, his eyes pained by the sudden light, and pulled his glasses on, then straightened, looking out.

Just as the dark side had been strange, so this—the bright side of Catherine’s nature, as he saw it—was wonderful. They stood at the top of a great slope—a large rocky hill in the midst of an ocean, one of several set in a rough circle—each hill carpeted with bright, gorgeously scented flowers over which a million butterflied danced and fluttered.

And at the very center of that circle of rocklike hills, a great ringshaped waterfall rushed inward at an angle, toward a single central point far below. Directly over that huge vortex, flickering in and out of visibility, were twisting, vertical ribbons of fast-moving cloud that appeared high up in the air then vanished quickly into the mouth of that great circular falls.

With a shock of recognition, Atrus understood. “We’re on the other side! It’s the source of the great torrent…it falls
through
…”

And even as he said it, his mouth fell open with wonder.

But how? What physical mechanism was involved? For he knew—
knew,
with a sudden, absolute certainty—that if this existed, then there was a physical reason why it existed. This did not break the D’ni laws, it merely twisted them; pushed them to their limits.

He looked to Catherine, a sudden admiration in his eyes.

“This is beautiful. I never guessed…”

She took his hand. “There’s more. Would you like to see?”

“Yes.”

“Out there,” she said, pointing, directing his eyes toward the horizon.

Atrus stared. Huge thunderclouds massed at the horizon, rising up into the sky like steam from a boiling pot. Incredible thunderstorms, their noise muted by distance, filled the air out there, the whole of the horizon, as far as he could see to left and right, filled with flickering lightning.

It completely surrounds the torus
, he realized, turning, looking back at the great hole in the ocean, remembering the great jet of water on the far side of that massive hole. There seemed to be two separate forces at work here—one a jet stream force and the other a ring force to which the water was attracted.

Atrus blinked, then looked to Catherine. “You put most of the mass of the torus at its outer edge, didn’t you?”

She simply smiled at him.

“So the gravity…” Atrus paused, his right fist clenched intently, frown lines etched deep in his brow. “That circle of gravity…
forces
the water through the central hole…then some other force sucks it up into the sky, where it fans out…still captured by the gravitational field of the torus, and falls down the outer edges of that field…
right?
”

She simply smiled at him.

“And as it slowly falls, it forms clouds and the clouds cause the storms and…”

It was impressive. In fact, now that he partly understood it, it was even more impressive than he’d first thought.

He turned, standing, looking about him, then stopped dead. Just across from him was a patch of flowers, nestled in among the lush grass. He walked across, climbing the slope until he stood among them.

Flowers. Blue flowers. Thousands of tiny, delicate blue flowers with tiny, starlike petals and velvet dark stamen.

Moved by the sight, he stooped and plucked one, holding it to his nose, then looked to her.

“How did you know?”

“Know?” Catherine’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “Know what?”

“I thought…No, it doesn’t matter.” Then, changing the subject, “What are you to my father?”

She looked down. “I am his servant. One of his Guild members…”

He looked at her, knowing there was more, but afraid to ask.

After a moment, she spoke again. “I am to be married to him.”

“Married?”

She nodded, unable to look at him.

Atrus sat heavily, the flowers all around him. He closed his fingers, squeezing the tiny, delicate bloom, then let it fall.

His head hung now and his eyes seemed desolate.

“He has commanded me,” she said, stepping closer. “Thirty days, Gehn said. There is to be a great ceremony on Riven…Age Five.”

He looked up, a bitter disappointment in his eyes.

She met his eyes clearly. “I’d rather die.”

Slowly, very slowly, understanding of what she’d said came to his face. “Then…”

“Then you must help me, Atrus. We have thirty days. Thirty days to change things.”

“And if we can’t?”

Catherine turned her head, looking about her at the Age she had written, then looked back at Atrus, her green eyes burning. Burning with such an intensity that he felt transfixed, frozen, utterly overwhelmed by this strange woman and the odd powers she possessed. And as she held his gaze, she reached out for his hand, clenching it tightly in her own, and spoke; her voice filling him with a sudden, almost impulsive confience. “We can do wonders, you and I. Wonders.”

21

~~~~~~~~~~

 

As the sun slowly set, Atrus stood on the top of the tiny plateau, his glasses pulled down tightly over his eyes, his journal open in his hand, looking out across the Age he had written. Below him lay a cold, dark sea, its surface smooth like oil, or like a mirror blackened by age, its sterile waters filling the great bowl that lay between the bloodred sandstone cliffs.

On the shores of that great sea, the land was bare and empty; more desolate even than the desert he had known as a child. Titanic sandstone escarpments, carved by the action of wind and sun, stretched to the horizon on every side, their stark, bloodred shapes interspersed with jagged, night-black chasms.

He had written in the bare minimum this time. Enough to conduct his experiment and no more. Enough to see whether his theories about the flaws in the Age Five book were true or not.

He had built ten such Ages in the past few weeks. Two for each experiment. In this and one other he was testing whether the changes he sought to make in the orbital system of Age Five would have the desired effects, while in others he was experimenting with the structure of the tectonic plates beneath the planet’s crust, the type and strength of the oceanic currents, fluctuations in gravitational fields, and the composition of the crust itself.

What he had done, here and elsewhere, was to recreate the same underlying structures that he had found in the Age Five book, only incorporating specific minor alterations—additions mainly—to the way the thing was phrased. If that new phrasing was correct, then this Age was now stable. And if this was stable, then so would Age Five be once he had written the changes into the book.

Looking about him, he jotted down his observations, then, closing the journal, slipped it into his knapsack.

Thus far his tests had proved one thing conclusively. Age Five was doomed. It would degenerate and be destroyed within a generation, unless he made these vital, telling changes to the book.

Lifting his glasses, he blinked, then rubbed at his eyes. He was tired, more thired than he’d been in years, yet he could not let up now. It was only ten days until the ceremony, and everything—everything—had to be ready for that time.

Pulling his glasses back down, Atrus waited. The moon would be rising soon, and then he’d know.

If he was right, Gehn had placed Age Five’s single moon well inside the synchronous orbital distance from the planet. This had the effect of increasing the planet’s tides dramatically, and, ultimately, would result in the moon being dragged into ever-lower orbits until it would finally smash into the planet’s surface. That final catastrophe would take many lifetimes, but long before that happened, the great tides generated by the moon’s ever closer orbit would destroy the island, smashing it into the surrounding sea.

He needed to push Age Five’s moon back into a stable, synchronous orbit: one where its roataion rate would be equivalent to the planet’s. What complicated the task was that he would have to achieve this in a manner that could not be directly observed.

As the light dimmed, Atrus pulled his cloak tighter about him. The air here was thin and cold, and it would be good to get back to D’ni, if only for some sleep.

He waited, watching as the sun winked then vanished beneath the edge of the horizon. Atrus turned and, pulling up his glasses, looked for the moon. He saw it at once, directly behind him in the sky, low down, the silver-blue huge and ominous.

Wrong
, he thought, chilled by the sight.
It’s much too close.

The tremors began at once, the tiny plateau gently vibrating, as if some machine had started up in the rock beneath his feet.

The sea was stippled now, like a sheet of black, beaten metal.

Atrus stared up at the moon. What had gone wrong? Had he written in a contradiction of some kind? Or were the changes he’d made simply the wrong ones?

Or, in his tiredness, had he mixed up the two books? Was he in the wrong Age—the Age where he had exaggerated the moon’s deteriorating orbit?

The trembling grew, became a steady shaking. There was groaning now from deep within the earth, sharp cracks, the sound of rocks falling, splashing into the sea below, while the sea itself seemed to be boiling, as if in a great cauldron.

In the distance, the land was glowing, not with the silver-blue of moonlight but a fiery orange-red.

A cold wind gusted across the plateau.

Frowning, Atrus stepped over to the edge and, lowering his glasses, increased their magnification.

That distant glow was the molten glow of magma, spewing out from deep within the fiery mantle. Out there, beneath that low and massive moon, the planet’s crust was tearing itself apart.

The noise all about him was deafening now, and the shaking was so bad that he found it hard even to stand without bracing himself. It was time to link back.

Atrus half-turned, lowering his right shoulder, meaning to slip the knapsack from his back and take the Linking Book from inside, but as he did the ground lurched violently.

Knocked from his feet, Atrus reached out blindly, grabbing a nearby outcrop, but though it stopped him sliding, it was no good, for the whole plateau was slowly tipping over, sliding inch by inch toward the sea below.

What’s more, the knapsack was trapped beneath him and when he tried to lift himself to free it, he lost his grip and began to tumble down the tilted face of the plateau.

For a moment his fingers scrabbled at the surface of the rock, and then, abruptly, he was falling through the air.

“No…!”

His cry was cut short as he hit the cold, dark surface of the sea.

For a moment he panicked, not knowing which way he faced, the water in turmoil all about him, and then his head breached the surface and he gasped for air.

Water splashed his face constantly now, filling his mouth and nose. He struggled not to swallow any, struggled to bring his knapsack around so he could get the book.

And then he saw it.

Directly ahead of him, its thundering crest lit almost demonically by the obscenely huge moon that seemed to ride on its back, was the wave. A huge, black wave that towered over the surrounding pinnacles of rock, smashing and splintering them as if they were nothing.

And as it came on, the water all about Atrus grew still and smooth, an eery silence falling. A silence that contrasted with the great roar of the oncoming mountain of water.

For a moment Atrus forgot. For a moment he simply stared at the sight.

Then, abruptly, he snapped into action, and, scrabbling at the sack, his fingers numb from the coldness of the water, he took the Linking Book out and flicked it open.

Home…

And even as Atrus placed his hand upon the page, the moon blinked out and the whole of the sea in which he rested seemed to lift up to join that great black wall of water, the noise so loud it made his whole skull tremble, as if at any moment it would shatter.

 

§

 

Coming to his senses, Atrus found himself lying in an exhausted heap on the cold floor of the chamber, back on D’ni, a puddle of water from his drenched clothes forming beneath his body.