The Myst Reader (87 page)

Maybe that had been wrong, for her brief from the elders was to teach them useful skills—reading and writing and the use of numbers—but it would have been lean fare indeed had she not seasoned it with tales.

She smoothed her hands over the surface of the desk, then, knowing she had come here for a purpose, crouched down and began to take her things from the drawers, slipping them into her knapsack.

Last of all she removed her journal from the bottom drawer, pausing a moment to open it and read the last few entries. She had noticed how Atrus wrote everything down, keeping a daily record of events, but she had never thought to do the same until two months back, when, on a search of one of the midlevel houses, she had come upon an unused notebook. Since then, she had made the time each evening to set down her thoughts about the day’s activities, to
reflect
on what she’d done. And now that she did, she understood the purpose of it. If she were a boat, making her way across life’s water, then the journal was her compass. It let her steer her course. For how could she know where she was going without a reference to where she’d been.

Which made it only all the more curious that Atrus’s father, Gehn, had not seen that. Reading his journals, she had found it strange how little Gehn had reflected on the world about him. Gehn’s was not, as she understood it, a true intellectual curiosity, he was interested only in forcing the world to fit his first conception of it: a conception warped by his youthful experiences and the unbridled power of the art of writing.

Marrim closed the notebook and slipped it into the sack, then looked about her again. Even in the last few minutes the shadows in the room had deepened. In a moment the sun would sink below the horizon and it would be night. And she would be gone from here again.

She had already said her good-byes, her mother clutching her tearfully, he father taking her hands and squeezing them—as much emotion in that as in all her mother’s embraces. Now Irras and Carrad awaited her at the clearing in the wood. But still she stood there, reluctant to leave while one shred of light remained.

At such moments there was no logic to events; one had to go with the feeling.

The sun’s last light threw a bar of red across the open doorway to her right. Into that light now stepped a child. A young girl.

Marrim blinked, as if she had imagined it, but the child was still there, looking across at her, the dying light reflected in the moist pools of her eyes.

“Allem?”

Allem slowly came across. From close up Marrim could see she had been crying.

“You will come back, won’t you, Marrim?”

Marrim knelt, embracing her. “Of course I will.”

“You promise?”

“I promise. Now go. Your father will be angry if he knows you are here.”

The girl nodded but did not pull away. “I had to come. You’ve meant so much to us.”

Marrim sniffed. “And you…I enjoyed teaching you. You were good pupils. You made it easy for me.”

The girl looked up. “Can I come with you?”

“Come?” Marrim went to shake her head, but Allem spoke again.

“I don’t mean now. I mean later. When I’m grown up.”

Again Marrim made to shake her head, but then, relenting, she nodded. “Yes, Allem. When you’re older.”

 

 

§

 

 

Atrus and Catherine were in the library on Chroma’Agana to greet them, as first Irras, and then Carrad, and finally Marrim linked through.

“Well…” he said, stepping back. “All is prepared. When the teams link through we can begin.”

The other team members would arrive tonight, but Atrus had wanted his team leaders back earlier to brief them.

“Which Ages did you finally choose, Master Atrus?” Irras asked. He had helped Atrus catalog the Ages.

“Six in all,” Atrus answered. “I’ve chosen old worlds to begin with. Family Ages of some solidity.”

“Will we be using the Maintainers’ suit?” Carrad asked.

“Not this time,” Atrus said, yet he glanced at Catherine as he did so, as if this had been a topic of debate between them.

They linked through to K’veer. There Gavas awaited them with a boat. Marrim greeted him, then took her seat in the stern, staring past the overhang of rock into the cavern beyond.

As they rowed out under the ledge and onto the lake, Marrim glanced at Atrus and, seeing him watching her, looked away, smiling to herself. It was so good to see him again. So good to be back. She had enjoyed her spell teaching, but this was her real work.
This
was where she belonged.

That morning’s briefings were long and highly detailed. Atrus was leaving nothing to chance. He had prepared information for each of the team leaders, giving them details of the terrain, the names of the families who had owned the Ages, and, as a precaution, basic points of D’ni etiquette. Last of all he handed them copies of the letter of introduction he had penned. Marrim stared at hers a moment, studying the dark green seal that had the imprint of a D’ni letter at its center, then slipped it into her jacket pocket.

The afternoon was spent in preparation, making up backpacks for each team member, with all-weather clothes and sufficient food. It had been decided that they would camp out in the Ages, if necessary, with one team member remaining at the link point, ready to get a message back to D’ni at a moment’s notice.

“I don’t expect trouble,” Atrus said, explaining the decision, “but we had best prepare for it.”

Even so, he would not let them take any weapons into the Ages. Their intentions were peaceful, and should the worst come to the worst and they were taken prisoner and searched, he did not want their captors finding anything upon them that might suggest otherwise.

“The Ages themselves are harmless. The Maintainers were careful to ensure that. And the survivors, if there are any, will undoubtedly be D’ni. They may not welcome you at first, but they will certainly not harm you.”

 

 

§

 

 

They slept that night in D’ni. In the morning they rose early, while the lake was still dark, and gathered in the space before the makeshift library.

A month previously, Atrus had had them carry down six of the big stone pedestals from one of the common libraries. These were now spaced out along the harbor front. A lamp had been set up above each, to illuminate the tilted lecterns on which lay the open Books, their descriptive panels glowing softly.

At a word from Atrus, the six teams of four lined up before their respective pedestals.

Atrus looked down the line of tense, nervous faces. Then, without a further word, he placed his hand against the panel and linked.

In less than a minute it was done. They stepped up, one by one, to the lecterns and disappeared, like ghosts vanishing into the air, leaving the harbor front empty, even as the lake began to glow with the faint light of morning.

 

 

§

 

 

Marrim stood at the center of the deserted village and looked about her, her vision darkened. It was six hours now and they had found no sign of life. The plague, it seemed, had taken them all.

The first sign of it had been in the cave. There, in a heap upon the floor beside the Linking Book, they had found two skeletons, their bones intertwined, their cloaks, rotted by damp, tearing like spiders’ webs beneath her touch.

Veovis
, she thought, and in her mind she saw Veovis and A’Gaeris, masked, their own hands gloved to protect them from contagion, placing the palms of the dead men onto the Book.

It was horrifying, yet it had been as nothing beside the other sights she’d witnessed. She had gone inside one hut only to find a whole family—mother, father, and their two young children—wiped out, their bones stretched out on the rotting mattress, their fleshless fingers linked in death.

That small, tender sign of affection in the midst of this horror had unhinged her momentarily. Until then she had been able to harden herself against it, to remind herself that this was what Atrus had warned them might await them. But
that
…

The disappointment seared her. She had not realized just how much of herself she had gambled on this venture.

“Lerral! Allef!” she called, stirring herself.

She watched the two young men step from the big meetinghouse at the far end of the central space, and saw at once the darkness in their eyes.

“Come,” she said, walking over to them. “Let’s go. There’s nothing here for us.”

 

 

§

 

 

Six worlds and not a single survivor.

Atrus had wanted to go back—to pack fresh provisions and have another, more thorough search of those two Ages where they had found nothing at all, not even bones—but Catherine had persuaded him against it.

“Never mind,” Atrus concluded, when all else had been said. “We’ll try again. We are certain to be more successful next time round. This time, I’ll just check one.”

“Yes. We need something to raise their spirits, Atrus. They’re feeling very despondent.”

“This one, I think.” Atrus showed her the cover. It was the Book of Aurack. “It looks as likely as any other. I’ll write our link back tonight. Tell Marrim and Carrad they can come with us. Oh, and Meer and Gavas, too. We’ll take six through this time. It’ll speed the search.”

Catherine leaned across, kissing him on his bearded cheek. “Good. The news will cheer them.”

 

 

§

 

 

“Is everyone ready?”

Atrus looked from face to face, his eyes questioning theirs. Then, satisfied with what he’d seen, he smiled and placed his hand against the glowing panel.

Aurack was hot. Stepping out from the linking cave, Marrim raised her hand to her brow instinctively, shielding her eyes against the sun’s fierce glare. Atrus was up ahead of her, standing on the edge of the escarpment, his special D’ni lenses pulled down over his eyes, their surfaces opaqued.

“Empty,” he said as Catherine stepped up beside him.

“It only
looks
empty,” she answered him. “Why, you could hide a hundred villages in that.”

He glanced at her, conscious of the others listening. “Do you think that’s what they’ve done?”

“It’s possible. After what happened to D’ni, it would make sense to take precautions.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, “but how are we going to find them?”

Marrim, coming up onto the ledge, saw at once what Atrus meant. What lay below them, covering the landscape from horizon to horizon, was no wood as she had experienced it on Averone, but a forest, a thousand square miles or more of densely packed trees; an ocean of green in which you could hide forever and never be found.

“Why don’t we light a fire?” she said.

Atrus looked at her. “If all else fails, we shall. But if they’re here, I suspect they’ll not have gone too far from the linking cave. They would want to know if anyone came through into their Age.”

“You mean to make a physical search of that?” Catherine asked, gesturing toward the great sprawl of the forest.

“Only part of it. Once we’ve made our search for the Linking Book, we’ll split up. Each take a small section of it.”

“What if someone gets lost?”

But Atrus had thought of that. He’d packed special dye-markers in every knapsack. They were to use these to mark the trees they passed.

“To prevent confusion, I’ve given each of you a different color.” He turned, looking at the three young men. “Carrad and Meer, you’ll take part in the first sweep. Gavas, you can be our anchor man here on the escarpment. If anything goes wrong, send up a fire flare.”

Gavas nodded, hiding his disappointment well.

“Good. Then we’ll concentrate our search on this side first. There’s a river down there—you can see it winking between the trees—so that might be a good site for an encampment. We can make our way down, then split up on the riverbank.”

Atrus looked about him. “First, however, let’s spread out and search this area. The Linking Book, if there is one, ought to be somewhere nearby.”

 

 

§

 

 

The river was a broad band of green, glimpsed between the straight dark boles of the trees off to the left. Out there, on the river’s bank, it was swelteringly hot, swarms of exotic insects feasting on anything or anyone who strayed near, but here, beneath the branches of the trees, it was much cooler, the insect life less voracious.

Marrim paused to spray the bole of a tree, then turned, looking about her. The forest was alive with sounds, with the buzz of insects, the endless cries of birds, and the rustle of unseen creatures as they hastened away from her approach.

Even though it was much cooler here, it was still humid, and Marrim stopped frequently to mop her brow, her clothes sticking to her uncomfortably. It never got this hot on Averone, even during the dry season, and that, as much as the alien life-forms, was beginning to get to her. It was an hour since they had split up at the river, and she had seen nothing at all to indicate that there was any kind of intelligent life in this Age. But each time she thought that, she reminded herself of what it had looked like from the escarpment—how huge an area it was they were searching—and she felt herself spurred on again.

She had grown used to the way the ground beneath her gave with each step, a thousand years of leaf fall forming a thick, dry carpet of mold beneath her feet. She had even grown used to the strange quality of the light beneath the leaf canopy, its pellucid greenness that had at first made her think herself at the bottom of some great ocean.

Marrim scratched at her arm. The bites were heavily swollen and formed a small mountain range of red blotches from her exposed elbow to her wrist. She smiled now, but at the time she had thought they were going to eat her alive!