The Myst Reader (53 page)

It tilted sharply forward. Aitrus caught his breath, waiting for the fall, but the carriage had stopped in midair. Slowly, the walls on either side of him began to buckle inward.

“Noooo-oh!”

The buckling stopped. With a hiss of hydraulics the carriage jerked forward, then began slowly to descend with a strange jogging motion.

Aitrus began to laugh. Relief flooded him.

It was a cutter. A cutter had climbed the shaft walls and plucked them from the track. Now, holding them between its cutting arms, it was slowly carrying them down.

Aitrus leaned across, checking that Veovis was breathing steadily, then sat back, closing his eyes, his head resting against the buckled wall.

Safe.

THE COUNCIL ORDERED THE SHAFT REPAIRED
, the top tunnel completed, and then they sealed it. There was to be no breakthrough, no meeting with the surface-dwellers. That was decided within the first ten minutes of the meeting. Whether the quakes had happened or not, they would have decided thus. But there was the matter of D’ni pride, D’ni expertise to be addressed, hence the repairs, the drive toward completion.

It would not be said that they had failed. No. The D’ni did not fail. Once they had decided upon a course of action, they would carry it through. That was the D’ni way, and had been for a thousand generations.

In the future, perhaps, when circumstances differed, or the mood of the Council had changed, the tunnel might be unsealed, a form of contact established, but for now that was not to be.

And so the adventure ended. Yet life went on.

IT WAS TWO WEEKS AFTER THE COUNCIL’S
decision, and Aitrus was sitting in the garden on K’veer, the island mansion owned by Lord Rakeri situated to the south of the great cavern of D’ni.

Rakeri’s son, the young Lord Veovis, was lounging on a chair nearby, recuperating, his shoulder heavily bandaged, the bruising to his head still evident. The two young men had been talking, but were quiet now, thoughtful. Eventually, Aitrus looked up and shook his head.

“Your father’s offer is kind, Veovis, and well meant, yet I cannot accept it. He says he feels a debt of gratitude to me for saving your life, yet I did only what any other man would have done. Besides, I wish to make my own way in the world. To win honor by my own endeavors.”

Veovis smiled. “I understand that fully, Aitrus, and it does you credit. And if it helps make things easier, I, too, would have turned down my father’s offer, though be sure you never tell him that.”

Aitrus made to speak, but Veovis raised a hand.

“However,” he went on, “
I
owe you a debt, whatever you may say about this mythical ‘anyman’ who might or might not have helped me. Whether that is so or not, you
did
help me. And for that I shall remain eternally grateful. Oh, I shall not embarrass you with gifts or offers of patronage, dear friend, but let me make it clear, if there is ever anything you want—
anything
—that is in my power to grant you, then come to me and I shall grant it. There, that is my last word on it! Now we are even. Now we can both relax and feel less awkward with each other, eh?”

Aitrus smiled. “You felt it, too?”

“Yes. Though I don’t know which is harder, owing a life or being owed one.”

“Then let us do as you say. Let us be friends without obligations.”

“Yes,” Veovis said, rising awkwardly from his chair to grasp both of Aitrus’s hands in his own in the D’ni fashion. “Friends, eh?”

“Friends,” Aitrus agreed, smiling back at the young Lord, “until the last stone is dust.”

A
NNA STOOD AT THE CENTER OF THE STRANGE
circle of rock and dust and looked about her, her eyes half-lidded.

She was a tall, rather slender girl of eighteen years, and she wore her long auburn hair, which had been bleached almost blond by the sun, tied back in a plait at her neck. Like her father, she was dressed in a long black desert cloak, hemmed in red with a broad leather tool belt at the waist. On her back was a leather knapsack, on her feet stout leather boots.

Her father was to the left of her, slowly walking the circle’s edge, the wide-brimmed hat he wore to keep off the sun was pulled back, a look of puzzlement on his face.

They had discovered the circle the previous day, on the way back from a survey of a sector of the desert southwest of the dormant volcano.

“Well?” she asked, turning to him. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, his voice husky. “Either someone spent an age
constructing
this, sorting and grading the stones by size then laying them out in perfect circles, or …”

“Or what?”

He shook his head. “Or someone shook the earth, like a giant sieve.” He laughed. “From
below
, I mean.”

“So what
did
cause it?”

“I don’t know,” he said again. “I really don’t. I’ve never seen anything like it in over fifty years of surveying, and I’ve seen a lot of strange things.”

She walked over to him, counting each step, then made a quick calculation in her head.

“It’s eighty paces in diameter, so that’s close on eight hundred square feet,” she said. “I’d say that’s much too big to have been made.”

“Unless you had a whole tribe working at it.”

“Yes, but it looks natural. It looks … well, I imagine that from above it would look like a giant drop of water had fallen from the sky.”

“Or that sieve of mine.” He narrowed his eyes and crouched a moment, studying the pattern of stones by his feet, then shook his head again. “Vibrations,” he said quietly. “Vibrations deep in the earth.”

“Volcanic?”

“No.” He looked up at his daughter. “No, this was no quake. Quakes crack stone, or shatter it, or deposit it. They don’t grade it and sort it.”

“You’re looking tired,” she said after a moment. “Do you want to rest a while?”

She did not usually comment on how he looked, yet there was an edge of concern in her voice. Of late he had tired easily. He seemed to have lost much of the vigor he had had of old.

He did not answer her. Not that she expected him to. He was never one for small talk.

Anna looked about her once more. “How long do you think it’s been here?”

“It’s sheltered here,” he said after a moment, his eyes taking in every detail of his surroundings. “There’s not much sand drift. But judging by what there is, I’d say it’s been here quite a while. Fifty years, perhaps?”

Anna nodded. Normally she would have taken samples, yet it was not the rocks themselves but the way they were laid out that was different here.

She went over to her father. “I think we should go back. We could come here tomorrow, early.”

He nodded. “Okay. Let’s do that. I could do with a long, cool soak.”

“And strawberries and cream, too, no doubt?”

“Yes, and a large glass of brandy to finish with!”

They both laughed.

“I’ll see what I can rustle up.”

THE LODGE HAD BEEN NAMED BY HER FATHER
in a moment of good humor, not after the hunting lodge in which he had spent his own childhood, back in Europe, but because it was lodged into a shelf between the rock wall and the shelf below. A narrow stone bridge—hand-cut by her father some fifteen years ago, when Anna was barely three—linked it to the rest of the rocky outcrop, traversing a broad chasm that in places was close to sixty feet deep.

The outer walls of the Lodge were also of hand-cut stone, their polished surfaces laid flush. A small, beautifully carved wooden door, set deep within the white stone at the end of the narrow bridge, opened onto a long, low-ceilinged room that had been hewn from the rock.

Four additional rooms led off from that long room: three to the right, which they used as living quarters, and another, their laboratory and workshop, to the left.

Following him inside, she helped him down onto the great sofa at the end of the room, then ducked under the narrow stone lintel into the galley-kitchen at the front.

A moment later she returned, a stone tumbler of cold water held out to him.

“No, Anna. That’s too extravagant!”

“Drink it,” she said insistently. “I’ll make a special journey to the pool tonight.”

He hesitated, then, with a frown of self-disapproval, slowly gulped it down.

Anna, watching him, saw suddenly how pained he was, how close to exhaustion, and wondered how long he had struggled on like this without saying anything to her.

“You’ll rest tomorrow,” she said, her voice brooking no argument. “I can continue with the survey on my own.”

She could see he didn’t like the idea; nonetheless, he nodded.

“And the report?”

“If the report’s late, it’s late,” she said tetchily.

He turned his head, looking at her. “I gave my word.”

“You’re ill. He’ll understand. People are ill.”

“Yes, and people starve. It’s a hard world, Anna.”

“Maybe so. But we’ll survive. And you
are
ill. Look at you. You need rest.”

He sighed. “Okay. But a day. That’s all.”

“Good. Now let’s get you to your bed. I’ll wake you later for supper.”

IT WAS DARK WHEN SHE HEARD HIM WAKE.
She had been sitting there, watching the slow, inexorable movement of the stars through the tiny square of window.

Turning, she looked through to where he lay, a shadow among the shadows of the inner room.

“How are you feeling now?”

“A little better. Not so tired anyway.”

Anna stood, walked over to where the pitcher rested in its carved niche, beside the marble slab on which she prepared all their meals, and poured him a second tumbler of cold water. She had climbed down to the pool at the bottom of the chasm earlier, while he slept, and brought two pitchers back, strapped to her back, their tops stoppered to prevent them from leaking as she climbed the tricky rock face. It would last them several days if they were careful.