The Myst Reader (57 page)

LESS THAN A HUNDRED PACES DOWN, THE
tunnel was blocked again, a second rockfall making it unpassable. Yet to the left of the fall, like a grinning dark mouth, was a crack in the tunnel wall, large enough for Anna to step into, if she wished.

Anna stood on the rim, her left hand holding the edge of the wall, and she leaned into it, the lamp held out.

The crack was deep. Its floor went down steeply into the dark, from which a faint, cold breeze emanated. She could hear the sound of water, muted and distant, far below, and something else—a kind of irregular knocking. A tap, tap, tap that was like the weak blow of a chisel against the rock.

Anna turned, looking back the way she had come, then, deciding that the slope was not
too
steep, she clipped the lamp to the top of her hard hat and stepped down, steadying herself against the walls with both hands and digging her heels in, so that she would not fall.

The crack was not as long as she’d imagined. After twenty paces it leveled out. For a moment she thought it was a dead end, for the rock seemed to fill the crack ahead of her, but just before that it twisted to the side again, almost at ninety degrees. As she turned that corner, she gave a little cry of surprise.

“It’s a cavern!” she yelled, not knowing whether he could hear her or not. “A huge cavern!”

That tapping noise was close now and the sound of flowing water much stronger.

Stepping out onto the floor of the cavern, Anna turned, looking about her. The lamp illuminated only a small part of space, yet she could see, at the edge of the light, what looked like a tiny stream, its surface winking back at her.

Water. The most precious thing of all here in the desert. More precious than the silver her father had found for Amanjira.

Anna walked over to it, conscious of the rope trailing out behind her. The stream was crystal clear. She stooped down beside it, dipping her hand into the flow, then put her fingers to her lips.

Ice cold, it was, and pure. Much better than the water in the pool.

She grinned, looking forward to telling her father of her discovery, then she turned and looked up at the ceiling, twenty yards or so overhead.

There it was! The source of the tapping noise. It looked like a bright red hanging of some kind, marble smooth yet thin, the tip of it swollen like a drop of blood. And where it hung in the breeze it tap-tap-tapped against the roof of the cavern.

Anna frowned, then turned, looking for the source of the breeze. The cavern narrowed at its near end, becoming a kind of funnel. The breeze seemed to come from there.

She sniffed the air, surprised by how fresh it was. Usually there was a stale, musty smell in these caverns. A smell of damp and stone. But this was different.

Unclipping the lamp again, she held it up, trying to make out what the red stuff was. It seemed to be trapped in the rock overhead, or to have squeezed through the rock and then congealed.

She took out her notebook; settling it on her knee, she began to write, noting down not merely what she could see but her first notions about the cavern. Such, she knew from experience, could prove important. One might notice something that one afterward overlooked, or simply forgot. It was best to jot down
everything
, even if most of it proved subsequently to be ill-founded.

Putting the notebook away, she took hold of the rope and pulled a length of it toward her, making sure it was not snagged in the crack. It came easily. Reassured, she walked on, toward the near end of the cavern, toward the “funnel,” glancing from side to side, keen not to miss anything.

Thirty paces from it, she stopped, the slight sense of wrongness she had felt earlier now welling up in her.

There, facing her, filling the whole of one end of the narrowed cavern, was a huge sheet of the red stuff. It looked like a thick, stiff curtain, except that it jutted from the rock like a lava flow.

But it wasn’t lava. Not of any kind she knew, anyway.

It made her think of the circle on the surface. Somehow these two things were connected, but just how she didn’t know.

She could not wait to tell her father of it.

Anna walked over and stood before it, lifting the lamp. It was blood red, but within that redness was a faint vein of black, like tiny worm-threads.

Perhaps it
was
a kind of lava.

Clipping the lamp to her hat again, she took one of the hammers from her belt and, kneeling beside the wall, tried to chip a small chunk of the stuff away.

After a moment she looked up, puzzled. The hammer had made no impression. The stuff looked soft and felt soft. It
gave
before the hammer. But it would not chip. Why, it wouldn’t even mark!

Not lava, then. But what precisely
was
it? Unless she could get a piece for analysis, there was no way of telling.

Anna stood back a couple of paces, studying the wall, trying to see if there might not, perhaps, be a small piece jutting from the rest that would prove more amenable to the hammer, but the stuff formed a smooth unvarying surface.

She turned, looking about her, then laughed. There, only a few paces from her, lay a line of tiny red beads, like fresh blood spots on the gray rock floor. She looked up, seeing how the red stuff formed a narrow vein overhead, as if, under great pressure, it had been squeezed between the lips of the rock.

And dripped.

Anna crouched and, chipping this time into the rock
beneath
the red stuff, managed to free four samples of it, the largest of them the size of her fist.

As she went to slip the last of them into her knapsack, she turned it beneath the light, then squeezed it in her hand. It was almost spongy, yet it was tougher than marble. Not only that, but it seemed to hold the light rather than reflect it.

It was time to get back. They would need to analyze this before they investigated any further.

Anna slipped the sack onto her shoulder, then, taking the rope in her right hand, began to cross the cavern again, coiling it slowly as she headed for the crack.

THE OTHERS WERE GONE. ONLY VEOVIS AND
Aitrus remained. They stood in the broad hallway of the Mansion, beneath the stairs, the great stone steps and the tiny harbor beyond visible through the glass of the massive front door.

“Stay the night, Aitrus. You can travel back with me in the morning. The meeting does not start until midday.”

“I would, but there are some people I must see first thing.”

“Put them off. Tell them you have to prepare for the meeting. They’ll understand. Besides, I’d really like to talk to you some more.”

“I, too. But I must not break my word.”

Veovis smiled. “I understand. Your word means much to you, and rightly so. But try and come to me before the meeting. I shall be in my office in the Guild Hall. I would fain speak with you again before you cast your vote.”

Aitrus smiled. “I have decided already, old friend. I shall abstain.”

“Abstain?”

“I feel it would be for the best. I am not convinced by either argument. It may be as you say, and that my hesitancy is only sentiment, yet I still feel as if I would be betraying Master Telanis should I vote
against
the motion.”

“Then so be it. Take care, dear friend.”

The two men clasped each other’s hands.

“Until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow,” Aitrus echoed, smiling broadly. “And thank you. The evening was a most pleasant one.”

“As ever. Now go. Before I’m angry with you.”

“I’VE NO IDEA,” HE SAID, LIFTING HIS EYE FROM
the microscope.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks …
artificial
.”

“Impossible,” Anna said, stepping up beside him and putting her own eye to the lens.

“So tell me what it is, then. Have you ever seen stone with that kind of structure before? There’s not a crystal in it! That wasn’t formed. At least, not by any
natural
process. That was
made!
”

She shrugged. “Maybe there are processes we don’t know about.”

“And maybe I know nothing about rock!”

Anna looked up and smiled. “Maybe.”

“Well?” he said, after a moment. “Don’t you agree?”

“I don’t see how you could make something like this. The temperatures and pressures you’d need would be phenomenal. Besides, what would the stuff be doing down there, in the cavern? It makes no sense.”

“No …”

She saw the doubt creep back into his face. He looked tired again. They had been working at this puzzle now for close on ten hours.

“You should rest now,” she said. “We’ll carry on with this in the morning.”

“Yes,” he said, but it was clear his mind was still on the problem. “It has to be obvious,” he said, after a moment. “Something we’ve completely overlooked.”

But what
could
they have overlooked? They had been as thorough with their tests as anyone could be. Had they had twice the equipment and ten times the opportunity to study it, they would still have come up with the same results. This stuff was strange.