For an hour now Gehn had sat at his desk in silence, deaf to Atrus’s pleas, staring into the air blankly as he sucked on his pipe.

“You have to do something,” Atrus said, taking up the cause again. “You have to! They’re dying back there!”

Nothing. Not even the flicker of an eyebrow.

Atrus grimaced, trying not to imagine their suffering back there on the Thirty-seventh Age, trying not to think of the old woman and the girl, but it was impossible.

He stared at Gehn. It was the first time he had seen this side of his father; this indecisiveness . This hideous indifference.

“Won’t you help them, father? Won’t you?”

Nothing.

Something snapped in him. Stepping up to the desk, Atrus leaned across, meaning to take the book.

“If you won’t, then let me…”

Gehn’s hand gripped his like a vice. He looked up into Atrus’s face, his eyes hard. “You?”

It was the first thing Gehn had said for ages.

Atrus pulled his hand free. “they’re dying,” he said for what seemed like the thousandth time. “We have to help them. We could make changes.”

Gehn laughed bleakly. “Changes?”

“To fix things.”

Gehn’s eyes held his a moment, then looked away.

In his mind Atrus saw it again, the water pouring from the edge of the great rock table as it rose and rose on a cushion of red hot lava.

“So that’s it, is it?” he said, glaring at his father. “You can’t fix it?”

Gehn straightened up, looking at Atrus, something of the old arrogance in his eyes. “Did I say that?”

For a moment longer Gehn glared back at his son, then, opening the Book of the Thirty-seventh Age, he reached across and, dipping the pen into the ink pot, proceeded to cross out the last few entries in the book, using the D’ni negating symbol.

“There,” he said, handing the book to Atrus. “I have fixed it.”

Atrus stared at it, stunned.

Gehn nodded at the book. “Well? You want to check for yourself?”

He had been almost too afraid to ask. “Can I?”

“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.

So where did he go from here? What were his options? Should he try to get back to Anna and the cleft? Or should he, perhaps, find a hiding place in the city?

Whatever, he had to go and see Gehn one last time, to say goodbuy. And to tell him, face-to-face, just why he had to leave.

The thought of it disturbed him. He had grown a great deal this last year and was almost the physical equal of his father, yet Gehn still intimidated him.

Even so, it had to be done. He could not simply run away, with his tail between his legs. For if he did, he would be forever in his father’s shadow.

He went out, climbing the levels of that dark and twisting house, until he stood there in the library, at the foot of the steps that led up to his father’s study. Up there, on the landing, the lantern was still lit, the door still open, as he’d left them.

He went up, steeling himself against his father’s anger, against that mocking laugh that made him feel a little boy again.

But he was no “boy” anymore. He had grown beyond mere boyishness. And now Gehn must be made to recognize that fact—must be forced to acknowledge it once at least before he left his house.

Atrus paused in the doorway, surprised to find the room so dimly lit. The fire had gone out, the lantern on the table faded to the faintest glimmer. As for Gehn, there was no sign.

He turned, taking the landing lantern from its hook, then stepped inside.

Books had been scattered here, there, and everywhere, as if in some fearful rage. And the desk…

Atrus hurried across, setting the lantern down beside the other, then searched among the books stacked on the desk, but there was no sign of his own book. He turned, looking to the fire anxiously, fearing the worst, and almost tripped over his father.

Gehn lay on the floor just behind the desk, sprawled out before the guttered fire.

For a moment Atrus thought his father dead, he was so still. Then he noted a slight movement of Gehn’s right hand and knew that this wasn’t death, only its counterfeit—a kind of stupor brought on by overindulgence with his pipe.

The pipe itself lay to one side, the fire-marble glowing dimly in its chamber. Atrus crouched and picked it up, sniffing the spout then wrinkling up his nose in disgust.

He was about to leave, to turn away and go, when he noticed, just beyond his father’s outstretched hand, the notebook with the tanned leather cover he was always consulting.

For a second or two, he held back, the feeling of wrongness strong in him; but then the compulsion to know what was inside the book overcame him and, reaching out, he grasped the notebook then moved back into the lantern’s light.

Taking a long, calming breath, he opened it to the first page, reading what was written there:

The Book of Atrus…

He frowned. Surely that was wrong? Surely it meant…? And then he understood. It didn’t mean him. The handwriting wasn’t his, nor was it Gehn’s. No, this was his grandfather’s book. Not Atrus, son of Gehn, but Atrus, father of Gehn.

He read on, then stopped, the last thread that had connected him to his father broken in that instant. Slowly he sat down in Gehn’s chair, nodding to himself, a bitter laughter escaping him.

There he’d been, admiring his father, exalting him almost, for his courage, his patience in finding a path through the darkness of the tunnels back to D’ni. And all the while the path had been clearly marked, here in his grandfather’s notebook. It wasn’t Gehn who had taken the risks, but Gehn’s father.

Atrus closed the book and pushed it away from him, then turned, staring at the shadowy figure stretched out on the floor beside his feet.

“Why weren’t you what I wanted you to be?” he asked quietly, pained by the great weight of disillusion he was feeling at the moment. “Why did you have to be so…so small a man?”

Gehn groaned and stirred slightly, but did not wake.

Atrus sat back, a long, shivering breath escaping him. For a moment longer he stared at Gehn’s prone figure, then, his eyes drawn to the lantern, he reached across and picked the notebook up again.

16