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sufficient as any man could be, but intellectually. He had missed the chance to stretch himself in
debate, yes, and to demonstrate the vastness of his knowledge. And though the boy, as yet, was
little more than a sounding board for his ideas, yet there was immense potential in him.
Yes, but then how could he have been certain that the boy even existed? The chances were that he
had perished. After all, it was hard to imagine anyone surviving in that desolate little crack in
the ground!
"Patience. I must have patience with the boy, and then, in time..."
But right now time was the one thing he found himself severely lacking. Over these past few weeks
not one but several of his experiments had suddenly gone badly wrong, and he had been forced to
spend more and more time attempting to deal with the problems that had arisen. To try to give
Atrus as much attention as he needed was . . . well, impossible.
Still, Atrus was an obedient child. He could see that the boy tried his best. And maybe a few
sessions with the Rebevkor would bring him up to scratch. Time would tell.
Right now, however, other matters needed his attention. Crossing the dais, Gehn stood over one of
the open books, staring down at the descriptive box. Then he placed his hand upon it. A moment
later he was gone.
11
In the weeks that followed, Atrus fell heavily beneath his father's spell. Mornings he would work
hard, repairing the walls and paths of the many-leveled island. Then, in the afternoons, after he
had bathed and eaten, he would sit at his desk in the great library, while Gehn taught him the
rudiments of D'ni culture.
Much of what Gehn taught him was familiar from his own reading and from things Anna had told him
over the years, but there was also a great deal he had never heard before, and so he kept silent.
Besides, now that he knew it was real, even those things he knew seemed somehow transformed:
different simply because they were real.
For several days he had been working on the question of why the water at the north end of the
island was clear of the light-giving plankton, and had traced the problem to the spillage from an
old pipe that led down from his fathers workroom. He had taken samples of that spillage and found
traces of lead and cadmium in it-elements that were clearly poisoning the plankton. Not having the
equipment to make a proper filter, he decided that, as the spillage was only a trickle, it would
probably be best to block the pipe off altogether. He was busy doing this one morning, standing on
the steps below the seawall, leaning across to fit the tiny stone cap he'd fashioned to block the
end of the pipe, when Gehn came out to see him.
"Atrus?"
He turned and looked. His father stood at the head of the steps, cloaked and booted as if for a
journey, looking out across the sea toward the great rock and the city beyond.
"Yes, father?"
"I have a new task for you."
Atrus straightened up, then threw the steel facing-tool he had been using down onto the sack
beside him, waiting for his father to say more.
Gehn turned, combing his fingers through his ash-white hair, then looked to him. "I want you to
come into the city with me, Atrus. I want you to help me find some books."
"The city? We're going to the city?"
Gehn nodded. "Yes, so you had better go and change. You will need your boots. And bring your
knapsack, too."
Atrus hesitated a moment, then, with a curt nod to his father, gathered up his tools and hurried
up the steps.
"I shall go down to the dock and prepare the boat," Gehn said, stepping back to let his son pass.
"Meet me down there. And hurry now. I want to be back before nightfall."
Gehn was standing at the stern of the boat, his hand on the tethering rope, ready to cast off, as
Atrus came down the twist of stone steps and out into the low-ceilinged cave that housed the
jetty.
Since that evening when he had first arrived on K'veer, Atrus had never been off the island. Nor
had a day passed in all that time when he had not looked to the distant D'ni city and dreamed of
going there.
Climbing aboard, he looked to his father for instructions.
"Sit there," Gehn said, pointing to a low bench that dissected the shallow craft. "And try not to
lean over too far. I don't want to have to pull you out."
He nodded, chastened by his fathers words.
As his father cast off, then swung the boat around, poling it out through the narrow entrance,
Atrus turned in his seat, staring out across that vast expanse of orange sea, past the scattering
of intervening islets, toward the D'ni capital, seeing yet again how its crowded levels climbed
the cavern wall into the darkness.
Ancient, it was. Ancient beyond all imagining.
As they came out into the open water, Atrus turned, looking back as Gehn's island emerged into
view. The day he'd arrived, he had been too exhausted to take in all its details, but now he
stared, fascinated, seeing K'veer properly for the first time.
By now he knew every room and corridor, every stairway and terrace of the sprawling, many-leveled
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