The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  The orderlies, having arranged the girl for transport, now began to wheel her off. They were fussy about their work, however inexpert they were at it. They did not, so it appeared, want any of the ler party to touch Maellenkleth in any way.

  They indeed did depart 8905 through a different way than they had entered. Looking back once, Morlenden thought that the place where they left had the unmistakable look of a warehouse loading dock to it, rather than a regular door; and at that, one in not too much use. He also worried lest Cannialin and Kaldherman lose them through this labyrinthine game of evasion, but after a few turns, they were back on one of the main avenues debouching on the plaza, which the younger Derens had remained close to. Morlenden saw them pretending to admire a statuary group, all the time scanning the plaza entrances for them. They saw them, and across the distance, Morlenden could make out Cannialin whispering to Kal. And now they began moving off, as if to enter the terminal station from the other side.

  The party escorting Maellenkleth boarded the tube without incident, although Morlenden, now carefully watching every move the orderlies made, observed that the orderlies were most careful to retain the tickets. Fortunately, they were separated into two compartments. He saw that Kaldherman and Cannialin also boarded the tube-train, taking a coach just ahead of them. And oddly enough, Fellirian had little trouble, once aboard, in convincing the orderlies that Maellenkleth would be better off in their compartment, with her people. It was as if the orderlies—agents—felt the train more secure. From what? Where could they go in the endless alternating urban centers and industrial suburbs of manworld? Escape was remote until they were at the Institute stop. Or was it secure from interference? Morlenden thought that if Fellirian had a plan, she had better use it fast. All had been smooth up to this point. Too smooth by far. It was not to have been so easy. That was the reason for including the others in it. And now?

  Morlenden and Krisshantem moved into the compartment with the girl, while Fellirian remained behind momentarily, conversing confidentially with one of the agents, the one who seemed to be in charge. After a moment, she joined them also, closing the compartment door.

  Motioning them to silence, she paused, and then began to speak in Multispeech, using the one-to-many speech-mode, but with the side channels suppressed. Morlenden was impressed; he would not have thought that she had learned the skill.

  To any human that might have been listening, it sounded rather like nonsensical music, wordless, and with an odd, ringing purity of tone. Fellirian had told the agents that they would now perform a rite over the girl and that they would hear chanting. But to the ler ear, there was no music in it at all, indeed, as in most forms of Multispeech, there was no consciousness of sound or ears at all. It was just ideas, stripped to simplicity, somehow whispered directly into their minds.

  She said, “Spy.two.they.now.here.speak.past.Eliya.tell.Godseek.for. her&thisspeak.noread.they@&! do.it.now.quick.yes??”

  And Krisshantem answered in the same mode. “Two.here.know. parts.&&.same.now.Stop. + Two.here.make.base.line&three.make.her &lose.them(!)(!).”

  Keeping the chant up, but now not sending anything in it, they moved quickly, carefully placing Maellenkleth on the floor between Morlenden and Fellirian. She was awake, but passive and unresisting. They arranged her as Krisshantem directed, and settled into position themselves, assuming a studied, rigorous posture with their legs folded under them, and sitting back on their turned heels. Krisshantem took up his position at the head of the girl, in the same posture. The process began.

  Now Morlenden and Fellirian took up the chant, immediately shifting the mode, making it even more submelodic, exactly as Krisshantem had instructed them. Morlenden now felt his vision dim and fade, as the new mode took hold and blanked out his visual center, readying it for another purpose.

  “Remember,” Kris had admonished them with adolescent severity, “you must, you two, make the base line. The persona is four-dimensional, and the maker will erect the restored one upon that line. You must keep it steady; that is the hardest part of the whole thing—the steadying of the reference line. When I get fully into the rebuild pattern, if I get that far and residuals in her mind do not resist me, I can compensate for some dislocation, but if I get tied up in that follower sub-routine I will lose the growth pattern, and we all may be in danger of getting sucked into that forgetty program stored in her. Remember, no one ever shut it off. It is still the paramount instruction in her mind. That is why they couldn’t do anything with her. Most of what she learns she erases immediately. And in the net, she can do it to us. Never forget this: this is dangerous to us. Also remember that I am no expert at this. I have never done it live before; only received instruction from Mael. So you must be steady!”

  The theory, he had explained, was that the persona was a four-dimensional figure, a tessaract in space, the elementals Fire, Earth, Air, and Water permutating and pervolving upon themselves, making a cruciform (in three-space projection) figure of equal lines and ninety degree angles. For their part, Morlenden and Fellirian would make the reference line, which set orientation in space and the length determined how much would go into it. There was one such line, uniquely placed, for everyone, if one could but find it; here, they were making one from scratch. In Maellenkleth’s case, they could, within limits, select any line they wished, for they were starting anew.

  Holding the developing subject rigidly in the growing pattern, the maker reprogrammed the subject, nonverbally, inserting concepts directly into the appropriate parts of the brain. And to her, there was further risk: do it right, and they would end up with a retarded but functional Schaeszendur. And do it wrong, and a thousand disasters awaited them. They could kill her, for one choice. In another, she could become a dangerous maniac, beyond their abilities to subdue her, physically or multispecifically.

  The Deren insiblings reached deep within themselves for calmness and strength, striving to make the base line, bring it into being, and hold it just so, at such a position in space. That was near what she had been before, Kris had advised, suggesting that orientation because she would be less likely to fight them. Yes, he had said. They had told each other what their lines had been. They had been dhofters, had they not?

  At first the effort was just a song, but before long, Morlenden could see it in his mind’s eye, slowly coming into being in the web of Multispeech, a bright, hard, sodium-yellow line, piercingly narrow, now varying in length and waving about in a rubbery, unstable, nonoriented manner, then slowing, stiffening, stabilizing in length, feeling the right angle of orientation, coming to rest now, but still as unstable as the opposing poles of two magnets, slippery, elsewhere wanting. And it came into hard focus, and all vagueness vanished. There was nothing else, a universe of utter black night. Night and darkness and the hard, burning yellow line. Morlenden, seeing it, tried to see through the vision and pick up something of the coach-sleeper, some outside sight. It was no use; he was completely blind, save to the vision being generated by Multispeech. He knew that Fellirian must also be equally blind now, completely into it.

  The line steadied, and now, delicately touched and nudged by a third power in the net! Krisshantem. It drifted slowly, still moving in orientation, becoming steady. He let Morlenden and Fellirian hold it thus for a moment, to get the feel of it, measuring the chant he was entering and increasingly controlling. Holding the line was hard, hard. He heard, somewhere very far away, a subvocal moan from her who had been Maellenkleth and was about to be Schaeszendur. The line wavered with his attention, and he returned to it, increased the power, and nailed it down. And on the other end, he could feel the feedback from Fellirian, also clamping down, mastering the unstable yellow line. He remembered to take a deep breath, and concentrated, and

  Now a third point in the furry darkness appeared from nowhere, and the line was a square, empty, hanging alone in space, still oddly and rigidly oriented. It hung a moment, a little uncertain. The Derens applied more pressure, more inner strength
. It steadied. Morlenden could not now sense Krisshantem as a person, but as an intense force, somewhere offstage, who was manipulating their visions, their work. That was what it was. He could not imagine what Kris was seeing now. The same as they? And now Fellirian was fading as a person also, becoming the anchor at the far end of the line, holding it in space. He could not sense Maellenkleth-Schaeszendur at all: she was in the figure only. That was she, and they were making her now. But there were four here in the unity that three were controlling. They held the chant, held down the square in a vise of Will, and

  Now the figure trembled off-center, making odd little perturbations, paused, and sprang into three dimensions, a stick-figure empty cube, now beginning to fight them, to resist, to know Will. It seemed to want to go back into its old square shape, but the Krisshantem would not allow it to, and in a sudden moment of weakness he had it and

  Now it leaped into the shape of the tessaract and they saw it not as a projection in three dimensions, a cruciform shape with an extra cubical arm in the front and the back, but there was no time to contemplate it; the outlined, stick-figure tessaract suddenly became solid, instantly, without sense of transition, opaque, solid, tangible, hanging in the empty space of their minds, and the whole surface was covered, a living, scintillating mosaic of changing black and yellow tiny squares all over the surface, cells flickering, changing; patterns washed over the now solid surface in their minds, patterns that moved and lunged like the reflected light of flame along a wall, more so, the yellow burned, the bumblebee patterns reminding them too closely of the striking visual display one saw in a migraine attack. Like that, yes, and it went on and on, the deeper rhythms washing over the surfaces like the play of summer lightning. Morlenden grunted with effort. And at the far end of the now submerged base line, he could also feel Fellirian straining as well. And something was now actively resisting them, something inside the crawling figure in their minds. It took all their effort to hold it still, for now all of Krisshantem’s attention was devoted to controlling the wild patterns flying over the surface of the tessaract.

  The process continued, seemingly endless, inexorable, and they could see no apparent change in the patterns. They could not determine how long it was taking, for there was no subjective sense of time when that time had been integrated as a spatial dimension. To Morlenden, it seemed to go on and on beyond levels of endurance he thought he might have had; days, weeks, a whole span devoted to a sustained effort of raw Will, Fire-Elemental, Panrus. He ached in odd places in his body, places which in his mind’s eye did not correspond to any known locations in his old familiar physical body.

  Then there was change. The pattern on the surface of the enigmatic tessaract slowed, slowed, slowed some more, and changed to a regular, surging motion, rather like the slow and rhythmic beating of waves onto some low shore, calm, reflective, steady. The figure also relaxed something of its taut straining, and became easier to hold. A sense of time came back, into them from the edge of the universe, intruding a little, and they were able to hear, as from some immense distance, faint sounds from the everyday world. Everyday world; not the real world. This was the real world, and they were making it. The everyday world was now, seemed disheartening, disappointing; after all, the perceptual surround of a Multispeech reprogram was seductive and addictive. It was naked Power. And along the intruding edges they heard the voice of Krisshantem, speaking ordinary words, inserted into the stream of Multispeech, as if he could retain the present pattern by nudging it now and again.

  The voice said hoarsely, “Worst over, the longest part. . . . Motor coordination, control, body . . . all in place, calibrated and tested. . . . Next will be verbals and pseudomemory, the repersona, Schaeszendur. Different . . . she’ll fight us now . . . hold it down like never before . . . now, now, now,” and

  Now the voice vanished, blown out like a candle flame, as if it had never been, never could be. Darkness and the tessaract. The tiny cellular units seemed to randomize slightly, lose coherence momentarily, but in the cellular units, a new coherence was building, surging, coming in like the tide, like an approaching storm, powerful and inescapable. The sensation of waves rather than firelight became very pronounced, and Morlenden tasted a brassy, metallic flavor in his mouth, smelled an unknown, spicy and rotten odor; gone instantly. And this one was becoming much harder to hold. There was definitely another force now, opposing them, something whose location they could not determine, but which seemed to be emanating from deep within (?) the projected figure in their minds. It tried to move away, escape them, distort the shape of the tessaract. Morlenden reached deep, for reserves he was not sure existed; and there he found something that allowed him to hang on, clamp down some more, for a little longer. But the figure’s resistance was also increasing. Yet now it was not so steady; it waxed and waned, now fighting them, now withdrawing, and oddly, sometimes catching the sense and rhythm of what they were doing and in quick flashes surging ahead of them, anticipating almost, very nearly helping.

  Yes, it was harder than the first part, but it was not as long in duration. Already they could sense a weakening in the resistance, and as the resistance slackened, it became passive, submissive, waiting. It was now much easier to hold, almost no effort at all; and with the easing of their common tension, now Morlenden began to feel fatigue for the first time, much deeper than mere tiredness as he had felt before. He was weary; releasing the figure felt like sinking into an ocean of warm syrup. And the resistance faded even more, and now they could definitely feel for the first time the actual presence of a fourth in the web of Multispeech that had bound them all together. This fourth was warm, engaging, friendly, like a small child, of no great mind, but pleasant and without any force whatsoever. They . . . he was on the verge of welcoming her and

  Now with no warning or anticipation the tessaract in their minds everted, collapsed, and with it went the universal night: and they were sitting on the floor in a compartment on a tube-train, lit by ceiling fixtures that seemed too bright, and they were back in the old, shabby world of reality, yes, as shabby and subtle as it was. And in their midst, a girl named Schaeszendur was sitting up, leaning on one arm, looking idly and vacantly about, gazing passively over the compartment with a dazed, uncomprehending expression on her pretty face, the soft, pursed mouth.

  Morlenden looked long at the girl, now-Schaeszendur, comparing the image of her with the memory of then-Maellenkleth, which he would never forget no matter what happened to him. There was no doubt of it; there was a noticeable difference. This Schaeszendur was as pretty as the old Maellenkleth, perhaps more so, but there were lacks. This one lacked the drive, the ambition, and the prodigy intelligence of the old; she now was relaxed, at her ease, submissive and passive. This was only a gentle, retarded creature who wanted but to please, and to be happy and free of pain and sorrow. She would be functional, she could look after herself. And if cared for lovingly by people who knew what they were about, in time, she would grow to be almost a full-person again. But never the Maellenkleth who challenged the Gameplayers and three hundred and more years of tradition, of course.

  Morlenden tried to move out of the position he had been holding himself in, but his muscles would not obey him, and he more or less half fell over on one side, supported by one arm. As he had fallen closer to Krisshantem, the boy felt the motion and turned to him. Kris spoke slowly, as if recounting a dream, as if trying to recapture the exact flavor it had. “You felt her in the end, how first she fought us, and then helped? There was a lot left of the original in her after she had disminded; also many of the mnemonic fragments did not subfractionate completely. She fought us, but she wanted to come back purified, too . . . that was not your imagination, for she really was there in the net with us. She was, unconsciously. Beforetimes, when she was Maellenkleth and whole, when we were together, we would speak Multispeech while we made dhainaz, the whole time, however long we took. That is like projecting mentally . . . mentally, that which your bodies do with mus
cle and flesh. There were echoes of that in this Schaeszendur.”

  Morlenden tried to speak, but his voice came out a croak. “Is . . . everything all right with her?”

  “Yes. She is whole. It worked better than I imagined it would. We did a better job than I had hoped for, even better than she who taught me could imagine. But all the same, this Schaeszendur is a stranger.... And I know a secret, that the maker must want the new persona to come terribly. That would be common sense; but also the holders must want it almost as much. My motivations are clear enough, but what of yours and your insibling co-spouse’s? How is it that you, a stranger to Maellenkleth-who-was, want this as I?”

  Morlenden answered wearily: “I have not known a forgetty before. Had we done this as strangers who had just met for the purpose, upon an utter nobody, perhaps things would have been different. I . . . just felt that she needed this restoration to balance justice, that she had not, whatever she did, deserved to come to the forgetty fate. I learned to care very much about Maellenkleth, just as I suppose we should about everyone. . . . Fellirian told me it was the same with her, as she pursued memories and reflections and echoes down in the Institute. And neither of us would see anyone ill-used, no matter by whom.”

  Now Morlenden felt more control returning to his limbs; he got to his feet with effort, still somewhat dazed, and went to the girl, helping her to her feet. She stood unsteadily, blinking in the harsh artificial light. Morlenden hoped that the pseudomemories Kris had programmed into her mind were pleasant ones, of cool nights and warm hearthfires, of kindness and body-friends, and of love affairs that did not end out of phase with their owners’ times. He took her hand and gently led her to one of the sleeping-bunks, and she came with him, unquestioning, trusting, accepting without doubt. Morlenden was of course now long past the days of his fertility, the springing erect seasons of desire, the sudden emotions, the tidelike urgings as it had been with Fellirian. But he had not forgotten the embraces of the girls he had known, nor the soft sounds they made in his ear, the unspeakable words they had said to one another, the sleek strong bodies; nor would he forget, let go the various thrills, anticipations, satisfactions, and, yes, dissatisfactions of which he had measured his portion. Even so, as he led the girl Schaeszendur to the small bunk, as he undressed her out of the voluminous palliatory coverall, as he laid her down, he felt something like an echo of what had been but was no more. And Schaeszendur who was Maellenkleth was slender, gracefully muscular without seeming angular or stringy, her skin a rich soft olive color with darker shades along the accent lines and creases; the tendons of her neck, the insides of her elbows; honey and olive and sandalwood. Similar to Sanjirmil, perhaps, but richer, more range, more degrees of contrast. Morlenden smiled at her, knowing what little else to do, hoping it would reassure her, tucking her in under the covers and kissing her forehead chastely, as if she were a very young child, which of course she now was, whatever the lovely, lean body shouted at one. And like a child, she fell asleep instantly, effortlessly, not fidgeting, playing, daydreaming or twisting and searching for just that right position to enter the Dark World. Her eyelids simply fell shut, and she was breathing deeply, her rosy mouth opened very slightly. . . .