The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  He hadn’t expected Mevlannen, the insibling of Maellenkleth, to resemble the latter. After all, it had been the Nerh, Klervondaf, who had shared an insibling parent with Maellen. This one would be a stranger; they had different parents in the flesh. The person he saw in the opened doorway was a ler girl of the appropriate age, about twenty, but she looked older. She was dark-haired, as much as he could see of her, but pale-skinned and rather light-eyed. She had a sharp, foxy quality of face that contrasted sharply with the rounded softness of Maellen. But none of the predatory in it, as Sanjirmil, either. The sharpness here was one of fineness and delicacy, not of muscles held tensed in opposition.

  Her hair was straight, dark brown, very fine in texture, worn longer than was seemly for a girl her age. . . . Then he recalled where she had been the last five years or so. Her skin was a pale snow-creamy color, lightly spotted with tiny freckles. The nose was straight and narrow, this reminding him most of Taskellan. The winter overshirt she wore concealed most of her body, but from the long, slender neck and the fine, delicate collarbone, he could see that she was thinner than the average, who tended toward a slightly more strong frame.

  Behind the girl was a fireplace, and in it a fire was built and brightly burning; not a traditional hearth, but a heavy stonework fireplace, presumably of human style, although Morlenden had never seen one. The fireplace, and a couple of oil lamps, seemed to be the only light. The girl, backlit by the warm glow, looked at him with unconcealed curiosity.

  She began, tentatively, as if describing a phenomenon, rather than speaking directly. “I was told by the public message service that a visitor was coming . . . and one stands in my door, in the evening, after the fashion of a traveler, almost as one who would go on the Salt Pilgrimage. Yet there is not salt here.”

  He answered, “I am Morlenden Deren, and I am your visitor. The name I have used to travel under, and the clothing, only suggest a poor enough disguise.”

  “I am Mevlannen Srith Perklaren.” The voice was, for all its indirection, even and plain, cool and reserved. It was the voice of one who had learned privacy, and who did not offer invitations casually. “Am I the one you seek?”

  “You are. May I come into your house? There is much we must say.”

  She stepped back from the doorway, making a motion with her right hand for him to enter. The motion was in the same underlanguage as had been her words, reserve, skepticism. Yet also within was hunger and loneliness as well. Morlenden saw, and deeply regretted the news that he was to bring. More yet he regretted that he had been born too soon: he deeply appreciated what the graceful, reserved motions offered. What was being displayed here. All for nothing. He stepped inside the door, over the threshold, hearing the door latch behind him.

  She held out her hands to him to take his cloak, and he slipped out of it and handed it to her. He proceeded forward bluntly. “The reason I have come is twofold: one, to bring you bad tidings; and the other, to be told something by you, if you will believe that I am indeed the one to carry it.”

  She hung the cloak on a peg in the wall by the fireplace. “I had thought when the word came it might be something bad,” she said quietly, turning back to him. “You know that no one ever comes here. Ever. At first, I would journey home, but as things went forward, lately . . .”

  “I understand some of it. I have been to the yos of the Perklarens. And I see that you are now a stranger in your own yos.”

  “True. But are we not all thus, one time or another? But never mind that. I have a nice supper. Will you eat here with me, sleep with me tonight?”

  “I had hoped to. I have never come so far before.”

  She turned from her place by the fire. “This is one of the few places where the world as it was of old has been kept. It used to be said, of the lands along this coast, and another place farther north, that here creation still continued. Mael was here . . . and loved it. My fellow workers think it peculiar that I should live alone on top of Pico Tranquillon, but it suits me. They are terrified by the loneliness, but those are my needs. Solitude. I am not bothered here; when I am down, I am free to sit by the window, watch the sea and the sky, and dream. . . . You know that I am an engineer, but were I that and nothing more, I would be a poor one, I think.”

  Morlenden looked about the tiny cabin. He nodded approvingly. “Yes, I understand. It is a cozy home here. I did not know that it could be thus, here, outside.”

  “I tried to get a yos cast here, but the Revens would not hear of it. . . . So I built this place myself. It is a copy of a human cabin; I learned from places I have seen along this coast. Odd, that, for in the older times, this country, here, was the place where all the newest things were tried. . . . And now it is the only place on the continent where even a trace of the old ways remain.”

  Morlenden agreed, noting her hands as he did. Built it herself? With those delicate, needleworker hands, pale and slim fingers? There was more to her than met the eye. But he knew that would be the case. Too much ocean, too much deep space, too much an alien society, the society of humans. Mevlannen had undergone a sea-change.

  She said, “So. We will have all night to talk about things. And I read from your face, Morlenden Deren, that I will be unhappy by that which I will hear. So let us eat. Come, sit.” She faced him with an arch, coy expression, yet with something wistful in it as well. And as if she sensed his appraisal of her, she said, “I know well enough we could not be even casual lovers, even for a night; but you can, if you will, lend me for a time some small part of that which I have given up. Lost, now. I need talk, the warmth of my own . . . too much have I seen of silence and conspiracy.” She finished and moved around the table with a curious floating grace, a slow, flowing, dancelike motion that caused her over-skirt to flow, and eddy about her slender body.

  Morlenden sat at a rude table that incorporated benches into its form. It looked hand-planed, rough-finished. She had said that she had made this cabin herself. The table too, obviously. She was a capable one, this Mevlannen, for all her delicacy and slenderness of figure. . . .

  After supper, which they partook in silence, they sat by the fire on cushions, cross-legged like tailors, and drank steaming cups of coffee, to Morlenden’s taste a harsh, bitter drink. Mevlannen had also laced it heavily with brandy. The girl seemed used to it, and as he drank, Morlenden found that it did banish the fatigue and apprehensions he felt.

  Mevlannen looked blankly into the fire. She said, suddenly, “Bring me your bad tidings, now.”

  He began hesitantly, “It is Maellenkleth . . . she had an accident.” He stopped. This would lead nowhere. He could circle it all night and never tell her. She needed to know. Bluntness would be best. The cuts of it were deep, but they would heal faster.

  “Some months back, Maellenkleth was captured outside by humans. After that, something they did apparently frightened her, and she autoforgot.”

  Mevlannen continued looking into the fire, giving no sign. She nodded, once, curtly, to acknowledge that she had heard him.

  He continued, “We, the Derens, were commissioned by the Perwathwiy Srith to locate her, determine what had happened to her. But they would tell us nothing, none of them. . . . We went to Krisshantem, a hifzer, who was her last lover, and with him, we retrieved her from the place where they had kept her. And with Krisshantem leading, performed a restoration. On the way back to the reservation, some agents tried to prevent us from reaching our destination. In escaping them, they pressed the hunt, and on the fence she was shot by a wire-guide. She died soon after that, after we made revenge upon those who would use a proscribed weapon.”

  Mevlannen nodded again. “Who performed the rites? She was of the Water elemental.”

  “We knew, and we did it. The Derens. Taskellan witnessed for the Perklarens, or rather for so much as is left of them.”

  “What has happened to Kler and Tas? Tell me.”

  “Klervondaf is living with the Braid of Plindestier. We have taken in Taskellan. He was too
young; he needed a Braid, a home. Why were your parents not at home? Why did they not come? Your Braid is full of mysteries, but that one is most far from me.”

  “Didn’t they tell you anything? The Perwathwiy? Sanjirmil?”

  “They would say nothing. I wormed out some information about Mael from them, as I went, but it was not much, and concerned only her. I have talked with Sanjirmil, but she was more opaque in her words than the others were in their silences.”

  “I see. Yes, I can imagine that—that they would not have told you. They couldn’t. Yes, it is true . . . the parents Perklaren were not at home as they should have been, and they could not do right for Mael. I know why; I understand. They would do it that way . . . there was no choice.”

  “So you know.”

  “Yes. All too much. That is why I do not travel. I am, I suppose, in it even thicker than was poor Mael. She was our valiant soldier, she was, all the while we stayed in the back, working, working. . . .”

  “I was told, in her last words, by Maellenkleth, to get from you a matrix, to return and transmit it to Sanjirmil. Do you also know the significance of this?”

  She started, an abrupt movement, alarm on her face. “The matrix? Now? Are you sure of this thing?”

  “Certain as I am of little else. She was dying, and a part of the old persona emerged, just enough to get that out. Will you give it to me, and will you tell me what is so important that a girl should die twice before her time to protect it?”

  “Yes . . . I will tell you. Everything. They should have, themselves, from the beginning. You could stumble, and undo the work of generations. You should have known. They should have done it all, initiated you....”

  “Krisshantem taught me the Outer Game.”

  “Not good enough by far, but it will help you understand.”

  “Then why not more?”

  “They probably feared that outside you would trip stressies.”

  “Stressies?”

  “Chemical stress-monitors. They detect anxiety chemically. In your scent, your breath. They are everywhere, but of course more so in the East. They work on us, too. In fact, we usually give stronger readings through them. That is why they would not tell you. You must take oath to autoforget to protect it.”

  “I would not reveal a secret, no more than Maellen.”

  “Just so, just so. I do not doubt you. But we simply could not risk sending many into oblivion. And if a centipede loses enough legs, even it will stop walking. And of course, things can be traced.”

  The girl arose now, refilled the cups, and returned to the place before the fire. She did not evidence any emotion Morlenden could identify, but her eyes were moist, reflecting brightly the light of the fire. She blinked rapidly. A log in the fire collapsed, sending a whirl of sparks up the chimney. Outside, the wind took up a constant moan, and Morlenden could hear rain pelting on the windowpane.

  Mevlannen looked up. “I will tell you what I know. Then the matrix. You will understand it then. I will not have you stumbling in the dark anymore. You are far too dangerous that way. But you must oathmake to me, on your name, that you will autoforget to protect it.”

  Morlenden hesitated, drawn by the mystery, but also repelled by the idea of autoforgetting. He said, “Then so be it. On my name, which no one else has ever carried.”

  She looked deeply at him, into him, with eyes as bright and piercing as needles of fire. They were a soft, pale-blue color, almost gray, but in the firelight and the intensity of the moment, he did not see the color, so much as he felt that he was being weighed and measured as he had never been before. Apparently she saw what she wished to see. She took a deep breath.

  “Very well . . . now I don’t know how to tell this to you properly, for I am not a tale-teller. I know not where to start it; I have lived with it, as did Mael, all my life. And for some of the recent parts, since I came out here, there will be guessing. They will be accurate enough. You see, Mael was to come here in person, when the time was ripe, for the matrix. No other way; her, alone, when the time came. And so by what you have said, and its truth, I know it is time, but faster than was expected. After this, you may tell me why this is so.”

  Morlenden settled back. “I will do what I can. And now, I am ready.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Every word that we utter must decrease the ignorance and increase the mystery.

  —Ibid

  The real beginnings of a journey occur long before the act of physical departure.

  —Enosis ton Barbaron

  MEVLANNON BEGAN, “AND now will I give you blunt stroke for blunt stroke, Morlenden Deren. It is thus: we who are the pampered and protected curios, we who live lives characterized by the forerunners as all too agricultural and oversexed, we who supposedly fear technology . . . we possess a true ship of the deep spaces, ship and ark, ark and weapon, which was to have carried all of us to a new world beyond the stars, our own place, our world.”

  Morlenden listened to her, heard her words clearly, with no misunderstanding of them, but all the same he wondered if the news of the death of Maellenkleth had not undermined her sanity; that perhaps she was now reliving a vague legend that had circulated about the reservation for several hundreds of years. She had taken the news calmly, too calmly, and now her words were those of romantic bravado. . . . Or was it true? He asked, not concealing his disbelief, “You mean a machine, like the humans build and use to take you to the telescope? And this would take . . . all of us to some other world? Aside from being preposterous, where is such a large and weighty device located, that no one has seen it all these years?”

  “I will answer your objections, one by one. Our starship is like the forerunner craft only in that it moves in the same medium, it moves living creatures across the void. But end-functions do not determine things, only the manner of their use. The means, not the ends. And the means determine the shape of the tool. But yes, originally, it was for all of us, and yes, it will go to the stars, as far as we have to. And above all, yes, it is hidden now, but soon it will be revealed. And it was to protect that secret that Maellen paid the price, her price, her value. And why you have been told nothing up to now, why you never suspected. It has been a secret since before there was a reservation, indeed it is the sole reason that there is such a thing as the reservation, quiet and isolated from the struggles of this world. And there has never been a leak, not when this was just a dream, a theory, nor when it was building, nor when it is almost ready.”

  “Not completely leak-free. There are legends, common knowledge among the children, though we all called them nonsense sooner or later. Who could imagine such a thing?”

  “Legends? We nurtured the legend. We, Morlenden; the Perklarens, the Terklarens, the Revens, Dragonfly Lodge, we who are Kai Hrunon, the Shadow that Governs. We kept it alive, so that when all was in readiness, need, we would send word in a truth-speaker, and the people would come.”

  And now Mevlannen stopped, thinking, reaching for some graceful entry into the story she had longed all her life to tell someone, a stranger, but never had. But all her life she had lived in the community of those who knew those whose whole lives consisted of an intricate dance about a point that all acknowledged, an understood, unspoken, implied but invisible keystone of their lives.

  She began again, “It was in the beginning, when they started the Braids, the Law, the Way. Before the reservation. You must understand that. The whole thing with us, the entire culture, the way we perceived, everything was engineered to convince all outside observers that there never could be such a thing of the people. A vast prestidigitation that also had to fool the magician as well, or at any rate most of him. And of course it was successful, as you will be the first to admit. So successful that even our own imagine it to be no more than a child’s fable; so successful that the disguise has taken root on its own, and now guides the inner long-range plan as well. The values of the disguise have now permeated the real plan. And when we leave Earth, the concepts and t
he way of life that we take with us to transplant on strange soil are not the values of the originators of the plan, but those of the shadow-play that protected them all these centuries.

  “. . . But in the beginning, we were not sure it could be done; it was a hope, a theory, a gamble. But the suspicion was so strong we could not ignore it; so it was started at the mountain called Madness. Inside, it was hollowed out, a little at a time, a handful, a pocket-load, to make a place for the ark that was to be. And just as gradually, in the smoky meditation halls of Dragonfly Lodge, one pocketful of principle at a time, it began to come into view, to manifest itself. It was then we learned that the whole concept of ideas about space travel we had been laboring under was wrong, full of limits we would never transcend . . . like powering aircraft with coal-fired steam engines. It would never fly, and should it, by accident, it would never take us anywhere, or anyone else for that matter.

  “Now spaceflight had been approached by the forerunners, and some good work they did, work we are still using in the very program in which I am involved. But it has limits that any child can see; and to escape them, a whole series of fantasies was concocted, leading nowhere in hard science. What was the concept? That one moves in space according to Newton and his bloody laws of motion: forced-power, imposition of will, the Fire elemental, chemical rockets, ion-drives, solar-wind sails. All wrong. It was exactly like when the forerunners in prehistory first sailed upon seas; they could only use natural forces—buoyancy, floating ships with sails to catch the wind, launched by the tides. And we, standing on the shore of a new and terrible sea, would do the same; we, too, would tap tides and winds and currents. Only all those would be analogs, stranger forms of energy-flow in a larger and more multiplex universe.”

  Morlenden said, “I have world-knowledge; you mean that you tap directly into things like gravity, solar wind, things like that?”

  “No.” Her sharp, delicate face became focused, intense. “No. Those things you speak of, the principles, they are nth-order derivatives of the basic underlying forces we tap. In the things you know, there are no words for the currents, the flows, the forces, the concepts. And we have taken care to ensure that this remains so, forever, until we are ready to give up the secret.