The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  “Where do you go? Do they put you out in the cold?”

  “Oh, no.” She laughed in a low tone, quietly. It was the first time he had heard her laugh. It was a relaxed, pleasant sound. “As for me, or like me, by then I would already have woven. The thes stays at home until they are chosen. But the parents—they are elders, then. They are free; they can do anything they want. They have gender, but no sex. So they are completely free. Some go off in small groups, you would say communes, although it is not exactly like that. Others go into government or business. Still others become mnath, the wise. They live alone, rarely in pairs, in the hills and forests.”

  “Don’t the adults of the old generation stay together?”

  “Yes, sometimes, they do. But as often as not they don’t. There is no rule and people do as they please. With the Karen, it is tradition that the insiblings stay and teach at the school, which belongs to the braid. Sometimes the afterparents, who were outsiblings before weaving, stay as well. But our braid is an old one and such traditions are meaningful to us. But the elders do not live in the Yos. That is forbidden. This way, a yos need only be of such a size, so everyone has much of the same size of house. That discourages vanity.”

  Han was surprised at the insights he gained from her. He had always thought of ler weaving as something either akin to marriage, or sanctioned cohabitation. It was neither, and apparently was regulated more strictly than either. He was, however, still dissatisfied. “Well, that sounds nice, but what about rich and poor? Don’t the rich have bigger houses? Or don’t you have rich and poor? And who runs the government?”

  She answered easily. Liszendir either ignored sarcasm, or did not recognize it. “Oh, yes, we have rich and poor. But you think in terms of family, and inheritance. With us, it is the braid that is rich or poor. For the rest, all you take when you leave, outsibling or elder, are some personal things, clothes and the like. We know that possessions enslave. And it is the same with land. The property one owns is where one works or lives. No more. Nothing less. Some elders become very rich and powerful. But when they terminate, all that they have made goes back into the common treasury. All of it.

  “And as for the government, you know that braids are set for certain roles. One bakes bread, another builds houses, another performs still another function in the community. So it is with the government; a certain braid runs it, others perform supporting roles within it. You met Yalvarkoy and Lenkurian Haoren? They are also from Kenten, and they are what you might call ‘a braid which is responsible for the ministry of the interior.’ But our governments are small. We restrain ourselves, so that we do not have to call on someone else to do it for us. And the way to outlaw complex, weighty governments, is to outlaw preconditions which lead to complex problems.”

  “That doesn’t sound very free.”

  “Well, in the matter of running the government, no. But our government leaves us alone.”

  “You said self-restraint. I must ask if some are not so restrained?”

  “Yes. Some are. And that is where the school comes in. We Karens are something like what you would call police and judges at the same time. Our law is equivalence. We are as prone to dishonesty as any folk, I suppose, so I am trained in ler law and in many degrees of violence. And in philosophy, for only the wise may judge, and only the gentle command violence.” At the last, Liszendir slipped into a peculiar kind of measured speech, almost as if she were chanting.

  “Or, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’?”

  “Or in some cases, the money equivalent.”

  “Then you know a lot about ler society.”

  “Yes. Would you like a recitation?” She laughed. “I can recite the Book of the Law, the Way of the Wise, the Fourteen Sages’ Commentaries, and if you desire, all the names of my insibling chain back zhan generations. That number is the second power of fourteen to you, and has the same significance as your one hundred.”

  Han laughed back at her. “Anything else?”

  Liszendir sat pensively for a moment. Then she brightened and said, “If we had a very long voyage, I could also teach you Singlespeech, which is our everyday language. You could not learn Multispeech, but I am a master of both modes, one to many and many to one, and could at least tell you about it. I could also teach you sliding numbers, which you would find useful.”

  “Sliding numbers?”

  “We do not have a fixed number base, like your tenbase or the one your machines use, two-base. We use many, as fits the situation. We are non-Aristotelians: hence to us, reality cannot be categorized into any fixed number of states. So we use many bases; theoretically, we could use any number as a base, but we restrict ourselves to bases which are twice a prime number, such as, in decimals, base of six, which we call childsway, or base ten, which we discourage, or base fourteen. There are many others. Base ninety-four, or another which uses most of the wordroots of Singlespeech for numbers in its unity sequence.”

  “Why not ten and two, like us?”

  “Two reasons. To program non-Aristotelianism into all, and to prevent children from counting on their fingers. We have five digits, just like you; but we make them go abstract from the first—it makes things easier later on.”

  She held her hand out for him to see. It was a graceful, strong hand, smooth and finely shaped. It was very similar to a normal human hand, except that the palm was narrower, and the little finger had separated and moved back, like a smaller thumb. It was opposable, just like a thumb, and in the matter of writing, ler were not “handed,” but wrote with either hand, holding the pen with either thumb. She wore no rings of any kind. The nails were pink, plain, and clipped off short and neat. The only distinguishing mark of any kind was a small tattoo at the base of the inner thumb, suggestive of the ancient Chinese symbol of Yang and Yin.

  Han asked, “What is that mark?”

  “That is the badge of my skill.”

  “That is very similar to an ancient symbol of old Earth. Chinese. Did your firstfolk model on them?”

  “Yes. Some things. The best example is language. Our Singlespeech was modeled on theirs, but in phonetic root building only. We did not imitate their grammar or sounds. Each Singlespeech root has three parts—leading consonant, middle vowel, and final consonant. Within the rules, every combination has four meanings. But only that far. We used old English for the phonetics, for we lived in a country where it was spoken. And we did not like using tones. In that way, we modeled much on their ideas, but we used different materials. It is that way in other areas.”

  Han started to interrupt, but Liszendir went on. “And especially we borrowed from them the lesson of change. They knew change and permutation well, and that all things end. All that begins must end, and all that is, must be something else. They were called backward, yet their society lasted on Earth much longer than the ones of those who trusted in stone and metal and illusions of changelessness. The ones who hoped they would live forever.”

  Han arose from his chair, went to the kitchen unit and programmed it, and then returned. Then they talked about humans. Han felt at a disadvantage here, since he lacked the continunity with his ancestors which Liszendir seemed to have. Here was a puzzle: ler society seemed static, old-fashioned, primitive, tribal. Yet they assimilated some forms of technology with no apparent effort and seemed to suffer no cultural shock from those newer ingredients. And as a group, they showed little change in time or space. They were remarkably homogeneous; ler from different planets spoke the same language and held the same social structures in common. Humans were changeable, divergent.

  Of his own forebears, Han only knew back to his father’s grandfather, who had come to Boomtown from somewhere else and become a trader. Beyond that, he only knew that the great-grandfather had supposedly come from Thersing V. What had members of the family been before that? What difference did it make?

  He saw, in Liszendir, a girl of such basic culture, that, having learned basics from her, he could reasonably expect to f
ind the same motivations in another ler from any place. The individual would be different, just like humans, but there seemed to be much less of a range. One human was easy and tolerant; the next might be a bigot of the most intolerant sort. But to her, she could not hope to have the same assurances: every human she met would be different.

  Religion was another area where there was a deep rift between their mutual comprehensions. He described human practices in this area in great detail, hoping by conversational trade to elicit some description of ler practices out of her. As always, the ruling classes of human society were more or less agnostic, paying lip service to whatever cult happened to be active in their area at the time. This was one human constant that ran unbroken all the way back to Gilgamesh. The deeds remained the same, and only the excuses were changed to protect the innocent. And as in all other areas, human society varied in religion in both time and space.

  But of ler religion or lack thereof, men knew little or nothing. Some savants averred that there was indirect evidence of this or that structure; but upon more sober examination, these theories seemed to revolve more upon the prejudices of the author than on the practices of the subject. Nor could Han get any information out of Liszendir: she was curiously reticent to discuss the subject, and avoided questions with great dexterity. The only positive statement he could get out of her was in reference to the projectile weapon they had found set for them in Efrem’s apartment. She was definitive in her distaste for it; apparently projectile weapons of any kind were ritually unclean to her. He remembered that she had handled it with the greatest reluctance, and when he asked her now further about this, she said little. She had shuddered, and said sadly, “No ler would touch the filthy thing. And especially no Karen.” She made a curious gesture with her left hand, the one that bore the yang-and-yin mark. That was all he could get out of her.

  As they ate, the talk drifted towards sexual topics. It was an area Han did not really want to come up, but he felt it was almost inevitable; a certain tension was rising between them, and here was its obvious source. Han was no beginner, and was not particularly bashful, or ashamed of the things he had done. Yet he was reticent to talk at length about his past adventures. However, the girl was not restrained in the least, and became more animated as she discussed this aspect of their lives in detail. The kitchen delivered its work, and they sat down to eat together.

  For a time, they traded some relatively innocent stories back and forth. But it became clear that here was a very great difference between them.

  She said, “I am surprised at only one thing about your way—that you wait so long. You are concerned first about your identity, then later, sometimes after you have become parents, with sex. It is just the reverse with us. We do not worry so much about our identity until after we have become parents.

  “I will tell you how it was with me, not to satisfy your curiosity so much as to work something out in my own mind. You see, for us, I was somewhat late in getting the idea. As children, we are very free—we can do as we want, and curiosity about the body is not discouraged. And in good weather, we do not wear clothes. So as a child, a hazh, that is a pre-adolescent child, you see young people, adolescents, did-has, playing body-games with each other all the time; no one goes to a great deal of trouble to hide. But you do not have any interest in it—it’s silly, you know? But one day it isn’t silly any more and you want to do it.”

  She stopped for a moment, as if she were reaching for a memory, savoring it, weighing it to determine its exact substance. She smiled weakly. “As I said, I was late. All of my friends the same age were all crazy about this new thing they had discovered they could do with each other. But I didn’t seem to understand why it was so important. So one day we were swimming, not far from my yos. It was very warm. And a boy I knew, Fithgwinjir, very pretty, took me to the beach, holding my hand. I felt very strange. I saw he was different, ready. But all I felt was expectation. He said, ‘Liszen, let’s do it together, now.’ That was the first time anyone had ever called me a love name. We only use the first syllable of our names when we are children. Two when you are adolescent. And later, three. I told him I didn’t know how. He told me he would show me. We kissed, and then we lay down together in the warm sand. The others, some looked, and some didn’t. It wasn’t important to them. Just madhainimoni, ‘they who are making love to each other.’ But it was very important to me. I felt turned inside out. And I loved Fithgwin, of course.

  “Afterwards, I wanted to talk to someone, but I knew the other children would laugh; they were way ahead of me. It wasn’t new to them. I was ten. They had been at it for months, some a year. My insiblings were about five, so they knew nothing, and my thes, Vindhermaz, he was just a baby. So I told my foremother, my madh. She was very happy—she was worried I would be retarded.

  “But I learned fast. At first it’s like that. Play. Fun. Something to do. Then you fall in love, over and over again. You begin spending nights with your love at each other’s houses. Then you have group parties together. But by your late teens you are settling down, playing at more adult games, hoping you will be chosen to start a new braid as shartoorh, honorary insiblings. That is very wonderful, because that is the only time you can pick who your mate will be. That is what we all dream about before we are woven.

  “So. Now. The present. Wendyorlei was my last lover. We were living together, schoolmates, in a yos which was not presently being used. We felt the same way: we hoped we could stay together and be chosen. But we did not have a great love. Yes, we cared, we were loving-kind to each other, but we still wandered, too. We had other lovers, and as is custom, we did not hide them from each other. That is training for when you are woven—there can be no jealousy in the yos. None. You learn to erase it before you weave.

  “School finished. Wendyor was needed at his home, which was across the mountains. We were waiting for something. And I heard of this, and so came. I harbor no illusions. I will never see him again close within my arms.” She took a very deep breath.

  Han told her a parallel tale, the story of his adventures in love, the ones he had felt like they were the last thing in the world. And the others, which had been just fun. But he admitted that he had started much later, and couldn’t come near her in quantity.

  She said, “Well, I approve, of course. And I understand why you are so cautious. We are not fertile—it is just fun, with no price except the one you pay with your heart. But you do not have that room to move about in. A mistake, and your life is out of control, yes?”

  “Yes,” was all Han could say.

  “Now. Your name is very close to the form of a ler name. It is easy for me to call you ‘Han,’ but hard in another. The single syllable reminds me of a child, but there is nothing childish about you. Also, the child name ends. And I do not know how to handle that.”

  “I would be less than honest if I said that I had not found you desirable, even with our differences,” Han said, after some hesitation.

  Liszendir had finished eating. She leaned back in the chair, stretched gracefully, and her face took on a coyness, an arch flirtatious look which Han found unbearable. She had, in an instant, become beautiful in the soft light of the instruments and the stars. He could not turn away the thoughts he had of that smooth, completely hairless body under the homespun robe.

  She said, in a soft voice he had never before heard her use, and which matched perfectly a face which had become mysteriously lovely, the broad mouth soft and generous, “Yes. I see, and I have felt some of the same with you. It frightens me, for I know very well that physically we are compatible; yet it is said that such things are not to be done, and with wisdom, for our endurance is different from yours. We can do it many times. So it is not to be done: but you are male and not unattractive, even if you are too hairy.” She laughed shortly, and then became pensive and sober again.

  After a long, silent moment, she said, quietly, “You must not touch me when we are in this mood. The urge to couple in ler is
very strong, more intense than to you, until we are no longer fertile. I have not made love for some time and my need is great. And you and I should not to do this thing, Han.”

  As she finished, she rose and turned away. “It is now your turn at the watch. I will do my exercises and sleep.” She started towards the passageway door.

  Han said, just as she paused at the door to go through it, “By the way, you never told me the meaning of your name.”

  She looked back, startled. “You do not know what you ask. But it is no secret. It means, literally, ‘velvet-brushed-night.’ A ‘liszendir’ is a special kind of sky . . . it is when the night sky is very clear, like there was no air in it, but streaked with very fine, high cirrus clouds, filmy, lit only by starlight. It is normally a winter sky, although we rarely see it in summer.”

  Han, mystified, shrugged. “Well that’s progress, at least. Now we know each other better.”

  Liszendir looked unfathomable. She made a gesture of negation. “There is no progress. There is only change.” She vanished through the door.

  3

  “There is no such thing as a doctrine, a theory, or an idea which lacks the capacity and the ability to imprison the mind.

  —The Fourteen Sages’ Commentaries, v 1, ch 3, Suntrev 15

  THE REMAINDER OF their journey to Chalcedon passed in what Han would later think of as courteous silence. Yet, there was something unfinished between them, something unresolved, which in other circumstances might have posed no problem at all.