The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  SEVERAL OF THE short and dark days of the winter of Dawn passed, while Han tired to accommodate himself to his new reality; a task which was complicated greatly by the fact that he did not know very well what reality he should try to adhere to. He tried to examine his present context in the light of past experiences and found that impossible—the past would not fit the present, and neither would engage with any future he could imagine. Most of this was engendered by the quiet and almost unnoticeable presence of the girl, Usteyin, for she, as nothing else, reminded him of how far his adventure had diverged from his original position.

  What had started as a relatively simple journey had become impossibly complex, a total wilderness in which issues of morality, emotion, loyalty and the very personality were all blown this way and that. So long as the flow of events had been simplex and serial, as he and Liszendir became drawn deeper and deeper, farther and farther out, he had maintained some balance. But now, it all returned. His system, he realized, had been jury-rigged and jerry-built. Or was it jury-built and jerry-rigged? He knew the ancient formula, but he could not get it straight. He suspected that it did not really make any difference. So, with the undeniably human girl, he came back to the roots of things. To a reality. But it was a reality that made no sense.

  As for Usteyin, she had installed herself with a minimum of fuss and was indeed as advertised, docile, quiet and neat. Han was mystified by her in several ways—for although a young girl, barely adult, if that, she was completely self-sufficient. She had a sense of self-possession that was beyond anything he had ever seen or heard of. He thought that if by some chance he could maroon Usteyin on some obscure asteroid, she would continue her routine until her supplies gave out, and face the void calmly, as if it were nothing more remarkable than awaking from a nap. He had watched her as she slept; she slept like an animal, lightly, with little movement. She dreamed, for he could watch the changes of expression moving over the exquisite face, but they moved with a slow, steady rhythm that resembled no one he had known. She had a reserve and a sense of self-discipline that made Liszendir look like a wild barbarian by comparison. She responded to Han directly, without artifice or mannerism, speaking in simple, short sentences, in a girl’s clear voice, but one which was absolutely steady. Whatever she thought she was, she was absolutely sure of it. Perhaps she really did think of herself as nothing more than an animal, a pet, a breed. But he could not tell—she was completely opaque and revealed nothing. Han could thank Liszendir for teaching him that such behavior was indicative of depth, just as overly demonstrative behavior was indicative of great shallowness. If this was true, the girl Usteyin was an ocean.

  As he saw more and more of her, he became more convinced of his original impression of her—she did have a mind-wrenching beauty, and was as different from Liszendir as any living person could be, and still remain a person. He visualized Liszendir as a picture in monotone. A picture in great detail, a picture filled with a thousand details, highly erotic and suggestive in the mind of even more than the body could accomplish. But Usteyin was something done in full, broadband color, a dazzling figure whose brightness concealed—something, everything. He viewed the prospect of any further relationship with her with misgivings. So, indeed, had he been advised to take his choice, and so he had done. He could not see any materially different result; and the few days only served to allow him to realize the depth of the problem. And he did have a problem. Owning her had been as simple as just asking. But in reverse proportion to what he really wanted of her, he felt as if he had set an impossible task upon himself—for to truly possess her as he wished, now, he would have to know her, and she would have to know him.

  Han considered cultural shock, but as a meaningful symbol it fell far short of the reality. Already, there were subtle hints that within her, a delicate balance was being upset, slowly, to be true, but nevertheless, upset, completely. He had come to want her more than any other girl or woman he had known, but he did not want it at the price of ruining her forever, by destroying the very basis of her intangible appeal.

  He considered that a person who had never had any money could suddenly become rich, through a lottery, or some similar circumstance. Likewise, a farmer could move to the city; a person from a backward and rude planet could arrive on a developed and sophisticated one. But all those were of one range. The next level down was that of a slave become a freedman, or perhaps a responsible member of society. Then, below that, was Usteyin, who did not even think of herself, as well as Han could determine, as a person.

  This was doubly ironic, he realized, because as a result of the heavy bombardment of charged particles Dawn received periodically, when the planet’s magnetic field reversed polarity, the renegade ler who ruled most of Dawn were sinking, losing abilities, and some of the humans were undoubtedly advancing, or at least holding their own. Han strongly suspected that given equal conditions, Usteyin was probably vastly more capable and intelligent than even the better Warriors. He could pursue more paradoxes—for in comparing Usteyin with Liszendir, he could see that Liszender, while denouncing civilization, was completely civilized, and Usteyin not. Yet in another sense, if civilization was an exercise in self-control, then it was Usteyin who was the furthest along of all of them.

  A pet. But a highly refined pet. One did not hitch a thoroughbred horse to a plow, nor did the lapdogs of a previous age pull carts and sleds. She was not a drudge, a scullery maid, or a concubine. It had been the most quixotic of hopes to take her at all. And to maintain such a self-view required a balance equal to that of the finest chronometer. He feared damages to his own ego, if he treated her in error; but he feared even more for her, if he tried, too abruptly or too coarsely, to turn her into a human being, a person, overnight. And he found that the longer he had her in his presence, the more he wanted just that: she would do something to his life forever.

  He was suspicious of the word “love.” So he had been, long before, and since Liszendir, doubly so. She had been right, of course—there were an unnumbered quantity of things, states, relationships that all fell, in human society, within the large expanse covered by the symbol. It was as if someone asked if the city Boomtown were located in the universe! But he saw in himself a continuum here, beginning with a native selfishness and an idle concern for sensual pleasures, which had been fun, never regret it. But he had reached a deeper level with Liszendir, a mutuality that was far different. And with Usteyin, he could sense, somewhere out of sight, a deeper sense of commitment, in the same degree of logarithmic scale. It did not change or degrade anything which had passed between himself and Liszendir. He realized with a sudden pang that it indeed was past-tense, now. Rather, it brought it into more meaning.

  His mind went off on another tangent: what about the other klesh, any of them, the Zlats, the Haydars, and the Marenij, who resembled the Zlats in build, but who were slightly taller and who had gold-olive skins and fine, silky, pale-blond hair. The girls had been breathtaking, simply unbelievable. He had read the material in the folder, eventually deciphering it out: the Warriors who were fanciers of klesh thought that they were, by breeding, working back to the original human types. But you could not work backwards this way, and they had instead created, unwittingly, several hundred types of races, each with its own strengths and shortcomings. Han had no doubts that immeasurable harm had been done in the weeding process over thousands of years. But it had also brought some qualities into piercing, burning focus; all the klesh would have to have something to survive. And from what he had seen, the Zlats were the furthest along of all. If they all could only be brought back into the common stream of humanity . . .

  As for Usteyin herself, she seemed content in her new home. He had no idea what her old one had been like. She gave no indication of sadness at leaving her past, whatever it had been. She was clean, fastidious, neat, and took care of herself with the seriousness of some ancient courtesan, although much of the effort she expended was, at second glance, completely asexual in nature
, and very probably served to pass time. She had a small bag of toilet articles, a comb, a simple brush, a miniature file, a crude toothbrush. She spent the days grooming herself, sleeping, or occasionally manipulating the gadget that looked like a tangle of fine silver wires. More rarely, she sang quietly to herself, aimless and endless songs in a dialect Han could not follow. In these times she seemed to be oblivious to everything, withdrawn into some private universe whose dimensions only the Zlats knew, and perhaps only she knew them accurately. Han let her sleep and make herself comfortable when and where she would; at night, she curled up in the corner by his bed. And slept lightly, for many times he was awakened by a sudden noise, or a shout from outside, and looking about in the darkness to locate the source of whatever woke him up, he would glimpse in the corner, the sheen of her eyes, wide open. But in a moment, the sound of her breathing would become audible and regular again. As soon as he realized what he wanted with her, he wanted to begin immediately, but thought it best, for the present, to let her establish a routine comfortable to her before he started trying to unravel the fabric of probably six thousand standard years of intensive breeding and an ingrown, introspective culture; and a score of years on her own.

  He had not been able to locate Liszendir, or find out anything about her, during the days in which he and Usteyin were left to themselves, and he had begun to worry about her. But finally she appeared. His feelings were mixed—relief that she was present and in seemingly good shape, and acute embarrassment over the presence of Usteyin. But he could sense in her eyes as she came in that whatever had been between them, it had now evolved into something different, and there was no jealousy in it. Rather, something comradely responsible. Han followed the hint closely, for he felt the same way.

  “I have come because we can meet and talk more freely now. I have some interesting information. Apparently, we are now to be trusted somewhat by these clods; I am doing what I can. They think I am teaching them great secrets, but in reality, I am only giving them beginner’s-level exercises. I feel guilty, because they will be deadly enough here, but it will be child’s play if they try to use it back in a ler civilized place. Some of them, it is true, have a high degree of native skill, but it seems to be caught by accident and personality and circumstance. Hatha, for example, is not a member of a class, but an individual in his skill, which by the way increases my professional regard for him, though I detest him and everything he stands for, just as before.

  “Also, Han, your behavior at the klesh exhibit was a factor in this. Hatha was astonished! He actually respects you! It is the talk of the camp. So here I am. I came to tell you to stay on the course you have chosen. And to see the girl.”

  Han called Usteyin. She appeared shortly, and stood quietly, obediently, while Liszendir looked her over carefully. Now that he could see the two of them together, it reinforced his impression about Liszendir being monotone, monochromatic, while Usteyin was something in color. But there were other differences now apparent. Usteyin was slightly smaller in size than the ler girl, and considerably more delicate in structure, yet through some process Han could not fathom, she seemed to be the stronger of the two. It was Liszendir who had to exert some effort to keep her face expressionless.

  Finally, she spoke. “I understand completely. In a house full of everything you could desire, you chose better than you know. She is far more than a pretty face, a young body, even though even to my eyes she is lovely. And you and I know how it must be with us. No bitterness. No recriminations. You must do this thing, for it has been set long before you ever saw me at Boomtown.”

  “It is a thing I have wrestled with deeply, Liszendir,” he said, avoiding her eyes, still as full and liquid gray as they had been in the bright sunlit room where he had first seen Liszendir Srith-Karen.

  “I know what you feel. But you must not project traditional human emotions, out of what one of your Boomtown secretaries might think, seeing you with some new lover, onto me. I feel no jealousy or envy. I wanted you to do this, and I know that were things reversed, I could not have done so well. Indeed, I feel as Hatha; in Boomtown, my first impression was of a lazy human fool, I see deeper now. Our peoples misunderstand much about one another; we should get back together somehow. It has been too long.”

  Han did not say anything. She went on, “You will save this one, she will be your life, and you will come back, or send back for the others. I see this. I visited the klesh exhibition also. It was disgusting—not the people themselves, but in how they came to be where they are, and what they are. But every human on Dawn is worth it. As for me, I have not found one ler on the whole planet I would lift a finger for. They are both inferior and evil—let them devolve back into the chaos and bestiality they deserve.”

  “I did as you suggested, and as I felt the pressure to act. It was like feeling the cleavage in a piece of wood. I knew which way lay the grain, and which way lay the knots. I must have learned how to think that way from you.”

  “You did well, completely. You know that you were not being rewarded; you were being tested. And in passing it as you did, you have astounded Hatha so much that we now have room to move about.”

  “Liszen, I have not forgotten . . .” At the use of her lovename, he thought he saw a quick shadow flit across her face.

  “Nor have I. Nor will I ever. But you know we could not spend our lives together, that I must someday weave with others. I want to; even when you were within me, I knew what I would have to do. Even your name was an omen. It means ‘last,’ in the mode of the power of the water, which governs the emotions. I can tell you that, now. You know ler too well to have anything like that concealed any longer. And she? She should be obvious to you, even if you are not trained in such things. Look at her color: red hair. She is powerful in the air elemental, she radiates it, she is a living spirit of the power of events, the onrush of things. I am Liszendir-the-fire, a creature of the will, but it is so strong in her that she would blow me out like a candle. She is small and fragile, but she bears the weight of the universe behind her.

  “So, now, Han. You know what must be, with me. You knew long before you asked me if ler kissed. So would you stand outside the yos of my braid and bay at the moon? No. And I would not stand outside yours either. And if I can help with what will be your most difficult task. I will. Ask it of me, for what we made between us with our bodies was hodh, and afterwards we are closer than parent and child. Will you have enemies? Let them tremble in the night, for I will lay hands of fire upon them. And wilt thou lovers? Then I will warm them with my heart as I once warmed you. It is all now far beyond what you call love and sex.”

  She turned and left.

  Han turned to Usteyin and looked at her for a long time. He regarded elementals as rank superstition, but there was an undercurrent of sense in what Liszendir had been saying, something which could not be denied, however rationally one pursued it. Usteyin finally spoke. It was the first time he had heard her speak directly to him, in confidence. Her voice was lower, and had a slightly throaty quality.

  “Who is that lady?”

  “She came here with me. From another world.”

  “Did she own you?”

  “No. We were both wild.” He had to use the word. There was no word for “free” in the distorted ler Singlespeech of Dawn.

  “I fear her greatly. Females as cruel. She is warm one way, I see that, she has known love, but in another, she is cold, like ice, like the wind of the south, now. Like the darkness out of the south. She came before you, to the place of show. I thought then she must be from some far place. She looked at me with hardness, with eyes of wands.”

  “Usteyin, what do you want?”

  “Want? I do not understand.”

  “Desire. Ambition. Need. Before you were in the show.” He paused. “Plans. Hopes.”

  “I . . . want to have some honor, that I may mate. If not that, a kind home, where there are people who will treat me well, even feel warmth, protection.” She paused
, thinking. “But I know from the way the people acted when they were deciding who was best that I did not fare well.”

  “Is that all?”

  “All? Is there more? To have hope, an alien thing, one must be either of the people or the wild. I am neither. I would see that my life is good as it unfolds, but I am prepared that it be otherwise. There is no past, no future. Those are things-not-real which unwild creatures tangle themselves into.”

  “They told me you were not high, this show, but of what I saw, I wanted you more than anything else. Above all.”

  “Above females nearer to yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I am happy. It is good to be wanted, even more to want, and find that which is yours.”

  “What do I look like to you?”

  “When I saw you first, I was very surprised; wild klesh never come. I thought you were a person from far away. But I saw your hands, your face, the fear on it. What was that from? You are klesh, even as I, yet you must be a great one, just so, to walk with the people as one. Mnar, I thought, but I saw then that it could not be so. You look like them a little, but only at first.”

  He could not explain everything. Not yet. She waited a moment, then continued.

  “Sometimes we see wild ones. There were many, not so long ago. I did not meet any myself, but I heard tales. It was very hard on them; they pined, they languished, they refused to eat. Many fought constantly, and some were killed. What do the people wish of you? Will they mate you?”

  “No, I don’t think so, at least not the way you mean. They wanted to, at first, I think, the fat one who was with me. But later he changed his mind. He said I was too close to the wild to be of any value to any breeder. No demand. They can get all the wild ones they want, here. I work for him. He was pleased, and so gave you to me as a present.”

  “Me?”