The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  “There is one on my ship as well. Liszendir and I took it from a murdered man’s room, in Boomtown, on Seabright, which you have never seen. Who put it there?” At the last, Han was shouting; the guards looked nervous, jumpy, hairtrigger. Never before had they seen Hatha, the great warlord, the hetman, addressed in such a manner. Han continued, “Go to the Pallenber and look in the locker in the rear of the control room.”

  During the last exchange, Han had been slowly moving, almost un-noticeably, imperceptibly, closer to the guards, away from Hatha. No one had noticed, except the glittering bright eyes of Usteyin. Even Liszendir was fooled.

  Han asked, softly, “Can you trust these guards, who have heard what we know? How do you know who is a creature of Aving’s, and who is one of yours?”

  “I will have them strip, now; then . . .”

  But Hatha was unable to finish what he had intended to say, just then, for one of the guards had dropped his ornamental sword and his crossbow, and was displaying one of the deadly little gas guns. Two others followed suit, almost in unison with the first. They immediately shot the other guards in the room, who were presumably real ler. As soon as they had done this, they turned to the others in the room, but it was too late, for Liszendir and Hatha had overturned some tables, and ducked behind them, knowing that however deadly the little darts might be, they had no real penetrating power. And Han had been close enough to one of the phony guards to strike him with an elbow chop, which, to Han’s surprise, doubled the creature over. It appeared to have died instantly from the blow, which Han had not thought deadly. Using the fallen one as a shield, and grabbing the fallen gas gun, he shot the other before it could get a shot off. It fell, grimacing horribly and convulsing. Whatever was in those poison darts, it worked as well on the guards as it was intended to on humans and ler. From his position, he could see Liszendir’s pale face, grimacing with distaste at his use of a projectile weapon. But this was no time for her mannered niceties!

  By this time, which seemed to Han to have taken an eternity, but which was quite short, all of them had gotten under cover, except Usteyin, who had vanished. Where was she? Han could not go looking for her, for the remaining phony guard was hiding in the doorway, and he had them pinned down. He was screeching in a loud, piercing cry, in a language none of them had heard before, presumably calling for assistance. It was liquid, trilling, suggestive of birdsong, but in a much lower register. But it carried well. Han called out to Liszendir.

  “I was right! They are not ler. They do not have a rib cage, but something like a cartilage tube. Hit them in the middle! They break there.”

  The remaining phony guard was still in the doorway, still screeching. Han thought desperately. That one must not get away, and we must get him, somehow, before he can get reinforcements in here. Hatha added to the din by bellowing like a bull, calling for his own reinforcements, if any of them could hear him. It probably did no good, but it added to the confusion, and lent Han some spirit. Suddenly, the trilling, liquid screeching stopped abruptly, as if cut off. Hatha continued for a breath or two, then he, too, fell silent. Han looked around, cautiously. Where the hell was Usteyin? The one guard seemed to have also disappeared. Han took a chance, and ran to the doorway. The guard was slumped backwards, behind the edge, and standing over him was Usteyin, holding one of the ornamental swords, which was dripping with a brownish fluid, rather watery, which was not blood, even though it obviously served the same function. She had wormed along the wall, gotten out of the room somehow, and stabbed the creature from behind.

  Han looked at her for a moment, amazed. She looked back, and there was a feral, wild light in her eyes he had not seen before. It faded, even as he watched. He turned from her, and called to Hatha.

  “Hatha, what did you do with that crossbow? The one Liszendir and I had when we came to Aving’s castle. Where is it?”

  “In another room, here. Three doors down, on the right. I kept it. I was going to send it back to the warship, but never got around to it.”

  “I’ll get it. It is better than the ones your guards carried. Stay here. Strip these bodies. We will need the gas guns. Yours, too.”

  Motioning Usteyin back into the relative security of the room, Han made his way down the corridor to the room Hatha had indicated. His skin began to crawl. Damn! It was dark in here! How many more of them were there? He began to feel along the back of his neck the aim of a sniper. But the dart did not come. He made it to the room. There, on a table, was the crossbow, still disassembled. He picked it up, and ducking beneath the table, assembled it, cocked it, and loaded it. The quiver of iron darts was still with it. Then, hurrying back up the hall, he joined the others, who were waiting in the doorway. Together, they made their way towards the outer exit from the building. Nothing happened, until they reached the door to the outside, suspiciously standing wide open. Hatha started into the opening, but Han pulled him back. Just as he did, a sliver pinned one edge of Hatha’s cloak to the frame. He returned to a hiding place, pasty-faced.

  Han wriggled to the opening, lying on the floor. Outside, the winter darkness was complete, as he had expected. He could see nothing from where he was without exposing himself further. But the angle at which the dart had struck suggested a direction, just out of sight. Han motioned to Liszendir; she came up to kneel beside him.

  “Can you get across this doorway, very quickly, too fast for whoever that is out there to get a good shot at you?”

  She nodded assent, tensed her muscles. Han got ready. “Go!” he whispered. Liszendir flipped across the opening. A sliver of something struck the wall behind her, with plenty of room to spare. Their reactions were slow. Han thought that he could have beat their aim himself. But he saw the sniper. He took careful aim and fired. There was a howl, and a figure burst out of concealment, staggering, making a weird howling noise. Before it became completely still, another came running from the right, to help. Han recocked the crossbow he had just used, and shot the second one. This one fell silently and lay still. The other was still as well. It seemed odd. They were killers, but they died at the slightest blow, the lightest wound. He could have sworn that the wound would not have been mortal. Curious . . . He got up and ran recklessly out into the night, looking around, followed by Liszendir.

  It was a clear, very cold night, without fresh snow or cloud cover; frosty starlight spattered the Pannona Plain with weak light, bluish in tone. Han caught a hurried movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned, and saw still another one of the phony guards drawing an aim on him. He bent over, falling, knowing it was his only chance. The first shot missed, and Han kept moving, trying to recock the crossbow as he went, knowing that he would probably not complete the act. No thoughts at all passed through his mind; just a sudden sharp pang. But the figure did not take advantage of this, but instead burst out of hiding, running, trying to get away. Of course! He was the last. Before Han could load and fire, the figure suddenly performed a wild somersault and sprawled on the cold ground, biting the icy dirt and convulsing into impossible, topological shapes in his frenzy. Then it gave a tremendous heave, and became still. Han looked around. Liszendir was standing, slightly behind him, with a gas gun in her hand, and in the weak, faint light, a wry expression on her face.

  They looked at each other, and she said, in a low voice, “I menaced him with this, to give you time to reload. You would have gotten him, too, had he tried to shoot, because he would have had to choose between us. But instead, he tried to run. He would have gotten out of range for you. So I did the deed. All laws must be broken, at least once. There is not a single one that does not have an exception, in some circumstance. Remember what I told you about your irrational decimals being the only rational parts of the universe? Well—I have met one face to face.” But however casually she uttered the words, there was a price, within her, to be paid. Now she, the cold one who had avoided passions in her youth, had broken two prohibitions. Han touched Liszendir affectionately on the shoulder. She had turned
away, but she looked back. “And now I shall be known as Liszendir Oathbreaker, for all time. No one else has gone so far.” Han could not answer her. Suddenly the illusion of closeness between them, which had been growing since they had boarded the ship, together at Boomtown, vanished. This was something she could not share. An edifice in Han’s mind, which had seemed as solid as the mountains far to the west, turned to fog, dimmed, and vanished. Illusions, that was what they had been to each other. Phantoms. But that was what defined the deepest feelings, loyalties. Then it stablized. Liszendir receded with the speed of light, in his mind, shifting all the frequencies to the red. Then became still. She was now of the past.

  Han left her, and went over to the last guard. He removed the cloak it wore; felt the body, which seemed to be losing heat more rapidly than it should, even in this cold air. He could sense some difference in the creature, but exactly what he could not determine. It looked ler-like enough, but that was probably cosmetic surgery. He pushed, experimentally at the area where the ribs would have been. It gave oddly, as if it were not bone, but a tube of cartilage, flattish, of one piece. Odd . . .

  He rejoined the others, who were coming out into the open. He said, “To our ship, quickly. We can fly it over to Hatha’s. We need to get both of them off-planet into space right now, before we run into any more of these.”

  But apparently there were no more of the creatures in the immediate area, for they had no further incidents. They made their way to the Pallenber without seeing any further evidence of them. Still, with as much hanging in the balance as was here now, they could not waste time, nor take any more chances. Hatha had recovered, and was in his characteristic temper, fuming and enraged. While Han was sealing and activating the Pallenber, Usteyin came to Han, where he was working in the control room. She was still carrying her small roll of possessions with her, and she had also kept the ornamental sword.

  “I have never done such a thing, never dreamed of it, never tried to set it in the story-block. But he—that thing was trying to kill you, you more than all the rest of us, for you had found it out, and it knew that only you could find its masters. Myself—so what is termination but the end? Our regrets and pain are short; but to lose you is a price I will not pay.” She was shaking and her eyes were overflowing. But she gained control of herself, and placed the sword to the side, repeating, “I have never dreamed of such a thing,” half to Han, and half to herself.

  Han lifted the Pallenber off, hoping they were making as little noise as possible, and flew rapidly over the short distance to where the Hammerhand sat in the frosty starlight and the silences of the winter night, grounded. Han found one of the shuttle bays open, yawning, and without hesitating, flew carefully into it and landed. Hatha was waiting at the outer lock, and they had hardly stopped when he had bolted out, running with an agility that none of them would have credited to his bulk, until they might have recalled his abilities during the first fight Han and Liszendir had had with him. It seemed that he was there, and back, before they had finished recollecting that first scene. He returned to the control room, breathing hard.

  “There is only a small crew aboard, a duty watch, but it will be enough. I told them everything, and to go as it is, now.” Even as he was speaking, the warship began the rumbling, rocking motion Han remembered. Hatha watched for a moment in evident satisfaction, and added, “A runner is already on the way to the rest of the senior Warriors with this tale. We must alert the camp.”

  Han turned to him. “Go back. Have them leave the meteors here. It will speed takeoff. Go to the place where you get more, and gather some large ones. Bigger than these. I think that these may be too small for what we will have to do.”

  Hatha sprang for the lock again, shouting over his shoulder, “So it is! I will tell them. We will meet them there!” Then he disappeared, reappearing after a short interval. He locked down the outer door, and said, “All is ready. They will be awaiting us. Now let us go!”

  Han had the Pallenber ready, and without effort, they lifted off the floor of the bay, glided outside, and took to the air. Han switched the screen to ventral view, and they watched the huge bulk dwindling on the darkened plains below, until it was at the edge of visibility. Before it merged into the dark background, they could see that it was moving, hovering uncertainly, finally moving off at right angles to their course.

  Once they had risen out of the steeper gradient of Dawn’s gravity well, Han set an automatic course in to bring them up out of the orbital plane. Usteyin stood close by him, her eyes wide, entranced, staring at the instruments, the controls, the screen, now switched back to look into the endless night of space. Han watched her closely; what could she be thinking, how would all of this seem to her? She moved closer to him, touched her arm against his.

  Hatha watched the screen for a time, also. Then he turned to Liszendir. “What he says fits together well enough. But I am still not satisfied with the reasons why these creatures from the void chose Dawn as the place to begin their aggression. You tell me why. You have odd insights into things.”

  Liszendir was standing towards the rear of the room. She answered, absent-mindedly at first, “Oh, I suppose they thought to start at the weakest point. You know, no one ever attacks anyone else for a reason, but because they think they can get away with it. They have reasons enough, but they are only for questioners among their own, and others. They are most assuredly not the real reasons. This is true on the individual level, on the level of tribes and nations, and between planets. True of ler, too, and I would project all sentient life forms. They doubtless think all of us primitives, but the problem in dealing with primitives is that on the average, the individuals of a primitive culture are more capable than those of the superior culture, culture differences, notwithstanding. Aving only saw mine and Han’s problems, our blunders, our stumblings. He was perceptive, there, and saw far into me, and my own thoughts of lacks in my life. He thought we would bumble it up good! But the further in we got, the more we learned. You played a part, too, Hatha. We are all in a chain of causality that has not yet ended, nor whose end I can see.”

  Han and Usteyin were not listening too intently to the conversation. Han was, now that they were out into deep space, programming and running the detection sequence, hoping to get a more accurate position on the anomalous emissions he had seen when they were flying from Aving’s castle to Hatha’s camp. Usteyin watched with great attention, as the panel lights flickered on and off, many colors; while on the various screens to the side, numbers and letters appeared briefly, vanishing seemingly as fast as they appeared. Other screens displayed possible configurations, arrangements of points. Nothing seemed stable for any length of time. Occasionally, there would be a hint of a promise of something definite coming into view, surfacing out of mountains of meaningless data—facts; but nothing of any definite shape would hold, longer than a few seconds. Han explained as he went to the girl, knowing that it could not be making very much sense to her. After all, the symbols and numbers could mean nothing to a person who couldn’t read and write, or count past five. After a frustrating period of time, he stood back from the panels in resignation.

  “It’s the same problem as before. I can definitely tell now that there is something here,” he said, pointing at various indicators, meters, data, “but I can’t pin it down. We’ll have to keep taking readings from different positions until we get a better fix. This could take years.”

  Usteyin looked at the ship’s detection equipment and computation panels with something between curiosity and, impossibly, recognition. She watched it closely, as if she were working some puzzle out in her mind. Then she abruptly turned and grabbed Han.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before you had a story-block? You kept a secret, you pretended you didn’t know what mine was. Why did you do this?”

  Han looked back at her, understanding nothing. “What are you talking about, Usteyin? What story-block? I have nothing like that tangle of wire you use. I don’t under
stand what you mean.” He felt completely blank.

  She darted to her blanket roll, dug out the small bag in which she kept all her small things. She reached within, deftly, and brought out the complicated tangle of wire Han had seen her use before, as she said, to tell stories on. She unfolded it to full expansion. Han peered at it closely, trying to make something coherent out of its randomness. It was still a seemingly random tangle of hair-fine wires, silver or platinum, tied at the junctions of the wires, and strung with hundreds of infinitesimally small beads. She held it up to him proudly, but she would not let him touch it, when he reached for it, to bring it closer.

  “This,” she said, as if explaining something very obvious to a child who was refusing to cooperate. “I told you before. I tell stories on it, to myself. We Zlats all have them. But this one of yours—I know it is a story-block, too, but it is so big. You cannot carry it around with you. And what is wrong with it? Why won’t it read back? Can’t it tell you the things you wish to see?” Concern replaced the tone of mild irritation which had slipped into her voice.

  “Tell me again, Usteyin. Slowly. I am just beginning to see what that is.”

  She shook her head, as if clearing cobwebs, a gesture of impatience. How could he fail to see this, he who had seen so much, of herself, and of other creatures. “This is mine. I made it, grew it, when I was very young, a tiny girl, with my mother. We all have them. Zlats. No one else. I know. When I wish time to pass, when I need to know a story, I take it like this.” She held it in a peculiar gesture with her left hand. “And I make it tell me stories. Like this.” She made a quick series of flickering motions with her right hand, hardly touching the tangle. Some of the beads moved, changing position. The deft, sure finger motions were almost too swift to follow. She did something else to it, tensing it with her left hand, and it responded, very subtly, shifting in some way, becoming . . . another random tangle of wires with beads strung along them. “Can’t you see it?” she asked. “That was the tale of Koren and Jolise; they are Zlats who have a great love story, they stole the jewels and ran away to . . .” She trailed off, watching Han’s face, closely. “No, you don’t see, do you?” Her enthusiasm turned to disappointment.