The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  “A good trick, the best I have ever seen. But you have cost me my story-block to do it—a little high for the likes of Aving.” Here was the source of her anger, now fading.

  “How so? Why?”

  “I told you before—you go too far and it traps your spirit. That is what happened to Aving, you tricked him into it. But now the story-block has his spirit, and the next person to use it will get it back, part of Aving impressed into his selfness, his mind. Maybe a lot, maybe even Aving’s self will be strong enough to trade with yours, if you look again.”

  “How can that be? That is just hypnosis.”

  “No, it is more than that, what-you-say, the way you hold it, the tension, everything is input. Ask Han. He knows now, he got a taste of it. When you do not put any starts into it at the first you are asking for the meaning of everything, you have put no limtis whatsoever on it. And you go within, with your mind. Are you really inside it? I do not know, except what I learned when I was young, beginning to use one. The Zlats say you go within. And when you look into one, you get out what has been stored; and if it is someone who has been careless, who looked too far . . . Aving was an evil man, even in the little part of him that we knew; I do not know what other evils he may have been prey to. But we will not have the problem of letting Aving out into one of us. I will destroy it.” And before either Han or Liszendir could stop her, she took the story-block, carefully avoiding looking at it directly, and crumpled it up into a wadded tangle, a crushed mass. Then she placed it on the floor, and stamped on it until it was completely unrecognizable.

  “Liszendir, you have the flash gun. Make it narrow, strong! Burn this, melt it, now!” Her voice was sharp, peremptory. “Do not worry about that body there on the floor! It still functions, but it has no mind: and I know no way to get it back. Now, the gun! Quick! You must do this now or my resolve will not last!”

  Liszendir adjusted the flash gun, pointed it at the crumpled object on the floor, matted and wadded as far as hands could make it, and fired, playing the beam over the story-block until nothing remained of it but a charred lump of melted silver, unrecognizable, smoking.

  Usteyin looked at the lump for a long moment, sighed deeply, and relaxed, becoming herself again. The change in her had been so gradual that Han had not noticed it, until she returned to her normal self. “So now it is done. The body is of no more use to us, so we can eject it into the night.”

  “But he’s still alive. Shouldn’t we try to take it back?”

  “No. He will die soon. The story-block got a lot of him, even things like breathing. He was more susceptible to it than either Han or myself, and he had less defense against it—none, in fact. It was catching him before he even took it from Han. The body will go bad. So we will tell them, back in your place, and they will believe.”

  “Couldn’t we bring him back to his senses, interrogate him somehow?”

  “No. Nothing is kept. I know of no one who has ever recovered from an event like that. They die sooner or later. Yes. Look at Aving. He is dead, now. I can’t tell you hows—I only know whats. Just like I said. It traps the spirit. And once that has happened to a story-block, it is no good any more and the metal must be purified by fire. It is unclean. This normally happens with one’s own, you know, from looking too far. But for mine, it was a stranger who was caught. If we had not destroyed it, then the next time I looked into it, I would get Aving’s spirit impressed onto mine. And my self would go inside. Then you would have Aving back, but in my body. I do not think you would want that.”

  “Can you get another one, from the Zlats, or can you make another one?”

  “No—neither. I cannot make another one. Period. As for anyone else’s, they are individual. If I tried to use another’s, I might see the same stories, but they would go all wrong, and if I tried to see with it, it would show lies. I might try to rerun the story of Koren and Jolise, remember? But in someone else’s, Jolise might try to kill Koren, in some terrible way. The pattern of strong emotion would be there, but it would have been shifted into a different particular expression. Do you see? In a story-block, there are no whats, only hows. I supply the whats.”

  Usteyin bent to the body of the alien, began trying to drag it to a place where they could jettison it into space. Liszendir moved to help her. It was not heavy, and they dragged it with little effort. Han showed them where the disposal bay was, and Aving vanished into space.

  At last, they returned to the cabin, to the panel, where Han inserted the course, a matrix-12 course which would route them directly through to Seabright. As the Pallenber began to move in normal space, orienting itself, Han showed the initiate handle to Usteyin, a rough-finish simple gray lever-type device, offered it to her.

  “You turn it. Just hold it firmly, turn it by rotating your hand, as if you were bringing your thumb up.”

  She looked shyly at Han, and then at Liszendir; reached for the handle, hesitantly, then grasped it firmly, and turned it. Normal space in the vicinity of the planet Dawn vanished, and they were on their way back. Usteyin still, for a time, tightly held the gray handle, as if she feared that if she let it go, the magic would end. Finally, convinced that it would not, she released it and stood back, smiling an odd half-smile to herself.

  14

  EPILOGUE

  “Ends? What ends? I know only beginnings!”

  —Valdollin Tlanh

  ON THE PLANET Kenten, the first home of the ler after they had left Earth, it was spring, early spring, the particular time of the year when things are just starting to become tinged with green, and some days may be balmy, pleasant, but in the dregs of the day, the old winter is still hanging on, hoping against time that it still can make its presence known.

  In spring, then, in a small town located on the shore of a small sea that connected two larger seas, Han walked back to the teahouse where Usteyin awaited him, savoring the wet rain, the damp air, the suggestion of sea-odors, feeling the cold, and reflecting on all that had been said in the final report on Dawn, which Hetrus had arranged to have forwarded to him there, through the local post. This town was called Plenkhander, in accordance with the ler custom which decreed that the smaller the town, the longer the name.

  But he was not so concerned with the report, which at any rate was no more than a courtesy; Han’s part in the events on Dawn had ended, by his own wish, and Usteyin’s, and instead of going back, they had all three come to Kenten, to Yalven province, to Plenkhander, to see Liszendir woven, and to fit themselves into a more normal life again. He reflected, as he passed rainstreaked shop windows, that adventuring was all right, all well and good, for those who sought it out, but he had not, however it had come off, and for the moment, he did not want any more adventures of the sort that saw one carried further into the unknown with every minute of time. He realized that this was, of course, just an extreme parable of life itself, always into the unknown, no matter if you spent your days in a shop, selling cookies, but he had wanted time; and they had given it to him. They had come to Kenten, left the Pallenber at the main spaceport, and journeyed here.

  As Han had expected, Hetrus had wanted them all to go back to Dawn, and lead the operations there. But he had refused, and he was glad he had done so, for not only did Liszendir have her problem, compounded by the fact that her age group had already made most of their arrangements, but she also had Usteyin’s problem: she had a whole world-idea to learn. So Hetrus had paid them all, handsomely, for all they had done, given them the ship (they had earned it, he said), and left them alone.

  He had heard that ler planets were, as the phrase was politely put, backward, but that one word missed much of the charm and sense of relaxed living which flowed all through them. Time was here, one was conscious of it constantly, one never forgot it, particularly on Kenten. He had expected something—either vast technological progress, or at least great intellectual subtlety, but he had seen neither. Just people, and the basic realities of life, as might be seen at any place and any t
ime. It was much of what he and Usteyin had needed.

  Plenkhander was named for an ancient stone bridge which still stood, relaying light traffic over a sluggish creek which met the sea here, a bridge which had been standing, mortarless, from a time before Han’s own planet had been settled. The shore here was straight, without points or embayments, so in a later period, they had added a jetty, and a small dock, to facilitate trade with the interior, which loomed behind the town, tumbling hills rising into the middle distances, culminating in a sawtooth ridgeline not so very high, no more than a few thousand feet, tree-covered to the very summits. Farther down the coast, to the east, the mountains came closer in to the shore, and that was where Liszendir had grown up, in a place near a town called as the remembered it, “millwheel-stream.”

  Usteyin had been enchanted at the site of the house, and a larger building nearby which served as the school, and he himself had not wanted to leave, such was the peace and timelessness of it. It was just as she had described it—the house, or yos, the orchards, the farms along the slopes, the narrow beach and the sea before the house. In the fore-yard of the yos, there had been a dwarf tree in a huge stone pot. But dwarf was only a relative term, for the tree had overspread much of the yard. It was, apparently, a giant sequoia from Earth, lovingly cultivated in miniature, forced to concentrate on bulk and spread instead of height as it would have done on its own. Injhe space behind the yos, where the structure had sprouted two wings that flowed up the hill, there was another, nestled in the comer. It was a local tree, called grayflank, which had a trunk that was veined and corded like the arm of a wrestler. It spread its branches over the yos, shading it in the summer with its foliage of small, rough leaves which Liszendir said turned bright yellow in the autumn. The yos itself was no longer the beige, off-white, parchment color of newer material, but a soft brownish-gray, streaked and stained and mossy with age. It looked as if it were part of the landscape.

  The parent generation was still around, as they said it, but none of them seemed very interested in staying at home, and save for a few chance meetings, they saw little of them. As for Liszendir’s insiblings, they were not yet fertile, but after the older girl had left, they had gradually taken over the yos themselves, and now were fully settled in their new role, painfully shy, serious, and busy as newly weds in a new house, even though they had lived in it all their lives. They, too, spent much of their time up at the school, for they would be the ones to carry its ownership on. Which left the thes, the younger outsibling, Vindhermaz. Liszendir called him Vin, which embarrassed the boy terribly, but he bore up under her ribbing gracefully, smiling knowingly whenever they would hear a soft, feminine voice call for him from outside, using his love-name of two syllables.

  They had visited just long enough to become acquainted, and then set out for the larger town several miles west down the coast, from which they could obtain a wider view of available insiblings. Liszendir had taken little from her home, save a few clothes, her musical instrument, the tsonh, made of fine, dark wood, finished in natural colors, and accented by silver keys and pad-covers. And a string of wooden beads, simple, unornamented, made of a dark, reddish wood. They were made of the wood of the tree before the yos, and were several generations old. These she gave to Han, saying only that by them he should remember her. For Usteyin, a soft summer wrap she had worn earlier. They were both touched deeply by these gifts, which were not either things which could be bought anywhere.

  So they returned to Plenkhander. At first, Liszendir had disclaimed the two of them, saying that she could look after herself well enough, but she did not resist when both Han and Usteyin insisted, and Han chartered a room in an obscure but comfortable hotel, for several months, with an option to renew the lease. Since then she had become gentle, even wistful, when she was not traveling all over the local area, following up leads, which were, still, turning out to be either dead ends, or past-tense, by the time she found the insiblings in question. This problem was not only one of availability, but was further compounded by a factor she told Han about only after they were safely on Kenten: her attribute being “fire,” she could only weave into a braid which lacked a “fire,” completing the square of Fire-Air-Earth-Water. And neither Han or Usteyin could help her in this, for no ler would speak openly about the matter, even among themselves, and to talk about this with humans, the old people, was completely out of the question.

  So they waited, in Plenkhander, and felt time passing in its measureless way. Here, the rain fell and blackened the trees, still bare from winter, and the wind in the night made the trees creak, and the air smelled in the soft blue twilights of sea and salt and woodsmoke; wagons and hooves rattled in the cobblestone streets, and small children on their way home played small flutes, and carried warm loaves of fresh bread flavored with onions back to clusters of ellipsoids nestling under trees that resembled plane trees or poplars. They ate their fill, slept deeply, and spent the days walking in the rich, rain-wet air, and visiting whatever struck their fancy. Usteyin did not want to leave, even after Liszendir became be woven.

  The braid-houses were, here as on Chalcedon, the low ellipsoids, loosely joined together, usually surrounded by low walls and spread gracefully under the trees, while buildings devoted to public use or commerce seemed to follow a more human shape—one- or two-story square buildings as often as not topped with low domes. The streets wound around without seeming purpose, wandering, random, as if they had followed paths before they were streets. The ler were not obvious, this Han knew well, but even more, neither were they ever in a hurry, even to get home. Rarely, a few braids lived in their shops, overhead, but this was considered low-class and on the verge of poverty, so there were few.

  And back to reality, to the present. Han was nearing the teahouse, which was a low building, open, glassed in, with a low dome, which squatted or floated according to the mood of the observer, beside a ferry landing. Today, in the afternoon light, the sky was leaden and the rain pelted in Han’s face, and the slate-colored sea heaved and tossed as if in some mild agitation; yet it was not dreary, apprehensive, or moody. On the contrary, Han had never felt so full of life, so involved. He looked ahead to see if he could pick Usteyin out of the crowd in the teahouse. Yes. Even from a distance he could distinguish her red hair, for, dark as it was, it was of a color no ler would ever have, and she wore it falling in cascades over her shoulders. She sat quietly unmoving in the teahouse, features rippled by the hand-poured glass panes and the streaks of rain on them, and sipped tea daintily, her full upper lip marking her face, looking out on the sea with the patience and inward calm reflections of the ler, who Han had observed watching the sea for hours if so disposed.

  Han entered the tea house, shaking the rain off his cloak, and then hanging it on a peg set in the wall, secured another pot of tea from the counterman, and joined Usteyin. As he sat down at the small table with her, she turned and smiled to him with an expression at once so peaceful and at the same time so intimate and warm that he felt a sudden pang.

  He said, “Have you been bored waiting? It was a very long business, picking up that message.”

  “No, no, I am learning to like this very much, this ler place, the way they live, not at all like the Warriors were. I fit it well. And more than once, I have caught myself wishing that you and I, we could live here. It is so . . . what? You are the one who knows words. No, I was not bored. You know that I watch the sea and spell stories in it, stories without end. We did not have seas on Dawn; only some salt lakes where nothing lived and the smell was bad. But not anything like this; this is more a wonder than the view from space. But I know there is much more to see and I want to see it all.” Han looked mock-scandalized. She looked at his serious face, and then continued, “Well, the boy said they had a long message for you at the post. What do the others say?”

  “That there is a planet for the klesh, all to itself, far away from Dawn. They had been keeping it in reserve, but this is a good purpose, and they at least
will need a place of their own. After knowing you for a while, I do not worry about the Zlats adjusting. Oh, no. We are the ones who would have trouble adjusting to them! But the wild humans will come back, to backwater places, and later, they can come into the mainstream worlds, if they feel up to it. As for the ler on Dawn, I don’t know. Factionalism has at last entered ler politics. One faction wants to leave them where they are and let Dawn’s star take care of the problem. The other faction wants to get them off. And neither wants them integrated into mainstream ler culture. That’s funny, if you think of it—I mean, they had no races as we humans do, but all the time, despite all their strictures about a wide gene pool, they were really extremely racist. Now they have a race problem as well.”

  “They are strange people, very strange. More so than I thought. Those on Dawn were . . . very ordinary, I suppose. Here, in their old place, this Kenten, they are deep in the way of . . . nature, but not wildness. They are warm, and treat one another well, according to their lights; yet they can be hard and cruel, too, to each other. But I am trying to imagine what a whole world of klesh, and wild, too, would be like. What will happen to them after they are moved?”

  “I don’t have any idea at all. I have never seen or heard anything like this. I suspect they will form tribes, first, oppress and exploit one another. You are a Zlat. How would you act?”

  “I wouldn’t know how to act on my own, in a society, at first.” She said the word “society” as if it were some strange pungent herb. “We would have to, or run wild in the forest. I shouldn’t want that—I would be cold, running about bare. You know that we were in some ways very primitive. I have been studying, Han, so I know what I was. But I am not ashamed. But more, we were not wild, but really a kind of privileged class, protected by a kind of civilization. On Dawn, many would have died. I know about winter.” She made a motion as if she were shivering in bitter-cold airs.