The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  There was a pause while the operator complied with Venle’s instructions and rang both mentioned parties. There was some further delay while the called parties awoke and tried to assemble some official dignity before coming on the conference call. But finally the screen before Venle divided and two faces appeared side by side. Venle spoke first. “Operator, record this.”

  “Recording.”

  “Noted. First, Acumen-Medic Slegele: Are you aware of the nature of the subject remanded to the sensory deprivation unit located in room seven-thirty-five, Building eight-nine-oh-five?”

  Venle knew very well the acumen-medic did not. It was merely an opening question to put the senior man off balance. And it did. Slegele answered, “Of course I don’t know at five in the morning. I don’t keep rosters in my quarters. Is this why you get me out of bed at this hour?”

  Venle said, “Well, let me be the first to tell you. You have a quote live unquote ler in your magic box, that’s what.”

  The puffy face in the viewer moved, registering several emotions at once. Slegele said, “But, Venle, that’s impossible. I recall the circumstance, and remember seeing the forms on info when they went through; you must be making some mistake. That particular unit holds an unknown female subject, I believe a suspect of vandalism or something similar.”

  “Somebody lied,” Venle said sternly, not bothering to conceal his elation at confirming something he had long suspected: that Acumen-Medic Slegele was a mere paper-stamper who knew nothing about what was going on in his departments. “Yes, indeed. The forms were in error. It’s a female, true enough; I looked. But not human. With them, I’d have to guess the age . . . she appears to be about middle-adolescence, over fifteen, under twenty-five. Small breasts, well-formed, no pubic hair. Second thumb on the outside of both hands. That sounds like a ler to me. And you know the terms of the Compact as well as I: No imprisonment or experimentation. All suspects are to be conveyed immediately to the Institute. You and I, we’ll fry for this. How long has she been on isolation?”

  Eykor broke in, his composure recovering. He was a horse-faced man with a shock of unkempt reddish hair. But despite his rude appearance, he was both suave and controlled. “There is no problem, Venle. We listed that one in that manner on the invoices. All of the extant records were paperwhipped by my people. What’s the problem? More specifically, how did you come to be over there?”

  “I believe I can state the reason briefly: I was called on a blankout alarm which your cretin watchman sent out six hours late. The subject, as you refer to her, has somehow managed to dismind herself. Zero. You’ve got a live warm body, Interrogator, but that is all you have. Apply your methodology on that. She has virtually no responses whatsoever. I should estimate early newborn, if anything.”

  Slegele began stammering, “But, but . . .”

  Eykor interrupted Slegele. “This conference will be classified secret under the provisions of Code four-oh-one-five, section B amended, and is hereby confiscated, all recording thereof to be forwarded to this office, Organization S. Operator?”

  “Noted, sir.”

  “Venle, complete your procedures and await me. I’ll be over there immediately.”

  “Very well.”

  “And, operator, arrange an appointment for me with Chairman Parleau. Naturally, the discreet person would specify that such a meeting be at his convenience, but as early as possible.”

  “That is noted. It will be as you say. Shall I inform your office facilities? The Regional Chairman’s unit will not be open for an hour or so yet.”

  “Notify me in person at room seven-thirty-five, Building eight-nine-oh-five. Venle?”

  “Present.”

  “You verge upon insubordination.”

  “Others have noted that tendency, sir. But I must add that where I err in one regulation, it might be said that your office has erred in another, perhaps one with more serious consequences. I must stand upon my right to advise of error, freely and without reprisal, however subtle.” Venle was quoting.

  “Oh, your rights have been noted in full. Proceed with your function. Break.” Eykor’s half of the viewer winked out. Slegele’s puffy face filled the screen. Venle was indeed sorry he had dragged the acumen-medic into this. The man simply wasn’t prepared. . . .

  To Slegele he said, “We’ll recover her, well enough. It was fortuitous I thought to bring my own crew over here. But I will still require some assistance; can you send over the Central Palliatory and have them send me some, ah . . . pediatrics assistants?”

  Slegele stammered, “Of course, if you need them. But why pediatrics? I don’t understand . . .”

  Venle said, patiently, “Apparently the girl, whoever she is, now has nothing but the infant responses she was born with. She breathes, she has a strong heartbeat, all the vital signs. As far as I can determine now, her blood chemistry is good, although I’ll have to refer to some other manuals. But infant responses! She’ll have to be cared for: she’s an infant with a full set of teeth. She’ll bite her tongue off before she discovers what those little pearlies are used for. And what do we tell her people when they come for her, as they surely must? That we’re bloody sorry? She’s obviously an adolescent. Not bred yet. They’ll ransack the place when they find out.” Venle mused for a moment, then added, “A shame about all this, too; she’s quite attractive, if a bit childish for my tastes. . . .”

  Slegele, waking up, interrupted Venle’s train of thought. “How could they know she was missing? And knowing, how would they know to come here looking for her?”

  “I should imagine someone will find her absence curious. They are close people, you know. And it won’t take a genius to discover Building eight-nine-oh-five. Of course, we can always deny the whole thing, but that means we have to dispose of the body, also. That means that many more who know something about it. You see what I’m trying to hint at?”

  “Yes . . . I think so. We could always say she did it to herself, couldn’t we? We can’t be held responsible for that.”

  “I suppose it’s worth trying. But I’ll say this: you and I have more to fear from our own people than from them. Get it?”

  “You’re cynical.”

  “Realistic is the terminology I prefer . . . I know that people who set events like this one in motion never pay for it. They arrange that someone else foots the bill. I’m not in danger, but you could be. Cover yourself. I’ll do what I can for you.”

  “Let us both hope it doesn’t come to that. But at any rate I appreciate the gesture.”

  Venle signed off disgustedly and went back to work on the occupant of the box, ignoring Oeschone entirely, save in his private thoughts, which were malevolent ones; Venle took his work more seriously than he did his status, and one of his private hates included those who applied for programmed names and then expected to ride free for the rest of their days. Careerists, he grumbled under his breath, inaudibly. There were entirely too many of them these days, and no real way to get at them, either.

  Not so very long afterward, the girl was carefully lifted out of the box and almost tenderly laid on the waiting stretcher. She was, as Venle had observed earlier, lovely. Out of the box, in the open light, she was something more than that. Her hair was a lustrous dense deep brown, almost black, worn in the fashion affected by ler adolescents, a simple short style resembling a tapered bowl cut, in human eyes boyish. The face was delicate and soft at the same time, oval-triangular, rising from a small but not weak chin to large, deeply set eyes, which were an odd light brown color. She had a small nose, very straight, and her lips were pursed rather than full. There were no lines on the face whatsoever, but it was a strong face filled with myriad adult determinations, and something else as well: a sadness, something wistful, otherworldly, deeply emotional. From the head, a slender, fine neck led to a taut, athletic body, smoothly curved and completely feminine, whose skin tone was a ripe faded honey-olive. Venle looked at her long, sighing. There was only one thing out of place; she coul
d have been human, save for the hands. The hands were narrow, three-fingered, with an opposable thumb on each side, both thumbs being narrower than the human thumb. In addition, her hands were powerful and angular, a bit at variance from the rest of her.

  Venle looked back at the face, now relaxed. There was a faint shadow of a smile set along the lines and softened planes of the girl’s face, something ineffably subtle, something about the set of the eyes and mouth; save for that, the face was empty of expression in the present. No one present with Venle could quite place where they had seen a smile like that before, if indeed they ever had before.

  TWO

  The appearance of the quality of randomness is often the most reliable indication of high and subtle systems of order.

  We learn from simple analysis of the Zan (Life Game) that time is asymmetrical, one-way. To try to work time in reverse brings one immediately into the principle of uncertainty. Things may be mysterious, incomprehensible, or ineluctable, but nothing in the universe is uncertain. This is basic to understanding higher-order phenomena.

  —The Game Texts

  FELLIRIAN7 WAS EXPLAINING, “The Four Determinants of a person are these: Aspect, Phase, Class, Position.” She added fastidiously, “Gender is not a determinant. So, then; if one of us knows all four determinants of another person, we are thereby able to predict, with reasonable accuracy, what that person will do in various circumstances.”

  Fellirian was an adult female ler of many roles and relationships. In the present case, she was serving as resident sociologist, Visitors Bureau, at the Institute for Applied Interrelationships, a problem-solving organization which was the primary organ of human and ler interaction. Once a week, Fellirian traveled down to the Institute from her home deep inside the ler reservation, and explained an alien culture to visitors, both humble and distinguished. This particular audience appeared to be of the more humble variety, and it was close to the end of the day, and Fellirian was bored.

  “Aspect,” she continued, “is distantly related to your own concept of astrological sign, save that it is much simplified. We use only four: Fire, Air, Earth, Water. These correspond to the four seasons.”

  It was autumn, on Earth, the year 2550. Fellirian lived partially in two worlds, and in the human world she visited, even the little taste she got of it at the Institute, her presence generated paperwork echoes of herself. On various rosters, lists, collations, and assorted personnel summaries, she was listed as “one each Fellirian Deren, female, ler, reservation resident, age 45, married (local custom), three offspring, two male, one female. Position: Instructor of Customs. Branch: Visitors Bureau. Supervisor: W. Vance, Director. Fertility Board Index: (not applicable).

  She could, had she pondered overly long on the matter, have produced a much longer “full-name” in her own field of reference, with an even longer list of titles and identities. Her full-name, in her own environment, was Kanh Srith Fel Liryan Klan’Deren Klandormadh; which translated, more or less, to the following: Earth-Aspect’s the Lady Starry Sedge-Field of the Counters Clan, Head-of-Family Foremother. But she never translated the name, as was the case with all of them. Names were names, meant to suggest in their meanings, not to describe. To friends, adult relations occasionally in the formal mode, and humans, she was simply Fellirian. That sufficed. There wasn’t another; ler names never repeated that of a living person, and inasmuch as was possible, one who had ever been, although they admitted that this last would become un-feasible with time.

  To her fellow Braid-members at home, in the mode of intimacy, she was Eliya, and to the Braidschildren Madheliya. Foremother Eliya. She was never called Fellir anymore, for that was an adolescent love-name. Morlenden, her insibling and co-spouse, sometimes called her Fel, the child-name, but more often he called her by an embarrassing pet name, Benon, which meant “freckles.” The matter was embarrassing because the freckles were on her shoulders, which led to connotations she did not care to recall now at her age and phase.

  Fellirian’s phase was Kanh, the mode of the power of Earth. Her season was spring. She was saying to her audience, “Now, Phase: this is approximately how old you are. Hazh is a child, up to about ten years. Didh is adolescent: ten to twenty-nine. Rodh is parent, and Starh is elder. We are rodhosi until age sixty, and then we are starosi, although this last is somewhat arbitrary. Technically, we are only actually rodhosi until the end of the fertile period.”

  Fellirian had children, and yet lived at home, her children not yet being of weavable age; therefore she was Parent Phase. In gender, female, but sexually neuter. So it went with all after last-fertility, the so-called hanh-dhain8.

  Fellirian, being of the Earth mode, was a child born in the spring. Without being overtly obvious about it, she did in part live up to the theoretical attributes of a person of that mode, although none could consider her the prey of erratic aspectual compulsions. Spring was her preferred season as well; like her own manner, it was a direct season, things proceeding toward their due ripening, earthy, direct, practical. She did not care so much for the present season of autumn, with its tanh air-aspect moodiness, its constantly shifting weather, off and on again, now looking back into summer, now anticipating winter.

  “There are, in theory, four social classes: Servant, Worker, Journeyman, and Grower, from the lowest to the highest; but in practice now we only use the top three, and this is of less weight than the other determinants.”

  One of the visitors inquired, “And what class do you belong to?”

  “Worker. My Braid is part of the ler government. My family and I are, in the eyes of our peers, rather low-class, although I feel no sense of either pride or envy therefrom. Class, odd as this may sound, is only applicable to persons who are within a Braid, or family. Once you are elder and leave home, you are classless. Elders have no class. Utterly none.”

  She saw some expressions in the audience she did not care for. She said, “Lest you mistake me, I must define things here, although it is somewhat off the path we go upon. I am not in the government because my family and I are worker-class. It is the other way around. I derive class and status from my occupation, so to speak.” She waited for a rejoinder, but there was none. Good.

  She continued, “Last, and perhaps most important, is the determinant of position. What we refer to here is what place you occupied within the Braid when you were a child.” Here she gestured to a chart beside her that diagrammed the intricate family relationships of the ler cultural surround. They had used it earlier. “We can be one of five different positions, with some subcategorization, of course. This measure, like class, also runs from low to high, thus: Hifzer, Zerh, Thes, Nerh, Toorh. You would say, Bastard, Extra, Younger Outsibling, Elder Outsibling, and highest, Insibling. These stay with you forever. They are basic identities. I was Toorh, and I shall always be perceived as one, no matter my age. Also this is not a smooth scale. A Nerh is almost equal to a Toorh, and a Thes is closer to a Zerh. Families do not, by definition, have Hifzers.”

  At this last, the group immediately began an argument among themselves, one faction in particular taking some exception to the concept of position being more weighty a determinant than social class. Fellirian did not know why they were arguing over this, for it did not affect them one way or another; but she did not enter the argument on either side. She felt as if she had somehow espoused a doctrine held or shared by one faction and above all she did not wish to be identified with one human faction or another. As the sides became more defined and the visitors began to polarize among themselves, she withdrew and walked slowly to the side, to the window ledge, where she settled and looked outside, leaning on one hand and half sitting on the broad metal sill.

  She looked out the window, through the rain-streaked polarized glass, through the damp and rainy November airs to the wet land beyond, now taking on a bluish tint with the approach of evening. From her viewpoint, looking somewhat northeast, she could see in the land itself the clear delineation of the two cultures, human a
nd ler. On the left, the reservation, a 4,200-square-mile forest preserve in which the ler were now allowed to pursue their own ends, whatever those ends were; and on the right, the end product of several thousand years of human culture. Both were on the same planet, Earth, the same year—2550.

  To the left, the land appeared unkempt, empty, overgrown with trees and brush. To the right, as far as she could see through the light rain and foggy haze, everything was neat, orderly, trimmed, laid out, controlled. Far to the right at the edge of visibility, a manufacturing operation dominated the landscape: it appeared to be a low, rather featureless building of square ground-plan, betraying its inner activity only by the action of small vents along the roof, some of which emitted pastel clouds of vapor, while others trailed away into the rainy darkening air wisps of smoke which soon vanished. It looked dormant, inactive; but she knew this to be an illusion. Inside, unseen, it was as busy as an anthill, madly producing still more of the perishable artifacts on which their society seemed to exist. There was little traffic in or out of it; transit-ways underground handled the material flows, and the employees lived in air-conditioned cubicles in the basement. Bosses and bossed alike; it cost less to totalize their entire environment than it did to provide transportation and housing for them elsewhere.

  Farther to the right, the remainder of the view through the Institute window took in agricultural fields, some smaller buildings and miscellaneous sheds, a light grid of access roads and hoverways. There was nothing but a sense of neatness and order in all that she saw, a tincture of everything calculated to a nicety; she could not help but admire it to a point. Still, a part of her insisted on another, more chaotic view: that the fine sense of order and regulation concealed something perilous. The higher the degree of apparent order, the finer the line that divided the arbitrary order from the merciless down-drag of entropy. Nature only appears random to the unobservant, she thought. It was one of the basic ler maxims. In reality, there was a deep and subtle order in the changes of nature, its wavelike progressions, its cycles of time.