The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  They stayed on at Lamkleth a few days, sleeping, eating, dashing into the cooling lake water for quick wild splashing dips, and making love when the mood fell upon them, sometimes lazily and contemplatively, students of an art each would shortly lose in one fashion or another; at other times they would suddenly fall upon one another in wild bursts of passion and desire, as if each moment were to be their last. Until the little store of money which Morlenden had laboriously built up during his travels had begun to come to its end.

  In the meantime, Morlenden, one not given over to fits of brooding self-inspection, mused over the odd circumstances of his meeting with the younger girl. He had soon lost sight of their differences, as had she, and both of them had begun to see each other as contemporaries, at least in the days of their futures to come. True to her age, Sanjirmil was somewhat abrupt, erratic, and irresponsible; but she also carried in her head a whole cargo of insights far in advance of her years, and he learned to feel at ease with her peculiarities. It even came to seem as if most of her odd behavior came not from her youth, relative to him, but from an innate nature common to all the Players. At any rate, there was less a gulf between them than the years might have suggested, for after all they were both still adolescents, and in the highly structured environment they lived in their behavior was more similar than different.

  They decided to remain together for a time longer, and left Lamkleth, to wander from one Braid holding to another, from village to village, from elder lodge to elder lodge, helping with odd jobs and the harvest, which was just now beginning. They walked along paths in the forest, along the edges of fields, cultivated and fallow alike; and when the weather permitted, slept outside, wrapped tightly together for warmth. After the first night together in the cabin, they talked little, and when they did, their words were only of little things, insignificant things, things which they could see immediately in front of them. As long as it was possible for them to do so, they set aside time and lived in the present, from moment to moment, making love when they found the time and place and ambience right, sitting quietly together when they did not.

  But all things end which have a beginning, some sooner than others; and after some time, Morlenden and Sanjirmil became aware, as if they had been bemused, of the passage of weeks into months. The nights grew steadily cooler, and then cold, and then some days did not really warm up, even in the sun. The canopies of the forest began to open up, and washes of bright color flowed over the face of the mornings. They spent fewer nights in the open. And gradually they began to admit time between them once again; they spoke of the lives behind them and before them, of changes; Morlenden of the role coming to him of parent, of holdingsman. Sanjirmil spoke of the Players and their insular, abstracted yet passionate lives. She spoke no more of the Game itself. He did not ask. They did not really listen to the words, though they listened close enough, for it wasn’t what they said in words, in Singlespeech or Multispeech, but rather what the unspoken words under the spoken words said of their inner uneasiness, and their knowledge of ends. For now Morlenden was beginning to feel change stirring within himself, an odd set of unfamiliar new sensations, as if the prolonged liaison with Sanjirmil had stimulated the onset of his fertility. He knew it was not yet. But it would be soon. Very soon. The ancient, cultured pair-bond of the Braid between himself and Fellirian began to reassert itself, driving his orientation toward the odd, wiry hoydenish Sanjirmil away from the flesh and more into the heart.

  And she, in her turn, began to grow apprehensive about her return, which was now long overdue. The Players, so it seemed, did not care so much for long visits out of their own environment. Certain elders, whom she would not name, would be angry with her for staying so long. There were punishments, of which she would not speak.

  They allowed their wanderings to carry them around, drifting to the northwest again, more in the direction of Sanjirmil’s home territories, by unspoken agreement. And they spent their last night together in the ruins of an ancient, pre-ler water-powered gristmill somewhere deep in the upper waters of the River Hvar, in a place where the old stone and brick buildings were overgrown with creepervine, trumpetflower, and kudzu, and where enormous aged beech trees hung over the mirrored surface of the millpond behind the piled-stone dam and shed their yellow leaves into the muddy water. It was rainy and miserable on the night they found the mill, but the morning was bright and clear, cold and windy.

  A variable, willful breeze played in the leaves and ruffled wavelets over the shallow pond. They did not speak of it, of ends and departures, but stood by the dam for a long time, standing close together, hands interlocked. Sanjirmil looked at Morlenden once, with the disturbing blind, fixed gaze of hers, the scanning motion of her eyes readily apparent from so close. And after that, she turned abruptly and walked swiftly away across the dam, deftly skipping over driftwood which had piled up over the years along the upstream side of it. It was only when she was completely across, off the stonework dam, on the far side under the trees, that she looked back. Morlenden watched her for a moment, seeing the wind teasing her short, coarse black hair, ruffling her overshirt, the same much-mended one she had met him in, and he waved, as casually as possible. Sanjirmil waved back. Morlenden looked away; and when he could look back, Sanjirmil was gone. The woods on the farther shore were empty.

  He returned homeward directly, seeking no further adventures or idle wanderings, taking shortcuts, wasting no time. It took all of that day until far after dark, but he made it all in one day. And when he had at last come into his own yos, the old, homey, weather-stained ellipsoids of the Derens, after a long, thoughtful soak in the icy water of the wash-trough outside, he found Fellirian waiting for him in the hearthroom.

  She looked questioningly at him for a moment, but said nothing beyond an offhand greeting, as if he had just now stepped outside to fetch a pail of water from the creek. And although he found that he was actually deeply happy to see his insibling again, he said no more than as if he actually had done just that: gone outside for water an instant ago. He found that his earlier desire to make a clever allusion to his great adventure had vanished completely; what had happened to him could not be told. And he knew a deeper secret about the vayyon: that below the level of the first revelation, that there was no great adventure, was a second, more cryptic level of the heart—that it was perhaps better not to find that for which one searched. He wondered if she had seen that as well.

  They did not speak of such things. But that night, sitting together, sharing a bowl of stew, they made the small talk of members of the family, neighborhood gossip. Who had done what, with which, and to whom. Births. Deaths. It was only as they were banking the hearthfire for the night and blowing out the lamps that Fellirian told him that she had become fertile in the last few days.

  “I’m not surprised, Eliya,” Morlenden answered from across the hearthroom, not looking at her. “I’ve felt some twinges myself. I don’t think I am right now, but it will be soon, now that you’ve come in.”

  “Kadh’Elagi and Madh’Abedra have set a date for the weaving.”

  “When?”

  “Winter Solsticeday. And they’ve already made arrangements with a lodge.”

  “So soon?”

  “Yes. We wondered what had become of you, if you would be back in time . . .”

  “I was unavoidably detained, ah, by the harvest.”

  “Indeed. They do say that it has been a good one this year. Did you work hard?”

  “Yes. It was good for me.”

  “So it appears . . . you look somewhat the better for it. And more, too: from the look of you, you’ll be fertile yourself by Solsticeday.”

  “Such are my suspicions as well.” Morlenden and Fellirian paused by the curtained port into the children’s sleeper, sharing an odd conspiratorial look. “Well, Eliya, after you.”

  “All right, I’ll go first. But we won’t be in here much longer, you know.”

  Fellirian climbed into the sleeper. A
s she disappeared behind the curtain, Morlenden reached up and patted her rump affectionately. When he had himself pushed the curtain aside, Fellirian met him, whispering fiercely “You randy hifzer buck! You know you shouldn’t touch me now. You don’t know what it’s like yet.” She quieted a little. “Really, it’s no fun. Not like wanting dhainaz at all. I fear it. And I fear even more going long without doing what we must.”

  “I’ll stay away, if you want.”

  “No, I don’t want that either. . . . Did you have a good time, Olede?”

  “I learned a great deal—the last few weeks, months . . . has it been months? Someday I’ll tell you some of it.”

  Fellirian was spreading out one large double comforter on the soft floor of the sleeper. Morlenden was folding his kif, feeling around for the proper shelf. He asked, “And where’s mine?”

  Fellirian slid her kif off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. She gestured to the comforter she had spread. Morlenden nodded. She was fertile, and nothing mattered now. He could not refuse her, even had he wanted to refuse.

  She said softly, “It has to be us now . . . I have laid aside all mine of the past. You must do likewise, and comfort me.”

  The light in the sleeper was dim, but there was enough to make out the smooth shape across the comforter from him. Familiar, as everyday as an arm or a leg. Fellirian . . . she was smooth and subtle of shape, inviting. He bent over her, touched her face, lightly. Her scent had changed, was no longer the tart, flowery, slightly pungent scent of an adolescent girl, but something warmer, richer, riper. It had an odd and immediate effect on him, and the speed of it surprised Morlenden greatly. He began to learn about the compulsions of fertility.

  At last the sequence ended and Morlenden returned to the present, now sleepy. Beside him, he heard Fellirian’s deep, even breathing, felt the familiar warmth of her body. All those years, he thought. And us with a girl-child a year or more older than Sanjir was then . . . amazing!

  He had not spoken to Fellirian about his adventure, just as she had never spoken of hers. And in the intervening years, he had not been able to follow Sanjirmil very well; the Derens had led a busy life, and Morlenden had been doing most of the field work, and of course all the Players, of both Braids, kept very much to themselves. Rarely, he and Sanjirmil had passed on some errand, but they had said nothing. He had once heard a distant tale, distortedly repeated by the tenth bearer of the tale, that something had happened to her, some drastic accident which she had survived somehow . . . here the tale had been unclear. And at any rate, he had seen her at a distance not long after that, a few weeks, and she had looked no different. There had been no injuries, no disfigurements.

  But the disturbing tales continued, and they told that Sanjirmil had been changed in a way no bearer of tales could tell. But here again, he had never seen any evidence of change.

  So now he lay awake in the dark, remembering, reliving it all again, his inner mind returning with abrasive insistence, to the same questions he had asked before and found no answer to. Why was it that the Perwathwiy Srith, an elder, should walk in haste to the holding of the Derens; and why bring with her Sanjirmil, her own insibling descendant, two generations removed? And the Perwathwiy had been, of course, a Terklaren herself, the Klandorh of the Terklarens, just as would be Sanjirmil in her turn. Next year. Maybe sooner.

  Sanjirmil. Morlenden had enjoyed recalling the affair they had shared, with its strong sense of poignant emotions and extravagant eroticism; indeed, a piece of him was tied into that time forever, even though he had grown used to the knowledge over the years that their liaison was doomed from the start, made hopeless by the years that separated them. So one went one way, one another. A little ripple passed through him, something not quite laughter; soon she would look upon her own children with the same sense of astonishment that he did. It seemed to be forever coming, and then it was over. Yes, there were some regrets. But now . . . he did not care so much for the speculations, unanswered, that the visit suggested.

  FIVE

  The Game visually generates certain patterns which remain in one location and pervolve; others move over the playing field at various speeds, retaining various degrees of internal identity and coherence. Here, we have no difficulty whatsoever understanding that it is the Game and the parameters of a specific Game set which make such figures move. In the physical universe, however, we see similar motions and various conditions of identity and stability; and have thereon erected an incredible and erroneous set of “laws” to explain such conditions. When the laws fail to predict, add complications and subtleties, precisely as the Ptolemaic astronomers added epicycle after epicycle to their basically wrong model of planetary motion. So a better theory was devised. We speak of Copernicus, of Newton, of Kepler, of conic sections and conservations of angular momentum. Seen from the perspective of the Game, these things are hardly less wrong than Ptolemaics. We shall now discuss these things under their true names, understanding, of course, that they are expressions of a much better model.

  —The Game Texts

  IN THE EARLIEST societies, the symbol of force replaces the force itself, and then symbols replace symbols, each becoming progressively more subtle: club, spear, knife, sword, pistol. They evolve to bearers of such things, mere suggestions to be sure, but not less in the importance put upon them by the observer. Or the owner. In the settled, civilized, mostly nonviolent bureaucratic state, these symbols become even more abstract: counters, desks, offices. The more massive the desk and the more empty the office, the greater the authority. The more insulated and invisible the office, the greater still. Klaneth Parleau, Chairman of the Board of Governors of Seaboard South Region, had such a desk, such an office. The office was excessively large, and would have been in any age, but in an age in which volume and space were at a premium and all buildings were designed with function and efficiency first in mind, it was particularly impressive. There were no windows; windows were conducive to distraction and daydreaming, and there was little time for that. Parleau, for one, could not imagine an age when there could have been time for it.

  One who came into Parleau’s office would first have to traverse the apparent vastness of the length of the room, and then face Parleau’s desk, which was a massive cruciform shape made of a single casting of titanium, brushed and anodized to a dull, almost black finish. To increase the illusion of distance, the base of the T-shape of the desk was slightly narrower than the part nearest its occupant, which had the dual effect of making the occupant seem both farther away and at the same time larger than life. This neck of the T was used occasionally as a conference desk, and chairs were stored under it. They, too, were part of the effect, for as they increased their distance from the head of the desk, they grew smaller and more uncomfortable to sit in. And the occupant of the head of the desk could select, from a console blended into the working surface, which chair would be slid out for the visitor, varying status with circumstance. There wasn’t a weapon within miles of this office, and it was doubtful if the chairman himself could have done violence to a starving orphan; yet within his office full in the powers of his position, he could reduce grown men to worms and they themselves would admit it first.

  Seaboard South was not particularly more powerful than other, similar administrative units into which the whole habitable Earth was divided, save in one area: it possessed the Charter of Overmanagement for both the Institute, which was the interface between the humans of Earth and their artificially mutated step-cousins, the ler, and the reservation in which the ler lived. This made it, in effect, the broker for the vast amounts of data which flowed into and out of the Institute, detailing every art and science of the planet.

  In similar fashion, Chairman Parleau was not especially different from his theoretical equals, the chairmen of other regions near and far, except for this one area, and the Regional Chairman’s consciousness of that fact. Parleau personally had as yet done very little in the way of direct manipulation of those pow
ers. Yet. But the very idea that he could, should he choose, kept chairmen of the neighboring Regions closely attentive to events in Seaboard South.

  Parleau himself was a large and heavy-boned but generally trim, balding individual of apparent early middle age: mature, securely settled in high office. No single facet of Klaneth Parleau would have distinguished him from a thousand other career administrative executives—other than a rather aggressive manner and a more closely cropped than normal hair-style (of what hair remained to him). When he moved he exhibited a crispness and a dynamism which somehow most of the others lacked.

  In fact, Parleau was somewhat younger in years than his appearance suggested, and far from reaching a pinnacle, he was in fact being groomed carefully for higher advancement still; some thought to Co-directorate Staff, an anonymous coordination position. Others, no less well-informed, felt that it would be at the least to a post on Continental Secretariat, with a leg up to the Planetary Presidium somewhat later. Seaboard South had been his first regional chairmanship, and with its long association with the ler and the Institute, it was a key posting, selected by his peers. Historically, it had always been a make-or-break assignment, and the odds had been against most past chairmen. The majority, upon completion or replacement, had elected to move to positions of lesser ranking. But a few had made it into the rarefied upper levels, where they generally prospered.

  The problem, as Parleau formulated it, was not that the New People were troublesome or unruly, but to the contrary. In fact, they were generally better behaved than their human neighbors. It was a fact that they seemed to react with less stress to crowding and personal restriction, but, he thought wryly, with the population density they had, they could hardly complain about a behavioral sink, however restricted they were to their reservation. More, the reservation did not impose a drain upon the resources of Seaboard South, as such a project might have been expected to do. No; together, the reservation and the Institute were both self-supporting, and their gross output net was larger than any conceivable alternate use to which the land could have been put.