The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  Freedom is a most interesting subject; it must, in the bizarre systematology of basic ideas stretched to the breaking point, include the freedom to choose to be free of freedom.

  To avoid the responsibility for complete study at the initiation of a plan guarantees that blame must be found for its unavoidable failure in the end.

  —M. A. F., Atropine

  IT WAS considerably farther than Morlenden had anticipated to the treehouse; he walked, or trudged, now, along behind Krisshantem, growing weary as the distances unreeled behind them. The boy did not seem to hurry, but his progress was steady and covered ground at a rate Morlenden found somewhat exerting. He himself was no slouch at walking, and had made many a distance run himself, but here the effort was beginning to tell on him; he was, in a word, tired. And Krisshantem moved on through the seemingly endless forest of beech and ironwood silently and unhurrying, while the shadows softened and lengthened, and what blue remained in the sky deepened in color; the western sky, which was behind them, grew pastel bright and full of colored veils. The boy made no sound in the fallen leaves, crackled no twigs, left no mark at all of his passage. Morlenden was embarrassed, knowing that to Krisshantem’s acute hearing, his own passage must sound like that of a wild bull, breaking through the leaves behind the boy. No wonder Kris never looked back—he could follow Morlenden’s passage easily enough just by listening.

  At last, they reached the treehouse, with evening close upon them, full night only moments away. Krisshantem did not hesitate, but went straight to the rope ladder extending out of the house and climbed within. Morlenden had been expecting something rude and unsubstantial, a shanty stuck willy-nilly in the crotch of a tree—but it was, as he watched Kris climb, an impressive, solid structure, built with an eye for endurance and resistance to stresses, carefully braced in an ancient, stolid beech. Far from appearing tacked on, it seemed to be so much an integral part of the tree and the surrounding forest that one could easily overlook it. He was sure that it was nearly invisible in the summer with the leaves to shield it and break its outlines.

  They reached the inside by means of a crude rope ladder, which Morlenden found exacting and difficult to climb, something he had not the practice for. But once inside, any suspicion that the treehouse could have been crude vanished entirely. It was sparse inside, but comfortable and roomy. Rather like a combined hearthroom and sleeper, but instead of a hearth, there was an ancient iron stove, a wood-burner. A human artifact, from the days long ago. He assumed that they had found it nearby, for it seemed so heavy and massive that they couldn’t have dragged it very far on muscle alone.

  After lighting several lamps, Krisshantem reached into a locker and produced a couple of freshly killed squirrels, already gutted, dressed, ready for cooking. These he put into a pot, along with some potatoes and onions from another pantry, and threw in a couple of suspicious red peppers for good measure. Then he went to work on a fire, and within a short time, had a fire going, the stew cooking, and some of the edge began to come off the cold.

  Now warming, they both removed their heavy winter overcloaks and sat on the floor silently, relaxing. Morlenden offered no words. The boy seemed tired and drawn as well, as if he had come a great distance, for the coldness of the treehouse suggested that it had been untenanted for something more than a day. Krisshantem offered nothing, apparently deeply immersed in some private inner reverie whose boundaries only he knew. Morlenden did not interrupt him, and so they sat for a considerable time, in silence. But at last Krisshantem looked up, directly at Morlenden, with that same disturbingly intent gaze he had seen before. This time, the glance did not waver, but stayed; Morlenden found the sudden intense attention disconcerting.

  “Ser Deren, you will wonder the reasons for my silence?”

  “Yes.”

  The boy looked out the window, a real glass window, not one of the travertine panes they favored for yos windows, deep into the north and west. Only a hint of color remained in those skies, a deep far-violet; otherwise, it was night. “I was setting an image straight,” he began, “making it just right in my mind, for a Multispeech transferal to you. Can you read such an image if I send in the visual-mode?”

  “Indeed I can receive, and have the readiness for it. But tell me, where does one such as yourself learn the fine arts of Multispeech?” Morlenden felt apprehension over the voluntary submission in the will during reception of Multispeech, and wished to make the boy a little defensive before he gave up to him.

  A light flared in the boy’s eyes, then dimmed. But did not go out. “I learn well. Many things, from such as will instruct me. But it is good that you elect to receive and I to send, for thereby you will at least be able to say then that you know more than just a name.”

  Morlenden said, “Before I set out on this journey, my insibling said that she could send an image, but that it would be one weak and blurred. I had hoped to find a good one, with those who knew Maellenkleth well.”

  “And so it shall be, Ser Deren! You will see, as I did, with the eyes of my mind . . . are you indeed prepared to see-in-perdeskris?”

  Morlenden felt the intimidation behind the words, but nodded, tense, apprehensive, yet nonetheless determined to go ahead with this . . . not without misgivings. Multispeech had many modes, many aspects. One was the direct transmission of an image direct from one mind to another, in which the medium of transmission was a kind of speech, voice, sound. But it was speech that far transcended the normal linear coding and sorting aspects of traditional language, language as the humans had known it, language as the simpler Singlespeech was structured.

  In single-channel language, the signal was broad-band, a fingerprint pattern of bands of harmonic tones, shifting frequency slightly, the whole pattern being broken from time to time by sharp clicks, drops, and hisses and combinations thereof: vowels and consonants, former and latter. But in Multispeech, the harmonic bands were individually controlled, and the breaks in tone came separately in each separate band; only with intense concentration would it normally work at all, for there was no instinct for it: it was all learned. And on the part of the receiver, total submission. This was the part of it Morlenden liked least, this sense of losing control, of giving in to another’s will. In the past, he and Fellirian had played with it, experimented, but they were both unskilled, and in any event, uninterested in it. It was nice that the people had this ability, he had thought many times; still, they didn’t need it in their klanrolh . . . or did they? Well, in any event, there was as yet no suitable method of writing it. Or were they truly primitive . . . and was Multispeech their true communicative way? And this one, this hifzer Krisshantem, was reputedly a master of it.

  The boy sat across the room from Morlenden, hidden a bit in the patterns of shadow and lamplight, wrapped in his long overshirt, a plain but much-mended pleth without decoration. In his hand he held a small, pale stick or wand, and with this he began tapping regularly, slowly, on the platted flooring before himself; simultaneously beginning a slow rocking motion with his body. Morlenden shut his eyes, instinctively, to concentrate on the sound, even though he knew well enough that if they did establish contact, he would be blind while he was receiving; Multispeech in certain modes overrode and cut out the visual centers, programming routing from the ears into the visual cortex instead.

  ... he heard the night sounds of the forest and a nearby creek; he heard the rustling, blurry noises of a hardwood fire, the hiss and bubble of the pot. He heard the musing of a weak breeze outside which had come up, microturbulences as it flowed through the limbs and branches and branchlets and terminal twigs . . . each tree had its own sound in the wind. Each individual tree as well . . . there were those who had made an art of tree-listening and claimed to recognize individuals blindfolded. He heard the creaks and stress-shifts of the treehouse, as it moved in tune with the tree of which it had become a part. And he heard tapping, tapping, some where far off, somewhere near.

  He heard the tapping of the wand, and und
er it, a monotonous, repetitive humming, a droning, like the melody of a song such as a forgetty might make up, simplistic, iterative, recurved inward upon itself, simple, over and over again; yet when one tried to listen to it . . . Morlenden found it full of sudden shifts and changes, permutations which had not been there before; unseen, unheard. Shifts in key, subtle changes in rhythm, damned subtle when he first noticed, and then getting harder to hear; he had to concentrate deeper on it, trying to anticipate, to find the key to the order of the changes. That was the way of it. Now listening very closely, Morlenden observed, half aware of it, that he thought he could perceive not a tone, but a harmony now opening up; two melodies, perhaps more—yes, there were three, four, five and

  THERE he had it, grasped it an instant, lost in as fast, but now he knew it was easier to pick up the thread, follow the changes, feel the coming shifts, and he always had more than one thread of it. The first step, the first linking between himself and the boy Krisshantem. Odd, odd, it was like monocular vision, or an ear blocked; something was trying to form in his visual center, vague, shapeless, a lump, a nothing, a blur, not-yet-ness. Morlenden began to hum the aimless tune along with the boy, tapping with his fingers, picking up the melody, the rhythm, the changes, the shifts, hoping the feedbacks would let Kris know he really was trying, despite his distaste of it, really trying to reach for it, and

  NOW NOW NOW and the sensation of sound blew out like an impossible implosion and Morlenden felt himself grasped, in utter silence, by a monster raw will-force, pure aspect stripped of its vehicle, the body-person, an enormity, a formless pulsing power that was reaching deeply into his innermost mind, imposing, dominating. He felt sudden panic, raw fear, madness, lust to break this web of Multispeech and run screaming out into the night. But it was too late. He had achieved empathy and synchronization with Krisshantem, via the aimless little forgetty song, and there was no escaping, no running, no avoiding. They were not completely separated in their minds, now.

  Morlenden’s memory flickered out, was gone, never had been. In its place was nothing. Immediately the vision started. At first it was dim and vague, but also somehow definite. In one moment, it had not been there; and the next it was there, as if it had always been there, clear as his own memory, and oddly offset. He could see it taking shape out of blurred nothingness, but as yet he could not “look” directly at it or any of its parts. Swiftly, now, the image, blurred and vague, began to brighten, to sharpen, to become detailed. Contrast improved. Blurs and shadows shaped themselves. The resolution improved. The holistic pattern of a Multispeech visual was working, forming like a hologram, the process making an image whole in two dimensions with the suggested dimensionality of parallax, just as Kris had seen originally, and remembered. The image was not built up of lines and dots; the time factor controlled how clear it became, as area worked in a hologram. The more Morlenden received, the clearer it became, and the more directly he could see it. The pressure increased from the will outside himself.

  Now she was clear enough to see . . . it was a girl, here, in this place, this treehouse, sitting in a beam of sunlight that had passed through the window . . . smiling warmly, and almost nude, her legs folded to one side under her hips, toward him. She was wearing the dhwef, a long-tailed, embroidered loinclothlike strip, held on her narrow hips by a belt of wooden beads. She was turned slightly, her left side toward him. It had been summer; something of the flat tone to the light falling on her body, the warm, tanned tone of her skin. The image brightened and clarified. So this was Maellenkleth, the First-player who was lost. She matched very well the words he had heard to describe her, but in this case, as with all the rest, the words had not matched the reality very well. She was lovely—Morlenden, now seeing with his own memory-eyes, felt his heartbeat speed a little, recalling the days of his own adolescence, how she would have seemed to him then, when he was a buck, how he would have responded to her. She was rare and exquisite, half of the perfect, taut body, lean and muscular, and half of the imperious will that animated it, filled those comely limbs with life and will.

  Now Morlenden had a living memory of the girl, in this image of her identical with Krisshantem’s own memory of her. It was so detailed, he could see-remember a tiny mole under her left breast, see-remember a light sheen of perspiration on her forehead, her collarbone, see-remember a soft youthful bloom along the skin of her ankles, a healed scratch on her knee. Her face narrowed down to a finely structured, delicate chin. Her nose was small, narrow, her lips soft, not quite full, slightly pursed. Her eyes were clear, not deep-set, open in their expression. There was determination and innocence in her every gesture, arrested here in midflight, but there was also a sweet, open smile forming on her mouth, too. Enchanting . . . Morlenden felt himself both voyeur and burglar, despite that he was being given this, for he would always now carry the memory of that smile, its slight adolescent awkwardness and shy offering, and know that it had not been directed at him, though it seemed so. . . . Visuals were a cheat.

  The image had long since ceased to become clearer, and now Morlenden felt at last that it was over. He relaxed, anticipating the moment when Krisshantem would release him and he would fall out of this reception-self. The pressure increased, became greater, painful, excruciating, making him wince, feel fear now, and the image faded, faded, became gray, blurred, indistinct, even though he could remember it well enough. It was what was being sent. That image faded, vanished. Nothing replaced it. There was darkness and void. Suddenly a series of ideas flashed directly across his imagination: So you woven scum think a hifzer shouldn’t learn your precious multispeech, do you? Then watch this elder-to-be, and learn how well one such as I learned his lessons. The concepts were as if shouted by many Krisshantems, all at once, echoing and bouncing and multiplying, feeding back and forth across one another, feeding back upon themselves until Morlenden’s whole mind reverberated with them. Then he went totally blank, aware only that something was being put into him, bypassing his conscious mind altogether—he would know-remember it later, but not now. Instruction-mode. Raw data. He knew something was happening to him, but he couldn’t reach it.

  Then he was aware that he was not receiving anymore, that time was passing again, that the presence had withdrawn, that the will which had gripped him with a force he could not have broken had faded away without notice. He was himself, sitting in a treehouse, now warm, smelling squirrel stew. He opened his eyes; Krisshantem was no longer sitting, tapping, humming the monotonous melody, but instead was casually stirring the stew with the wand. Morlenden did not know how much time had passed, nor how long the process had been stopped. He felt shaken, light-headed. Afraid to move. He remembered Maellenkleth, as if she had been his own then; yet it was not then, in that summer, but was here, moments ago . . . and something else; he remembered the Game. Morlenden touched the memory of the data, stuffed into his mind raw, without referent. Yes, it was all there, the Outer Game, what Krisshantem knew of it, stripped to essentials, his mind filled with strategy and tactics, millions of rules and configurations; one could wander there forever, bemused. He put it away. He wanted to inspect this curious new learning another time. He cleared his throat. Kris looked up at him, blandly, matter-of-factly, as if nothing at all had happened.

  Kris asked casually, “Did you get it all?”

  “Indeed I did; completely. . . .”

  “I thought as much. I stopped augmenting the image of Maellenkleth when I sensed from your feedback that you had most of it. First it’s slow, then it comes fast, then slow again . . . it never quite reaches an exact copy. Not much good going on indefinitely, although I suppose one could. Pardon the intrusion, but I sensed doubt. You have doubtless realized that you are now as I in knowledge of the Game. That will save us much talk.”

  “I had no idea you would be able . . . How much of that did Maellen teach you?”

  “I knew some before. Not very much. Most of it came from her. I would have to know all modes to sit with her in the citadel
of the Inner Game, which at present I know not. Nor you. I have some ideas on it, for one can always project from the data at hand, but, frankly, some of the conjectures I have imagined are so odd or perhaps outrageous that I have not pursued it far, thinking it had to be wrong.”

  “I remember it now, but I have not thought on what I have newly learned, whether I wished to know or not. How long was I under that?”

  “There is, they say, no time in Multispeech . . . I have no idea, but the stew is done. I have heard some elders say that the universe waits until one is finished. However, I remain skeptical there, for to the stew you may add the datum that there is no more light yonder westward. Perhaps the stars have more imagination than the average elder. Those are her words as well.”

  “You are too good at it. I think I shall not allow that again,” Morlenden said without heat, stating a fact.

  “I will not try again, although I must tell you that there is a variant of Command-mode which insibling Players must learn, Command-override, which does not require permission, or even knowledge of it on the part of the receiver. . . . Mael taught it to me, and it is a fearsome thing I will not use. But you may meet others not so restrained as I in your travels.”

  Morlenden was aghast. “But how can I protect myself?”

  “No way. If you are of the people, you are susceptible. You can’t even autoforget out of it, that is why they restrict its teaching . . . it’s very hard to do right. I can’t teach it to you. As I said, it’s difficult. Mael taught me only part of it. I didn’t use override on you. I am sorry I was angry; you chose not your position, as neither did I. But I suggest you get someone to teach it to you—you can at least strive with one who would use it.”