The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  “Now we saw that space was sea, the great sea. And we saw the analogy of ships of one kind of sea comparing to ships of the other sea. Just so, so that even in Singlespeech we still call a container of people that moves according to control in that medium a ship. But the flaw in the old concept was that we tried to leapfrog to powered ships, fueled ships, before we even knew the nature of that new sea. Or about the kinds of power we could use. Then we saw. And understood. And when we did, we also understood why we could not test it with a model. You will see also. So we pushed the thinkers, the theoreticians; some collapsed from the effort, others retired in disgust and discouragement. But always some stayed, and at last we knew enough to begin. Then the Player Braids were formed: first were the Klarens, who were to become the Perklarens when the second Player Braid was added, the Ter-Klarens. And thus we have been, until this last generation.”

  “Thus you have been. To do what?” asked Morlenden, with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Indeed do what? Play a distracting Game for three hundred years?”

  She laughed, a light, playful silvery laugh. “No, no. You all have been carefully led to assume that the root klarh- was Earth aspect, ‘to play.’ Hence, in turn, the Players.... It is not Earth aspect: it is Fire, and that means ...”

  “. . . to fly! Not Players, but Flyers!”

  “Indeed, to fly, to soar, to float upon the currents. We are not idle, privileged entertainers, Morlenden Deren; we are the pilot-astrogators of the Great Ark, the One Ship. There was no other way to keep the skill and the knowledge alive, save in a public Game that everyone could see and think he knew.”

  “Very well. What does the Game have to do with piloting? I know the Game, thanks to Krisshantem, but I fail to see . . .”

  “The hard question; thus the hard answer. Let me build a dynamic identification-series for you: consider vehicles. You make a cart, a wagon, hitch it to a pony, and off you go. Its purpose is to go, but it can be stopped, and it doesn’t change, or stop being a cart. Yes? Now consider a bicycle, which must be in balance to go. Yes? Now an aircraft; it can only be stopped when it is finished being a functional airplane, yes? You can’t stop it just anywhere, and never in the air, unless you have rotary wings, which is just cheating the system. Yes? Just so the leap to the Ship. It is a quantum leap into a new concept in machines, if indeed that is the proper word. Before, we had machines that could be turned off. The more complex they became, the harder to turn off. With the ship, we enter the concept-world of machines that can’t be turned off—at all. They must be on to exist. Once you reach a certain stage in the assembly of it, it’s on and that’s all there is to it. And when you build it, you are building something very specific; that is the Law of Multiplexity. The more developed the machine, the more unique it becomes.

  “So, then,” she continued, “this machine can only operate, be on, exist—in one mode only. A spaceship, which can’t be turned off. Now, in the true-mode of that existence the laws we limited living creatures perceive about the universe are so distorted that they may as well not apply. One doesn’t look out a window to see where one is going! The kind of space that the ship perceives, operates in, is to creatures such as you and I, chaotic, meaningless, and dangerous, when perceived directly, if we can at all. To confront it directly is destructive to the primate mind, indeed the whole vertebrate nervous system. At present, Dragonfly Lodge thinks that this underlying reality-universe is destructive to all minds, whatever their configuration, life-form or robotic. Basic to the universe: that its inmost reality cannot be perceived. A limit. So we interpose a symbolizer, and that translates the view into something we can perceive, and control. And we must control it, for like the sailing ship our Ship emulates, it cannot exist uncontrolled, and there can be no automaton to do it for us. It is flown manually, all the time; even to hold it in place relative to our perceptual field. For at the level of reality we are operating at here, to perceive is to manipulate. As you go further down into mystery, they become more and more similar; even the forerunners know that. But at the Ship they converge.”

  Morlenden thought a moment, then said, “And I see; the symoblizer portrays a Game.”

  “Just so. That is the Inner Game. And the Outer Game we have played in public is a much simplified form of the kind of thing we see in the Sensorium, which is display screen and control system all in one. Not combined; it is both. That we see the functions as separate is a measure of our distance from the Eternal. It is accurate enough, but of course certain configurations cannot be attained in the Outer Game, since they would lead to flight, too, and an open gameboard is no ship to fly in, but only an unmounted sail.”

  “It . . . flaps away?”

  “About that. Yes, very good. And in two-dimensional display, we have the tesselations: triangular, quadrangular, pentagonal, hexagonal, octagonal, although this last leaves holes in the continuum and therein uncontrolled things happen. These symbolize the different kinds of space we can use . . . space-three, space-four, space-five, space-six, and space-eight. Each one has a different range and kind of thing it can perceive and control. Pertrol equals both. Within limits, we can set distances as we will.”

  “I see; when one flies the Ship, one actually is playing a more difficult Game, in which space itself plays the role of antagonist.”

  “Yes. And there is no way we could practice using the Ship’s display. There, to simulate is to replace. So we invented the Outer, public Game, to keep us trained in the basics so we would always be ready when the time came.”

  “You are one of the pilot-astrogators?”

  “No. I would have been, had either Maellen or I been born male. It takes four, and no less, to face that which the symbolizer depicts . . . this is why Braids were invented. The real reason. Not the genetic reason we use—that it keeps us all mixed and gene-pooled. That is excuse. You see? There must be four, and the only bond that will hold is the sexual-emotional one. You will not understand now, but I will say and you must believe that the Game in the Ship cannot be approached as a job, a vocation, a career, or recreation. To the contrary, it is Life and Death itself at work there. In the Inner Game, we call the Game Dhum Welur, the Mind of God. And that Mind is a terrible mind, that one may not face directly and remain whole. Some of the forerunners guessed it long ago—first the Hebrews far back in time, others along the way, and they wisely left it alone, left the Arcana alone. That is why those who studied the occult arts were either fools or doomed. Fools if they were wrong, and most were; doomed if right. The forerunners know, and stay away.”

  “It’s that alien?”

  “Yes. More than you can imagine. . . . Consider now, here in this cabin atop this mountain. We will go outside and look at, into the sky. We will see clouds, storm, and through rents in the clouds, stars. Ordinary enough, you can say; yet I have seen the same sky and the same clouds-of-the-world in space-three . . . it is different, full of terrors, of things we cannot understand, save to avoid, other things. . . .”

  She stopped for a moment, apparently looking into some interior memory.

  Then she continued, “So I suppose that things would have continued thus indefinitely. But the Ship was nearing completion, and it was estimated that the need for two Player Braids and the deception of the public Game were at an end. Thus the Perklaren insiblings, who were yet to weave at that time, and because they were the higher Braid, took a drug that disrupted the normal sexual-selection process of the insiblings45 for that generation. They knew that it would make the Toorhon turn out to be the same sex, but they did not know which sex it would be.”

  “They did this by intent?”

  “Yes. And it would have been . . . was to be . . . of no great effect. But that is one of the ironies of the Game, I think. It does not let you go so easily. The Ship can’t be turned off; the Game can’t be left, just like that. It will have its price. And so here is the essence of it: Sanjirmil was the inheritor of the Game, by the actions taken by the Perklaren insiblings before the
birth of my generation. But in the province of the Game, Sanjirmil is actually not suited to it at all. Relative to the Game, and only to the Game, she is uninspired and . . . well, stupid. She hasn’t the mind for it, although she is capable in other areas. Maellen, on the other hand, had a natural-born talent for it, the best we ever had. She was, by irony or accident, a natural prodigy for the Game, the only one ever so born. A genius. But it was too late, things had gone too far, the momentum was carrying us, perhaps the Game now controlling us and wished to teach us a lesson. I don’t know. But as it stood, it would have been cruel enough. But this ties into another problem. . . .”

  “Which is?”

  “I said that the Ship was a machine that could not be turned off. That there was no way; that at a certain point in its construction it becomes on, activated, and assumes some of the responsibility for constructing itself, growing itself, while being guided. And so at that point, it turns itself on; and flight begins, ready for it or not. We knew it would be that way—thus the theorists had predicted. After all, it’s not a hard prediction—you or I could do as well. But they could not tell the time when the event would occur. That is why we had the two Player Braids—to keep us all sharp and prepared for it by means of the artificial rivalry between us. And well it was, too, that the Terklarens had done so well by this generation; but evil, too. An evil star was after our fate. For the event occurred about fifteen years ago.”

  “About the time of the birth of Taskellan?”

  “Yes. Just after. Maellen and I were just five, little children, hazhonhazhoun, children’s children. So the Flyers all had to go to work, alternating in the Sensorium, all the hours of the day, the days of the week . . . for fifteen years.”

  “I don’t understand. . . .”

  “It must be manually flown to hold it in place!” she exclaimed. “Its position at a specific place upon the Earth is not held there by gravity and momentum, as are the other things; that it stays in that place, it must be flown there. As we sit here, we move in many ways, but are held fast in a matrix of local forces. The Earth rotates, revolves in the Earth-moon system, revolves about the sun, follows an orbit about the galaxy, moves with the galaxy in the local galactic group, and participates in the steady-state expansion of the universe . . . those motions and their multiplex sum must be reversed and fed into the Ship so that it stays in its cave. Those motions, and many others that we do not see . . . some of these countermotions are those which may not be seen. There are terrors in the universe, and they are not the ones we imagined. And if we do not compensate, then the Ship would drift off on its own, following the currents as it feels them. . . . Perhaps the word drift is inappropriate, for seen by an outsider on the surface, this drift would seem like an explosion; the Ship would explosively depart the immediate area at something close to c, the velocity of light, a significant fraction of it, interacting violently with matter in its path and around it. At the value of c it possessed, it would have enough mass, once it moved, to disrupt the balance of the whole solar system. It would, of course, be destroyed in the first moment of unguided flight, but no matter; it would destroy everything else.”

  “I don’t understand . . . why doesn’t it disrupt things now, if it has that much mass?”

  “Speed alone. Relativity. The mass approaches infinity as the speed approaches unity-c. Held at rest, it has its own material mass, a few thousand tons. This is damped by the control field, so that it appears massless. Makes it easy to move, short-field. But turned loose, it takes off at almost a full light; so that the mass is approximately equal to two-point-five suns. This is above limits within a given volume of space, so the result is a linear supernova as long as it lasts. Those are the limits . . . say, from the mass of Jupiter to two-point-five suns. There is some inexactitude in our calculations, but at any rate, at either extreme, the result is doom; so what does it matter? And as if it made any difference, we cannot determine the vector either. It is a heavy responsibility, flying.”

  “Indeed, to know the Flyers have been sitting on a bomb for fifteen years. They have been flying it manually?”

  “Manually. While the rest of the Ship was being grown and built. Finished, the life-support systems completed. There have never been enough people to do it, the work that isn’t done by the Ship. And by the Canon of the Law of the Flyers, only a formed Braid can fly. That means that only two crews are available, although exceptions are made by executive order of the High Reven, to allow relief so the outside Game can go on, and continue its deception. . . . The last time I was home, I was told that an exemption would be made for Sanjirmil and her Braid, if she could assemble one.”

  “So that is why the parent Perklarens were never home.”

  “Yes. And why I am here. But their story first. They were at a holy mountain, the Mountain of Madness, inside the Ship, flying alone in the darkness, in space-three, triangular tesselation, hardest of all. Matrix twelve; fine detail work deep inside a gravity well, the solar gravity well. The Ship is spherical in shape and sits in a cradle in the rock, in the cavern; it has only moved about an inch in all that time. You could sit on that very hill and not know it was there, a few score feet under your very fundament.”

  She said, after a moment, “Klervondaf was initiated but not trained. Taskellan was not initiated. Both Maellen and I were, of course. We did not stop being insiblings. The Inner Game was our heritage and our right. But instead of Player-Flyers, we were to take different roles, so that the last step might be implemented; I would come here, to the Trojan Project, and Maellen would secretly soldier for us in the outer world. I chose loneliness, and Maellenkleth chose danger, and ultimately, death.”

  “Who decided? How?”

  “The Shadow, as in all things. We divided it up, Maellen and I, with no more thought than we would share a piece of cake. There was no particular reason. We were so very young . . . and she was good at the Game, and wanted to remain where she could at least study it, pass on her insights. I am only average, like anyone else. Better than Sanjirmil, but nothing like Maellen. And so I am here . . . but in many ways I like my work, both the outer and inner portions of it. I like to make things work, and so have done well by my employers, even as I used their instrument to do other things. . . .”

  She shook her head, as if still unbelieving. “So I am an astronaut, an engineer. When I would prefer a yos, and now, until I weave, an eager circle of lovers.”

  Morlenden interrupted her musing. “I see that Maellenkleth was to run destructive interference for the rest of you.”

  “Yes. One last trick.”

  “And you?”

  “Mine was the last part, a small one, but important. I was to see that the telescope was built, and help build it, so I could have a good reason for using it without arousing suspicion.”

  “And what were you to use it for?”

  “You know we have poor night-vision; that is why the telescope. Not for magnification, but for the gathering of light. Otherwise one of us could have done this from the ground. So, then, I was to obtain views, visually, polychromatically, of the space all around Earth, in all directions, and memorize. Then, using all those views from different points along the Earth’s orbit about the sun, combine the views together, to make up in my mind a three-dimensional map of interstellar space from eidetic memory. I would have an excellent dimensional view, because I would have a parallax baseline one hundred and eighty-five miles long, the diameter of the orbit. After I had the image, I could convert that into a three-dimensional grid map, using Multispeech space-matrix coordinates, which would then be used in the comparison astrogation base.”

  “How so?”

  “On a clear night, you look at the stars. Can you see any order in their arrangement?”

  Morlenden hesitated. “. . . No. I see the brighter constellations, but they are somewhat arbitrary. I cannot tell what is near or far, or in relation to what. Lights in the sky. Jupiter and Mars seem as far, or as near, as Sirius, Vega, Deneb.�
�� For the names of the stars and planets he had used, Morlenden had unconsciously used the words as he had heard them from Fellirian; the old Modanglic names. It was only after he had spoken the words that he realized how alien and strange they sounded. Mevlannen noticed as well. A light smile danced across her face.

  “You do not know the names of the stars, for those who name are also those who seek order. It was a slow process, for we had to work in part from ancient maps. We do not see them all from the ground. Painstaking research, thousands of nights of careful watching, care and secrecy lest it be known that we even look at the stars. But we have our own names for the stars, the near ones that we know and feel, and the far ones that we use as reference points. You know the Canon of Names: one syllable for things, two for places, three for people, four for stars, and five for the ‘Attributes of God46.’ So that Borlinmeldreth is that which the forerunners call Sirius; Kathiarvashien, Sigma Doradus; Skarmethseldir, Deneb. There are many names we have had to learn, recite by rote.”

  Morlenden said, “Names, yes, but it is still without order.”

  “So it seems. But there is a great and mighty system of order in space, although it cannot be seen by a creature on the surface, without a matrix in the imagination. It is on too vast a scale for us. And we are talking about visuals, that which we see with our eyes; you cannot begin to imagine what the same volume looks like when seen through the symbolizer in space-four. Or any other. More than chaotic, it is alive with forces and unknown objects whose nature we cannot determine. Eddies and currents are there, and waves and winds and storms whose source and sink we do not know. And as the ancient forerunner Polynesian navigators saw lights in the sea that indicated land over the horizon, the glory of the sea, so do we also see glory in the sea of space, but it is a glory that makes us very afraid as well; it crawls like the Pacific Ocean down there below Pico Tranquillon. And for such a Ship, there can be no anchorage anywhere; for the pilot, no landfall, though a planet be found, and the passengers, the people, disembark. For us, a planetfall is just more work in space-three. . . . And there are other things, too, things we can only dimly perceive in the Game, things which have no visual analog at all. They move, they appear to have volition. Are they forms of life? Perhaps. So however well we think we see space in the display, we have to have a reference set of coordinates from the visual perception. Because some things show in the Game that cannot be seen and we must know where these are. And we must know arbitrary things, too—like which way is Galactic North, G-South, Solar North, S-South. The reference for Galactic Meridian. Translating. Our eyes see geodesic lines to the stars, but in the Ship there is no such thing, and the two must be integrated. That integration has been my real mission, and it is this for which I have been trained.”