The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  Now standing, Sanjirmil waited patiently, her head thrown back, still attentive to the small active section of the Game display being shown in the dome overhead. Perwathwiy from her master’s chair now directed the changeover of the rest, minding things carefully while they exchanged places, one at a time. Each slid into place and took up the motions of his predecessor, eyes on the ceiling. Those relieved moved away from their cradles, staring blindly after hours at it. None looked up. And when the new crew was in place and now in control, Perwathwiy’s bony, ribbed hands flickered over the master keyboards to either side of her, and in the ceiling over their heads, the full display came on.

  A muted white light immediately flooded the entire room, and the ceiling came alive, the whole surface of it, down to the coping along the vertical wall bordering the observation ledge; and the domed ceiling was covered with the same flickering, roiling, permutating endless recursive pattern of a complex and large-scale Game in progress, but moving so fast the untrained eye could not follow it for more than an instant. This array used tiny cells of the triangular tesselation, demarcated by fine black lines, fine as a spider’s web. The activity was dense and busy: currents of motion flowed through it, forms appeared, coalescing out of others, then dissolving. Others held their existence and their position, but changed in shape constantly. To Fellirian it was a stunning window into hell and chaos, the primal chaos that underlies all appearances of the outer world of trees and rocks and stones and creatures, buildings and power and abstract reasonings. Here was displayed in graphic, visual form, the way things were, at some unknowable and unimaginable microlevel, and there was, to the eye, no meaning to it at all, much less the thought of controlling and manipulating that mighty flow over their heads: it was madness to look at it for more than a second.

  Fellirian dropped her head, breathing hard, her breath coming in long sobs that shook her whole body. After a time, she said, simply, “My mind is too small.” Morlenden had been staring at it, awestruck, dumb, his mouth hanging open in astonishment, for nothing he had seen during his partial indoctrination into the Game had prepared him for this. At last, he too dropped his head, a dazed expression on his face.

  Pellandrey said, “This is the array Mevlannen spoke of, space-three; fine detail-work inside a planetary system. I know you are not Players, so I will not try to point out bodies in the solar system in the display. This display in full is part of changeover; the smaller partial unit is enough to keep the Ship moored, but we must take the larger view every eight hours, just to keep an eye on things.”

  Morlenden said, “I don’t see how you could show me any particular body in that welter—it all looks the same, the same density everywhere.”

  “It always looks thus. The great Game we tap into in the universe goes on everywhere, source and sink and flow; it is different kinds, different patterns, rather than different densities that determines, in the macrocosm you and I inhabit, just what an object becomes—here, a planet; and there, an unseen flux of energy from a distant galaxy.”

  “How far can you see in these various display patterns?”

  “There is no limit save that which we bring to it—the finite limits of ourselves, imperfect creatures just as all the rest. The greater the area of the display, the more you can do with it. The small partial is sufficient to hold the Ship; we need full to move it out of the planetary system. And of course there are limits to what even a trained mind can handle—it gets too dense. Space-three is only good out to about, say, a parsec. In deep space, with virtual velocities in whole-number multiples of c, we use the higher-order tesselations; space-four, the several fives, the three sixes. Those we use for the most distant viewing.”

  Fellirian was regaining control of herself once again; she looked to the ceiling display once, then away. The Perwathwiy, down in the pit, sensing that they had seen as much as they could understand at that time, abruptly returned the display program to the reduced section they had first seen when they had come into this place. The light in the control room died back to its previous dimness.

  Fellirian said, “And what of time delay? When you look into the distance, do you also see into the far past, as they do with the telescopes?”

  “No. The Game has the same time everywhere; everything that we see and everything that we see happening is happening at that instant. That which is here displayed is an absolute universe, not a relativistic one; this is how things are, right now. No matter how far we have pushed it.”

  She said, “And what of us? What are we to do when Mor’s transmission of the matrix to Sanjirmil is complete?”

  “We had all hoped that you would rest from your journey here, in the Ship, until the morning. Then we have a decision to make.”

  “Is time really different in here?”

  “Sometimes . . . but mostly it’s just a manner of speaking. Stay here tonight; there will be time tomorrow.”

  “Will there be, Pellandrey?”

  He hesitated. “Time enough,” he said laboriously, “for that which we all must do, painful though it will be. I should have you fresh for that.”

  TWENTY

  In the Game, Symmetry, however and whenever attained, is not lost, nor can it be.

  —The Game Texts

  AND SO THEY all waited along the encircling ledge for the relieved Braid to come up out of the pit to meet them. For a time, Sanjirmil stood close beside the Perwathwiy Srith, by the main console keyboard, apparently answering questions, adding small operator observations. The visitors could not catch the words, nor discern their meaning; the words were inaudible, and accompanied by an odd, but total, lack of bodily gestures; Fellirian inferred from this that Perwathwiy and Sanjirmil were speaking in one or another mode of Multispeech.

  And while the leaders conversed, the others began drifting up out of the pit, picking their way along carefully, as if dazed, now that they were free of the strain of flying. They were all visibly fatigued. The younger girl, Sunderlai, in particular, seemed dazed and disoriented by the weight of her past shift at the controls: her attention seemed distracted, her motions as she climbed the stairs almost clumsy. A shame; Sunderlai was a small, delicate girl, of soft, rounded contours, whose skin was the color of whipped honey. The girl was yet just a child, round-faced, pleasant, pretty although not a beauty. But all in all, a healthy, lively young girl. Or would have been. Fellirian could imagine it well enough: selection, unbeknown to the girl herself, then early uprooting from yos and homelands, and placement into hard training so that she could fly under the hardest taskmaster of all—Sanjirmil.

  The others were not so different. They were all fatigued and distracted. Numb from the long hours at the consoles. In Sanjirmil’s insibling, Tundarstven, the effect seemed less pronounced, replaced by something more like a deep indifference. And Sanjirmil turned from her conversation with the Perwathwiy, said something to her insibling that Fellirian did not catch completely, something about the session they had just finished, deep in Inner Game terminology. And the habit of the flying shift was still deep in him, for he turned to her immediately, but his reply, which came after a little pause, was consciously himself and nothing else, accompanied by a little gesture of the hand, signifying indifference. By that little exchange, Fellirian could see the influence Sanjirmil wielded over them; some Daimons could be exorcised only by indifference.

  The three others of Sanjirmil’s Braid climbed out of the pit, and departed the room immediately through the main hatch. Sanjirmil, last to leave, was now apparently finished with her remarks with the Perwathwiy, and she, too, left the console area, turning away from it, so it seemed, with reluctance and dragging step. She began climbing up to the railed ledge about the pit, shedding as she climbed some but not all of that steely air of control she carried with her when she had been controlling. She, too, was visibly fatigued, but she did not seem disoriented as the others had. Sanjirmil had reserves they had not begun to learn of yet. And as she approached closer, Fellirian noticed the youn
ger girl’s eyes in particular; they held a peculiar expression, an almost glassy cast, which upon closer inspection seemed not so much inattention or unfocusing, but an unconscious scanning habit, an almost total reliance on peripheral vision. Of course; she understood: only with trained peripheral vision could they see and respond to the visual field shimmering above them, especially when the full display was on.

  Sanjirmil reached the landing, opposite Fellirian. The eerie scanning gaze turned in their direction, took in Pellandrey, Fellirian, Morlenden. She read all their faces instantly, selecting that which she would fix her real attention upon. She knew Pellandrey had nothing new for her. Fellirian she dismissed from the first. A traditional rival Fellirian had been, the loyal insibling, but no more than that.

  In the timeless way of all creatures that move about freely, as they faced each other, they took the measure of one another’s worth and weight. For her own part, Fellirian felt the confidence her maturity and parenthood had brought to her—through the hundreds of decisions she had made therefrom, the problems solved. She also had her place at the Institute to support her as well. She knew herself to be a person of consequence. But Sanjirmil possessed an enormously strong will, a ferocious directional vector, and of course the deception of her insanity; she was convinced she was right. And here, in this place, she had the power of her position behind her, for in effect the Ship was hers. But there was more: Sanjirmil possessed an almost terrifying power of sexuality. Fellirian could sense it, could almost feel the waves of it buffeting her, waves of pure body. Extreme, perverse. Fellirian had never met a girl before possessed of such a raw force, such a strength of it

  Sanjirmil approached her slowly. Fellirian watched her come, powerless to run, or to turn her aside. Seen from the ledge, when she had been reclining in her control cradle, the dark clothing Sanjirmil wore had been hardly more than a distraction, but here, close, on equal level, Fellirian saw the figure coming toward her, impressively dressed in stone black, broken only by thin lines of white. Their eyes met, focused, locked on; the glassy, unfocused look in Sanjirmil’s eyes faded, being replaced by a disturbingly direct gaze of naked will, corrosive ability, unlimited malice. It was a gaze that burned. Fellirian instinctively looked away, breaking first, protecting herself from something she sensed was far beyond her abilities to subdue.

  She spoke, almost involuntarily. “Morlenden has the matrix from Mevlannen.”

  Sanjirmil nodded, shifting her gaze back to the scanning mode, as if it had been no more than what she had been expecting to hear. And now she faced Morlenden, fixing him with that same disturbing gaze. He saw her much as had Fellirian, but deeper, too, for this fey, dangerous creature, almost out of control of all of them together, this girl in black, had once been known to him; and had sat not an arm’s length away in a silent room, with him. But now she was at her time, at her full maturity, at the summit of her powers, secure in her own place, and he felt the strength of her rather more acutely than had Fellirian.

  Sanjirmil’s working overshirt was limp from the hours she had spent at the console-keyboard in the pit, and through it, the angular, primitive contours of her body showed easily. Along her face and neck and forearms, the only exposed parts, the warm streaky tone was more obvious; a hard, burnished olive along the lines of bone and tendon; soft, dull rose in the softer hollows. Wiry and yet ripe, too, erotic without comment, where others of this color were only lovely, or attractive. He thought that perhaps this effect was due to the shape; for Sanjirmil did not follow the rather undifferentiated unisex shape of the typical ler girl, flat-chested and narrow-hipped, but was closer to the ancient human shape, with its curves, hollows, fullnesses, increased sexual differentiation. And Morlenden was aware that even tired from a full shift at the master console, her body could still evoke responses in himself, even after the great change. He felt intimidated, demanded upon.

  He sensed hostility in her, not well concealed, under the drive and power she projected. It was not a hostility of envy now, however it might have been in the beginning; now it was a hostility of arrogance, contempt, hubris, nurtured, for all too long, by too much responsibility piled on by accident, in one by nature not prepared for it. There was no cure for it, he saw as had Pellandrey; circumstances had worked their evil magic upon them all, just as they had with others and their plans, dreams. Morlenden did not doubt whatsoever that whatever strange creatures shared the universe with human and ler, they also had faced the same dilemmas; indeed, just now, somewhere else, some thing was facing the problems they faced, or something similar. Morlenden felt a sudden surge of sympathy for the unknown beings; for he did not like the weight of it. He felt it acutely; too acutely. There was something lurking in the back of his mind, something just out of sight, something enlarging this meeting with Sanjirmil into something more than what it was.... And what could he say to her in reproof that Pellandrey had already not tried? He searched; there was nothing he thought he could add; yet there was this anticipation growing in him. It was most curious, as an emotion; for he now had no real desire to see Sanjirmil again, certainly not with a lover’s zest and zeal; but it felt something like that. But alien, too, as if there were more components to it.

  She was before him now; and he could see her as through an enlarging glass, with an immanence and a terror. As with all strong-natured ones, she possessed a roiled, complex, turbulent persona, further stirred by a stormy, disturbed sequence of memories. She might well be insane; Morlenden was certain that her memory would be all the clearer for it. Empathetic, he reached with his instincts, a gestalt perception of her, projected outward and continually verified by the reality of the ever-present now. Yes, he could see it, in the larger-than-life figure before him, coming closer, closer, close enough to reach out and touch, although he knew not if he dared, now. Yes, he could see it: Sanjirmil had been a tomboy, Dantlanosi, wiry, strong, aggressive; she had preferred to do it standing up, under a cool bridge in the rain, quick and hard, no quarter asked, none given, a hot and sweaty, piercingly sweet embrace and coupling.

  That was her nature; but it has all been taken from her by the accident that had made her a Player, but also a monster. What was left was the intense inwardness of the insibling, but now, of course, greatly magnified out of proportion. Once she had had the same chance at the rude freedoms of the adolescent as the rest of them, the easy and casual promiscuity, the relaxed and lazy affairs that came with time and the twenties. But she had not had them; instead, Sanjirmil had known a terrible stress, and won; but at what price? And somewhere in her was the knowledge, carefully hidden from obvious surfacing, that as with all insanities, the price for return did not stay fixed but slowly and inexorably grew ever larger. He knew that she would not return normally, of her own will, now. Now? Now there remained only the matrix to pass to her, and perhaps a few words, now that he knew. Yes, perhaps that was the sense of apprehension he felt. He would have Sanjirmil in a position of weakness when she was receiving; perhaps then he could . . . deflect her from her course, nudge her aside by a reference to their shared memories, their past?

  He spoke first. “I have brought the matrix from Mevlannen, to you as directed. Are you ready to receive?” And as he spoke to her, he felt a wild surge of anticipation, quite out of character, and he did not understand why he should feel so exultant, so . . . wild. What the hell was happening to him? The room began to shrink, to converge, to focus on himself, Sanjirmil. What was happening? Whatever it was, he felt increasingly powerless to change the course of things. A wild abandon took him, whispering in his inner ear, Let it be! Let what will come to pass, so come to pass. You will like it and ride willingly with it into the future!

  Sanjirmil answered simply, softly, with a voice betraying deep fatigue: “So I have waited, knowing the time to have come for the integration of Game and matrix. Speak on, then, messenger. Deskris . . . I await you.”

  Her eyes ceased scanning, found Morlenden’s, locked on them. Morlenden began, and it was easy, f
or all he had to do was remember the sequence Mevlannen had inserted in him, recall it and let it go. There was no composition on his part at all; just remember and release. Easy. And the wild anticipation in his heart leaped up like a wildfire, exulting. Almost there, it seemed to say, almost there, and the moment will be within this scene. He sang the sequence softly to her, slowly feeling, inexpertly, how she as receiver was leaning slowly into his influence, becoming a part of him, an extension of himself. All the result of Multispeech, of course; but also a lot of the relationship went into it, too. She was letting Morlenden take over part of her because she trusted Morlenden as she trusted no one else in the world. And he saw on the edge of his perceptions that somehow the feral glow was fading out of her eyes, the tense set of her harsh, angular face, once loved violently and intensely. There were other, familiar emotions beginning to show upon it, and something she heard and recognized, something she could say she truly knew as no one else did. These new emotions flickered over the harsh but softening face, like firelight over a raw, new stone wall. Her thin lips were tensed and white with concentration, as she reached for the more subtle nuances of the matrix, integrating it as she went.

  And the string of matrix numbers suddenly ended, ran out; there had been no warning, no anticipation, nor was there for what replaced them: Morlenden found himself speaking, quite involuntarily, in the strongest Command-override he had ever heard. Sanjirmil’s ego defenses, her will defenses, against outside control by Multispeech Command-mode were not down, but they had been relaxed to the point where they might as well have been. The sudden assault, which took Morlenden by as much surprise as it did Sanjirmil, battered down her will, hammered it flat, beat it down, and began reaching for the central node inside her mind that would make her sane; yes, sane, as it also killed her from inside. His voice echoed and boomed in his head like the voice of a god, probing, tearing, reaching. And an image of Mevlannen, who was saying, Sorry about the compulsion, Morlenden. I warned you that we’d cheat you. I knew who sent Mael to her death, but I would never get close enough to do it myself. But you would, and here you are now. And now extract our revenge! Destroy this thing before you. It can’t be cured, it can only be killed, and from the inside. NOW!