The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  So here was the source of the anticipation, the exultation, that he had been feeling as the moment approached; not himself at all, but a compulsion Mevlannen had set into him as she had herself passed the matrix to him. Morlenden hesitated, for as much as he wished to avenge Maellenkleth, he had never attained malice toward Sanjirmil. Only anger. And now, that hesitation almost became the end of him, for although Morlenden still had inhibitions, even to the resistance of Mevlannen’s compulsion, Sanjirmil had no such inhibitions whatsoever. And he was about to find that where survival was at stake, she could shed fatigue like a pine tree shedding raindrops in a sudden wind.

  In the instant he had argued with himself, hesitated, fought the compulsion, his attention had dropped off Sanjirmil. And now she recovered from the Multispeech assault upon her. And he lost belief in the program Mevlannen had set into him, and now the words became just words, falling off Sanjirmil harmlessly. The room winked out in his perceptions, and was replaced with a boundless darkness. He could imagine, but not see, Sanjirmil, gathering herself, recovering, now rising to strike back. He moved hesitantly. He was in great danger, he knew, and began looking for a way he could defend himself against the approaching counterattack.

  And a voice shouted at him from all sides: So it was to be you after all, was it? It was just as I feared the day I came with Perwathwiy: you would unravel the long string and turn against me, too, as have all the rest. Well, then, you have come so far; so witness what others who have tried came to see. Some are there yet. You will join them.

  And instantly the furry darkness was replaced with the abstract plain he had glimpsed before. Only now he was standing on the surface, dazed, disoriented, looking about. There was no one there but him. A brown, flat plain, illuminated by a wan, amber, sourceless light, arrowed off into infinity, a horizon that seemed staggeringly far away. Sanjirmil had dropped Morlenden into her own private limbo.

  He forced himself to think, not to panic and run, which he was sure the others had done. Run wildly, as they had done, and he knew death would come from a thousand directions, in unknowable ways. He had to think. Morlenden looked at the “ground.” It seemed faintly etched with parallel lines, which he could follow, now that he saw them, off to the horizon. Then there was something regular about this place, after all. And he knew that this limbo was Game-generated, by Sanjirmil, but part of some Game program still. He forced himself to remember all that he had learned from Krisshantem, to try to find a way out. He began, hesitantly, vocalizing short bursts of Game language, in Command-mode. At first, nothing happened, but with one segment there was a sudden wavering of the brown horizon. Yes. His heart leaped. Yes! He could pull this limbo down and walk out of the ruins. He probed at it again.

  Now a spot developed, just off-center in his field of vision, like a migraine spot, a pulsing, wavering blot of black and bumblebee-yellow, pulsing, growing, writhing into his field of vision, taking his attention. He increased his efforts. The patch of yellow and black increased in intensity, and he began to hear a humming in his ears, becoming louder, and at the same time he began to feel a will pressing hard against him, harder, harder.... The patch of writhing color grew, becoming immense, covering a third of the scene, and then suddenly shrank, taking on form, someone . . . and Sanjirmil materialized out of the patch, with no warning, with a curious, dancelike motion, her leather cloak swirling about her and settling as she materialized into this strange world with a faint pop of displaced air. And now she stood only feet away, dressed in black, her figure set in a posture of dire menace, slowly approaching him, slightly circling.

  “Ho, Morlenden!” she challenged him. “You are more resourceful than I thought. A Player, no less! How did you come by it?”

  He faced her, ceasing for the moment his efforts to break the walls of limbo. “The same way I came to attack you, Sanjir. Things have been put into me that I did not ask for.”

  “I know Mevlannen set a compulsion in you; things like that leave traces, like the scent of the hunter on his traps.”

  “Krisshantem set a program of an Outer Player into me. And I see the light, with it. I’m going to pull down this hell you’ve made.”

  “I don’t doubt for a minute you would, if I let you. You are the first to realize it could be done, although far better Players have come here . . . and failed. That is why I come in person. What must be done . . . but you know that. Can you dissuade me before I . . . ?”

  “Dissuade you? I don’t intend to. Keep your distance, or I will reactivate the destruction program of Mevlannen. I know you are powerful, Sanjir, but you cannot cover both ends.” And without warning, he slipped into Command-override, trying the instructions of Mevlannen again, but this time with belief and a deep sense of self-preservation behind them as well. Sanjirmil was unprepared for the second attack; she had apparently thought that all she would have to do was enter limbo and dispose of this troublesome stranger. . . . Now she staggered back, her image wavering, the horizon suddenly gone unsteady. She had never caught one like this! He was fighting back! Unthinkable! She exerted a mighty effort that made veins emerge into sharp relief around her forehead, countering in Command-override of her own; and Morlenden again felt himself gripped in the clutches of a monster will. The strange world steadied, as well as her image. And she began circling him, like a wolf, closing slowly. Morlenden also began moving, circling her, keeping up his own song as he went, for he knew that to waver now would be instant termination; he would never return from this place, wherever it was.

  He called to her, “Ho, Sanjirmil! I can stalemate you indefinitely! Attack me and I unravel your limbo. Patch up your world-lines and I’ll attack you.”

  She replied through a grimace of effort, “Stalemate, you think. There is no time here save my time. I’ll wear you down. But know that this is not my heart’s desire, Morlen. . . .”

  “Speak of heart’s desire, then. We have little else to say to one another, it would seem, here, save malice.”

  “If you will cease fighting me, and join me in my crusade against stupidity, I will share it with you, thus and thus. Share and share alike. You are too good to waste in absurd combat like this.”

  “Why did you send Maellenkleth out to certain capture?”

  “You have said it, therefore you know why. I read the old human story of Damvidhlan and Baethshevban49 and saw my way clear. Maellen fell, of course, to the role of the Great Hurthayyan, or as the forerunners call him, Uriah-the-Hittite. Like him, she was fond, overly fond, of the front of the battle, and like him, she was espoused to a being I coveted, the regard of the rest of the Game community. So I, like Damvidhlan, sent her to the place where it was hottest.”

  Morlenden interrupted. “It would not be like you to leave a thing like that to chance.”

  “No,” she said sadly. “No chance. I had been cultivating a vile agent of the humans, holding him for some extraordinary deed. And there it was. Through him I made sure she was captured. A man named Errat. In the end he became too slippery, and I had to dispose of him. Too dangerous. It is a fearsome thing to deal with humans; they are dangerous . . . full of a thousand enmities. Their thoughts subvert one’s own, take over, and you become like them. That is why I went out to finish Errat; he was corrupting me.”

  “Hah!” Morlenden barked. “You corrupted by Errat? I should think it the other way. If you did eliminate him, you did him a favor.”

  “I shot the arrow at you, to warn you. Do not make me wish to be sorry I missed.”

  “Not much of a miss, was it? Or do you claim it after the fact? That is the score I must even with you myself: you loosed upon me a weapon that leaves the hand.”

  “I saw you were coming to it, and would not be deceived by hope. Perwathwiy and the rest I could keep off, for they wanted to believe . . . but I saw the way you were going would lead you to me in the end. I agree it was unwise . . . but you cannot obtain judgment upon me for it, for I have narrowed the field of Players. They need me now, notwithstandi
ng the fact that I am master of the Ship.”

  “Then you do not need my help.” Morlenden turned from her and began unraveling the ends of the strange half-world Sanjirmil had made. She abruptly countered, stabilizing it again, a flush of anger radiating from her.

  “Stop that! You know not what forces you will release!”

  “Since you were caught by the Ship, Sanjir, you have lived by playing upon the unthinkable, that there were things others would not do. I see that. But I will do them, won’t I? You have gone too far, and I will stop you.”

  “Regardless of the cost to the people?”

  “Look at what you have cost them already! We were innocent, but evil has entered us, wearing your overshirt, your boots, your leather cape. I do not wish to see this evil carried to the stars, however you will have it.”

  “Join me, come with me, be my love again as you once were. We fly soon to the new worlds, and I will set you above me when we land, above Pellandrey.”

  “No.”

  “You owe him nothing. He stole the heart of your insibling in her vayyon, long ago. Yes, I know, though you do not. It was Pellandrey and Fellirian, and it has remained so all these years.”

  “No. The vayyon is the vayyon. One can do that. I hold no grudge. Will have none of it. Is it now that you cannot overcome me, so you bring forth these cheap arguments? Indeed you are wavering.”

  “I do not waver in what must be done. See!” And again Morlenden felt the pressure of her will, beating upon him, relentless as the tide. He felt himself being forced, step by step, move by move, into a crouching posture, an ancient posture of defense. And now she advanced on him, pressing close. Morlenden fought back with all the powers he could muster, defending, picking at the wall that was closing around him, compressing him, closing him in. She stood before him, a figure in dark clothing in the eerie half-light of the amber plain, her hands flexing. “See!” she cried. “It would be so easy to snuff you out. But I am merciful, and something of me still loves you. Desist, O Morlenden, from your resistance against me; join me. You are worth far more to me as a willing friend than as a vanquished enemy. Anyone can vanquish enemies. It is easy.”

  In her gloating over her Multispeech powers, and her immense powers as a Player, she had come too close, closed her web of power too closely about Morlenden. He looked at it closely, feeling along its boundaries with his mind, feeling for a line of weakness. She had to have one, somewhere.

  She was saying, “My last offer: you have the basic skills, I see. I offer you one half of everything that is mine, the power and the glory. Only say that you will accept me for what I am; for I cannot help that.”

  “No.” Morlenden grimaced, still feeling along her will for a weak point. And he found it. A minuscule crack: her memory of him. It was the one thing that someone else would have easily missed; for she had told no one of their dalliance long ago. Into this crack Morlenden flowed, working his way along the weakened lines of will-force in the web of Multispeech Command-override. And then he was inside her defenses, no longer outside, and he did not hesitate now, for to falter here would mean the end. She wailed, “Nooooo . . .” and he found the node in her mind he was looking for, and turned loose, in all its horrors, the destructive program of Mevlannen, but now under his control. She fought him like a wild beast, and the plain vanished utterly, and he was filled with vertigo, but he did not let go for an instant. She turned and fled, but Morlenden pursued her like an avenging angel. He was now pulling himself laboriously through a labyrinth of insanity, of the whole elaborate network she had built up over the years. But at last he came to the center, to the central node, the event in her memory that had started it all, the memory of that time in the Ship, when it had activated and she had had to face the awful cosmos alone. And Morlenden saw the basic flaw, reached into it, and repaired it, and watched the rest, now falling into line after it, readjusting. It was over. The process was now fixed, unstoppable, and in the end she would be different. He was sure she would be diminished, though it pained him to reduce her thus.

  And they were back in the master Control room, with no warning, seemingly at the same instant they had left it, only now he was holding Sanjirmil in his arms, supporting her as she sank against him, her body heaving with dry sobs that shook her whole body. Her eyes were closed tightly, and between sobs, she was moving her lips soundlessly, muttering something. Pellandrey and Fellirian looked at the two of them, amazed at the change in Sanjirmil, which had seemingly come instantly; one moment she had been master of the Control room; the next, collapsed in Morlenden’s arms.

  Pellandrey stepped forward, eyes blazing. “What have you done to her?”

  Morlenden spoke over his shoulder, never taking his eyes off the girl. “Cured her, that’s what. She’ll probably never fly again, but she can remember the basic integration, the matrix plus the Game-view of the stars, and she can guide you. But she’s disarmed now. I’ve clipped her wings.”

  “You fool, do you know what you’ve done? You’ve condemned us to wait until we can replace her. And we don’t have that much time; the forces she stirred in the human world will be reaching here within the week, according to our computations.”

  Morlenden said, over his shoulder, “If you let this one as she was lead you to that pass, then you’re a fool and deserve the blame yourself for what happened. She was insane, you dodo, and she was poisoning all of you, one by one. You let her get this far; all along the way there were actions you would not take, and she knew it, read you all perfectly. Until she had you locked into total dependence on her. God only knows what she would have done once she lifted the ship off, in the condition she was in. She’d probably have turned the whole range of weaponry you have aboard here on Earth and blighted it. All we want to do is get away clean, not leave a legacy of revenge behind us.”

  Fellirian agreed with Morlenden. “I follow his argument; if we allowed that to happen, they would never forgive and they would never let it leave their minds. They would reinvent the starship just to hunt us down. I will not have that Daimon pursuing us across space to the ends of the universe.”

  Morlenden added, “If worse comes, sit in for her yourself. I know she was systematically eliminating potential replacements; but there have to be some left who can take her place. Use them. And make her work for you as an astrogator. You have the leverage now.”

  Pellandrey answered, after a time, “You are right, of course. I admit the flaw; we have all here been living with it too long, and the rationalizations always come too easy. And so what did you learn from her? What are the crimes of Sanjirmil, in specific?”

  Morlenden said, “To punish her further is meaningless. She will flog herself to a shred, now that she has her whole mind back. What more could we do to her that would bring her victims back? What can we add that will strike down other Sanjirmils to come? We can do no more than be ready for them when they come, and stop them then. I will not say what I learned of this one. Let it rest there: you would not judge her and act, because of her position as master of the Game. So I took my case to the Game master, disagreed with her arbitration, and settled the matter with her alone. Proceed with your plan, Pellandrey.”

  “When I finish telling you what I started to a moment ago, you will not be so kindhearted.”

  “Pah. I have never been kind in my life. I am being practical.”

  “Very well, practical. But you will recall that we sensed increased human interest in this site as a result of Sanjirmil’s manipulations? That this had interrupted and aborted one timetable, the program we were putting into human society?”

  “Yes.”

  “It interrupted more than that; it also interrupted the orderly growth of the Ship. . . .”

  Fellirian put her hands to her mouth, and said, simply, “Oh.”

  “And the Ship grows only at a certain rate, controlled by the Game. This gives us our basic ulterior space, which we must then render habitable. We had things tied into our racial birthrate, so t
hat at a certain time, the available space in the Ship would be exactly that required for the whole of the people.”

  Morlenden said, slowly, “So if the Ship can fly now, it would do so with less room. . . .”

  “Exactly. According to what Maellenkleth knew from her own capture, the time was then near. We are actually overdue a departure even now. We must fly next week at the latest, or risk, according to our studies, having to fight our way out. It may be so already, now. And there isn’t room for everyone. Do you understand? There isn’t room.”

  “So someone must stay behind?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “All children and adolescents will go. All elders, except for a handful designated as absolutely essential, will stay behind.”

  Fellirian said, in a very small voice, “You left out the parent phase.”

  Pellandrey said, “Some Braids will have to leave two of the parents behind, with the elders.”

  Morlenden laid Sanjirmil down, very gently, along the floor of the ledge. He straightened, and said, “And who are these Braids? Are they known to you? Better yet, are they known to themselves?”

  “Tomorrow we send the runners out, to bring the gathering of the people. We have worked it this way, so the knowledge of role will not be lost: All Braids that carry a number in their surname must cast lots among themselves, or somehow make a decision. And of course, what little government we have will set the example and bite this most bitter bullet.”