The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  “Yes.”

  “Will you let me mate? I desire it very much.” She said the last with a coy glance from under her eyelashes in a mannerism that was something more than a flat statement. To be sure, he wanted her—but he had hoped to put the issue off for some time, start changing her first. He realized that he should have known better. She had seen through all that with insight, and had gone directly to the point. He decided to be honest, and step ahead.

  “I had hoped to win you for myself. Perhaps not immediately, but when you wanted, later. For a long time.”

  She did not answer him, but instead looked downwards to the floor, shyly. He looked at her eyelashes: they were long, feathery, the same deep coppery color as her hair. Suddenly she became, without doing anything, very desirable. Her posture relaxed imperceptibly, suggesting confidence, submission. Han felt his hold on his old resolves growing slippery, hard to hold. The moment was now, approaching like a thunderbolt.

  Han said, softly, “I wanted to wait, because I didn’t know if you would want me, or one of your own kind more.”

  She looked up, demurely, her eyes moist and shining under her lashes, her mouth soft. “Another Zlat would have been fine. But you are beautiful to me, because of your strangeness, because of something I saw in you when you looked at me there, the first time. Something I have known only in stories, not something I would expect to see. Why did you not speak of this earlier?”

  She stood quietly, looking into nothing, expectant. Han could see the pulse in her fine, slim neck. It was racing. He turned and locked the door. When he turned back to Usteyin, she reached up, hesitantly, and stroked his beard, softly, tenderly, her eyes glassy. Han felt fire. He could not speak now, and he knew that he could not even begin to say, “No, later.” Whatever was coming, let it come, he thought, feeling his own pulse going up, feeling the light-headedness, the sense of falling without vertigo. He touched the clear, creamy skin, brushed against her dense, fragrant hair. Time changed to Usteyin’s concept of itself: it ceased to exist.

  Usteyin was a complete beginner in lovemaking, knowing almost nothing. She was artless and seemed to be guided only by the things she felt, and tales she had heard. It was, in fact, difficult for them at the first, for as Han recalled, she was “unbred,” to use the phrase of the klesh-breeders of Dawn. But she made up the lack of knowledge and experience with a naive enthusiasm, and an ability to learn, which Han found to be both disarming and disturbing. He treated her with tenderness and patience, and she responded with a fierceness and an immediacy; Usteyin could not live for maybes or laters. She lived now, and it was reach it now first. Other times would be other times. Foreplay, apparently, was another of the things she knew nothing of. That, for her, now consisted, so it seemed, of a few fleeting gestures. Then to work. The spirit of it was not one of selfish gratification, but one of the fear that it would never be again, and so it was to be experienced to the fullest. He thought afterwards, as they lay close together, that she had volumes to learn, and that he would enjoy being the instructor.

  She made a motion to return to the corner where she made her bed, but Han stopped her gently, asking her to stay where she was, close to him. Wordless, she curled close beside him, seeming almost to glow in the dark from some inner sense of happiness. It was something beyond her wildest dreams. As he moved his shoulder to make room for her, he winced. However delicate and fragile she looked, it was not apparent within an intimate embrace; she was both violent and strong. At the height of her own feelings, her muscles had rippled like hot wires. And she bit. He gingerly felt new tender spots along his neck and shoulders. He winced again. Yes, that had been in the sheaf of instructions, too. Zlats were passionate.

  When he awoke, it had become dark, and was late at night, the long night of the Dawn Winter. The lamp was on, and under it, Usteyin was combing out her hair. She sat in her corner, her blanket draped over her legs. The lamplight cast golden planes on her skin, rippling fiery highlights in her hair. She noticed immediately that Han was awake, and looked to him expectantly, then away, in the shy, submissive gesture he had seen her make before. But now he knew what it meant.

  She said, her voice soft, “You and I, we must do that often, as much as we can. I am afraid they will take us apart. I expect it. But I would have this last forever.”

  Han watched the girl, and did not speak, for some time. He found himself feeling much the same, and he could not explain it to himself; but however it was, this girl had become priceless, the end of all searching. There was no reason for it—it simply was, and he knew, from long before Liszendir, that a love (however broad and meaningless the word was in general usage) which could be explained wasn’t much of a love at all. If you could say “Because . . .” then it was already over, a thing of the past. He said to her, “So I would have it too. What do they normally do when it is just two Zlats, your own kind?”

  “We stay together only long enough for the girl to conceive. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks. But not long. But with you and me, I don’t know . . . they did not put us together to breed more Zlats, so it could be shorter or longer. Who knows what they want of us?”

  Han felt icy. The Zlats, and all the rest, were pets! They would be very fertile, bred for it. And no contraceptives; they would be light years away. He had forgotten, in his long time with Liszendir, when they didn’t have that problem. He looked closely at Usteyin again, sitting quietly under the lamp; the exquisite figure, the deep, thoughtful sea-green eyes, the spirit, the strong emotions . . . no. He was sure. He would see this thing through to its ultimate end, whatever came. He felt a sudden surge of possessiveness, something alien to him. Yes, he thought. To the end. In civilization, on Dawn, or in Hell.

  “Usteyin, we have much to do.”

  “I know.”

  “Not only more than you know, but more than you can know, right now,” he said, paraphrasing Haldane’s law. “But aren’t you hungry? Come on. I will find something for us.”

  Her reaction was not what he expected. “You would share your sleep with me? Your food?” she asked suddenly, and began crying. He went over to her and put his arms around her, saying nothing, letting her calm down of her own accord and at her own pace. Even such simple things as that were more alien to her than she could be to him. Or so he thought, at least for the present. Again, he reflected that he had a lot to learn, as well. She calmed down quickly, showing the same speed of realization and readjustment that she had displayed before.

  “Now I understand more. We are people, you and I, in the place where you are from. Not them. You see me that way, not as an unwilling Zlat, or any kind of Zlat. Do you want that? They will probably kill us when they find out.” She said the last bluntly, unemotionally.

  “Yes, just that. We are people. Back in my place, the world is filled with people, just like us. There are no klesh there. We are the people.”

  “I . . . I fear that greatly. I cannot see it. I am afraid of the wild.”

  “It is not all that wild. Better than the people here have.”

  “Then you must tell me, and I will understand. About a place where the klesh are people. I have heard this tale before, in parts, but I did not believe. That is the kind of thing that we tell ourselves in our stories. Thus, have some of the wild females talked, sometimes in words I did not understand at all.”

  “That is klesh speech from the other place. Our speech. There are many different ways of speech.”

  She laughed. “So you think. Many, all different, like the klesh here, but I know that we are all the same under the skin, and so I know that however we wish to say our needs, so it can be understood by all, with a little trying.” Then she suddenly became serious again. “But you must return me, send me back. I do not think I can do this thing. I will fail you. Send me back, now, while the desire is still deep in your eyes. I do not wish to see the other.”

  “The other?”

  “The anger you will feel when you discover that I cannot follow you, that I wi
ll be too weak.”

  “Oh, no. You will do well.” He was not saying it to calm her fears, her sudden loss of confidence. It was true. Han had never met any creature that learned as fast, adjusted as fast. It was almost as if she had nothing to reject, which was probably quite close to the truth, at least as much of it as he could see, as much as anyone could see. “Come, now. Share food. We will talk. You first. Tell me everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “All of it. I want to know.”

  “And you will give me your everything in return?”

  “As much as you can take.”

  “There is darkness and the night in your words, behind your eyes. But I will come, and I will take it, gladly, for this is a thing far beyond even the make-believe stories of the Zlats.”

  Somehow, he had imagined that she might eat with her fingers, but she did not, using the utensils with deft accuracy. Familiarly. But she ate fast. She said, “Food is a serious thing. That is why I was surprised you would share, even after what we had done. It would not be thus with a Zlat male. We are always hungry.”

  “You must keep a little of that. If you eat too much you won’t be pretty any more.”

  “Ugh. Yes, I have seen a few fat klesh. They are not so pretty.”

  After they finished, Han gave her a cup of hot beer, which she sniffed at suspiciously. She said, “There is people magic in this. It is forbidden.”

  “I know. It is good, and it is not forbidden any more, to us. Not to you, now.”

  “Do you really mean to keep me, yourself, always?”

  “Yes, I do, if you will stay.”

  “You would let me choose?”

  “Yes. Not here, but in my own land, my country. You will be free there, even of me, if you wish it, though it pains me to offer it to you.”

  “It is no matter. I will not exercise such a choice, either here or there. I have only one life to live, I only want one such a love as this. It is so much more . . .” She stopped and thought for a moment. “Besides,” she said, with a flash of sudden shrewdness, “we are not there yet.”

  “That is so. Now we wait. Tell me now of the Zlats. Everything. Come, let us sit together.”

  She joined him, sitting closely beside him. At first she began hesitantly, as if she were revealing deep secrets, but gradually the hot beer worked on her inhibitions, and the tale began to unfold.

  It was a simple story, really, and they had forgotten much. The way Usteyin told it, before there had been chaos, in which humans were as wild as any other creature. The people, the ler, came, and set things in order, then producing the breeds. It was a narrow, narrow world, but within its limits it was relatively secure. She knew that there were still wild humans, but she did not envy them. She had never even thought deeply about it before.

  The Zlats, of course, were the only breed she knew well. They seemed, to Han’s ears, somewhat more advanced and sophisticated than most of the others, but even then, they had so little of what might have been called culture that he could not compare them to any society he knew. They were something even below slaves, and were not used to any practical purpose. They did not have religion, nor did they have any sort of underground. Keeping them separated for most of their lives, over thousands of years, had ensured that there would be none of that. They bred only when allowed to have a few days together, and the rest of the time they were carefully segregated. Children were raised by their mothers, and after a certain age the boys were raised by the males. Usteyin knew about sex, about the love of the parent for the child; and she knew many stories about men and women, but they were not real—they were for the quiet times only.

  That was what the tangle of wire was for: it was actually a mechanism which could be put into an almost infinite number of possible arrangements and configurations. Those, and the way light fell on it, and the motions she used to set it, were all elements of a symbolic system, probably closer to an abacus than anything else, but it was a system that coded relationships, emotions, events and desires, whole realities. She could tell to herself an infinite number of stories on it, learning the proper motions and settings from others, when they had their rare personal contacts. She was proud of the one she had, for she had made it herself, when she had been young. The word she used, however, was “grown.” She had grown it. But she was afraid of it, too. “You use it too much, the story-block, and it catches your mind. You stay down there, in the wires and the beads; no one can get you out of a story-block, except yourself.”

  The only other thing she did was a hand-weaving, by an unusual method which did not use a loom. Her blanket was as fine a thing as Han had ever seen. It was her only item of property, so to speak, and was both cover, house or place, and clothes, when the weather required them.

  She knew about the other kinds of klesh, but in an odd and abstract way. She would have said more, but she began to grow sleepy, and like most of her kind, when she reached a certain degree of drowsiness, she simply went under, like a lamp being blown out. Han carried her to the small bed, placed her in it, and covered her up with her own blanket. As she settled into her new position, a soft smile grew on the delicately formed face, and she murmured something in her sleep, too quietly for Han to hear. He was not sleepy, not just then, and turned away to think.

  Han reflected on Usteyin. She lived, exactly in the present. She did not measure herself, as did Liszendir, by a set of traditions, or like a civilized human, by an unconscious set of cultural values, but solely by an unknown sense of interior balance. Han could see that she did this: he could not see how that interior balance was structured, and he imagined that he would never be able to glimpse it, even for a moment. To grasp it, one would have to strip off all civilized values, then program oneself to think of a personal image something more than a wild animal, but less than a slave, for at least slaves had functions, duties, and contributed something, even if that something was unwilling support of the rest of the society.

  But she was fully human, not ler, and not an animal. And as such, she had vast reserves of curiosity, of mind, which would be used for something. So far, all he had seen was her incredible flexibility. Liszendir had made Han partly ler as far as she could, to make herself comprehensible to him. Usteyin simply absorbed everything, integrated it, and pressed on in her eternal present.

  Abandoning that train of thought, he picked up the folder concerning the care of the Zlats, and read the crabbed characters until his eyes burned. After a bout of struggling with the boring expostulations, the overaccurate language, the many injunctions, he finally felt sleepy, and turned out the lamp, getting into bed beside the sleeping girl, warm and soft in complete trust and relaxation. He thought about her in relation to all others he had known. He was no stranger to girls, not at all. But there was something different here, some inner essence that the others had simply not had. Her beauty was manifested in body, face, skin, carriage. Yet for all of that, it was not a mask to hide something less inside, but something which escaped from the inside despite all the limitations the physical body placed on such expressions. There was something sweeter just out of reach. Was it her scent, disturbingly like a child’s? No, something abstract. Something about time. Time. Wife? Lover? Family. Children. Red hair and furred lower legs . . . almost under. Time. Sense of time. Children.

  Then his eyes opened wide. He had it. The answer. He knew who was manipulating the Warriors. And why. And all the proof required would be a few answers from Hatha. Simple questions. It was all so clear. And for an instant, invisibly tiny, unmeasurable in time, he glimpsed a fraction of the reality that was Usteyin. He slept.

  11

  We have learned one thing about nature: that it is a great generalizer—it forces its component parts to be multiplex or perish, all in degrees commensurate to their ability to influence other parts around them. Artificial things do not show this trait; and this applies to the living as well as to the nonliving, if you prefer that level of distinction. So it is that within a na
rrow range of specifications, we ler are indeed superior to the old people, the humans. Yet one cannot escape the weight of evidence—whole for whole, ler and human are approximately equal—different, not better or worse in either case. No ler surprises a human, after the initial shock of acquaintance, but humans continually surprise ler, just as they do each other. We prefer our own carefully structured society. But we, I assure you, stand in considerable awe of people who live closer to chaos than do we, and do not fear it, as we do very much.

  —Klislangir Tlanh

  HAN SOON BEGAN to be worried about Usteyin, and Liszendir as well. If his guess was anywhere near correct, even partially correct, they were all in great danger, much greater than anything Hatha could do to them. In fact, he was beginning to feel a certain pity for Hatha and the whole crew of the Warriors. They, in fact, were being used, and much of their potential for future evil was reduced by the same amount. And, to continue, if the suspicion was right, then they were a disposable tool as well.

  He countered these thoughts with reminders of the miseries. Hatha had caused with his vainglorious raids—the broken families, the sundered friends, the deaths, the appalling view one had to take, to survive at all, once on Dawn. And the meteoric bombardment was a horror beyond most weapons, for realistically, it could be used only against populations. A terror weapon, solely. Aving’s cold remarks about livestock, and of course the history of the Zlats, and all the other klesh. If by magic he could forget the rest of the universe, judging solely from Dawn, he would have to agree with Liszendir’s fierce condemnation of the Warriors—let them fall to their fates, except that he would attempt to get the humans off the planet first. But conditions were not like that, and there was the issue of the real villains, who would have to be neutralized before they could do anything, because he was sure that whoever and whatever they were, they had the means to eliminate any threat from the Warriors, should one appear. One did not, however advanced, work on nuclear weapons without fail-safes, and to manipulate a whole culture was potentially even more dangerous. To do what must be done here, he would need both ships and Hatha’s cooperation. And he would have to do it without Liszendir. And he would have to get it quickly, for he had heard rumors among the guard staff to the effect that recruiting was now going on for a new and more extensive adventure than any they had previously had.