The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  Liszendir said, “And so I have lived to see the end of a legend, the end of the tale of Sanjirmil. Somehow, I wish I hadn’t, that something better, or the unknown, could have been for them. . . . But now it is over, and we can go home. We are free.”

  “We are free, and now we have choice,” said Han quietly.

  “What choice?” Both girls spoke almost in unison.

  “We can go back now, or attend to some other unfinished business.”

  “What could we have that is unfinished, here?”

  “Aving. Have you forgotten? I know Aving was not on that ship below the pole. He could not be—he would not be able, even on a place like Dawn, to go and come unnoticed in such a ship; it was as big or bigger than Hatha’s. No. The only time he could board it was when Hatha was away, and the season kept everyone else indoors, at night, so they would not see. And he couldn’t live at the pole, either. So Aving has not yet been caught up in the ruin of his adventure. He will have had communications with his ship, and now he knows it is gone. They cannot answer his calls, the equipment will be silent, and so he will have guessed something. If we can bring him back, dead or alive, we can prove what we say, for however much he may look like a ler, I will bet everything I now have that he will be different inside. And more: we do not know that he can’t communicate with his homeworld. He may even now be calling for help. We don’t know where it is, or how far. It could be hundreds of lights away, or over in the next system.”

  Liszendir looked grave, thoughtful. “Yes. It would almost have to be as you say. But what you are thinking, Han, that is more dangerous than anything we have done yet. Think: we came to look, and we were dragged off to the ends of the universe, hunted, beaten. If we go looking for trouble, to seek one out like that, ah, now, that is a fine peril. And I do not wish to be hauled off to any more planets, save my own, which I will allow you to do.”

  Usteyin was equally concerned. “I agree with what Liszendir says. And more. Who will do this thing, capture or kill this creature? There are only three of us; you two are fighters, that I see, but I am not, even if I have ended one of those things.”

  “I do not mean that we should go back there blind. But we should at least go and have a look at the castle. We know he has no ship, and we can reason that he has no weapons heavy enough to do us damage at the castle. We would be able to detect the power source, if one were there. And if he has gone, then we can’t spend the rest of our lives looking for him. But I do not want to leave him here.”

  Liszendir moved around Han, and set the course in herself. “All right. I see it. You are right. I do not want him loose either.”

  Usteyin looked at both of them. “I do not like this at all, but I have no way to stop you, and I see there is no way to get off this machine. I am not brave. I have fear of beings who could use the people so.”

  “Not brave? I don’t think that’s true, Usteyin. And if you lack it, you are going to have to learn it soon. Because if any of us have to go into the castle, it will have to be you and I. Somebody who can fly the ship has to stay in it, and that is Liszendir.”

  In a short time, they were approaching Aving’s castle from the south, flying the Pallenber down in the upper atmosphere. As they passed over the location of the city Leilas, Han and Liszendir looked below through the ventral pickups for signs of life. There were none. Leilas was buried under snow. All they could see, even with low-level augmentation, were patterns of different tints of snow and rocks, the random traceries of hard winter and night. Soon after, they were over the top of the northern trough, dropping lower and lower, decreasing their speed as they came closer. They passed the castle, carefully watching for any sign of life about it, but there was nothing. In the twilight of the north-winter, the castle sat on its outcrop, dark and empty. It had been abandoned.

  While Han and Liszendir were looking at the castle and the lands around it, Usteyin was looking ahead, northwards, on the main viewscreen. It was not long before her sharp eyes saw something far ahead on the gently dipping slope of the northern end of the trough: small knots of people, fleeing north, to the polar summer, and perhaps another way out, or back, or into obscurity. Or just away. She called to Han and Liszendir.

  Han flew closer to the straggling knots, to get a better view of them. Yes; they were fleeing, all walking away from the castle. He could not make out any features on any of them, but something of the way they hurried, the way they scattered as they heard the approach of the ship; those ways were not the way of an Aving. Liar and deceiver he could be, but he would neither scuttle nor cower, even in defeat. He also felt with all the strength of a hunch that Aving would not be one to run, if he ran at all, into isolation—that would make him all the easier to spot, to hunt down. No—he was not with these. He would be back at the castle, hiding, or perhaps in Leilas. He turned the ship around and headed back to the castle.

  The strength of the hunch waned as he came closer to the castle. It had been a foolish idea to come back here at all. They would never find Aving. The sly fox had too much of a head start on them—even if it were only an hour, it was enough. They could not expect to locate one creature from a spaceship—this was one time when machinery and technology could not help them, and they did not have time to go down and search the whole planet on foot. But a trip into the castle might be worthwhile, for artifacts, if nothing else. Proof. They flew around the dark hulk several times, but they saw no sign of life on it, not even smoke. On an impulse, he flew right up to the castle and grounded the ship inside the courtyard, although there was barely room for it. It was a small ship, yet inside the walls, it seemed improbably large. The Pallenber settled into the snow, gingerly, tentatively, protesting the soft, yielding surface under its landing legs.

  The ship quieted, became silent. Han set the controls on standby, and began getting ready to go out. “Liszendir, you stay here. If anything goes wrong, if we don’t come back, you will have to get the information back into the Union. Take off and fly it—you know how. And burn this place to a cinder before you leave, if it comes to that. Forget your inhibitions once. You can go straight through on Matrix-12. I’ve already set it up. Just punch it in.”

  She became obstinate. “This is not right! You and I should be going in there. If you must.”

  Usteyin began wrapping her blanket around herself. “I fear this place, and I fear to leave the ship, for it is the only place, save our little room in the camp on the plains, where I have felt my reality so strongly. But I must go with you, even if all I do is carry things. You understand me, Liszendir, and you will not be offended, but my life with you would not be so much as with him.”

  “I am not. Now go! Let it be done and let us leave this place.”

  Han gave Usteyin one of the gas guns, showed her how to use it. She listened patiently, grimly serious. For himself, he went to the locker and removed two weapons, just in case. One was a flash gun, which generated a narrow beam whose wavelength was in the near infrared. The other was a devilish reactionless pistol that fired tiny rocket-powered projectiles guided by a fine attached wire. The projectiles were also explosive. He found also some extra clothing, and offered the things to Usteyin, for it was cold outside. She refused them.

  They left the ship, climbed down the ladder, and stood for a time in the courtyard. They could not see the sun; it was now below the horizon, below the walls, and behind the mountains. But its glow spread a diffuse, weak light all over the northern sky, fading overhead into an overlay on the darkness, of a color suggesting blue flame. The stars shone brightly, what few there were. The courtyard was all shadows, suggestions of shape, in the strange twilight, made by the erratic sun of Dawn, halting, standing still in its yearly spiral sunset.

  Overhead, in the depths of the eerie, darkened sky, a faint, almost invisible, flickering began. Both Han and Usteyin stopped and looked up: it was an aurora starting up, now too weak, too undefined for them to be able to make out any details or colors of it. Standing barefoot in th
e fine, powdery snow, her blanket wrapped around her, Usteyin tilted her head and smelled the icy air, her delicate nostrils flaring; in a situation of both suspicion and possible danger, she had reverted to patterns of behavior that stretched across time and space to the dark glacial forests of precivilization old Earth. Then they walked through the snow, hearing only the whisper of it underfoot, to the great hall entrance, which hung open, ajar. Waiting another moment, like burglars, they stepped cautiously into Aving’s castle.

  Inside it was as cold as the outside. Usteyin whispered to Han, “They are all gone. There is no presence here. The people left before the ship was destroyed—they have been gone for hours. This place is cold, dead.”

  “How could that be? They should be only about an hour ahead of us. This place should still be warm.”

  “Remember? When I used the story-block, on our ship? I told you that they could see me, with some sense I do not understand, not-sight, but something that acts like it. Perhaps they gave the alarm then.”

  But as they passed through the darkened castle, Han could see that she was right—there was no one in it, and it had been empty for hours, much longer than from the time the alien ship had fallen to Hatha’s dive on it. But all through the castle there were signs of recent and hasty abandonment: an astonishing variety of junk and trash was strewn all over, and some ways into the castle, they found some bodies. Some were ler, some human. None were of the aliens. There had been fighting, but over what they could not see—perhaps over the spoils, or something else.

  As they made their way to the central hall, and found the corridor Aving had used to come into it, Han told Usteyin, “When Liszendir and I came here before, they had a musical troupe here, in this hall, playing for dinner. At the time, I knew nothing about klesh, I thought the players were all members of a family, or something like that—a caste or tribe. But they all resembled one another about to the same degree that you Zlats look like each other.”

  “Music? They were actually doing something? You know that most of the klesh have long since lost their old functions; they no longer do the things they were specialized for. I do not know which those you saw would be.”

  “I don’t think there have been any of them among the bodies we have found. They were light in complexion, not especially pretty in the faces, and stocky. They had brown hair, with some curl in it, and big noses—not as large as on the Haydars, but large just the same. Larger in size than you, but shorter than me.”

  “Ah, ha! Those would be Peynir. I did not know there were any left. We all know, in a general way, about each other; the Peynir are supposed to be almost as old as the Zlats. There are klesh and then there are others.”

  Farther up the corridor, they had better luck. In a room at the top of a flight of stairs, narrow and littered with papers, they found a communications device, or at least what appeared to be a communications device. There were several meters and light indicators on it, but what gave it away was a small, oddly designed microphone and earset, still plugged into it. The rest of the box, or console, made little sense, and they did not touch it or attempt to manipulate it. There were various knobs, push-places, transparent windows which must have been indicators of some type, but which now were indicating nothing. They could not even find the power pack for it. There was some writing, but neither of them could understand it; it seemed to be made up of narrow lines with infinitesimal, subtle variations in thickness.

  Han said, half to himself, “The Warriors had radar, of all things, the oldest kind, with steerable antennas, physical things, but they had no radio. That is like us having voices, but only using them to find out where things are around us by listening for the echo. So Aving could use any number of ways to transmit to his ship, any wavelength: no one on this planet would hear him. But the best way would be the longer wavelengths, very long waves. That way, he could bury the antenna underground, and they would be able to send back and forth even under the magnetic storms.”

  Usteyin whispered, her breath steaming in the cold, “I do not know what you are saying. It appears that this Aving was a wizard, and you are one too. A greater one, for was it not you who saw through his deceptions? But wait! Look out the window.”

  Han went to the narrow window, the only one in the room, and looked out, around, upwards. This room faced somewhat to the north, and on the horizon, he could see the sunset unmoving northern sun, in one corner. It was on the horizon, just below it, but there the sky was tinged with pale rose, lemon, wild blues that carried strong greenish overtones. What caught his attention more was the strong flickering that came from overhead. He looked up. Yes. It was a strong aurora.

  Usteyin came to the window and joined Han there, looking upwards, momentarily entranced. It was the strongest aurora Han had ever seen, vast curtains converging on a point in the zenith which seemed an infinite distance away, vast curtains that moved and rippled along their lower skirts, and which were lit up, from within, from the sides, from below, by particolored beams of colored searchlights, or bonfires. The outside had become lighter, noticeably. Usteyin stood, face upturned, beautiful in the flickering light, unreal, twin plumes of breath-steam flowing out of her delicate nostrils, the light painting wild iridescences in her hair.

  She came down from the window. “That I have seen before, many times, but never so bright or so easy to see! Nor so wild. Now let us leave this place! There is no one here.”

  Han reluctantly came away from the window also, and scooped up some things that appeared to be books or manuals. He had no idea what they were, but he thought, irreverently, that if he were going to be a burglar, then he had to burgle something, anything, and they had seen nothing else. Usteyin picked up nothing; she had seen nothing she wanted, even for burgling. It was clear to Han that she did not like this place, nor her being in it, not in the least.

  They made their way back to the Pallenber, through the empty and silent cold halls and corridors, seeing no more than they did when they had first entered the castle—bodies, rubbish, abandoned rags, dropped weapons. All the way back, they went quietly, moving from shadow to shadow, feeling as if any moment there would come a sudden shock, a cry, the bite of steel, a sudden stab of bright pain, then darkness. But there was nothing in the still darkness except the pounding of their pulses. In the courtyard at last, the ship still bulked over them. All appeared secure. The lights were still on, the port was still open. There was no change, except in the sky above, where the aurora still held court, playing, dancing. Han looked at Usteyin. There was no more awe on her pretty, serious face; just apprehension. He sighed in a minor kind of defeat and resignation; Aving had indeed escaped them, probably for good, for they could not very well sift the whole planet to find him. He could be anywhere.

  They climbed the ladder, Han first, Usteyin waiting below, gas gun at the ready, in case. She was jumpy, suspicious, although Han could see no reason why. She kept looking around, as if there was something wrong somewhere in the scene around them. Something out of place. But it might take weeks to find that as well. Han made it to the lock, and covered Usteyin while she climbed. They were on the point of going within when she suddenly stopped, taking a deep breath of the icy air.

  “Wait. Just one minute, for me. I want to take one last look out on my world, for I will never see it again.”

  “All right. But hurry—it’s cold. When you pass the second door, press the black button; that will close the lock port doors and retract the ladder.”

  “I’ll just be a minute.”

  Han went ahead. Usteyin might not mind the cold, but it was beginning to bite into him. He didn’t know how she stood it, and walking around in that place barefooted, too! And that had been odd, what she had said about not coming back to Dawn. Of course she would come back—they would have to, to see to everything, when they came back for the humans, and the klesh, to take them to a place of their own. That was a shame, in a way—that Dawn would end in five of its years, burnt to a cinder, scattered over the
void, later to be incorporated in some other star, some other planet, recycled. He had been himself appalled by the visage of the planet, its terrible weather and seasons, its impossible geography, but there was something there—in a universe of marvels, Dawn was something special, one of a kind. A place of terror and isolation and ignorance, but a place of heroic beauty as well. The Warriors were not all to blame themselves, nor could it all be laid to Aving’s manipulations—the place itself acted in an underground way in the mind, conjuring up visions of heroism, of greatness.

  Han went ahead, entered the corridor, and started to enter the control room. Just as he opened the door, he heard a squeal from Usteyin. He stopped in the doorway, holding the panel half open and looking back to the lock, and called to her.

  “What is it?”

  “Han! The snow! That is wrong. I knew something wasn’t right! You and I, we came and went: four tracks of footprints, yours with shoes, mine without. Four! But there are five. Did Liszendir leave the ship? No! Somebody came here. To the ladder.”

  Han knew, before he heard the voice from the control room, the voice he had heard before, the voice which did not belong, by any stretch of the imagination, to Liszendir. It was not a human voice, not even ler-human.

  The speaker said, “I hold a flash gun on your ex-lover. Bid the klesh girl come in, and enter yourself, leaving your weapons by the door. And do it quickly, for we have far to go and little time remaining to do it in.”

  He turned and called to Usteyin. “Come in. Cycle the door.” He was thinking as fast as he could, for some way. There was none. Better to follow this line, inside the ship, a little longer, than face a certain end, freezing in the castle—if any of them lived beyond the threat. With three of us, there may just be a chance, he thought. He did not see one at that moment, however hard he tried.