Wyrms by Orson Scott Card (Arbor House: $16.95; 263 pp.)

In the stereotypical and sometimes slipshod world of science fiction, here is a writer who stands, eyebrows slightly arched, in a literary pose struck by elegance and polish and just that tiny dash of haughtiness that comes to those who haven’t had to struggle for the throne. His pen sits like the diamond needle on a slowly turning record, and the melody and lyrics that you hear are magical and inescapable and ancient. You know this is a writer because he knows he is a writer--and you know also right away, having turned a page or two, that he has something of substance to say.

Once there was a time, he tells you with almost hypnotic restraint, seven times seven times seven generations ago, when mankind was locked into the prison of a single planet. But then it freed itself and moved into the universe, where “wyrms” now co-exist with geblings, dwelfs and gaunts.

The human travelers took along, unfortunately, the psychic cargo that had burdened them on Earth, still limiting existence on Imakulata. Life on this planet is flawed by cunning, treachery, passion, war and greed; death is no longer a sharp, finite moment but has been stretched by exploitative science to encompass a thousand years. The not-so-dead, as you might guess, have hidden and not-so-benevolent agendas of their own.

Patience is a 13-year-old-girl with the probing intellect of a philosopher and the emotions of a cold but sparkling icicle. She has been trained by Peace, her furtive father, to be a diplomat, assassin and future mother of Kristos, a “savior” who, the palace servants say, will bring cosmic harmony to creatures good and bad.

As she matures, she feels “the Cranning Call,” an inner yearning which helps direct her to a destiny she must fulfill or die. She follows it, aware of her ambivalence but compelled by careful conditioning not to give in to her own thoughts and needs.

”. . . But she would not defend herself. She might sometimes wish that she were not her father’s daughter, but wishing wouldn’t change the past. She had no more need to defend what she was than a mountain had to defend itself for being tall and craggy, or worn down and knobby, or whatever other shape it might have. What I am is what was done to me, not what I chose. . . .

The “thing” that waits for her is “Unwyrm”--a creature with many sexual tentacles, both loathsome and strangely seductive. As she comes near it, Patience hears only the roar of her own blood. She embarks to meet her destiny, burdened by the heavy knowledge of her curse, ready to slay it rather than have it consume her.

She loathes the evil power that this unknown creature has over her. Only when she realizes that it has eaten all “the mindstones of The Wise,” the cumulative wisdom of the planet, does she know where the strength and origin of Evil might reside.

The story line may seem unoriginal, but there is nothing trite about this book, nothing swollen and contrived. It is many things at once: a parable, a heroic adventure, a philosophical treatise, a finely crafted masterpiece of stylistically honed paragraphs, a careful and smart understatement on the rebellious theme that God might be evil and needs to be slain.

This is no sci-fi quickie. There are some commercially unfortunate choices that mar this book somewhat. The title is ill-chosen, as is the dust jacket, depicting a dragon that makes you think of a book an adolescent might pick up. But on the pages of this story are few chords that strike you as off-key.

Orson Scott Card is as fine a writer as we have. Already well-known as a two-time Nebula Award winner for “Ender’s Game” and “Speaker for the Dead,” he is seen by many as the hottest sci-fi name today. This is his 10th book, and it’s good. Limitations are those of genre rather than talent. One wishes Card would settle down as a good old-fashioned novelist. He could be one of the best.