After an indeterminate time, Orb became aware of company. A spider was hovering before her.
"Mother!" she exclaimed, knowing that no mortal spiders existed anymore.
Niobe manifested in her natural form. "I think we should talk, dear," she said.
"Isn't it late for that?" Orb asked dully. "I've ruined everything."
"Not necessarily. Chronos can help."
"Chronos said I would have to decide for myself."
"And so you shall, dear. Come with me."
Orb suffered herself to be guided, and found herself in Chronos' mansion, along with the other Incarnations.
"We are at a critical pass," Mym said without preamble. "The war between good and evil hangs in the balance. As I see it, Gaea has three choices. She can allow the present condition of the mortal world to remain—"
"No!" Orb cried. "I killed everyone! I want only to undo as much of the damage as can be arranged and retire in shame from this office."
"Or she can sing the final copy of the Song of Chaos," he continued as if she hadn't spoken.
"Each repetition is worse than the prior one!" Orb said. "What will the final one do?"
Thanatos leaned forward, his skull-face showing beneath his hood. "You invoked the Elements of Chaos, each rendition turning it to another form. First Water, then Air, then Fire—"
"Elements!" Orb said. "Water—when the flooding came! Air—when the storms came! I never realized! But Fire—I never invoked that!"
"Nulled," Thanatos explained. "That brought chill rather than flame."
"Oh." Now Orb remembered what she had learned before: that every Song of the Llano interacted with any of the Elements or Kingdoms. She had tried to negate the Song of Chaos, but had only reversed the invocation of Fire. "Then I invoked Earth, and it destroyed everything. What can the fifth Element do, worse than that?"
"That is the Void," Thanatos said. "It will reset the universe to its original state, without form and void."
"Total Chaos," Niobe said. "Destiny reversed."
"So that God and Satan have to start their eternal war again, from scratch?" Orb asked, appalled anew. "All of what has happened before counts for nothing? All of what all of you have done—undone? How could I let that happen?" Now she understood why Satan had said this was the ultimate weapon against him—but that its cost was too great.
"Or she can vote to allow me to reverse the course of recent time, restoring the world to its state just before she started the Song of Chaos," Chronos concluded.
"Yes!" Orb exclaimed. "If you can do that—"
"There is a catch, dear," Niobe cautioned her.
"It doesn't matter! If all the damage I have done can be undone that simply, of course that's what I want! Then I can retire without singing and let someone more balanced and competent assume the office."
Mym shook his head. "You can not retire, Orb. That is a condition of the reversal. You must carry through your office."
Orb spread her hands. "Then I will! Whatever is required to bring my friends back, to restore everyone—"
"What is required is the agreement of all the Incarnations," Thanatos said. "That is the only manner a situation of this gravity can be resolved."
"But don't you all agree? How can any of you deny this?"
"We are not the only Incarnations, dear," Niobe said.
"Oh, of course there are lesser Incarnations, like Eros and Pestilence—none of them would object, would they?"
"None of them do," Mym agreed. "But there are two major Incarnations. One of them can be presumed to agree; He never interferes in the affairs of the mortals, no matter how tempting it may be."
"Oh—God," Orb said. "The Incarnation of Good. Of course. But—"
"But the other is the Incarnation of Evil."
"Satan!" Orb said, understanding. "Who opposes all good of any kind!"
"I heard My name?" a new voice said. Natasha stood there, smiling.
Orb turned her face away, her emotions abruptly raging in contrasts seemingly as savage as those she had loosed upon the world. What he had done—!
"I think you know the situation," Mars said to Satan. "Do you accede to the course we propose?"
"I could be persuaded," Satan said.
Orb was determined not to speak to him at all, but the words came from her before she knew. "How can we believe anything you say? You only want the destruction of man!"
"Not so," Satan said smoothly. "I only want to tilt the balance of power My way, relegating Mine ancient adversary to the lesser role. It hardly behooves Me to allow mankind to be consigned to the Afterlife when the balance is inappropriate."
"And it favors God now?" Orb asked, knowing it was true. "So that if everyone dies now, He wins?"
"Even so."
"Then you have to agree to revert the world!" she exclaimed to Satan. "Because you don't want to lose!"
"No."
She gazed at him, not knowing what to make of this. "But if you have no chance to win, this way—"
"I lose," he said slowly. "But so do you. Do you want your friends, and all the other innocent people of the world, to die, just to spite Me?"
Orb thought of Tinka, of Lou-Mae, of the Livin' Sludge, the mermaid, and all the others of the world. They were surely bound for Heaven, but their lives on Earth were incomplete. Her daughter Orlene was still just a child. "No," she admitted, tears stinging her eyes.
"So you are prepared to compromise, to save your friends."
"I would do anything to undo the damage I have done," Orb said brokenly.
"You would even promote My welfare?"
"What are you getting at?" she snapped.
"I have proposed marriage to you. The offer stands. Do you accede?"
"Oh, God," she breathed. "Your price for letting the world return!"
"True."
"Gaea's power allied with yours, tilting the balance to you."
"In time, that will be the case. This is My object."
Now at last the full significance of her childhood vision was clear. A wedding—or a devastated world. Her choice.
Orb looked desperately around at the others. "What am I to do? If I align with him. God loses! But if I don't—"
"This is the nature of the decision you must make," Chronos said. "None of us can make it for you."
"But the world loses either way! Is this what you have lived through?"
"No," Chronos said. "But as I intend to explain to you later, my past is malleable. It may be that I will be required to divert it to another course."
"What am I to do?" Orb repeated, distraught.
"We can not advise you, dear," Niobe said. "But perhaps one question will suffice to clarify your thinking."
"What question?" Orb asked hopelessly.
"You now know Satan for who and what he is. Do you love him?"
The implication struck Orb with stunning force. She put the back of her hand to her forehead, reeling. With all her being she tried to deny it, but could not.
"God help me," she whispered brokenly, "for I do love Satan."
"And I love you," Satan said. "I offer you the world."
"But what I say is the truth," Orb protested weakly. "What you say is a lie."
"Perhaps," he agreed. He extended his hand to her. "I ask you again, Gaea: will you marry Me?"
Orb fought, but her heart had betrayed her. She knew Natasha for what he was, for the Incarnation of Evil, but she did love him and wanted to be with him in all the ways that love might dictate.
Slowly her hand moved out to meet his. "I will," she breathed, half sobbing. Was she doing this for the benefit of the world or from selfishness? Was she already moving into his orbit of evil?
Satan held the hand, captive to his success, and faced the others. "Does anyone object to our marriage?" No other Incarnation spoke.
"Then we shall hold the wedding at this moment, in Hell," Satan said. "All of you are invited, as honored guests and witnesses, together with any others who wish to attend. I welcome your participation and support. There shall be no question about the legitimacy of this union."
"This moment will not occur for several days, considering my action," Chronos said.
"Precisely," Satan said. "We shall all return to the time just before Gaea invoked the Theme of Chaos. None of this will have happened, and our memories of it will fade. But the agreement has been made, and all of you are party to it. It will be honored."
"It will be honored," Chronos agreed.
"My objection to your action is withdrawn," Satan said. "We are now unanimous. The world shall be spared the ravage of the Theme of Chaos. Proceed with your action."
Chronos raised his hand, and the Hourglass appeared in it, expanding to greater prominence. The sand within it brightened, flowing in its thin stream between the chambers. The sand turned blue.
Orb was alone on the isle, mulling her situation. Her anger and grief and confusion prompted her to do what she knew she should not: sing the Song of Chaos.
Chronos appeared. His shining Hourglass held a fine ribbon of sand that was turning from blue to red. "Gaea, you must not do it," he said.
Orb was startled. "What?"
"Do not invoke the Theme of Chaos," he said. "It will destroy the world. Do you remember?"
Orb remembered. "The next few days—all my friends, all the world—gone! Is it a vision?"
"A vision, now," he agreed. "A reality that has been abrogated. Instead, you must marry Satan."
"Marry Satan!" she repeated, outraged. But then she remembered that, too. "I—agreed," she said. "I love him."
"You agreed to marry him so that the world could be saved. Now you must carry through the agreement you made. Only because of this am I permitted to change the course of history. Do you understand?"
"Everything is undone?" she asked. "My friends—?"
"The world is untouched."
The relief was immense. "I must marry Satan," she said.
Chronos nodded. He disappeared.
Orb gazed again across the sea. She sighed. "Satan," she whispered.
He appeared. "You have decided?"
"I will marry you."
"You remember?"
"As in a vision. But it stands. You gave me back the world, and I will marry you."
"Is that all?"
She looked at him. He was tall and fair and comely, the picture of the man she had known as Natasha. "How is it that you have no horns or tail, now that your masquerade is off?"
"This is My true form," he said. "My true mortal form, fixed as it was when I assumed the office. My true form as the Incarnation of Evil is as you describe. Both are valid. But this is the one I prefer to use with you. Is that the extent of what you have to say to Me?"
"I love you." He might be the creature of lies, but she had to tell the truth.
Satan smiled. "This is what I wished to hear, Gaea. May I embrace you?"
"You have to ask?"
"Yes, this first time. There must be no coercion."
No coercion! But how could she protest? "You may embrace me, Satan."
He took her in his arms, and she thrilled to his touch, even knowing him for what he was.
"May I kiss you?"
She wished she could claim that she detested this, that she was only acting a necessary part, but she could not. She desired Satan's kiss. "You may."
He kissed her, and she felt the same passion for him she had before, despite her self-reproval.
"May I—"
"Not until after the wedding," she said.
He laughed, she laughed, and it was good, in spite of everything. She did want to marry him, heedless of all that portended.
"Am I damned, Satan?" she asked.
"An Incarnation cannot be damned. But even if you remained mortal, your damnation is determined only by your motives and your actions. Are you marrying Me for the good of the world?"
"Yes. But also because I love you."
"Neither the good of the world nor love will damn you."
"But my power added to yours—I am contributing to your capacity for evil!"
"Would you love Me less if I exercised that increased capacity?"
"I—I think I would have to."
"Then I will not exercise it."
"But how can I believe you?"
"You can not trust My words, but you can see My actions. Through them you will know that I love you."
"How I wish it could be so!"
"You shall believe," he said. "In time."
She was afraid he was right.
The wedding was a phenomenal production. This section of Hell was like a monstrous cathedral, with a domed ceiling that reached up so high that there seemed to be clouds drifting within it. Great arches enclosed the main chamber, ornamentally carved with exquisite taste. Stained glass was prevalent, its pictures illustrating scenes from earthly mythologies.
There was a dais in front, with seven elaborate chairs in a semicircle, each of carven ebony invoking aspects of the office of a particular Incarnation. One was in the likeness of a skeleton, with the legs shaped into the seat and arms into armrests and the skull into a headrest. Another was like a large wicker hourglass. A third was fashioned like a spider, the legs paired to form the enclosure for the occupant. Another seemed to be a huge red sword and scabbard. Another was like a tree, its branches twining about to form the appropriate shape.
At the ends of the semicircle were two larger chairs. One was decorated with representations of pitchforks and the faces of demons; the other with halos and angel faces.
Orb noted these details with a certain detachment; she was standing at the back in her wedding gown, awaiting the onset of the ceremony.
Suddenly the benches in the main section were filled: all the people Orb had known in life were there, including many who had died long ago. Childhood playmates, teachers and casual acquaintances; adult associates, friends, relatives, and those she had interacted with in however minor a manner. Everyone she had encountered, ever.
She wanted to go out and talk with them, for she saw her father Pacian and others who had been long gone from her life. But she could not; she was the Bride, and had to play her part in the ceremony. Probably many were illusion, anyway; would God release her father from Heaven to visit a function in Hell?
The Incarnations entered and took their seats: Thanatos, Chronos, Niobe as Fate, Mym as Mars, and Satan. The seat for Gaea was empty; Orb could not be in two places at once, on this occasion.
The seat reserved for God remained vacant. He had been invited, but did not intervene in the affairs of mortals or immortals. In any event. He was unlikely to support the merger that would shift the balance of power away from Him. Orb found herself feeling sorry for God. If only, just this once, He would, Would what? Rain fire down on this ceremony, preventing the marriage? That certainly was not His way! Yet if he did not act, all else would become academic; the final power would no longer be His.
And if He did act, where would Orb be? She had agreed to this, knowing the consequence.
The great chair sat mute. Was God even paying attention? If only He would give some sign! Mym rose from his chair and walked down along the side of the chamber.
It began. A choir appeared, children—no, small demons arranged by height, each in a white robe and holding a songbook. They sang—and the sound in any other setting would have been deemed angelic. Orb had never heard a mortal choir sing so perfectly; every note was precise, every part perfect.
There was a motion in the choir. Something odd was occurring. Orb peered down the aisle and saw what it was: Individual demons were fading out and being replaced by others, who sang as perfectly, so that the song was not interrupted.
Mym appeared. "Are you ready, Orb?" he asked.
"The usual. Butterflies in stomach," she said, smiling bravely. "What is happening with the choir?"
"They are singing angelically," Mym explained. "That is not healthy for demons."
"They are being abolished?" she asked, horrified despite her lack of sympathy for the creatures of Hell. "For singing well?"
"Ordinarily a demonic creature cannot be angelic in any sense. But for this occasion there is a special dispensation. When they perform in a manner that is better than their limit, they cease being demons and become the next stage up: damned souls. They fade out, being unable to remain in the demon choir. Others come in, eager for their chance."
"So Satan really is being decent?"
"So it seems," Mym said. "Everything has been absolutely straight. He doesn't want any objection to this wedding, no quibble, no technicality that might invalidate it."
"Why are you participating, if you don't approve?"
"We did make a deal, and you deserve any support we can provide." She laughed, somewhat shakily. "I suppose we should get on with it." She took his arm.
They walked down the aisle, exactly as in her early vision. The music swelled, but not into the conventional bridal melody. They had decided on a different approach.
Satan walked in from the side and turned to await her arrival. Light shone down on him. He was the most handsome figure of a man she had ever seen. Whatever coercion he had used to bring her acquiescence to this union—and her memory of that and everything else that had occurred during the vision-interim was fading—had been largely unnecessary. She loved him and wanted to marry him.
When she reached the dais, Satan took her hand. Mym went to take the chair reserved for Mars. They turned together to face the guests.
"Gaea and I have elected to make our vows in song," Satan said. He smiled. "There has been a question which of us is the better singer. That question shall now be resolved. The superior singer will be the one whose love for the other is greater. You will be the judges."
He turned to Orb. Her harp appeared in his hand. He bowed to her and held it out. "I yield the first performance to you, the first woman I have truly loved."
Orb took the harp—and almost dropped it. It was her own; she could not mistake that. But how had Satan, the Prince of Lies, been able to handle it? Not only that, he had said he loved her, while holding it. Satan was of course far too powerful an entity for the harp to hurt, but the conflict should have destroyed the harp—if Satan were lying.
She could not pause to consider this at this moment; it was her turn to sing. Satan had gone to his chair. She had the stage.
She sat on the floor, bridal gown and all, and set up the little harp. No problem now about how much leg might be showing; the gown was so voluminous it covered everything and more! She played a chord, then started.
She sang the Song of Evening, the aspect of the Llano concerning love. There were no words to it, but they hardly mattered: the theme itself was the statement.
The sunset came to the cathedral, bringing out the preternatural color of dusk and the grandeur of the sun behind clouds. She saw the members of the audience staring raptly and knew that they had never in their lives heard a more evocative song than this. The power of love infused the assembly and transformed this section of Hell itself with its delight, comfort, and passion. Orb was truly in love, however unwisely, and this was the expression of that love.
There was a hush when she finished like that of fulfilled love. Orb had not done this in any competitive spirit, but as the most honest expression other feeling, but she knew that there was no way that even Satan could match it.
She got up and went to the chair reserved for Gaea. Satan rose and came forward. He had no instrument; all he had ever used was his voice.
He sang, a cappella—and Orb received another shock. He was singing a hymn! How could that be? It was one of the few things Satan could not do.
"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, That saves a wretch like Me. I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see."
Orb listened, mesmerized. This was the hymn "Amazing Grace," exquisitely rendered. She had thought that there was no way Satan could match her presentation of the Song of Love, but he was going into a type of song that exceeded it: a song of the love of God. Yet this was impossible, by definition.
He began the second stanza—and now the demon choir joined in as background. What had been beautiful became transcendent. Orb suspected that no angels in Heaven could have sung more angelically than this. Indeed, the flickering in the choir intensified, indicating that the strain was too much; no demon could sing this way for more than a moment without losing its definition.
As he sang, Satan turned to face Orb. His gaze sent shivers of heat and chill running through her; his aspect and his voice were totally persuasive.
" 'Twas grace that taught My heart to fear, And grace My fears relieved; How precious did that grace appear The hour I first believed."
Satan was a liar, indeed the Prince of Lies. The truth was not in him. Yet Orb found herself unable to doubt his sincerity now; he was addressing her, and when he sang "grace" she heard also "love." He did love her as she loved him; there was no other way it could be.
How could the Lord of Hate love anyone or anything except power? Perhaps that was the explanation: it was the power inherent in the office of the Incarnation of Nature that Satan truly loved. She was fool enough to love him, and he loved what he stood to gain by his alliance.
Satan turned back to the guests as he sang the next stanza, and they seemed as rapt as was Orb herself. What Satan was doing was impossible, yet he was doing it. The demon choir was flickering so rapidly that it seemed unreal. Satan himself seemed to be developing a glow.
Could this be another vision? That would account for the effects; Satan was not really singing a hymn, not really uttering words that were forbidden to him. It was all a dream, crafted for maximum effect.
But if this were the case, the wedding was not valid. That was where the notion foundered. Satan might fool her into believing she had married him and, in that manner, have his will of her in any way he chose. But he could not fool the other Incarnations: not Chronos, who had lived through future history; not Fate, who was her mother; not Mars, who had loved her. They would not accept the marriage unless it was real; and if they did not accept it, the alliance was suspect. It had to be real for Satan to achieve his purpose.
This ran through her mind as she listened, entranced. Satan was doing what he could not do, and she believed it, and the guests and other Incarnations believed it. Perhaps there was no proper explanation. Meanwhile, her doubts had run their course and faded like mist; she believed the Prince of Lies and she loved the Lord of Hate.
The choir flickered into nonexistence; all the available demons had been upgraded to the status of damned souls. For the final stanza, Satan sang alone. He turned again to Orb, and the glow about him intensified. He had become godlike in the nobility of his countenance. He met her gaze and sang with an earnestness that transfixed her.
"Must Jesus bear the cross alone And all the world go free?"
The light about him became so bright that it resembled flame. Orb's eyes were smarting from the effort of looking at him. What was happening to him?
"No, there's a cross for everyone And there's a cross for Me."
As Satan concluded the hymn, the light turned blinding. Orb squinted, then blinked—and he was gone!
She lurched to her feet. "Satan, my love!" she cried. "Where are you?"
Mym stood. "He is gone, Gaea," he said.
"But—"
"He was doomed the moment he took up his cross. He knew it, but he had to do it. He has left you at the altar and given you back the world."
"What cross?" she asked, horrified.
Niobe stood and walked toward Orb. "The cross of his true love for you," she explained.
"Then he wasn't lying," Orb said. "He really did—"
"He really did, dear. He knew he could never truly marry you, but he had to come as close as it was possible to do. To love you, to have your love in return, and to complete the vows of marriage. But you are now a widow."
"The glow—" Orb said, numbed.
"It was the brightness of the redeemed souls being released from Hell. He could no longer hold them, once he invoked the forbidden song. He truly loved you, as he had never loved before, and he gave up everything for you."
Orb looked at the empty chair that had been reserved for God. Had God really elected not to attend? Surely He had known...
Then the magnitude of her own loss struck Orb. She fell into her mother's arms and sobbed with her private heartbreak.
"Not too much, dear," Niobe murmured. "When you cry, Gaea, the world cries with you."
Indeed, it was raining throughout the world. But no damage was being done, and in time the sunshine would return. Now it was time for her to learn the office she had assumed and so far neglected—to concentrate on being a Green Mother.
As I wrote each of the prior novels of this series, their themes tended to impinge on my own life. Thus Death became prominent during Pale Horse and Time during Hourglass and Fate during Tangled Skein and War during Red Sword. Perhaps it is a matter of interpretation as much as of reality; you can be the judge. Green Mother concerns Nature, and I was indeed aware of the things of Nature.
To begin with, as I completed the prior novel in this series, my shoulder began to hurt. It worsened over the months, and finally the pain cut off all my exercises except running. I had been doing about thirty chins on my study rafter, and 75 Japanese push-ups in under four minutes, but the pain took no note of physical condition. When it began to manifest as I reached for my keyboard, I saw the doctor; I can live without the exercises, but this affected my livelihood.
It turned out to be tenonitis. Not "tendonitis"; there is no such word, contrary to public belief. It is an inflammation of the tendon that manifested, in my case, when I tried to stretch out my arm. When I was bitten by a deerfly and swatted it, the pain of the effort was so sudden and intense it had me reeling. I could not reach my back pocket or lift my hand above my head. I learned how to be left-handed in most respects; fortunately I am already left-handed in a number of ways, such as eating. Sleeping was a problem because there was no position in which my right arm remained comfortable; I had to undertake contortions to avoid being awakened by a jolt of pain. Sometimes by day I would simply pick up my right arm with my left hand and put it where it needed to be. I'd rather not discuss the effect this ailment had on my love life.
Pills had no effect. Finally the doctor gave me a shot in the tendon, and that turned the corner. The inflammation gave ground as slowly as it had advanced; six months later it hardly bothers me, and in a few more months it should be gone entirely. I don't know whether I'll resume my arm exercises then; after about a year's layoff, I have lost what it took me ten years to develop, and I suspect I'll call it a day. The truth is, those exercises were pretty grueling, and I feel more relaxed in their absence. Thus I learn about my own nature; now that I am on the downhill side of 50, I'm more inclined to relax a bit.
In this period I also learned more about equine nature. We moved to the forest when my daughter Penny reached horse-craze age, and each daughter got a horse. I liked Penny's horse Sky-Blue from the start; she was a registered Hackney, a former racer, then twenty years old, which would be something like sixty in a person. Blue had raised her former owner from age ten to fifteen, and had raised Penny through the same range. The former owner is now married, and Penny is in college, so you can see how well Blue did her job.
Cheryl's horse Misty was another matter. She was arrogant, not acceding readily to the directives of her rider, and taking any feed she could get at. We had to fence Blue off during feeding time so that she could eat in peace; otherwise Misty would take it all. That is why Blue became the model for two of my creatures in other series, while Misty was unrepresented. I knew which kind of horse was better.
But in this period Misty developed severe foot problems. She saw the vet more times than I saw the doctor. The essence is that the bones in her front feet warped, so that she could no longer stand normally; she had to bend her legs just above the hooves back at a thirty degree angle when she stood, and was in obvious discomfort. She lay down for most of the day. This is the stage at which horses are shot, but we are not a horse-shooting family. We accommodated her as well as we could, bringing her food and water to her.
Blue, however, had a different notion. Realizing that the mighty had fallen, she took to stealing Misty's food. Now I had to fence Blue off to protect Misty. At one point I brought some hay to Misty that Blue hadn't deigned to touch, and opened the gate, figuring Blue wouldn't try to steal that. I was wrong; Blue charged in so determinedly that Misty lurched to her feet to avoid her. Blue bit at her anyway and stood outraged guard over that hay until Misty had hobbled far away and lain down again, hungry. Then Blue left the hay—still untouched. She had never wanted it; she wanted only to establish her dominance. We had wondered why Misty was losing weight, while Blue got fat; now we knew. My illness was reversible; Misty's will be terminal.
Thereafter I fenced them apart for the full day, opening the gate only at night. I had seen to my regret that horses are no better than people; when the underdog finally gets power, he can be just as mean as the overdog was. Might makes right. Human beings, at least, can sometimes rise above their instincts and act in a more generous manner— but I think not often enough. This is the nature of creatures of whatever kind.
Another aspect of nature is the weather. Here around Florida the summers get hot and humid—on occasion our high temperature for a day has been two degrees above the high for the nation for that day—and those who have read this novel know how that can lead to trouble. There has been tremendous overbuilding along the shoreline by those who apparently assume that hurricanes are a myth. It was time for a warning blow. It came in the form of storm #4 for the season, at the end of AwGhost—Hurricane Elena. She was just passing by, heading for Alabama or Louisiana; when she was safely by our latitude, I relaxed and turned in for the night.
I should not have. Elena took that opportunity to make a right-angle turn and headed straight for us. Now hurricanes are allowed to go ashore where they choose, but not right where I live! I worked up some magic and straight-armed that storm, pushing her off. But it takes an awful lot of magic to stop a hurricane in full advance, and I had been caught off guard. Elena slowed, but wouldn't turn away. For two days she hovered there, building up strength; she had been a minimal blow of about 90-mile-per-hour winds, but she swelled to a hundred, then to a hundred ten, and finally became a major hurricane of a hundred twenty-five, still determined to land on our house. The entire Florida shoreline in this region was taking a beating. Then, finally, the magic prevailed and shoved her back on course toward Alabama. What a struggle! But of course I should have known better than to relax before the storm had actually landed elsewhere.
The season kept throwing storms at us, but none of the others got that close. One was called Juan (pronounced Wan), that wandered all over. I could have told them that would happen; it was predicted in the operetta The Pirates of Penzance, in the song "Poor Wandering Juan." The path of storms can be predicted; you merely have to know the proper key.
But these were just warm-ups for the coming novel. Once I got into the actual writing, things intensified. Not all can be lightly dismissed. For example, the person who arranged to buy this novel, Judy-Lynn del Rey, Publisher of DEL REY BOOKS, was on the phone in SapTimber, spending an hour talking with me in an effort to straighten out a problem that had come up between the publisher and me about this series. In OctOgre Judy-Lynn had a stroke that put her in a coma. In FeBlueberry she died. She and her husband Lester had put me on the map as a bestseller in fantasy, along with Steven Donaldson and David Eddings and Terry Brooks; they had done more to make fantasy a big-time operation than anyone else I know of. I fear that thus suddenly a golden age is waning. There were other deaths in this period: Theodore Sturgeon, perhaps the best writer the genre has seen; Frank Herbert, author of one of the most successful science-fiction novels ever, Dune; L. Ron Hubbard, who left the genre for thirty years to found Dianetics and then Scientology, then returned; I have no brief for Scientology, but Hubbard was certainly a figure to be reckoned with.
Let's move on to a gentler aspect of nature: the nature of women. This novel was delayed because I came down with a flu-like illness, running a fever of a couple of degrees for a couple of days. Then it dropped to normal, the same day, FeBlueberry 4, that Blue drove Misty from the hay. I relaxed and turned in with a book; I always read myself to sleep. I was out of paperbacks at the moment, so I was in a hardcover: The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense by Suzette Hayden Elgin, who is also a genre writer. The essence of the book is that you can defend yourself from verbal abuse if you are alert. The first thing is to recognize when you are under such attack; it is obvious if someone calls you a @#$%&*!! of a Censored/Blank, but not if the person says "I don't understand why you don't try to be fair." Beware of words like "even" and "really," as for example "If you really loved me, you wouldn't be such a jerk." Recognizing the state of siege, you may then respond in a guarded or diversionary manner, so that you don't wind up feeling like a C/Blank. I found it interesting; I took judo classes for three years and learned that you can't throw a person who retains his balance; similarly, Suzette shows, you can't verbally damage a person who retains verbal balance. I had a coughing fit that delayed my sleep for an hour or so; then when I finally nodded off, the book fell from my hand and smote me on the mouth, cornerwise.
Now this did not seem quite fair of Ms. Elgin, considering the doctrine she was preaching. I would have continued reading her book on the morrow, after all. Wide awake again, I resumed reading, and in another hour I nodded off a second time. Whap! Suzette smacked me again. What a temper! It took me yet another hour to nod off, this time with the book propped so it couldn't hit me, making four hours in all. Next day my fever shot up to new heights, peaking at 102.5°. My mouth felt like bruised cheese rind. Thus it was two more days before I could resume paying work, and yes, I did finish reading the book. Suzette, dearest, if you really loved me, you wouldn't even want to publish in hardcover....
The nature of computers and their programs also figured heavily in my life at this time. Those readers who object to this sort of discussion are encouraged to skim on down the page until I return to something interesting, if ever. The fact is, though I resisted getting computerized for a long time, just as I resisted getting involved with girls throughout high school, when I finally did get into it, I fell in a big way. For me, being on the computer is like starting a fine automobile or mounting a dynamic horse: it seems alive and exciting, with limitless potential. But it can also be ornery, and the challenge, frustration, and joy of it was never more evident than when I wrote this novel.
You see, I got a new program in No-Remember. I like PTP, the text processor I was using, but it had two weaknesses: it could use only half my computer's memory, so that I had to keep chopping chapters in half because they wouldn't fit, and it had no windows, so I could look at only one file at a time. My wife spied this ad for a text processor named Edward that solved both these problems, so we sent for it, just in case. And Edward changed my life. It addressed all my computer's memory, so I no longer had to divide files, and it had fourteen buffers, or places where files could be called up, as it were, in parallel. I could call up Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, etc. without exiting Chapter 4, and flick back and forth between the buffers to compare, or I could move material from one file to the other, or make a change in one and save it and close down the buffer. I spent a week getting into it, not because it was that complicated, but because it opened up such new horizons for me and made me appreciate new qualities about the programs I already had. For example, Edward had a squintillion places to put macros, those keys that do simple or complicated chores with single keystrokes, such as typing out my entire address-block. I rechecked SmartKey, which is a macro program, and discovered it would put macros in those new places, too; I never realized! Thus I could set fifty macros if I wanted, instead of the twenty-two I had before. I could embed macros within macros, putting a SmartKey macro in an Edward macro. And Edward allowed me to move its functions about, putting them on any keys I want. That meant I could place them to match the equivalent functions on PTP and not have to retrain my reflexes. What fun!
But Edward had some horrendous holes, too. At one point it filled our hard disk with garbage; at other times it blew the memory, which was a frightening experience, rather like a pressure cooker exploding, only the effects were non-physical. We had to figure out exactly where those holes were, because they were like mines waiting for someone to blunder into them. More hours I lost, defusing mines! There were also some formidable problems. Edward couldn't underline, and I use underlining frequently. The wonderful Edward macros could not be saved for future use: some glitch in the routine that was supposed to save them. Edward's printing program was of the "batch" type, which was so completely unsuitable to my need that I never even loaded it into my machine. I discovered by experimentation that PTP would print an Edward file, and that I could use "escape" codes to put in underlining. That saved Edward; I could use it after all. I decided to write a novel with Edward and see how I liked it. Yes, this novel.
Thus, on-schedule DisMember 1, I started writing on Edward. I had to use special escape codes to underline, and PTP to print, and to set up my macros each time. But before the month was out, I knew I wanted to stay with Edward. It was those buffers. I had worked things out with PTP to accommodate my [brackets] system of writing; with Edward I didn't have to do that, because I could set up an entire separate buffer for my ongoing notes. And another for an ongoing Table of Contents. And one for a list of characters, so I didn't have to search through past text for names I'd forgotten. Plus any temporary notefile for stray notions about other novels that occurred to me while working; I could write them and save them with no fuss. Thus everything changed; my --->arrow<--- macros disappeared, and my brackets. I had a better system. Just about the time I worked it out, we got hold of a collection of public-domain programs that do marvelous little things that the regular programs never thought of, such as un-erasing a program you erased by accident that contains irreplaceable material, or scrambling a file so nobody else can read it without the code word—and these, too, had their glitches that could and did blow the memory. After much struggle I figured out how to debug the major glitch and sent a letter to the public domain folk, who evidently hadn't known; they did not respond. Glitchers never do; that's human nature.
No need to go into detail about the myriad little refinements I worked out to integrate PTP and SmartKey and Edward; suffice to say that the three programs now seem like one, overlapping marvelously. But the doing took time, much time, and that coupled with other interruptions such as horses and illness and correspondence—I wrote 1206 letters last year, and am doing over a hundred a month so far this year—have run this novel into overtime, putting me behind schedule. Aspects of the novel do reflect the nervousness and wonder of the computer experience, such as Orb's first traveling by turning the pages on reality, and the manner that mysterious codes or sequences can do truly remarkable things. Just getting the page number in the right place took us three months to figure out; PTP vindictively shoved the page numbers for Edward text so far to the right they sometimes went off the page. The breakthrough? I now put nonprinting symbols in the heading. The printer just eliminates them and closes up the line, sucking the page numbers in several columns, and PTP never even knows, heh, heh. It can take real cunning to outsmart a stupid machine, but what a satisfaction!
In the middle of it all, our hard disk crashed. The human equivalent would be complete amnesia; all our programs were lost when we replaced the unit. Except that we had been careful throughout to back up almost everything of value. But it was another harsh lesson in the nature of computers, and of course it cost its share of time.
I don't attend many fan conventions—maybe one a year— and the one for 1985 was Fall-Con (a pun on Falcon, I think) in Gainesville, Florida, in OctOgre. (The Ogre does tend to make public appearances in that month, of course.) These affairs typically have one Guest of Honor, plus appearances by a number of other genre writers, and are good places to meet writers, artists, and fans, and to shop for genre books and art and artifacts. I spent several hours autographing copies of my books and chatting with whoever was interested. I don't go public much, but when I do, I try to do it properly. Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, I have never actually been an ogre at a convention, as anyone in the know will verify. My memory for names and faces is sievelike, but I do recall some of the other writers there. Martin Caiden, author of the story that became TV's "Six Million Dollar Man." Robert Lynn Asprin, of the punnish Myth-Begotten series. (His wife is also Lynn, and I have contributed an Elfquest story to their volume Blood of Ten Chiefs; if any trouble occurs, I'm tempted to say "Take two Asprin and call me in the morning.") David Palmer, author of Emergence, a finely crafted post-holocaust novel. There are two Haldemans, and I met one of them, and my daughters met his daughter. Robert Adams, of the Horseclan series. Meredith Ann Pierce, author of the delightful Darkangel trilogy, who reminds me of Rapunzel because her hair reaches nearly to the floor. The following week, collecting a daughter or two from Tampa's Necronomicon, I renewed acquaintance with Andre Norton, the Grand Dame of the genre, and Roger Zelazny, author of the Amber series, and met Robert Bloch—remember Psycho? Florida is not a complete backwoods region for the genre!
Thus went my life during this novel. It's a pretty mundane life, overall, and I'm a pretty ordinary character. I suffer increasingly from allergies that can turn my nose into a faucet for hours or days at a time, and slobs cut in front of me in lines, and the phone glitches when I try to make a call. I presume these things happen to every nonentity, in this world. That is surely a major reason I seek respite in the realms of fantasy, where I have the illusion of importance. Yet even the mundane life has its minor compensations. When I walk out around the grounds I see the little cedar trees we planted as seedlings; now some of them are my height, and some are taller. I have paths that go to them, for I love paths. I know the little wild flowers that grow nearby; there was a violet beside a cedar tree that came up just for me each year. Then, abruptly, it was gone; evidently a horse had stepped on it. That saddens me every time I pass that spot. Nature can be cruel. There was a little pine tree growing, just rising into adolescence, and then the wind took down a big old dead oak, and that oak caught the pine tree and snapped it off. That, too, I mourn, even years later, though we have thousands of pine trees growing.
In fact we set up a region for Penny with pines, called Penny's Pines, with one for each year of her life. Then when we fenced it for the horses it was less accessible, so we moved Penny's Pines to a new spot. Since that time no new pines have appeared at the old site, but a score of new little ones have seeded in the new one; they knew! Penny and I are special; I have short brown hair and she has long blond hair, but one day we discovered that we match exactly at a given length; if I wore mine as long as hers, I'd be blond, too. Which explains why my mother always thought I was blond, and I thought she was color-blind. Our eyes match, also; Penny's my daughter through and through. We live and learn constantly about nature; even the little things aren't always what they seem.
When we built the barn and stalls for the horses, two huge spiders moved in, one with about a four and a half inch leg-span, the biggest web spinner ever seen, and the other was larger. Fine; they trapped the flies that bother the horses. Then the larger drove out the other and took over that site. Then one morning that one was hanging from its web, dead; I never found out what happened. Whole life histories are available for our consideration, in Nature, if we but watch.
Death is integral to Nature, of course. It was my preoccupation with death that started this series, and I have had many letters from readers who say they were helped over personal crises of death by that novel. I always read and respond to these with mixed emotions: glad to have been of help, however distantly, but sad that the crisis had to come at all. Meanwhile, the Deathwatch, which I bought at the time of that first novel, I finally retired during this novel; in four years its functions had declined to the point where it simply wasn't worthwhile to use it. I set it aside with a special sadness. I shouldn't personalize machines, I know; still...
Death can strike at the least expected times. In this period of Green Mother the Tylenol crisis redeveloped, causing the company to discontinue capsules, because some grisly joker was putting cyanide in them. I have little brief for big drug companies, but this one strikes me as a singularly upright one, paying a singularly unjustified penalty for someone else's misdeeds. We may thus have seen one of the new forms that world terrorism will take, bringing death and ruin to innocent parties.
There was also the case of a most foolish challenge of Nature that resulted in tragedy. A launch of the Challenger shuttle was set, but the night was cold. We live at the same latitude, and our morning low was the coldest of the winter, sixteen degrees Fahrenheit. It wasn't quite as cold on what in my lexicon is called the Isle of Illusion, but there were long icicles on the equipment. Engineers were worried about the ability of the sealing rings to function in cold weather, but the powers that be overruled them and fired off the rocket anyway. Thus seven lives and a billion dollars thrown away needlessly, and the space program severely damaged, because people did not yield to Nature. That horrifies me on several levels.
While delving through my old papers in search of something else, I came across material relating to my researches for Macroscope, one of my earlier novels. It was an article in a 1967 issue of Saturday Review, by John F. Wharton, and I had highlighted significant passages. Now I find those passages relevant to my present thinking. They describe the nature of man: his enormous capacity for self-delusion, and his propensity to bully others. Thus, in the name of a compassionate faith, fanatics slaughter those who have done them no harm, and we race recklessly toward destruction. Religion doesn't stop it, it merely finds ways to forgive sin. This explains part of my cynicism about that subject; I prefer prevention to forgiveness.
Which brings me to my conclusion. I make no claim to any special depth in these novels; they are entertainments that merely flirt with the deeper concepts that underlie our superficial reality. Just as the screen of the computer is a window to an aspect of its inner workings, so is the human eye a window to an aspect of mundane reality. Codings and buffers enable the computer to present portions of its content as if they were all of it, and if you don't know how to use those controls, you will never see the rest. I see this as an analogy to the deeper nature of our existence. We see only the superficial aspects, the skin of a person, the paint on the wall, and extrapolate to perceive the larger situation. But even so, do we grasp it all? Or are there entire worlds that we can not perceive, alternate realities that are present but beyond our ken unless we learn the keys to their revelation? So far, this concept has been evoked mostly in science fiction and fantasy, but now science is approaching it, suspecting that we perceive only a tenth of the mass of the universe. What about the other nine-tenths? What is the key to its perception? Can science devise some magic spell to reveal it? Is the universe, seen and unseen, truly random, or is there some higher organization, some ethic superior to what we practice?
This leads us to considerations of God, which I shall define as the source of that higher organization. Some readers send me letters of proselytization, assuming that I have somehow lived my life without becoming aware of Jesus. I had a report that a fundamentalist school was banning my books on the grounds that I was a Satanist. (I wrote them a stiff letter, reminding them that Jesus would not have lied like that. I am at this writing approaching my thirtieth anniversary of marriage to a minister's daughter.) One reader wrote at length arguing that either Jesus was a stark, blithering lunatic who should have been put away, or he was correct when he claimed to be the son of God, with all that implies. No; this is a fallacy of limited thinking. The world is not black/white, it embraces all the shades of gray in between. Jesus did not have to be one or the other; he could have been a man who felt a strong need to reform the evils of the world, and whose parables were misunderstood by those who took them literally instead of grasping their messages. What mischief is wrought by those who take Jesus' words in vain—without realizing it! Jesus claimed to be the son of God? Of course he was. We are all children of God.
Copyright © 1987 by Piers Anthony Jacob
ISBN: 0-345-32223-1