There was no problem about leaving Hell; Satan was eager to facilitate his departure. The capsule that had enclosed Ligeia descended from the sky, and Mym stepped into it. The capsule rose swiftly and soon was back in the palace of frozen mist. It came to rest exactly where it had been.
Mym got off the bed and stepped out, finding the ice now pervious. He walked to his unconscious body and phased in.
He found himself cold and stiff, despite the protective cloak. Apparently what he had worn in Hell had been only a spirit cloak. He climbed to his feet and stretched. He looked back at the bed, remembering Ligeia. If only there had been some way...
No point in torturing himself. He turned resolutely and walked out through the ice-passages to the broken entrance. He stepped out. Then he touched the Red Sword and willed himself back to the Castle of War.
The personnel of the Castle greeted him as if his absence had been routine, but Mym knew that the mortal world had not halted in place during the past few days. Satan had wanted him out of the mortal picture, had taken trouble to keep him u Hell as long as possible, and perhaps had paid more of a price than intended. What had Satan been up to on Earth?
He knew one way to find out. He turned on the television set. Its news always related to Mars.
"All hell is breaking loose on Earth," the announcer said. "There has never been a period of greater unrest, short of all-out war. The mysterious absence of Mars, the Incarnation of War, has contributed to the general confusion. Exactly who is managing this violence?"
Satan was, surely. But what was his purpose? Certainly increasing violence in the world would not deprive Mars of his power; it would enhance it.
Yet Satan had tried to make a deal with him before to facilitate just such unrest, because it would generate the problems of war, which in turn would generate conditions that would cause increasing suffering among the mortals, and turn more of them to evil. But could that be all?
It seemed to Mym that Satan had gone to an extraordinary amount of trouble to get him out of the way. It hardly seemed worth it, just for a few more souls. Satan might lose as many souls from the hearings as he would gain from the disturbances among the mortals.
The more Mym thought about this, the less he trusted it. When he couldn't properly fathom the nature of the evil Satan did, that was apt to be because he had missed the true point. He was still new at his job, and he suspected he was missing the point now.
But there was one who should be able to give him the answer. He touched the Sword. "Chronos," he murmured.
There was a shimmer, and the Incarnation of Time appeared before him. "Yes, Mars; I caught your signal."
"Your memory is of my future," Mym said. "I need to know what Satan is up to, and I suspect it will show there. If you will tell me—"
"Tell you what? My memory covers a great deal."
"What Satan has done."
Chronos frowned. "You may misunderstand my nature. I remember your future, true—but I remember it only as it happened, not as it might have happened. So if as you say Satan has done something, then this is the way I remember it, and I don't know how it differs from what you feel it ought to be. If you can be more specific—"
Mym remembered that Luna was supposed to play a key role in foiling Satan's major scheme, and that Satan had been trying to get around that before it happened. "Is Luna—does she remain all right?"
"Why, certainly, though her disappointment has been serious."
"Her disappointment?"
"She had hoped to foil Satan; but, of course, that became impossible."
"Impossible? Why? Isn't she active in politics?"
"She was. But that's academic."
"Academic? Why? Doesn't she cast the key vote against Satan, when the time comes?"
Chronos smiled sadly. "How could she? There was no issue to vote on."
This sounded very much like what he was looking for. "At what point did the matter of issues and voting become academic?"
"Very recently, actually. When martial law was declared in America and the civilian government temporarily suspended. Of course there is nothing so permanent as a temporary—"
"Martial law? Whatever for?"
"Because of the unrest. It was simply impossible for a democratic government to cope, so the military had to take over. I viewed this with extreme regret, myself, but I must admit that the alternative would have been worse. There could have been complete anarchy."
"How long ago—for you—did this martial law develop?" Mym asked.
"Only a week ago. But it was inevitable; the violence in the world is already too great to be contained, as I come to perceive it now. The lesser of evils had to be embraced."
"Thank you, Chronos," Mym said. "You have told me what I need to know."
"Any time. Mars," Chronos said. He tilted his Hourglass and vanished.
Mym paced the floor, his head seeming to spin. Here he had been concerned about his own lost love, while the world really was going to Hell! Now he understood Satan's plot—to foment violence in the world to such a degree that the civilian governments fell by the wayside. Military dictatorships were things Satan could shape to his own ends—and of course Luna would have no way to cast her vote against Satan, when there was no civilian government.
Well, he could put a stop to that. He would quell every battle before it happened, restoring relative peace.
Mym touched the Sword. "War's minions," he murmured.
They appeared, in their bright capes. "Rich harvests!" Conquest said, rubbing his hands together.
"No," Mym said. "We are going to suppress these. Provide me with a list of the most serious situations, so I can go to each."
Conquest brought out a scroll and unrolled it. The thing seemed to be endlessly long.
Mym looked at it. "But there are thousands here!" he exclaimed.
"Yes," Conquest agreed heartily. "And more developing every moment. We have never had as potentially rich a harvest." Slaughter, Famine, and Pestilence nodded.
Mym shook his head. "I can't possibly get to all of these in time, let alone defuse them!"
"Why try?" Slaughter asked. "This is our chance for greatest glory!"
Satan's plot was coming clearer. In only a few days, the Incarnation of Evil had sown so much dissent in the world that it was now virtually impossible to stop. Had Mars been here, he would have taken note of the interference and cut it off, for this was his domain. But Satan had distracted him in the infernal region, thus having free rein on Earth, and had really made it count. No wonder Mym had seen so little of Satan in Hell; Satan had been very busy elsewhere!
Mym didn't try to answer Slaughter. "I have other business." He went outside, summoned Werre, and mounted. "No supervision of battles today," he called shortly, and started the horse moving.
They went to Thanatos' mansion. Mym could have sent out a call for the Incarnation of Death, but he preferred to have a little time to think on the way. If Satan had already stirred the world up to too great a turmoil to be abated before martial law set in, what could he do? But the time did him no good; he still had no idea.
The door opened as he approached the Mansion of Death. Thanatos met him. "Chronos advised us yesterday of your problem—and ours," Thanatos said. "We are here to try to help."
And they were. Lachesis and Gaea were there—and Luna, brought to Purgatory for this occasion. They all greeted him warmly.
"But I only talked to Chronos an hour ago!" Mym exclaimed. "How could he have told you yesterday, while I was still in Hell?"
"You forget the direction of his life," Lachesis said. "He spoke to us a day after he spoke to you."
Mym nodded. He kept forgetting! "Maybe he can go on back and tell me before I even go to Hell!"
"He is reluctant," Gaea said. "It seems that there can be serious consequences when he acts to change the course of events that are in his past. On occasion he will do this, but he prefers to keep the compass quite limited, so that the result is fully defined."
Mym realized that it would indeed be a hazardous business, changing past events; people, including perhaps some Incarnations, could be eliminated. Certainly there should be no haphazard dabbling.
"In any event," Lachesis said, "this seems to be your problem, Mars. Satan makes things difficult for each new Incarnation at the outset, and it is necessary for that Incarnation to demonstrate that he can prevail. Then Satan knows better than to try again. If Chronos were to rescue you from your dilemma, Satan would merely try another ploy and another, until successful."
"But the whole world is at stake!" Mym protested. "All of you will lose, too!"
"That is why it is so important for you to prevail," Thanatos said. "We must take the risk of letting you oppose Satan alone, even as each of us must, so as to establish that not one of us is a weak spot."
"But I don't see how I can prevail!" Mym cried. "I thought I had won in Hell—only to learn that I had lost in the mortal realm. And according to Chronos, that loss stands."
"Not necessarily," Luna said. "Chronos can report only on the aspect of history he has lived through. If that is changed, he will live a different life, and that will be as valid as the first. Probably his reality is being constantly changed in little ways by the actions of the rest of us, and he is not aware of it."
"That sounds like paradox to me," Mym said.
"Chronos is immune from paradox," Thanatos said.
"This may be difficult for the rest of us to understand, but it must be accepted."
"So I can change future reality—if I can only figure out how," Mym said. "I can take Satan's victory away—somehow."
"That is a thing we have to believe," Lachesis said. "Unless there is no way!"
"There must be a way," Thanatos said. "Otherwise Satan would not have attempted to keep you so long in Hell. He knew it was only safe for him if you remained there until after his move on Earth was complete. You won free too soon, so now it must be in your power to prevail."
"Certainly you must seek it," Luna said.
"Certainly I must seek it," he agreed morosely. "The fate of the world, left to one confused stutterer!"
Then he did a double-take. "I'm not stuttering!"
"Fancy that," Gaea murmured.
"But I didn't stutter in Hell, because—I thought—how can this be?" Then he remembered. "Green Mother—you took something from me and did not tell me what it was. You took my stutter!"
"We do have some power over each other—if we agree to it," Gaea said. "I felt you could spare it."
"And I never noticed!"
She shrugged. "Surely you have other powers you haven't noticed. One of them may yet foil Satan."
Shaken, Mym departed. This seemingly minor demonstration of the special power of an Incarnation impressed him more than all the other wonders he had seen. He had agreed to let Nature take something of his. Now the other Incarnations had agreed to let him affect thenfutures. He had to come through for them!
Yet the way eluded him. He returned preoccupied to the Castle of War and ate and slept fitfully and ate again, remaining confined. No revelation came. One day passed, and two, and three, and the situation among the mortals intensified, yet he remained helpless. He simply saw no way to do what he knew he had to do.
He found himself walking again in the garden. There, when he reached the nether extremity, was the demoness.
"So nice to see you again. Mars," she said, stretching languidly. She wore another of her semi-exposive gowns, and her breasts moved almost liquidly as her torso shifted.
"Get out of here, slut!" he raged.
"Nuh-uh, Mars," she said, smiling. "This is a neutral zone, remember? You would not have come here if you hadn't wanted to see me, now would you!"
"I came here to figure out how to defeat your foul master!" he snapped.
"That is not easy to do, Mym. Why don't you just bow to the inevitable and relax? Since you have inadvertently served Satan's design, you might as well accept your reward."
"What reward?" he demanded.
"Me, of course." She stretched again, spectacularly. "I really do want to serve you, Mym, and I am very good at what I do. I can return to you what I denied you in Hell."
"What do you mean?" he asked, sure that he would regret the question, but unable to pass it by.
She fuzzed out, slowly changing shape. "Why, the Fireman. Don't you remember?"
"The fire monster in Hell?" he asked blankly.
"You were just about to possess your beloved, and I was jealous, so I sent the monster to break it up. Now it is of course too late; you can never possess her."
"You—?" he began, outraged.
Herformfirmed. She looked exactly like Ligeia. "What does she have that I can not emulate?" she inquired in Ligeia's dulcet voice.
Mym found the Red Sword in his hand. But he froze, not striking. How could he slay the facsimile of the woman he loved?
"I don't suppose you would believe that one of my kind could truly care for you," she said.
"True," he said between his teeth.
She shifted back to her presumably natural form. "I'm not even one of the damned. I'm just a construct of ether, existing solely at my Master's discretion. I have no reality other than my assignment. My assignment is to please you. If I fail in this, I will have no existence at all. You have but to instruct me in those things you require of the ideal woman, and I will be those things as perfectly and as long as you desire them. Will you deny me my only chance to emulate that state of grace?"
Even with his rage at her, Mym was struck by the seeming sincerity of her words. How could a genuinely soulless creature speak in this fashion? He knew it was foolish, but he found himself beginning to appreciate her position.
He was without a woman. For the third time he had lost his love. Perhaps it was time for a concubine he didn't need to love or make any pretense of loving.
"The ideal woman serves her man absolutely," Mym said. "Whatever he asks of her, she does without question. Any question he has, she answers honestly and to the best other ability. Loyalty—that is the salient quality I require. Loyalty to me, before all else."
"I would give you that," Lila said.
"Before Satan?"
She moved back as if struck. "Oh, immortal mortal, you know not what you ask!"
"I think I do. Since it is obvious that you can not give me what I require, you might as well leave me alone."
"But then I will have failed to please you, and the penalty—"
"I am familiar with the penalty," he said, remembering the fate of the lovely concubines he had rejected when his father had kept him prisoner. Satan would surely be no more merciful. Those grisly deaths had hurt him; he steeled himself not to be hurt by this one.
He saw the tear at her eye again. There really was no point in artifice at this point; she surely was experiencing whatever emulation of emotion she was capable of. "If I am to perish, then it behooves me to choose the manner of it," she said. "I would rather let my final act be an expression of my true private will than a lie. Therefore I will agree to this."
This set him back. He had expected her to admit defeat. But of course she could be lying, as she had no concern for truth, only for convenience.
Or had she? He had never caught her in a lie. Satan was the Father of Lies, but did that mean that all of his constructs were liars too? It might be that Lila, sent to subvert an honest man, had been fashioned to be honest and would remain so until Satan changed her.
Still, this was suspect. He needed proof of her commitment. He knew of a way to get it—but the problem was that this would require a commitment from him, too.
Yet what did his relationship with one demoness matter, compared to the fate of the world? It would be selfish of him to put his own preference for a woman with a soul before the welfare of the world.
"Give me your absolute loyalty, and I will take you as my concubine," he said. "But you will have to prove it."
"I will prove it," she said.
"Tell me how I may foil Satan's plot and save the world from his dominance."
"That is simple," she said. "Precipitate the holocaust."
Mym's jaw dropped. "What?"
"Gotterdammerung. Ragnarok. Day of Doom. World War Three. The final confrontation between Good and Evil. Whatever it is termed in your mythology."
"But that would destroy mankind!"
"Yes."
"I ask you how to save the world, and you tell me to destroy it!" he exclaimed incredulously.
"You asked me how to save the world from Satan. I have told you how."
Mym shook his head, disgusted. "I should have known that a demoness would not give me any answer I could use!"
"I gave you truth," she said. "I can explain."
"Don't bother!" he said, turning away.
"But you agreed to take me as your concubine if I proved my loyalty!" she cried. "I have proved it! Are you not a man of honor?"
He whirled on her. "You had to know that that is no answer at all! It would only swamp the Afterlife with all the remaining souls of the mortals, in a few savage minutes. To give an answer you know is useless is no signal of loyalty!"
"But it is a good answer!" she protested. "Why won't you hear my explanation?"
"Then give your explanation," Mym said through his teeth. She had betrayed him, but the terms of his agreement required that much of him, that he hear her rationale.
She spoke. Gradually the sense of it penetrated.
"Lila, I apologize," he said. "Now that I understand it, I see that it is a good answer."
"Take me now, Mym," she said. "Because when Satan leams what I have done, he will abolish me."
True, again. She had shown him how to save the world, but she could not save herself. She had given up her existence for the sake of a few hours of acceptance by him.
He took her in his arms. "Now that it is too late, Lila, I regret that I mistrusted you. You shall have my thanks and my passion, while you exist."
"That is all I desire," she said, meeting him with a fierce kiss.
The day before the last civilian governments on Earth were to fall, Mym emerged from the Castle of War. He summoned his lesser Incarnations, and the five of them mounted. "To the Doomsday Clock!" Mym cried.
At that Conquest, Slaughter, Famine, and Pestilence looked askance. But their steeds knew the way, for the Clock was one of the artifacts of Mars. It was the timepiece that marked the incipience of the Final War that would destroy mankind on Earth.
They drew up before it. The Doomsday Clock stood on its mounting, fifty meters tall, and its huge hands were set at three minutes to midnight. This, in the metaphor of eternity, indicated the proximity of that War; it was not far off.
Mym dismounted and drew the Red Sword. "Let there be War," he said.
Power radiated from the Sword. It bathed all the world—and all about the globe the tensions that led to conflict and violence intensified. Nations that had considered war now declared it; armies that had been in position to do battle now began it; individuals who had been bluffing each other down now called their bluffs and entered combat.
For this was the ultimate power of the Red Sword. It could not pacify violence, it could only enhance it. But what it enhanced, no other power could deplete; only the cessation of its own activity could abate the terrible malice of its nature. When allowed to radiate freely, it would amplify the warlike passions of man until they erupted in the greatest conflagration ever to occur—Doomsday.
The four subsidiary Incarnations stood taller and more imposing as the effect of the Red Sword was felt. Their colors brightened, and their steeds paced eagerly. Conquest's white cape commenced a secondary radiation;
Slaughter's red became the texture of flowing blood; Famine turned so black that he was no more than a dark blot; and Pestilence's entire body became a brown mass of vermin. They were approaching the moment of their greatest fulfillment.
Mym's Cloak of War, too, was intensifying, the golden hue suffusing the region. Even his horse, Werre, was assuming a preternatural glow of strength.
The hands of the Doomsday Clock were traveling toward midnight at a visible rate. The two minutes became ninety seconds, then sixty.
Satan appeared. "What are you doing, Mars?" the Lord of Evil demanded.
"I am finishing what you started, Satan," Mym replied evenly. "You fomented unrest during my absence; I am bringing it to climax."
"But you will bring on the holocaust!"
"Yes, this will be the moment of my greatest glory," Mym agreed.
The Clock had moved to thirty seconds. "Wait!" Satan cried. "Are you sure you want to do this. Mars?"
Mym lowered the Sword, and the Clock halted at twenty-four seconds to midnight. "You have a consideration, Satan?"
"I merely wish to point out that, once the final earthly reckoning occurs, you will have no further job, because all the mortals will be dead. Is this what you want?"
"Why, I believe it will do," Mym said. "Why should I limp along piecemeal, when I can accomplish my purpose in one glorious burst? All mortal cares abated in a single effort!"
Now the other Incarnations appeared. Thanatos rode up on his pale steed Mortis, the woman Luna behind him. Chronos coasted in obliquely, holding his Hourglass, facing away, oddly. No, not oddly; this was his departure, by his backward's reckoning; he would reverse his perception to phase in to mortal time. Fate, in the form of a giant spider, descended a thread from nowhere. And Gaea coalesced from a cloud of vapor. All knew that this was the showdown.
"But you have always tried to preserve the lives of the mortals," Satan reminded him. "To ease the suffering brought about by war."
"That was before I realized the extent of my power," Mym replied. "Now I prefer to exercise it in full measure." He raised the Sword again.
Satan glanced about at the other Incarnations. "You tolerate this?" he asked. "You, who have always sought what was good for mankind?"
"Each Incarnation is supreme in his own bailiwick," Gaea said. "Our preferences do not matter; this is Mars' show."
Satan shrugged. "Well, certainly if none of you are interested in doing what is good, it ill behooves Me to do it for you. I will receive more souls in one batch than ever before."
"And God will receive even more," Mym said. "Since the balance of this world is currently positive—as it will not be after your folk assume political power among the mortals." The hands of the Clock resumed their motion toward midnight.
"You would destroy the world—merely to deny Me a few souls?" Satan asked. "That is very shortsighted."
"Well, the whole matter of war is shortsighted," Mym agreed. The sweep-hand passed fifteen seconds.
"Wait!" Satan cried desperately.
The hand paused. "I wish you wouldn't keep interrupting me with inconsequentials," Mym said. "I'm sure we all want to get this matter expeditiously completed."
"If the world ends now," Satan said, "God will win, for the balance will be in his favor at the Final Reckoning."
"Fancy that," Mym agreed. "Since I have no interest in your victory, this does seem to be the appropriate time to make my play. Then I can retire from this office and go to Heaven to join my love who is there. Now, if you have no other observations—"
Small flames crackled about Satan's body. He knew that Mym had found the key to victory. The Lord of Evil could not afford to have the world end in holocaust while the overall balance of living souls was in God's favor, however marginally. "How did you learn of this?"
"Does it matter?" Mym asked. "All that should concern us is that it is true. Now, of course, if you should happen to choose to give up your plans for dictatorships and martial law on Earth—"
"Lila!" Satan exclaimed. "That demoness betrayed Me!"
Lila appeared. "I no longer serve you, Satan," she said.
Satan stared at her, considering. Then he seemed to come to a private conclusion. "There is something that may interest you. Mars," he said. "You mentioned joining a certain party in Heaven. Did you know that your companion in Hell did not go to Heaven?"
"She didn't?" Mym asked, dismayed. "But I know her balance was good! The hearings—"
"She is good—but she declined to go," Satan said.
"For some reason she wished to return to mortality, though it would seem that she had little to gain and everything to risk by that."
"But she's already dead!" Mym protested. "She couldn't—"
"She could—with the help of one of your kind," Satan said, glancing meaningfully at Gaea.
"This much is true," Gaea said. "The woman wanted to be with you, Mars, so at the hearing she petitioned for a body among the mortals. There are some few soul-dead bodies, so I made one available to her. I did not realize that Satan had an involvement in this. I think she had in mind a surprise for you."
"I—I never dreamed—" Mym said, amazed.
"And here she is," Satan said, gesturing.
A woman appeared. Her appearance was not that of Ligeia, but she approached Mym as if she knew him. He put out his hand and touched her, and knew immediately that it was her soul. Now the body began to assume some of the traits of her former one, as her personality animated it. She was young and comely, and her love for him was manifest.
"But it seems she did not realize that you had made a deal with the demoness," Satan said.
Ligeia gazed at Mym with hurt questioning.
Satan, with uncanny insight, had brought about the confrontation Mym least desired. To have his lost love abruptly returned to him—after he had made the pact with the demoness! What was he to do now?
"But of course your choice is clear," Satan said. "You did not know that your true love was returning to you. Therefore any arrangement you made with the demoness is null and void. I will take her off your hands." He raised one arm, pointing a finger at Lila.
"No," Mym said.
Satan arched an eyebrow. "No? You intercede for this soulless slut? That does not become you. Mars."
"I accepted her help," Mym said with difficulty. "I agreed to accept her as my concubine. I can not go back on my word."
"And so you reject your true love, who gave up her place in Heaven itself only to be with you?" Satan made a gesture of dismissal. "You would not do that. Mars."
"What are you bargaining for?" Mym demanded.
"All I ask is that you allow the world lo stand, Mars. As you can see, if it is destroyed now, your re-mortal girlfriend will have made her gesture for nothing. She will be returned forthwith to Heaven, and you will be left with the demoness. For I do not believe that you will be bound for Heaven after you have treated the mortal realm so."
The notion of losing Ligeia a second time, after her phenomenal sacrifice to be with him, appalled Mym But if he backed off now, Satan would have his way with Earth.
"And you have no need to be concerned about this bit of nothing," Satan said. "I will eliminate her memory of you and put her to another assignment. That will leave your situation clear."
It was still a sort of betrayal of the creature who had helped him, Mym realized. He had given his word.
"I want nothing from you but your agreement to abate your plot against the mortal realm," Mym said. "Otherwise I will destroy it. What happens with the women is incidental."
Satan shrugged. "You have My agreement," he said. "You have won this showdown. Mars."
Mym almost gaped. Victory—just like that?
"And I will take care of this minor business for you, as a gesture of amity," Satan said. He turned again to Lila.
Ligeia moved suddenly to throw her arms about the demoness. "Leave her alone!" she cried.
"Do not be concerned," Satan told her. "This is for your own good. Mars needs no concubine when he has you."
"You understand nothing about the ways of princes," Ligeia said. "Mym gave his word. She did her part."
Satan looked at Mym. "Does this make any sense to you, Mars? Why should the woman you love want competition from a demoness?"
Why, indeed! Mym did not know what to think. He looked at the other Incarnations, but all of them were mute. It seemed that he had a decision to make.
There was something about this that he didn't understand. It was as if this were far more important than just a decision about a demoness whose presence had become an embarrassment. But what was the significance? He had won, hadn't he? Why should he concern himself over such a trifle as the existence of a demoness whom all parties knew had never expected to survive beyond this point?
A trifle? Why, then, was Satan taking the matter so seriously?
Pay attention even to trifles. So said Five Rings.
He focused his whole attention on that question—and, slowly, it came to him.
"You shall not have Lila," Mym said firmly.
The demoness turned her head to look at him, surprised. Ligeia remained holding her.
"Because your friend has a soft heart?" Satan asked. "That will not change the nature of a demoness! Believe me, you will be better off without the spawn of Hell in your household."
The Father of Lies could hardly have spoken more direct truth! Therefore Mym rejected it.
Mym turned to the Clock. He raised the Sword. The seconds resumed their tickoff.
"This is crazy!" Satan protested. "You risk the whole world for this damned bit of ether?"
The sweep-hand passed ten seconds to midnight. Now the hint of the wailing of the world could be heard, as the anquish of the dread finale approached. Missiles rose from their silos, ready for launching. Monstrous destructive spells were being chanted.
Satan turned to the other Incarnations. "Can't you see, Mars is crazy!" he cried. "All this, for a creature who is beyond damnation!"
But no one responded. The others had yielded the decision to Mars. Five seconds, four, three. The wailing swelled into the final keening.
Satan vanished. He had defaulted.
The sweep-hand stopped at one second to midnight.
Lila stared at Mym. "But why?" she asked. "You did not owe me this! You know my nature and you do not love me. You had already fulfilled your bargain."
Mym lowered the Sword. The hands of the Doomsday Clock resumed their motion—in the other direction. They retreated slowly from midnight, then accelerated as the forces that had incited violence faded. They passed thirty seconds and kept moving.
"I did what I realized I had to do," Mym said.
"My memory has changed," Chronos remarked. "Satan has been defeated. Soon I will forget that alternate reality I knew before; I did not live through it, now."
"But you had your victory!" Lila persisted. "And I was—am—now a liability to you."
"No," Ligeia told her. "As a princess, I know that a prince needs concubines, and it is better to have them known and subservient. He will use you when I am indisposed. And you made it possible for him to find me and for him to find the way to face Satan down. We would not let you be abolished for that. Quite apart from the fact that the word of a prince is inviolate, not to be sullied or compromised, no matter what the cost."
"But to risk the whole world in war—merely because you interceded—"
"No," Mym said.
Now Ligeia was surprised. "No?"
"I love you, Li," Mym said. "And I owe Lila. But I did not do this for either of you, or to sustain my word."
"But that does not make sense, then!" Ligeia protested.
"I'm not sure whether I can explain," Mym said. "The key I perceived is from the book Five Rings. It has taught me the Way of Strategy. It advises me that, if I am trying to follow the Way and allow myself to diverge even a little, then this will later become a greater divergence, and I will lose the Way. I feel this is most especially true when dealing with the Incarnation of Evil himself. I must not diverge even the most trifling amount from the Way, lest I lose all. But it is hard to make that plain to those who have not been studying that book."
"I believe I understand," Luna said. "This matter is larger than any single person or any single episode. Satan is an insidious corruptor who never rests and he is most dangerous in seeming defeat, as all of us know. It is his speciality to proffer a large reward for a very small compromise, for his resources are infinite. But he who accepts the first compromise has made a precedent, and it then becomes easier to accept the next, and the next, until at last Satan has after all won. Only by refusing any compromise at all, no matter how grotesquely uneven the stakes seem to be, can a person be proof against the insidious devices of the Master of Evil. Mars has refused that first compromise, and thus shown Satan that he is not to be corrupted. This, more than the threat of the holocaust, is the true measure of his victory."
Mym met Luna's gaze, nodding. She did understand! And now he understood how it was that she could be at the center of this titanic struggle between Good and Evil. When the time came for the critical decision to be made, Luna would be there, and would understand, and would have the courage to do what had to be done.
Remember, this Note is a somewhat separate entry that need not be read to appreciate the novel. In life, the author's mundane existence tends to influence the fiction he writes; in fantasy, his fiction may influence his mundane existence. In my case, there can be alarming interactions and feedbacks, both ways. As I believe I have remarked before, I have absolutely no belief in the supernatural; therefore it plagues me incessantly, as if trying to force me to change my attitude.
The theme of this novel is war, with its related aspects of violence and distress and wasted effort and sacrifice of life. I do not like war; naturally it fascinates me in the fashion of a snake with its prey. When I wrote of Death, death impinged on my life; when I wrote of Time, time was my problem; when I wrote of Fate I felt obliged to explain how deviously fate had brought me to this pass. Now I am writing of War, and of course I shall now describe the manner that violence touched my life at this time.
But first news of a more technical nature. If you happen to be one who is sick of hearing about how yet another innocent soul has computerized, and his joys and horrors thereof, skip this section and go on to Part II of the Note, because here is more of the same, only worse.
I have been among the last major holdouts against the computer age and have taken a certain pride in writing my manuscripts with a pencil on paper—sometimes on the back of someone else's discarded computer paper, read what delightful irony you will—and typing them on a manual Olympia, and still outperforming the great majority of computerized writers. Fancy machinery does not a writer make. But then they stopped making good manual typewriters, and mine was ten years old, with ten million words on it, about due for replacement. So, perforce, I surveyed the situation. I discovered that they don't make a Dvorak disk for the print-wheel typewriters, and the element typewriters are too limited for my needs. So I decided to go all the way to the twentieth century and computerize.
Of course I had qualms. I tend to trust most that which is least complicated, and a computer is hellishly more complicated than pencil and paper. Could I compose on the machine? I concluded that I probably could, because I was able to compose fiction on the typewriter sixteen years earlier, before my newbom daughter converted me to pencil. (She was hyperactive, so I had to be constantly mobile to keep her out of mischief. The typewriter wasn't mobile. Yes, I was the one who took care of her; my wife was out earning our living, in those days.) After all, it is my mind that generates my fiction, and it matters little by what route that fiction is expressed: verbally, penciled, or typed. The computer is a different creature than the typewriter, but why should my fingers care what happens after they have performed at the keyboard? So I rationalized and hoped.
There was one problem: that modified Dvorak keyboard I use. I converted to Dvorak before the computer industry did, so I use the original version, not the bastardized computer version, and of course I added my lower-case quote marks, making my version unique to me. Several years ago when I surveyed the situation, I found that no computer was able or willing to provide me with this option, though it should have been the easiest thing for them to do. I would have had to do it on my own, and there I ran into the catch-22 that I could not hire a specialist to modify my computer without violating the patent, and the complexities of designing my own conversion program were such that it wasn't worth it.
But by this time, the market for home computers was beginning to get saturated, so that companies were somewhat more interested in accommodating the needs of the buyer; and technology had progressed. Companies like Apple and Wang had Dvorak as an option, but for complex but valid reasons I elected to do business with neither. (I could say ten times as much about computers as I am saying here; let's just say that I did my homework in this as in other things, and the decisions I have made were not frivolous.) A commercial program existed that would make all the keys programmable. That is, with this program I could change 5 to 0 and D to E and F to U, and all the other exchanges required for my keyboard. I would be happy to say, "F to U"; my problem had been solved. I proceeded to look for the most versatile and reliable computer system on the market, because I work hard and do not like to be balked by equipment failure.
I will spare you the story of our search and of the fits and starts once I got my computer; it seems that just about every writer who has ever computerized has written an article on it, and I refer you to any of those articles for that story. I shall just touch on a few aspects that made my experience different from the norm. It seems I don't do much of anything in the normal way, which is one reason you are reading this material. (We understand each other, don't we, you and I?) (The prior parenthetical note does not apply to reviewers.)
For hardware we bought the DEC Rainbow 100+. That's a heavy-duty home system with enough memory (256 Kilobytes) to handle my needs, enough storage (10 MegaBytes) for several novels, and the best designed keyboard on the market. For software we got SmartKey to redefine the keyboard so that I could have it exactly the way I wanted it. And PTP—Professional Text Processor—for the word processing. With twenty-two little macros for my special needs.
Oh, I see I'll have to clarify this a bit. Very well: the hardware is the stuff you can see—the keyboard, monitor, disk drive, printer, cables and such. It has a masculine aspect; you can manhandle it about, with caution. The software is the programming, or the instructions that make the hardware operate so it doesn't just sit there and ignore you. It has a feminine aspect; you can't manhandle it because it will vacate the premises if you do. The firmware is what contains the software, naturally. "I dreamed I ran a computer in my maiden firm ware." In this case, what is called floppy disks. Yes, they are round and firm, and you can use two of them simultaneously, and no, they really don't sag.
The macros are keys that are programmed to do special tasks that would otherwise take a number of keystrokes. For example, it normally requires five keystrokes for me to save my material to the hard disk, where it won't be lost if the power fails and shuts down the system, and twice that many if I want to mark my place and find it again after the save. My macro does it with a single stroke, returning me to my place and setting a little » symbol in the margin so I know it's been done. Also, because I switched over from pencil, I brought my little arrows with me: ----> to indicate the resumption of my text after a bracket note (you learned about those brackets in On a Pale Horse—one reader wrote to tell me that this device had solved his problem with that dread malady. Writer's Block); ----> to indicate the resumption of the main bracket note after a parenthetical interruption (oh, yes, I have notes within notes, as my disorderly ongoing streamof-consciousness runs the rapids of my creativity); and a vertical down-arrow to show that there is a long interruption in the text, so when editing I can skip down to the next page or so to find the resumption arrow.
The pencil is more versatile in this respect than the typewriter, but the computer is able to keep pace with the pencil, a fact that goes far to endear it to me. That vertical arrow requires twenty-two strokes, several of which are multi-key—two or three fingers striking simultaneously. That's a real pain to assemble by hand, but one stroke of the macro does it all.
But here: to show you how it works in practice, I shall not edit out the brackets and arrows of the second and third paragraphs following this one. No, I did not set those brackets up just for you; it happened just the way it is presented. But what I did do was insert this explanation ahead of it (which is one of the convenient things a computer can do for a writer: insert material without retyping the prior text) because otherwise those interruptions and arrows would be pretty confusing. So this paragraph is faked up, but not what follows. (I always try to be fair to my readers, even the unworthy ones.) Several prior bracket-notes relating to mysterious phone calls that interrupted my typing of this Note have been edited out, however.
But there was another problem. The original keyboard had the period and comma on both upper and lower case, as many typewriters do. Some bright character in the hardware division had elected to save effort by having a default on those keys, so that only the lower-case characters got through to the screen. Thus when a capital period or capital comma was typed, the lower-case one was actually represented. Who would ever know the difference?
(Editor's Note: The following two paragraphs are indented to permit setting Author's symbols. Author does not indent, but sets these beyond the margin, but this is not feasible in the case of book margins. This is a purely mechanical device and has no other significance.)
----> Well, I knew the difference. Because [callback at 4:15 saying that they have a major problem with the line and asking me not to use the phone for another day. I told the man I could not distinguish between a legitimate request and a practical joke, so I would phone the company and inquire. He said fine, and he would call back in twenty minutes. So I called—and the operator pointed out (UPS delivery, three parcels—I didn't hear the truck, but heard the dogs barking) that we are served by United Telephone, not Southwestern Bell, so they would not be calling us about any local line problem. She agreed that it sounded like a practical joke. Good enough; I doubt that I will hear from that guy again.] in my changed layout, those keys are where my W and V are. So when I typed those capitals, I actually got them uncapped. DEC—Digital Equipment Co.—didn't know any solution to that problem, and neither did SmartKey. How can you get around a default when it is built in to the keyboard? (Later we realized the explanation might be simpler: SmartKey simply translates one symbol to another, not caring how the first symbol is generated. Because a capital period is the same as a lower-case period, SmartKey translates both the same way.)
----> I am an ornery cuss. I refused to take no for an answer. I discussed the matter with my wife, and she did some research in the computer manuals and discovered that the Rainbow is more sophisticated than it seems. It is an international computer, with fifteen different keyboards, so that the needs of foreign languages can be served. [5:15 after horsefeeding, etc. That guy did not phone back, as I thought would be the case. I looked at the Waldenbooks interview transcription and can see how imprecise my speech is; I'm much better as a writer. But the one doing the transcription isn't much, either. When I said "inversely proportional to its merit," it was transcribed as "inversedly fortunal towards marriage."] Any of those foreign keyboards could be set up on our system, merely by going through the proper procedure—and several of them had different symbols on the lower and upper cases of those two keys.
Well, now. Why not change over to a foreign keyboard, then change that to Dvorak via SmartKey? It seemed possible, but there was a problem. (There's always a problem!) Those foreign keyboards didn't have all the same letters as the American one. Instead they had things like ¿ and Ø and ñ and £. How could we put our letters in a keyboard that didn't have them all? Well, there was a way; we would have to bring our letters across, exchange them with the foreign ones, and then rearrange them into Dvorak. My wife believed she could manage that. She's the computer expert in the family, having once earned our living as a computer programmer, back before home computers existed. (Such recollections tend to make us feel unconscionably old.)
But there was another problem. Some of the foreign keys were set to their own private programs, and could not be changed. Thus we might get our capital Ws and Vs, but lose other letters entirely. So I did some research of my own, poring over the representations of the fifteen keyboards, and discovered three whose programmed keys were not in any critical place. I chose the Finnish keyboard, whose special keys were in the upper comers, bracketing the numbers row. We could work around these, as the symbols there were not critical. We would have to move the American +/= key in one space, because that was in the upper right comer and we needed it, and leave the Finnish `/^ key in its place. Also, there were two Finnish keyboards: one for the Correspondence Mode and the other for the Data Processing Mode. The one with the symbols I needed was the Data Processing Mode.
Then I went to work compiling an exchange chart for every letter on the keyboard, as capital and lower-case. Ninety-six exchanges in all—about half of the total on the keyboard. It took me hours. Then my wife got into the guts of the reprogramming of the keys and made the changes, and lo! it worked! We had what was probably the first complete Dvorak keyboard on the Rainbow. No longer did I have to head out into the hinterlands of the Function Keys to find where they had put my capitals.
So I am now typing this Note on the Data Processing Mode of the Finnish keyboard, with certain letters imported from the American keyboard, configured to my special version of the Dvorak layout. Naturally I sent a smug letter to SmartKey telling them how to do likewise. I love it when I, an ignoramus, can tell the experts how to do the job that stumped them—and be right. (No, they did not reply. For some reason I can't quite fathom, experts don't seem to like having me show them up. I wonder whether they will give us credit, when they revise their procedure and their manual? Don't be concerned; this self-congratulatory Note will be seen by the folk who count. Namely, you readers.) (Except for that reviewer who fell asleep early in the Note. No, don't jog his elbow; let him suffer. His face is in the book, and the print is transferring itself to his cheek, backwards. You will be able to recognize him by the steam rising from his review of this book.)
One other thing, before the next reader falls asleep. I mentioned power failures. We have them here by the gross, as we are deep in the forest, at the very end of the line, literally. I broke into the computer by typing letters—I have them by the gross, too—and when the power bunked twice in one hour, erasing me both times, my blood pressure made like Old Faithful. "I can't work this way!" I told my wife, who had been showing me how to work the buttons. So we quit in disgust and retired to the house. A storm was building; evidently lightning strikes farther up the line were responsible. And in the next hour that lightning found the range and struck right by us and sent a devastating surge along the line. It blew out our good color TV set, and a burner of the electric stove, sending a shower of sparks at my daughter Cheryl; and the timer on our water heater (trees overgrow our solar water heating system, and it sprang a leak, so we had to go back to electric, but we turn it on by the timer only two hours a day); and several components of the Atari computer system my daughters use for games and (before the Rainbow and that lightning strike) for word processing; and all the light bulbs that happened to be on. It put splotches of color on the screen of the Atari monitor and another TV set that weren't even turned on. It raced up the two-hundred-foot extension to my study and put my two all-wave radios halfway out of circulation (there after they would tune in only the closest, loudest stations). At the very, very end of that line was my new, three-dayinstalled Rainbow system, the obvious target.
And the surge petered out just at that point. Having wastefully expended its energy taking out all the sidepieces, it lacked the strength to do the job it had come for. Ten thousand dollars' worth of computer emerged unscathed. I think. It is true that it tends to garble the recorded size of files, claiming they are bigger than they are, which has caused me some problems in judging the length of novels. But I think that's a software defect.
But the only reason that system had been turned off—for it surely wouldn't have survived if it had been on—was my disgust at getting erased twice in an hour.
I may be a slow learner, but that got through to me. Forthwith we ordered a UPS box—Uninterruptible Power Supply. Not only did that protect us from power failures, by providing ten or more minutes backup power, it also protected us from power surges. And that box has saved us many times since. In fact, now we own three of them. At $500 per, they aren't cheap, but we do need them.
Actually, my computerization isn't as isolated a phenomenon as this may have made it seem. There is a fannish and a social aspect. Back in OctOgre of 1983 I was co-Guest-of-Honor with Richard Adams (Horseclans) at the science fiction convention NECRONOMICON. I receive about one invitation to a convention a month, and I turn them down because I'm busy writing and I don't like to travel; Del Rey Books got me to the ABA convention in Dallas in 1983 by bringing my whole family along, but that Satanish device is unlikely to work again and I think that niore or less covers my out-of-state traveling for this decade. NECRONOMICON, however, was in Tampa, where we often go anyway, so I agreed to attend, and I brought my daughters, then aged thirteen and sixteen. Naturally they got hooked on conventions, and thereafter they attended them without me.
Well, the fan GOH was Bill Ritch, an expert in DR. WHO, video cassette recorders (VCR's), computers and such. Bill is a huge, harmless, teddybear of a man who likes people. I met him and talked to him about this and that, and evidently my daughters did too, for two months later, the night before Christmas, he showed up for a visit. He was just passing through on his way to Miami. But he had come down from the north—that is to say, Atlanta, Georgia—and naturally he brought the cold weather with him. The temperature dropped steadily and was freezing by the time he got ready to go. He had it in mind to drive overnight in his unheated car.
At this point our parental instincts got the better of us, and we prevailed on him to stay the night and resume travel in the morning. Indeed this was wise, for it dropped to Florida-record levels that night: the coldest December ever, for the state. By morning it was 15°F on our carport. We were comfortable, of course, for we have a good wood stove. As it happened. Bill had a VCR with him that he was taking to his folks in Miami. So he hooked it up to our TV and showed us Thriller and Blade Runner and such. That was our first direct experience with a VCR. Later Bill sent us literature on the subject, and we bought a Sony 2700 Betamax. Thus it was Bill who got us into video, and that has certainly brightened a number of what otherwise would have been dull TV evenings. More recently we got a video camera, using it to record the talks I give at local schools and such. For the first time I have been able to see myself as others see me, watching myself on our own TV. I'm sort of angular, and my voice seems somewhat nasal; believe me, I come across better in an Author's Note than I do in person. (Sigh.)
Bill showed up periodically thereafter. I told him how I was unable to computerize because of the keyboard problem, and he told me ofSmartKey and the Digital computers. Thus he was directly responsible for the manner I obtained my present setup, which I suspect is the best currently available for a serious writer. No, I promised not to go into tedious detail, and please don't deluge me with letters claiming that IBM or Kaypro are better; I was late coming into this equipment, but I knew what I wanted, and my needs are specialized. Computer companies have very little notion of the needs of novelists, which is why it is necessary to pick and choose carefully. Even the reviewers of software are ignorant in this regard. I read one who condemned a program because it defaulted to overstrike. That is, when you want to correct a typo, you can simply strike over the error, anywhere in the text, without messing up anything else. That's vital for a typoprone writer like me—but you can't readily do it with the type of program that reviewer recommended. My program can readily be changed to a different default, when I want it.
The software program affects the computer the way personality affects a human being. What counts is not merely what is done, but how it's done. The term "userfriendly" is no joke; if you think of the computer for a moment as a big dog, the user-friendly program will cause that dog to wag his tail and slurp your hand when he meets you, while the other type of program would cause him to consume your left buttock. Some programs are menudriven, and some are command-driven. With the former you can't do anything without having to get into the menu, which is a list of available tasks to choose from. That can get annoying when all you want to do is correct a typo you happened to see in the prior sentence. With the latter you can do it directly by typing the correct code—but that means you have to memorize a squintillion complex codes. That, too, is annoying. I suspect the best programs are compromises, with simple commands buttressed by simple menus for the less-frequent tasks. I started out with what came with the system: The DEC-approved Select-86 word processor, menu-driven. I typed my first novel on that, which happened to be But What of Earth? that I was restoring to its original condition for republication, together with twenty-five thousand words of comment on the nature of the (abysmal) editing it had received before. I soon discovered what DEC didn't know about the holes in its own program; whoever approved it had never, for example, tried to use the double-spacing setting or tried to follow the written instructions on how to remove a hard-carriage-return. But the same user-friendly DEC man who had put me on to the amber screen monitor—that's the one that doesn't give you eyestrain—put me on to the PTP text processor, and I composed (as opposed to retyping) the first novel, Golem in the Gears, with that one. Then we figured out the Finnish-keyboard device, and I composed the first science fiction novel (as opposed to fantasy), Politician, with that.
Now I hear some of you clamoring about why should I settle for a text-processing program no one ever heard of, instead of going first-class with WordStar or Word Perfect. Well, here is another thing that the industry has been slow to understand. The ideal word processor is not the one that tries to do all things for all users, in the process becoming monstrously complex and burdening most users with complicated peripheral features they seldom or never use. That's like selling a Mack truck to a housewife for her weekly shopping. The ideal is the one that does the basics readily, is easy to learn and understand, and allows the individual to program his own specialized functions. PTP is the easiest of all the programs I have considered to learn and use, and its macros enable me to set up just exactly those specialized features, like downarrows or my bibliography boilerplate, that I want—and no others. Thus it is simple and sophisticated and personalized, exactly as I am. Oh, I admit there are a couple of things it lacks that I would like, such as "windows" (those enable you to call up another file and view it while keeping the current one on a parallel screen, so you can verify whether you said something in a prior chapter that you are about to say here) and the ability to address my full 256K memory (it addresses only half of it). Every so often I bug the maker, and I suspect that in due course he'll come through with improvements. But basically I feel that I have here a setup, hard, soft, and firm, that would be the first choice of any newcomer who could afford it, if he but knew its features. Oldtimers are lost; once a person has taken six months to master WordStar, he's not about to throw that away and spend two days to master PTP.
Meanwhile Bill Pitch phoned. A store in Atlanta was having a half-price sale on Rainbow 100's. Were we interested? We were. We sent him the money, he bought Rainbows for us and his own projects, and we set up the duplicate system at the house, where it would be warm in winter. Thus the fourth novel. Red Sword, is the first on that second system. Thus, within nine months of computerization, I have done three and a half novels (the first being a rework), which is a fair pace even for me, and yes, I am now thoroughly addicted to the computer. But you can see how closely it ties in with personal connections.
One thing I considered for this novel was changing the operating system. You see, there are levels and levels of these things, even in software. The computer system might be likened to a car, with wheels, engine, doors and such. The software can be likened to the controls that direct the progress of that car. But obviously you don't do things directly; there is a series of linkages between your hands and the engine, and between the engine and the wheels. So I think of the word processor as the layout of the steering wheel, gearshift (or automatic shift), ignition key, dials and such, while the operating system is the gearbox below, the steering mechanism, the clutch and such. You can have a similar layout and the same type of engine as another car, but the intermediary linkages may be quite different, and the kind you want for Sunday morning driving might not be suitable for the racetrack. So with computer operating systems; they are largely invisible, but they are important, and some suit particular purposes better than others.
The operating system I use is CP/M, obviously an abbreviation for an old retired naval man called Captain Manager. Captain M supplements his income by renting his house, which is a fine old edifice of some fifteen storeys (as he spells it) and a capacious cellar. Each floor contains six rooms and is provided with all the amenities of the domicile. Because the Captain never saw fit to adjust all the way to civilian life, he calls his boarders "Users" and he assigns them numbers. Thus User 1 occupies the first floor, and when he enters the building he must step into the elevator and punch out the code USER 1, and instantly he is there. Similarly for User 2, and on up to the one on the top floor, User 15. Some of these boarders sublet individual rooms, and these they reach by pausing in the elevator to punch out A, B, E, F, G, or H, which are the designations the Captain has coded for this building. Now you might suppose that this was an aggravating nuisance, but in fact it is very much to the advantage of the boarders, for each one had absolute privacy within his number and letter. All the furniture is set up exactly as he wants it, and the rooms are completely individualized. It is as if the rest of the building doesn't exist. The elevator has a Directory that can be flashed on a screen by typing the secret code word MAINT, and it will show a complete inventory of everything in the designated room on that floor. There may be hundreds of other items in the various other rooms and floors, but this Directory ignores them; they have their own Directories.
What this means is that the Captain provides the ideal situation for a writer who has a number of projects going simultaneously and wants to keep them all distinct, without accidentally erasing one, but who also has teenage offspring that wish to borrow the machine for word-processing homework. For the House of CP/M is my computer, as organized by that operating system. I had nightmares of a daughter turning on the computer, touching the wrong button, and erasing my past week's work. So I set us up with the House, and now the cellar (User 0) contains the assorted software programs including the good Captain M himself, while I have reserved floors 1 through 9 for business purposes, and two floors each for wife and daughters. Penny, who likes the view from the heights, has the top two floors, for example, and when she uses the computer she punches in User 14 or User 15 and there she is, with her margins set the way she left them, her macros ready, and all the files she has saved ready for her. When she punches the Macro 7 button she gets whatever she has put on it; when I punch the same button, down on User 1, I get my down-arrow. On User 3 that same button evokes my About-the-Author boilerplate. (A boilerplate is a set passage that can be inserted into a letter or other text without retyping; it can be very handy for answering the same question from different fans.) I would be quite lost on her floors, because I don't know her macros and don't understand the contemporary teengirl way of doing things. And she would not be at home on my floors, should she go to one by accident. And we don't snoop on each other; I visit her floors only by invitation, so she has privacy of correspondence, and of course she's not interested in my correspondence. Neither of us can affect anything on the other's floor from our own floor, so accidents are impossible. A family with fifteen or even sixteen Users could give each a floor, and each one could program each of the six rooms (four sections of the hard disk, plus the two floppy disk drives) differently, to allow for an infinite number of variations. Yes, infinite, because there is no limit to the number of floppy disks that can be used in turn in their drives, and the defaults are stored on the disks themselves. If a daughter takes one of my floppies by mistake and uses MAINT to check what's on it, it won't tell her, because it answers only to my User number. So it is as if we have several computers, and it's beautiful. We even have color-coded cases for the disks: Blue for Penny, Green for Cheryl, Red for my wife, and Black and Yellow for me. I suppose what I'm saying is that we have a family computer system in the most compatible way, and we all like it, and visitors (yea, even Bill Ritch) are impressed by our setup. Bill even took home a disk containing my macros, so that he can get little arrows and things, though I can't imagine what he does with them. (I picture him running about Atlanta, poking people with little arrows...)
But the Captain is not the only operating system. There is MS-DOS, obviously the abbreviation for a somewhat prim lady of uncertain age and marital status. Ms DOS distrusts apartment buildings, having perhaps had some bad experience there, but she likes to garden. So her layout is in the form of a garden with paths leading to the various entries. When you enter this garden you encounter a Directory with several diverging paths; pick a path, and it leads to another Directory with several more, and each one of those paths leads to its own sub-Directory of files. So each occupant of the garden can have privacy, with his own selection of flowers and such, but by a different mechanism. Our computer is equipped to handle both CP/M and MS-DOS, so I thought I'd try the latter for this novel. But I found that the Captain and the Lady don't get along together all that well; if I want both at once, I have to split my hard disk into two halves, one for each, and the two hardly speak to each other. And it seems that the Lady doesn't have the MAINT feature that puts all my files in alphabetical order and allows me to change titles, delete files or take a quick peek at any file without disturbing it, and gives me the space used by each file and the total space used by them all. Those are housekeeping features I use constantly, for every day's work is a separate file and there may be sixty of them for a novel. FTP has both CP/M and MS-DOS versions, and so does SmartKcy, so I can have my keyboard layout and macros and things with either, but the Captain's type of organization just seemed to be better for me. So my apologies to those of you who know and like Ms DOS, and wish I had used her for this novel. Maybe some other time.
But enough (more than enough!) of computers; I realize that the relatively gentle rivalry between the Captain and the Lady is not the type of violence you want to see in this Note. You want to know exactly how violence and war struck at me while I was writing Red Sword. Well, I started this just after the turn of the year. Jamboree 2, 1985, in the Ogre Calendar. Penny, whom we taught to drive two years ago in Hourglass, now drives to school, taking two friends with her, because they have early classes that the schoolbus doesn't catch. You might suppose that there are no hazards of the road, on that twelvemile trip through the sparsely inhabited countryside. But one day some truck left a tangled mass of metal just over the brink of a hill that Penny encountered—flat tire, phone call, we got out there to rescue her, discovering one of her teachers changing the tire, and I drove her car in to get the tire fixed. Since I had never even been in that car before, I had to figure out how to operate it, which was an uncomfortable business, because it has little features that didn't exist in my day. You might say the macros and defaults are all wrong. But that was before; now, in Jamboree, came a more serious call. That's right; there had been an accident, and she was phoning from the hospital.
Periodically in this region, the forestry folk do what they call controlled bums, burning off regions of the state forest in the slack season so that there will not be uncontrolled forest fires at other times. The policy makes sense, but sometimes the burners lack common sense. This winter has been generally dry, and there have been a number of uncontrolled bums. This time they started a bum adjacent to the highway Penny drives to school, and the wind blew it out of control. We passed it in the evening, as we came home from an archaeology meeting; the fires raged for a mile or more beside the road, and the region resembled a section of Hell. (I happen to know what Hell looks like.) The next morning was foggy, and the fire was still smoldering. We cautioned Penny about driving through that region. "If there is thick smoke there, you don't dare slow down too much, because the car behind will ram you," I said. But we doubted that it was bad, because there had been no news of smoke, and the road was open. However, it was bad, and Penny, driving in to school alone for the first time (the two other girls coincidentally had other business), found herself caught in dense smog. All night, owing to an inversion, that smoke had accumulated by that road. Penny, mindful of my warning, slowed to 25 mph—and rammed into a truck that was moving at walking speed. The truck was hardly damaged, but our little car suffered a $2,600 repair bill. They pushed the car off the road, and Penny, shaken up but not really hurt, thanks to the use of her seat belt (I taught her, remember; I taught her right. Anyone who drives or rides in a car without using the seat belt is a fool; I don't care how educated he may consider himself to be in other respects.), went out to try to flag down other cars before they collided. Her friend, who normally rides in with her, was next to arrive; she recognized Penny and stopped, then started to maneuver to get off the road. And a fourth car came up and crushed the friend's car against the original truck. So there it was, a four-car accident—and it was obvious that had Penny not driven the speed she had, she would have been rear-ended by that fourth car, or crushed between the two. As it was, she was technically at fault—but alive. A person has to consider not only the law, but common sense.
That smoke, all told, accounted for nine cars that morning, and several more that were peripheral. It was the worst traffic situation in the history of the county. An ambulance was dispatched; when it encountered the smoke, it had a man walk ahead of it to show the way, and then that man had to slow down because the vehicle couldn't keep up with him. The police said that they had never seen worse driving conditions; that visibility was zero. Now they closed off the road; why they had not done so before is an unanswered question. Penny's name appeared in the accounts of three newspapers. Our car was out of commission for the rest of the month. Now Penny is afraid to drive in fog, understandably; the day I started typing this Note, we had to drop breakfast and head out to rescue her because she didn't dare drive into it. The fog gets pretty thick some mornings, and we understand. This is what families are for. I got gun-shy about driving after my roll-over, back in 1956, and I still don't really like to drive. One morning when there was light fog, Penny braced herself and drove anyway. Came a phone call: "Daddy, this is Penny, calling from the bank." Oops; where was she caught now? "The bank? What bank?" "The fog bank," she replied. She had made it through. Oh, what about the real culprits in this mess, the forestry and highway departments who burned recklessly and never told the public about the hazard? It seems they are immune from fault, and our insurance paid.
That was Jamboree: fire and collision. But this novel required two months to write, even with the computer. I'm not really a fast writer; I'm a steady one. An average of two thousand words a day for two months covers a one hundred twenty thousand word novel. Actually, I work faster, then suffer interruptions. So what violence occurred in FeBlueberry?
I was awakened at 3:40 A.M. by the phone. It was a neighbor—the high school was burning to the ground. Both my daughters go there. As it turned out, only part of the school burned, but that was enough to eliminate normal functioning. So the freshmen and the seniors had to take their classes elsewhere—and we have one of each. It may never be known whether the fire was natural or arson; it seemed to start with an explosion, but whether it was a bomb or a faulty heater can not be ascertained. Classes will be affected the rest of this year and next year, while they see about rebuilding. Unfortunately the library was lost, with all its books, including some of mine. So we donated a thousand dollars to the library fund; after all, it behooves a writer to support both libraries and the school his children attend. I had a thank-you note from a teacher on another matter, and sure enough, the envelope was scorched. Good thing I knew the cause, or I might have feared it was a letter from Hell.
And more news: a local company asked permission to explore the entire state forest that we live against for possible limerock mining. Now this sort of mining is open-pit, and it leaves a landscape reminiscent of that of the Moon. Reclamation is a joke; the trees and animal ecology are gone. We bought land where we did in order to have a guarantee that the natural land could never be denied us. But it seemed that while the state owned the land, the national government retained the mineral rights, which meant it could license the land for strip-mining. (It is said that profits can run as high as a million dollars per acre.) Ah, but was there lime-rock there to mine? Yes, indeed; it was under our own land. Was the acreage we owned to become an island of wilderness next to a wasteland that was once the state forest? If this was not war, it seemed very like it. The outlook was grim. But then, before the battle was joined, new information came to light; the state forest had been designated for public use only, back when it had been set aside, and could not be signed away for private mining. Satan had been balked by a technicality—about the time I wrote the final chapter.
Let's narrow the focus to the more personal aspect. How am I doing, these two months of this novel? Well, I can write well enough, unless distracted by other calls on my time, such as letters and manuscripts and research for other projects. What was the story there?
Life continued at its frenetic pace. I made notes on items I might mention here, but the inclusion of all of them would render this Note much longer than anyone would have patience for. So, just the more significant ones, and briefly. My major concern was research for a mainstream novel relating to the situation of the American Indians of this region of Florida at the time Hemando de Soto passed through. Every Sunday we went out to the Indian mound being excavated, where my daughter Cheryl worked. Our involvement is intimate; there will be more on that elsewhere in due course. For now it suffices to say that significant finds are being made and that the matter has been taking up a significant amount of my time. Associated with this, before the turn of the year, our whole family joined an archaeological canoe trip, with Cheryl and I sharing one canoe. It was a kind of nightmare. So I enhanced the details and put it into this novel. Those who wonder where I get my ideas may take due note; I do more adaptation from life than most readers realize.
Just about this time, my right shoulder began bothering me chronically. It hurts when I stretch or reach too far. We'll check with the doctor when we have time, but meanwhile it is progressive and worrisome. I have lost partial use of both knees, and it doesn't please me to have me same thing happen to a shoulder. I'm still doing my exercises, such as the chins on the study rafter, but it is now painful to get my grip, and I can't descend all the way. I still do thirty, operating in the restricted range, but, if the shoulder gets worse, that exercise may be denied me. Since I have always felt that the end of my physical exercise program will mark the beginning of the end of my life, this is not a minor matter to me. I now do seventy-five Japanese pushups in under four minutes, sometimes under 3:30; my best time is 3:03, beating the time that evoked the kidney stone in Pale Horse by more than a minute. I hate doing them, but I would hate even more to have to give them up. My runs are slowing, too, and I am no longer able to break 21 minutes for three miles, or 22, and usually can't break 23. I am minded of the line from W.B. Yeats: "The hour of the waning of love is upon us." I love my physical fitness, perhaps the final relic of my youth, and I feel the hour of the waning of it. I fear that even the Ping-Pong will be ended by this particular incapacity. Well, I'm past fifty now; the war against age and death is one that every person is fated to lose. But I am conscious of a significant loss, right at this time.
In one week in this same period, I addressed three different school classes. I don't like taking the time, but I do support education, so I give these local talks when requested. One was to Penny's college-level English class, and Penny took our brand new video camera and recorded me, as I think I mentioned in Part I of this Note. By coincidence, it was in the homeroom of a different teacher (the school fire jumbled these things)—one who had angrily told her classes that "Piers Anthony is wrong." That dated from a prior address I had given, when I had stated "You no more need to know the names of the parts of speech in order to use the English language correctly than you need to know the names of the muscles and ligaments of the legs in order to walk correctly." I was once an English teacher, you see, and I take exception to much of what is currently being taught. I believe that less effort should be expended on irrelevant material like parts of speech, and more on relevant material like how to balance a checkbook or understand mortgage interest—things a person could use in today's world. So I repeated my statement—and this time received applause for it. Of course the teacher who objects to my attitude was not there; I did take the trouble to greet her when she arrived. I am not, of course, wrong. Another presentation was for a selected group in a different school in the county, the attendees being students who were fans of mine. But the challenge was the third, to a second grade class. The youngest fan I have had a letter from was eight years old; these were in the seven-year-old range, and none of them had read any of my books, but they were interested in writing. They were doing books of their own, as a class project. I wanted to be sure not to overshoot their level of interest, so I told them about how the baby ogre in Crewel Lye foiled the dragon and about the monster-under-the-bed, and these were things they related to. Then they had an Author's Reception with refreshments they had prepared, so it became a social occasion. I think it was a success. That, too, is on the videotape. Certainly it was an interesting experience. But this sort of thing does take time, and is one of the reasons I failed to complete this novel within the two-month period I had allotted.
And in this period the question of a motion picture option was settled. In 1984, interest in the Xanth series developed, stipulating a payment of $300,000 for each novel made into a movie, with the possibility of using all nine Xanth novels. But there was also interest in Germany for cartoon adaptation for the first three Xanths, for $500,000. Which was the better bet? The American deal might peter out after the first novel, so was not necessarily better, and of course there was no telling what quality of movie might be made. We pondered, and finally gambled on the American deal, and I signed the option contract. Time passed, and finally it was apparent that the option was not going to be exercised. So it goes.
This was also the time of the Sharon/Time magazine and Westmoreland/CBS libel suits, both resolved somewhat indecisively, as wars often are. Freedom of the press—I believe in it, but it does get abused, and I think it is best that an accounting be made periodically. And on a lighter note, this was the time when the war between men and women erupted on a new front. Ann Landers conducted a survey and reported that 72% of her women would rather be cuddled than have sex. Furor followed. Mike Royko conducted a hilarious counter-survey, getting the men's side of it. I, of course, have a fairminded solution: let the women wear placards bearing the numbers 72 or 28 so that the men can make more informed decisions about dating, marriage, etc. Any man who prefers Cuddles can probably have her. The divorce rate might drop precipitously. Not to mention the marriage rate. (And to think they call me a sexist!)
And Bantam Books ran a five-page promotional ad in various periodicals, showing reproductions of bestseller lists with their books thereon. But Anthony got shown five times in that ad for the Del Rey novels On a Pale Horse and Bearing an Hourglass, the first two volumes in this series. I'm sure Del Rey joins me in thanking Bantam for the free publicity.
I typed a record 125 letters in the month of Jamboree, and in FeBlueberry I had a manuscript and a book to read and blurb, sent by two publishers with whom I am not doing business, and another expected from a third publisher. No, this is professional courtesy; I do for other writers what other writers did for me when I was in need, though I am a slow reader and it takes me days to get through a book. But about the letters: most of them were cards, as I have become adept at reducing my responses to that length, though each remains individual. Most other writers, I understand, do not bother to answer their mail; certainly I could save a lot of time if I did not. But those are living, feeling people out there, and I feel that they deserve answers, so as long as I can, I am answering. I have no secretary; I bash them out, with typos, strikeovers, and all, on my manual typewriter. (The computer printer can't handle cards.) By going wholesale to the card format, I have managed to keep up.
One day I received fifty letters: forty-four in a package from Del Rey, six from elsewhere. Next day I typed thirty cards, and the following day twenty mixed cards and letters, and the third day, seven, saving the complicated ones for last. Only then did I get back to work on Sword. But you know, I don't suffer from Writer's Block, while many other writers do. I can not prove this, but it is my suspicion that those writers who are callous about social responsibilities, so do not answer letters, also tend to be callous about their business commitments, so suffer Block. Those who take all commitments seriously, including the need to consider the feelings and rights of others, do a better job at meeting those commitments: correspondence and books. If this is true, it is poetic justice. At any rate, I believe I write about as many letters and as much fiction as anyone in the genre, and I would like to think the two are linked. There are those who have called me naive about this sort of thing, though.
And you know, those letters can be interesting. Let me give a couple of examples, positive and negative. One letter in that bunch of fifty informed me that a fan had named her prize colt after me: Piers Anthony Jacob. She says he is the prettiest horse alive. That seems only natural to me. I have asked the publisher whether we can run a picture of that horse on the back flap of this book. Might as well improve that aspect of the volume, after all. Another letter, received as I worked on this Note, is anonymous—no name or address, so I can't answer it. I regard anonymous missives as fair game, so I'll quote excerpts here: "It is becoming abundantly clear that your endless, thoroughly boring rants, diatribes and dissertations 'justifying' (through the many scenes you have depicting them) violent, humiliating [undecipherable word here] and soul-destroying sexual assaults against women are just thinly (very!) disguised versions ofapologiae of the same sorts of assaults on children of either sex." It confines in similar vein, psychoanalyzing me and concluding that I am trying to expiate guilt for similar things done to me as a child, and finishes: "Do you really want the whole world to remember you as 'Piers Anthony, the Battered Child'?" No novel of mine is named; those familiar with my work are free to make their own conjectures about the accuracy of this charge. Yes, I answer this kind of mail too, when able, though I am not as polite as I am to more positive fans. But as you can see, my mail is not boring.
In FeBlueberry it slacked off, with only thirty-nine letters, but the books-to-be-blurbed took up what slack there might have been. Still, by the end of the month I was two days from completing the editing of the novel. The editing consists of reading it through on the screen, printing out my bracket-notes relating to other projects, deleting both bracket notes and marginal symbols (I have special macros to facilitate that, such as one that locates and highlights all the material between the next set of brackets, so I can check it before deleting it), correcting my own typos and spelling errors (yes, we have a spelling-checker program, but it's easier to do it myself), revising awkward sentences, and adding new material where required. This editing replaces the second and submission-draft typings I used to do and takes about a quarter the time. So I knew I would wrap it up just a couple of days into Marsh.
And on Marsh oneth (1th) came a package from Del Rey Books containing eighty-six fan letters dating back to Jamboree and Dismember. I should have known that if I used Ogre Months I'd get ogrish mail! There was nothing to do but read them (which alone took about six hours) and answer them (six days). So by the end of the Seventh I had answered eighty-seven of those eighty-six letters. (Apparently they were starting to reproduce in the package.) Then I got on the letters that had come in separately. As I type this paragraph, which is being inserted in the middle of this text, I have done 102 letters, as of the Ninth. This novel has been delayed that week. I think the pace is about to slack off, maybe, I hope. But this feels very like a war!
Again, I hear someone muttering: why do I bother? Why not call it quits and stick to my paying work? Or perhaps answer only the most serious ones and let the others go. Ah, yes, I hear the siren song of expediency. I understand that only two writers in the genre answer large volumes of mail personally; the other is Isaac Asimov. But again, I know of only two who never suffer Writer's Block, and the other is Isaac Asimov. My Antiblock Theory gains credence.
But let's consider some of these letters individually. Perhaps some are dispensable. Two from this last bunch were from people who are confined long-term by accident or illness and use my books to ease their solitude and pain. It seems that mine have better effect in this respect than those of most other writers. In the past I had letters from a young man who used my books to divert his mind from the unpleasantness of chemotherapy for cancer. Another in the present group is from an oncology (cancer) nurse who thanks me for taking death seriously in On a Pale Horse. Ignore these letters? I just can not; they must be answered.
Well, some of the others, then. Yet they evoke startling bits of individual personality. There is the lady who announces that I have stolen her heart. The righteously indignant teenager who isn't sending me any PUNS. (You see, most of these are in response to Crewel Lye, just published, whose brief Note explains that Xanth is no longer in the market for puns. That didn't stop a number of fans from sending me full pages of them.) The mother who thanks Xanth for doing what nothing else did—hooking her learning-disabled son on reading. (I raised an LD daughter; I understand about this sort of thing.) The coed who was hooked on Xanth by her boyfriend; she gave up the boyfriend but remained addicted to Anthony and, when my novels ran out, she had to get into Donaldson, Eddings, Moorcock, and McCaffrey. (Those other writers may not realize how much of their success is thus owed to me...) The man who brings up seeming inconsistencies in my novels, then proffers intelligent explanations for these that I can use to fend off other critics. The one who wishes to convert me to Jesus. (I am apt to refer these well-meaning people to my three-part novel Tarot, which is perhaps cruel. The point is, I am not agnostic from ignorance, but from preference; I suspect I have done more research on religion than most.) The young woman who begins: "I'm 19 yrs. old + I don't want to be a writer. I want to be an editor." (That one popped my eyes open! But why not? Editing is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.) The man who met a college professor of mine and relays that professor's regards to me—along with the news that the professor is dead. (I hadn't realized, so this was a jolt. That prof had been my counselor; I remember him with preternatural clarity.) The woman who relates somewhat graphically her experience in being assaulted by a masked male who put a gun to her head, and her thoughts on death and On a Pale Horse. And from the interim mail: a "fan" letter in the form of a fan, that opens out to reveal the writing. And an invitation to a convention, that I turned down, as usual. Which of these do I file without answering?
Well, why not cut off the repeats? Answer each fan once, and not again? Two considerations, there. First, I have found that a kind of universal inverse ratio applies, so that only about half of the first-timers respond again, and only half of the second-timers, and so on, so that the correspondence tends to damp out. That enables me to keep it down without actually having to cut people off, and I prefer that method. Second, some of those fans have excellent continuing input, and an arbitrary limit would be unfortunate. Third, (my difficulty in keeping count has been noted before) there are special cases.
I wrote about sixteen letters to one girl in Jamboree, ranging from cards to a six page missive. Yes, this is a very special case, and illustrates as well as any the levels on which wars are fought, the conflict between good and evil, and the difficulty of telling the two apart. This was a suicidal teenager who said she loved me. Now I was at this writing fifty years old, with two daughters older than this girl, so the matter had points of awkwardness.
You see, though I was never a 'battered child' I was a disturbed child, with compulsive mannerisms and comprehensive fear. Another impression I have is that a person does not have to be totally fouled up to be a successful writer, but that it helps. Today I have a life that is about as comfortable as any life gets, with supportive wife and daughters, an income in the top percentile, and success in the one type of work I always wanted to succeed at. I don't crave the adulation of the masses, but I know I could experience it any time I choose to attend a fan convention. I should be deliriously happy. But I am not. I suffer from chronic depression and I think about death on a daily basis, perhaps an hourly basis. (Yesterday I buried our last hen; we had had twelve, and as time progressed they died off individually; the last survivor had been with us a year and a half after the death of the next-to-last. Call me foolish if you will; I grieve for her, as I do for any pet who dies. Death is much larger in my life than in that of most other people.) I am not suicidal and never have been, but every morning I ask myself whether life is really worth it, and I am uncertain. As the day progresses I become more positive, and by evening I am pretty satisfied with life. Since no economic or social reason exists for this depression, and it is cyclical by the day, and steadfast by the year, I conjecture that it is a fringe benefit of my mild diabetes; my cells are generally slightly hungry for energy, and that chronic discomfort translates into mild depression.
The point is, I do have a basis to understand the situation of a fouled-up child, because of my memory of my own childhood; and I understand also how depression can be. My depression relates to this girl's depression about the way my adult-onset diabetes relates to the savage juvenile-onset form of it. What I have is token; what she has is serious. So while I only wonder whether life is worthwhile, she thinks seriously of suicide. I, being what I am, cannot simply tell her to quit bothering me.
Oh, objectively the situation is clear enough. This girl—I will not identify her here, of course, but let's give her an obvious pseudonym. I shall name her after a suicide I have in this novel, Ligeia, though there is no other parallel that I know of between the two. "Ligeia" was not aware of having experienced love in her home and she longed to be a part of a family where love exists. That is to say, my family. She wanted to love and be loved, which is perhaps the deepest human need. She could not simply invoke that love from others, but she could contribute her part of it. Thus she loved me, because she knew me from my novels and Notes, and because I answered her letters seriously, as I do with all letters. I had been treating her in the way I would a daughter and a child, partly because I was conscious that she was not exactly either. My teenage readers may find this confusing, but I trust that my adult readers will understand. This is not a "childish" matter; Ligeia wanted from me a good deal more than I could afford to give on either the fatherly or the manwoman level. I of course explained that, and she of course refused to accept it. Thus I found myself in a kind of ethical war, and it was difficult indeed to distinguish the nuances of right from wrong.
Why didn't I simply tell her that her interest was misplaced, and reject her letters? Two reasons. First, because I try to follow the Golden Rule, treating others as I would have them treat me, with fairness and compassion. Second, because it was possible that she would have died if I cut her off that way. In that sense this was a kind of emotional blackmail. It happens to be a kind I am vulnerable to. If this be a failing, it is hardly my only one. I have to say that I really would not care to know a person well who was not similarly vulnerable. This does not mean being mush-minded; it just means that the consequence of one's actions should be a concern of every person, on the social as well as the legal level.
Our correspondence began when she wrote a fan letter. It grew more serious with time. Her letters came in envelopes decorated with cute little butterflies, unicorns, rainbows, balloons and hearts, signifying a sweet and happy little girl, but inside they were desperate. She told of slashing her wrists in an attempt to commit suicide, of turning on her heater and closing the windows tight, of similar things. She spoke of feeling lonely and tired, of the foreboding of evil. She felt trapped, like being in a box with the sides closing in, and was afraid that after she died she would be similarly trapped, as if in a shell. All that enabled her to survive was love. The love I could not return. She believed she was going mad, but that there was no need to worry: her death would stop only her body, for she felt she was already dead in the ways that mattered. She said that suicide might be considered a copout, but that for her it would only hasten the inevitable. She expressed difficulty relating to an emotion that sprang from her heart instead of her mind. She saw love as a lifeline, while hate was worse than anything.
Another letter was smeared, as by tears. She had had a good day that then became bad. A discussion with a friend about love and sex and politics and religion and feeling—the things this bright girl really liked to explore—had lifted her. Then there had been a singulariy bad episode at home that threw her back into the depths. She said she needed love so much, yet it eluded her; she couldn't wait to die wholly. She concluded with the words "I'm so cold," trailing off with a jerky line as if abruptly interrupted, the letter unsigned.
I think it is evident that my objective, sensible statements were largely wasted here. I had a deep sympathy for Ligeia's plight, but I could not call this love. I tried to help her in various ways, putting her in touch with supportive correspondents and even checking with the authorities, but to no sufficient avail. Ligeia could not escape her situation that way. I saw her swirling down and down in the maelstrom, and I could not rescue her from that without going well beyond permissible bounds. So I wrote to her, with the unhappy suspicion that this was a war that was being lost.
Hence the letters of Jamboree. I tried an experiment: in addition to the fewer, longer letters, I sent her a series of light post cards, saying nothing thereon that other eyes could not see. The heart of them was the Ogre Tail, transcribed chapter by chapter, fourteen chapters on separate cards. The first Tail was "The Ugly Unicorn," and I think it is worth reprinting here:
Chapter One: Once upon a time, there was a little unicorn. She lived in a shell.
Chapter Two: There was a funny thing about this shell. No one else could see it.
Chapter Three: But to her, it was very heavy, as if an elephant were on it.
Chapter Four: Sometimes that shell just seemed to crush all the happiness right out of her.
Chapter Five: Of course, she wasn't really a unicorn, because little unicorns don't live in shells.
Chapter Six: She was really an alicorn, which is a flying unicorn. Her mane was brown.
Chapter Seven: Alicorns live in shells, because they like privacy. When anyone comes near, they close.
Chapter Eight: Of course that means that hardly anyone ever sees an alicorn, which is unfortunate.
Chapter Nine: Because alicorns are really very special creatures, when they come out of their shells.
Chapter Ten: But the little unicorn didn't know she was an alicorn. She wanted to die.
Chapter Eleven: This is because a magical creature who stifles her magic is in deep trouble.
Chapter Twelve: No one else understood about this, because no one else could see the shell.
Chapter Thirteen: Except for maybe one old centaur—but he was too far away to help.
Chapter Fourteen: He hoped the little unicorn would learn to fly, before she learned to die.
Ligeia loved the chapters, and they buoyed her momentarily, but then her depression resumed its hold. She wrote me a letter signed with her blood.
In one of her letters, she described a dream she had had, involving a cemetery where instead of people there were thoughts. She had not intended it as a suggestion, but I liked the notion and put it into this novel; this is the notice of credit.
Of such stuff was my life made, as I wrote this novel and this Note. My humor is obvious, but privately war and death and injustice were much on my mind.
You may wonder why I have used the past tense. That is because the enchantment that links these novels to my life remains; the theme is War, and so war came to the publication of the novel. The publisher took exception to this inordinately long Author's Note, stating that it was in the business of fiction, not nonfiction, and requested the Note's deletion. I refused. This was no minor matter; fundamental rights were at issue. The publisher is not required to publish material it deems to be unsuitable for its imprint—but the author must give permission for any significant changes. I feel that these notes are important to a sizeable segment of my readership and I do care about that readership. Neither side backed off, while the novel remained in limbo, unable to be published.
My agent, caught in the middle, spent many hours trying to negotiate a cease-fire, but for months the war continued. At last we came to a compromise. Part of the publisher's concern was about Ligeia: I had presented poignant excerpts from two of her letters. I had cleared this with her directly, showing her the material and making corrections she asked for. But she was a minor; therefore she lacked the legal capacity to give permission for my use of this material. That had to come from her parents. But she had made plain throughout that her parents did not know the things she told me, and she did not want them to know. It would be a violation of her confidence even to ask them for such permission, as her secret love and death wish would be exposed. Thus I could not obtain permission, and risked a lawsuit for the violation of a living person's privacy if I ran the letters. So, with deep regret, I revised that portion of the Note. I can not even tell you what happened to Ligeia in the intervening year, because that might serve to identify her. Thus do I lose the battle for part of my text, but win the battle for the rest of it by the somewhat heroic measure discussed here, and the war for Ligeia's life grinds on.
As I write this revision, I am midway through the next novel in the series, the one concerning Nature. Yes, the enchantment continues; Nature is making herself felt emphatically. I will cover that in the next Note.
Copyright © 1986 by Piers Anthony Jacob
ISBN: 0-345-32221-5