Outside the factory was another hall. She walked cautiously along it, alert for tricks. There seemed to be none. Soon she came to an intersection with a hall at right angles. In the center, mounted on a base, was a fancy plaque. She approached this and looked at it. It said: WELCOME TO THE FINAL SERIES OF CHALLENGES. THREADS REMAINING: 5. ILLUSIONS REMAINING: 10.
She considered this. Was it genuine, or a trick by Satan? Certainly it had her threads correctly listed; if the illusions were also correct, then she was much closer than she had supposed. She could still win this contest!
But it could be a plant, intended to deceive her. Should she use a thread on it to verify its accuracy? No, that would be foolish. If it was a lie, it should be a complete lie—and obviously it wasn't. Better just to assume it was correct and make sure she wasted no more threads. She would count off the remaining illusions, because, once that total reached zero, she would know she had won. But she would not trust it too far, because, if the plaque were a lie, it could cause her to think she had eliminated the last illusion when she had not—and that last illusion could wipe her out. But probably Mars would not have allowed Satan to volunteer false information, because there should, after all, be a distinction between illusion and outright lying.
She pondered, then turned right—and discovered a dead end. She felt along the walls, floor and ceiling, but all were solid. No exit here.
She tried the left hall, but this, too, was a dead end. So she went straight ahead—and found a third dead end. None of the passages went anywhere.
She stood by the plaque and pondered. Could the message be a fake, not in its accounting of threads and illusions, but in its implication that the route was here when it was not? So that she would waste her few remaining threads looking for what did not exist? What a fiendish trap!
She walked around the plaque—and saw that there were words printed on its back. DO YOU YIELD?
Satan's humor, all right! "No, I don't!" she exclaimed.
That plaque could be here to make her think it was a lie, so that she would write off this annex—when it was the correct route. She had to make absolutely sure it was not, before she gave up on it.
She explored the halls again. It occurred to her that an illusion did not have to be merely sight; it could be sound or touch too. Some of the illusion-monsters had roared. There might be an exit she couldn't find because her hands missed it as readily as her eye did. In that case she would have to use a thread—which would leave it at four threads, nine illusions. She couldn't afford to trade off one for one. Not now.
She discovered a slanting connecting passage between the straight-ahead hall and the left hall, making the overall configuration of passages resemble the closed figure 4. Why should that extra passage exist, when it was easy enough to go from one hall to another via the center? About all it did was make it possible to walk down every hall without having to double back.
Something nagged at her. Some figures had to be "solved" by tracing them without doubling back. There were some traffic patterns in large cities like that, where three right turns substituted for one illegal left turn. Could this be one such?
She returned to her starting point, at the base of the 4, then resolutely marched forward. She proceeded past the plaque to the apex, then turned sharp left. She followed the slant down, then turned sharply left again. She walked past the plaque, into the end of the 4—and now the passage opened out into a cave. She had penetrated the illusion, without using a thread. Two left turns had unraveled what one right turn could not.
Now she saw a straight path leading like a pier into a deep black pool. The path widened, forming a kind of island in the center of the pool—and on that island a dragon. The path continued on beyond the dragon, to terminate in a blank wall.
Obviously she had to pass the dragon to get through. But through to what? There was no exit there!
Ah, but there had to be! Satan had nine illusions left;
he must have covered the exit through the wall with illusion, and set a genuine dragon to guard it. Most of the prior illusions had been of monsters, guarding real passages; this one was the other way around. She could probably penetrate the illusion, once she got by the dragon; she didn't need to use any thread here.
But how could she get by the dragon?
Well, the dragon could be illusion too. But if she walked into it, and it was real, she would lose two precious threads and still not be past. That was hardly worth the risk. It would be better to verify it with one thread—
No, she had a better notion. She approached as close as she dared and threw the helmet at it. The metal bounced off the dragon's scaled side and rolled into the water with a splash. The dragon snorted fire. It was certainly real.
She looked to the sides. There was a ledge just above water-level beyond the dragon; it curved around to either side, approaching the path on which she stood within eight feet before terminating.
She sighed. A man might have leaped across; she had no such hope. She had to find another way.
She saw that there were vines hanging from the ceiling, but they looked insubstantial. She took hold of one and jerked; it broke near the top and came tumbling down. There were some that looked strong enough to bear her weight, but they were dangling tantalizingly out of reach.
There seemed to be no other avenue, unless she went back to the figure-4 annex, which she would only do as a last, last resort. There had to be a way; she just had to find it.
She found it. She yanked down another weak vine, bunched it and tied it in a rough knot. Then she tied that knot to another hanging vine. Then she swung the knot across to one of the more substantial vines. After several tries she was able to entangle that larger vine and draw it over to her, using the weak vine. Now she had hold of the one she wanted.
She hauled at it with increasing vigor. It held; it was firmly anchored and it was strong enough to take her weight.
She held on tightly, drew back, then ran to the edge of the water. She leaped at the margin, clung for dear life, and swung across to the other path. Something flashed below her in the water as she passed, like a huge shark. She landed heavily but adequately, and the vine swung back behind. It might have been pitiful as a gymnastic feat, but she was across. She was glad she had not tried to swim.
She made her way along the narrow path, her right hand brushing along the wall. The dragon watched her, but could not reach her.
Where the straight path intersected the current one, she found the exit; it was indeed illusion-covered. She stepped through cautiously, alert for a pitfall, but there was none. She was through—and she still had five threads, with eight illusions remaining, if the plaque was to be believed. She remained behind, but her ingenuity had enabled her to gain.
She came into a broad cavern with a wide river running through, reminiscent of one she had encountered in the Hall of the Mountain King. Perhaps Satan had borrowed the concept. If so, she knew how to cross.
But it was not the same. There was no mesh fence in this river, and no sign advertising it as Lethe. Of course it could still be Lethe, as that was one of the rivers of Hell, so she would treat it with caution. There were fish in it; when she dipped her finger in, three horrendouslytoothed little monsters converged. One leaped as she drew her hand quickly away; the fish's teeth clacked in midair where her hand had been, before it splashed back down. There would be no swimming in this river!
There was a wide path along the bank, originating at the point she entered this section. She walked slowly along it. Obviously her challenge was to cross the river, but there were no more hanging vines; and in any event the river was about fifty feet wide. Well, she would see.
She heard something. She stopped, listening nervously. It was the even footfalls of a striding man. She shrank into an alcove to the side, not wanting to encounter the sort of man she would in Hell.
The man came into view. He was tall and blond, muscular and handsome in a boyish way.
All Niobe's reserve crumbled. "Cedric!" she cried.
Cedric turned to face her. "Niobe!" he exclaimed, spreading his arms.
Then several things caught up with her. "But you're dead!" she said, stopping before she reached him.
"Of course I am. But my love for you remains."
"But what are you doing in Hell? You were a good man in life—a wonderful man!"
He shrugged. "A glitch in the system, maybe. But if you're here, that's where I want to be. With the most beautiful woman of her generation."
"But I'm not beautiful anymore! I've gone to seed."
He shrugged again. "It doesn't matter. My love is eternal."
"You're an illusion, aren't you!" she said indignantly. "A demon in disguise! I can use a thread on you and expose you for what you are!" She was angry now that Satan should use this particular device to trick her. To taunt her with her long lost love!
Cedric just stood there, not answering. He looked just exactly the way she remembered him, and her love fought in her breast to emerge and take over. There was nothing in life as sweet as first love! That made her angrier yet. "Get out of here!" she screamed. "I'll not waste a thread on you! You're just a—a mockery!" Now the tears were flowing. She had been caught entirely off-guard by this specter, and her emotion had to be expressed somehow. "You have no right to—to—"
"I'm sorry you feel that way," Cedric said. "But of course your love for me was never as true as mine for you."
There was just enough truth in that to sting. She rushed at him and struck him with her fist, scoring on the nose.
Blood streamed down his face, but he made no motion to strike back. "I'll always love you, Niobe," he said quietly.
Her rage was so great that she was ready to kill. Her fingers curled into claws. She started for his eyes—
And caught herself. Hate was Satan's way. She was falling into Satan's trap! If she allowed hate and rage to dominate her, she would remain in Hell forever.
This was a demon in disguise, for it was solid under the illusion. Surely the demon could wipe her out with a single blow! But it had not done so. Instead it was taunting her into rage, baiting the love she could not afford to express. She could have used one thread on it, to expose it—or it could have killed her, costing her two threads. The rules of the maze did not allow monsters to chase her down;
they could only hurt her if she made contact on her own initiative. She had made contact—but the thing was trying to destroy her rationality, not her body. To ruin her objectivity about her mission here, so that she would act foolishly and waste her remaining threads. That was the trap she could not afford—the one that would cost her all.
She calmed herself. "I'm sorry, Cedric. I shouldn't have struck you. Of course your love is true." She brought out a hanky and dabbed at his face.
Now he became uncomfortable. "Please don't bother," he said. "I'll be all right."
"Oh, but I must help you," she said warmly. "It's so important to love you back as strongly as you love me."
He jerked away. "I really must be going."
"Must you—so soon, Cedric?" she asked sadly.
He hurried away without further word.
She knew why. Demons were creatures of violence and hate, and could hardly tolerate gentleness and love, whatever they might say. This demon had been besting her— until she became positive. Then it could not handle the situation. Love defeated hate—with a little management.
She walked on—and encountered another man. "Pace!"
"Niobe!" he replied.
But it had to be another demon, for Pacian, like Cedric, had been a genuinely good man, not destined for Hell.
She headed for it. "Darling, it's so good to see you again!" she exclaimed.
It hesitated. "Uh, yes, of course. And I know you aren't really to blame for my being here."
So that was its ploy! Force her into an angry denial of that outrageous implication. "Oh, but I am," she replied. "I know you wouldn't be here now, if it weren't for me."
Again it hesitated. This wasn't following the script! Then it tried again, gamely enough. "Well, actually, you know it's not exactly me here—"
"Let me give you a big fat kiss, dear," she said, approaching.
It lost its composure and fled. Niobe smiled. She was learning how to handle demons.
But she wondered whether she had been correct in assuming that her anger was worth more to Satan than her life. She was so low on threads that the two threads a killing would have cost her represented forty percent of her total. Either of those demons could have dropped her total to three threads, putting her critically behind in the terminal stage of the maze. Was her anger really worth more than that?
She stopped where she was, certain that she was on her way to an important realization. Satan was evil, but hardly stupid. Anything he did made sense. So why would he instruct his demons not to attack her, if their taunting was not effective? There had to be some way he expected to gain from this.
Well, suppose there was a way she could get into more than two threads worth of trouble, if not diverted from it by the demons? She had recognized the wrong courses in prior segments of the maze because they were impassable. Now she was encountering demons who could have stopped her, but did not. Did that mean she was heading into more than two threads worth of mischief? That she was in fact on the wrong route?
If so, she should reverse course and get out of here. But that would mean encountering the two demons she had passed—and they surely would not let her travel that way. She could get killed twice, costing her four threads. These were more sophisticated than the prior monsters;
they hadn't had to kill her as long as she was going in the direction Satan desired. And if she managed to get back past them—where would she find the correct route? She had no idea.
She concluded that she simply had to gamble on this being the right course. It was after all possible that the demons were merely trying to make her think she was going wrong. Wouldn't that be an irony: for her to turn away from the correct route, simply because the demons let her pass!
Meanwhile, she had an advantage: she knew that Satan was not about to force her to lose two threads. He wanted her to lose at least three. That must be the minimum number she needed for victory. He was willing to throw away illusions; they didn't matter. It was the threads that counted.
Yet all this had been set up before she entered the maze. How could Satan have known how many threads she would have left?
She resumed her walking, ill at ease. And—another person approached.
It was Blanche, Pacian's first wife who had been killed by the demon at the wedding. Again, there was no way Blanche could have gone to Hell; she had always been a good woman. This was another demon—or demoness— clothed by illusion. She could be handled as the others had been.
"Blanche!" Niobe cried, approaching her with open arms. "I'm so glad to see you!"
Blanche did not blanch. She came right up and embraced Niobe. She felt completely human and real. "Thank you so much for taking care of my husband!"
This was a new approach! Apparently the creatures of Hell were not always repelled by affection. Maybe demonesses were more gentle, as they were commonly used to seduce men to evil—literally. If they were driven away by love, they would not be able to perform. How, then, could she get rid of this one? "You don't resent that I married him after you died?"
"Oh, no, dear!" Blanche exclaimed. "He was such a good man, he deserved the best—and you were the best. He always loved you, of course, because of your beauty;
it was only right that he have opportunity to enjoy it before it faded."
The demoness was beginning to get into it! The stilettoes of women were more subtle than those of men, but no less sharp. "I'm so glad you understand," Niobe said with as much warmth as she could manage. "The prophecy said he would possess the most beautiful woman of her generation, and obviously you weren't it."
"All too true!" Blanche agreed without rancor. "I feel privileged to have shared what part of his love I could, while I could, and to have had a lovely child by him."
"Yes, my son the Magician married her," Niobe agreed. She seemed to be unable to rattle this demoness, and she was not enjoying the effort. This woman was too much like the real Blanche, always good and giving. "I'm on my way to see him now."
"Yes, I know. I'll be glad to help you find him."
What? For a moment Niobe reeled with doubt. Could this be the real Blanche? She could verify it with a thread...
No! That might be part of the trap. Use a thread on this demoness, verify what she was, and then be killed by her: three threads gone, and Satan's victory. Qr try to retreat from her, and have to run the gauntlet of two male demons behind. A losing strategy, surely.
Blanche had to be in Heaven. This had to be an illusion/ demoness, playing her part the way only a female could. The males had failed, but the females were more adept.
Well, if she couldn't get rid of this one, she would have to play along. "Why, thank you, Blanche! But this is, after all. Hell. Will Satan permit it?"
"We aren't completely evil, even in Hell," Blanche reminded her. "We're just more evil than good. What good I possess is tied up with Pacian and my daughter and your son. I will help you reach him—but I am not allowed to tell you anything. You understand."
"I understand." But she did not understand. This was exactly the way the real Blanche would have acted—but what demoness would help an intruder defeat her master? There had to be a limit to the playing of a part—didn't there?
Disquieted, Niobe continued her walk, and Blanche paced her. If this was another one of Satan's traps, it was too sophisticated for her to fathom at the moment.
Unless, she realized abruptly, Satan wanted her to reach her son. Or to encourage her to believe she could reach him. Naturally he would provide her all needed assistance—to go the wrong way.
Well, she was stuck for it. The game was getting more devious, as Satan proceeded from straight maze-challenges to psychological ones, but it wasn't over until it was over. The outcome hadn't been decided yet, for she still had five threads.
Another person showed. The next demon—and she hadn't yet gotten rid of the last one!
It was Blenda, the Magician's wife, mother of Luna. This was getting eerie indeed!
"Mother!" Blenda cried.
"My baby!" Blanche cried.
The two swept together and hugged each other, shedding tears. Niobe watched, bemused. They had to be two demonesses—yet they acted real in all ways. Blenda was not the perfect beauty she had been in youth, but the somewhat wasted woman who had died of leukemia at age forty-seven, leaving the Magician a widower. His magic had extended her life, but had not been able to cure her. So she, too, had entered the Afterlife—but not Hell. She had at one point been a virtual twin of Niobe's, and Niobe had known her well—a woman with very little evil.
Then Blenda turned to her. "I'm so glad to see you so well, Niobe!"
So well? Hardly! But compared to Blenda, she was healthy. Niobe didn't even try to unmask her; she hugged Blenda and exchanged pleasantries.
"So now you're coming to talk with my husband," Blenda said.
"My son," Niobe agreed. "He has the answer I need."
"I will help you find him," Blenda said. "I haven't seen him since I died."
Surely not! Blenda was in Heaven, the Magician in Hell. But Niobe had to play along. "Why not? He's been here for two years."
Her mouth quirked. "We don't get visiting privileges. That's part of our punishment."
Niobe had to admit that made sense. So now she had two demonesses ready to help her find her son. Curiouser yet!
Niobe set off again, paced by a woman on either side. She had five threads, and only four unidentified illusions remained.
"How are the girls?" Blenda asked.
"Orb's on tour," Niobe answered shortly. "Luna's getting into politics."
"Oh, yes—to foil Satan!" Blenda agreed. "But you need the Magician's advice."
Another form appeared. In fact it was three forms: outright demons. Evidently Satan was not about to expend three of his four remaining illusions on these; he had to send them in undisguised. They spied the women and hurried toward them.
"Watch out for them!" Blanche cried. "I know their kind! If they get us outnumbered, they'll rape us or eat us!"
"Or both," Blenda amended.
"Or both," Blanche agreed. "We must stay together; then they won't try it. They're cowardly; they must have numerical advantage, or they won't act."
Niobe did not comment. As far as she was concerned, she was now in the company of five demons. How was she going to get out of this? Why hadn't Satan simply sent ten demons?
The demons came close. They had horns and tails and hooves and obvious masculine appendages, in the manner of their kind. They eyed the women. "You need company?" one asked.
"Oh, go away, you foul fiend!" Blenda exclaimed. The demon considered, evidently trying to figure out how to separate the three women so that they would become vulnerable. "Maybe we help," he said. "You want cross river?"
"Yes," Niobe said. It was, after all, the truth; she could see that the path on this side came to an end a short distance ahead.
"We help. We got boat."
"Why should you help us cross?" Niobe demanded. With overt demons, at least she didn't have to pretend.
The demon looked at her. It licked its lips. It shifted its posterior. It didn't answer.
It hardly needed to. The demons would help one woman cross, so that the three would be separated. Then the three demons would converge on the one or two women, and do their dirty work.
Would one demon actually rape or eat a demoness? Apparently so, by the rules that evidently governed this strange portion of-the maze. Perhaps it was just Niobe who would be attacked, once she was separated from her "friends."
Well, the answer was simple. They would all cross together. If the women intended to desert her, they would have done so already. It seemed that they would stand by her—for now.
"Show us your boat," Niobe said.
The demons showed the boat. It was a small canoe, just big enough for two. It was obvious that it would sink if any more got on it.
Niobe looked at Blanche and Blenda. They spread their hands. It was clear that it was not possible for the three of them to cross together.
But if they did not, one or two of them would be left to the appetites of the demons. Niobe might cross alone, but she realized that she could not in conscience leave the other two women to that fate, even if they were demonesses beneath. They had not betrayed her, so far; she was unwilling to be the one to initiate that sort of thing. This might be Hell, but she carried her standards with her.
Perhaps that was the real nature of this test: to ascertain whether she would desert her conscience when it seemed convenient to do so. An ethical standard that bowed to convenience was not worth much.
She considered crossing with one demon, so as to keep it even on both sides of the river. But then that demon could cross back after Niobe went on, making it three to two. Or it could return to fetch across another demon, both of which could pursue Niobe.
She had to arrange to get all three women across— without ever letting any of them be outnumbered, on either side of the river. That was the only proper course.
She pondered. She remembered something that might help: a series of intellectual riddles she and Cedric had struggled with during their first summer. He had been uncannily bright, and she knew in distant retrospect that the foundation of her love for him had been laid when the power of his mind began to show in such games. He had seemed like little more than a boy, then—but what a bonnie boy!
She felt the tears starting and shook herself out of the reverie. She was, after all, in Hell.
One of those riddles had been the story of a river crossing: three civilized hunters, with three untrustworthy natives. They had had to cross the river, using a two-man boat, without ever letting the natives outnumber the hunters. Exactly the problem she faced here! So she knew there was an answer—
But she didn't remember it.
The others stood there, looking at her—the two women and the three demons. Yes, this was definitely a test, an aspect of the maze. She had been able to unravel the confusions of passages and illusions, and to survive the rigors of the snowy slope, and to get by the robot factory, but now the maze was focusing increasingly on her weakness: intellect. She had never claimed to have more than ordinary intelligence, though she had been attracted to smart men.
If she could solve this riddle, she could proceed; if not, she would shortly commence her Afterlife in Hell with a truly Hellish experience.
Did Satan know of her prior exposure to this puzzle? Did it suit his humor to dangle the prize this close, to see whether she could come through? What an exquisite torture it would be, to know she had had victory within her reach and had been unable to grasp it! He had even sent a demon in the guise of Cedric, to remind her!
"Damn you, Satan!" she swore under her breath. She thought she heard a responding chuckle, though perhaps that was merely a ripple in the river.
She concentrated. How had that long-ago puzzle gone? Two women could cross first—no, that would leave the third with all three demons. Well, one woman and one demon could cross, keeping it even. Then—oops! Who would bring the boat back? The woman would have to. Then there would be three women and two demons on the near bank, and a lone demon on the far bank. Then one woman and one demon could cross—and when they got to the far bank, there would be two demons to one woman there. No good.
Well, suppose two demons crossed first? One would bring the boat back. Then two women—no, that left two demons and one woman on the near shore.
No matter how she tried it, at some point she encountered an imbalance. It seemed impossible to cross successfully—yet she knew there was an answer! Cedric had worked it out.
There was a key—a special way of looking at it. Something that the ordinary person, like her, did not think of. What was it?
She pictured Cedric's boyish face, the tousled hair tumbling over his forehead. He had shown her the key, such a simple, obvious thing, and she had laughed ruefully.
Cedric! she thought, her ancient love for him suffusing her. I need you!
And then she thought: return. Perhaps she had heard Cedric say it, her love bringing back the dear memory of his voice.
The key was in the boat's return trip. Something surprising, nonsensical—until understood. The return orThen she had it. Thanks to Cedric, Luna's grandfather, she knew how to cross the river and save Luna. Satan had gotten too cute, taunting her; she had gotten away with the bait.
"Two of you take this boat across," she directed the demons.
They didn't argue. They got into the canoe and dipped their hand-paws in to paddle, not bothering with the paddles that lay in the bottom of the craft. The carnivorous fish swarmed, biting at the hands. When a fish took hold, a demon simply drew his hand out of the water along with the attached fish, brought it to his mouth, and chomped the fish. In a moment the eater became the eaten, and the paddling resumed.
Soon they were across. "Now one of you get out; the other bring it back," Niobe called. The demons shrugged; one got out and stood on the bank, while the other dogpaddled the canoe back by sitting in the front and pulling it along. It wasn't a smooth trip, but in due course the demon got there.
"Two more of you cross," Niobe said.
Two crossed. When they arrived, all three demons were on the far bank, while all three women remained on the near one.
"Now one of you bring it back," Niobe called.
"But if one of us crosses next—" Blanche said worriedly.
"Don't worry," Niobe said.
The demon arrived back. The two on the far shore licked their gross chops, anticipating something pleasant on the next crossing.
"Now two of us will cross," Niobe said. "Come on, Blanche."
"But I—" Blenda protested.
"You will have the company of one demon," Niobe said. "No problem."
She and Blanche took up the paddles and started off. The fish swarmed in again, but found nothing tender to chomp. The journey was somewhat erratic, as neither woman was experienced, and at times Niobe feared they would tip the craft over in their effort to keep it on course, but they did eventually make it across. The fish clacked their teeth angrily.
Now there were two women and two demons on this bank, one of each on the other. Who was going back: a woman or a demon?
"One of each," Niobe said. "I'll go—and you." She picked a demon.
The demon shrugged and joined her in the boat. It didn't know what she was up to, but was sure that sooner or later it would find the women outnumbered.
It was eerie, riding with the demon. She knew it could overturn the canoe at any point, dumping her in the water and costing her a life. But she also knew the demon wouldn't do it. It would attack only when it had the advantage of numbers. She was finessing Satan, offering him the chance to penalize her two threads when he wanted three.
They reached the bank. Now there were four on this side, two on the other, still evenly divided.
"Two women," Niobe said.
Blenda joined her in the canoe, and they crossed, leaving the two demons behind. When they arrived, there were three women to one demon. "Now you can ferry your friends across," Niobe said. "We'll be moving on. Thank you for your help." She led the way on down the path, leaving the demon to scratch his horny head in perplexity. How had the three morsels managed to escape? "That was very clever of you." Blanche said.
"It was just a fond memory," Niobe said enigmatically. She knew it had been a close call. though—and four illusions remained, with the challenges getting harder.
The path diverged from the river. It led to a large hall, a virtual cathedral.
A man sat on a throne on a dais in the center. He stood as the women entered. "So you have come!" he exclaimed, rising.
It was the Magician!
Blenda was the first to approach him. "My husband!"
"My wife!" he agreed. They embraced and kissed. Now Niobe approached him. But she remembered those four remaining illusions. It was possible that she had bypassed them when she crossed the river, or that the count given on the plaque in the 4-hall had overstated the number, but she doubted it. It was more likely that she would have to fathom every last one of those illusions before she won through. She couldn't trust this.
But suppose it was her son, ready with the answer she needed—and she passed him by? That was as good a way to lose as any! Wouldn't Satan laugh if he offered her the solution on a platter—and she rejected it, for that reason. Exquisite irony.
Well, one day Satan was going to try so hard for that irony that he would lose more than an encounter.
She brought out a thread and flung it at the Magician. If this was no illusion—
The thread touched—and the Magician became a demon with three faces and six arms. Its head seemed to be mounted on ball-bearings, for it rotated without limit to aim one face at her, then another, and then the third. One face was young, one middle-aged, and one old, but each seemed uglier than the other two.
"So!" the middle face hissed. "You doubt me, bag!" the old one grated. "I will perforate you!" the young one cried. The demon stepped toward her.
Blanche and Blenda screamed. Niobe expected them to run away, as their challenge was done, but instead they closed in before her. "You shall not have her!" Blenda cried.
"This is my concern, not yours!" Niobe said. "Don't—"
The three-faced demon grabbed Blenda, using four of its arms to catch hold of her two arms and two legs. It picked her up and spun its head to view her triply. "You aren't worth bothering with, you prune!" it said, and hurled her beyond the throne.
Now Niobe saw a gulf there. The throne was not in the center of the chamber; it had only seemed to be, from a distance. It was perched on the edge of a void. Blenda screamed as she fell into this hole and disappeared.
Again the demon advanced on Niobe. This time Blanche interposed herself. "You can cross, Niobe!" she cried. "The landing is hidden by illusion—"
The demon caught her, wrapping two hands about her throat to cut off her words. With three more hands it ripped off her clothes. It growled with disgust. "Damned flesh is no good; I want the real thing. To Hell with you!" And it threw her also into the gulf.
Niobe was shocked on several levels. These were demons—sacrificing themselves to protect her. They were giving her information that she needed to defeat their master. That made little sense, unless—
Unless Blanche and Blenda were what they had seemed to be. In which case—
No! There was no way those two could really be in Hell. But they weren't necessarily demons. They could be other souls, ordered to impersonate the women Niobe had known—or maybe even caused to believe that they were those women. Thus they could have acted in good faith, despite being false—and had paid a terrible price for it.
Terrible price! No—they were damned souls anyway. The fall into the pit could not hurt them; it merely took them out of this context. Niobe was alone again. Still, she regretted their passing, and was sorry she had not been able to do anything for them.
Meanwhile, the three-faced demon was coming at her again—and this time there was no one to intercede. She had used a thread exposing it; if it killed her now, that would make three threads lost, and put her below the critical threshold as she understood it. She had to escape—but the void was too broad for her to slide across on a limited thread.
If she retreated, she would be trapped between this demon and the three at the river. She had to go forward.
There was a landing, hidden by illusion—if Blanche had been telling the truth. If that damned soul had been a true emulation of the blessed one, she would have told the truth. Blanche had been one of the finest people Niobe had known, though she had known her mainly by observation. Satan had made a mistake, using damned souls to emulate blessed ones; naturally they had longed to be their roles, as an actor might wish to be the hero he portrayed, and they had played them too well. It had been their closest approach to the illusion of Heaven, of escape from Hell.
Niobe ran for the void. She threw a thread ahead of her.
There, just a yard away from the edge, was a platform. It had been concealed by the illusion of the void.
She leaped across. The three-faced demon, following her, tried to stop, skidded on the smooth floor, and fell into the crevice between the edge and the platform. Screaming from all three faces, it descended.
She was across, and she had three threads left, while Satan had only two illusions. It was coming down to the wire, and for the first time she had a genuine hope of winning.
She set herself and walked on, hardly exhilarated, still regretting the fate of the two damned souls who had helped her cross.
She came to another large chamber. Here there were a dozen demons of the kind she had encountered at the river, all looking alike. They stood beside a huge set of balancing scales.
What was she to make of this? The demons made no hostile gesture; they seemed merely to be waiting. This must be the final challenge—but how could she solve it, when she couldn't even tell its nature?
Then something occurred to her. Pacian, her second husband, had had a mind very like Cedric's. Magic music and intellectual brilliance--they had been cousins, so it was not surprising that they shared traits. She had played games of riddles with Pace, too, and he had bested her readily. Now she remembered the first, at the sea of grass as they tried to approach Gaea's residence. Twelve cpins, a set of scales. Eleven coins specified to be genuine, one counterfeit—but the counterfeit looked exactly like the others. Only its slight difference in weight distinguished it. The problem had been to discover which one was the counterfeit, and whether it was heavy or light.
Easy enough; it was necessary only to weigh all the coins in pairs. If two balanced, both were genuine; if the scales did not balance, then one coin was the counterfeit. Then each of these could be balanced against one of the others, and the counterfeit would be exposed.
Except that only three weighings were permitted. It was necessary to weigh them in groups—and no combination of group weighings seemed certain to isolate the lone counterfeit, let alone identify the nature of its difference.
Here were twelve identical demons—and she had just three threads left. Could that be it?
Satan had two illusions remaining, it seemed. Two demons could be made to resemble her son, concealing him—but that had not been done. None of these demons had been masked.
Then she caught on. "One of you is my son!"
All of them nodded affirmatively.
"Which one?"
All nodded negatively, refusing to tell.
Why didn't the Magician simply step forward so she could verify him with a thread?
She considered and realized that, just as her threads were not merely illusion-disposers but also life-restorers and flying devices, so Satan's illusions were not confined to the senses. Satan could have used one illusion to change the Magician's appearance to that of a demon— and the other to prevent him from identifying himself.
More than that, she realized. Satan could have bound the Magician so that once she identified him, he would not tell the truth. Then she would have a lie for an answer, and when she applied it, Satan would win.
Well, then, she would reverse whatever he told her, and have the truth.
But suppose it wasn't a lie? Then she would forfeit the game despite having the truth—another delicious irony.
She had to know whether the Magician had been enchanted to tell the truth or to lie. A thread would do itbut would she have a thread left, once she found him?
Her son was the counterfeit coin, in this Hellish inversion—and what he told her could be either true or false. He could be honest, and be slightly lighter than the demons, or dishonest, and be slightly heavier, for dishonesty was a sin and sin weighed down the soul. She had to know which.
She had three threads—and now she knew that each one entitled her to one weighing. She had to locate her son among the identical demons, and determine his relative weight.
It seemed impossible—yet Pacian had done it, and shown her how. But that had been a quarter-century ago, and she had forgotten the solution.
This was a tougher one than the river-crossing; she knew that. She had barely solved the other; how could she ever fathom this one? Her advantage in threads had been nullified by her lesser intellect and fading memory. Now she wished she had been the smartest woman of her generation, instead of the prettiest!
A fireball manifested. It expanded and became the form of Satan himself. "So it has come to this at last, sad sack!" he exclaimed.
She had been less annoyed during that confrontation in the Void, when he had called her "cutie" and other such mock endearments. But she held her peace. "I can win, Satan."
"Can you, old hen? Let's see you try!" He gestured, causing a throne of fire to appear. He ensconced himself in it and settled down to watch.
"Why not invite the whole world to watch?" Niobe asked, irritated.
Satan shrugged. "The world? I think not. But selected parties, perhaps." He clapped his hands, and a wall of the chamber vaporized. Beyond it was a segment of an amphitheater. Seated there were all manner of demons and lost souls, including the two who resembled Cedric and Pacian, and the two who resembled Blanche and Blenda. There were also the five major Incarnations.
Five? Oh, yes—she was not at the moment Fate; she was just the soul ofNiobe, perched on the verge of damnation—or salvation. Clotho and Atropos had the body, and they shifted back and forth as the mood took them.
"Now perform your miracle of failure, O dismal dog!" Satan said sardonically. "Your friends will see your humiliation!"
Still she resisted the baiting. If she allowed herself to get rattled or angry, she would certainly lose. She concentrated on the immediate problem. Twelve coins, three weighings—how could it be done?
She considered balancing six against six. One group would certainly rise—but would that mean that a light counterfeit was among them, or that a heavy counterfeit was among the others? If only she knew the weight first! Then she could take the lighter six, if that happened to be it, split them into two groups of three, and weigh two of the three from the lighter group. If one was light, that was it; if they balanced, then the odd one out was it. It would work as well if the counterfeit was heavier. Such a simple process!
But without the knowledge of the relative weight, it became a complex process, a single weighing determining nothing. She would need a second thread to weigh the halves of one of the original sides; if they balanced, then the counterfeit was in the other group, and she would know its weight. From that point two more weighings would do it—four in all. No good.
But as she struggled with it, she began to remember. That odd-man-out system could be used throughout! Weigh four against four, with four out. If the eight balanced, the counterfeit was in the four remaining. Then weigh two against two—no, that wasn't it. Weigh all four against one of the other groups, now known to consist of good coins (demons); that would tell whether the counterfeit was heavy or light. Then—no, one weighing wasn't enough to finish it.
Still, she was sure she was on the right track. Weigh just three coins from the subject group against three good ones; if they balanced, it was the odd one out, and the last weighing would determine its relative weight. If the two sets did not balance, then it would be known that, say, the counterfeit was light. Then a simple weighing would identify it.
But suppose the first weighing of fours did not balance? Then she had the counterfeit somewhere amidst eight coins—too many" for two weighings.
She went over and over it while the audience waited silently. By chance she might win, if the counterfeit fell in the right group. But she was sure that chance would not favor her—not here in Hell. She had to exclude chance and guarantee it in three weighings, regardless.
She was getting a concentration headache. No matter what strategy she tried, she could not be sure of the answer in just three weighings. What was she to do?
The tears started. It didn't help that Satan spotted them and smirked. He knew he was winning—and the audience knew it too. Her final humiliation was upon her.
Oh, Pace! she thought. How did you do it?
Then, as ifitwere the answer to her prayer, the solution came. Pace—or something—had responded. Her memory clarified, and she knew the key. "Exchange!" she exclaimed.
She stepped before the scales. "You four—get on this side," she ordered the nearest demons. They obeyed, (romping to the large plate. "And you four—to this side." The next four obeyed.
When the eight stood on the two plates of the scales, Niobe released the fastenings and let the plates find their levels. They were not in balance. Slowly the left plate descended. There was a trifle more evil there. This was the hardest case to fathom, of course.
Now came the key step. She gestured to the innermost demon on the left, and to the one on the right. "You and you—switch places."
The two demons shrugged at this nonsense and exchanged places. There was a murmur in the audience. Satan scowled.
"You there," she said, pointing to those remaining on the right side. "Get off." They got off.
"You three," she said, indicating three of those in the unweighed group. "Get on." And the three marched on.
Niobe saw the Incarnations shaking their heads. They thought she had lost her common sense. Blanche and Blenda were bowing their heads with regret. Nobody believed in her—but she knew what she was doing. She hoped.
The scales, when the weighing proceeded, remained unbalanced, the left side still down. That told her much of what she needed to know. Had they become balanced, she would have known that the counterfeit was among the three she had removed, and light, because she had taken them from the light plate. Had they become unbalanced the other way, she would have known it was one of the two that had exchanged places; then she could have weighed the light one against a good one and defined it, for if it remained light, it was a light counterfeit, and if it balanced, then the other one would have been the heavy counterfeit. As it was, she knew that the counterfeit was one of the three she had neither moved nor switched, and it was heavy.
"You and you," she said, pointing to two of those three. "Weigh against each other." This was her third and final thread.
The two did. They balanced.
Niobe turned to the odd one out. "Hello, Magician!"
The Incarnations, surprised, applauded. Blanche and Blenda looked up in glad surmise. Satan's scowl deepened.
But Niobe knew it wasn't over yet. She could ask her son for the answer—but what he would tell her would be a lie. She had used up all her threads getting to this point;
she could not make him tell the truth.
She could get the truth by elimination. Only the truth was perfectly consistent; sooner or later, a pattern of lies would trip itself up.
"You have one question," Satan said.
"One question!" she exploded. "That isn't part of the bargain!"
"One soul is on the line; one question to be answered."
That had not been her understanding, but she realized that she hadn't made it tight. Mars, too, had overlooked this. The Father of Lies had found a loophole. She was stuck with Satan's interpretation.
One question! Had she been assured of a true answer, she could have asked, "How can I foil Satan's plot against Luna?" But his lie could be anything else—making that question an exercise in futility. She had to find the question whose lie would be instructive. That was more of a challenge than she had cared for!
Could she phrase a suitable yes-no question so that the lie would give her a direct answer? Only if she pretty well knew the answer already—and she did not.
Had Satan won after all? Not entirely, for she had gotten through to the Magician and identified him. She had threaded the maze. But until she got the answer she had come for and got out of Hell, her soul was not safe. Neither was mankind.
Her gaze passed over the audience again. There were the demons, licking their chops in anticipation of victory. There were some of the damned souls, looking soulful. There was Mars, his face set carefully neutral. He had made sure Satan didn't cheat, but he could not help her now.
The Incarnations—the personifications of the major factors governing the destiny of man. Thanatos, who had assumed the office and refused to take Luna's soul, because he loved her. A selfish reason, perhaps—but it had caused him to face down Satan directly, thereby preserving Luna for her eventual role in the salvation of man. One may marry Death...
Chronos, who had similarly fought Satan, in what was the future for the rest of them. She was glad, now, that she had comforted Chronos' successors in her past; they were all worthy holders of the office, even the child, and had/would do their part in securing the salvation of man.
Gaea, who had helped significantly. Niobe's daughter Orb seemed destined to assume that office, if the prophecy carried through. Surely she, too, would have to overcome Satan's evil designs, for the Prince of Evil always pounced on the newest and least experienced Incarnations. And one may marry Evil...
Surely not! That was unthinkable! Yet—she had in a sense given Orb to Satan. It had only been a commitment to keep her out of politics, capitalizing on Satan's error of identification, but any commitment to Satan was treacherous. What had she let her child in for? But Orb was a sensible and talented young woman, if a bit short on temper, and she well knew the treacheries of the one who had struck directly at her in the Hall of the Mountain King. Orb would never trust Evil!
Yet that prophecy kept coming true, stage by stage, in its own devious manner. Niobe hoped she was misinterpreting its import, here.
Thanatos had balked Satan's power by using an aspect of his own power over death. Chronos would do it by manipulating time. Each Incarnation fought Satan in his/ her own fashion. Now she, as Fate, had to prevent Satan from distorting her threads of life. Some aspect of her power should do it.
She felt a flash of realization. Her power—because it was for her that the Magician had left his message. That limited the range of options considerably! The solution to her problem should not lie in Thanatos' province, or Chronos', or any of the other Incarnations. It had to lie with Fate. In some special power that she, as Fate, could invoke.
But what power? She still couldn't ask what it was! Yet if it was a power of Fate, it had to be a power of an Aspect of Fate. There were three Aspects; in thirtyeight years she had pretty well learned the powers of Clotho, and none of them related to this situation. Her successor. Lisa, had discovered or developed a power she hadn't know about, the ability to change her appearance from one pretty young form to another, so perhaps there were others. But Clotho spun the threads; she did not manipulate them after they were in place. So it really wasn't likely to be Clotho.
Niobe had not been Lachesis long enough to fathom all her powers, but she had made progress. There could be some major power she had not yet discovered, but she doubted it.
That left Atropos. She knew very little ofAtropos' powers. The job seemed simple enough, however—merely to cut the measured threads. Not really enough to warrant a full separate Aspect, when she thought about it. Could there be something they had not realized?
This had become a three-coin problem! One coin she could set aside: Clotho. That left two to weigh. If she knew which one had the necessary power, she could focus exclusively on that, and have a much better chance to discover it. This wasn't the direct answer she had sought, but it would give her a better fighting chance.
"Magician, here is my question," she said. "Is it Atropos who has the power to defeat Satan's present scheme?"
"No," the demon-figure said.
There was a sigh of disappointment from the damned souls, and a chortle of glee from the demons. They thought she had failed; they didn't realize that the answer was a lie, or that she knew it was a lie. The Magician had just confirmed her guess, giving her the key to victory.
Satan rose from his throne of fire. "So you have failed, and you are Mine, you wretched woman!"
"Get away from me, you foul fiend!" Niobe snapped. "My threads are done, but so are your illusions. I threaded the maze."
"But you lost your answer," Satan said, walking toward her. Now flames appeared in a circle, enclosing the two of them and the twelve demon-forms.
"I got my answer!" she cried. "I knew from my weighings that you had enchanted my son to lie. Atropos is the one!"
"Ridiculous!" Satan said. The ring of fire closed in, burning the demons, who disappeared one by one in puffs of flame as they were ignited. "Everyone knows you lost." He reached for her, and now his hands were flaming too. "I have desired your soul for sixty years, and now it is Mine!"
"No!" Niobe cried. "I cry foul! I have the answer!"
Mars stood. "Satan, you presume," he said. His hand descended to touch the hilt of his great red sword.
Satan scowled, but he paused, and the ring of fire paused too. Four demons remained standing, including the one who was the Magician. "Your turn will come, Warmonger!" he muttered. Then, to the audience: "Then let the threadbare one present her answer, if she's got it. Here and now!"
"Agreed," Mars said. He remained standing, hand still resting at the sword.
So Mars had now acted directly to enforce the rules of the maze. She had been wise to choose him as referee.
Satan's head swiveled on around in a full circle and returned to cover Niobe. Now the flames danced within them. "Present your answer, saggy! I call your bluff!"
But Niobe had not worked it out yet; she knew only that she had the key to it. "In due course, stinkhorn."
"Now—or forfeit!" Satan said.
"There is no time limit, remember?" she insisted. "The maze is finished only when I have the answer—or do not have it. I can take twenty years, if I want to. Isn't that right, Mars?"
Mars smiled grimly. "That is right, Lachesis. Time is not specified. I lacked authority to agree to Here and Now, so I withdraw it."
"A blessed loophole!" Satan muttered. "Well, then, I'll wait—till Hell freezes over." He gestured, and the circle of flames resumed its contraction. "Which will not be soon."
Niobe knew that those flames could not hurt her—not as long as the game was unfinished. But probably they could make her quite uncomfortable. Satan was applying a hotfoot to distract her.
She concentrated as well as she could. So it was Atropos who had the power. Therefore it related to the cutting of threads. But Atropos could not cut a thread until it had been measured, and measuring was Lachesis' province. ' If the pawns of Satan on Earth could be eliminated by the action of Lachesis, why had the Magician's answer excluded her? He should have said "yes," so as to direct her toward Atropos, since he had to lie. So this should not involve measuring.
What would happen if Atropos cut an unmeasured thread? Well, if she cut the front end, it was disaster; they had discovered that the hard way. But it was too late to cut the front ends of Satan's agents in the Senate. They were already well established in the Tapestry. The other ends—if they had already been measured, cut to length and woven in, it should not be possible to cut them. Yet they could be cut, obviously. Atropos would never do it, because of the harm it would do to the Tapestry, but—
She was on to something here. When Lachesis measured a thread, she determined its potential. But not all threads lived up to their potential. Some broke early and were lost. The mortals thought of that as suicide—a selfarranged cutting. Normally the mortal instinct of selfpreservation prevented that, but when that instinct broke down—
And there it was. Niobe faced Satan. "When Atropos cuts a thread out of turn, after it has been measured and woven into the Tapestry, that thread will end despite the destiny Lachesis has measured for it. An unfated end is a suicide. What Atropos does, in effect, is terminate that person's impulse to exist—eliminating the instinct of selfpreservation. Without that instinct, the average person will soon get tired of the routine frustrations of life, and decide to try the Afterlife instead. Especially if he believes he is going to Heaven—or has a promise of preferred treatment in Hell."
"I don't treat suicides any better than the others!" Satan exclaimed, his flames brightening indignantly.
"But you have promised preferred treatment to those who do your bidding on Earth," Niobe said. "Such as the ones slated to replace the senators who have returned to enjoy their newfound youth. Well, those folk may come to you sooner than you anticipate."
"I'll assign them double torture if they do!" Satan raged. "I need them on Earth!"
"For twenty years or so," Niobe agreed. "But when Atropos cuts their threads early, so that they lose their indomitable desire to live, they won't care to waste all that time waiting for their reward."
"There is no reward!" Satan was almost engulfed in flames now.
"In which case, why should they agree to your bidding?" she asked sweetly. "You will have a lot of trouble garnering the votes you want if those folk realize that your promises are meaningless."
"You're bluffing!" Satan cried. "You wouldn't abrogate your own threads!"
"To save mankind?" she asked. "Perhaps I would not—but I suspect practical old Atropos would."
"You bet I would!" Atropos cried from the audience. "And without those corrupted votes, twenty years hence, the final decision will be left to the powers that will be—and the swing vote will remain with my granddaughter Luna!"
Satan didn't answer. He stood there, glowering, as the circle of fire closed in on them both. It ignited the last demon—the one who was the Magician. As the demon- semblance went up in smoke, her son stood there in his natural form. A slow, grim smile was spreading across his face.
Then the flame engulfed her, blotting out the rest of Hell. But Niobe felt no heat.
In a moment the air cleared. Hell was gone, and with it the audience. She stood in Mars' castle, where she had started this strange challenge. She was back in her physical body, her soul safe as an Aspect of Fate. Mars was standing before her, his smile very like that of the Magician.
You did it! Clotho cried in thought, kissing her internally.
Good job, woman! Atropos thought next.
Niobe laughed with relief and delight. "Upon my soul!" she exclaimed. She knew she had a long and satisfying role ahead of her as Lachesis.
In the first Incarnations novel, featuring Thanatos, I explored the subject of Death in a manner not commonly seen in fiction. That novel seems to be doing reasonably well, commercially and critically, and my fans have reacted favorably. But I noted in the "Author's Note" for that book that Death seemed to be lobbing shells at me while I worked on the novel. This was disquieting. Next year I wrote the sequel, featuring Chronos, and explored aspects of Time that other writers may have overlooked. I was then besieged by problems of time, and really had to struggle to complete the novel on schedule. I don't believe in the Supernatural—I regard it as fantasy—but I dreaded what I would encounter when I wrote the next, on the subject of Fate.
Well, now it is done, and this is my report on the manner Fate has affected me. I am broadening the scope here, for as I trust this novel shows, Fate is not a matter of a few months or particular episodes; it is an ongoing tapestry of interacting life, fashioned from the tangled skein of reality. So herewith my usual warning: the entertainment portion of this book is over, and this Note is of a more introspective nature. If you are not interested in the musings of anonymous writers, don't bother to read further; the novel can stand perfectly well without this.
How did I come to write Skein? Well, of course I went the usual route, presenting a summary of the notion to the editor, who put out a contract on it, and in the winter of 1983-84 I settled down to write the first drafts of the third Bio novel for Avon and the third Incarnations novel for Del Rey. You will remember my system: I so arrange my year so as not to have to type in my unheated study in winter, preferring to sit by the warm woodstove and pencil the first drafts of two novels, then type them in spring. This really is no answer, though, because the question is too limited. How did I, an established science fiction writer since 1963, come to be writing fantasy? How did I come to be a writer at all?
Let me start at the beginning, because the true course that took me to Niobe was more devious and difficult than most folks would care to realize. If parts of this narration seem uncomfortably personal—well, this is my nature.
There is an element in my fiction that appeals to certain readers who claim they don't find it in most other fiction, and much as I might be tempted to call it Competence or Quality or Genius, I really can't. There are other writers with these traits who are less successful than I am. I regard myself as a good writer, not a great one, and my current success has as much to do with the efforts of the publisher and its sales force as it does with my skill as an author. This isn't modesty on my part, false or otherwise; it's observation based on my desire to know the truth, whatever its nature may be.
I have what some others would call an obsession with truth, which manifests in a lively curiosity about practically everything that exists or fails to exist, a very strong desire for integrity—and contempt for its absence—and an omery attitude about ascertaining the facts and making them known. This attitude has gotten me in a lot of trouble in the past, but is paying off now, because I am working my way closer to comprehension of the nature of ultimate reality, and it helps. Of course I have a way to go yet, before that comprehension is complete; let's give it a millennium or two and see where I stand.
Anyway, I suspect that special element in my fiction is the personal touch. I am not content to follow the standard rules of plotting, characterization, and style, though these are good rules; I want my fiction also to live. When I succeed, it does live for me, and I hope for my readers, too. I do feel what my characters feel and I can cry, literally, when they hurt. I can suffer pangs of parturition when I finish with a novel; of course the words remain, but I am no longer in it; it has ceased to be an ongoing aspect of my life and has become part of the record of my achievement. Its thread has been cut, and I must proceed to the spinning and measuring of the next one. But while I'm in, I am involved.
Sometimes I dream about my characters. I love Niobe, I love Cedric, I love Luna and Orb; they live in my fancy much as living people do. Is it foolish to care for nonexistent folk? Then leave me to my foolishness! There is too much insensitivity and isolation in this world; there should be no shame in caring, even if only for constructs of the imagination. Indeed, in certain respects, I prefer imagination to reality and shall explain why. But this entails some baring of the nerves and is uncomfortable for some folk, including some writers. I happen to be more introspective and expressive than most, so I do get personal in these Notes. Bear with me I was born in Oxford, England, where both my parents had their degrees. Ours was a Quaker family, and my father worked with the British Friends Service Committee in Spain, supervising their relief program there during the Spanish Civil War. As I understand it, this was largely concerned with the feeding of hungry children, who had the worst of it during the ravages of combat. Generals like to speak of conquering territory and reducing the enemy's combative ability, but this is rough on the children whose territory it is; their houses are destroyed arid their families killed and their food disappears. That is the real meaning of war, after the generals have played their games and moved on to new challenges. I will have a good deal more to say on the subject of the suffering of innocents in war in the next novel in this series. Wielding a Red Sword; too often it is the blood of children that accounts for the color.
This war in Spain went from 1936 to 1939 and presaged World War II; the Nazi regime used it as a kind of testing ground for new weapons, then turned that experience into something that caused the rest of the world to take note. Many people were affected by the war in Spain, including such literary figures as Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, and science fiction writer Ted Cogswell... and me.
My father was arrested by the victorious Franco government; he disappeared, in the manner that has more recently been popularized in Latin America, but was fortunate enough to manage to smuggle out a note. It reached my mother, and, armed with that proof, she was able to get the authorities to admit that my father was in custody; they had, of course, denied it. Truth is the first casualty in war and in its aftermath. They agreed to release him conditionally: that he depart the country. That way the dictatorship did not have to admit to making a mistake— dictatorships just don't make mistakes—and got to take over the stores of food intended for children. I doubt that much of it reached those children thereafter. Thus it was that we came to America. It is entirely possible that had this false arrest and eviction not occurred, I would be living today in Spain, perhaps trying to write fantasy in Spanish.
I was not aware of such details at the time, but I felt their impact. I was not in Spain during the actual war; I remained in England with my sister, cared for by "Nana," a British girl hired for the purpose, as has been the custom there for perhaps a longer time than America has been colonized. Thus it is not surprising that some of my earliest and fondest memories are of Nana, whose actual name I never knew. Even my memory may be skewed; it was probably "Nanny." Then the time came for my sister and me to go to Spain. I learned to my chagrin that Nana, who I thought was my mother or equivalent, was not going. We were to be in the charge of two other people, who were in fact my parents. They had spared me the possible anguish of separation from them, before, by distancing themselves; they overlooked the discomfort of this separation.
I don't want to make more of this than it was, but my awareness of that separation has remained with me throughout my life. The echo of it is apparent in the separation of Niobe from her son; the things of my life do make their way into my fiction, though not in ways that any critic comprehends. I suspect the same is true for other writers.
In Spain I adapted gradually to the culture and the language; at age five I was beginning to speak Spanish. My sister had a pretty, lacy Spanish dress. I would wake in the mornings and see the moving shadows of palm fronds cast against my wall; I viewed this as an adventure, trying to guess which frond would dive farthest in the wind. I saw my first movie there. The Three Little Pigs. My memories of Spain are more populous and clear than those of England, though not as fond. But then, abruptly, we left. Oh, it was an adventure; we traveled to Portugal, to Lisbon—I remember the hotel room there—to board the ship Excalibur. No, as far as I know, that name has no connection to my later taste in fantasy, but perhaps it was a signal. As it happened, the Duke of Windsor—the former King Edward VIII of England—was taking that same ship to the New World to be Governor of the Bahamas; I remember seeing his car hoisted out of the hold at Bermuda. The Nazis had hatched a plot to kidnap or convert them to their cause, but that had been botched and he crossed the Atlantic unmolested.
Again, my memories of the time are more personal than historic; I was seasick, vomiting over the rail into the ocean—the Atlantic remains polluted to this day—and I had my sixth birthday at sea on August 6, 1940. The chef lacked sugar, because of the War, and so I was presented with a cake made of sawdust, nicely covered with icing and candles. It was a surprise when we cut that open! I was somewhat put out at the time. Today, ironically, when I can afford a genuine cake, I can't have it, because of my mild diabetes. I think my daughters are jealous; they've had many real cakes, but never a sawdust cake. For a present I received a harmonica, which I played ceaselessly thereafter; I trust the Duke appreciated the music. I have always liked harmonica music since then; it, too, appears in my fiction, most notably in the Adept series.
But this was my second uprooting, though not my last, as my family slowly fragmented and my parents eventually divorced. Gardeners will tell you that root-pruning doesn't hurt; I hesitate to agree. I did not understand the problem, though in retrospect I do. I had no continuing security of situation; both the people and the places closest to me kept changing. By day I got along, but darkness brought nightmare. I would lie awake at night, staring at the wan lamp that was my only security from nocturnal monsters.
If I were to personify my closest acquaintance of these years, it would be Fear; I have known it longer and better than anyone else would believe. I began to wet my bed at night, and this persisted, despite the efforts of others to shame, cure, or punish me, until I was ten years old; living folk simply lacked the leverage my nightmares had. I remember being in boarding school in first grade, when one of the bigger boys took off the sheet to expose me in my soaking nakedness. It didn't matter; what does one humiliation matter, when one is already in Hell?
My family moved again, and again, and I attended five different schools in the course of my three years in first grade. I learned how to fight, because I had to; I just couldn't learn how to read and I wasn't strong in math, either. That may explain why I was later to be a math instructor in the U.S. Army and an English teacher and professional writer in civilian life. In the throes of this childhood I developed nervous twitches of head and hands, and I counted things compulsively. I suspect early tests showed me to be of subnormal intellect. My physical growth slowed, then stopped; I became the smallest in my class, male or female. I suffered daily stomachaches, and every few months there would be a real gut-tearer that would incapacitate me all day. Not until I had a kidney stone at the age of forty-seven did I experience worse abdominal pain.
The only thing worse than being with other people, who picked on me physically and emotionally, was being alone. I would imagine that it was all one interminable bad dream and that eventually I would wake up and be back in England, the land of happiness. But it never happened, and in time I accepted the fact that I was in America to stay. There is a direct adaptation of this in my three-volume novel Tarot: a day in the life of an eight-year-old boy. It is literal. I retain an interest in Hell, as is evident in this novel, Skein. When I was wet and shivering in my bed in New England, my feet so cold they felt hot, I decided that if Hell was hot, I had no fear of going there.
There is no need to detail all of it, though there is a great deal more. I have, I trust, presented enough to show that my early life was not perfect, and that the realm of imagination seemed to have more to offer me than did reality. In this, I believe, was the root of my later passion for writing. How much better to organize my worlds of imagination so as to make them meet my needs more completely! To come to terms with the monsters that first pursued me and discover the joys that lay beyond. A popular song played on the radio while I worked on this novel, one line going, "My dream is real; reality is wrong." Oh, yes.
I finally discovered reading, progressing in a bound from exclusion to complete inclusion in the world of print. Suddenly I was in The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade, a novel of the Middle Ages written in 1869, about three hundred thousand words long. It took me months to get through it, but I read every word faithfully, and I lived in that world, and was desolate when it ended. Later I got into reading fantasy and science fiction, and there were worlds galore for me to romp in. I read slowly but deeply—to this day I am a slow reader—and tuned out all the world around me in favor of the universe perceived through the window of the printed page, sometimes to the annoyance of others who thought I was being perverse. But I needed that other universe; in a certain respect I owe my sanity to it, for it helped me to survive the rigors of the real world. I had no solid emotional place to stand in reality; the fantastic genre provided me with my anchorage. And so it was perhaps inevitable that I become a creature of that genre, as I am today. Piers Anthony is my strength; it is a pseudonym, but more of my reality is associated with it now than with my mundane identity. I was always a nonentity in Mundania, and remain so, but in fantasy I am a figure of consequence.
Perhaps ironically, my mundane existence has improved steadily since my teenage years and is a good one today by any standard. I have been married more than a quarter-century, have two bright and healthy daughters, and a pleasant lifestyle. Of course, much of this is runoff from my success in fantasy, for it is mundane money I receive for my fantastic efforts. But even the course of an improving life does not necessarily flow smoothly. I have shown the foundation of my need to write; of course it also helps to have some reasonable intelligence and creativity and perseverance and luck, and these have helped me. But I feel in one major respect I came at my career via the monkey's paw.
"The Monkey's Paw" is a famous story by W. W. Jacobs in which a couple is granted three wishes on a monkey's paw, but each wish is granted in a manner that makes it horrible. They wish for money—and their son is killed, so that the benefit comes to them. They wish him alive again, and the corpse reanimates and approaches. At last they wish him dead again, and are left with nothing.
Well, the mundane world gave me a wife, but I wanted more; I wanted to be a successful writer. It was an unrealistic ambition; only one in a hundred who make the effort ever breaks into professional print. But for eight years I kept trying. Our first child miscarried at four months add was stillborn; that was not only a personal loss, it eliminated my exemption from the military draft, so that, before my first year of marriage was done, I was in the U.S. Army. Our second baby was stillborn at five months, at the time when I declined to sign up for the U.S. Savings Bond program (as I recall, they then paid 2.5 percent interest) and was therefore removed as instructor and set to weed-pulling and similar duties, as well as being denied promotion beyond PFC. It was also the time when I was naturalized as an American citizen; in the final courtroom ceremony there were forty-nine Army wives and me. That event made the local TV news in Oklahoma; you don't see too many PPCs in uniform getting naturalized. I also had my first science fiction story accepted, by a magazine edited by Damon Knight—which folded before payment or publication, washing me out.
Back in civilian life, our third baby was born prematurely at six months, lived one hour, and died the day I lost my good job at an electronics company and had a doctor advise me that the mysterious fatigue I suffered was all in my head. One day in May 1962, and much of my mundane world was lost, again. It looked as if we would never be able to have a child of our own, my ability to earn a living was shot, and I was in serious doubt about my health, for I knew that my physical condition was not imaginary. It actually was ten years before it was diagnosed as diabetes; in the interim I was ridered on insurance for all mental diseases. No joke—and it wasn't funny at the time. One company tried to jack up my premium to almost double in addition to the rider; now I once sold insurance, so I know that was blatantly unethical, if not illegal.
So we lost three babies, and each loss was associated with dramatic and generally negative changes in our married life. But after that Day in May we gradually reorganized. My wife went to work, so as to earn our living while I made a more serious effort to become a writer— by putting my full time into it, instead of writing on the side. In that year I succeeded; I sold my first two stories. I was on my way at last—but I never would have had the chance, had any of those first three babies lived. There was the monkey's paw. My wife had to be free to work, and our expenses had to be low; a child would have nullified that. I would never have sacrificed my babies, had I known, had I had any way to save them—yet their loss enabled me to achieve my ambition. Thus it was that I became a writer, by the devious and often unkind machination of Fate. Motive had at last been joined by opportunity. That sort of thing, too, is reflected in this novel.
So I had become a writer. Even then, the devious route had problems and surprises. I couldn't earn a living on stories; the word-rates were too low and editors too fickle. So I moved into novels, and it was a struggle, because short fiction was my natural length. It wasn't until I sold my fifth novel, Macroscope—actually the ninth I had written, and it had been rejected by five publishers, for book editors are fickle too—that I felt comfortable in that length. Then I liked it well, and I gave up on stories; today I have had more novels published than stories, which is unusual for a story writer.
But by then I had trouble in Parnassus: a publisher was taking in money for subsidiary rights but neither reporting them on the statements nor paying me my share. I protested in a private letter—and got summarily blacklisted. I protested privately to a writers' organization—which tunneled my letter on to the publisher and advised me that I had acted rashly and might be guilty of libel.
There were other complications, but the upshot was that I got a lawyer, got most of my money, lost several publishers because of blacklisting, and departed in deep disgust from that writers' organization, which was evidently operating under false pretenses. I damn well did have the right of the case and detest such dishonesty. After that, times were lean for me, as a writer; my success fell behind that of others who had come into the picture when I did, and I piled up a total of eight unpublished novels even as my name was deleted from contention for awards. Parnassus is no kinder than the U.S. Army to those who stand on their rights, and Satan smiles.
But I had not lost all my publishers. I survived, though my income from writing was not great. My wife continued to work. Another writer showed me how to sell novels from summaries, rather than writing them complete; that meant that instead of selling part of what I wrote, I wrote only what sold. That one change in marketing caused my income to triple. Meanwhile editors were shifting about, publishers were buying each other out, and most of those who blacklisted me went elsewhere. Markets reopened. I can't say this was because the establishment had any change of heart; Parnassus, like dictators, doesn't admit error. Mainly it was that I never gave up and I now had an agent to help fight the war. It's harder for a publisher to blacklist an agent, because he represents a number of writers, some of whom are important enough to have clout. My leverage had improved.
Two of the editors I had worked with on stories moved into books: Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey. They remained interested in my work. But there was a problem; I was writing my science fiction for Avon, who had always treated me well, and Avon had the option. That is, in the vernacular, they had first dibs on my next novel in the genre. So—I expanded into a "new" genre, one I had had little success with before: fantasy. It was a purely tactical move, to take advantage of a new market. Avon was generous enough to agree to this, with the understanding that if Del Rey (technically that imprint didn't exist then, but let's not quibble) did not like my fantasy, Avon would have the next crack at it. But Lester did like it, and thus I came to write A Spell for Chameleon. It wasn't perfect, either in summary or in manuscript, but I had the fortune to encounter in Lester an editor who knew what he was doing. That, unfortunately, is rare in Parnassus. I revised the novel per his advice, and it was published.
I had the additional fortune to encounter in Judy-Lynn an executive who knew what she was doing; that, too, is rare, but it manifests in the type of presentation, promotion, and sales push novels get, and this can make an enormous difference. Spell took off like magic. It won the August Derleth Fantasy Award in England, where they evidently hadn't gotten word about my bad reputation. A leading American genre newspaper got sudden amnesia and failed to list the August Derleth awards that year, and of course Spell took no American awards. But it became one of my most commercial novels, and the Xanth series it commenced has about as many fans as any.
In this manner I discovered that I liked fantasy. Oh, I had always liked it as a reader; it just hadn't scored for me before as a writer. Now I found that it was easy and fun to write, and the readers liked it too. There was then developing a high tide in fantasy, fostered in significant part by Del Rey, and I just happened to get into it in time to surf my way to the top—through no initial effort of strategy or timing of my own. Chance put me into it—or, if you prefer. Fate. Once I was in, of course, I was quick enough to capitalize on my situation. Thus by this devious and seemingly coincidental route my serious career in fantasy proceeded. My income tripled again... and again. I now have a better career in fantasy than I had dreamed of as a writer; reality has surpassed imagination. One series led to another. And that, roughly, is how I came to write this present novel. Skein. It is not the path I would have chosen, but it got me here. For those who tell me they would like to be just like me and write fantasy the way I do, I pose this question: do you really? Then go fetch your monkey's paw.
Reality has a way of weaving itself into my fiction, whether I will or no. I had many notes for minor examples of this for this novel, but I fear they would become tedious in detail, so I'll go into detail on only one. There are several major themes that recur in my novels that critics seem to be unable to perceive, such as the value of integrity or my effort to merge the city (science fiction) with the country (fantasy). These themes have complex personal bases that I may unravel at another time; there is a good deal more on my mind than simple entertainment, though I do feel that clarity and entertainment are paramount in fiction. I normally write on more than one level. The top level is like the conscious mind, concerned with immediacies; the reader can buzz through and enjoy it without stretching his mind. The nether level gets into symbolism and feeling and meaning and theme; it puts on record my world view, for those who care to examine it. As far as I know, no critic has ever perceived this level in my fiction, but many of my readers seem to grasp it, and, of course, it is for them I write.
One of my major themes relates to music. I believe that man is most fundamentally distinguished from animal by his art, and an aspect of that art is music. I believe in the power of music, as I believe in the power of the word. At critical junctures in my novels you will find music, right back to the first one I had published, Chthon, which shows a quest for a broken song and the effort to make it whole again; and Macroscope, where music is the key to the mystery of the universe; and right on into my fantasy series, this one included. The heart of my feeling is in song. I try to name the particular song I have in mind, because I want the reader to hear the music too, and share my experience. You saw it in Pale Horse in the hymn scene, and the hint of it in Hourglass as Orlene commits suicide by her piano. (Did you note Orlene's honey-hair, the same as Niobe's? Do you really suppose that's coincidence?) You will see it in Red Sword, when a stutterer leams to sing, and emphatically in Green Mother, when Gaea sings with Satan—and falls in love.
And of course you see it here. The song that starts Skein is not identified in the text. It is The Bonnie Boy, and the recording I have of it is sung by the Irish lass Mary O'Hara. It tells the story as I have it in the first three chapters, the romance of a young woman and a bonnie boy, and its tragic end. Of course I have embellished it somewhat—but if you like my story, perhaps you will also like the song. I don't know whether that record can still be purchased. It is Songs of Erin, on the London label; I bought it in New York in 1959.
The Shepherd's Song, in various guises and titles, has its own story: "Come live with me and be my love..." In the course of Izaak Walton's The Complete Angler (sometimes rendered "Compleat"), which dates from 1653, there are two songs presented, and these are the two used here. Actually, the first one originated with Christopher Marlowe in the sixteenth century. As poems they may not seem like much, but with the music it is another matter. Seldom, I suspect, has a love song had a more enduring appeal—or a snappier rejoinder.
There is a more recent story on another song. The Wetlands Waltz. I have an interest in nature, especially the wilderness environment, as also shows throughout my work, and in this case it overlapped my interest in music. A couple of years ago one of my daughter Penny's forestcamp counselors stopped by to say hello and meet Penny's horse. Blue, who also appears in various guises in my fantasy. The counselor's name was Jill Jarboe. This winter she sent Penny a cassette tape: Songs from the Water World.
It seems that Jill Jarboe had formed a group with four of the boys in the summer camp, called it The Ecotones, and produced this collection of ecologically oriented songs. It's an integrated group; Jill Jarboe is white, while Mike Carey, Mike Kinsey, Shaun Martinez, and Andrew Rock are black. (I support integration, as may also be evident in this novel.) This group is not a high-powered, big-promotion thing; it's just an attempt, I think, to popularize the worthy cause of ecological awareness. Penny more or less put the earphones on my head one morning as I was eating breakfast and reading the newspaper, and turned on the cassette recorder, and there it was. I was impressed; they were nice songs, not your Top-Fortytype popular stuff, but pleasant and quite to the point for those who value Nature as I do.
So I used one of those songs here in Skein, with permission, and anyone who is interested in obtaining the original cassette should write to Jill Jarboe at the address listed in the credit behind the title page of this novel. My reference to The Wetlands Waltz is actually anachronistic, as the song did not exist in 1915 where this novel places it—but of course Chronos could have heard it and carried it back. This is, after all, fantasy; we are not much concerned with anachronism.
Meanwhile, as I worked on the several stages of my writing. Fate stirred her fickle finger in the ongoing minor maelstrom of my daily existence in sundry ways. Life does, after all, go on, and mine is packed with tokens of my interests and orneriness. I bought another Songs from the Water World cassette and sent it to an environmental organization of which I am a life-member, suggesting that they might review it in their national publication for other members who liked a positive approach to ecological awareness. They never responded. I might as well have dropped the cassette into the Void. Then they sent me three separate form-solicitations for contributions. But I had seen how they answered their mail, and the Golden Rule came to my mind, and I did not respond.
I bought some of those sonic bug-repelling devices you see advertised all over, as I don't like hurting bugs if they aren't actually biting me, but don't like roaches in my food or fleas on my dogs—then had a months-long hassle to get a refund, finally involving a visit to a lawyer and a stiff note to the balky local Better Business council, because the devices simply didn't work as represented. I queried the "Troubleshooter" column of the newspaper: is there any objective evidence that any of these sonic devices work? So far, none has turned up.
Our Basenji dog, who we adopted eleven years ago after he was run over and the owner never came to claim him or pay the vet's bill for rebuilding the bone of his leg with wire, died of complications of age in the quarter-hour that I received the hardbacked poster for Dragon on a Pedestal used at the American Booksellers' Association convention in Dallas: an unfortunate juxtaposition. Now that poster graces the wall near the dread spot. That was not my favorite dog, but death disturbs me with an intensity that others do not seem to understand. I know that someday I will have to deal with the death of someone a lot more important to me than that dog, and I don't know how I'm going to make it.
I went out on my usual three-mile run, and returned to a different address; the Post Orifice had swallowed our science-fictiony "Star Route" and disgorged "Pineleaf Lane"—fortunately we had gotten to name our own street—sending us into a tailspin of address-change notifications, because our daily mail can amount to as much as ten pounds at a time, We received the notice in March 1984, advising us to notify all correspondents by the end of December 1983. The P.O. expects a lot of an anachronistic fantasy writer.
I got into second-draft typing of Skein and hit a record rate for me—65,000 words in five days, despite a cold snap into the thirties that forced me to bundle up as if in the arctic, and a jamming tab on my manual typewriter. Seems there are only about two writers in the genre who still use a manual machine, and I'm one of them—I think Harlan Ellison is the other—but they don't make manual Olympias anymore, and this one is ten years and ten million words old, so I may yet have to vault to the computer word-processing age, getting custom equipment so I can retain my special keyboard. You know, word-processing is hailed as a great boon to writers, but I do more actual writing in pencil and on the manual typewriter than anyone I know who is in word-processing; technology does not substitute for imagination and a Dvorak keyboard.
Anyway, after those five days I had to take three days off to catch up on forty more letters. Happened again next month in the final five days typing of the submission draft; in one day forty-seven items of mail arrived, ranging from packages of books to fan letters, including one from a hopeful writer asking whether I would read his 800-page novel and give advice how to get it published, one from a publisher asking for a favorable comment on its enclosed advance proof of a novel, and one from another publisher who sent complimentary copies of a novel I read and blurbed in December. It's a funny thing, seeing my name printed on the cover of someone else's novel; too bad they didn't bother to make the corrections of errors I called out.
I may have noted before the irony that when I had time to read everything in the genre, I lacked the money to buy the stuff; now that I can afford it, I lack the time even to keep up with what I am sent free. I suppose that's parallel to the cake problem I face as a diabetic. And a note from an eight-year-old girl: my youngest fan so far, the same age as Xanth. I answered that one immediately; after all, I was once that age myself. The other twenty-nine fan letters from that day I'll tackle right after I finish typing this Note and my summaries of the final two novels in this series.
I pinched the nerve in my back three times in succession, trying too hard on my exercises, and had to call a ten-day halt while the sciatica abated; now I am easing up on those exercises, and that's a significant private turning point. Every year at my birthday I note the levels I do, and at my forty-ninth birthday I broke all my birthday records, but at my fiftieth I'll break none. I'm two-thirds of the way through my life, and the tide has turned during this novel.
You know. Skein just might turn out to be my fiftieth book to see print. The writing of it was punctuated several times by calls from my agent, setting up the sale of eight of my back books in a package; those fans who bug me about where to find my out-of-print material may soon have an answer.
During that sciatica—that's a shooting pain in the leg where there is no injury; the pinch is actually in the spine, but the body thinks it's in the leg—I glanced at the published comment I had made a year before on Gordon Dickson's Dorsai series (actually it's the Childe Cycle, but I don't know any better), and saw my reference to "Eileen?" therein. Suddenly I had a pain in my mind to match that in my leg, for several days. In Dickson's novel Soldier, Ask Not we see the death of an innocent young man, drafted to fight a war he does not understand on a far planet. He revives from his lethal injury long enough to speak the name of his wife, Eileen, as if trusting her to come and make the hurt go away. That tore me up; I have a deep feeling for those who are taken far from what they have known and loved, and who plaintively wish for return that is impossible.
But on: we bought a videotape recorder, a great boon to my daughters, who have more time for TV than I do. Now they watch the weirdest stuff, some of it unsuitable for the fathers ofteenaged girls. Sigh. We also got a cordless remote phone extension, so that I no longer have to dash from the study to the house just in time to catch the dial tone after the last ring; that does simplify my life. My daughter Penny finally got her driver's license; whew! One down, one to go. My other daughter Cheryl took second place in a verbal presentation of her paper on the conservation of soil and water. That was a fitting topic, during this novel; I had taken time to help drill her on it, and suspect she really took first place but that the judges were closet sexists. Of course I may not be completely objective.
I saw a bright triangle of stars in the morning sky, so I ferreted it out in the star books and discovered it was the constellation Libra—the scales. Yes, I was writing the coin-weighing scene along about then. Libra is Penny's sign, because she reads a lot—you know, the Library. I finally got a line on a mysterious, lovely melody I'd heard in fragments for years; I think it is titled Twin Sons of Different Mothers. Reminds me of this novel again, with virtually twin girls, daughters of different mothers. I quest for melodies as I do for story notions; I am haunted by those that flash a few tantalizing notes and disappear, leaving me longing.
I also continued my quest for the Perfect Ping-Pong Paddle—and believe I have found it. It's made of graphite, very light and fast, and the backside has a "long pips" surface that sends the opponent's spin right back at him, messing him up instead of me. Lovely! I used it to defend the honor of Fantasy at my first SF convention, NECRON OMI-CON, in Tampa, in Oct-ogre 1983, the month that three of my novels were published. Of course I took my daughters with me; they loved it, and now they're con-crazy. One of my correspondents attended, and when she introduced herself I didn't make the connection. I wish I were better at spot memory of names!
Phone call from Bowker, publisher of Fiction 18761983, in response to my curt note about the way they listed some of my novels under Anthony and some under Piers, omitted my first New York Times bestseller Ogre, Ogre, and listed my mundane name nine times in succession. I had suggested that they hire a proofreader, since this volume costs $100 and is supposed to be comprehensive. They were apologetic, but noncommittal about the proofreader. Call from a Colorado fan who wished to visit me; he would be traveling with a school group of about twenty people and needed advice where they could stay cheaply. My wife phoned about and finally arranged free camping for them at a local park, and we went out to talk to the park people and clarify that we had the camping permit for them... and then the group changed its mind and went elsewhere. But the fan did come to visit me, and I chatted with him for a couple of hours. He wrote later that it was the high point of his life. He was generous;
I'm a pretty ordinary character in person, really not worth that sort of effort.
My wife spied a sale on some nice enclosed bookshelves; now we are in the process of dismantling my rickety prior shelving and setting up the beautiful new ones. At last my file copies of my own books are getting proper treatment! I keep one file copy of every edition of every book I have published, hardcover, paperback, British, German, French, Japanese and so on; at present that makes about 150 volumes, and it's growing.
In the spring came the mundane political primaries, and I had to watch the best man in the field, former Governor Reuben Askew of Florida, bite the dust in New Hampshire. Once again the political process wends its inevitable way to mediocrity. And I heard about a recent survey; 96 percent of Americans believe in God, 90 percent of those also believe in Heaven and Hell (it's hypocritical to believe in one without the other); only 4 percent expect to go to Hell. Oh, yeah? Well, I have news for someone....
Thus my mundane life, proceeding in its petty pace from day to day. You can see that when the fantastic is removed from my life, not much of interest remains. If you fell asleep during the last paragraph, I understand. Now it is time to separate from this novel, too, and I do it with a certain muddled mixture of emotions. In one sense I am satisfied, for I believe Skein to be a decent novel. I feel nostalgia for the experience of it that is now passing behind me. I am concerned as I anticipate its coming course through the gauntlet of the publication process and the cynosure of the great readership beyond. I feel advance resentment for the scoffing some reviewers will do about its merits and demerits and the inevitable sneer at this Note. A recent survey shows that the more ignorant a reviewer is, the more critical he is; any professional writer could have told you that twenty years ago. In fact Alexander Pope told us two and a half centuries ago:
Tis hard to say if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill.
But he had the answer:
Let such teach others who themselves excel,
And censure freely, who have written well.
I am also apprehensive about the flood of mail this Note may generate when the novel sees paperback publication. Oh, yes, I get mail on my Notes; sometimes the reader doesn't bother with the novel at all, just the Note. I had one letter from a person who fished my novel out of a trashcan, read only the Note, wrote me a fan letter, and (I suspect) threw the book back in the can. But he really liked the Note. Well, I daresay he got his money's worth.
I do try to keep up with my mail, but after doing 702 letters last year—yes, I remain a compulsive counter—I see the handwriting in the figurative bruises my head makes against the wall, and suspect that my performance in this respect will turn the tide and begin to ebb, as with my exercises. They aren't all simple notes, either; I have to try to make meaningful responses to those who wish to become instant successful writers—if I had known how to do that, I could have saved myself eight years!—or who ply me with complex lists of questions for their research papers, or try to convert me to Jesus (I came to know Jesus when I put him in Tarot as a character, but I don't think that's what they mean), or who are contemplating suicide. This is no joke; there are some very real problems out there, and I do not feel competent to address them—yet I have to try, because these folk really do want my input, such as it is. I remind myself that it is much better to be relating to my readers than to be emotionally alone.
If Fate is the plot of life, then feeling must be its content. To be known, to be needed, to be loved—this may be the true problem of our society. We see people turning to alcohol, to mind- and mood-affecting drugs, to gambling, to casual sex both hetero and homo, to violence, to cults, to self-destructive behavior, when these may be but poor sublimations for the recognition, interaction, security and love they truly crave. Isn't it an awful irony that some of us must even turn to fantasy to glean some semblance of the companionship we are denied in mundane existence, and we cannot even cry "Eileen"! We suffer all manner of compulsive behavior, in futile reaction to fundamental inadequacies of emotion we do not comprehend.
As I worked on Skein, a woman was gang-raped on a barroom pool table; when the rapists were tried and convicted, women of that community demonstrated in favor of the rapists. Loveless sex pervades the media. Preschool children are sexually molested by the staff of the nursery—and this is said to be only a hint of the abuse and incest that is not rare but is typical today. Satan's mischief, surely.
Yet there is also joy in the world. Some find their solace in religion, in the belief that God loves them. Some find it in close family ties. I myself have gained some share of the Heaven of a close family life, after emerging from the Hell of the denial of it, but I remain scarred. I don't like to travel, for as a child I found that my travels had no returning. I don't like to leave my family, because I remember how fragile family existence can be. Some regard me as overprotective as a father, but I resolved at the outset that my children would never be exposed to what I was and, after losing three, I know that no life is guaranteed.
I turn down most invitations to be Guest of Honor at conventions, not from any dislike of people or any fear of public appearances—stage fright, like writer's block, I conquered long ago, and I am quite at ease among fans— but simply because there is nowhere I'd rather be than home. I trust that after reading this Note, those who have been disappointed by my relative isolation from the public will understand that there is nothing frivolous in this. It is one of the ways I have come to terms with the problem of my own existence. I hope that what I write helps others come to terms with theirs.
Copyright © 1985 by Piers Anthony Jacob
ISBN: 0-345-31885-4