And Eternity

by Piers Anthony

  The Incarnations linked hands and disappeared. Jolie was left with Roque. "I will remain with Vita as long as she needs me," she told him. "I hope you can settle for that."

  "I can settle for that," he said.

  "We thought Nox was plotting something sinister, but instead she plotted to save the cosmos. Why do you think she did that?"

  "I suspect she feared the game would end if she did not, and she wanted the game to continue. Even Nox must get bored with just dreams. Also, it may be that she really does like the baby, with his ornery malady. She well understands the undisciplined passions of the male. So, in effect, she traded for Gaw-Two, giving good value in return."

  "I suppose so," Jolie agreed, awed now by the audacity of it. "Certainly she made our lives more interesting."

  Jolie returned the body to Vita. "Orlene's a Holy Ghost!" the girl said, and giggled. Then she sobered. "Gee, Roque, you gave up being an Incarnation, to be with me!"

  "It was selfish of me, I know," he agreed.

  "You are still God to me."

  "You are still a nymphet to me."

  "Yeah? And what are you going to do about it?" But she gave him no time to decide. She leaped into his arms.

  Jolie shook her head, in her thoughts. These were interesting times!

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  During the course of my work on this novel, we moved. Did it affect my writing? Perhaps you can judge by the change in the text at what point the move occurred. I will tell you later in this Note, so you don't have to write me any letters. Leave the letters to those who are properly outraged by the novel's theme and conclusion.

  This is the final novel of this series; I have no plan to write another. Readers have suggested that I follow up with the Lesser Incarnations, but I am disinclined; after God, all else is anticlimactic. Originally I planned on just five novels, because I thought that readers would not care for the inclusion of Satan and God, but I became satisfied as I read my voluminous fan mail that the readers did indeed want those Incarnations covered. So I extended the series, and thereby hangs a tale.

  It happened that at about the point I made the decision to extend the series, I also decided to change publishers. I do not change wives or publishers lightly, but the latter is more likely than the former. I was having serious editorial problems, and felt that the integrity of my work could be guaranteed only by making the change. When push came to shove, that counted more than either money or convenience.

  The change of publishers was complicated. Options had to be voided and new understandings worked out. My literary agent—the man who handled my American sales—labored heroically to work things out with the old and new publishers. By the time it was done, some 45 of my novels had been affected to some degree, and more than half a million dollars was allocated. My first 17 fantasy novels remained with Del Rey, while the new Adept trilogy went to Putnam/Ace and the final two novels of the Incarnations series to Morrow/Avon. A new Xanth trilogy also went to Avon. I had resolved, you see, to split my fantasy between publishers, so as not to have too many eggs in one basket.

  This was an amicable change, complicated by the shock of the death of Judy-Lynn del Rey. Del Rey was the publisher who put me on the best-seller lists and made me one of the most successful writers of the genre. I did not want to leave, and they did not want me to leave; it was just one of those things. I still receive enormous royalties from my titles with them, and great piles of fan mail, and expect to do new business with them in the future. Certainly we wish each other no evil.

  But in the complicated process of transition, there was a minor glitch. Del Rey did not get the word about my two new Incarnations novels, and on the cover of the hardcover edition of Being a Green Mother, printed, "A Brilliant Conclusion to an Extraordinary Series." I notified them of the error when I saw the cover proofs, but it was evidently too late; those words remained.

  Several readers wrote in to inquire about that, when the hardcover edition was published, because I had told them that there were more Incarnations coming. I had to explain about the glitch, with some irritation. One reader hit the ceiling. He decided to make a public campaign against the publisher because of the lie. I demurred, explaining that though the matter annoyed me, I could not claim it was malice; it was a foul-up, of the kind that occurs not infrequently in Parnassus. Certainly I would not allow my name to be used in an attack on this publisher, who had treated me very well over the years. I hoped to get it straightened out privately. This reader then attacked me, claiming that I had to be lying, and demanding, in abusive language, a clarification of my lie.

  Well, now. Few folk have the temerity to address the Ogre in such fashion, and those who do, generally regret it. I have too much mail as it is, and it is enough of a chore to keep up with the positive letters without having to take on such negative missives too. My response to him began: "Listen, Blivet-Brain, I have little patience with fools or knaves." Thereafter it became less polite. For those who are not up on the vernacular of a prior generation, I should explain that a blivet is a five-pound container with ten pounds of excrement. I understand it is a useful weapon when arguments get ugly.

  So now you know why I changed publishers, and some of the consequences thereof. You may consider this an update on my autobiography, Bio of an Ogre, which was published in hardcover in Mayhem (naturally!) while I was writing this novel. I admit to running second to Harlan Ellison when it comes to perpetual trouble, but believe me, I am trying to close the gap. An ogre's reach should exceed his grasp, else what's Hell for?

  But I was trying to tell you about my move. In 1977 we moved to the forest, preferring it to the city. We still prefer it, but three things have changed. First, our financial resources have improved, as my writing income progressed from five figures to six figures, thanks to the support of readers like you. About ten percent of each book of mine you buy comes eventually to me in royalties, and that adds up when sales are good. So we can now afford a six-figure house instead of a five-figure house. Second, our daughters grew up. Penny is now in college, and Cheryl, having made the highest SAT score in the history of her school, is about to go to college too. It is an irony that after I struggled to reach a level of income that would enable us to afford college for our daughters, Cheryl is getting Merit Scholarships that make it relatively cheap. My fault, as I should have seen it coming. I married the smartest woman I could catch, because I wanted smart children. I didn't want my children following my example and taking three years to get out of first grade. But do you know what college kids do? They came back home for surprise visits, with six of their classmates in tow. Three of each sex. They think it is like a convention, where they can pile up eight deep in one room, sharing two and a half sleeping bags and a submarine sandwich. I won't try to explain why this disturbs parents, who are, of course, hopelessly out of touch with current mores. I'll just say that we now need more room than we did a decade ago. Third, we were already so crowded that we had to thread mazes to get from one part of a room to another. I am a writer, you know; I have books, and they keep multiplying, and no, I can't part with a single solitary one without suffering a seizure of one or two valves of the heart. When folk visit, we have to move books out of chairs so they can sit down. Actually, piles of books can make decent temporary chairs, but visitors don't seem to understand very well about this, particularly when the piles fall over.

  So we moved, as I said. It was my wife's project; she took about six months without much sleep drawing up the house plans, and our friendly neighborhood building contractor, a man named Lou Dolbow, undertook the construction.

  According to the contract, the house was to be complete in Jamboree 1988, but I hoped that it would move along well so that we would be able to move before then: say OctOgre. The Ogre hates to travel, but when he does, that's the month. That would save me from having to saw and haul and split wood for the winter's heat. I like working with wood, and since we burn only trees that have died and fallen naturally, nothing
suffers. It is good exercise, and our wood stove not only heats our house, it heats our water, too, so that our bills are small. I have not counted the hours I spend per winter chopping wood, but I think it would be somewhere over 20. Florida is warm, and our house is insulated, so our needs are relatively small, but still it takes a cord or so. The problem with this is that I now earn much more than it would cost me to pay for an automatic heating system; my time spent on free wood is no bargain. So the prospect of recovering those 20+ hours for my paying work appealed.

  Well, the house wasn't finished early. We had to go and struggle with the cutting up of a huge fallen tree whose main trunk arched over the forest floor: a real challenge. Yes, I succeeded in binding the saw several times, but finally got the job done, and we loaded wood into our car and hauled it to the house. Why didn't I use the wheelbarrow? Because the tree was about 3/16 of a mile distant—naturally, it had fallen on our farthest piece of property—and downhill from our house. A couple of wheelbarrow loads convinced me that there had to be a better way. So we had wood for the winter, and the time was lost; my writing slowed accordingly.

  The house was not complete in Jamboree. When would it be done? In FeBlueberry, Lou assured us. But it wasn't done then either. The completion date receded like the horizon, always about two weeks distant. Marsh, Apull, Mayhem, while I worked on this novel, expecting to break off momentarily for the move and never quite doing so. What was the problem? Well, a contractor does not do it all himself; he subcontracts the various parts of the job, and coordinates the whole. Again and again one crew or another would be scheduled for a job, and wouldn't show—and so other crews were delayed, because they could not do their jobs until the first was done. Or something would be done wrong, so that corrections entailed more delay. The choice seemed to be between quality and speed, and Lou opted for quality. There seems to be a failure in the work ethic; many people just do not seem to be much interested in working, or in doing their jobs promptly and correctly. I wonder to what extent this represents the effects of the so-called drug culture. The availability of increasingly potent drugs like cocaine (but not Spelled H, yet) has cost me more than one associate and made direct and indirect mischief of more than incidental nature. I stay clear of such things, avoiding even nicotine and caffeine; I resist taking aspirin or the equivalent unless I have a rare bad headache. I want no baffle between me and reality, so I am usually in possession of my natural faculties. I suspect that many others are not.

  You know, I am not the greatest writer in the world, but I am one of the most successful. Perhaps this offers a hint why: I always do my job, promptly and well. I am amazed at the number of others who don't. I have pride in my work, which will cause me to leave a good publisher, at great inconvenience, rather than allow a novel to be unduly compromised. I will speak out in protest when I see wrong done. Not only does this attitude seem to be atypical, it has brought me the reputation of a troublemaker—in fact, of an Ogre. As I watched my new house being built, I couldn't help wishing that there were more ogres on the crews. I'll go into more positive detail about the house further along, but first let me change subjects.

  There is another huge tax on my working time: the mail. It takes me about half an hour to answer the average letter, so the hours lost can be calculated by dividing the number of letters by two. I decided to get a secretary, so that I could still answer personally but not lose as much time. But we had no room for such a person. Our new house, twice the size of our old one, would have room; I could put her in a corner with my backup computer system and let her do the letters. (I say her, but a male secretary would do as well, or a very smart robot.) I figured on hiring maybe a retired teacher, so that I wouldn't have to teach her basic English, and educating her in the type of response I normally did, so that I wouldn't have to dictate each letter verbatim. I receive quite a number of "Dear Mr. Anthony, I am eleven years old and this is my first fan letter. Here are ten puns for Xanth. When is the next Xanth novel coming out, and what's it about?" missives, and a fairly standard answer would do for these, with whatever individual touches were appropriate. So, once we moved, I could look for such a secretary.

  And then we kept not moving. Had we moved in OctOgre, and set up secretarily then—well, I answered 99 letters that month, which was about standard. If a secretary cut my average answering time in half, that would be about 25 hours saved. Right—one winter's worth of wood! In NoRemember the pace increased, to 132 letters. This was because I had several novels published in the fall season, and the mail follows the sales figures. Readers keep asking why I don't have my address published in my novels, so that more folk could write to me. I hope I don't need to answer that. In DisMember there were 166 letters, bringing the total for the year to 1393. Understand, that's just the ones I answered; I don't answer them all, though I do the best I can. But when I could move in Jamboree...

  By this time Fate had discovered mat I had no ready way to handle letters, because I couldn't get a secretary because I couldn't move. I was tied down. So the Jamboree total was 221, a record. That meant that my approximate 180-hour working month (actually, I'm working all the time, but I don't count meals, chores, reading [unless it is direct research], exercise, family demands and such, so it nets 40 to 45 hours a week) lost about 110 hours to the mail. Between that and wood chopping, guess how fast my paying work was moving then! I had to do something. I had already resolved to avoid conventions and similar distractions for the year, to recover time, but it was draining away as fast as I could save it.

  FeBlueberry is a short month. I answered only 163 letters. That meant that just over half my working time was available for my writing. But somehow I wasn't satisfied; I wanted more. I was working on Xanth #12, Man from Mundania, and it was moving well yet taking an extra month because I put so little time in on it. Xanth is relatively easy and fun to do. What would happen when I came to Incarnations #7, a more significant challenge? When the #$%&*!! would that house get finished?

  Then in mid-Marsh we saw an article about a local lady who was setting up a business called "My Private Secretary." She would supply secretarial skills for small businesses of the area for $15 an hour. Since she had her own office and was self-employed, no special paperwork was needed. So I called her, and next day my wife and I went to see her. We decided to try it. I scribbled notes for my answers on the backs of the envelopes, and she typed them up into coherent letters. Then I reviewed the letters, signed them, and mailed them.

  It worked. She handled most of my fan mail, while I continued to handle my business mail and those fan letters requiring special handling—suicidal teenagers, for example. I timed some batches, and concluded that it was now taking me just under fifteen minutes per secretarial letter, average. Half my letter time was being saved! As a result, this novel, started at the same time as the secretary, moved better than the last one had, despite being more difficult. I was devoting more time to it. It was a wonderful feeling, putting about three quarters of my working time into my novel instead of only half my time. And we hadn't even moved yet! The secretary was not conversant with my work and had to check with her husband, who knew the genre. He assured her that I was a legitimate writer. I gave her a box of my books, and paid her the going rate per hour for reading them, because she has a better idea how to answer a letter when she knows what the fan is talking about. Thus when I scribble "Not end; Evil out 11-88," she can type "No, Being a Green Mother is not the conclusion of the series, despite what it says on the cover. The next one, For Love of Evil, concerning Satan, will be published in hardcover in NoRemember 1988. I hope you like it as much as you did the prior novels in the series." Sometimes she adds: "My secretary likes this series best."

  Still, a lot of my time still goes to the mail. About half of it is new letters, and the rest is repeat letters. Some fans just keep writing back. I try to answer all the first-timers, but don't feel obliged to keep up perpetually with the repeaters. But it isn't necessarily easy to cut off a correspondence
. Let me make an example of an extreme case: this was a boy who had written to me a dozen times, and had a dozen responses, and asked how often it was all right to keep writing. I explained gently that it was difficult for me to keep up, so less was better. Hurt, he signed off with one last letter. Then he continued to write, about once a month. Finally, when the total was about 18 letters, which had used up more than a thousand dollars worth of my writing time, I got more pointed. I told him that I hoped he would understand when I didn't answer his next.

  In due course he responded with his "last and final" letter. In it he informed me that he had arranged to go to Florida, where he had traced down my address and taken one drive past my house. He expressed extreme disappointment. "You had made yourself seem so important and so wonderful.... such a humanitarian, such a busy man, with no time to do everything you want to... but I saw the dead ugly trees in your yard, and the waist-high weeds, and the dismal house you call home.... I really don't mind if you write about this letter in your future author's notes. Maybe the others will know the real Piers Anthony. It is my hope that they do." He added that he took pictures to show to his friends, who couldn't believe it, and that I should remember that it was my fans who put food on my table and let me get my books even PUBLISHED. He thanked me for his rude but wonderful awakening; at last his eyes were open to the reality behind the facade. He signed his name with the subtitle "ex-Anthony fan."

  As I said, this was an extreme case, but it illustrates the type. None of this revelation came to him until I cut him off after he refused to take a hint. Most others have taken the hint, but are nevertheless hurt, and I do get some hate mail. It is apparent that there is no way short of this to protect my time from those who are determined to take it. This letter arrived in FeBlueberry, but isn't one of the 163 because I didn't answer it. I have left a small trail of disillusioned ex-Anthony fans, and I don't like doing it, but the alternative is to allow my working time to become monopolized by just such folk. One of my reasons for getting a secretary was to make my answers less personal, so that those who craved a large collection of personal Anthony notes would be dissuaded without coming to emotional violence. In this sense, ironically, I can sympathize with God: how do I get on with my business when those who idolize me insist on my complete attention? How could God function, with billions of personal demands being made on Hun?