Golem in the Gears

by Piers Anthony

  “Naturally,” the Hags agreed.

  “While the other Golem will follow my strategy,” he said. He glanced at the other. “You do know it?”

  “Oh, sure. I’m your clone; I know everything you do.”

  “Good. Now let’s do this one at a time, so the Demon can see clearly what happens. There will be several rounds to each match, to allow the strategy to manifest as something other than chance. I will start off.”

  Grundy approached one of the Hags. He paused. “Oh—we’ll need pieces of paper, and pencils, for—”

  Again the Demon didn’t blink. Little pads of paper appeared in each of their hands, and pencils in each of their other hands.

  There was a small stir in the vast audience, and Grundy saw that each member of it also had a little pad and a pencil, except for Rapunzel, who had a puncil. Everyone was keeping score.

  Grundy was shaken by another doubt. He had not had time to work this out thoroughly in his mind. Suppose his insight was not sound, and his strategy did not produce victory? Not only would he be confined forever in the storage lake of the Brain Coral and the Hag be given access to Rapunzel’s body—everyone in Xanth would know. His humiliation would be complete and eternal. The golem in the gears, who had the chance to make things right, and fouled it up.

  The very notion made him shiver and sweat. He had the apprehension of the inevitable, knowing that if anything good were to occur here, it could not be by the agency of anything as insignificant as a mere golem with a big mouth. Why was he even trying?

  Then he saw Rapunzel watching him. She smiled and blew him a kiss. She believed in him.

  She believed in him.

  He might fail himself and fail others, as he had so often before. But how could he fail her?

  “Now each of us will make a mark on our sheets,” he told the Hag. “We shall make a smiley-face for Nice, meaning that we do not give evidence against the other prisoner, or a scowl-face for Nasty, meaning that we do the selfish thing and give the evidence. We each know that we will both be better off if neither is Nasty, but that one of us can get way ahead if that one is Nasty when the other is Nice. But we don’t know how the other will choose. We won’t know until we show our faces.”

  “Get on with it, Wretch,” the Hag said.

  “I am.” Grundy marked a big smiley-face on his top sheet, so that the Hag couldn’t see it. Meanwhile she marked what was surely a scowl-face on hers.

  “Now we shall show our faces,” Grundy said. He turned his around and held it up so that everyone could see it. More grudgingly, the Hag showed hers.

  It was exactly as he had anticipated. Hers was a scowl.

  “Now the Sea Hag has chosen to give evidence,” he said. “I did not. Therefore the Hag scores five points, and I score none.”

  There was a muted sigh in the audience. Evidently they had wanted the Hag to lose.

  But the game had just begun. If his strategy was valid …

  “Now we shall go to the second round,” he said. “We shall each mark our sheets again.”

  They did so. Grundy marked a scowl-face.

  When they showed their sheets, both of them had scowls. “This time we match,” Grundy said. “Both acted selfishly, so each of us receives just one point.”

  “But I’m still ahead of you, Golem!” the Hag said with satisfaction.

  “So it would seem,” he agreed. “Now the third round.”

  They marked their sheets again, and showed them. Both were scowls. “Another point for each,” Grundy said.

  “Seven to two, my favor,” the Hag gloated. “You aren’t getting anywhere, wretch!”

  “Fourth round,” Grundy said.

  Again they marked their sheets, and showed them. Again both were scowls. “Eight to three,” the Hag cackled. “Your stupid strategy is just digging you in deeper, Golem!”

  “Fifth round,” Grundy announced grimly. They marked and showed again, with the same result, making the score nine to four.

  “Sixth and final round,” Grundy said. His preliminary calculation had suggested that this was the crucial point. He had to trust it.

  They marked and showed—two scowls. “Ten to five—I win!” The Hag chortled.

  “You win,” Grundy agreed grimly. The audience was deathly quiet.

  The Demon’s lips twitched.

  “But the trial is not over yet!” Grundy exclaimed. “This is only the first match.”

  “My matches proceed for eternity,” the Demon grumbled.

  “Precisely,” Grundy agreed. “One match is nothing; it is the totality that counts.”

  Now he went to the other Hag. “I will now repeat the encounter with the next opponent,” he announced. “Each of us will mark our faces—” They paused to do so. “And show them.” They did.

  The result was the same as before: his smiley-face against her scowl-face. He was behind by five points.

  They played out the remaining five rounds, with similar effect. The final score was 10–5, Hag’s favor. “I like your strategy, Golem!” She cackled.

  “I have now had two matches,” Grundy announced. “I have a total of ten points, while my opponents have twenty.”

  The massed score-keepers in the audience nodded somberly. Their calculations agreed. Only Fracto seemed pleased, though of course the cloud had no brief for the Hag.

  But Rapunzel still smiled at him, showing her confidence. She, perhaps alone, retained her faith in him. He hoped it was justified.

  He went to his third and final opponent, the other golem. Both marked their sheets, and showed them. There were two smiley-faces.

  “Each of us has chosen to be Nice,” Grundy announced. “Therefore neither has the advantage. Each gets three points.”

  They proceeded to the second round. The result was the same. Then the remaining rounds. In each case, each scored three points.

  “The result of this match is a draw,” Grundy announced. “Eighteen to eighteen. I now have twenty-eight points total, while my opponents have accumulated thirty-eight.”

  “So you are out of it,” one of the Hags exulted. “One of us will win!”

  “Perhaps,” Grundy said. Now they were coming to the next critical point. If the others acted true to form—

  “Let’s finish this,” the other golem said. “I have still to match the two Hags.”

  “Yes,” Grundy agreed. “But stick to the strategy.”

  “Gotcha.” The golem went to one Hag and went through the match —with exactly the same result Grundy had had, losing ten to five. The wicked glee of the Hags could scarcely be contained, and the audience was glum indeed. The Demon looked bored, which was a bad sign.

  Now it was time for the final match: Hag vs Hag. Each had twenty points, from her tromping of the two golems.

  “Now if you’ll just let me have some points—” one Hag said to the other.

  Grundy kept his face straight, but inside he was almost unbearably tight. His fortune depended on his analysis of the nature of the Hag. This was the final critical point. If he had misjudged—

  “Like Hades, you old witch!” the other snapped. “I’m looking out for Number One!”

  “Well, if you feel that way, wartsnoot!” the other responded. “See what you get from me!”

  Grundy relaxed. He had judged correctly.

  They marked and showed—and naturally each face was a scowl. One point for each.

  Both angered by the seeming betrayal by the other, they went to the second round—and scowl met scowl again. One more point for each.

  So it continued. When the match was done, the Hags were tied, six to six.

  “Now note the cumulative scores,” Grundy said. “Each Hag has twenty-six, while each Golem has twenty-eight. The Golems are ahead.”

  There was a stir of astonishment through the audience, as the folk checked their scoresheets. Many had not been keeping them up to date, being certain that the issue was already decided. The two Hags made shrieks of indignation
, and the Demon’s sleepy eyes snapped back to full alertness. Rapunzel clapped her hands with maidenly delight, her faith vindicated.

  “Note that neither Golem ever won a single match,” Grundy said. “But the final victory must go to a Golem. The longer this trial continues, the more certain this becomes. In an eternal trial, this strategy must inevitably prevail.”

  The Demon was definitely interested. Curls of vapor rose from his countenance. “What is that strategy?”

  “I call it Tough But Fair,” Grundy said. “I start out positive, but after that I do back to my opponent whatever my opponent does to me. So when the Hag gave evidence against me in the first round, I did it back to her in the second—and continued until she changed. Since she never changed, we just kept on getting single points. When I matched against the other Golem, and he was Nice to me, I was Nice to him in the next round—and continued that way until he changed. Since he didn’t change—”

  “But you never won a match!” the Demon protested.

  “And the Hags never lost a match,” Grundy agreed. “But the victory does not go to the winner of matches, but to the scorer of the most total points, which is a different matter. I made more points tying with the other Golem than I lost losing to the Hags. Their selfish ways gave them short-term victories, but cost them the trial.”

  “A fluke!” a Hag screamed.

  “No fluke,” Grundy said. “You Hags can’t cooperate with anyone, even your own kind, so you inevitably lose out to those of us who can. An enlightened cooperation is better, in the long run, than short-term selfishness.” He turned to the Demon. “Now I realize this is just a simple game, hardly worthy of your notice. But the principle is sound. You should be able to apply the same strategy to your complex encounters with other Demons that are far beyond my understanding. You have been going for individual victories, and getting some, but like the Hags you have been losing overall. With this strategy you can lose matches, and the other Demons will think they are cleaning up, but inevitably as time passes—”

  Slowly, the Demon smiled.

  Then the cave was gone. Grundy was standing alone beside the Elf Elm. In the distance Stanley Steamer was lifting his head, getting wind of him.

  And Rapunzel, golem-size, was swinging down on a line—no, it was her own hair, restored to its former length and splendor. The Demon X(A/N)th, eventually to be X[A/N]th or even ••«A/N»th••, had added a bonus.

  Rapunzel landed, and her lovely tresses floated down about her like a swirling halo as she did a little dance of joy. She was the most beautiful creature he could have imagined, and not just in her body. She laughed merrily as she ran to embrace him.

  “Oh, Grundy!” she cried, and the two of them were lost amid the halo.

  Author’s Note

  Puns have continued to come in, and I have used a number, but as I have warned in the last couple of Notes, the market for these is diminishing. Don’t rush to send more; your effort is apt to be wasted. But here are the credits for those used in this novel, roughly in order of their appearance:

  Greg Burris: the thesaurus; Stanley Cohen, M.D.: the snailboat and the Con-Pewter; Cathy Livoni (a novelist in her own right, author of Element of Time): the unicorn’s taste for popcorn; Bryce Cockson: the secret of using reverse-wood with Youth Elixir; Mark Odegard: D-tails, shopping centaur, Kissimmee River, mys-tree, casuis-tree, Ever-Glades; Nicki Marino: going nowhere; Wm. Martin: parrot-ox; Robert Haight: power plant, handball, tail-lights, evergreen; Brent Edwards: lo, middle and hi quats, passion fruit; Rose Mary Scanlon: house fly; Dave Schwartz: babbling brook; Charles Puzio: passport; Ron Elam: burr; Jeff Sotland: pumpkin, club soda, evergreen (right: two people suggested it); Nick Jamilla: golden fleas; Chris Miller: reverse-wood used with the centaur aisle; Jennifer Davidson inquired whether I had ever based a novel on a limerick, and when I thought about it I concluded that maybe there was a limerick buried under the puns of Golem; you’ll find it in the Lexicon under “Ass.”

  In addition, an insight by Steve Thaxton: a version of the hypnogourd exists in Mundania. It is called TV, and it causes folk to freeze in place while their minds get zonked, exactly as the gourd does. Perhaps this was obvious to everyone else all the time; I’m a little slow to catch on, is all. That, too, is in the Lexicon.

  The concluding strategy for victory, here called Tough But Fair, was adapted from a Mundane program called Tit for Tat that is indeed a winner. The implications of that program are far-reaching, ranging from relations within a marriage (obviously Tat would be the male) to international dealings (if They bomb Us …), and are worth thinking about.

  Meanwhile, there has been some leakage of Xanth magic into Mundania. Some of it is minor, so that only those who are paying close attention even notice. For example, the publisher took a ride in an airplane and was served a meal. All perfectly normal, you say? But she read the small print on a package of salad dressing and discovered that it contained Xanthan Gum. Now where do you suppose that came from? And who—or what—do you suppose was keeping an eye on her? Most Mundanes don’t believe in magic, but sometimes they do wonder.

  But the effects of the magic leakage don’t have to be minor. Now—which is 1984 in my Mundane time—whole groves of Florida citrus trees may have to be deliberately burned up to control an infestation of a new form of deadly canker, that destroys the leaves and kills the trees. Florida citrus is in dire peril, because they don’t even know where this canker disease came from, and have never seen this particular type before. It is as if it crossed magically from some other world. It is caused by a bacterium called Xanthomonas. That makes its origin clear to you and me—but naturally the citrus folk don’t believe in magic. Sigh.

  Sometimes fans send me gifts. I would rather that they did not, attractive as some of them are, because I can’t send gifts to all my fans in return. I have had a lovely little Unicorn Plaque, a map of Castle Roogna, a pressed-flower portrait, pictures, books, bookmarks and so on. But one should be acknowledged here: a beautiful hand-embroidered map of Xanth by Wynn Hilty. I wonder if that type of work is what is called crewel?

  I must remind you folk that though I have managed to answer my mail so far (except for those letters with no return address), it does take up to three months to reach me, so that by the time I do answer, the fan may have forgotten the matter. I once received a copy of one of my own novels, to be autographed for the birthday of a friend—three months after her birthday was past. I find that sort of thing very awkward. In that particular case I declared January 17 to be the 21¼ birthday of Miss LaRae Varty, and autographed the book for that occasion. But this matter of autographing copies by mail is a real nuisance and it does not please me to have to do it, because it takes more of my time than the book is worth, even when it isn’t lost in the mail.

  Another caution, while I’m in this area: please don’t write to ask me for free copies of my novels. The publisher and I earn our livings by selling books, not by giving them away free. If you can’t afford to buy a book, go to your friendly neighborhood library and check it out. If the library doesn’t carry it, call the librarian discreetly aside and point out the error of her ways. If she doesn’t see your point, you might try holding your breath until you turn purple, then foam at the mouth a bit, and perhaps she will see reason. However, I have been receiving reports that some libraries have stopped carrying my books, because they have been stolen. On occasion I have given autographed copies to a library—and had them stolen. I have news for those who do that sort of thing: if you can read one of my novels and get the notion that stealing is all right, then I don’t want you for a fan, because you don’t understand my work at all. When you steal from the library, you are preventing anyone else from reading that book, and the very notion makes me want to drop you in the Void.

  And a little story: Barry Aspengren was waiting in a line, reading an Anthony fantasy, when the young lady behind him inquired whether he was aware that the sequel was in print. This caused him to wrench his
gaze from the page to focus on her. Her name was Ellen. That was their introduction: they had a common interest. Five months later they were married. Congratulations, folks!

  Golem is the ninth novel in the original Xanth trilogy, and though I have other novels in this series in mind, there is also a good deal of other work to be done. For one thing, I turned fifty while writing Golem, and you may imagine how awkward it is to have an age like that sneak up on a person. For another, it was the first novel I composed on my new computer; my prior novels have been composed on the pencil, so it was quite a jump, and I’m still settling in. For a third thing, I have a number of other projects to work on, such as more Adept novels, as that trilogy is rather skimpy with only three volumes. So I plan to let Xanth rest for a while, and hope that you rabid Xanth fans will understand. In due course I expect to return to Xanth and find out what little Ivy has been up to. I understand there is quite a scandal when she gets into her teens and gets interested in a man from Mundania.

  LEXICON OF XANTH

  Compiled by M. J. Langley and Associates Michael and Keith

  A

  ADULT CONSPIRACY—The secret of summoning storks to deliver babies, kept by all grown-ups from all children.

  AGENT ORANGE—A vaguely catlike, orange creature acting as an agent for the Catapult who returns his baskets to him. His talent is the killing of plants in the vicinity.

  AIR—See ELEMENTS

  ALLEGORY—A green creature with a long snout filled with teeth who lives in the water. It can turn a situation inside out without touching it.

  AMORPHOUS MONSTERS—Creatures living in the hypnogourd with multiple hands and hungry snouts who are helpless against disdain.

  ANCES-TREE—A tree whose trunk splits into two major branches, which in turn split to four, and so on, until at the fringe there are too many branches to track. The bark is corrugated to resemble words: the names of a person’s parents, grandparents, and so on.

  ARGUS—A sea monster described as having the body and tail of a fish, four stout legs terminating in flippers, with the tusked head of a boar (minus neck) and three eyes along the body (with the middle eye lower than the others).