"Zane!" Luna exclaimed. "You won!"
"But all I did was try to help make it easier for people to die," Zane said. "I broke several rules, and often I bungled it anyway."
Then the television camera swung upward to show the welkin, the lovely dome of the Earthly sky. In a moment it turned from day to night, and the stars scintillated in their myriads, and the images of rafts of angels formed, each angel with a shining halo. All of them applauded politely: the salutation of Heaven. It seemed to Zane that one of them looked like his mother, and others resembled some of his clients.
The camera swung down to show the fires of the nether world, with its massed demons, all of them sticking out their forked tongues. But dimly visible behind them were the condemned souls of Hell, and here and there among these were covert thumbs-up gestures.
Zane smiled, experiencing a joy as deep as Eternity. "Thanks, folks," he said, and clicked off the set. "I'll settle for the applause of one." He turned to Luna.
"Always. Forever," she agreed, kissing him.
"But I wonder what that unique quality of mine is supposed to be?" he said as an afterthought.
"It is why I love you," she said.
Zane, back in the routine of his office, saw that the mother was suffering terribly from the first shock of her grief as she cradled her dying baby in her arms. He was still working on the enormous backlog of clients that had accumulated during his strike, but he could not let the bereaved mother suffer more than she had to.
Zane stood before her. "Woman, recognize me," he said softly.
She looked up. Her mouth fell open in horror.
"Do not fear me," Zane said. "Your baby has an incurable malady, and is in pain, and shall never be free of it while he lives. It is best that he be released from the burden of life."
Her mouth worked in protest. "You—you wouldn't say that if one you loved had to go!"
"Yes, I would," he said sincerely. "I sent my own mother to Eternity, to end her suffering. I understand your grief and know it becomes you. But your child is the innocent victim of a wrongful act—" He did not repeat what she already knew, that the child had been conceived by incestuous rape and born syphilitic. "—and it is better for him and for you that he never face the horrors of such a life."
Her haunted eyes gazed up at him, beginning to see Death as more friend than nemesis. "Is—is it really best?"
"Samuel Taylor Coleridge said it best," Death replied gently, extending his hand for the suffering baby's soul. "Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to Heaven conveyed, And bade it blossom there."
As he spoke, he drew the tiny soul out. He knew even before he checked it that this one would go to Heaven, for now he had discretion in such cases.
"You're not the way I thought you would be," the woman said, recovering some stability now that the issue had been decided. "You have—" She faltered, seeking the appropriate word. "Compassion."
Compassion. Suddenly it fell into place. This was the quality Zane brought to the office of Death that the office had lacked before. It made him feel good to realize that the delays he had indulged in and the rules he had broken—that such acts could be construed positively instead of negatively. He cared about his clients, strove for what was best for them within the dreadful parameters of his office, and was no longer ashamed to admit it.
He knew he had been installed in this office for reasons not relating to merit. But he had conquered his limitations and knew that he would perform with reasonable merit henceforth.
"Death came with friendly care..." he repeated as he set his watch for the next client. He liked the thought.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Every novel is an adventure, for the author as well as the reader, but some are more so than others. The last extended Author's Note I did was for my science fiction novel Viscous Circle; those readers who encountered that and didn't like it should avoid this one, because it is more of the same. I believe that a work of fiction should stand pretty much by itself and not require any external explanation; certainly On a Pale Horse can survive without this one.
Coincidentally—if one believes in coincidence—my Author's Copies of Viscous Circle arrived as I was typing this Author's Note. I glanced at that prior Note and realized it signaled the change in my outlook that has resulted, among other things, in On a Pale Horse. I had suffered an illness in 1980 that disrupted my schedule, put me in the hospital, and forcibly reminded me of my own mortality. In consequence, I planned to shift my efforts from the kind of science fiction I had been doing to fantasy, horror. World War II fiction, and maybe some general mainstream writing, exploring and broadening my parameters while it was convenient to do so. That is, while I still had my health and vigor and imagination. I wanted to discover where I could achieve more meaning in writing.
So how did that effort work out? Well, I did try—but the first thing I discovered was that publishers were not interested in nonfantastic-genre Anthony efforts. They showed the same disinterest that they had shown in my early science-fantasy writing—and it took me eight years to break into print. It seems it may take me a similar period to break into another genre. I have kept plugging away, meanwhile filling in with light fantasy, because that is easy and fun and the readers like it and it makes a lot of money; if I have to wait those extra years for publishers to appreciate my merit, I might as well wait in comfort. Thus I completed almost half a million words of fantasy in 1981, and that seems to be expanding my reputation in that subgenre. I will continue trying the other genres, for I remain an ornery cuss, and I think in time I will break through and prove that all those uninterested editors were wrong, just as I did before. I have, as may be apparent, not much respect for editors as a class.
But impediments, whether editorial or otherwise, can lead to rewarding innovation. As I wrestled with the problem of putting meaningful writing into print, I discovered that it was possible for me to do much of the social commentary I had in mind—within the SF/fantasy genre itself. Instead of stepping outside the genre to protest such things as world hunger and nuclear folly, I realized I could stretch the genre boundaries to cover the territory. Since I already have markets and readers for my fantastic-genre writing, the editors can't stop me. This facilitates my ambition enormously. On a Pale Horse, for example, is on one level a fun-fantasy with a unique main character, and I hope most readers enjoy it on that level. Fiction should always entertain! But on another level it is a satiric look at contemporary society, with some savagely pointed criticism. It is also a serious exploration of man's relation to death. Man is the one creature on Earth who knows he will die, and that is an appalling intellectual burden.
I need to clarify how I do my writing, as I am not quite like other writers, professionally or personally. Of course, no writer is quite like any other; each thinks himself unique in some typical fashion. I live in the backwoods of central Florida and have a twelve by twenty-four foot study in our horse pasture. Yes, I am surrounded by horse manure! I now have electricity there—for three years I did not—so I can type at night if I want to, but have no heating. In summer I use a fan to cool me, for we do hit 100 degrees F often enough, and in winter I bundle up with voluminous clothing as if for a hike through a snowstorm. Our area seldom gets below freezing in the daytime, but even 40 degrees to 50 degrees becomes bone-chilling when one is sitting at a typewriter for hours at a time. Even with sweater, jacket, scarf, and heavy cap, I slowly congeal, because I must expose my hands to type. Back when I typed two-finger, it was possible to do it with gloves on, but now I touch type and must bare my flesh.
So I avoid winter typing when possible, arranging my schedule to write the first draft in pencil on my clipboard at the house, where we have a fine wood stove that puts out so much heat that my darling daughters complain. Between literary thoughts, I feed more chunks of my hard-sawed-and-split wood to the monster, maintaining my primitive comfort.
Don't get me wrong; I live here b
ecause I love the wilderness and the rustic independence of it, and I distrust complex machines. The wood stove is not only cheap to operate, it's fun. It also heats all our water in winter, via a copper coil in the stovepipe. (In summer the solar system does the job.) Then when the land warms, in spring, I hie me back to my study to type the second draft, and then the submission draft. Each novel is done three times, ironing out the bugs. But the four months of inclement weather are too long for a single novel; I need only two months for the first draft, and sometimes less, depending on the nature of the project. So I try to schedule two novels in pencil in the winter, then type both later.
The winter of 1981-82, my two novels were one fantasy and one science fiction, each the initial volume of what I hoped would be an ambitious, hard-hitting, social commentary, five-novel series. The science fiction series was Bio of a Space Tyrant, superficially a space opera, covertly a serious political commentary, to be published elsewhere. The fantasy series was Incarnations of Immortality, that title given with a nod of appreciation toward William Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood. This present novel, with Death as its protagonist, is the first of that series.
I understand some writers just start writing and watch almost with surprise what develops; I plan considerably farther ahead. I know how a novel will end before I begin to write it—and before I write it, these days, I sell it. I realize that sounds backward, but it's true. I make a summary, and my New York literary agent shows it around, and if a publisher offers a contract for it, then I go ahead and write the novel. I have any number of summaries that no editor wanted, so those novels have never been written. Sometimes I really want to write one, but have to let it go. You might say that some of my best novels of the past have never been written. In the early days of my career I wrote my novels first and marketed them second, and naturally the editors gleefully bounced them. At one point I had built up a backlog of eight complete unsold novels. That's not the best way for a writer to make a living. When I caught on and changed my system to escape that bind, my income tripled, and then began a sharper rise—because suddenly I was selling everything I wrote. Rather, I was writing everything I sold.
As it happens, both these series, Bio and Incarnations, relate strongly to death, a subject with which I am morbidly fascinated. I wish I were not; this constant awareness of death makes it impossible for me to go blithely about my life in simple contentment. This has been so since my closest cousin died, when I was a teenager. He is represented in this novel as Tad: the one who had everything to live for, while I did not. It seemed to me that Death had somehow taken the wrong one of us. Now I am highly aware that my time on Earth is limited, and I do not believe in any afterlife. It follows that anything I want to do, I must do in this session, as it were. Perhaps this explains in part the determination with which I write novels, including this one. It is my way of saying whatever I have to say while I have the opportunity, hoping others will profit thereby.
I think few writers have tried, as I have here, to present Death in a sympathetic manner. Therefore it was chancy to market On a Pale Horse, for many publishers seem to be uninterested in innovation. If Death could not make it into print, how could there be any hope for the following notions that were percolating through my mind? For the rest of this series, as it finally shaped up, concerned other unusual protagonists: Time, Bearing an Hourglass; Fate, With a Tangled Skein; War, Wielding a Red Sword; and Nature, Being a Green Mother. All of it started with Death, and Death-in-print was not nearly so certain as death in the real world. This concept was obviously fantastic, corresponding to the established scheme of the Afterlife only very loosely; perhaps it would offend some readers. I, as an ornery writer, don't much care if I offend a reader or two, but publishers have hypersensitive nerves about popular reaction, and very little courage of conviction. My more challenging notions have had trouble with publishers before. Those of you who think of me as a light entertainment writer have not seen that portion of my writing that never made it into print.
So I played it safe. I sent a private, informal query to my fantasy editor, Lester del Rey of Del Rey Books, describing my notion and asking whether he might be interested in seeing a more formal presentation at a later date. A writer can do this when he knows an editor well enough. I have a track record at Del Rey; they know what my writing is like, so can tell from even a brief description whether a particular project of mine would be to their taste. If Mr. del Rey didn't like the notion, or did not care to gamble his company's money on it, he would tell me privately, and that would spare the two of us and my agent the embarrassment and inconvenience of a formal rejection.
Now let me switch to another subject, in the tantalizing manner of the storyteller I am. I have gotten interested in colored stones of the precious variety. Most people know of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, and I have acquired samples of these. No, I didn't spend ten thousand dollars for a one-carat diamond two years ago and watch its value shrink in half. Lack of money served in lieu of wisdom, there. Instead, I bought rough diamonds from a wholesale dealer at ten dollars a carat. They look like gravel; they don't sparkle prettily from cut facets.
But they are diamonds, so I can lay claim to owning diamonds. I shopped similarly for bargains in other stones. There are many pretty ones, comparatively inexpensive, ranging from a hundred dollars or more per carat down to eight cents a carat for faceted smoky quartz in quantity. Know something? In a dim light, you could have trouble distinguishing quartz from diamond, and quartz will scratch window glass.
There are also topaz, aquamarine, garnet, tourmaline, zircon, amethyst, scapolite, andalusite, and others, each with its own special qualities. It is possible to develop an interesting collection of such gems for a tiny fraction of the price of the smallest cut diamond, and that collection may be a more secure investment than that diamond. Certainly this has been the case recently; the value of most colored stones has risen, in some cases dramatically, while diamonds have declined.
But there are pitfalls. People who aren't expert in gemstones can get rapidly fleeced, unless they have a reliable source of supply. I had such a source in the large, wholesale House of Onyx, but was lured by an ad in the local newspaper for a huge star sapphire on sale privately. I went to see it, and it was an ugly stone—maybe it would be kinder to say the stone had character—with a fantastic floating star. It had come from North Carolina, where some sapphire mining is done. In sunlight, that star seemed to sit an eighth of an inch above the surface of the stone, and it shifted about on its rays like a spider as the stone moved, almost like magic. I'm a sucker for magic, considering that I don't believe in it, so I bought the stone.
Then, of course, I wondered whether I had been smart. I had paid over ten dollars a carat for the sapphire, which was a lot of money for a stone that size—one hundred-fourteen carats. Good sapphire is worth a lot more—but was this one a bargain? Was it even true sapphire? Now that it was too late, I had to know. So I phoned Fred Rowe, owner of the House of Onyx—you can do that if you know him well enough—and he very nicely agreed to appraise the stone for me. He is not in the business of appraising other people's stones, of course; he did it as a private favor, much as Lester del Rey did me the favor of appraising my novel notion privately. I dare say there are two busier men in the world, but I really could not name any offhand. Sometimes the busiest are also the most generous.
On September 8, 1981, I received two important items in the mail—one from Mr. Rowe, the other from Mr. del Rey. Mr. Rowe was returning my stone with his appraisal: it was corundum (sapphire and ruby are both corundum), but of a cheap grade imported from India for fifty cents a carat and sold to gullible tourists in places like North Carolina as local stones for five to ten dollars per carat. He himself had sold a number of five-thousand-carat parcels of this type of stone to clients in North Carolina at the fifty-cent price. In short, this was a junkstone. I had been bilked. Not, I believe, by the per
son who sold it to me; he honestly believed in the value of the stone, and I'm sure many other people with similar belief have similar stones. But for what it's worth, I recommend that people be wary of bargains in gems from North Carolina.
Mr. del Rey's letter was more positive. Yes, he liked the notion of On a Pale Horse. No, I did not need to submit a formal presentation through my agent at a later date. He was prepared to offer my agent a contract on it now. He did not name a figure, but I knew from experience that this novel would earn me at least ten times what I had lost on the sapphire.
That was some mail! Fate had neatly juxtaposed these events. Mr. Rowe and Mr, del Rey had, figuratively, met in my mailbox. (Mr. Rowe, meet Mr. del Rey; Lester, meet Fred. So nice to have you both here. Now let's get out of this hot mailbox!) Who was I to argue with Fate? Thus it was that my unfortunate star sapphire became a part of this novel. The two just seemed fated to merge.
There was more to it than that. I am ornery in various ways, and one of them is that I don't like to make mistakes, but mistakes stalk me like sendings from Hell. So I try to turn every experience, good or bad, to my profit, whether monetary or intellectual. I had blundered in buying the stone, but if I used that experience in the novel, that might redeem it somewhat. In fact, by this device I could make this stone unique. It might not be worth much as a junk-grade star sapphire, but as the stone that suckered Piers Anthony—um, let's rephrase that. As the stone that launched a new man into the dread office of Death, it—well, it just might eventually be worth what I paid for it. Thus, perhaps, it could no longer be considered a blunder. Of course, this mundane stone lacks the literal magic of the one in the novel, and I dare say any potential purchaser would in due course catch on to that. But I don't want to sell it anyway. I merely want to erase a mistake. Just think: If this ploy is successful, no one will ever know about my blunder in buying that stone...
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