Bearing an Hourglass

by Piers Anthony

  "I beg your indulgence," Norton said. "Let me try to undo what I can. If I fail, she can still concede."

  Luna put her hand on Thanatos' shoulder. "See the Truthstones," she murmured.

  Indeed, the stones on the mantel were shining like little stars. "I yield," Thanatos said.

  They went outside to the front gate, beyond the range of the griffins. Television cameras and a magic mirror were set up there. The world was watching—or at least that minor portion of it that cared to tune in on this particular concession speech. Most people were probably more interested in Luna's beauty than in her politics, anyway.

  Luna stepped up to the focus of the media. In this year, mechanical microphones were still in use for sound pickup. "Before I speak, my friend Chronos will address you," she said.

  "Hey, what's this?" a man protested, pushing forward. His eyes blazed with the inner fire of the possessed—an agent of Satan. "We came to hear the harlot drop out!"

  Thanatos started forward in cold fury, but Norton moved first. He shoved the Hourglass in the possessed's face. The man fell back, stunned.

  "The minions of Satan have wronged this fine woman," Norton said. "Now I will show you your future if this wrong stands."

  He turned the sand transparent and willed it into action, to embrace the whole world. He felt the immense power channeling through the Hourglass, the weakest force becoming the strongest. Nothing changed, physically; this was magic of the mind only.

  There was a hush as the effect took hold. Then a cameraman lurched away, dropping his camera. "I'm gonna die!" he screamed. "Next year, covering a hostage crisis, bomb goes off—I remember! I'm getting out of here!"

  A female reporter turned and slapped a news director. "You're going to throw me over for that hussy!" she cried indignantly. "Well, you can just forget about tonight, you sneak!"

  The director could not deny it, for he remembered, too. Indeed, he seemed preoccupied, seeing farther into his own future. "AIDS?" he said, bewildered and horrified. "Me? But I'm not part of that culture!"

  "Evidently the hussy is," the driver next to him said. "That stuff's spreading fast, now that it's out of the special groups. My uncle's gonna get it, too, and die—" He broke off, horrified as he realized what he was saying.

  "Leukemia?" a bystander asked, chagrined. "How can I remember having that, when it's five years in the future? I'm going to do some research and change that before it happens!"

  In moments the street was empty, as every person attending the concession speech sought to avoid the horrors of his own future. Each person in the world was going to suffer tragedy and death sooner or later—and no person enjoyed the prospect. Everyone was trying to change his life to avoid the mischief he foresaw—and, of course, that changed his future and that of those he interacted with and gave him new visions of the inevitable. Humanity was in chaos.

  Satan himself arrived. Most of his minions could not take solid form on Earth, but he himself was an Incarnation, as real as the others. "Give over, Chronos!" he cried, fire showing inside his mouth in lieu of a tongue. "I sought no quarrel with you!"

  "Not this year," Norton said. The sand remained clear. "But in a future year—"

  "You are generating utter chaos!" the Prince of Evil protested, smoke rising from him.

  Norton glanced up and down the street. "Am I?"

  "It's impossible for anyone to function in this!"

  "Even you, Satan?" Norton inquired pleasantly. He was coming to understand the impact of his action. Satan's ultimate evil did not need to be manifest within eighteen years; the ordinary lives, loves, and deaths of people sufficed. The sudden knowledge of the specific circumstance and time of his own misfortune or death drove the average person into a frenzy like that of a drowning man. The veil that shrouded the future was in fact a blessing, and now it had been rent.

  "I am a Creature of order!" Satan said. "I have plans—"

  Norton merely looked at him inquiringly.

  "I can't accomplish anything if they remember—"

  Norton waited.

  "What do you want, Chronos?" the Prince of Evil demanded.

  "Need you ask, sirrah?"

  Satan stomped about, his horns turning red with frustration and emitting sparks. "All right, Chronos! The bitch shall have her office!"

  "The who?"

  The sparks became larger, and a small zap of lightning flashed between Satan's horns. "The good woman!"

  Norton allowed the sand to return to its underlying green. Sometime he would have to explore the mechanism that enabled him to remain in the green while the sand turned clear, but there was no hurry; obviously there were sophistications of the Hourglass that would require careful study for full comprehension, but which protected him in his ignorance. "I trust you to honor your word, my dear associate," he said.

  "Your trust is misplaced, fool!" Satan said, gesturing.

  Abruptly the two of them were in Hell. Opaque smoke surrounded them, obscuring the details, but there was no question about the location. "Now try your little trick," Satan said grimly. "I'm sure My demons will enjoy seeing their futures."

  Norton lifted the Hourglass—but now the sand was fogged out by smoke, and he could not see the color. It wasn't illusion; it was genuine smoke; he couldn't abolish it by concentrating.

  Satan couldn't hold him, of course. The Prince of Evil was merely setting up another diversion, trying to salvage his campaign to win power on Earth. The three-person limit would prevent Norton from returning here; he had to accomplish his mission now.

  Norton had had enough of this. He owed Satan. Sning, he thought, Can you help me fix him once and for all?

  Squeeze.

  What color? Transparent?

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  "Did you really think you could oppose me, Chronos?" Satan asked, sneering. Sulfurous smoke was curling up from his nose.

  Black?

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  Desperately he tried the color they hadn't used before. Brown?

  "Enough of this," Satan said. His arm shot forward, his hand landing on Norton's. There was a jolt of current—and Sning was in Satan's grasp. "This rogue demon is Mine!"

  Norton felt as if he had been skewered. He had lost his most vital adviser! Satan could not touch the Hourglass, but Sning had no such protection.

  Norton willed the sand brown, the color of Luna's hair, knowing the Hourglass would respond, though the smoke obscured it.

  Satan paused, surprised. The smoke was curling down to his nose.

  Norton was similarly surprised. What had he done? Satan turned about abruptly. Flame shot into his mouth, and sparks zapped from the air to his horns. He lashed his tail. "?lleh eht tahW" he demanded.

  He was living backward! But no one else was; the demons of Hell showed through the smoke now, glancing at their Master with curiosity. The brown sand reversed time for Satan alone.

  The Father of Lies would break out of this predicament soon enough. That was not the point. Norton had shown Satan that Chronos could make him just as uncomfortable as he could make Chronos.

  Norton reached for Satan's hand to take Sning back. Satan tried to snatch the ring away, but his reversed reflex caused him to shove it directly at Norton instead. Norton took the snake and returned the ring to his finger.

  Sque-he-he-heze! Sning seemed to be laughing.

  Norton walked away—and Satan's illusion dissolved around him. He was still on the street, and Thanatos and Luna were waiting. "We saw the smoke, but decided to let you deal with Satan in your own way," Thanatos explained. "Every Incarnation must come to his own terms with Satan."

  "True," Norton agreed. He turned to face Satan, who was now on the street but still locked in reverse. "I trust you will behave now, Lord of Flies. I wouldn't want to have to invoke my power again. Or is my trust misplaced?"

  Satan became so hot he suffered a phenomenal implosion of flame and winked out like a reversed nova.

  Norton experienced a great r
elief and satisfaction. He had at last faced Satan directly and held him off! Mars' advice to him had been right; all he had needed to do was keep fighting.

  He turned to Luna. "Notice of the recount should be broadcast soon, and your reputation will be restored. You have begun your political career."

  "Thank you, Chronos," she said faintly.

  Thanatos stepped forward, extending his skeletal hand. "I knew you had power, Chronos; I never suspected its extent."

  "Neither did I," Norton said, accepting the hand. He knew this was not the occasion to discuss his first encounter with Thanatos, eighteen years hence. "Farewell, both."

  He turned the sand red and returned to his present. He landed on the street outside Luna's estate.

  Satan reappeared, horns red-hot. "How dare you—"

  Norton lifted the Hourglass and turned the sand brown. Satan vanished.

  He steadied the sand on green and turned to the front gate. All the Incarnations were there, and Luna herself. "My stones told me to appear for this meeting, though I have pressing political business," she said. "Now I remember: I owe not only my life but my office to you. You helped me win my first election as a representative, and later my election as Senator. I am deeply in your debt."

  "And I in yours," Norton said. "Just do what you have to do when your crisis looms. We all must strive constantly to keep Satan at bay."

  "Yes, of course," Thanatos agreed. "But I wish we could reward you for your special effort—"

  "There is no need," Norton said, thinking of the bleakness he now had to return to, living his life opposite to them and the world, not even speaking of this matter as he moved into their past, lest that somehow change the course.

  "I will attend to his reward," Atropos declared, shifting to Clotho. "Keep the sand green, Chronos, until we reach your mansion, so I won't forget."

  Norton looked at her. She had evidently prepared for this occasion, for she was ravishing. And she understood! He realized that there were, after all, compensations to his lonely office.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  This is the second novel in a five-novel series. In the long Author's Note following the first novel, On a Pale Horse, I explained how, since the protagonist was Death, death and illness seemed to strike all around me while I was working on that novel, so that part of it was actually written in the hospital. You probably think I'm going to tell a similar story this time.

  Correct. Except that, since this novel features Time, it was time that bedeviled me this time. I hesitate to conjecture what will bedevil me when I work on the next novel, With a Tangled Skein, in which Fate is the protagonist. But I expect it to be interesting, for Fate is a most intriguing and devious female. Stay tuned for the next Note...

  I am a slow reader and a slow worker, and I do three drafts of each novel. Since I turn in about a third of a million words of fiction per year, that means about a million words of work per year, though only the first three hundred thousand are really challenging; the rest is mainly refining and polishing, in an effort to make this oft hellishly complex business of writing seem like the simple, relaxed flowing of prose. What I say in the finished draft is much the same as what I said in the first draft, but it comes across more eloquently. Polishing: a useful lesson for the hopeful writer. You say your tormented prose doesn't read as well as mine? Neither does mine, at first! I get about six and a half decent working hours a day, after chores, meals, exercises, mail, and the sundry minutiae of mundane existence. That means I need to run a fairly tight ship and make my working time count—and I do. Other writers will tell you that it is difficult to know when a writer is working, for he may be reading a book or lying on a couch or staring glassy-eyed at a blank sheet of paper. Not so with me; I confine my reading to off hours unless it is direct research, in which case I'm probably making notes on it. I have a couch in my study that I never lie on, and when I'm at my typewriter I'm typing without pause. I don't suffer from that dreadest of maladies, Writer's Block; as with stage fright, I realized early that I couldn't afford it, so I conquered it. I seem to be almost unique among the more creative writers in that respect. I understand some block up for a few hours at a time, and others for a few years or decades at a time. I view such writers as pseudo-professionals who are not really interested in working. If I am balked for a few minutes at a time, there is something wrong. So when I work, I work, and every hour counts. In that way I compensate for my slowness. I see myself, figuratively, as a locomotive, starting slow but proceeding along my limited track with heavy-duty reliability.

  My time is precious. I work efficiently, no matter how far my imagination ranges. I write the first draft in pencil at about five hundred words per hour, though this is highly variable, depending on the nature of the material and the facility of my inspiration; this is the one time I might be observed doing something like staring at a blank page for a few seconds as the gears in my brain squeal and grind. A lost hour of time is a lost hour of work, and it hurts; my schedule is behind by that amount. I catch up by taking pencil and clipboard wherever I go so I can squeeze out a few more hundred words of text and thought. When I'm typing second or submission drafts on one novel, I'll start the pencil draft of the next, as I can't take my office machine around with me.

  I'm not a fast typist, either, though I use the world's most efficient keyboard, the Dvorak Simplified, further modified for my needs; I may be the only writer with the sense to put the often-used quotation marks on the lowercase shift for added convenience. I am slow because my brain is always in gear, analyzing, changing things, catching the sense of the material. Therefore I buzz along at about a thousand words an hour, every hour. I try to avoid typing in the chill of winter in my unheated study, so I'll concentrate on two first drafts then, and type both when the study warms. In the winter of 1982-83, I wrote the science fiction novel Mercenary and most of the fantasy Hourglass.

  Most of? What happened—Writer's Block? Of course not! I ran out of time. Let me explain.

  My correspondence has been picking up. This year I have been answering about fifty letters per month. Many can be handled by cards, but some require pages. "Dear Mr. Anthony: I love your Xanth books. When is the next coming out, and what is it about? Please send me your picture, a list of all your novels, your philosophy of life, and detailed advice on how to become a professional writer, and tell me how much money you make. P.S., I am twelve years old." That sort of thing. I answer seriously, but it is a challenge to keep up, and it cuts into my fiction-writing time. Twenty-five hours a month, just to answer my mail! My novels have been falling behind schedule. Time—I don't have enough of it.

  Why not just stop answering fan letters? I understand many authors ignore their fan mail. I'm sure that simplifies their lives. I just can't do that. I feel that a serious letter— and when a twelve-year-old writes, it is quite serious to him—deserves a serious answer. There may be writers who don't really care about the quality of their fiction or of their personal relations; I do care. I do the best I can in whatever I am doing, whether it is a funny scene or a physical exercise or an answer to a fan. I admit to wondering sometimes why I bother, such as when I explain gently why I can not undertake to become a regular correspondent and get a hurt, sarcastic, or abusive response. But such events are rare and outweighed by the letters of genuine appreciation and understanding, sometimes from the parents of children I have written to. I am trying to do my little bit of good in the world (that will do for part of my philosophy of life), and I have found that the letters I send are far more important to my fans than theirs are to me. No, I don't mean that to sound callous; it's just that I do receive hundreds of often-similar missives, while the fans on the other end may never have a more personal interaction with a writer they like. There is a current of desperation that runs through much of the mail I receive; that small personal touch my reply represents is vital. Some fans are lonely and some are ill; they write to me because they enjoy my fiction and perceive in me a person who cares, and
in this they are not mistaken. But the time it takes, the time it takes! I am forced to perform triage on my mail: this letter must be answered promptly, though my paying work suffers; this one can wait; this other one does not have to be answered. At what point does my need to earn a living override the hurt feelings of a fan? If my mail continues to increase, I will not be able to answer even the first letter from some fans; this may have happened by the time this novel sees print. That will hurt; the cold equations always do. Sometimes I feel like the national budget: always a deficit. A deficit of time.

  Then there are the extraordinary events that consume whole chunks of time. I don't mean they are amazing or unbelievable, just out of the ordinary. I address a class here, go to an autographing session there, submit to an interview, or participate in a convention elsewhere. I turn down the great majority of invitations; even so, there is something almost every month.

  There are family events. My daughters like to get me involved in their activities, and if there is one thing I place ahead of my writing, it is my family. Penny is learning how to drive now, and it would not be expedient to have my wife teach her; my wife can't even stand to have me drive when she's in the car. So Penny learns with me, much as she learned to ride the bicycle years ago, and I trust it is no serious affront to her if I remark on how nervous I can get when my fifteen-year-old daughter is at the wheel, demonstrating that she's not afraid of cornering at high velocity, that it is still possible to stall the motor four times when turning the car around, and managing to scrape the chassis against the road on a bump. Sometimes I think small trees quail when they see us coming, and quail are treed. But mainly it takes time, for I will not turn my child loose on the highway until I am reasonably certain she will survive the experience. A car is a powerful machine, a potential killer; she must learn the same respect for it that I have. I took my eyes off the road once, over a quarter century ago; next thing I knew, the car was in mid-air, and my only thought was whether I would ever regain consciousness after it struck the ground. As it happened, I survived the rollover with no more than a bruised shoulder, but I remain highly conscious of the hazards of carelessness.