Piers Anthony - Phaze Doubt

“A mother figure?” Brown asked, amazed.

“I should not have mentioned it,” Weva said quickly, flushing. “Now I realize that I had no right to cast you as—“

“Nay, girl, I be not affronted!” Brown exclaimed. “Gladly would I have had a child like thee, an it been possible without—“

A tear showed at the girl’s eye. “Then—?”

“May I hug thee, Weva?”

“Oh, yes!” Weva opened her arms and embraced her.

“Thou must visit me,” Brown said. “Thou and thy young—“ She hesitated. “Flach and Nepe be similarly reversed?”

“Yes. We are working it out. For now, we agree that he is male and I female. In time I’m sure the ambiguity will be resolved.”

“Surely it will,” Brown agreed. It occurred to her that there could be another reason that Weva chose to identify with her, Brown. That sexual ambiguity...

Now a unicorn stepped forward. It was Neysa. She assumed ‘her woman form, actually that of Nessie the Moebite emulating hers. “I be last,” she said, “ ‘cause my burden be most onerous.”

“Thou?” Brown asked, astonished. “Thou hast been always my best friend, Neysa!”

“Aye. That be why my pain be most, that I betrayed thee in thine hour o’ need.”

“What? Thou didst ne’er—“

“Nay, I did! When thou didst tell me what I somehow hall ne’er fathomed before, and sought my support.”

“Thou gavest it, Neysa. Thou didst—“

“I said thy shame would not be known. I, who loved outside my species, and had not the courage to confess it, and who condemned my filly when she did have the courage—how could’ I have condemned thee for loving in other manner! I were hypocrite when I hurt thee, Brown, and deep be my thereof.” There had been one tear at Weva’s eye; there was t stream at Neysa’s eyes. “It were not thy shame, O truest friend it were mine.”

Brown opened her mouth to protest, but was frozen. For from the mare radiated the splash of truth. It caused the air to shimmer, and the ground to ripple, and the sky to shift color. crossed the assembled folk, and from them radiated echoing splashes, their ripples crisscrossing. That backwash intersected the spot where Brown and Tsetse stood, and suddenly Brown felt the great current of support from all the gathering. The knew—and they accepted her way, as she accepted theirs.

Brown embraced Neysa. “There be no shame,” she said. Now it was true. The last doubt of Phaze had been resolved.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is the second Author’s Note in this series of no-note novels. Don’t froth at the mouth; you read this novel for better or worse.

One of the criticisms of my Author’s Notes has been that a novel should stand on its own and not need to be explained separately. I suspect that such critics read neither the novels nor the notes with much comprehension, because normally my notes discuss not the novels, but my life and times during the writing of the novels, or they may give credits to particular readers who suggested notions used in the novels. Well, muster your ire, because this time I shall discuss the novel.

Two names were borrowed from those of readers who wrote to me, though the characters surely bear little resemblance to the originals: Alyc and Jod’e. Another went the other way: Icy turned up in real life as a reviewer in an amateur magazine, Fosfax.

I was accused of doing a poor presentation of a lesbian, in the second Adept novel, Blue Adept. It must have been poor, because I had no lesbian character there, or in any of my novels. Apparently some readers assumed that a woman who hated men had to be a lesbian; I don’t see it that way. But in this novel I do have a lesbian, and any of that persuasion may now chastise me for doing it wrong. Certainly homosexuality is not one of my stronger subjects, but I felt that it wasn’t fair to exclude a sizable segment of the human population—about ten per cent—from representation in my fiction. Do I think that such folk are misguided, and that appropriate therapy will show them the error of their ways? No. No more than therapy would turn me gay. I would resent anyone, however well intentioned, trying to reverse my sexual orientation, so I follow the Golden Rule and leave the gay community alone. No, I don’t exclude them from friendship, and yes, I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one. Fair enough?

There were several problems in the course of the writing of this novel. For example, in the interest of developing new games for the game sections, I subscribed to World Game Review—and then didn’t use it. The novel led me in other directions than I expected. This sort of thing happens to writers. Sometimes characters take over their roles, too, and enlarge their parts, as Icy the demon chief’s daughter did. She was supposed to be a bit part, but she played me for a sucker with that sweater. You know, the one with the mountain contours.

I had intended to present the Master Game Grid layout here, so that interested readers could see exactly how every game was derived from the assorted grids and subgrids. But when I checked, I discovered no Master Grid. Oops! Two things, actually three, had happened. Years back I had worked out the full grid, and spent three hours one morning perfecting its details—then made an error on the computer that wiped out everything. I was never able to re-create it as I had had it. I can get very upset by such things, and I labor to see that they happen only once. Then I changed from CP/M to MS-DOS, and got everything set up—and a hard disk crash took it out. Later I changed computers, and my old one glitched. In sum, I couldn’t get anything that might have been salvaged. I was dependent on prior printouts. But I had also moved to a new house, and my back papers were buried somewhere in the refuse, where we are slowly cleaning up a decade’s worth of neglect. Eventually we’ll find those printouts, under a pile of other manuscripts. But I had a novel to do now. Which meant I had to do it without the Master Grid. Aarrgh!

Ah, now you understand. I faked it. This will be no news for reviewers, who have been privy to the fact that I faked any ability as a writer from the outset of my career. But I am sorry that I was unable to provide the Master Grid; it was my pride.

I try to benefit from anything that happens. Sometimes it’s a struggle. I received a letter from a reader, Ben Mays, who said that his play group would be putting on a show in my county at such and such a date. I hate to take time off from writing to sleep, let alone for anything else, but I do have an interest in drama. I acted in college, and while I’m sure I was not a great actor, it benefited me by helping me to abolish stage fright and teaching me how to make myself heard by an audience when there was no mike. I support the arts, and acting is one of them. So I made myself to go the play.

It was a disaster. Oh, the play was all right, I’m sure; it was Red Fox/Second Hanging, and was of the kind where stage and costuming are minimal. In fact there were only three actors, all male, covering perhaps a dozen parts. They changed parts almost in midsentence, going from scene to scene without pause. It started as a dialogue with the audience and worked seemingly by accident into the content of the play, but was actually highly integrated. It was a story of backwoods Kentucky, corruption and law enforcement and odd histories. The whole thing was the kind that you don’t see on mass market television, and yes, I think it’s great that small groups maintain the tradition and bring this sort of art to communities like ours. Attendance was free, even.

So what’s my gripe? Well, I was dead center in the audience, and the acoustics were such that the sound came at me from left and right, overlapped and garbled, and I could barely make out one word in ten. It was like watching TV with the sound turned down, or with interference that made the sound unintelligible: you can’t get much of the sense of it, but do have a glimpse of what you are missing. I suffered about two hours of that, thinking how I could have been home working on this novel instead. What a waste! Others heard it, and there was a standing ovation at the conclusion, which I didn’t join, because it would have been hypocrisy; I don’t do something just to conform. If only I hadn’t been stuck in that dead spot.