And she did improve. The doctor’s strenuous treatment was effective, and in a few hours the crisis passed. Weary, weak, feeling depleted, but relieved, Lea realized that the burden had lifted and she was on the way to recovery. She was sure that she would be her old self by the time the ship reached Boston. She hoped her folks would never know how difficult part of her wonderful excursion had been. Somehow she felt that she had accomplished more than merely circling the world while baby-sitting a little boy.
The babies were ready. All that remained was to insert a soul split into halves, and the two halves of the magic talent and ship them to their destination. They were wrapped in cloth, a blue ribbon was set in the hair of the male, and a pink ribbon in the hair of the female. Then they were conveyed to the other end of the complex, where the waiting room of the storks was. A husky stork was given the location. It then poked its beak through the upper knot of the bundle, made a running takeoff, and was airborne. Another baby or two was being delivered to the waiting family.
“Oh!” Bria exclaimed as the stork, tired from the double burden, unceremoniously dumped first one baby and then the other into her lap and flew away. “Two!”
“A boy and a girl,” Esk agreed. “I can tell by the ribbons.”
“I think I know what their talents will turn out to be,” she said wisely. “He will be able to make things magically hard, and she will be able to make them magically soft. Whatever shall we call them?”
“Epoxy and Benzene,” he said.
“That’s the label on the diaper!” she protested.
But it was too late. He had spoken the words, and the names stuck fast. Epoxy Ogre, who made things hard and fast, and Benzene Brassie, who dissolved them again. They were destined to be quite a pair, when they got loose in Xanth. But at the moment they were merely cute identical twins.
Identical? Male and female? Somewhere a disturbing thought hovered. Fortunately it found no place to settle.
“Do you know,” Bria mused, accepting it philosophically, “sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier just to let us make our own babies at home. Then maybe we wouldn’t have to wait so long for delivery, or be caught by surprise.” She paused, then reluctantly added: “Or be concerned about possible mistakes.”
“It will never happen,” Esk replied. “The bureaucracy of the Adult Conspiracy hides all such critical information. That outfit will never give up its power. No one will ever know the secret of making babies.”
“And no child will ever know the secret of summoning the stork,” she agreed. “Perhaps it is just as well. There could be a lot of mischief if children ever started doing it.”
Certainly no one in the Mundane world ever knew the real story, especially not innocent girls like Lea who answered newspaper ads. Lea remembered that year between high school and college, but somehow its details soon faded along with her stretch marks, in the manner of a dream. Perhaps that was just as well. What would the world come to, if such devastating secrets were exposed? It might be severely disruptive of the established order.
Note: The idea of Esk and Bria having twins with the magic of making things hard and soft was suggested by David Abolafia. But don’t blame any of the rest of it on him. This was written for Norman Spinrad’s anthology Down in Flames, where the authors of a number of series were to write stories torpedoing their own creations. So mine torpedoes Xanth. No wonder the storks are so close-beaked about where they get the babies, and why it takes so long to deliver them. I wrote it early in 1992, and revised it on the editor’s suggestion to make it more obviously Xanthian, and signed the contract on February 11, 1994. $250.00 was to be paid within thirty days of receipt of the signed contract. That was the end of it. I never received payment and as far as I know the volume was never published; it must have gone down in flames. So now, twenty years later, I think it is time to share this story with my readers, damaging as it may be to Xanth.
Author’s Note
Each entry herein has its Note, so I suppose the volume is entitled to one too. Funny thing about my Author’s Notes: editors don’t like them, publishers don’t like them, reviewers don’t like them, critics hate them. Nobody likes them—except the readers. Over the decades I think I have hundreds of reader endorsements, many saying they prefer the Notes to the novels, which leaves me with mixed feelings. I remember only three negative votes, and when I rechecked those, one was from a woman who liked them but thought I shouldn’t have to work so hard writing them; one reader didn’t see much point in them; and I forget the third. Assuming it was fully negative, that makes the reader score about a hundred to one in favor. So what’s with the critics, who hate what readers like? And I think that’s it: critics tend to have aberrant tastes, which is why they are critics instead of writers.
You might think I have included all my left over pieces. Not so. On rare occasion a story loses all its rights to the publisher, so I can’t use it. I have also done a number of essays targeted to specific audiences, that would not be of much interest to this (I presume) more general audience. For example, there is “Syntax of Dreams,” which was written in response to a request for an idealized Last Lecture: if I knew it was to be my last, so that I would have no further chance to address my audience, what would I say? So I said it, in about 5,000 words, but it gets technical and I concluded it was not for this volume. There are the talks I have given at conventions, targeted to their interests, such as my “Blockhead” talk, where I said I’m a blockhead because I don’t write only for money, and most Internet writers and publishers are blockheads too; they applauded that. Or the one where I used the analogy of a person getting a ten dollar bill, provided he shares it with someone else; pretty soon he catches on that he doesn’t have to share evenly, because if the other person doesn’t take the lesser deal, he gets nothing. I likened it to publishing, where the publisher offers maybe five percent of the money an author’s book makes, and if he doesn’t take it, he gets nothing. Which is one reason I support Internet publishing. But is that of much interest to the general reader? And some I simply lose track of. I try to keep a careful record of everything I write, but things do slip through the cracks, like typos.
But for those who are interested, you are welcome to visit my Web Site, www.HiPiers.com, where I have a monthly blog type column featuring my feisty opinionations, plus an ongoing survey of Internet Publishers and related services for the benefit of aspiring writers looking for markets, plus general information about me and my novels. Or my Blog site http://piersanthonyblog.blogspot.com where I have spot essays. Or my email address
[email protected] Or my Twitter site, at https://twitter.com/PiersAnthony where I have an ongoing novelette “Forbidden Fruit” told line by line in 140-character-or-less Tweets, one per day. I lack the imagination to do original Tweets on different subjects, so I make them into stories which eventually may be collected into a volume like this. So there are several ways to reach me, if you are interested. Otherwise, I wish you well in your uninterested life.
Credits: some of these were written for amateur publications and I never saw them in print, so the listings are approximate.
“Bluebeard” published in Interzone 1995
“Root Pruning” 2006
“Cartaphilus” written for Starkweather: The Grid circa 2006
“A Picture of Jesus” published in Science Fiction Age 1993
“My America” published in My America 2002
“Serial” published by Excessica 2007
“The Courting” published in Bits of the Dead 2008
“Pep Talk” published by NaNoWriMo 2008
“Knave” published by Cobblestone 2008
“Juliet Quartet” published by Excessica 2009
“Editing” written December 2008
“Medusa” published in Divine Matches circa 2010
“Rat Bait” published in Something Wicked circa 2010
“Humor” written February 2009 for Crossed Genres
“Lost Things” published
in The Horror Zine 2010 and What Fears Become 2011
“Privy” published in The Forsaken circa 2011
“Wood Knot Dew” published in Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror: Exercises from Today’s Best Speculative Genre Writers & Teachers circa 2013
“Living Doll” published in Attic Toys 2012
“Religion” written 2012, publication uncertain
“Adult Conspiracy” written 1992 for Down in Flames, never published.
And a credit for my proofreader Scott M. Ryan, who caught half a slew of errors I had missed.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Piers Anthony
ISBN: 978-1-4976-6280-3
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Piers Anthony, Cautionary Tales
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