Recommendation, Mino thought, his machine mind very loud and clear. Explore the parameters.
Voila extended her awareness through his to the ambiance of the cave, for now she trusted Mino and could share freely with him. He had an enormous store of information and processing ability. What he lacked was imagination and feeling. She possessed these things, far less than the adults or even the children did, but her small basis was enough to guide her in seeking more. She discovered that it wasn't enough. Siblings she thought. Join us.
What you fussing about now, brat? Warp demanded. Then he felt it. Wow!
You're linked to Mino again, Weft thought. And this time you're letting us in.
And what a merger it is, Flame thought. Bigger than anything except Idyll.
Their company helped considerably, as it always did, for they could organize their thoughts in words and remember them. Help me explore the parameters, she urged them. She had to borrow the word from an adult mind, as all she knew was the vague concept.
They did, joining their minds and feeling to hers, drawing on Mino's database. Five minds, questing through the ambiance that had been too large, complicated, and dynamic for any one mind.
Understanding came. The secret of the planet was here, its ultimate motivation. It had discovered awareness and desire with the arrival of the early colonists, starting with the demons and progressing with the mosses, fungi, and trees. Then the worms had come, evolving up through dragons, bringing conscious intellect. The planet slowly integrated each arrival, and benefited from it, adding its capacities to its whole. The last to come was the human species, with its ready intelligence, and it too was being integrated. It needed to be, because the threat from the machine culture was too great for the planet's other resources to handle. It had to have those minds to guide its process. Thus the effort of the sphinxes, who had not known the larger plan; they had simply implemented the urging that came from the planet.
It wants us to serve Charm instead of mankind, Warp thought. To be part of it.
Why should we do that? Flame demanded.
Weft had the answer: to save us all from the machines, maybe a century hence. Voila beat Mino, but he's only one little piece of a huge galactic culture. We're going to need everything. All the business about the altars, loom, changelings, and Glamors—was to try to bring the humans in. So that all will not be lost to the machines.
Correction, Mino thought. The effort to integrate preceded my arrival. All species are ultimately one with the planet, on Charm and Counter Charm. But it had to be hurried, because of this threat.
So is it really that bad? Warp inquired.
Confirmation.
And Mino was in a position to know. Sharing his far-reaching linear precognition, augmented by his existing information, satisfied them that he was correct.
Then we'll do it, Weft thought.
Do we tell the adults? Warp asked.
Not yet, Flame thought. They all giggled.
Voila napped again, but was aware of the several paths of the near future. She saw Augur and Aura settle on Counter Charm, and Ini too. Ini would keep the altar ikon and marry the Green Glamor and bear him three children, with a fourth via Augur, and they would be raised among the ifrits. Other humans would come, forming a small community, a village. Meanwhile Ivo, Iva, and their children would be joined by other ifrits to make an enclave on Charm, with Futility as liaison to the human community, basking in her importance. She would take an ifrit lover who honored her whims implicitly, demanding nothing, but also accommodate the Translucent Glamor when he wished; that was another kind of importance. In time she would marry the Glamor and start her own family, though not required to, and demand her fourth from Havoc, annoying all the other women of the palace. The former bath girls, Bijou and Nonce, would remain associated, marrying well and also claiming their fourths from Havoc in due course. Nonce would return the loom ikon to its native village, fulfilling a promise. The loom's Glamor was the planet Charm itself. The ladies Ennui and Aspect, free of their ikons, would slowly revert to their middle aged natures, and be quite satisfied, as were their men, Throe and Chief.
Meanwhile the children would grow up to be suitable palace terrors. Symbol, enhanced by Viola's ikon, would somehow keep up with them. And Voila herself would in time become a young woman, the most potent of all the Glamors—just in time to tackle the next crisis. Not the machines, but a nearer one: Earth, coming at last to reclaim its colony and exploit the planets. That could not be allowed, but its denial was a tangle of paths that could not yet be unraveled.
Voila looked forward to it. Meanwhile she would spend much time with her friend Idyll Ifrit, learning all she could. It would be wonderful.
* * *
Author's Note
The three ChroMagic novels were written at two-year intervals, in 1998, 2000, and 2002. When it was apparent that Parnassus (the traditional publishing establishment) wasn't interested, I gave them to small publisher Mundania Press, which set up to publish them at six month intervals in 2003 and 2004. Now that's done, and I'll write the fourth and fifth novels, Key to Liberty and Key to Survival, if the first three do well enough to warrant it. That depends on factors other than merit.
Which naturally needs an explanation. At the time I proofread the galleys and wrote this Note, my personal life on our isolated tree farm was suitably dull, but my professional life was evincing potential. I spent roughly the decade of the 1980s on the bestseller lists with my fantasy, and the decade of the 1990s as a has-been. It wasn't that the quality of my writing declined, but that the quality of my publishing did. I saw that if I wanted to return to the bestseller lists, I could not depend on the publishing industry. So I oriented on the sister motion picture industry. It was a long wait as the movie outfits flirted with my various novels and series, but now things seem to have aligned and there are excellent movie prospects for three of my fantasy series. Should these materialize, the market for my fantasy will magnify, sales will increase, and a continuation of ChroMagic will become commercially feasible. So it has nothing to do with the quality of the novels or the dubious efforts of publishers, and everything to do with the movies. This is one of the magical realities of fantasy.
As I read the novel, I pondered its elements. It starts slow, with a good deal of reprise. This is necessary, as the vagaries of the marketplace mean that some readers will not see the prior novels and will start with this one. Some will have read one or both of the others, but some time ago, so that many of their details will have been forgotten. Those readers need to be brought up to date, lest they be confused. I have always tried to have each novel in a series be intelligible and enjoyable on its own. Some writers look askance at that; they feel that readers should be required to start at the beginning of a series, so no updates are necessary. There's no point in naming those writers; you would probably not recognize them, as they lose much of their readerships without understanding why. Other writers extend the principle to single novels: if a thing is mentioned once, that's it, and the reader had better remember it. I have on occasion been thrown by what seemed like a key element flying in late from left field. Once I asked the author about that, and he was disgusted with my obtuseness: he had distinctly mentioned that element fifty pages before. So he had. Yet for some obscure (to him) reason he never earned the living from his fiction that I do from mine. My rule here is THINK OF THE READER. So I try to see that all key elements are clear, and I remind the reader of them when they reappear after a fair amount of text. Do I do that too much in this novel? It is possible, because I noticed it. It's a judgment call, to make for the greatest clarity for the greatest number of readers without alienating those who are sharp enough to catch and hold everything the first time.
Does the novel work its slow way up to a worthwhile climax? It seems so to me: the fate of two planets, and the answers to enduring mysteries. There are a number of elements along the way, each with its nuances that integrate to form the whole. The ikons, ch
ildren, ifrits, and Mino—I would hesitate to cover them more expeditiously. The ikons alone range from Glamor tokens to a fancy loom, tricky to understand. I also have certain conventions to follow, like the customs of the language and gender roles: Question, Curiosity, Outrage, Obscenity. With the exception of the Amazons, women don't take up swords and battle like men. They find feminine ways to handle their challenges. For example, the case of the lesbians in the Gray Chroma village in Chapter 4. Ennui and Aspect don't threaten the villagers, they find a way to encourage tolerance. When there is violence there, the Gray Glamor handles it, making the point with brutal efficiency as the birds destroy the malefactor. Women don't hesitate to use sex appeal to win rides across the Chroma zones, an advantage they have over men. One result is that there's more sex here than you can shake a penis at. The new Glamors are discovering their magical abilities, and of course the Glamor children too. There's a lot to cover.
Normally fantasy is low-research; I simply invent what I need. Even so, there was some work here. In Chapter 3 the challenge to move the altars about was adapted from a tile moving game on my computer. I made a diagram, figured out a solution, then put my characters through it. There was more to do there than showed in the text. In Chapter 9 the illusion challenge was another job of research. I wanted different scenes, so didn't depend on my own limited imagination. I dug out my collection of about twenty fantasy genre art books and went through them, noting remarkable images. Then I adapted some of them to the scenes. It was quite a challenge, but I trust varied and refreshing for the readers. Another bit of spot research came to naught: a reader mentioned that “nonce” is a prison term for sexual offenders, who have to be separated from regular prisoners lest they suffer harm. I didn't know that, so I looked it up in my collection of dictionaries, from the Oxford English down. Nonce means the present, for now, which is the way I see the girl Nonce; she's certainly no sexual offender. No indication of anything untoward; it evidently has not yet reached the dictionaries. So I'm letting her be.
Then there are the inset stories. I have an idea file where I have summaries of my ideas over the years, and when I need one I go there. Thus the little stories travelers tell. My hope is that readers will like this series not just for the main storyline, but also for its ambiance: that they'll like just being in this realm. The no fault traveling and inset stories are part of it. I like to think that the reader pictures him/her self in the scene, polishing his/her own little stories to win a night's lodging from villagers, before traveling on to experience new wonders. I want my readers to live in this realm for the duration of the series, preferring it to their own mundane existence. So they won't get impatient if there is not a cliffhanger every scene.
Reading the novel two years later, I hardly noticed the changes in viewpoint, but these were a struggle to work out. Each long chapter has two viewpoints, two sequences for each view, with three sets of major characters, until the last chapter, which has several, including the finale by four-month-old Voila. I was concerned with balance, giving each major character fair representation, and having chapters of similar length. It was quite a balancing act—unnoticed in the reading. Conclusion: maybe I should worry less about balancing and just focus on telling the story.
Something else occurred to me: I have charts detailing the arrivals of all the major species as the planet gets colonized by successive waves of things and creatures. But when did the funguses, bacteria, viruses, and amoeba colonize? They are obviously there, as they support their own Glamors, but they don't seem to be listed. The record must be incomplete. That needs to be addressed, some time.
As I read, I kept thinking of the next novel, when Earth comes to reclaim its colony. What a cast of characters I have ready for that! The Earth ship officers have the power to blast the planets from space, so can't be ignored or directly opposed, but how little they will know what they're up against. That sweet teen girl, Voila, daughter of the king—they might take her home as a hostage. Does her nonChroma magic work on planet Earth? There are amoeba on Earth; if they accept her, she'll have a global reach. Can she read the future there? If so, they'd be better off blowing themselves up to keep her away from Earth. That harmless dull boyfriend of hers, Iolo Ifrit—they may have something to learn about clouds back on Earth, too. And do they even see that robot ship following them home? Revelation: I may have to start writing the novel regardless of its commercial viability, being unable to wait to discover the answers.
—Piers Anthony, March 17, 2004
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Piers Anthony, Key to Destiny
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