img April 1989 img

A communications board provides helpful messages: “My—–hurts.” A girl is moved to Ward 7. A nerve is blocked. A companion is chosen. A support brace to therapists becomes elven armor in a girl’s imagination. Someone moves her left hand for the first time. A letter appears with a mysterious signature. A whistle sounds. And the first word is spoken, “Hi.”

 

Apull 3, 1989

Dear Jenny,

 

What’s that? Why didn’t I send this letter in care of the Monster Under the Bed in the Cute Care section of Cumbersome Hospital, as I have before? Well, it’s a long story. You see I have a feature of my computer program that will put on a whole address when I type one word. That way I can type “Jenny” and it puts it all there in half an eyeblink. I use it mostly for business letters, but since I’ve been writing fairly often to you, I decided to put you in too. Then when I print out the letter, I can copy that address for the envelope. But if I set it up with the Bed Monster and all, I might accidentally type that onto the envelope, and then I’m not sure exactly where the letter would go, but I’m afraid it would not reach you as quickly. So give the Bed Monster my regrets; this letter is in care of someone else.

I was going to write to you yesterday, Sunday, and phone the hospital to learn how you were doing, but things happened. My day started well, because when I rode my bicycle out to pick up the newspapers (we’re so deep in the forest that our mail box is three quarters of a mile away) I saw a cloud sitting on the ground. It had come down to rest for the night, where it thought no one would see, but it overslept and I saw it resting about three feet above the ground, and the tops of the trees showing above it. It’s a rare thing to catch a cloud napping like that; mostly they stay way up high and pretend that they never sleep at all.

I decided it was time to listen to that record with the beautiful picture on the album, the one with the huge stone musical instruments and the castle in the background, and the girl in the red dress dancing—well, maybe she’s just standing there enjoying it, with the wind blowing her hair off to the side, just the way you’re going to, one of these days, after you get better—but to do that I had to put together the record player, after postponing that chore for about a year. So I got it set up, and the tape player too—what a mass of wires and connections and things, all threaded through impossible-to-reach little holes in the back! That’s almost as bad as combing the tangles out of your hair after you’ve been through a windstorm. That used up my morning, but I did listen to the record. That hammer dulcimer actually sounds delicate, not at all like a carpenter’s hammer on metal. Oh I knew better, but somehow that’s how I thought of it. It’s nice enough music, and it does sound as if there’s a heartbeat in it. Maybe I’ll get one of those dulcimers, though I have no hope of playing it decently. If you and I ever meet, you can play it decently. My daughter Cheryl was home from college this week, and she’s taking a class in the recorder, and she was practicing on it, tootling away at all hours of the day and night. My parents used to play the recorder, and I think it’s great if my daughter does too. The more music the better. This morning on the radio I heard Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, and that’s one of the loveliest pieces I’ve heard. I was trying to read the newspaper, but I just had to stop and listen. Oh, I know, that sounds like a cumbersome title, but believe me, the music is beautiful, and if you ever get a chance to listen to it, do so. For that matter, if you ever have a chance to listen to Grieg’s Peer Gynt—I’m not sure I’ve spelled that right, but it’s such wonderful music that it almost gives me hope for the world.

Anyway, that’s how my morning went. Then the phone rang: two of my readers were in town and wanted to visit. Okay, I meant to talk with them for an hour, but I always talk three times as much as is good for me—it’s a trait I share with your mother, I think—and it was close to three hours before they left. Then I had to mow our lawn. We’re deep in the forest, but we do have a little lawn around the house, in patches; it was even, but the horses grazed parts down to bare dirt, until we confined them to the pasture. That finished my afternoon. Then I had to finish Chapter Three of Isle of View, and that was only 500 words but I kept running into things I had to figure out, so it took time. So I never got to this letter, and never called the hospital. I hope you didn’t miss me. So now I’m doing it first thing this morning.

Yes, I wrote Chapter Two, with Jenny Elf. She managed to scare off the goblins by picking cherry bombs from a nearby cherry tree and tossing them behind the goblins, who fled. Then she untied Che Centaur and told the cat to find a safe place, and then the two of them followed the cat. Your folks were going to ask you about the name of that cat, but you had such a big day that day, with everyone visiting (and listening to my last letter? Ouch—I hope I didn’t say anything naughty!) that there wasn’t time for that. I understand you are doing so well that they may move you out of Cute Care. All those nurses there will be so lonely when you go! Anyway, Jenny and Che and the cat do make it to the raft on the With-a-Cookee River, but mean Fracto drives them back to shore and the goblins capture them. Tune in next week, when maybe I will have written the next Jenny chapter and saved her from a fate worse than a flu shot.

I’m enclosing a comic strip, “Curtis.” I don’t read comics much these days, except for “Calvin and Hobbes,” but the newspaper is just now starting this one up, so that they can have a black comic to go with all the white comics they have. I think I’m going to like it, and you can see why. We vegetarians can get obnoxious when we try.

Last night I looked out back, and there were dozens of fireflies flashing green. That’s the first time I’ve seen them here. Maybe the freshly mowed lawn attracted them. Folk who hate bugs should try watching fireflies some time.

Remember Elsie the Bored Cow? Then I saw another one, Hownow Brown, and my wife saw a third, and we realized that there must be a hole in the fence. Those cows belong to the sheriff, and he checked and found that the air-boats had shoved a hole in his fence where it’s at the pond, and the cows were getting through. So they weren’t lost, they were just heading for the farthest and greenest pastures.

Tell your mother that I got her letter of Marsh 29 and I hope she’s well enough this week to come in and see you. Maybe she’ll be able to read this letter to you. Of course that means I can’t say things about her, the way I have in other letters; she might be listening. She asked about the article I wrote for THE WRITER that mentioned you, so I’m enclosing one of the messed-up copies my computer ran off. You are mentioned on page 7; tell her she doesn’t need to bother reading the rest of it, which is mostly about technicalities of writing. I don’t know when it will be published, but at least this will let you folk know what I said.

Keep getting better, Jenny! I understand you even waved to your daddy the other day. I guess that’s better than wiggling a toe at him.

Apull 9, 1989

[This letter was addressed to Jenny at Warp 7-A, Sick Bay,
Enterprise.]

Dear Jenny,

What’s that? You don’t recognize the pun? It relates to Star Trek, where they are always zooming into space at Warp Factor 7 or something. When I heard you had moved to—oh, Ward? Sorry, I misheard. And they have a barrier up to block off the nerds—what? Oh, nerves. I thought you said—well, never mind.

I have some good news, which you may already have heard. I wrote to Richard Pini, and he phoned me and said it was fine to use an Elfquest elf in Xanth. In fact, he said they would send you a note. I gave him your address; I thought it was all right. So if the one thing you wanted more than a note from Xanth was one from Elfquest, now maybe you have it.

Remember how your mother wrote me a four page letter when you smiled, and six pages when you laughed? When you got better enough to leave Cute Care, she called me and talked for seven pages. I think she’s having trouble keeping up with you.

I’m still working on Isle of View. I am now in Chapter 5, “Chex’s Checks,” and right now Chex is trying to get past the evil cloud Fracto, who naturally wants to stop her from getting wherever she’s going. Grundy Golem is with her, yelling insults at Fracto, so it’s getting pretty stormy. I’ll be back with Jenny Elf in the next chapter, but first I have to get through this one. Writing a novel can be almost as much work as recovering from a coma, I think. Well, maybe not that much. Some day maybe you’ll write a novel, and you can let me know then. Chex is going to fly so high, trying to get over Fracto, that she winds up on the moon, and not the honey side of it either. Did you ever get all four feet mired in green cheese? Even Grundy’s big mouth isn’t going to be much help there!

Remember when I told you about our rows of pine trees, and the blueberries that were getting mowed down? Well, a lot of blueberry bushes did get flattened, but a number survived because they were between the trees where the mower couldn’t reach. Now they have berries, and we’ll be able to pick them before long. Spring comes early to Florida, you see. You know, as I look at those pine trees, and see all the rows, it’s as though each row is a life, going straight through to the other side, with the trees alongside marking off the years. Some go a long way, and some only a short way. Each seems unique, yet if you step into the next row, there it is with its own life, just as nice. I think that if we could step from one person’s life to another, as we can between the rows, we would see how similar they are, even though each is the only one that seems real to it, and each probably believes that if it closed its eyes, all the others would have no existence. It’s sort of funny and sort of sad and sort of awesome too.

We had a little bat visit. We found it on our garage door a few evenings ago, hanging from the top of the screen. It must have been too tired to make it home, so it stopped at our house. It turned its head and looked at us, but didn’t fly away. We left the garage open, but it stayed where it was all night, and the next day. I’m afraid it’s dead now. We would have helped it if we could, but we don’t know much about bats except that they are good to have around. They’re like flying mice, really. So I guess we’ll have to bury it. Some don’t make it out of the hospital, unfortunately. I considered calling it Brick Bat, after the one in Heaven Cent, but that might be unkind.

Remember all those fireflies that turned up in our forest? They’re still here; every night they flash all around our house. I woke up one night and there was one flashing in our bedroom. I thought about catching it in a glass and taking it out, but I was afraid that in the dark I’d hurt it, so I waited till morning—and then couldn’t find it. I hope it found its own way out, because houses really aren’t the place for fireflies. We have fireflies by night and dragonflies by day. I was talking with some folk outside, and a dragonfly came and perched on my shoulder. They’re so pretty, with their four wings and their different colors! I saw six blue ones at once, one day. When we go out, they are always curious just what we’re doing, and sometimes they will sit on our hands if we hold them up.

I’m enclosing a cartoon about the awful oil spill this past week in Alaska. Do you watch the news on TV? Maybe you should. Two recent headlines have been about the oil spill and nuclear fusion. Do you want a lecture on how they’re connected? No? Too bad, because I’m going to give it anyway, and maybe you’ll be interested when you see how it relates to you.

You see, our world needs a whole lot of energy, for everything from jet planes to hospitals. They get most of it from fossil fuels like oil, and when they ship that oil, accidents happen. You know how bad drunken drivers are? You would not be in that hospital now, if the driver who hit you hadn’t been drinking. It’s a mean, bad business, drinking and driving, and there’s a group trying to stop it, called MADD. That stands for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Well, the captain of that oil tanker was drunk, and his ship cracked up and leaked oil into the sea, and now thousands of innocent birds and seals and fish are dying because they got soaked in oil. So we need to stop the drunk drivers—but also to stop the shipment of oil, so it can’t foul the ocean.

The trouble is, we need that oil, for a squintillion things. So what do we do? Well, another source of power is nuclear energy. But that can foul things up awfully too, when some drunk driver pulls the wrong switch, and radiation gets all over the place. But there is one kind of nuclear power, nuclear fusion—that’s pronounced New-Clear Few-Shun—that hardly makes radiation at all, and could make enough energy to take care of all our needs for just about forever. It’s what makes the sun shine, after all. The trouble is, it is very hard to make fusion work on Earth; it takes about a billion dollars worth of equipment, and they still don’t have it working. Except that now these scientists have found a way to do it simply and cheaply at room temperature. Maybe. They have set up something a bit like a car battery, that makes so much heat it melts the equipment, and they think that only fusion could account for that. We can’t be sure until other scientists duplicate the effect, to be sure it really works. But if it does work, it may mean that we won’t need oil any more, and no more poor ducks will die in the spills. That’s why, in the cartoon, the animals are hoping that fusion will work.

So there was the lecture. Now you know why you should be interested in nuclear fusion. Because you care about animals. Maybe you’ll grow up to be a cartoonist like that, who helps folk understand what’s at stake.

I understand you may have a roommate now. I hope you get along okay. My daughters have roommates at college. Anyway, keep getting better, Jenny!

Apull 14, 1989

Dear Jenny,

Ha: I finally got my new ribbon, so the letter will print out dark instead of light. See, look at it—isn’t that nice? No, don’t squinch your eyes shut! I’ll hold my breath until you look. One, two, threemph, fourmth, gasp—ha, you looked! Now let me catch my breath.

I have several things, this time. First, I’m typing this letter Friday instead of Sunday, so that I can mail it Saturday, and it will arrive Monday or Tuesday so your mother can have it in time to read to you on Wednesday. Last time it came too late for her, and she was miffed, and you know how bad that is.

She told me that you had decided on Sammy to be the cat that makes it into Xanth with Jenny Elf, and she sent three pictures of him in his speed-bump mode on the stairs. Okay, I am replacing [cat] with Sammy in the text; I haven’t changed them all yet, but I will when I edit the novel. I did go over Jenny Elf’s introduction in the novel, and I printed out those three pages for you. So you can make someone read that to you any time—no, don’t throw away this letter yet! You can wait till the end of this paragraph, can’t you? Because I need to tell you the background. Chex Centaur is searching for her foal Che, and has been checking with all the search parties, but no one has seen anything yet. Finally she comes back to her cottage in a clearing, with Grundy Golem, who is helping her search. That’s when this text starts. Remember, I’ll probably make small changes later, as my daughter Cheryl catches me on more errors. If you spy any, let me know; I may have forgotten more than I ever knew about Elfquest. Okay, now you can throw away this letter.

Now let me tell you about the way I feel about cats. I don’t like them. No, wait, don’t throw the bedpan at me yet. You see, cats do like me. And there was one I did like, and she’s the one I want to tell you about. But it’s a sad story, so don’t listen too carefully.

It all started with Pandora. Pandora was the girl who opened a box she shouldn’t have, because she was curious (girls are like that), and all the ills of the world flew out and we’ve been in trouble ever since. Well, this cat had kittens in our car, and we discovered this when we were about to drive somewhere. So we called her Pandora, because of all the mischief. The daddy-cat had skipped out—this has been known to happen with people, too—so we had to take care of her and them. She was a stray cat, you see. There were three kittens: two tiger-striped like their mother, and one black with a white face. All three were males. You know, I just discovered that the females of most species have different names, except for cats. A female goat is a doe, a female sheep is a ewe, a female horse is a mare, and so on. But a female cat is a what? Apparently there it is the other way around, and it’s the male cat who has to take the other name: Tom. Anyway, when they were old enough we gave away the two tigers, but we kept the black and white one, whom we named Panda, because he was the son of Pandora, and his coloration fitted. Pandora we didn’t keep, because she had bad manners. If you walked along a path, she would rush past you, get just ahead of you, then hiss and scratch you if you continued walking on her path, even if you had never seen her come. So we had her spayed and gave her to a cat shelter.

Well, Panda grew up with our dog Canute, who was a beautiful Dalmatian, also black and white. Canute’s story is a sad one, so I’ll skip that. Then, months later, a small midnight black cat appeared, evidently dumped by some tourist going north—they do that, and if I say any more about the practice of dumping, I will become uncharitable, which is a polite way of saying #$%&*f⊘!!, so I won’t. We didn’t want another cat, so we ignored her. But she seemed to want to take up residence in our garage. So we shut her out. Then, when we went to open it, she appeared from nowhere and dashed in. Now this was really pushing it, so I went in with the dog to rout her out. She stood guard before a box, so I kicked over the box, trying to make the point that we didn’t want her in there, where she was apt to get shut in by accident and starve. And a kitten fell out.

Oops. I investigated. There were five newborn kittens, which explained why she had been so desperate to get back in; we had shut her out from them, not knowing. One looked just like her, and one looked just like Panda, and the others were all shades in between. This was a perfect genetic pattern, solidly incriminating Panda as the father. So we were responsible. We brought her into the house and named her Pandora II. Panda didn’t like that; he was jealous of his turf. Too bad; he should have thought of that before he—well, never mind, the Adult Conspiracy just invoked itself. She turned out to be a perfectly house-trained cat. We had a different dog then—no, don’t ask about Canute, this history is sad enough without that. Let me just say that once we adopt an animal, that animal is ours for life; kittens are the only ones who have left. I usually think of dogs as honest and cats as dishonest—stop glaring at me, will you, just let me tell my story!—but the dog would sneak anything she could, including the cat’s food, while the cat sneaked nothing. I mean she would not jump up on the table to go after food. That’s a rigorous moral code, for a cat. When we went for a walk around the block, Pandora II would come with us. She liked people. She did not go out at night to prowl; she preferred to sleep on my daughter Penny’s bed. Penny was then five. The only problem was that Penny was hyperactive—if you don’t know about that or dyslexia, you’re lucky—and when she wiggled her toes under the covers, Pandora would pounce on them, thinking they were edible. You see, Pandora had survived alone for a while; she was a huntress. She would never claw a person knowingly. In fact she had a thing about that: no person could do any wrong. If anything happened, such as someone stepping on her tail—I know it’s mean to mention such a thing, but accidents do happen—it was the dog’s fault. She would go and hiss at the dog, who like as not was sound asleep and was quite confused by it.

Well, we gave away the kittens again, and kept Pandora II. She was a wonder. One day an obnoxious neighbor’s dachshund came charging in to chase Pandora. She fled; I saw them disappear around the house. Then the dog reappeared, yipping, with the cat hot in pursuit. My daughter had seen it happen: Pandora had retreated to the base of a big punk tree—no, you don’t have that kind where you live—whirled, hissed, and given the dog a good swipe on the nose. He was far larger than she; I think she weighed only about three pounds. But she just didn’t take any guff from dogs. So, in the course of such episodes, I came to like her; she had a lot of mettle. She was our cat.

Then one evening she did not come in. We were perplexed, because she had not done this before. But if she wanted to be outside, we wouldn’t stop her. It would be no good hunting for a midnight black cat at night! But in the morning, as I went out to pick up the newspaper, I saw her lying there at the edge of the street. “Oh, no!” I said, dreading it. She was dead; she had evidently been hit by a car. I buried her behind the house. Telling Penny about it was almost as bad as finding Pandora dead; it tore us both up. That was sixteen years ago, and it still hurts. So that is the story of the only cat I ever really liked, and I just can’t see my way clear to liking another. I guess I’m a one-cat man, and Pandora was that cat. Oh, Panda was all right— but several months later, he too was hit by a car. You might get the notion that I don’t like what careless cars do to folk. Right.

You know, years later I was on a panel at a science fiction convention with Andre Norton. I don’t know whether you read her books; she has had over a hundred published, and many are juveniles. She loves cats. So it was quite a panel when I said I didn’t like them. But then I told of Pandora II, and Andre Norton and I are friends.

Now on to better things. Yesterday we had our first magnolia flower of the season. You see, when we built our house here on the tree farm last year, we had to make a half mile long drive to the house, which is hidden in the deepest jungle. We wouldn’t let them doze out any magnolia trees, which were growing wild throughout the forest. So now they are tame trees along our drive, and one of them is flowering. Magnolias are big, lovely flowers. We have a dogwood, too. Actually, I’ve never seen an ugly flower; even so-called weeds can have wonderful little flowers, if you just look carefully at them. But you can see a magnolia flower for a hundred feet. We can’t count the magnolia trees we have on the property, but there are at least thirteen along the drive—those I did count—and some in the forest are huge.

Look, I am running on too long—who else do you know who does that?—and must stop. Beware; some letter I may tell you about the beauty of math. No, don’t turn your nose away in disgust; I can tell you something about math that will fascinate you. You see, when I was your age, math was my worst subject. Then I discovered how it can relate to art. I may also get on the subject of the creative mind in the prison of circumstance. But not this letter, so relax.

Let me just pass along to you a riddle that annoys me. It is this: take a cup of coffee—what? Well, I know you don’t drink coffee, and neither do I, and I’ll bet your mother doesn’t either, but that isn’t relevant. Pretend it’s mudwater, okay? Take one teaspoonful of that coffee and stir it into a cup of tea—you don’t drink that either? Neither do I. But your mother does? Pretend it’s something awful, like tannic acid from boiled leaves. Okay; now take a spoonful of that mix from the tea cup and put it back into the coffee cup. Now the riddle: is there more coffee in the tea cup, or more tea in the coffee cup? No, I won’t tease you about the answer. As I figure it, they are the same: just as much coffee in the tea as there is tea in the coffee. Having figured it out, I looked up the answer in the back of the magazine where I saw this problem. It said that some problems were almost too easy, and that there was more coffee in the tea cup. What? Either I missed something, or that’s a wrong answer. Which is the problem I often have with tests of any kind: their answers don’t match mine. When that happens, their answers are wrong, of course. But I remain annoyed.

Remind me next time to tell you about the Llano; that should interest you too. Now I really must go, because I have to write a letter to your mother, and she’s jogging my elbow.

Oh, what’s Jenny Elf doing right now? Well, I’m in Chapter 6, and she and Che Centaur are the captives of goblins who have a grotesque fate in mind for them. But Jenny’s magic talent is about to be discovered. Yes, she has one, because she’s from a magic land. You see, she—oops, I’m at the end of the letter. Meanwhile, don’t let things like this frustrate you; just keep getting better.

Apull 21, 1989

Dear Jenny,

Guess what: I had a letter from Sue Benes, your Occupational Therapist! Aren’t you jealous? No? You say you got one from Elfquest? Well, try this one: I also have one from Jenny. Oops—that’s you! In your Elven Armor. Well, now; I wouldn’t have thought of that. Thank you. Just don’t get into any fights with the human folk. And one from your mother. You remember how many pages she wrote me when you smiled (4), laughed (6), and moved to Warp 7 (7, of course—oops, that was that phone call)? This time you Spoke—right, eight (8) pages. You know, I was going to call the hospital today to find out how you’re doing, but there was so much information in those eight (8) pages that I can’t think of anything about you I don’t already know. Besides, I’m afraid to try I don’t know the Warp folk as well as I knew the ones in Cute Care. But about your letter: your mother said you still have a bit of trouble signing things, but that she could make out the J and Y. Well, I can also make out an N in the middle. But you have a way to go yet before your signature gets as indecipherable as mine. The more I sign it—and I have had to sign thousands of times—the worse it gets, until now all you can read is the P, but you know there’s an I there somewhere because the dot is in the middle of the P. I read a book about grapho-analysis once, telling how to judge folks' character through their handwriting, and I resolved that no one was going to get at my inner secrets of character that way, so I set it up so that the I-dot was always inside the P. Let them try to analyze that! They’ll think that I’m impossibly introspective, and, um, ouch, they might be right. Sigh.

I’m enclosing a couple of comic clippings from today’s newspaper: one Family Circus about a vegetarian, and a Curtis, because it seems your local paper doesn’t carry it. It’s really just an ordinary comic, though today’s strip is a bit painful in an unintended way: I’d hate to have that happen to a parakeet. We used to have parakeets, starting with Cinnamon, whom we inherited from my wife’s sister when she got married and moved away. Naturally we named the next one Nutmeg, and went on through the spices from there. But all that was before we were adopted by a cat. I wrote a story about parakeets; it’s in my volume Anthonology, which volume is unsuitable for the mothers of teenagers to read. Anyway, I hope your music playing doesn’t sound like that of the comic.

I guess that’s all—oh, what’s that? You’re reminding me to what? Oh, to tell you about the Llano. Yes. I think you haven’t read my other fantasies, and they’re really not intended for folk who aren’t in on the Adult Conspiracy, but this much should be all right. You see, in that fantasy series there is the ultimate song. It’s really the operating system of the universe—I’ll wait while you make your mother tell you what a computer operating system is—in the form of music, and the lady who becomes Nature has a rare talent for music and learns how to sing it. But even the pieces of it, the little fragments that some folk learn, have rare power; when folk sing them, wonderful things happen. There’s the Song of Morning, which makes the dawn come and flowers grow, even when it’s the middle of the day on a pavement. There’s the Song of Evening, which brings love. So keep your ear open; some day you may hear a piece of the Llano, and you want to be sure to remember it.

I was also going to tell you about how math could be beautiful. No, don’t drum your fingers impatiently on the armrest; someone might see you, and then there would be a great hue and cry: “She can drum her fingers!” and your privacy will be gone. You see, I know about the deadly dullness of math. I mean, who can stand to memorize the Times Tables? I couldn’t! I took an IQ test once, and the problem was all in words, but I immediately saw that it worked out to eight times twelve. Then I had to stop and figure out what that was, while the woman was timing me on the stopwatch. It turned out that that was supposed to be the easy part; most kids couldn’t get that far, but when they did, they knew the answer instantly. Which sort of thing explains why folk never thought I was smart. That, and the way I took three years to master first grade. Yes, I really did! So maybe some day I’ll succeed in memorizing eight times twelve. I wonder if it’s close to the answer for twelve times eight? That would be a nice coincidence! Anyway, arithmetic was the bane of my existence, until about ninth grade, when it changed. I didn’t change, it changed. It quit with the stupid Times Tables, which are called Rote Learning, which is the stuff of idiocy, and started with algebra, which is like a puzzle. If X plus 5 equals your age, what’s X? I’ll bet you can solve that one! You can even use it to solve one of the trickiest riddles ever, which your mother probably encountered generations ago: Mary is 24. Mary is twice as old as Ann was, when Mary was as old as Ann is now. How old is Ann? This is the stuff of fun, if you like brain-buster riddles, which I do.

You can make lines and circles and things on paper with the right X and Y formulae. This is because the answers change. Next year X will be larger than it is this year, because your age will be more. So you can plot a line of all the possible values of X, and you can even follow it back into the past: when you were 4, what was X? What number added to 5 equals your age of four? A minus number, that’s what! Maybe that seems foolish in the real world, but math is a world of its own where strange things can happen. It can be fun making up equations and finding out what pictures they make.

But mainly, it is that math can become very like art, especially with the aid of a computer. You see, a few years ago a man tried plotting an equation—what? No, his name doesn’t matter. He used a complex equation—no, I told you his name doesn’t matter. He made a drawing of all the points that fell inside this equation; the ones that fell outside he ignored. So—oh, all right, his name was Mandelbrot. Now will you listen? He took this complicated formula and used the computer to figure out all the points—and it turned out to be a very strange figure indeed. The main part of it looked like a lady bug, but there were also little lady bugs near it, and they were all connected by curling patterns. When he used colors to mark these patterns, it became beautiful. In fact I would call it art. The patterns keep repeating on smaller and smaller scale, but never quite the same as before, so there’s always something new to find. So this science of figuring out such pictures is called fractals, and this one figure is called the Mandelbrot set (I can’t think why!) and it is considered to be the most complicated object in mathematics—and perhaps also the most beautiful and fascinating. I can look at it for hours, always being amazed. There are patterns like little shells in there, and others like sea-horses, and who knows what else. Maybe your folks have encountered this, and can show you one of those colored pictures in a book. If your mind is anything like mine, you won’t find it very interesting at first glance, but the more you look at it the more fascinating it will become as you try to figure out just what’s with this weird design. All from an obscure mathematical formula. So remember: there’s a whole lot more to math than the awful stuff they teach in grade school, and the higher math resembles the lower math much the way a beautiful princess resembles a squalling baby. I’ll be getting into this when I write Fractal Mode, the novel with that picture I described on the record album jacket—you know, with the huge stone dulcimer and the girl in the red dress. I don’t know which fascinates me more, the dulcimer or the damsel or the Mandelbrot set imagery I’ll draw on. So I will write to Mr. Mandelbrot, to make sure it’s all right to do that.

Now let’s see—now stop that snoring, I know you aren’t asleep!—I was going to mention that I have put a scene in Isle of View with a princess and a unicorn. See, I knew you weren’t asleep! Actually there’s a dragon in it too; I hope you don’t mind. It’s a nice story that they make into a bad dream for Fracto (no relation to fractal!) the mean cloud. You see, Fracto hates nice things, so this really nice tale drives him to thunderation. But Jenny Elf picks up on it too, and for her it’s a nice scene. So the novel is progressing, slowly because a lot of other stuff came in this week, but it is getting there, and Jenny Elf is—well, can you keep a secret? She turns out to have a magic talent. Mundanes don’t, but she’s from the World of Two Moons where there is magic. So she has magic. It’s that when she sings, which she doesn’t like to do in public—I mean, who does?—a fancy forms, sort of like a daydream of a really nice scene, like a sweet princess and a nice castle, and anyone who hears her sing but isn’t paying attention enters the fancy too, and enjoys the scene. But anyone who is paying attention can’t get into it. This makes it sort of hard to verify her magic, as you might think. But it’s there, and it helps her stave off the awful fate the goblins are planning for her. Oh, I know it’s not Magician class magic, but it’s good enough.

Tell your mother thanks for the copy of Andrea Alton’s novel she sent. I am buried in reading right now—I have to read a fantasy novel for a publisher, for a blurb—that’s a comment they can run on the cover, to encourage others to buy it—and I’m a slow reader. But in due course I’ll get to this one, so tell her not to get too impatient about getting it back. I see it has cat folk on the cover, which makes sense; anyone you folk know relates to cats, right?

I must stop; it’s supper time. Keep getting better, Jenny—I know I’ve said that before, but you know, I wouldn’t want you to change your mind and start getting worse. May you dream of elves and unicorns and fractals—oh, all right, you can leave out the last.

Apull 28, 1989

Dear Jenny,

I heard something about something—details are obscure, because nobody is talking, but I think it was a whistle. I had to piece it together from secret fragments, and parts of it may be missing, but here is the unauthorized version of the incident.

Things were quiet at the Cumbersome Hospital, and the folk there were going about their various businesses. The doctors were counting their money in the Doctors' Club, the nurses were running around with big needles to give patients shots, the patients were hiding under the sheets hoping the nurses wouldn’t find them, and the cooks were preparing something horrendously awful for the next meal. In short, everything was routine.

Suddenly there was a piercing whistle. It reverberated through the halls and made every person stop. What was that? The sound was so compelling that all the doctors, nurses and cooks charged up to Warp 7 to find out where it came from. They traced it to Jenny’s room, and they all arrived there at once and squeezed through the door together. But it happened that the staff had been waxing the floor that day, and the surface was just about one degree more slippery than a wet bar of soap on melting ice. The nurse in the lead took a phenomenal spill and landed on the floor, sliding right up to the edge of the bed. The doctor behind her landed on top, and the nurse behind him landed on top of him, until there was a pile like a crazy sandwich just about six nurses, two doctors, one cook and a cleaning woman high.

Now it just so happened, by the type of coincidence that occurs only in a story like this, that the nurse on the bottom of the pile was the very nurse who had once threatened to give the monster under this bed a loathsome shot in the rump. Now her face was right up close, and she couldn’t move. Suddenly a huge hairy hand came out and tweaked her on the nose. She screamed. “EEEEEEEEKK!!” It was the most piercing eeek ever heard in Warp 7, almost as penetrating as the whistle had been. It shook the entire pile.

Then, slowly, the pile began to fall. The cleaning woman on top grabbed at her bucket of slop water, but all that accomplished was to dump the bucket on the rest of the pile, wetting six nurses, two doctors and one cook. They all screamed with outrage as they fell. After all, it was suspected that that water was supposed to be saved for the next day’s soup. “Aaaaaahh!!” Then the pile crashed to the floor, scattering arms and legs and whatever everywhere.

At this point the therapist arrived. Her name was Sue. “What are you all doing here?” she demanded indignantly. “This is supposed to be a private session!” The others scrambled out, humiliated. They never were able to find out who had blown that whistle. It is a mystery that remains to this day, because nobody likes to talk about it. In fact the doctors claim that nothing happened, nothing at all.

But Sue was unable to do the therapy session, because Jenny was sound asleep, with nothing but the very faintest of smiles on her face. Clutched in her left hand, out of sight under the sheet, was a silver whistle. Could it be? Sue shook her head and tiptoed out, so as not to disturb Jenny from her nap.

Okay, that’s all I have been able to piece together. I wonder how much of it is true? The folk at the hospital all deny that any such thing happened, of course, and there’s a perfectly good explanation why their uniforms looked like tomorrow’s soup, but there is that whistle, and the monster under the bed seems happier than he’s been in a long time. Your mother said something, but it wasn’t at all like this, so she may be in on the conspiracy of silence. We’ll probably never know for sure. But you can tell me: were you really asleep?

I had an experience with my computers this week. You see, I made a lots of notes two years ago for my big novel Tatham Mound, which is about the American Indians who encountered Hernando de Soto, the Spanish conquistador who landed in Florida and discovered the Mississippi River. He was looking for gold, and he wasn’t very nice to the Indians who told him they didn’t have any. So this will be a savage novel, and I have over a hundred books I plan to use for research. But my early notes were in my former computer, and I needed to translate them to this computer. Computers don’t necessarily talk to each other, you see; sometimes you have to use eye blinks or keyboards or whatever to find out what they’re up to. The floppy drives were on the blink: they kept saying I had no disk there, when I did. So we were going to have to call the repairman. But I tried it once more, because you know how things play possum, then work perfectly when the repairman is watching. It still didn’t work. I tried it again and again, and it didn’t work. After about six times I tried something dirty: I took the disk out and told it to read the disk. That gave it a real error to chew on. And would you believe: after that, when I put in the disk, it decided to read it! So I quick translated my two disks of Mound notes to the new format and read them into my new system. Now I have my notes and four chapters in my new system, ready for me to write more. All because I faked out the computer. Maybe it thought I was the repairman when I gave it a real error to work on. So I’m happy; it isn’t often a person can outsmart a dumb machine. Ask your mother.

But there’s a moral. Yes, you knew I was going to get to that, didn’t you. And you’re going to pretend you’re sound asleep, clutching your whistle, aren’t you! But it won’t work; here is the moral anyway. It is that if something doesn’t work the first time, or the second, keep trying, because maybe after the sixth time it will. I remember when you were in that deep pit—it was more like a well, actually, dark and lonely and scary—and you finally started to climb out, an inch and a blink at a time. You struggled and struggled and at last you made it to the rim—only to find that that was only the first hurdle in a mountain of challenges. So you’re still struggling to get back your own, one muscle at a time. You wish nature would just let you get it all back in one swell foop, but foops are hard to come by. So keep struggling, Jenny, and maybe one day you’ll get to take a giant step instead of a finger step.

One of our magnolia trees had seven flowers one day. Did I tell you about the magnolias? No? When we were having our half-mile drive put in, I was showing the man where, and I saw a little magnolia tree right in the path of the dozer. “Go around that tree,” I told him. Thus it was that that little tree was saved. But they cut the road so close to it that some of the roots were damaged, and the poor little thing’s leaves were turning pale and yellow. We were afraid the tree wouldn’t survive, after all; it was sort of in the Cute Care section. Then I had a bright idea. Maybe nitrogen would help it. Plants like nitrogen; it helps them grow. It happens that there is nitrogen in urine. So whenever I passed that tree, I—well, never mind the details. But soon its leaves were turning green again, and it was doing better. It’s out of Cute Care now and will probably grow into a fine tree in due course.

Your mother says the flowers in her garden just aren’t as pretty when you aren’t there. They will surely perk up when you return. You say maybe they need nitrogen? Your mother says Absolutely Not!! (No, I don’t know what set her off. Women are strange that way.)

I have just written a scene between Sammy Cat and Prince Dolph. You see, Jenny Elf told Sammy to find help, when the goblins were capturing her and Che the centaur foal, and he took off and found Dolph. Dolph can change forms, so he became another cat and talked with Sammy in feline language. But Sammy never says two words when one will do. “Where did you come from?” “Home.” That sort of thing. It was frustrating. Finally Dolph got smart, and told Sammy to find the captives. Then Sammy took off, and Dolph followed. But there’s a lot of adventure still to come.

The other day we saw strange bugs on the screen enclosure of our swimming pool. They looked like huge gray Assassin Bugs, but one was pink. Was it hatching from its old gray skin? Then a cardinal came by and snapped it up. We like birds and we don’t like assassin bugs, but it was a bit of a shock to see nature so directly in action. Everything preys on something else. We love the pretty colored dragonflies, though they are predators too. The thing is, they prey on things like deerflies, and the deerflies bite our horses (we do have deer in the forest, but I guess the deerflies can’t always find deer to bite), so we really appreciate the way the dragonflies keep them down. I found a dragonfly in the pool enclosure. We always try to get them out, because there’s nothing in there for them to eat, and they can starve. But they think it’s a game when we shoo them out, and gaily dodge around us. This one had evidently been in a couple of days, and was flying slowly. I opened the door, but it landed on the doorframe instead. I actually touched its wing, but it didn’t move. Finally I managed to jog it loose, and it flew on outside. I hope it had the strength to catch a fly!

Yesterday when I rode my bicycle out to pick up the newspapers—they are three quarters of a mile from our house, you see—I discovered halfway there that my little basket was half full of leaves and moss and stuff. Something was trying to make a nest there! When I got back, two wrens flew from that region. So I took off the basket and set it up in the corner, with its leaves and things still there, so that next time I wouldn’t ride off with their nest. But the wrens did not return; they didn’t trust it after that. I can’t blame them. I’m just sorry I didn’t see the leaves before I rode out. We like wrens; they are gutsy little birds, and they keep bugs from the house.

So our life goes on from day to day in its petty pace, and I guess yours does too. But keep working at things, Jenny; even inchworm steps are better than none. And tell your mother I meant to write her a letter too, this time, because I have a whole lot to say, but I ran out of time. So in a few days I’ll write her. You say all I have to do is tell you what I want to say to her, and you’ll tell her? Well, thanks, but do you really want to tell her two pages? I thought not.

PS—Since I changed from the manual typewriter to the computer, my I’s don’t capitalize; I think I take my finger off the capital key too fast. So I made a macro to capitalize them for me. It just capitalized 27 in this letter! And four more in this paragraph. Don’t you try to miss I’s like that—you’ll get cross-eyed.

Oh, one more thing: your mother told me of a story you wrote once, about flowers and a blind princess. Is it all right if I put that in the novel? I think it’s a lovely story, and it does explain why flowers have pretty smells. You have such a nice way of seeing things, sometimes, Jenny.

Ouch—and the printer messed up your letter; I’m printing it over. As I said before, the computer will get you if you don’t watch out.

*AUTHOR’S NOTE:

THE COMIC STRIP I MENTION SHOWED CURTIS HAVING LUNCH WITH HIS WHITE FRIEND GUNK, A VEGETARIAN, WHOSE SANDWICH HAD A WHOLE CARROT IN IT. GUNK IS A FRIEND TO ALL LIVING THINGS, AND HIS HOMELAND OF FLYSPECK ISLAND IS A MAGICAL REALM. JENNY AND I JUST HAD TO LIKE GUNK.

THE WHISTLE STORY IS BASED UPON A DEVELOPMENT IN JENNY’S THERAPY PROGRAM. JENNY HAD GOTTEN A WHISTLE, AND WAS ABLE TO BLOW IT. THIS WAS A SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENT, CONSIDERING THE GENERAL PARALYSIS OF HER FACE. SO I MADE A STORY ABOUT IT, POKING FUN AT HOSPITALS IN GENERAL. BUT I HAVE TO SAY THAT CUMBERLAND HOSPITAL IS A MUCH NICER PLACE THAN THE ORDINARY HOSPITAL, BEING RATHER LIKE A RESORT IN APPEARANCE AND ATTITUDE, AND THIS STORY HAS NO RELATION TO REALITY THERE.

THESE LETTERS CONTAIN SEVERAL MENTIONS OF COMPUTERS IN CONJUNCTION WITH JENNY’S MOTHER. SHE EARNS HER LIVING BY PROGRAMMING COMPUTERS, THUS IS RIPE FOR TEASING. THERE WILL BE MORE OF IT. IT SEEMS THAT JENNY LAUGHS WHEN HER MOTHER GETS TEASED, AND HER MOTHER LOVES TO HAVE JENNY LAUGH, SO SHE ENJOYS GETTING TEASED. THIS IS A POSITIVE ATTITUDE.