Sunday, April 10, 2011

"as insubstantial as a Peaceforcer's promise."

Shared this on Facebook, reposting.

Opening of "Live Fast and Never Die" -- it used to continue immediately with the main action, but since there's going to be a delay between books -- I gave Trent a vacation. Just some bits. He meets a girl:

~~~~~

“ANOTHER PITCHER OF margaritas, please. Wait.” He glanced at the girl on the hammock beside him. “Strawberry? Melon?”

“You look like Adam Selstrom,” the girl said in English that was better than Trent’s Portuguese and no worse than his French. “With blond hair. And younger, of course. Did anyone ever tell you that? Melon.”

The girl’s name was Allison. She was Brazilian, of apparently Asian background despite the blonde hair and blue eyes, neither obviously from a makeup key. Trent didn’t know how old she was – above 21, he was pretty sure, despite the presence of her parents on the atoll. In any event her father hadn’t said anything to him yet.

“Melon,” Trent told the waitbot, which bobbed its head at him and trundled off. “Yeah,” Trent told Allison, “I get that sometimes. Don’t see it myself.”

~~~~~

Her father, a squat middle-aged Brazilian Unification functionary, had given Trent the evil eye – her mother had simply failed to see him, as though he were as insubstantial as a Peaceforcer’s promise.

~~~~~

Allison’s voice was a little startling. “Have you been here before?”

“Rangiroa? No.”

“What made you decide to come here?”

Trent thought about Mohammed Vance, who by now was tearing apart the seams of the world looking for him.

“Did you know,” he said to Allison, “that there are twenty thousand islands in the South Seas?”

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for posting on here. Great little "vacation" in between novels.

Mike Cornflake said...

Adam Selstrom :-) Like it :-)

Jesse Wendel said...

*laughs and laughs*

If he only "looks like", then it sounds as if our boy has gotten much better with the makeup than he was when he set off on the Long Run and didn't know how to apply a base, let alone how to effectively disguise himself.

However... even with 20,000 islands "looks like" is still too much. I'd say it's time for sculpture.

Daniel Keys Moran said...

Yeah, Trent's wearing a makeup layer. And also biosculpture is coming soon -- after which, for the rest of this novel, he'll look like "himself" -- blond and blue-eyed, for the first time in a decade plus.

Unknown said...

Ah, but who on Earth would be doing the sculpting? There were only a few he trusted.

nathan kaiser said...

I am enjoying every bit that you post. Keep the fun coming.