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I wish I could do the "Share three passages from three WIPs" meme in the spirit in which it's probably intended, but it doesn't mention fanfic in particular, after all. So, have something from the fic I hope to finish someday, plus a bit from early in Not Time's Fool (which counts as in-progress because I still have plenty of editing to do) and the opening of Book Five.
1. "They got all this out of our heads?" he wondered. "I mean, it's not very Betan, all the water. But…"
"If it was the Barrayaran seaside the waves would be bigger and colder and there wouldn't be… pelicans? Albatrosses? Whatever those are."
"Exactly. Where in my subconscious or yours did those come from, I ask you."
"Simon, dear. Don't be more paranoid than you… obviously require yourself to be. It's a generic Earth fantasy, I expect. Collective ancestral memories." She smiled. "Adam and Eve. Aquatic and geriatric version thereof. I have to say," she added, looking down at herself, "it's pleasant to negate the effects of gravity somewhat."
2. Alisha chuckled. “You are so nonchalant about it. Do you know how many times on the show I’ve wanted to tell everyone how my daughter works in time travel? The segue proves difficult, is all. ‘Speaking of making curtains, did I ever tell you how one of my daughter’s jumpers met Betsy Ross and the woman who actually did sew the first American flag?’ ”
“He wasn’t one of my jumpers, not that I own them or anything. That contract happened while I was still doing Europe.”
“Well, then, the tulips. I did tell them about the tulips. And that was definitely yours.”
A picture formed in Janet’s mind of Rutger, bent over a microscope in the middle of a tulip field. Had it been an advertising piece? She didn’t want to think about the tulips.
“It’s not that glamorous, you know. Even for the jumpers. I haven’t ever jumped at all, of course. I just push people and information around until they fit.”
Alisha nodded. “People depend on you. And it may not be glamorous but it’s important. More than what I do.” She hesitated briefly, waiting for Janet’s denial; Janet decided that it could be assumed. “But you pretty much got forced out of the old job, didn’t you?” Alisha went on, pouring the tea. “Are you feeling better about that?”
“I’m fine. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault, not really. Something went wrong, and we couldn’t jump into Europe anymore.”
“It had to do with those new Saut de Soi things, right? The personal jumping devices like what’s-his-face, Dr. Sinensis, used at the Boston Tea Party reenactment?”
Janet’s hand froze, reaching for the cup. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, it’s probably a post hoc fallacy—and don’t grin like that”—Janet hadn’t been—“just because I spend half my life in an apron doesn’t mean I don’t have an education—but they show up on the market and the U.S. government bans them, and then next thing you know jumpers are disappearing in Europe and then no one is allowed to time travel there anymore at all. And”—she frowned, taking a gingerbread terrier—“we get a Christmas card from Vienna, where I had no idea you were going, and then every time I call your office you’re at an offsite meeting, for months, and your hard-nosed boss gets all charitable and gives you half the job someone else has been doing competently for years, so he doesn’t have to fire you. Or maybe he can’t?” She bit the terrier’s head off. Mercy killing.
Janet sipped her tea, finding words. “We have a lot more North American contracts these days,” she said. “You get good at something and people give you more of it.”
“Aside from nobody giving anybody anything, that’s true enough. This”—Alisha patted her broad hips—“this is symbolic fat, here. I was skinny enough once. But am I right about the new machines?”
She could have guessed at more sensitive matters; giving her this was no sacrifice. “Yes. Though I’d appreciate it if you didn’t figure out how to work that information into your show.”
“Hmph. They’re tacky little things from what I gather. Wouldn’t give them house room.”
3. The muffled oars whispered secrets to the river as the boat slipped downstream at dawn, returning Major John André to the safety of the Vulture.
Rinaldo’s back and arms ached. They’d already done the long pull to and from the British sloop once; yes, it had been hours earlier, and he’d killed some of the boring and uncomfortable wait with a nap while André and Benedict Arnold had their chat, but the shoulder muscles he’d strained fighting the current were screaming at him now. He tried imagining just how good it was going to feel when Pasha had him facedown and naked in their bed, kneading at every sore bit of him with enormous and clever hands, but it was a dream, another world, the imaginary future it should have been to the man rowing the boat. The muscle strain was pretty much real; the boat wasn’t, and neither was the Hudson, even though he could taste its spray on the wind and feel it splashing on board when George’s oar cut into the water at the wrong angle.
They must have put the chilly splashes into the program on purpose, along with the tedium and the uncooperative current, just to weed out those rookies who expected time travel to be a non-stop adventure, instead of painful, cold and mostly dull. No wonder the Colquhoun brothers, who’d done the first leg of this horrible trip in real history, had balked at repeating it; no wonder it had been so easy to talk them (or their computerized avatars) out of the honor of influencing the outcome of the American Revolution. And here, provided with the bona fides required to pass as slightly more enthusiastic but equally gullible patriots, were George Merrill and Rinaldo Dickinson in their places.
1. "They got all this out of our heads?" he wondered. "I mean, it's not very Betan, all the water. But…"
"If it was the Barrayaran seaside the waves would be bigger and colder and there wouldn't be… pelicans? Albatrosses? Whatever those are."
"Exactly. Where in my subconscious or yours did those come from, I ask you."
"Simon, dear. Don't be more paranoid than you… obviously require yourself to be. It's a generic Earth fantasy, I expect. Collective ancestral memories." She smiled. "Adam and Eve. Aquatic and geriatric version thereof. I have to say," she added, looking down at herself, "it's pleasant to negate the effects of gravity somewhat."
2. Alisha chuckled. “You are so nonchalant about it. Do you know how many times on the show I’ve wanted to tell everyone how my daughter works in time travel? The segue proves difficult, is all. ‘Speaking of making curtains, did I ever tell you how one of my daughter’s jumpers met Betsy Ross and the woman who actually did sew the first American flag?’ ”
“He wasn’t one of my jumpers, not that I own them or anything. That contract happened while I was still doing Europe.”
“Well, then, the tulips. I did tell them about the tulips. And that was definitely yours.”
A picture formed in Janet’s mind of Rutger, bent over a microscope in the middle of a tulip field. Had it been an advertising piece? She didn’t want to think about the tulips.
“It’s not that glamorous, you know. Even for the jumpers. I haven’t ever jumped at all, of course. I just push people and information around until they fit.”
Alisha nodded. “People depend on you. And it may not be glamorous but it’s important. More than what I do.” She hesitated briefly, waiting for Janet’s denial; Janet decided that it could be assumed. “But you pretty much got forced out of the old job, didn’t you?” Alisha went on, pouring the tea. “Are you feeling better about that?”
“I’m fine. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault, not really. Something went wrong, and we couldn’t jump into Europe anymore.”
“It had to do with those new Saut de Soi things, right? The personal jumping devices like what’s-his-face, Dr. Sinensis, used at the Boston Tea Party reenactment?”
Janet’s hand froze, reaching for the cup. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, it’s probably a post hoc fallacy—and don’t grin like that”—Janet hadn’t been—“just because I spend half my life in an apron doesn’t mean I don’t have an education—but they show up on the market and the U.S. government bans them, and then next thing you know jumpers are disappearing in Europe and then no one is allowed to time travel there anymore at all. And”—she frowned, taking a gingerbread terrier—“we get a Christmas card from Vienna, where I had no idea you were going, and then every time I call your office you’re at an offsite meeting, for months, and your hard-nosed boss gets all charitable and gives you half the job someone else has been doing competently for years, so he doesn’t have to fire you. Or maybe he can’t?” She bit the terrier’s head off. Mercy killing.
Janet sipped her tea, finding words. “We have a lot more North American contracts these days,” she said. “You get good at something and people give you more of it.”
“Aside from nobody giving anybody anything, that’s true enough. This”—Alisha patted her broad hips—“this is symbolic fat, here. I was skinny enough once. But am I right about the new machines?”
She could have guessed at more sensitive matters; giving her this was no sacrifice. “Yes. Though I’d appreciate it if you didn’t figure out how to work that information into your show.”
“Hmph. They’re tacky little things from what I gather. Wouldn’t give them house room.”
3. The muffled oars whispered secrets to the river as the boat slipped downstream at dawn, returning Major John André to the safety of the Vulture.
Rinaldo’s back and arms ached. They’d already done the long pull to and from the British sloop once; yes, it had been hours earlier, and he’d killed some of the boring and uncomfortable wait with a nap while André and Benedict Arnold had their chat, but the shoulder muscles he’d strained fighting the current were screaming at him now. He tried imagining just how good it was going to feel when Pasha had him facedown and naked in their bed, kneading at every sore bit of him with enormous and clever hands, but it was a dream, another world, the imaginary future it should have been to the man rowing the boat. The muscle strain was pretty much real; the boat wasn’t, and neither was the Hudson, even though he could taste its spray on the wind and feel it splashing on board when George’s oar cut into the water at the wrong angle.
They must have put the chilly splashes into the program on purpose, along with the tedium and the uncooperative current, just to weed out those rookies who expected time travel to be a non-stop adventure, instead of painful, cold and mostly dull. No wonder the Colquhoun brothers, who’d done the first leg of this horrible trip in real history, had balked at repeating it; no wonder it had been so easy to talk them (or their computerized avatars) out of the honor of influencing the outcome of the American Revolution. And here, provided with the bona fides required to pass as slightly more enthusiastic but equally gullible patriots, were George Merrill and Rinaldo Dickinson in their places.
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Date: 2015-01-24 04:27 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2015-01-24 08:35 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2015-01-25 12:51 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2015-01-25 03:18 pm (UTC)From:And aha, I wondered, because I didn't see anything I could definitively recognize - hurray you, please finish it!