As for scraps of the alternate idea, this is as far as I got:
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Commander Cordelia Naismith stumbled out of a narrow cave mouth, supporting Ensign Dubauer over her shoulder, and stopped dead at the edge between shadow and sunlight.
This was not the world she had been on an hour ago. The sky was pale blue rather than turquoise, and the sun yellow-white rather than a deeper gold. The terrain wasn't too dissimilar -- grassy highland plains stretching toward distant mountains -- but the plants themselves were utterly different, all of them nagging at the edges of her memory as if she should know them already. In fact, she thought, taking an involuntary step backward toward the shelter of the cave, if she didn't know better, she would swear she had stepped into a holo documentary of Earth.
Impossible.
And yet, she couldn't deny the evidence of her senses. She had dragged the injured Dubauer into the cave barely five minutes ahead of the Cetagandan scouting party, hoping to lose them in the darkness, and had exited somewhere completely different, as if they had walked through a jump point underground.
Dubauer moaned, one leg twitching and spasming as if trying to give out under his weight. Hastily Cordelia lowered him to the mossy ground outside the cave and shoved her handkerchief between his teeth, in case the symptoms turned into a full-blown seizure. Dubauer stiffened, then began to shake all over in slow waves, his mouth drawn back around the handkerchief in a rictus grin.
Cordelia waited out the seizure, then blew out her breath and examined him anxiously, which she hadn't had time to do before. She had caught the edge of the ravine as Dubauer shoved her out of the Cetagandan's line of fire, fumbled out her stunner, and dropped the painted soldier to the ground. Then she had hauled the ensign to his feet and run for the only potential shelter she could think of.
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Basically I couldn't find the right balance between reusing Bujold's words and events and telling the story in my own voice and pacing. :-(
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Date: 2012-09-08 03:04 am (UTC)As for scraps of the alternate idea, this is as far as I got:
---------------
Commander Cordelia Naismith stumbled out of a narrow cave mouth, supporting Ensign Dubauer over her shoulder, and stopped dead at the edge between shadow and sunlight.
This was not the world she had been on an hour ago. The sky was pale blue rather than turquoise, and the sun yellow-white rather than a deeper gold. The terrain wasn't too dissimilar -- grassy highland plains stretching toward distant mountains -- but the plants themselves were utterly different, all of them nagging at the edges of her memory as if she should know them already. In fact, she thought, taking an involuntary step backward toward the shelter of the cave, if she didn't know better, she would swear she had stepped into a holo documentary of Earth.
Impossible.
And yet, she couldn't deny the evidence of her senses. She had dragged the injured Dubauer into the cave barely five minutes ahead of the Cetagandan scouting party, hoping to lose them in the darkness, and had exited somewhere completely different, as if they had walked through a jump point underground.
Damnation. She hoped the René Magritte had escaped the Cetas and returned home to Beta Colony with a warning. The Cetagandan Empire was on an expansionary path -- Komarr twenty years ago, Marilac ten years ago -- and they were due for another war. Cordelia had no idea what they wanted with an unknown world in the middle of nowhere, but she doubted it would be beneficial to any of the neighboring polities.
Dubauer moaned, one leg twitching and spasming as if trying to give out under his weight. Hastily Cordelia lowered him to the mossy ground outside the cave and shoved her handkerchief between his teeth, in case the symptoms turned into a full-blown seizure. Dubauer stiffened, then began to shake all over in slow waves, his mouth drawn back around the handkerchief in a rictus grin.
Cordelia waited out the seizure, then blew out her breath and examined him anxiously, which she hadn't had time to do before. She had caught the edge of the ravine as Dubauer shoved her out of the Cetagandan's line of fire, fumbled out her stunner, and dropped the painted soldier to the ground. Then she had hauled the ensign to his feet and run for the only potential shelter she could think of.
---------------
Basically I couldn't find the right balance between reusing Bujold's words and events and telling the story in my own voice and pacing. :-(