Emerald eyes a tale of the Continuing Time daniel keys moran

Interlude: Earth

November 5, 2068

On a grim cold Friday night late in November of 2068, Trent stood in a doorway, drinking black coffee with the bright warm restaurant at his back, and looking off across the water, watched snow fall on Manhattan Island.

Capitol City. The Big Town.

Pale blue eyes were the most visible features in a face that was poorly lit by the cracked, aging glowpaint on McGee’s roof. Trent had turned the heating coil on the mug as high as it would go, but the top layer of liquid kept going cold regardless when he waited too long between swallows.

He stood in a bubble of silence and stillness, slightly drunk himself. The wind whipped the snow wildly only centimeters away from the end of his nose, but where he stood the air was calm and cold, which was good enough.

He did not know how long he’d been out there before somebody from the party came looking for him. Trent’s coffee cup was long since empty when Jimmy came out through the restaurant’s roof entrance and joined him. “Word up.”

Trent inclined his head slightly.

“My brother,” said Jimmy quietly, his voice ten centimeters from Trent’s right ear. “Where are you?”

“On the roof,” said Trent without turning around.

“This I see. Where else?”

“Right here on the roof, Jimmy. Nowhere else.”

Standing immediately behind Trent, Jimmy nodded.

Without looking around, Trent added, “I can tell ’cause it’s cold.”

“Personally I think you’re on the beach again.”

The beach had been the furthest thing from Trent’s mind. “Absolutely,” he lied, and turned to look at Jimmy. “Sitting on the beach, drinking ’stralian beer, and watching the little brown girls go by.”

Jimmy grinned back after a moment. “Sho ’nuff. You’ll be there someday. Maybe the rest of us will come visit sometimes.”

“Sure.” Trent heard his voice as though it were emanating from someone else’s throat. “We should be in the Big Town by Christmas. One more boost like yesterday’s—”

Jimmy licked his lips and leaned in on Trent. “That soon?”

Trent shook his head slowly. “Just the five of us. Four’s going to be the most I can take out with me. And I don’t trust anyone else anyway. We have to do it, you know. We can’t stay out here forever.”

Trent could hear the alcohol in Jimmy’s speech. “Ain’t so bad in the Fringe. The Patrol Sectors are safer, but man, ain’t hardly any Peaceforcers at all in here. In Patrol Sectors, all over, we gon’ have to stand there with the Peaceforcers tossing down on us, and stay calm. It’s gon’ to be hard putting up with that genejunk.”

“We can’t stay in the Fringe forever. I don’t want to get old on the street.”

“True enough,” Jimmy conceded. “And for sure not on this cold roof. There’s people inside, bro, including Jodi Jodi who looks at you with the big eyes. What you say?”

Trent nodded. “What happened with you guys? I thought you two were made.”

Jimmy shrugged. “I don’t even know the word, Trent. Very happy and then very chilly. Not gon’ to break my heart. Besides,” he said simply, “you like her, I mean for real. Rather let her bounce off you than someone else.”

“Okay.”

Jimmy cocked his head slightly to one side. “I got you figured someday, my man. I think maybe you come out of the Big Time. Just—”

Trent grinned at him again. “Someday.”

“So not yet,” Jimmy conceded. “What was in your head when I came out here?”

Trent told him the truth. “A frog named Mohammed.”

“Indeed. Frenchie with an Arab name?”

“Strange but true.”

“Always the dramasuit,” said Jimmy softly, breath pluming, “like there’s nothing on your face except what the suit puts there.” Trent did not reply. “You gon’ to kill this frog?”

“Jimmy. Killing is—”

“—wrong, I know. You keep saying.” Jimmy studied him. “You ever kill anyone?”

“Once. It was an accident,” Trent said. “He drowned.”

“Bro, what hurts?”

“Something that happened a long time ago.” When you are seventeen, six years is almost forever. He did not wait to let Ramirez say anything further. “Let’s go back in.”

In all Times there are legends. But before the legend, there must be some piece of sharp, shiny truth to catch the light of day and hold it glowing in the midst of night’s descent.

Legends are rarely gentle. Gentleness is not remembered so long nor so well as valor or love or greed or death. Great deeds alone do not insure legend, and their lack will not prevent it—the winds of myth can rise from the lowest deserts.

I have known many of the Continuing Time’s great. I knew Ifahad bell K’Ailli briefly, and I was there when a congress of well meaning Zaradin began the Time Wars. I was there when the High King Arthur died under Camber Tremodian’s hand, and I grieved for him. I have known Shakespeare’s mind as he wrote, and Erl Moorhe’s as she composed her last and most popular sensable, the twenty-seven-hour Lord of the Rings.

I have known well all three of the deadliest night faces the human race has ever produced: Shiva Curiachen, and Ola who was Lady Blue, and Camber Tremodian himself.

Of the long list of regrets that define my life, I most regret the fact that I never knew Trent the Uncatchable.

About the Book And Me

Emerald Eyes is the first novel in The Tales of the Continuing Time. I believe the first published description of internet addiction occurs in this novel.
The text is Century Schoolbook; the headings are Albertus.
The book was purchased in 1986 by Amy Stout at Bantam Books, and was edited by her. The current edition was edited by this other person, Amy Stout-Moran. Like everything else, this was for her.
I’m currently (August 2007) maintaining a blog at:
http://DanielKeysMoran.blogspot.com
Sean Fagan and David Silberstein have maintained a fan site for years at:
http://kithrup.com/dkm
And Sol Foster has maintained the Continuing Time mailing list for about fifty years now – you can sign up at at:
http://ralf.org