“The Portuguese Widow” follows the misadventures of charming, half-Portuguese Nan Baldaya Benedict, twice widowed at barely 21 years of age. Regency Bath is taken aback by Nan’s cosmopolitan household: the retinue of faithful Indian ayahs and bhais, Kentish maids and footmen, and the French chef. Then, horrors! Her late mother’s scandalous history is raked up. A move to London results in the fortune hunters discovering her nabob’s fortune, the grandes dames looking down their noses at her, and an encounter with the wicked Lord Curwellion, a notorious rake.

Inevitably, the warm-hearted Nan becomes embroiled in other people’s lives: the gentlemen include the fashionable baronet Sir Noël Amory, the handsome diplomat Lord Keywes, and the grim-visaged Colonel Vane. The ladies range from the shy, sweet Cherry Chalfont to the hilariously eccentric Mrs Urqhart, who describes herself as “the widder of an India man.” Proper English ladies have nothing to do with theatrical persons, but Nan plunges herself into a theatrical venture led by the stout and fruity-voiced Mr Perseus Brentwood and the lugubrious Mr Emmanuel Everett. Few of these encounters are likely to do anything for the reputation of a lady anxious to establish herself creditably. And of course, there’s the unfortunate episode of the duel…

Featured Extract (SF)

7

The Xathpyroid’s Tale

     … Once all beings had appropriate refreshment in their appendages, this time on the Feeny-Argyllians, the xathpyroid went on with his story, since the beings seemed to be expecting him to.

    Breakfast next morning was enlivened by one of the Bond-Partners zapping a clump of Mooghanurdrangyean stinky-sedge that had incautiously moved in the wind, and by Thin Superior Being zapping a Mooghanurdrangyean pucker-snake that had incautiously come out of its hole to sniff the space rations. –Well, yes, Dohra, they are poisonous, but not to all species, in fact only to Hopeless Being’s species and a couple of others that weren’t represented, so it was a waste of blob power. Even though it was very dead, in fact disintegrated, Fluffy Being did the water-coming-out-of-the-eyes stuff with some screaming as well.—Hysterics? Thanks, Dohra.—In humanoid terms, she had hysterics, what a convenient word!

    And once Officiously Competent Being had competently revived Hopeless Being and Fluffy Being with a good sniff of Oononian chemo-blob—it wasn’t just the hysterics, it was the stink from the dead stinky-sedge as well—we got going on the Lost Cause of Mooghanurdrangyea again.

    Fifty glps later we had to park the skimmers and hide them under bunches of stinky-sedge and piles of sand, because the terrain had got too rough to use them any more. –I’m picking up what you’re all broadcasting, and you’re right. But I was being paid quite well, so I didn’t mind all that much. And there was nothing in my contract that said we had to actually get to the Fort or de-activate the plasma-bomb. So we set off again on foot, or on whatever was used. After a bit Officiously Competent Being thought I ought to give Fluffy Being and Hopeless Being a ride on my back, but I thought I ought not to, because—“Look OUT!” Zap! “That was a Local Bandit! Weapons, everybody!”

    And with several internal-fluid-curdling shrieks, the Local Bandits were upon us! Plasmo-blasts from the blasters beamed to and fro. The Local Bandits were throwing primitive local weapons as well, and a spear got Hopeless Being, who wasn’t ducking at the time, square in an upper appendage. Internal fluid oozed from it, but even Officiously Competent Being and the Bond-Partners didn’t have time to slap an Oononian chemo-blob on it, the fire was so fast and furious!

    And eventually we were overcome, and surrendered our weapons, and the Local Bandit Leader ordered us led off to his Bandit Camp!

—From Tales From The Third Moon, http://talesfromthethirdmoon.blogspot.com/


No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)