Tuesday 3 March 2020

On Brae And Gwydion

"The waning marine screamed.
"'Leave me 'lone, leave me 'lone, you up there, leave me 'lone! Stop grinning! I 'listed for to learn how to make Nyanza free, you hear up there, don't lap my blood so fast. It's nay my fault I made more slaves. I wanted to be free too! Get your teeth out of me, girl...mother, mother, don't eat me, mother -' Presently the boy died."
-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 303-339 AT I, pp. 305-306.

"Byord's small face opened. He screamed.
"'Don't eat me, mother!'"
-The Night Face, XII, p. 656.

The Imperial marine addresses an alien female statue on a conquered planet. Byord addresses his own mother.

See the question at the end of the previous post.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It does make me wonder, did Poul Anderson deliberately copied the "...don't eat me, mother!" from "The Game of Glory" into THE NIGHT FACE? Or was it simply an accident? If not, maybe Anderson hoped a few readers, like YOU, would see the link!

Ad astra! Sean