The Immortals

Excerpt

Captain Merrick is five hundred years old but he wears the body of a young man, robust and well-proportioned. He looks as he did at thirty-five, before he won the first of a series of victories that earned him his fame. His manner is easy and natural.

His quarters are modest, a horseshoe of private chambers surrounding a formal reception room. One wall of the reception room is dominated by a mural showing a man in green coveralls nestled in the womb of a great machine. With his pale skin and blond hair and his look of capable determination, the man in the painting resembles the captain so much that for a moment Lysa Tallis wonders if it is intended as a portrait.