More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”
If I was to reach the sill, I would have to jump and hope that my fingers found a grasp there. That would be insane. There was nothing in this tower that could justify such a risk. I waited for the wind to die down, crouched, and leaped.
“To folly,” he said. “To divine madness. To insane quests and messiahs crying from the desert. To the death of tyrants. To confusion to our enemies.” I started to raise the glass to my lips, but the old man was not done. “To heroes,” he said. “To heroes who get their hair cut.” He drank the champagne in one gulp. And so did I.
Since I was a boy on the moors, standing apart to watch smoke from the peat fires rise from within the protective ring of circled caravans, waiting for the stars to appear, then seeing them cold and indifferent in the deepening lapis sky and wondering about my future while waiting for the call that would bring me in to warmth and dinner, I have had a sense of the irony of things. So many important things pass quickly without being understood at the time. So many powerful moments are buried beneath the absurd. I saw this as a child. I have seen it throughout my life since then.
Aenea sat at the piano bench and began playing. I did not recognize the tune, but it sounded classical … something from the twenty-sixth century, perhaps.
Nonetheless, the blue and red circles of light—I could make out stars clustered in both spheres if I stared hard enough—now migrated farther to the bow and stern, shrinking to tiny dots of color. In between, filling the vast field of vision, there was … nothing. By that, I do not mean blackness or darkness. I mean void. I mean the sense of sickening nonsight one has when trying to look into a blind spot.
“Barring accidents or the unexpected,” he says, “the girl should be in our custody in seven hours and forty minutes … and we’ll be getting ready to translate to Pacem.” “Sir?” says Sergeant Gregorius. “Yes, Sergeant?” “Meaning no disrespect, sir,” says the other man, “but there’s no way in the Good Lord’s fucking universe that anyone can bar accidents or the unexpected.”
Information is always to be treasured, Raul. It is behind only love and honesty in a person’s attempt to understand the universe.
Somehow, he discovers, the nightly dreams are more compelling than seeing the real places.
I felt as if I should make some comment, say something intelligent. “Yoicks,” I said.
“Why?” said the ship. “Why investigate something which has nothing to do with your plans to travel downriver?” Aenea leaned over and lifted my wrist. “We’re human,” she said. The ship did not reply.
Men were milling around, most of them making toward the door and windows on this side to see what the commotion was, but they made way for me as I dodged through them like a deep brooder on a forty-three-man squamish team herding the goat in for the goal.
“See you later,” Aenea was saying, releasing my hand. “See you on the other side.”
Sometimes, I realized, the safety off on my plasma rifle, trying to walk lightly in the grinding weight of Sol Draconi Septem, the shortest route to courage is absolute ignorance.
Gregorius, Kee, and Nemes are still awake, waiting for translation and death. De Soya knows that the sergeant prays during these last minutes. Kee usually reads a book from his creche monitor. De Soya has no idea what the woman is doing within her comfortable coffin.
Father Captain de Soya is part of a millennia-long line of sailors, sea and space, who become fanatic about a place for everything and everything in its place. He is a spacer. Almost two decades of serving in frigates, destroyers, and torchships have shown him that anything he leaves out of place will literally be in his face as soon as the ship goes to zero-g. More important, he has the age-old sailor’s need to be able to reach out and find anything without looking, in darkness or storm.
The future is never written … only penciled in.
“Not a vision,” said the girl in an empty voice. “Just a memory from the future. A certain memory.”
A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
