City of Golden Shadow (Otherland, #1)

by Tad Williams

She was again grateful for his calm good nature, but with that gratitude came a small mote of resentment. His even disposition made her feel she was being forgiven, time after time, and she did not like being forgiven for anything.

I try to choose the happier way of saying things, so that my own words will not weigh me down like stones.

Fredericks nodded again. “I guess. It wasn’t a total lie, Orlando. When I’m hanging around with you . . . well, I feel like a guy.” Orlando snorted. “How would you know?” Fredericks looked hurt, then angry. “I get stupid and I act like the whole world revolves around me. That’s how.”

“But I have made a small piece, in part to learn the lessons that come from mistakes.

“It is a healing dance. It is important. We have a journey ahead of us, and we have suffered much pain already. Just do as I do.”

They danced on beneath the ringed moon, before the hills that bulked black against the stars. For a while, Renie quite forgot everything else.

“Bags, you old stick-in-the-mud! You know my motto: ‘Move like the wind, strike like lightning.’ We aren’t going to give these ghastly priest chappies a chance to spirit our quarry away. Now, let’s get cracking.

“Do try to keep Hurley from creating an interplanetary incident,” added Bagwalter.

“Ho!” shouted Brummond from the helm, “we are being taunted by some sort of otherworldly fireflies. Someone fetch me my rifle!” “Oh, dear,” sighed Professor Bagwalter. “You can see that Science has a difficult time with Hurley around.”

Perhaps he had already walked somewhere on his own for the last time. That was a horrible thought. There ought to be some way to tell when you were doing something for the last time so you could appreciate it. An announcement crawling along the bottom of your vision, like when you had the news ticker running on the net. Fourteen-year-old Orlando Gardiner of San Mateo, California, has just eaten ice cream for the last time in his life. His last laugh is expected sometime next week.

“Darlings, my patience has just about gone. I am going bye-bye now. I shall climb into bed with something warm and do my best to forget I heard any of this nonsense.”

“A group of hopeless idiots all banding together to solve a seemingly impossible task, is that it?” Sweet William was scornfully amused. “Yes indeed, that sounds just like the kind of story you must like, sweetie—but it’s just as good a description of a paranoid religious cult. ‘Oh, no! Only we clever few understand that the world is coming to an end! But if we move into these storm drains and wear our special aluminum foil hats, we alone will be saved!’