House of Suns

by Alastair Reynolds

‘To see something marvellous with your own eyes - that’s wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you’ll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that each of you will only ever hold an incomplete half of it, and that it won’t ever really exist as a whole until you’re together, talking or thinking about that moment . . . that’s worth more than one plus one.

The next three minutes passed like an age as I watched Hesperus streak forward and then slam past Mezereon’s position, missing her by barely half a million kilometres.

You may have principles, shatterlings, but acting collectively, you are monsters.

‘That’s not going to make Cadence and Cascade very happy.’ ‘And if I could think of something to make them even less happy, I would do it.’

‘Never put off until the next million years what you can do during this million.’

it was your own dark instrument turning against you.’

Human and not nearly as clever as we thought we were when it counted. End of story. When they put up the gravestone for our species, that’ll be the epitaph.’

‘We nearly killed you all.’ ‘You did, and it was unforgivable. Nonetheless, we offer our forgiveness. What is the point in being a superior civilisation if you can’t do that once in a while? I could push you off this cliff now, watch you fall all the way to the bottom. I might gain some barely measurable degree of satisfaction from seeing you die, knowing what you did to us, but would any higher purpose be served by that act?’

‘Surprises are always good. It’s what we live for, sentients like you and me.’

I shall have to be on my way.’