‘I thought the rules were meant to be the same for everybody.’ ‘They are. But in Special Circumstances we deal in the moral equivalent of black holes, where the normal laws - the rules of right and wrong that people imagine apply everywhere else in the universe - break down; beyond those metaphysical event-horizons, there exist . . . special circumstances.’ She smiled. ‘That’s us. That’s our territory; our domain.’ ‘To some people,’ he said, ‘that might sound like just a good excuse for bad behaviour.’ Sma shrugged. ‘And perhaps they would be right. Maybe that is all it is.’ She shook her
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