More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Small moments, unnoticed at the time, change the fate of empires.
Mostly, he’d listened, and when he did talk, it was often about the difficulty of living as a very small part of a very large universe.
If there was a war coming, it would find them gardening.
“I think some important scientific questions have finally been answered. Alien life exists, and they are assholes.”
“We’d have fought anyway,” he said, thinking of Ostencour and his improvised knife. Synnia wrestling down the guard. “It’s what we do.” “I don’t know if that idea is stupid or noble,” Else said. “Human,” Dafyd said. “It’s just human. We don’t stop just because there’s no hope.”
If this goes badly, he thought, they will never find my corpse. He didn’t know why that was funny, but it was.
It wasn’t a joke so much as a confession dressed up in party clothes.
The slow, low pulse of being alive kept making its demands, no matter what. However bad it was, however mind-breaking and strange and painful, the mundane insisted on its cut.
“It’ll be all right,” he said. “It won’t.” “No. But we’ll find a way to be all right with that.”
“I know. But… maybe it makes sense to go down fighting.” Her jaw slid forward, and her hands curled into fists. “It doesn’t. It makes sense to win.”
