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“Mr. Mahlo, you know me. We’ve met several times. I’m your chief of Antimemetics.” “We don’t have an Antimemetics Division,” Levene says.
“Let’s say it’s real,” Mahlo repeats. “If it’s real, then who wrote the file? And how, for that matter, do you, Ms. Quinn, retain knowledge of any of this?” “The file was written by Dr. Edward Hix,” Quinn says. “He used to work in my division. He’s dead.” “What happened to him?” “You don’t want to know what happened to him.” There is a very long pause while both Mahlo and Levene react to this. In fact, they pass through a long sequence of discrete reactions. Indignation at the seeming rudeness; confusion at Quinn’s incaution in front of sinister superiors; surprise at the magnitude of the
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The ones he’s cleared to read are bad enough. There is U-5649, a deep cave in Chile filled with millions of cubic meters of living, breathing lung tissue.
“What kind of violin music?” “Uh. What kind would you like? Tonight’s—last night’s—Christ, yesterday’s concert was Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1. And a few other pieces, obviously, but that was the main course for me. That was where I got my teeth in.” Sheridan stops hacking and turns around. She actually looks him in the eye. “That piece is a nightmare.” “It’s a challenge,” Quinn admits, brightly. “No, I mean it’s chaotic. It’s unlistenable.”
Noise, Hix always held, is a symptom of imperfect engineering.
It’s possible that there are surviving Organization staff, in bunkers somewhere. Somewhere else. If I were them, I’d be refusing incoming calls, because it seems like this thing is an idea, and we all know that an idea can travel across a phone call.
She asks, “How was China?” “Is there a point in making small talk? We’re just going to have the same small talk all over again the second we leave.” “Ed, a friendly conversation is its own reward.”
Argon is heavier than air. Get your head up! he screams into the cold brain. There is no way to tell how much of the bad air he’s already breathing. Argon is not a poison. There won’t be an allergic reaction, coughing or watering eyes. It is the simplest, most peaceful death conceivable. That’s part of what makes the substance so lethal to handle. If it feels like everything is fine, that’s how you know you’re dying.
