Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)

by Ada Palmer

Next He asked me whether I thought it was cruel to let angelic intelligences mix with human intelligences long enough for each to learn how the other category’s consciousnesses experience a different kind of independence from their God. I did not have an answer.

Animals may hunt by speed, by trap, by disguise, by ambush, but name for me another besides mankind that hunts by trust.

Imagine now, reader, that you are Providence. You have already decided that your Intervention, this miracle with which you have trespassed upon the ordered cosmos, will not die here at Saladin’s hands, as I had asked. But how will you prevent it? How will you make my supreme predator ignore the tearful wishes of the one person in the world who matters to him? The answer depends on what kind of Providence you are. Are you the deterministic ricochet of pool balls on a table? If so, then you must already have another pool ball on its way: a bird to startle the hunter and make him let go, or a hole to trip him, dug by some rabbit now five generations dead. Perhaps you are instead a chess master, moving pieces on a board? Then you move a new piece into play; my queen threatens your king so you advance one of your own knights, Dominic perhaps, or Thisbe. Perhaps you are instead a master of puppets? The all-commanding author of the Great Scroll who has predestined every act of your creatures from infinity? If so, you can simply make Saladin choose not to kill, as you make every decision for every person, from creation to the end of days. Or are you perhaps that mildest form of Providence, a parent, who has reared your children carefully, teaching them the values you think will guide them best, different for each, in hopes you might thereafter trust them to make their own decisions as they explore your world? This last, hands-off image of Providence appeals to many, especially to ...

Tame humans are easy enough to surprise, but for a creature always on guard, watching his back, as paranoid as nature intended beasts to be, this was the first time in Saladin’s life that he had let a person draw so close and only then sensed danger. I told you, reader, man is a beast that hunts by trust. A lion cub may lash out with claws it does not yet know it has, and so may Bridger.

Have you ever been in the true wilds, reader? There are some still, the deep protected Amazon, the arctic fringes, parts of the Great African Reservation, not the retrogressive towns where warlords cling to their thrones and borders, but the dark wastes where the full spectrum of wild beasts roams in herds and packs, including that rarest hunter, man. Out there you are responsible for yourself, no cars, no cops, no restaurants, no good Samaritans. That world does not exist to help you, does not need you, does not care, and will forget you as soon as the brush has grown over your footprints. For scavengers, our cities are such wilds too: for the pigeons who feast or starve by callous chance, for rats, for strays who have never known the ritual of ‘feeding time,’ and so for Saladin.

This History has two halves, reader, strange as it is that seven days should take two books to tell. But they were dense days, not just with events, but with inhabitants, many, different, like these wildflowers in the trench where all began. Here one stray footstep snaps many different plants, releasing different saps, and smells, and stirring up the insects hidden underneath. The surge is just beginning now, the armies of crawling life which swarm forth, as if born from the broken stems. You do not see their full numbers yet, but I hope I have, at least, shown you enough to realize that these first scouts you do see, like the others that will follow, were not born from the stems. These swarms, these changes, were all waiting in their sleepy tunnels, all with causes that you can now understand. You do not have to believe.

His talk with Bryar Kosala the afternoon before had done much to revive his spirits, though he would have risen full of strength that day regardless, for March the twenty-seventh was sacred to Asclepius, Dionysus, Rama, the Bodhisattva Tara, the Egyptian powers Neteret Renenutet and Neter Nepri, and to St. Rupert of Salzburg, a day on which men honored their Creator in many ways in ages past, and still do today.

The Message doesn’t have to be a burning bush, reader. From the Maker of planets, atoms, and electrons, the Message can be a thought.

a pair of Servicers had stripped the trash-smeared shirts from their backs to dance. It was beautiful, not one of society’s formulaic, social dances, but the primitive enjoyment of the body, reaching, kicking, leaping, ducking, close as daredevils, always a hair’s breadth from scraping one another’s cheeks, or sharing sweat. It wasn’t until one, thrusting with knife-straight fingers, scored a touch upon the other that Carlyle realized they were sparring.

I’m a good student of philosophy, I know my Stoics, Cynics, their advice, that, when a desire is so intense it hurts you, the healthy path is to detach, unwant it, let it go.