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Mycroft called their killings a demonstration of a liberty our era had not realized we possessed, proof of history’s progress if seventeen deaths were enough to shock the world; historically, seventeen deaths is a good day.
My first thought was that I might be one of my dolls come to life (no, at the time I did not know about Bridger’s power to bring toys to life, it’s just that my profession made me think hard about these things), but my tongue could move, enough to keep me from choking, and I found the notch on the inside of my top left molar which no doll has, which I had etched there for just such eventualities (I told you, I thought hard about these things).
I am a Humanist because I believe in heroes, that history is driven by those individuals with fire enough to change the world. If you aren’t a Humanist it’s because you think something different. That difference matters.
You have never met the people I describe, so your imaginings will be less accurate than those of someone who has toiled beside them in these rooms, and seen them sweat. Caught between two lies I give you mine, which has more truth immixed.
“They’re not your assassins,” Perry spat, “they’re our assassins.” Ganymede’s gilt brows narrowed. “In fact they are my assassins.”
Our modern moths have bounced so many times off lightbulbs, they aren’t prepared for torches, and forget that wings can burn.
Those motives feel so real. But I cannot be certain these are not veneer over some grosser instinct. The poison of millennia is in me too.
A playful smile on Dominic’s face always seems monstrous, like those nightmare fish of the deep sea that lure prey with their false, sweet lights.
“If you’ll excuse me, I have progress to progress.”
There is a Will behind this universe, reader, that I know. There are miracles, and a Divinity behind those miracles, Who has a Plan, but have you ever, reader, heard me claim that that Plan is benevolent?
Operation Ariadne, as the Major called it, had been planned for three careful hours and executed in forty-seven seconds, a six-man extraction team guided by Looker scrying through the crystal ball, with Bridger at the teleport controls. Success.
Ganymede in his mourning clothes, that shade of midnight blue that chases the sun toward sunset, so the dark cloth made the translucence of his skin glow bright as moonlight. For mourning, should it not be black? It should, reader, but remember that, however deeply the others mourned the Mardi bash’, it is unlikely the Duke actually cared.
But then Mushi corrects, “Except ants.” How proud the day when Mushi rushed in to tell the young Apollo and the other Mojave ba’kids that even man’s greatest achievement, Space itself, was no longer a monopoly. The terraformers had found ants, stowaways in one of the nutrient shipments, which had escaped and built a colony in the new Mars soil, spiral tunnels woven like DNA around a leaking oxygen pipe. The first city on Mars was not built by humans, but under them.
Those who lived through it cannot forget the days after Apollo’s death, when across the globe the coats which should be windows to so many other worlds turned blank.
Are you surprised, reader, that she stayed quiet so long? What cares she what happens to this little murderer when the fact that only her salon can solve the crisis is a victory itself?
Curiosity is a dangerous thing for a dead man; it tempts one to want to live.
The Mardis thought that three things make wars more or less terrible: the length of the peace before them, the amount of technological change, and how little the commanders know about war’s up-to-date realities.
Each of these interests may extend to the other twin as well, but I have only once had a conversation with each twin when I was certain which it was, so that is all I know: Kat, spiritualist double-think; Robin, bikes.
Fess up, Ockham. ¿Do you want to disobey this order because it’s stupid or do you want to disobey it because they’re stupid?”
Cato had more conviction in his voice here than you have ever heard from him, strength, one might almost call it, hope, for it was hope to Cato, that tiny thousandth of a percent of a chance, each time they made him do this, that it might be the last time.
In my experience the Furies are a fairer portrait of Fate than any smiling angel. They are not good, not merciful. The sufferings they sow are not steps toward some incomprehensible Good; rather, in this kingdom where the virtuous must suffer, at least the Furies make the wicked suffer more.
Dominic’s a perverted sadist living in a psycho whorehouse, but at least there we could talk about the truth.
When Utopians forge Earth’s rare metals into dragon fleets that feed on sunlight as they bear their masters across the sky-white surface of the Moon, they are wizards, even if they use science to deny it. Just so, when a black-hearted spinster lures a stray priest to her bedchamber to rape her soul and laugh, she is a witch.
The witch’s eyes sparkled with secrets. “Sensayers are used to fearing God, so you know the right way to fear me, don’t you?”
The door closed behind the ba’sibs, leaving Carlyle slumped like a carcass abandoned when the hunt has too much prey to carry home.
Carlyle paused, facing the ageless question of whether to dip her cookies or keep her milk crumb-free.
“I think you should stay away from J.E.D.D. Mason. Mycroft said they’d die before they let you close to them, and Mycroft Canner is a man who’s thought a lot about their death and how best to use it.”
“I remember when we were in the garden with Geneva. You asked if we would destroy a better world to save this one. I would. I did, I destroyed the world that had you in it. But I always knew, for you it was the opposite. You would destroy this world to save a better one. You tried to.”
“The Greek Stoics said a human being is like a dog tied behind a moving cart. The dog can struggle, tug at the rope, dig its heels in, choke and suffer as it’s dragged, or it can trot along content and trust the Driver, though it still can’t understand the purpose of the journey, or its end.” I paused, watching distaste wrinkle his nose. “You don’t like the simile?” “No.” I nodded slowly. “Jehovah hates it too. He said any just Driver would let the dog sit with Him in the cart, and a just God would not create a creature incapable of understanding the journey.”
“This is why kids grow up, isn’t it?” “What is?” His words grew timid, sensing goodbye’s approach. “It’s probably special for me, since I’m pretty sure if I don’t want to grow up I just won’t, I can decide that. But things like this, where you see what’s happening in the grown-up world and realize that you have to do something, you can’t keep out of it, this is what makes kids want to grow up, so we can become able to make a difference.”
Papa strolled forward, flexing their work-stiffened shoulders, slim and ancient like a cliff-face tree that keeps its trunk pole-thin as it puts the growing strength of centuries into its roots.
“How many more?” <some.> “I’m not a dentist and I don’t like pulling teeth. How many?”
Somebody tell me how many murders are on that list before I confiscate every hard drive in the building, furry or otherwise!”
She did not comfort Jehovah—in her world it is not woman’s part to console man—rather she had Him tell her of His grief, and, hearing of the deaths of innocents, she wept, she sobbed, she shivered fragile in her habit’s rough embrace, so her God had no choice but to comfort her, and make Himself again the strong One.
it wasn’t even a choice, i had to, like a compulsion. it’s like coming home finding a friend with a knife sticking out of their guts, you can’t just leave it there, you have to pull it out and help.> Papa gave a shallow sigh. “If you pull the knife out it’ll hemorrhage and get worse.”
Old Town, Spectacle Strip, and Institute; if only the most successful revolutionaries cease to fear their teachers, how better could Brill boast his conquest of Master Freud than to let his capital flaunt its Id, Ego, and Superego so conspicuously?
All eyes sought the interrupter, glaring, a flock of scientists wondering what fool had shattered the walls of objectivity with that most dangerous of missiles: an opinion. All breathed relief to find it was not one of them.
Tully accepted Sniper’s hand slowly, gingerly, then clung for dear life. “Mojave, not Mardi,” he corrected. “I prefer Tully Mojave.” In a kinder world, Saladin and I would have awakened trembling, breathless at this moment, sensing in our bones as the doom that we had sacrificed so much to fight became a certainty. But in a kinder world Sniper would have turned right. “Nice to meet you, Tully Mojave,” Sniper answered. “I’d like to introduce you to some friends of mine.”
Never create a personal enemy. Always keep layers of minions between yourself and someone you destroy, it’s safer that way.”
“I wrote the list but didn’t think to pull a stunt like the theft. I wish I did know who it was. I’d congratulate them on a plot well laid, then deck them.”
Julia gave … patronizing isn’t the right word, a matronizing smile.
Carlyle blinked. “What?” “You betrayed me. You didn’t think there would be consequences, Gag-gene?”
“I’d rather stand.” “My dear Casimir, this bench has the most interesting view in the world. There’s a more telling cross-section of humanity down there than in the Censor’s database, plus porn. How can you possibly prefer to stand?”
“Think of our perversions as topiary. We all had the seeds in us, but it’s Madame who made them art.
Duke President Ganymede is never so cross as when he is forced to sit through the titles of a true king.
Men tell me that Jehovah’s eyes look dead, a blackness which focuses on nothing and reflects nothing, lightless as the emptiness of Space. They must, I think, be atheists who say this, for, to me, the black of heaven that we see behind the stars is more alive than anything.
“The system is three hundred years old, Felix. Its creators are long dead.” The old Headmaster shook his head. “Not their ideas. The Humanists created this. No one else sees history as composed of individuals. On their own the Mitsubishi would target corporations, Masons governments, Europe nation-strats, me bash’es, the Anonymous ideas. Only the Humanists still think the world is made of individuals.”
Smiling her silent thanks, Danaë reached for the list, then screamed like a rabbit ripped in twain by hounds hot in the hunt, and slipped into that kind of lifeless faint which made Homer call Sleep and Death twin brothers.
“Monster? Me? You’re the one who betrayed an innocent man.” “Innocent?” Tears came to her, bright as dew. “Day after day you swore you would love only me forever, but the instant you thought another man had touched me, you tried to kill me! How is that innocent?”
