More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
people who understand that, and how it affects the way the other Hives perceive us.
“No committee. I am sole Author of this intervention. I will have your un...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Jehovah’s eyes turned to Kosala’s screen again. “And if I order the Cousins dissolved?”
The Hive system is an incomparably flexible and effective tool. Use it for what it’s best at, that’s what I’m inviting you to do, what we’re all inviting you to do.”
(Secretly or publicly, as you prefer. It can all be yours: authority, primordial IMPERIUM, loyalty absolute from all my vast and secret forces, from myself, my Empire, two billion people of the ten you aim to rule, yours, right now. NOTE: Xiaoliu Guildbreaker offered to translate this scene, since I wasn’t equal to it.—
(I offer you the certainty of victory, and the chance to create your new world if you accept and become MASON. Choose.)”
but if you try to change my Empire, I must oppose you with all the force at my command.)”
present to the Senate next week fail to remedy the malformations at their hearts, the Humanists, Mitsubishi, Europe, and Cousins.)”
I passed out. Damnatio Memoriae—damnation of memory.
honesty. “I understand creating sides. I understand wanting to purge O.S. and remake the order that depended on it, but if an enemy stings me I gather friends and allies and conquer that enemy. I don’t declare war on my own father, or my own people.”
“He will never honor the ancients as we wanted to be honored, the way MASON does.”
“Then we must make sure Jehovah does not betray me.” MASON stepped between us. “We must make sure they change their mind.”
“MASON, why do you oppose the Set-Set Law?” Achilles asked at last. Death spoke warily now, “Why do you ask?” “Because I don’t think you care about set-sets. I think you care about the right of parents to rear strange children, and not just your own son.” Achilles’s gaze strayed to Aldrin’s false digital eyes. “Am I right?”
The Emperor stood tall. “This is my duty. The Utopians are one of the wonders of the human race, and since that race is mine to guard and guide, I will protect its wonders. Utopia will strike out and found new colonies, new worlds,
I’ve seen both flags in most Hive’s colors but not mine, and not yet yours. Make sure it stays that way.”
Caesar meant by “both flags,” but I would soon: Sniper’s bull’s-eye had inspired an opposite. The first one I saw was ragged, in Alexandria, rendered in rough paint on a cut-up shirt, but within a few days shops would dye real ones.
flag of the Alliance, the one which flutters over Romanova’s Senate and her offices, has on it a ring of eight abstracted, bird-like Vs which circle the Earth’s blue orb (the number eight was fixed by Kovács and Thomas Carlyle
But now the Alliance flag had birthed a sequel, improvised in the heat of pre-war, with seven birdlike Vs flying, not in a ring, but in a flock, like geese, one great V formed of lesser Vs, united. A V of Vs.
“Second-to-last. You still don’t have Mycroft Canner.” Caesar frowned. “Is that really enough to make us enemies?” Homer’s Great Soldier took a long time to answer, “No.”
to me. “It’s not enough. He’s right. I never, ever want to be on the opposite side of a war from you, but I won’t fight against everything in this world that makes sense to me. I’m with MASON, even if you aren’t.”
If you don’t want this to rip them apart, and rip you and me apart, then you’ll have to help us make Jehovah choose the Empire.”
“Do it,” Achilles ordered one more time. “The side that has the two of us on it will win, and you know it. Make it a side we can respect.”
When this war ends, all Hives, except perhaps the Cousins, Utopians, or Gordian, will have taken many lives, and we will have no precedent to establish the rights of Hives to kill except the bitter memory of nation-states, and this terra ignota of Human Ockham Prospero Saneer, which will naturally discuss the Hive leader whose tool Saneer was, former Humanist President
Empire has so long consented to be treated as a Hive by the Alliance,
Who stabbed Mycroft Canner the second time? Instinct and intuition are mere nicknames for conclusions one cannot yet consciously
Since Mycroft’s degenerating mental condition necessitates intervals of enforced rest,
but it turned out to be a resurgence of Mycroft’s ‘younger self’ or ‘beast’ aspect.
The Cousins’ draft did not disband the CFB.
the Transitional Congress created by Jehovah’s interim constitution would become a permanent Parliament, letting the Cousins join Europe and the Humanists in aping the geographic nations’ old faith in the tyranny of voters.
This left the whole Hive much more a generic government, and much less like itself.
This named an Emperor, modeled on the MASONS, to “approve but not appoint” the popularly elected Prime Minister, and to “stand above”
“It is a defense of the current Humanist Constitution, which I and my fellows on the reform committee believe to be the best and soundest form of government ever created by the human species.
If O.S. was an extreme means, it was not chosen selfishly. Those who used O.S. used it to preserve this age of peace and prosperity.
Screams across the House demanded that the Humanists be expelled from the Alliance at once for defying the Senate’s order to reform,
Dominic’s who is currently in the right emotional state to accept such a painful death without either confidence or trepidation is Blacklaw Carlyle Foster.
was the reawakened beast, freed by Jehovah’s discovery that Gods’ universes do not die if They do, freed to prowl and prey again
as she had never seen in our decade-long feigned friendship.
“You’re a tick, Thisbe,” I spat it this time, spat it like a curse. “A tick, and you feed, and you bloat, and you crawl, and you think it makes you something poetic and exciting, like a vampire, and you’re so wrong.” She threw her head back into laughter. “Says the cannibal.” “You can’t see, can you? How wrong you
How dare you place your idle hobby on a nobler level than works of heroes? Loyal Prospero, brave Sniper, and Mycroft Canner! You dare compare yourself to Mycroft Canner? Stab—crunch—echo.
Achilles: “You manage to smuggle in one capsule of your psycho perfume and you use it on Mycroft Canner?”
Actions have consequences. How could you do that to Mycroft of all people? You know he’s hallucinating half the time already.
Achilles: “No one’s coming for you, ever. You know why?” Thisbe: “Pray tell.” Achilles: “You’re evil.” Thisbe: “You must be kidding.” Achilles: “Murder has consequences, Thisbe, the unnatural betrayal and murder of your lover, of three lovers!”
You kill people because you enjoy killing people.” Thisbe: “And Mycroft doesn’t? You don’t?”
You risked exposing O.S., and blackmailed your own bash’ into letting you get away with murder, because you enjoy pushing people to suicide, just for selfish fun.
murders of Luca Cormor, Quinn Prichard, and Alex Limner—your lovers, Thisbe, whom you drove to their deaths for nothing!”
Be advised that, because of the coindictment of all Humanists in the Wish List conspiracy, you cannot choose a Humanist, nor can the Prosecution when they select the third judge.”
“I request a Mason and a Graylaw Hiveless. Let my trial begin.”
So famous is the Cousins’ tendency to sympathize with all, and to think of sentences as rehabilitation more than retribution, that it is a rare day when any defendant chooses anything but a Hivefellow and a Cousin.
former O.S. would choose the Hive that already believes its leader has the authority to kill.”
“I know what you’re thinking. You want your history to tell the truth about the Mardi bash’ without telling anyone I set out to start my own war.”
