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“You’re willing to hurt the Alien by telling the whole world that they think they are a God, but you’re not willing to tell the truth about me?”
We are Hives, our ever-changing members voluntarily united by shared ideology. This is not the place for such geographic concepts as homeland, foreignness, citizen, subject, nation, patrimony, birthright, birth-debt, or territory, nor is it the place for language or thought which privileges those Hives which do have geographic nations as part of their background.
“Why did you only target Masons, Cousins, and Brillists?”
and showed no sign of making a substantial contribution to human achievement. We never found a Humanist who met the latter requirement.”
Here Prospero revealed how this generation of O.S. murdered the last—‘executed’ was his word—when they caught their ba’pas discussing wielding O.S.’s power independently.
He also revealed that Thisbe had murdered for fun. Three times.
The next eruption came when set-sets hit the stand, Sidney Koons and the other poor Cartesian set-set Martin and Papa had hired to track down O.S. It came out that the hired set-set had only glanced at the transit computer data and instantly been tempted, even compelled, to cause a crash.
twisted Brill’s methods to create the set-set process!
And, of course, Utopians were set-sets, Utopians with their cult names and their blinding vizors, who, like the young Eureka, never saw the Sun.
The Brillist declared that a set-set is a set-set, and anyone calling anything else a set-set in the courtroom would be held in contempt.
be true, what I said of Apollo or the Mardi bash’, someone cited my ravings about Bridger’s miracles, proof positive again that I was mad.
Him what they wanted, never a God, or a madman who thought himself a God.
“On [January 3, 2387] O.S. killed [Indus Pygmalion Reaper], and thereby prevented [massive gang violence across Portugal] which would have killed your [grandmother], so you would never have been born.”
Jean-Louis de la Trémoïlle, Duc de Thouars, Prince de Talmond, former President of the Humanists * * * That was a strange place to end a sentence, Mycroft. What did Ganymede do?
This is the wrong war.
Why couldn’t this have been the war I thought it was?
He showed Earth what nobility should be. He said he had no greater pride in life than the knowledge that, as President of the Humanists, he had done such great good with O.S.
If a Hive had not the right to defend the world by taking lives, then doctors had no right to quarantine a plague, nor did the guards of the Olmek Virus Lab or Sanctum Sanctorum have the right to defend their wards with deadly force.
Since 2441, before the duke became president or young Ockham O.S., the set-sets’ data proved Earth was past the tipping point at which only O.S. could stave off war.
and suffering, breaking the First Law. This trump...
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Oh, the trial. Ockham goes free.
OPINION: Hives can command lethal force, since they can kill their own Members if their laws allow, as Masonic law does. [All three judges agree.]
Mason: The right of Sovereign Powers to exercise lethal force is well established and requires no clarification.]
Gordian’s requirement that the threat be provably immediate is notorious and transparent, making the use of lethal force by O.S. against Gordian Members indisputably criminal.
Other Sovereign Powers have the right to retaliate in kind.
hundred, a relic of the days after the Church War, when Thomas Carlyle had imagined that the multiplying Hives would multiply still more, a law for every dream that had a million dreamers.
“We summoned you.” A Utopian stepped forward.
“We’re keeping the Maldive Ridge Elevator. You get Ecuador, Gabon, and Borneo.”
Weapons whose very existence threatens to break the First and Second Laws. As of when we handed you your tablets, these facilities have been destroyed.”
“Utopia is unwilling to let this war begin with harbingers in play. We struck before the Games, since it seemed likely someone would try to use a harbinger before or at the Opening or Closing Ceremony.”
feared a heart attack, but realized it was the spot where Apollo had stabbed young Cornel with his pocketknife, the day after a Utopian first turned down Mars.
Utopia turned to the Alien. “Have we failed Your Great Test?” “You emptied the arsenal,” Jehovah pronounced, “but no thinking thing has been unmade. This is still peace.”
“Third item on the tablets, each of you will find twenty-three different scrying techniques for seeking evidence that others are brewing harbingers. This way you can watch each other, and know when the threat returns.
knows what we have done, and what safety it has bought.” A hush. “You are…” It was the King of Spain who framed it first. “You are holding people against their will?” The former Censor did fast math. “More than a thousand people?” “I am empowered to offer wergild for the Members we have taken from you, but we expect few of you will accept.”
“No,” the Delian answered. “We expect you to turn on us, and distrust us, throughout this war and ever after. But you will have an ever after, now.”
He did not expect them to choose Earth.
“We are not ready to abandon Earth.”
Jehovah: “I will have your unconditional surrender.”
The only things we’ll keep from You are harbingers, Mars, and the far distant future.” Jehovah: “What if I want Mars, and the far distant future?” Voltaire: “You want a world that doesn’t need O.S. or death. So do we.”
Voltaire: “I know You, Mike.” The hostage who had watched this Boy grow up still smiled. “I’ve known You almost since First Contact. I know what You wish this world was like.” Jehovah: “Do not mistake Me for a human thing.”
“Natural causes,” Voltaire announced. “We haven’t failed the Great Test, not yet.” A breath. “You’re not going to make me fear You, Micromegas. I know you are omnibenevolent.”
“Oh, I fully intend to squirm out of it.” Faust squeezed the proffered hand. “You won’t see Brillists involved in anything. Lie low, that’s the only sensible strategy for we teeny-weeny Hives.
And you never introduced yourself. That’s interesting too.”
“Huxley Mojave.”
Don’t want you missing the race!”
“Tonight’s race. The list with one name.”
and the third list is those Utopia couldn’t get their hands on, who are still at large, and capable of weaving massive, massive death. Everyone has that list now: you, me, O.S., the pretty public. There’s only one name on it, Cornel, one person still not in Utopia’s control who could make superweapons, the most dangerous and valuable person in the world. Everyone who’s anyone will be in the race now, to snatch that fruit. Everyone but me, of course. I shall remain voyeur.” “Who is it?” “Cato Weeksbooth.”
Klamath Marsh Secure Hospital
hour of horror, mankind confined Ráðsviðr,
Where better to imprison Cato Weeksbooth, a fake mad scientist but a true murder adept,
