Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)

by Ada Palmer

They surrounded Carlyle, the trash in their hands far less menacing than the hands themselves.

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.

If we magically plucked a war expert from the past and showed them the present, they’d say in an instant that we’re on the verge of war. The only reason our current experts haven’t said it is that we don’t have any. We believe so blindly that war’s impossible that we hardly study it anymore.

All it takes is one spark.

“Of course not. Anything that kills a Utopian they investigate until they solve it. If I were an assassin I’d never touch them.”

“Suicide is the most common cause of death. Any smart killer tries to make their murders look like suicides.”

All Hives benefit when the world is stable and the economy is strong. Given how incestuous politics is today, a death that helps the Masons short-term may be a long-term good for everyone.

“Yes. Commissioner General, I’ve been thinking... in a larger sense, this... assassination system... it’s arguably a good thing for the world. The vaguer economic influences aside, some of these murders provably saved hundreds of lives, thousands in some cases. Cumulatively many thousands. Thousands at the cost of dozens. We’re not talking about a secret underbelly of mass murder here, we’re talking about a secret underbelly of killing one to save ten thousand.”