Children of Ruin (Children of Time, #2)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

because if you had a slightly deranged genius on the team it was probably better to let him cox than row. That was the actual comment of the psychologist who recommended the promotion and Senkovi, having got into that file as well, treasured the perceived compliment.

They were their own little state with thirteen citizens, cut off from human progress, marooned on a desert island in a sea the size of the universe.

Advance science as far as you like, the human mind continued to place itself at the centre of the universe.

And yet this was all the alien life ever discovered that the human eye could make out unaided. A miracle that it had broken out of bacteria-analogues in the first place; a miracle that the result was something they could even recognize as “life”. Then Baltiel called up their mission statement which was, of course (and entirely incidentally), to destroy all this and replace it with something more like home.

An inclination to play God was part and parcel of wanting to go out and terraform other worlds, but good practice was to at least play nicely with the rest of the pantheon.

He decided Han probably had owned a cat, or had wanted to own a cat but hadn’t lived somewhere she could get a pet permit. Maybe she’d had a robot cat, one of those good little machines that purred and sat on your lap and then its ears fell off the moment its warranty expired.

He hammered on the metal of the door, indulging his fury on the inanimate so he could go back and be reasonable for his fellow human beings.

Despite the barriers to communication, they have developed an idiolect of their own, mostly devoted to complaining.

“By which, I mean—” “You don’t want to fry my brain,” Meshner confirms. “Delicious as that concept is to the imagination,” Fabian agrees,

Fabian passes over his best guess, paths to take that might dodge the worst of the incoming fire as they accelerate out of this mess; Meshner counters. Kern shoots them both down, figuratively speaking, modelling worst-case scenarios for them that see the Lightfoot smeared across a kilometre of empty space. The acerbic computer helpfully attaches a legend identifying just which pieces of the wreckage are Meshner and Fabian, because she always has computing power for put-downs.

“Your brain is a complicated toy. When you play carelessly with it, you might lose some pieces,”

She has hunted for meaning, using Helena’s notes and her own problem-solving capability, but has come down to a simple conclusion: They just never shut up.

If he listened to the background murmur of the universe for long enough it became a song to which he could fit any words he wanted.

“Why can’t I remember?” he asks her. “I’m not having this conversation with you again.”

We have achieved some great things here, the first of our kind to travel so far and see so much, Viola speaks, and for once he is happy to simply tap out the words. A shame it will be lost with us, but the loss is posterity’s, not ours.

I’m old, she thinks, although she’s not, not really. Old is for humans and other mortal things. Kern has gone past old and out the other side.

Vitriol, ah, I remember that. It feels good to be scathing and unpleasant again.

Helena always thought the linguist’s nightmare would be a scenario where communication was impossible. Now she has a clear channel, but nothing she can say that will help.

“We don’t understand,” Portia complains. “I don’t require you to,” is Kern’s imperious response. “You are a linguistics team. Translate for me, as I translate for it.”