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Deadly revenge was as old as time.
my looking like a brick wall: that when I shut out the world and retreated into myself, things were bad.
Retreat inward meant for me not retreating outwardly,
For reports and anything personal I used a computer system that wasn’t connected to any phone line. No one could in consequence tap into it and, as a precaution against thieves, I used unbreakable passwords. It was my second system that could theoretically be accessed; the one connected by modem to the big wide world of universal information. Any snooper was welcome to anything found there.
“keep back-up copies of completed sensitive inquiries in a bank vault, and wipe the information from any computer systems in your office. If you use random passwords, and change them weekly, you should be safe enough while you’re actually working on something, but once you’ve finished, get the back-up to the bank and wipe the office computer, like I said.
“What if he can’t help it?” Ellis said.
Hold on to the real tragedy at the heart of the farce,
civilization had offered care to the colt’s foot. barbarity had hacked it off.
it was hard to explain the intimacy that grew between horses and those who tended or rode them. Horses lived in a parallel world, spoke a parallel language, were a mass of instincts, lacked human perceptions of kindness or guilt, and allowed a merging on an untamed, untamable mysterious level of spirit. The Great God Pan lived in racehorses. One cut off his foot at one’s peril.
A fee was respectable where a bribe wasn’t. In the course of life I disbursed a lot of fees.
“He’s looking for a way back without losing face.
“Scoff,” I said with a smile. “But long ago it often worked. He’s bright and he’s bored and he’s not yet a totally confirmed delinquent.
“Life’s one long farce,” I said.
Take risks with caution: a great motto.
I now knew what the serial reputation-slasher looked like at dinner.
He had seen the pony in the moonlight.
He said, “A silver pony trotting trustfully across the field lured by a handful of horse nuts.” He shouldn’t have known that.
It was crazy to love someone else’s child so comprehensively, yet for the first time ever, I felt the idea of fatherhood take a grip.
The simple knot he tied slid undone because the tie was pure smooth silk.
They say that wherever he went he would be recognized, therefore if no one recognized him, that in itself is proof he wasn’t there.
“Emotion works against you in the witness box.
Half of human actions don’t make sense. Sense is in the eye of the beholder.
“Kevin told me you were a slum child,” India said. “Slum is an attitude, not a place.
The odd thing was that in the heat of a race one didn’t feel an injury. It was in the cooler ebbing of excitement that the discomfort returned.
One cannot improve on an immaculate conception.” “That’s blasphemous.
“This is silk,” he said. “Real silk?” “No possible doubt. This was expensive fabric. The pattern is woven in. See.” He turned the piece over to show me the back. “This is remarkable. Where did you get it? It looks like a very old lampas. Beautiful. The colors are organic, not mineral.
“It’s a modern copy,” he said. “It’s very skillfully done. It is lampas, woven on a Jacquard loom. There isn’t enough of it to be sure, but I think it’s a copy of a silk hanging made by Philippe de Lasalle in about 1760. But the original hadn’t a blue-green background, it was cream with this design of ropes and leaves in greens and red and gold.
“The field was the meeting place at Guines, France, in June 1520, of Henry the Eighth of England and Francis the First of France. They were supposed to be making peace between England and France but they hated each other and tried to outdo each other in splendor. So all their courtiers wore cloth woven out of gold and they gave each other gifts you’d never see today.
probably a modem copy
“A lampas is a compound weave with extra warps and wefts which put patterns and colors on the face of the fabric only, and are tucked into the back.
No one could ever be comprehensively protected from obsession. One simply had to live as best one could and disregard the feral threat lying in wait
