Real monsters will always disappoint. The unseen threat, the rumour, is a far greater power.
No. A look of dawning comprehension. Ah, that. The regret, is that what you’re talking about? This sense of loss? Yes, he always talked about that, too. It’s a mortal thing, as far as I can tell. The...
I’d rather you didn’t smoke in here.’ ‘Kawahara, I’d rather you died of an internal haemorrhage, but I don’t suppose you’ll oblige me.
It’ll take a stronger kind of human to deal with it, but that’s always been the case, with every major step in knowledge or technology that we take. You can’t get by on past models, you have to keep m...
Incessant junk rhythm music thrashed the air as if this was the ventricle of some massive heart on tetrameth.
I mean. She wasn’t listening to him, didn’t look at him. Her hand went on clenching and unclenching, making loose, gentle fists in the air one after the other. If the Chinese or maybe the Indians had...
Outside.
Your helmet is red hot, Ringil told him. And watched as the man screamed, dropped his ax and grabbed his helm with both hands, screamed again as his fingers touched the metal and melted from the heat,...
You wouldn’t have to be insane to do these things. You’d just have to have a goal and be determined to attain it. Let’s get this straight, early on. What we’ve seen aboard Horkan’s Pride are not the s...
What others believe is not my concern, unless they attempt to force it on me.
They tell you to save the ship at all costs. No one ever talks about whether the passengers and crew deserve all that effort.
The city you speak of will be built—will stand in all its undeserved serenity—on the bones of a billion unjust, unremembered deaths. Its foundation stones are mortared with the blood of ten thousand s...
Something’s not right. Without applying rationale as a mediator, select your first impulse. What would it be?
Pull on the new flesh like borrowed glovesand burn your fingers once again.
Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash, and at this the First Families were accomplished masters.
Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people? She made a tiny spitting sound. You can always get some more people. They reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want t...
Like all lotteries, it was an attempt to distract and dilute labor force discontent with irrational hope.
It is not our enemies that defeat us. It is our fear. Do not be afraid of the monsters, Miss Elizabeth. Make them afraid of you.
In the Envoy Corps, you take what is offered, Virginia Vidaura said, somewhere in the corridors of my memory. And that must sometimes be enough.
In any agenda, political or otherwise, there is a cost to be borne. Always ask what it is, and who will be paying. If you don’t, then the agenda makers will pick up the perfume of your silence like sw...