Novelists From Wales

"I don’t question your loyalty, Skade. I just wonder exactly what it is you’re loyal to."

"It was a numbers game, not a guaranteed method of avoiding being killed, but Clavain had been a soldier long enough to know that this was, ultimately, what most combat situations boiled down to."

"Relativity distorted classical expectations in a way that Clavain still did not find entirely intuitive. Slam two objects towards each other, each with individual velocities just below light-speed, and the classical result for their closing velocity would be the sum of their individual speeds: just under twice the speed of light. Yet the true result, confirmed with numbing precision, was that the objects saw each other approach with a combined speed that was still just below the speed of light. Similarly, the relativistic closing velocity for two objects moving towards each other with individual speeds of one-half of light-speed was not light-speed itself, but eight-tenths of it. It was the way the universe was put together, and yet it was not something the human mind had evolved to accept."

"Don’t overestimate your familiarity with technologies you barely understand. It could be your undoing."

"“I worry that it’s me they’re really after.” “You don’t exist. At the risk of wounding your ego, not everyone in the known universe is obsessed with you and your secret history.”"

"It was his experience that crises in space fell into two categories: those that killed you immediately, usually without much warning, and those that gave you plenty of time to ruminate on the problem, even if no solution was very likely."

"“How are the internal complications, anyway? Aren’t the other branches of government getting a little suspicious about all these machinations?” “Let’s just say that one or two discreet assassinations may still have to be performed,” Khouri said."

"Either you are a man of unusual ability, Thorn, or a man with a rather inadequate grasp of human nature. I just hope it’s the former."

"“Can I still wish you good luck?” “You can wish me what the hell you like. It won’t make any difference. If it did, it would mean I hadn’t prepared well enough."

"But sanity, Vasko decided, was like the pattern of lights he could see through his cabin window. In almost any direction the only way to travel was into darkness, and there was a lot more darkness than light."

"Clavain felt little in the way of regret; more a sense of quiet relief that they were past the negotiating stage and into the infinitely more honest arena of actual battle."

"She would worry, just as you worry. It’s the people who don’t worry—those who never have any doubts that what they’re doing is good and right—they’re the ones that cause the problems."

"Clavain saw it all with sudden, heart-stopping clarity: all that mattered was the here and now. All that mattered was survival. Sentience that bowed down and accepted its own extinction—no matter what the long-term arguments, no matter how good the greater cause—was not the kind of sentience he was interested in preserving."

"And even if what they showed you is true, that doesn’t begin to make it right. The cause might be just, Felka, but history’s littered with atrocities committed in the name of righteousness."

"There were choices to be made, harder choices than I would have liked, and I realised that I had been neglecting them because of their very difficulty."

"Memo to himself: the one way to make people panic was to warn them not to."

"Maps had never really been his thing, even during his days under Scorpio in Chasm City. There, it had hardly mattered. Blood’s motto had always been that if you needed a map to find your way around a neighbourhood, you were already in trouble."

"Rashmika could tell when anyone around her was lying. But seeing through her own deceptions was another matter entirely."

"Charm was what he excelled at. If anyone sensed his underlying shallowness, they usually mistook it for well-hidden great depth of character, like misinterpreting a radar bounce."

"“Personally,” Scorpio said, “I think it’s time to stop thinking chivalry and start thinking artillery.”"

"“We’ve never lied to you,” McKinley said. “No,” Bella said, “but you’ve done a damned good job of not correcting any of my assumptions.”"

"The church-sponsored archaeologists were the only ones who had any kind of overview of the entire haul of relics, and they were under intense pressure to ignore any evidence that conflicted with Quaicheist scripture. That was why Rashmika wrote them so many letters, and why their infrequent replies were always so evasive. She wanted an argument; she wanted to question the entire accepted view of the scuttlers. They wanted her to go away."

"The virus was not helping. He had hoped that it would, but the feelings it brought were too superficial. When he most needed their succour he could feel them for the paper-thin façades they were. Just because the virus was tickling the parts of his brain that produced feelings of religious experience didn’t mean he was able to turn off the other parts of his mind that recognised these feelings as having been induced artificially. He truly felt himself to be in the presence of something sacred, but he also knew, with total clarity, that this was due to neuroanatomy. Nothing was really with him: the organ music, the stained-glass windows in the sky, the sense of proximity to something huge and timeless and infinitely compassionate were all explicable in terms of neural wiring, firing potentials, synaptic gaps."

"Some promises are best broken. Trust me on this: I’m a politician."

"He’s not really a religious man, but he knows which side his bread’s buttered on. The churches pay his salary, so he doesn’t want anyone rocking the boat with unorthodox rumours."

"“Nothing he said indicated that he was that angry. I mean, there’s a difference between angry and murderous. Isn’t there?” “Less than you’d think.”"

"They screwed with democracy. I’m not going to lose much sleep when democracy screws them back."

"As always, it was necessary to strike a balance between a cavalier disregard for the rules and a professional understanding that some rules were more flexible than others."

"One trusted machines. But one never expected machines to return the favor."

"I’m fed up with everyone being lied to just because the administration thinks it’s in our best interests not to know all the facts."

"“But of course, you don’t believe in the existence of sin, do you?” “I believe in the existence of reckless stupidity,” Rashmika replied."

"“I’m hoping no one will be quite that stupid,” Sparver said. “Then again, this is baseline humans we’re dealing with.”"

"“I thought debate was supposed to be healthy,” she countered. “It is,” Auger replied, “so long as you don’t disagree with me.”"

"“That would require an unprecedented leap of faith.” “I don’t do faith,” Scorpio said."

"“I’m just saying...we can’t trust them. We’ve never been able to trust them. That’s always been a cornerstone of our operational policy.” “Then maybe it’s time we got a new cornerstone. They’re people, Lillian. They might be people who make us uncomfortable, people with very different values from ours, but when we’re facing local extinction at the hands of a genocidal machine intelligence, I don’t think the differences between us look massively significant, do you?”"

"She’d walked a delicate line with commendable skill. But sometimes the best case wasn’t good enough."

"“Are you threatening me, shatterling” “No, just indulging in a little wishful thinking.”"

"“Until recently we were a trio. Before that, a quartet. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m beginning to detect a trend.”"

"It was a glaring omission, a sign of cosmic sloppiness. Not even that, Vasko corrected himself. It was a sign of cosmic obliviousness. The universe didn’t know what was happening here. It didn’t know and it didn’t care. It didn’t even know that it didn’t know."

"No act of knowledge acquisition is entirely without risk."

"“Maybe it’s not as bad as she fears. Old people always think the world is going to ruin. It’s their job.” “Maybe they’re right,” Floyd replied."

"The existence theorem says that it is always much easier to find a solution when you can be confident that one exists."

"The simple fact was that she no longer hated them as a matter of principle. It was also a source of shameful amazement that she could ever have wasted so much energy on groundless prejudice, when acceptance and tolerance would have been the easier, even the lazier, course."

"Nice girls don’t carry guns."

"“I’m hearing a lot of reasons why someone wouldn’t hold a grudge against us,” Campion said. Betony looked sympathetic. “Then you misunderstand human nature, my dear fellow. People will hate us simply for being what we are: a force for good, for benign non-interference. The mere fact that we haven’t dirtied our hands, that we’ve maintained an unblemished reputation—that’s enough to make someone detest us.”"

"Khouri did not need to be told that Hades was a neutron star, any more than she needed to be told that there was no such thing as a safe close encounter with one. You either kept away or you died; those were the rules, and there was no force in the universe capable of negating them. Gravity ruled, and gravity did not take into account circumstances, or the unfairness of things, or listen to eleventh-hour petitions before reluctantly repealing its laws. Gravity crushed, and near the surface of a neutron star gravity crushed absolutely, until diamond flowed like water; until a mountain collapsed into a millionth of its height."

"Open your story-cube on the way home and ask it to tell you about causality violation. I did once, because I asked the same question you did. Why should I be limited? What right does the universe have to say what I can and can’t do? I’m intelligent. The universe is just a lot of hydrogen and dirt, going through the motions. But in this instance the universe has the final say."

"People lived and died and did strange, pointless things to themselves. So did societies, be they city-sized states or galactic empires encompassing thousands of solar systems. Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase."

"“There’s a catch,” Skellsgard said. “Another one? But of course there is. You know, I’m thinking I should start a collection.”"

"“What happened?” “Let’s just say my efforts to reprogram the weapon were not an unqualified success, shall we, and leave it at that?” She hated discussing failure almost as much as she hated the thing itself."