Against a Dark Background

Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying.

People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it is. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped.

It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said. She laughed. 'Really?' The machine shrugged and let go of her hand. 'Oh, no. It's just something we tell ourselves.

If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!

He might come in useful.' 'Yeah. So's a broken leg if you want to kick yourself in the back of the head.

We are a race prone to monsters, she thought, and when we produce one we worship it.

law is no more than an abstraction of justice; an expression of a society’s political will and philosophical conceptions. Truth, right and justice are processes, not states. They are dynamic functions

Never get beholden by people like that, they'll piss on you and then charge irrigation fees.

I want you to destroy everything! she screamed. Every fucking thing! All the evil men and compliant women, all the armies and companies and cults and faiths and orders and every stupid fucker in them! All of them! EVERYTHING!

But if you’re God,” Sharrow said to Elson Roa, “why do you need the others?” “What others?” Roa said. Sharrow looked exasperated. “Oh, come on.” Elson Roa shrugged. “My apparences? They are the sign that my will is not yet strong enough to support my existence without extraneous help. I am working on this.

Allow me to attenuate my portentousness for you.

and despite all her supposed maturity and sophistication she had the unnerving feeling that she was a child again, trapped in a baffling world of mysterious intent and arcane significance, forever making guesses at how it all worked but never knowing exactly the right questions to ask.

He might come in useful,” Cenuij said. “Yeah,” Zefla said. “So’s a broken leg if you want to kick yourself in the back of the head.

Malishu’s usual informality manifested itself in a total lack of any visible officials between the shuttle jetty and the maglev platform, and its renowned organizational prowess was demonstrated in the fact that an empty train had departed just before the passengers got there.

and its renowned organizational prowess was demonstrated in the fact that an empty train had departed just before the passengers got there.

She felt more and more awkward walking amongst the naked people in the station concourse, so she stopped to take her clothes off in a phone booth and was promptly arrested for stripping in public, an offense against common decency.

Ah, dear lady, it is with the greatest embarrassment that I have to confess that in this matter I must—with a degree of anguish you may well find hard to credit—relinquish my absolute commitment to the fulfillment of your every whim. Put plainly, I am not at liberty to divulge that information. There, it is said. Let us quickly move on from this unfortunate quantum of dissonance to the ground-state of accord which I trust will inform our future relationship.

Sorry? Of course he was sorry. People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it was. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped. … Sorrow be damned, and all your plans. Fuck the faithful, fuck the committed, the dedicated, the true believers; fuck all the sure and certain people prepared to maim and kill whoever got in their way; fuck every cause that ended in murder and a child screaming.

thought hard enough there could be significance in every name or none, and there was no way of knowing where to draw the line.

Sorrow be damned, and all your plans. Fuck the faithful, fuck the committed, the dedicated, the true believers; fuck all the sure and certain people prepared to maim and kill whoever got in their way; fuck every cause that ended in murder and a child screaming.

she willed that distant, ember memory to prevail against the leaching cold that made her teeth ache and her body shiver, and against the laws that ran the universe and the system and the world and every thing and body within it; the laws of decay, consumption, exhaustion and death.

She walked away down the broad grey curve of the causeway, the rain spattering her face while the evil-smelling wind whipped her hair, and realised with some surprise that, after nearly eight years of peaceful banality, that made two men she'd hit in less than twenty hours. Life was becoming interesting again.

How long have we had space travel?” Breyguhn shouted, smacking her fist into the table surface; the chain whipped down, scattering chips of granite. Breyguhn didn’t seem to notice. “Seven thousand years! Seven thousand years!” she roared, standing, throwing her arms wide, voice echoing from above. Sharrow heard a bell ringing somewhere. “Seventy centuries, Sharrow! Seven millennia of footling about in the one miserable system, crawling from rock to rock,