“But to have dreamed the dream is to have flown above the mountains so high in all but deed.”
“Are you sure it is trustworthy, Mellanie?"
"I'd be dead if it wasn't."
"yes. I suppose that does generate a respectable level of personsal confidence”
“The universe was not built on integrity. In the face of weakness, force can and will triumph. All you can do is choose who wields that force. Us or the Starflyer.”
“I don’t get it. There’s nothing here. Send your invasion force halfway across the galaxy so they can build a five star ski resort? That’s crazy.”
“During the Trinity test of the very first atom bomb, Fermi wondered if the detonation would ignite the Earth’s atmosphere. They just didn’t know, you see. We think the quantum disruption won’t propagate. If it does, then the whole universe gets converted into energy.”
“Any species possessing this kind of knowledge base is best left unannoyed.”
“Their electronics are still back in the Stone Age.”
“Like the original concept, the stormrider had rectangular blades, sixteen of them radiating out from the hub, each one a flat lattice of struts twenty-five kilometers long, made from the toughest steelsilicon fibers the Commonwealth knew how to manufacture. Twenty-three kilometers of them were covered by an ultra-thin silvered foil, giving a total surface area of over one thousand eight hundred square kilometers for the solar wind to impact on. Even in an ordinary solar system environment that would have produced a considerable torque. In the Half Way system the stormrider was positioned at the Lagrange point between the red star and its neutron companion, right in the middle of the plasma current, where the ion density was orders of magnitude thicker than any normal solar wind. The power the stormrider produced when it was in the thick of the flow was enough to operate the wormhole generator. But it couldn’t simply sit at the Lagrange point producing electricity continuously; that would have been too much like perpetual motion. As the waves of plasma pushed against it, they exerted an unremitting pressure on the blades that blew the stormrider away from the Lagrange point out toward the neutron star. So for five hours the two sets of blades would turn in opposite directions, generating electricity for the Port Evergreen wormhole that was delivered via a zero-width wormhole. The stormrider also stored some of the power, so that at the end of the five hours when it was out of alignment, it had enough of a reserve to fire its onboard thrusters, moving itself even farther out of the main plasma stream where the pressure was reduced. From there it chased a simple fifteen-hour loop back around through open space to the Lagrange point, where the cycle would begin again.”
“just how naïve could a porn star be?”
“I don’t understand why you need verbal trickery to ensnare a temporary mate,” Tochee said. “Are you not attracted to each other by what you are?”
“Ozzie hurriedly loaded in restrictions that would stop the boy wading through porn all night long—”
“Remember that when he’s slaughtering you. It’s important that the guy strangling the life out of you is drop-dead gorgeous.”
“Abruptly the voice became the plaintive treble of the little girl. “I can climb. Do you think I won’t think to move the table over there under the hole? I, who can talk?” “You know yourself a beast, then.” The man’s voice came again. “We know we are within the beast, just as once we were within the cases of flesh the beast has devoured.” “And you would consent to its devouring your wife and your son, Becan?” “I would direct it. I do direct it. I want Casdoe and Severian to join us here, just as I joined Severa today. When the fire dies, you die too-joining us—and so shall they.”
“Tess focuses on Cyclops’s placid, one-eyes face. He lost one of his black button eyes year ago, but she wouldn’t let Mrs. O’Hare replace it. She said it made him more interesting, and changed his name from Barnabus.”
“He motioned impatiently to his adjutant and was handed a small stack of identification papers, which he quickly riffled through. Von Strassen concluded immediately that there was no one of value in the bunch. No military men. No intelligence officers. No one who likely had any information that could be of use. “Stand up if you’re a Jew,” he ordered. No one stood. “I’m only going to say it one more time,” Von Strassen growled. “You’re all going to be sent to a prison camp—a labor camp, a work camp. You will remain there, serving the German war effort, until the war is over and der Führer decides your fate. But if you are Jewish, you will be treated specially. You will be treated differently. So you must stand to your feet if you are a Jew.”
“My mother named me after a miracle of nature: Waris means desert flower. The desert flower blooms in a barren environment where few living things can survive.”
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