The Tropic of Serpents

Science is not separate from politics. As much as I would like it to be a pure thing, existing only in some intellectual realm unsullied by human struggle, it will always be entangled with the world we live in.

There is no faster way to harden my determination than to assume I will fail at something.

Nudity, I find, rapidly becomes boring when it is not treated as scandalous.

Would that I were a man,’” I said, quoting Sarpalyce’s legend. “Except that I do not wish I were a man. I only wish that being a woman did not limit me so.

There is nothing in the world so enticing as that which you have been told you may not have.

One does not cease to treasure a gem simply because one owns another that is larger.

(On no trip before or since have I carried more alcohol than undergarments.)

Give me dragons any day; I understand their ways far better than those of my fellow human beings. We make our world much too complicated

Another thing to study," Natalie said, amused. "Will you ever be done?" I smiled into the sun, one hand holding my bonnet against the firm grasp of the wind. "I should hope not. How dreadfully tedious that would be.

Are a woman's wishes only fit to be considered when blessed by a male relative?

And all the while I have people telling me, at least you still have something of your husband. Do they mean the book chronicling our work in Vystrana? No, of course not—never mind that we undertook that work together, with intent. That cannot possibly be as valuable as the accidental consequence of biology.” Very quietly, Tom said, “Is not a child worth more than a book?” “Yes,” I said violently. “But then for God’s sake let us value my son for himself, and not as some relic of his father. When he is grown enough to read, I will be delighted to share his father’s legacy with him; it is my legacy as well, and I hope he has inherited our curiosity enough to appreciate it. I would not mind a motherhood where that was my purpose—to foster my son’s mind and teach him the intellectual values of his parents. But no; society tells me my role is to change his napkins and coo over the faces he makes, and in so doing abandon the things I want him to treasure when he is grown.

They say there are no atheists in war; I tell you that pantheists abound at the edge of a cliff. I would have taken the blessing of any god I could get.

All hail that bane of the upper class, a scene. The spectre of being publicly shamed

When people speak of the tragedies in my life, they ordinarily mean the deaths. Not only Jacob. But all those around me who have perished. Whether in direct consequence of danger or simple misfortune and the passage of time after our friendships have formed. At times though I think these partings should be accounted as highly, if only in the ledger of my own sorrow. Akinimanbi did not die on a Lebane spear, but I never saw her again after leaving for the Great Cataract. In that sense I lost her as thoroughly as if she had died. So it was with Yeyuama as well. I only saw Faj Rawango once more, years later. And although Galinke corresponded with me, we could not be friends the way we might have been had we dwelt in the same land. So it has been, again and again throughout my life, as I form connections with people and then lose them to distance and time. I mourn those losses, even when I know my erstwhile friends are safe and happy among their own kin. But the only way for me to avoid such losses, would be to stay home. To never journey beyond the range of easy visitation. As my life will attest, that is not a measure I am willing to take. Nor would I forgo the pleasures of my transient friendships if I could. So we made our farewells, packed our things, and boarded a steamship in the harbor of Nsebu. Much browner, thinner and more worn than it had been when we arrived, we made our way back to Scirland.

I therefore had only enough fear to make myself terrified — not enough to turn back

He was a man who did not properly exist in any single world, but he seemed to have found a place between them, and that, more than his past, was who he was.

So it has been, again and again throughout my life, as I form connections with people and then lose them to distance and time. I mourn those losses, even when I know my erstwhile friends are safe and happy among their own kin.

I set to work making a place for myself in Society, even if it was not the place Society intended for me.

...for even the best artwork is a static thing of the eye alone, and words are by their nature linear.

Your people understand the forest: how the animals behave, where to find them, and so on. I want something similar—but instead of the forest as a whole, I want to understand dragons. They are not only here, you know; there are dragons in the savannah—” Mekeesawa nodded. “Well, there are more than that, all over the world. They live in the mountains and on the plains and maybe even in the ocean. I want to know them as you know the creatures of this forest.” “But why?” Mekeesawa asked. His eyes were still merry with laughter, but his question was serious. “You don’t live in all those places.” With the amount of time I have spent traveling in my life, one might make the argument that I do live in all those places, if only temporarily. But Mekeesawa’s point was a good one, and not easily dismissed. The Moulish understood the creatures of the Green Hell because their survival depended on it; my survival did not depend on my traveling the globe to find dragons. (Indeed, it has on more than one occasion nearly been detrimental to my life expectancy.) How could I answer him? Thinking back on the matter now, it is possible my only true answer to that question is now in its second volume, with more to come. These memoirs are not only an accounting of my life; they are an accounting *for* it.

And since human minds are very good at finding patterns, and ours had recently shifted from looking for bad luck to looking for good, we wrote off setbacks as expected, rather than proof of misfortune.

I spoke with the assurance of a young woman who thought her experience with natural history and ad hoc education in other subjects more than qualified her to hold forth on topics she knew nothing about at all. The truth is that any such comparison is far more complicated and doubtful than I presented it that evening; but it is also true that no one in my audience knew any more about it than I did, and most of them knew less. My assertion was therefore allowed to stand unchallenged. For

I have not been to Bayembe in nearly twenty years, but my memory of it remains as fresh as yesterday. Not the factual details, but the experience of the place: the enormous quality the sky seemed to take on, and the vast stretches of dry grass rustling in the breeze. Scattered umbrella thorns spread their branches like flat clouds above the ground;

(Yes, I thought my stay in the region would be non-political. When you have finished laughing, you may proceed.)

I resent my son. There - I have said it. I resent him because he shackles me; I cannot live the life I want, not without feeling guilty for devoting my heart to the thing that makes me happy.

So you will blame me for her malaria? As others blame me for my husband's death - how very familiar. I cannot be permitted to make my own choices, as Natalie cannot either, but I am somehow to blame for the choices of others. What tremendous power I seem to have! But certain things are out of my hands, Sir Adam, and one of them is whether Natalie will even live to be sent home. I suggest you search your heart and find the decency to leave the matter of her disposition until after we know the answer to that question.

If science were only some abstract thing, without connection to our lives, it would be both useless and boring. But there have been times when I wished that I might snip a few of the threads tying it to other matters, so they would stop tripping me as I went.

But one does not cease to treasure a gem simply because one owns another that is larger. I would have loved to place that in the jewelry box of my memory.