Revelation Space

“A splendidly inept thing,” Sylveste said, nodding despite himself.

“What?”

“The human capacity for grief. It just isn’t capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn’t just level off—it just gives up, resets itself to zero. Admit it. None of us feel a damn about these people.”

“I don’t know.” That was typical Sajaki; like all the genuinely clever people Sylveste had met he knew better than to feign understanding where none existed.

I was going to call it a mistake, but you could argue that there are no mistakes in war, only fortunate and less fortunate events.

“How long have we been friends, Dan?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it friendship; more a kind of mutual parasitism.”

“I imagine you feel insignificant,” Sajaki said, almost as if he had been listening in on the conversation. “Well; you’re justified in feeling that way. You are insignificant. That’s the majesty of this place. Would you choose it any other way?”

“It’s all in the fine print. You should read it sometime.”

“When I’m gripped by existential boredom,” Khouri said, “I might try it.”

The mere fact that there could be danger in this is fascination in itself; almost an incentive to push further. That’s how you feel, isn’t it? Every argument they could use against you would only strengthen your resolve. Because knowledge makes you hungry, and it’s a hunger you can’t resist, even if you know that what you’re feasting on could kill you.

She wondered if she could put a dart in his eye. It would not kill him, but it might take the edge off his cockiness.

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.

It seemed that she had not so much misjudged the woman as assigned her to completely the wrong species.

For someone admitting guilt she sounded remarkably void of repentance.

“Are you sharpness personified?”

Khouri poured herself a few final sips of coffee and then left the rest of it on the stove for when she got back. Coffee was her only vice, one acquired in her soldiering days on the Edge. The trick was to reach a knife-edge of alertness, but not be so buzzing that she could not point the weapon without shaking.

“I think I’ve reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level, if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t like this at all,” Hegazi said.

“Believe me,” Sylveste said, “you’re about to like it a lot less.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of morale-building?” Khouri had asked.

“Heard of it,” Volyova said. “Don’t happen to agree with it. Would you rather be happy and dead, or scared and alive?”

“You look older, son.”

“Yes, well, some of us have to get on with the business of being alive in the entropic universe.”

“You can hardly blame them.”

“Assuming stupidity is an inherited trait, then no, I can’t.”

For whatever reason, I am now fully conscious. Perhaps all beta-levels are capable of this, or perhaps my sheer connectional complexity ensured that I exceeded some state of critical mass. I have no idea. All I know is that I think, and therefore I’m exceedingly angry.

The new regime which had succeeded his after the coup had become as fragmentary as the old, in the time-honoured way of all revolutions.

She had almost dared ask, but was perhaps too fearful of hearing something she could not refute.