Alastair Reynolds

This gets better, it really does. The odd thing is, I actually think you might be telling the truth. If you were going to lie, you’d at least come up with something that made sense.

“But you can be sure there are pockets of wealth and influence, and I’m willing to wager that a few people are wealthier and more influential than they were before.”

“That’s always the way with disasters,” I said.

“What?”

“They’re never bad news for everyone. Something nasty always rises to the top.”

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.

By and large these attempts to rewrite history were not taken seriously, but it was disconcerting to hear that they had gained even a toehold.

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.

“I don’t trust you.”

“Of course you don’t. I know I wouldn’t. And I’m not asking you to. I’m not putting you in a situation in which your trust of me is even remotely relevant. I’m just pointing a gun to your head and giving you orders.”

His parents had abdicated responsibility to an illusion.

They had been in love, desperately in love, but the universe cared nothing for the vicissitudes of the human heart.

“I gather you were all too busy killing each other.”

“That’s a fairly reductive summary of our history, but I don’t suppose it’s too far from the truth.”

“I’m not a bad man, Ilia. I’m just someone who knows exactly what needs to be done.”

“Like you said, always the most dangerous sort.”

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.

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.