Alastair Reynolds

“Is he dangerous?

“Anyone who lies for a living is dangerous.”

“Can I still wish you good luck?”

“You can wish me what the hell you like. It won’t make any difference. If it did, it would mean I hadn’t prepared well enough.

“How are the internal complications, anyway? Aren’t the other branches of government getting a little suspicious about all these machinations?”

“Let’s just say that one or two discreet assassinations may still have to be performed,” Khouri said.

Just because something had spawned a myth did not automatically mean it had to contain anything of substance.

It was his experience that crises in space fell into two categories: those that killed you immediately, usually without much warning, and those that gave you plenty of time to ruminate on the problem, even if no solution was very likely.

“You seem upset by the fact that we’re hated and feared.”

“It does give one pause for thought.”

The one thing I never counted on was having luck on my side.

It was generally simpler that way.

It was one of the oldest tricks of mob-management: give them a hate figure.

In Clavain’s experience, it was the less comforting possibility that generally turned out to be the case. It was the way the universe worked.

“Tanner, are you insane?”

“Very probably several kinds of insane,” I said. “But I’m afraid it doesn’t change anything. I’m perfectly happy with my current delusional system.”

Am I that fascinating to you, or are you just more bored than I imagined?

“All right, Marius—I get the message. In fact I intercepted it, parsed it, filtered it, decrypted it with the appropriate onetime pad and wrote a fucking two-hundred-page report on it. Satisfied?”

“I’m never satisfied, Mishenka. It just isn’t in my nature.”