Alastair Reynolds

“Wonderful, isn’t it?”

“Wonderful and a little spooky.”

“Like all the best things in the universe.”

“I’m hearing a lot of reasons why someone wouldn’t hold a grudge against us,” Campion said.

Betony looked sympathetic. “Then you misunderstand human nature, my dear fellow. People will hate us simply for being what we are: a force for good, for benign non-interference. The mere fact that we haven’t dirtied our hands, that we’ve maintained an unblemished reputation—that’s enough to make someone detest us.”

“We’re flexible,” Campion said. “It’s the price we pay for being sentient.”

“We’ve never lied to you,” McKinley said.

“No,” Bella said, “but you’ve done a damned good job of not correcting any of my assumptions.”

Hallucination doesn’t preclude a rational response to that same hallucination.

Once, they would have meant something to Svetlana, but now all she felt was a faint prickly of recollection. Fluency with mathematics—in the context of any kind of engineering discipline or physical science—was a use-it-or-lose-it skill.

Such hopes now seemed ludicrous in their naivety, like trying to stop a bulldozer with a feather.

Some promises are best broken. Trust me on this: I’m a politician.

“There’s still hope.”

But a small, private voice said: there’s hope, and there’s desperation.

The problem was, although I was as certain as I could be that I was right, I could offer nothing to bolster my arguments.

“Then all this,” Chromis said, gesturing at the vista before them, “everything we’ve lived for and made, everything we’ve dreamed into existence—you firmly believe it won’t always be here?”

“It’d be egocentric to think otherwise. Almost every sentient being who ever lived belonged to a society that doesn’t exist any more. Why should we be any different?”

“But our deeds will remain.”

“If we’re lucky. There’s every chance they won’t survive either.”

“That’s so bleak, Rudd.”

“Bracing, I prefer to think.”

“But if nothing we do here has any guarantee of lasting, if even the best gestures have only a slim chance of outliving us—is there any reason not to just give up?”

“Every reason in the world,” Rudd said. “We’re here and we’re alive. It’s a beautiful evening, on the last perfect day of summer.” He turned and nodded at the waiting cauls. “Now let’s go down there and make the most of it, while it lasts.”

“Even godlike aliens have to act rationally—don’t they?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I can’t recall ever meeting any.”