Alastair Reynolds

There are certain truths that, in themselves, are as dangerous as any advanced technology.

There was something about the cocksure confidence of that statement that gave Auger goose pimples. It was like an invitation to fate.

I was born in a house with a million rooms, built on a small, airless world on the edge of an empire of light and commerce that the adults called the Golden Hour, for a reason I did not yet grasp.

“The question is: do you trust me?”

“Sometimes.”

Bella smiled. “That’s exactly the right attitude: trust your leaders, but be careful not to trust them too much.”

If my years as a shatterling had taught me anything, it was that not all questions had answers. Societies had reduced themselves to radioactive dust because they could not accept that single unpalatable truth.

People lived and died and did strange, pointless things to themselves. So did societies, be they city-sized states or galactic empires encompassing thousands of solar systems. Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase.

It was bad, but it was some other slightly less piquant flavour of bad.

That was the universe: you could beat it once, you could float a message in a bottle across half of eternity, but the universe would always find a way to have the last laugh.

It was astonishing how quickly friendship could turn to enmity, she thought, like a compass needle swinging from one pole to the other.

They’d been excellent friends. They’d make excellent enemies as well.

There’s a lot here we don’t understand. Adding one more thing to the list doesn’t strike me as the worst crime imaginable.

I had read in the story-cube that the speed of light was a universal limit; that in a thousand years of experimentation—despite any number of false dawns—no one had ever managed to circumvent it. This had made me feel hemmed in and claustrophobic—it was like being told I must never run or skip down the long, dreary corridors of the house, but must walk instead, with my neck straight and my hands held behind my back. I felt affronted, as if the speed of light was a personal assault on my liberty. Why should I not go as fast as I pleased? Why should I not skip and run? But I could no more explain why the speed limit existed than I could explain why two and two did not make five. It was simply the way things were, one of those rules—like the edict not to visit certain parts of the house—that were not to be questioned.

No act of knowledge acquisition is entirely without risk.