Charles Sheffield

“It sounds reasonable to me.”

“Reasonable, but not true. Big difference.”

Be an optimist! It’s the only way to live.

“Lop the top-end tail off the distribution of human intelligence and creativity,” he went on, “and it would make no measurable difference to the population. Only one person in a billion is out beyond the six-sigma level. That’s what we’re talking about here. But eventually those one-in-a-billion make a huge difference. Ninety-five percent of all human progress comes from less than one thousandth of one percent of the population.”

“It is my personal belief that nothing can exceed light speed,” said Sy at last. “I will mistrust anyone, government or Immortal, man or woman, human or alien, who attempts to tell me otherwise without providing convincing evidence.”

No purpose is served by making private suffering into a public event.

Earth has been regarded for centuries as a giant self-regulating machine, absorbing all changes, great and small, and diluting their effects until they become invisible on a global scale. Mankind has taken that stability for granted. Careless of consequences, we have watched as forests were cleared, lakes poisoned, rivers dammed and diverted, mountains leveled, whole plains dug out for their mineral and fuel content. And nothing disastrous happened. Earth tolerated the insults, and always she restored the status quo.

Always—until now. Until finally some hidden critical point has been passed. The move away from a steady state is signalled in many ways: by increasing ocean temperatures, by drought and flood, by widespread loss of topsoil, by massive crop failure, and by the collapse of worldwide fishing industries.

He had defined intuition for Sondra: it was what remained after all the facts had been forgotten. But intuition could also be something else. Sometimes it was the subconscious mind, establishing deep connections long before the thinking part of the brain could explain them.

And now I think about it, I never really wanted to live forever. I just want to live well.

When in doubt, follow the money trail. People could lie, motives could be disguised, even acts could be misunderstood. Money was as constant as human nature.

We are creatures of conditioning, Commander. We assume that what we know is easy, and we find mysterious whatever we do not.

“I wonder why somebody would go to all that trouble to make a complete fool of himself.”

“Come on, Gina, we both know why.”

“Oh, I guess you’re right. Money will always do it.”

Of course.

As usual he looked tired, but that was normal. Geniuses worked harder than anyone else, not less hard.