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Seeker laughed. “You are so—well, human. You always think you are the ultimate.”

“And…we’re not.”

Seeker inspected the ceiling. “It seems unlikely.”

For her it was a slippery descent into a labyrinth where twin urges fought, revenge versus survival. These two instincts, already ancient before the first hominid walked, rarely married with any security. Yet if she did not feel the pinch of their competition, she would not be, by her own judgment, a true human.

History held counterexamples to any facile rule.

Naturals felt best in groups of a hundred or so, and better if only a few dozen were involved. Hunting parties had been about that size, for the long-extinct big game. Many important institutions were of the same rough scale: the ancient village, governing councils of nations, commanding elites of vast armies, teams playing games, orchestras, family fests. All human enterprises that worked were of that size, and nearly everything that failed was not.

None of the above. That’s often the right answer, and bugger the exams.

In his view, the true deep human fantasy was the conviction of safety. Men believed their women were devoted; wives felt that their men were dependable. Both ignored contrary evidence.

She had always admired the way bureaucracies spontaneously produced leaden prose, blandly sliding from the mouths of people who absolutely believed everything they said.

They all lived as ants in the shadow of mountains of millennia, and time’s sheer mass shaded every word.

Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

Nothing is eternal—including prisons.

Good food was like sex, one of life’s blessings, but they both lost their edge when talked about too much.

Indeed, high-blown rhetoric plus uncheckable consequences were the two sure signatures of the crank.