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Everything changed, and it went right on changing. A terrible thought when things were good, a comforting one now. Whatever happened, she could be certain that things wouldn’t stay the way they were now. And if she stayed smart and clever and lucky, she’d be able to affect how the next change came. Or take advantage of it.

It also meant that their reaching out to the artifact had gotten it to reach back. Her experiment was working.

She’d expected success to feel less like fear.

He was grandiose. He was ruthless. He was a genius at a couple of things and under the misapprehension that it meant he was smart about everything. But in his mind, he was doing the right thing.

We’re here to protect people’s freedom. I’m not sure what liberty is if you’re not permitted to decide what chances you’re willing to take.

“You make it sound like there’s a later in the game.”

Miller’s smile was enigmatic, and it looked a little like sorrow by the time it reached his eyes. “Until death all is life.”

“You think he may be a triple agent?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened. The one thing you know about someone who’s willing to compromise his allies is that he’s willing to compromise his allies.”

“They’re people,” Naomi said, exhaustion in her tone. “We’re trying to do all of this with humans. Shortsightedness is coded in our DNA.”

Teresa seemed older than adolescent Jim had been, both more knowledgeable about the universe and angrier with it. Maybe the two went hand in hand.

Fatalism had its dark attractions, after all. Hopelessness and despair could almost look restful.

The hardest thing was to trust his own people to do their jobs well, but it was what he had to do. He wondered if the high consul suffered the same thing—knowing that all the critical action would be taken by others who were guided by his orders, but in conditions he could only guess at, and in places where his intervention, even if it were possible, could only muddy the waters. It was a subtle and terrible insight. The powerlessness of control.

She had to remind herself that war was always this way. Had always been. Cities had been falling under siege since the time there were cities. Mortars had fallen on schools. Soldiers had stormed hospitals. Bombs had set churches and parks and children on fire. Homes had been lost before now.

Collaboration with the dead left questions that could never be answered.