В „Сърдитият дядо Пиперко“ Величка Настрадинова wrote:Милиционерът спря движението и отиде при дядо Пиперко.
- Гражданино, забранено е в столицата да се движат магарета.
...
- Забранено ли? – подхвърли дядо Пиперко и показа тъплата невчесани младежи, които с интерес следяха спора и дюдюкаха. – Я бе, сине, виж колко магарета се разкарват из София! Защо баш Рошльо да не може?
– Карай, дядка! – се провикнаха зяпачите. – Цапни един на милицая и си гилай с магарето!
Университетите бяха средища на мисълта, но сега слизат от сцената. За много хора те са се превърнали в центрове за ментална мастурбация без приложение.
Университетът развива всички заложби, включително и глупостта.
School! We sat in English class and we dissected the stories that I’d escaped into, laid open their abdomens and tagged their organs, covered their genitals with polite sterile drapes, recorded dutiful notes en masse that told us what the story was about, but never what the story was. Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions. Kill them and cut them open and they’re as naked as a nightclub in daylight.
"Eastern Standard Tribe" от Cory Doctorow http://craphound.com/
The belief that ideas should never become ideologies – either justifying the status quo, or dictating some transcendent imperative for renouncing it – was the essence of what they taught. … They taught a kind of skepticism that helped people cope with life in a heterogeneous, industrialized, mass market society. … This skepticism is also one of the qualities that make societies like that work. It is what permits the continual state of upheaval that capitalism thrives on. Holmes, James, Peirce and Dewey helped to free thought from thralldom to official ideologies, of the church, the state, or even the academy. There is also, though, implicit on what they wrote, a recognition of the limits of what thought can do in the struggle to increase human happiness.
"The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America" от Louis Menand
може и така да се изтълкува.Кал wrote:по-леко и очистващо
) In The Golden Age, John C. Wright wrote:Phaethon felt the tingle of his nape hairs as his name was read (he still had not put his mask back on), and then a signal came in on a high-compression channel, saying: “This is the translator. My client is attempting to convey a complex of memory files and associational paths which you either do not have the ability to receive or which I do not have authority to transmit. The amount of information involved may be more than one brain can apprehend. Do you have stored noumenal personalities, backups, or augments?”
Phaethon signaled for identity, but the Neptunian was masked. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir. I am not accustomed to revealing the locations of my mind-space to strangers, and certainly not my resurrection copies.” Phaethon wanted an answer to his question, and would have preferred to remain polite, but the request that he open his private thoughts was extraordinary, almost absurd. Not to mention that the Neptunian reputation for eccentric pranks was too well known.
“Very well. I will attempt to convey my client’s communication in a linear format, by means of words, but only on the understanding that much substantial content, and all secondary meanings, nuances, and connotations will be lost.”
“I will be tolerant. Proceed.”
“My initial data burst consists of four hundred entries, including multidimensional image arrays, memory respondents and correlations, poetry, and instructions on nerve alterations for creating novel emotional receiving structures in your brain. These structures may be of use later for appreciating the emotions (which have no names as yet in your language) which other parts of the communication will then attempt to arouse. The initial burst contains other preliminary minutia.
“Then follows a contextual batch of six thousand entries, including volumes of art and experience, memories and reconstructed memories, real and fictional, intended to give you and him a common background of experience, a context in which certain allusions and specifics will be best understood. Other greetings and salutations follow.
“The first entry of the core message contains rote formalities of time-sense and identity continuity, establishing that you are, in fact, the same Phaethon of my client’s acquaintance, or, in case you are a copy, reconstruction, or simulation, to ascertain the relative degree of emotional and mental correspondence with which my client must regard you. The core message itself—”
“Pardon me,” said Phaethon. “Did I know your client before he joined your Composition?” He amplified his vision (opening additional wavelengths) to look curiously at the several brains and brain groups floating in the icy substance.
“The Neptunian legate produces an emotion-statement of three orders of complexity, with associated memory trees to show correspondence, but otherwise does not respond to your question, which he regards as fantastic, disorienting, and not at all funny. Pause: Should I explain further about the emotional reaction, or shall I continue with the central message of the first datagroup? The process could be considerably sped if you will impart your command codes and locks to give me direct access to your neurological and mnemonic systems; this will enable me to add files directly into your mind, and alter your temperament, outlook, and philosophy to understand my client in the way he himself would like to be understood.”
“Certainly not!”
“I was required to ask.”
“Can you make your summary more brief? The man I’m asking about is someone who—well, perhaps he offended me, or—this man said some confusing things, and he—well, I’m trying to find him,” Phaethon finished lamely.
“Very well. My client says: I (he forwards, as an appendix, a treatise on the meaning of the word ‘I,’ the concept of selfhood, and a bibliographical compendium of his life experiences and changes in his self-notions in order to define this term to you) greet (he also has side comments on the history and nature of greetings, the implications in this context of what is meant, including the legal implications of violating the ban placed on his initiating any contact with you) you (and he postulates a subjunctive inquiry that, should you not be the individual that he deems you to be, that all this be placed in a secondary memory-chain, and be regarded as a less-than-real operation, similar to a pseudomnemia. He also requests sealed and notarized confirmation on his recorded memorandum documenting that you initiated the contact without his prompting).”
“Rhadamanthus, you Sophotechs always deny that you are wise enough to arrange everything we do, to arrange coincidences.”
“Our predictions of humanity are limited. There is an uncertainty which creatures with free will create. The Earthmind Herself could not beat you every time in a game of paper-scissors-rock, because your move is based on what you think she might choose for her move: and She cannot predict her own actions in advance perfectly.”
“Why not? I thought Earthmind was intelligent beyond measure.”
“No matter how great a creature’s intelligence, if one is guessing one’s own future actions, the past self cannot outwit the future self, because the intelligence of both is equal. The only thing which alters this paradox is morality.”
Phaethon was distracted. “Morality?! What an odd thing to say. Why morality?”
“Because when an honest man, a man who keeps his word, says he will do something in the future, you can be sure he will try.”
“So you machines are always preaching about honesty just for selfish reasons. It makes us more predictable, easier to work into a calculation.”
“Very selfish—provided you define the word ‘selfish’ to mean that which most educates, and most perfects the self, making the self just and true and beautiful. Which is, I assume, the way selves want themselves to be, yes?”
“I cannot speak for other selves; I will not be satisfied with anything less than the best Phaethon I can Phaethon.”
“My dear boy, are you using yourself as a verb?”
“I’m feeling fairly intransitive at the moment, Rhadamanthus.”
In The Golden Age, John C. Wright wrote:(...) The floor itself was inscribed with a mosaic in the data-pattern mode, representing the entire body of the Curia case law. At the center, small icons representing constitutional principles sent out lines to each case in which they were quoted; bright lines for controlling precedent, dim lines for dissenting opinions or dicta. Each case quoted in a later case sent out additional lines, till the concentric circles of floor-icons were meshed in a complex network.
The jest of the architect was clear to Phaethon. The floor mosaic was meant to represent the fixed immutability of the law; but the play of light from the pool above made it seem to ripple and sway and change with each little breeze.
Above the floor, not touching it, without sound or motion, hovered three massive cubes of black material.
These cubes were the manifestations of the Judges. The cube shape symbolized the solidity and implacable majesty of the law. Their high position showed they were above emotionalism or earthly appeals. The crown of each cube bore a thick-armed double helix of heavy gold.
The gold spirals atop the black cubes were symbols of life, motion, and energy. Perhaps they represented the active intellects of the Curia. Or perhaps they represented that life and civilization rested on the solid foundations of the law. If so, this was another jest of the architect. The law, it seemed, rested on nothing.
In The Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett wrote:“ (...) It is the secret of my long life.”
Ah, thought Tiffany, and she leaned forward.
“The important thing,” said Miss Treason, “is to stay the passage of the wind. You should avoid rumbustious fruits and vegetables. Beans are the worst, take it from me.”
“I don’t think I understand—” Tiffany began.
“Try not to fart, in a nutshell.”
“In a nutshell I imagine it would be pretty unpleasant!” said Tiffany nervously. She couldn’t believe she was being told this.
“This is no joking matter,” said Miss Treason. “The human body only has so much air in it. You have to make it last. One plate of beans can take a year off your life. I have avoided rumbustiousness all my days. I am an old person and that means what I say is wisdom!” She gave the bewildered Tiffany a stern look. “Do you understand, child?”
Tiffany’s mind raced. Everything is a test! “No,” she said. “I’m not a child and that’s nonsense, not wisdom!”
The stern look cracked into a smile. “Yes,” said Miss Treason. “Total gibberish. But you’ve got to admit it’s a corker, all the same, right? You definitely believed it, just for a moment? The villagers did last year. You should have seen the way they walked about for a few weeks! The strained looks on their faces quite cheered me up!”
In The Phoenix Exultant, John C. Wright wrote:She said, “Look me right in the eye, and tell me you don’t love me, and I’ll go.”
He stared at her. “Miss, I do not love you.”
“Don’t give me that rot! I’m coming with you, and that’s final!”
“Daphne, you just said that if I said…”
“That doesn’t count! I said look me right in the eye! You were staring at my nose!”
В „Руфо, червенокосия“ Иван Мариновски wrote:… Веднъж Руфо донесе в къщи малко котенце. Още слепичко. Погали го между ушенцата и го мушна под възглавницата.
– Да си на топло – метна му и юргана той. После отиде в млекарницата и поиска прясно мляко.
– Добре – рече бабчето. (...) – Имаш ли пари?
Ех!
Ако беше сънувала какво я чака, бабчето нямаше да отиде на работа. Ей тъй: щеше да си лежи в леглото, завита през глава, и да не шава. Разбира се, можеше да стане за малко – колкото да превърти два пъти ключа на вратата и да го хвърли през прозореца, та да не се изкуши по някое време да излезе.
Но, горката, нищо не подозираше и остави дето отвори магазина точно в шест часа, ами отгоре на това сега се усмихваше на Руфо.
– Е, къде са парите? Или си ги загубил, а?
Руфо пристъпи към нея и без заобикалки попита може ли под възглавница да се държи слон. Да, да, слон. Бабчето примигна, погледна вентилатора над вратата и сниши глас.
– Не.
– А сляпо котенце?
– Да.
– Котенцето пари яде ли?
– Не.
– А мляко?
– Да.
– С лъжица ли?
– Не.
– С биберон?
– Да.
Руфо извади от джоба си червен биберон, помами с пръст бабчето да си подаде ухото и прошепна:
– Аз имам и биберон, и сляпо котенце. Значи какво ми трябва – мляко или пари?
– Мляко.
– Тогава за какво говорим?
Бабчето отново се втренчи във вентилатора, който се въртеше ту наляво, ту надясно (вероятно и той се беше объркал от въпросите на Руфо) и смънка:
– Наистина, за какво говорим?
И тъкмо да му подаде млякото, в магазина влезе една лелка, у която всичко беше закръглено, сякаш очертано с пергел. И думите също:
– Бутилчица прясно млечице, моля!
Бабчето не сваляше очи от вентилатора.
– Имате ли сляпо котенце? – тихо попита тя.
– Не.
– Тогава няма мляко!
В „Руфо, червенокосия“ Иван Мариновски wrote:Хубавото на многото коне е това, че можеш да избереш който ти хареса. По вкус. Вихра не се съмняваше в изтънчения си вкус и от пръв поглед избра един жребец. Сив. Че какво като е сив? Вихър не каза какъв цвят го иска. Тя си припомни целия разговор, с всичките му подробности, но не си спомни да е заръчвал: „Вихре, не ми води сив кон!“. Как обаче да го примами? Припомни си още веднъж разговора и пак не си спомни Вихър да е давал указания: „Вихре, примами този сив кон тъй и тъй!“. Значи брат ѝ не се съмняваше в способностите ѝ.
Конят разсеяно пощипваше сухи листенца от един храст и много се озадачи, като чу „пис-пис“. Да не би това „пис-пис“ да означава, че наблизо има котки? И квачка с пиленца, защото някой ги мами с „кът-кът“ и „пили-пили“?… Конят наостри уши. „Кучи-кучи“ ли? Ето, и кучета се появиха вече. Той изпръхтя обезпокоен: около него щъкат разни домашни животни, а той не ги вижда. Дали не ослепява?
In [i]Wintersmith[/i], Terry Pratchett wrote:“Mrs. Earwig said the village women know what to do,” said Annagramma hopefully. “She says to trust in their peasant wisdom.”
“Well, Mrs. Obble was the old woman who called, and she has just got simple peasant ignorance,” said Tiffany. “She puts leaf mold on wounds if you don’t watch her. Look, just because a woman’s got no teeth doesn’t mean she’s wise. It might just mean she’s been stupid for a very long time.”
In [i]The Golden Transcendence[/i], John C. Wright wrote:[After a period of separation, Phaeton and Daphne are cuddling.]
Diomedes, meanwhile, was leaning to look behind Helion, staring with open fascination at the display Phaethon and Daphne made. “I have not seen non-parthenogenic bioforms before. Are they going to copulate?”
Atkins and Helion looked at him, then looked at each other. A glance of understanding passed between them.
Atkins put his hand on Diomedes’s elbow, and pulled him back in front of Helion. “Perhaps not at this time,” Atkins said, straight-faced.
“They are young and in love,” explained Helion, stepping so as to block Diomedes’s view. “So perhaps the excesses and, ah, exuberance of their, ah, greeting, can be overlooked this once.”
Diomedes craned his neck, trying to peer past Helion. “There’s nothing like that on Neptune.”
Helion murmured, “Perhaps certain peculiarities of the Neptunian character are thereby clarified, hmm…?”
“It looks very old-fashioned,” said Diomedes.
Helion said, “It is that most ancient and most precious romantic character of mankind which impels all great men to their greatness.”
Atkins said, “It’s what young men do before they go to war.”
Diomedes said, “It is not the way Cerebellines or Compositions or Hermaphrodites or Neptunians arrange these matters. I’m not sure I see the value of it. But it looks interesting. Do all Silver-Gray get to do that? I wonder if Phaethon would mind if I helped him.”
“He’d mind.” Atkins interrupted curtly. “Really. He’d mind.”
In Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett wrote:Tiffany got up early and lit the fires. When her mother came down, she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, very hard.
“Er…aren’t you supposed to do that sort of thing by magic, dear?” said her mother, who’d never really got the hang of what witchcraft was all about.
“No, Mum, I’m supposed not to,” said Tiffany, still scrubbing.
“But can’t you just wave your hand and make all the dirt fly away, then?”
“The trouble is getting the magic to understand what dirt is,” said Tiffany, scrubbing hard at a stain. “I heard of a witch over in Escrow who got it wrong and ended up losing the entire floor and her sandals and nearly a toe.”
Mrs. Aching backed away. “I thought you just had to wave your hands about,” she mumbled nervously.
“That works,” said Tiffany, “but only if you wave them about on the floor with a scrubbing brush.”
ibid. wrote:Oh, and there were urns, quite big urns, and statues, too, all in the same warm ice. The statues showed athletes and gods, very much like the pictures in Chaffinch’s Mythology, doing ancient things like hurling javelins or killing huge snakes with their bare hands. They didn’t have a stitch of clothing between them, but all the men wore fig leaves, which Tiffany, in a spirit of enquiry, found would not come off.
... So why is this exchange cracking me up? Because of certain associations.In [i]Earth[/i], David Brin wrote:A tug at Logan's elbow made him turn. "It started with a noise, mister."
One of the teenagers, his hair cut short, Ra Boy style, gestured toward the muddy lake bed below. "It was this low hum. Y'know? Like the water sort of sang."
His sister nodded. A little younger but nearly as tall, she wore a Church of Gaia gown at complete odds with her sibling's sun-worshipper attire. Logan could only imagine the ideological climate in their household.
"It was beautiful but awfully sad," she said. "I thought at first maybe it was the fish in the lake, you know, moaning?. Because certain people were killing and eating them?"
The boy groaned, sending her a disgusted look. "The fish were put there so people could come and—"
"How long did the sound last?" Logan interrupted.
Both youths shrugged, nearly identically. The boy said, "How could we know? After what happened next, our subjective memory's sure to be screwed up."
The things they're teaching kids, these days, Logan thought.
In [i]I Shall Wear Midnight[/i], Terry Pratchett wrote:He – and he was quite definitely a he, there was no possible doubt about that – had been carved out of the turf thousands of years before. A white outline against the green, he belonged to the days when people had to think about survival and fertility in a dangerous world.
Oh, and he had also been carved, or so it would appear, before anyone had invented trousers. In fact, to say that he had no trousers on just didn’t do the job. His lack of trousers filled the world. You simply could not stroll down the little road that passed along the bottom of the hills without noticing that there was an enormous, as it were, lack of something – e.g. trousers – and what was there instead. It was definitely a figure of a man without trousers, and certainly not a woman.
In [i]Dealing with Dragons[/i], Patricia C. Wrede wrote:The King and Queen did the best they could. They hired the most superior tutors and governesses to teach Cimorene all the things a princess ought to know— dancing, embroidery, drawing, and etiquette. There was a great deal of etiquette, from the proper way to curtsy before a visiting prince to how loudly it was permissible to scream when being carried off by a giant. (...)
Cimorene found it all very dull, but she pressed her lips together and learned it anyway. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she would go down to the castle armory and bully the armsmaster into giving her a fencing lesson. As she got older, she found her regular lessons more and more boring. Consequently, the fencing lessons became more and more frequent.
When she was twelve, her father found out.
“Fencing is not proper behavior for a princess,” he told her in the gentle-but-firm tone recommended by the court philosopher.
Cimorene tilted her head to one side. “Why not?”
“It’s ... well, it’s simply not done.”
Cimorene considered. “Aren’t I a princess?”
“Yes, of course you are, my dear,” said her father with relief. He had been bracing himself for a storm of tears, which was the way his other daughters reacted to reprimands.
“Well, I fence,” Cimorene said with the air of one delivering an unshakable argument. “So it is too done by a princess.”
ibid. wrote:“Well,” said the frog, “what are you going to do about it?”
“Marrying Therandil? I don’t know. I’ve tried talking to my parents, but they won’t listen, and neither will Therandil.”
“I didn’t ask what you’d said about it,” the frog snapped. “I asked what you’re going to do. Nine times out of ten, talking is a way of avoiding doing things.”
Sheng Wang wrote:Why do people say "grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.
In [i]The Cyberiad[/i], Stanislaw Lem wrote:Furious, the beast writhed and wriggled its iterated integrals beneath the King’s polynomial blows, collapsed into an infinite series of indeterminate terms, then got back up by raising itself to the nth power, but the King so belabored it with differentials and partial derivatives that its Fourier coefficients all canceled out (see Riemann’s Lemma), and in the ensuing confusion the constructors completely lost sight of both King and beast. So they took a break, stretched their legs, had a swig from the Leyden jug to bolster their strength, then went back to work and tried it again from the beginning, this time unleashing their entire arsenal of tensor matrices and grand canonical ensembles, attacking the problem with such fervor that the very paper began to smoke. The King rushed forward with all his cruel coordinates and mean values, stumbled into a dark forest of roots and logarithms, had to backtrack, then encountered the beast on a field of irrational numbers (F1) and smote it so grievously that it fell two decimal places and lost an epsilon, but the beast slid around an asymptote and hid in an n-dimensional orthogonal phase space, underwent expansion and came out, fuming factorially, and fell upon the King and hurt him passing sore. But the King, nothing daunted, put on his Markov chain mail and all his impervious parameters, took his increment Δk to infinity and dealt the beast a truly Boolean blow, sent it reeling through an x-axis and several brackets—but the beast, prepared for this, lowered its horns and—wham!!—the pencils flew like mad through transcendental functions and double eigentransformations, and when at last the beast closed in and the King was down and out for the count, the constructors jumped up, danced a jig, laughed and sang as they tore all their papers to shreds, much to the amazement of the spies perched in the chandelier-—perched in vain, for they were uninitiated into the niceties of higher mathematics and consequently had no idea why Trurl and Klapaucius were now shouting, over and over, “Hurrah! Victory!!
ibid. wrote:Certainly not! I didn't build a machine to solve ridiculous crossword puzzles! That's hack work, not Great Art! Just give it a topic, any topic, as difficult as you like..."
Klapaucius thought, and thought some more. Finally he nodded and said:
"Very well. Let's have a love poem, lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure mathematics. Tensor algebra mainly, with a little topology and higher calculus, if need be. But with feeling, you understand, and in the cybernetic spirit."
"Love and tensor algebra?" Have you taken leave of your senses?" Trurl began, but stopped, for his electronic bard was already declaiming:
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
In Reimann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in bound partition never part.
For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?
Cancel me not--for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
The product of our scalars is defined!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a^2 cos 2 phi!
В „Кой крепи света“ Величка Настрадинова wrote:Но когато съпругът внезапно починал, пианистът се обадил да изрази съчувствия. Поискал разрешение да я безпокои понякога. После почнал да говори с нея всяка вечер. Явно и за него са се раздиплили някакви тъкани и хоризонти. Отначало уж я утешавал като човек, който също е загубил най-близкото си същество, след това започнали едни безкрайни разговори. Той дошъл без сценични ангажименти, ей тъй – само да я види. И повторил, и потретил...
Те говорили, говорили...
Киприян, тогава във възрастта, в която децата всичко знаят, се отегчил и се обадил:
- Все говорите, говорите, говорите... Що не се ожените и да млъкнете?
Лелята едва не се задавила, макар че била наясно – това е резултатът от нейното възпитание.
Но пианистът не изгубил присъствие на духа и най-сериозно попитал:
– Ще се съгласи ли младият господин да ми даде ръката на майка си?
Киприян никак не се притеснил. Отвърнал:
– Влачи! Днеска съм в добро настроение.
In [i]Deadhouse Gates[/i], Steven Erikson wrote:Kalam took a mouthful of ale, swallowed it down and went perfectly still.
“Gets even worse after a few,” the stranger said.
The assassin set the tankard back down on the table. He struggled a moment to find his voice. “Tell me some news.”
“Why should I?”
“I’ve bought you a drink.”
“And I should be grateful? Hood’s breath, man, you’ve tasted it!”
“I’m not usually this patient.”
“Oh, very well, why didn’t you say so?” He finished the first tankard, picked up the new one. “Some ales grow on you. Some grow in you. To your health, sir.”
In [i]House of Chains[/i], Steven Erikson wrote:Pearl shrugged. ‘I have no idea. But I have a few theories.’
‘Of course you do,’ she snapped. ‘Like all men—you hate to say you don’t know and leave it at that. You have an answer to every question, and if you don’t you make one up.’
‘An outrageous accusation, my dear. It is not a matter of making up answers, it is rather an exercise in conjecture. There is a difference—’
‘That’s what you say, not what I have to listen to. All the time. Endless words. Does a man even exist who believes there can be too many words?’
‘I don’t know,’ Pearl replied.
After a moment she shot him a glare, but he was studiously staring ahead.
(...)
‘What do you make of that night sky, Pearl? I do not recognize the constellations…nor have I ever before seen those glowing swirls in any night sky I’ve looked at.’
He grunted. ‘That’s a foreign sky—as foreign as can be. A hole leading into alien realms, countless strange worlds filled with creatures unimaginable—’
‘You really don’t know, do you?’
‘Of course I don’t!’ he snapped.
‘Then why didn’t you just say so?’
‘It was more fun conjecturing creatively, of course. How can a man be the object of a woman’s interest if he’s always confessing his ignorance?’
‘You want me to be interested in you? Why didn’t you say so? Now I will hang on your every word, of course. Shall I gaze adoringly into your eyes as well?’
He swung on her a glum look. ‘Men really have no chance, do they?’
(...)
Lostara looked downward, then snapped her head up and closed her eyes, fighting vertigo. Through gritted teeth she asked, ‘How much farther do we sink, do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You could’ve given a better answer than that!’
(...)
‘Pearl, do you know precisely where we are?’
He shrugged. ‘First things first, lass. I’d appreciate it if you allowed me to savour my merciful moment. Ah! Here’s the spot, Olar Shayn!’
(...) She opened her eyes and studied him where he crouched anchoring stones around the undead warrior’s severed head. ‘You don’t know where we are, do you?’
He smiled. ‘Is this a time, do you think, for some creative conjecture?’
Thoughts of murder flashed through her, not for the first time.
In [i]House of Chains[/i], Steven Erikson wrote:He frowned, then sighed. ‘I regret that you view…things that way, and can only conclude that you derive a peculiar satisfaction from discord, and when it does not exist—or, rather, has no reason to exist—you seek to invent it.’
‘You think too much, Pearl. It’s your most irritating flaw, and, let us be honest, given the severity and sheer volume of your flaws, that is saying something. Since this seems to be a time for advice, I suggest you stop thinking entirely.’
‘And how might I achieve that? Follow your lead, perhaps?’
‘I think neither too much nor too little. I am perfectly balanced—this is what you find so attractive. As a capemoth is drawn to fire.’
‘So I am in danger of being burned up?’
‘To a blackened, shrivelled crust.’
‘So, you’re pushing me away for my own good. A gesture of compassion, then.’
‘Fires neither push nor pull. They simply exist, compassionless, indifferent to the suicidal urges of flitting bugs. That is another one of your flaws, Pearl. Attributing emotion where none exists.’
‘I could have sworn there was emotion, two nights past—’
‘Oh, fire burns eagerly when there’s fuel—’
‘And in the morning there’s naught but cold ashes.’
‘Now you are beginning to understand. Of course, you will see that as encouragement, and so endeavour to take your understanding further. But that would be a waste of time, so I suggest you abandon the effort. Be content with the glimmer, Pearl.’
‘I see…murkily. Very well, I will accept your list of advisements.’
‘You will? Gullibility is a most unattractive flaw, Pearl.’
She thought he would scream, was impressed by his sudden clamping of control, releasing his breath like steam beneath a cauldron’s lid, until the pressure died away.
