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8114ec0
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Rich people do this. They have the power and they see no reason not to use it. Men and women are just merchandise, like everything else. Store them, freight them, decant them. Sign at the bottom, please. On
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Richard K. Morgan |
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cd9a4f2
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The [ military ] lawyers I saw there had about as much in common with the man who had defended me at fifteen as automated machine rifle fire has with farting. They were cold, professionally polished and well on their way up a career ladder which would ensure that despite the uniforms they wore, they would never have to come within a thousand kilometres of a genuine firefight. The only problem they had, as they cruised sharkishly back and fo..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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41476d6
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They named me Kristin after some whale scientist in Australia, worked on the original translation team.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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24191aa
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Worse fates than being forced into a place where your choice of acts is limited to those where your soul burns brightest.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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fda3fe9
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We're all bound for the Sky Road, sooner or later. How we walk it depends on how we walked in the world beneath. So you don't sit on your arse whining and waiting for your death to come find you. You go looking for it. Track the fucker down, force the issue. You walk, Archidi, you find the strength to walk, and you keep walking till you drop. Now some men don't have that strength, so you have to lend it to them.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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5f297a6
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As a child I'd believed there was an essential person, a sort of core personality around which the surface factors could evolve and change without damaging the integrity of who you were. Later, I started to see that this was an error of perception caused by the metaphors we were used to framing ourselves in. What we thought of as personality was no more than the passing shape of one of the waves in front of me. Or, slowing it down to more h..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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7036c75
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I've heard that said about outlanders and enemies before, and I don't generally trust it. Just too bloody convenient, the quick and easy way to deal with difference. Oh, they're not like us, they're insane. It saves you having to think too much.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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bdf8687
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You know what you stupid fucking conspiracy assholes just don't get? No one is that well organized. There is no big Deep State evil, no Corporate Earth Plot to Enslave Humanity. It's just a bunch of conflicting interests making a fucking mess wherever they go.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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fe84382
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Pull on the cold, clinking mail of your professional detachment, Archeth Indamaninarmal, inhabit it until it starts to feel warm and accustomed, and in time you'll forget you're wearing it at all. You'll only notice when it works, when it stops you feeling the steel-edged bite of something that might otherwise have gotten through and done you some damage. And then you'll just grin and shiver and shake off the blow, like warriors do.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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9e2f7ef
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Then let me tell you something instead. When they make an Envoy, do you want to know what they do? They burn out every evolved violence limitation instinct in the human psyche. Submission signal recognition, pecking-order dynamics, pack loyalties. It all goes, tuned out a neuron at a time; and they replace it with a conscious will to harm." He stared back at me in silence. "Do you understand me? It would have been easier to kill you just th..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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93dcaf0
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He's a pretty serious believer.' 'Yeah? Funny how it doesn't get in the way of his commercial life.' 'Yeah, well. Organised religion, you know.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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ede198b
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the overwhelming impression I got was that if there was a line of least resistance in life, this face had never been along it.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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fc58b4c
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Drunk one night, Sarah had told me Women are the race, Tak. No two ways about it. Male is just a mutation with more muscle and half the nerves. Fighting, fucking machines. My own cross-sleevings had born that theory out. To be a woman was a sensory experience beyond the male. Touch and texture ran deeper, an interface with environment that male flesh seemed to seal out instinctively. To a man, skin was a barrier, a protection. To a woman, i..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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99eb33c
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Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash
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Richard K. Morgan |
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0491ce6
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The echo of the first shot, like the first sip of whiskey, burning...
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Richard K. Morgan |
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f4c7af8
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They exploit, and deal, and shift ground constantly, but for all that you can get used to them. You can get used to their gleaming company towers and their nanocopter security, their cartels and their HOGs, their stretched-over-centuries unhuman patience and their assumed inheritance of godfather status for the human race. You can get so you're grateful for the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God relief of whatever little flange of existence the..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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8130e81
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I shook my head. "I don't have the energy to hate the corporates, Hand. Where would I start? And like Quell says, Rip open the diseased heart of a corporation and what spills out?" "People." "That's right. People. It's all people. People and their stupid fucking groups."
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Richard K. Morgan |
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838c806
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That's right. People. It's all people. People and their stupid fucking groups. Show me an individual decision maker whose decisions have harmed me, and I'll melt his stack to slag. Show me a group with the united purpose of harming me and I'll take them all down if I can. But don't expect me to waste time and effort on abstract hate.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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77f768a
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It seems lies come very easily to your race. They lie to those they lead, to their mates and fellows no matter how close- drawn, even to themselves if it will make the world around them more bearable. It is hard to know what to believe in this place." Something"
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Richard K. Morgan |
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cc0133c
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No, I'm calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husband's angle, he's a man, he's got everything to gain from this crabshit. But you? You've thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You'll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the ex..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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0a5146b
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And like Quell says,
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Richard K. Morgan |
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d2fbb98
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We live in bloodbath times... and looks like tonight is bath night.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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914b946
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The Lady Ishil gestured. "Oh, we asked. It wasn't difficult. Everyone in this pigsty of a town seems to know where you sleep." A delicately curled lip. She let him go. "And with who." Ringil ignored that one. "I'm a hero, Mother. What do you expect?"
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Richard K. Morgan |
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0d58b1f
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Ringil lifted his right hand as if it pained him, put it slowly and wonderingly up to his shoulder and touched the pommel of his sword like, well, like he was caressing someone's prick, to be honest.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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a68b5c8
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Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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61b99a3
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Or maybe that was just the swiftly gathering sense of motion that had me now, the drug-like grip of a decision taken and what it meant.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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771c971
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Was a time... Sure. And there was another fucking time the summers never seemed to end and you'd never paid for it in your life. Remember that? Time passes, Max - get over it. Skip the fucking nostalgia, let's get where we're at.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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10af389
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Just as a primitive sextant functions on the illusion that the sun and stars rotate around the planet we are standing on, our senses give us the illusion of stability in the universe, and we accept it, because without that acceptance, nothing can be done. Virginia
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Richard K. Morgan |
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4894a40
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She wanted to do damage, gashed red, bleeding, and screaming damage to all and any of the bland facets of social restraint that meshed her about like spiderweb.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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797a600
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We're more than what we do.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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62d8452
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What you feel is not yours. You need not own it. Creatures like these breed the fear in you as we fatten a buffalo calf, and with similar intent.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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b7b922a
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Choose your feelings as you would a weapon. This is what it is to be Majak.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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364d456
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Most people don't like to think things through. Too much effort. They'd rather have the edited visceral highlights.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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a8de511
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Like the Sharyan resistance in general, they weren't overly imaginative--which in the end proved their downfall when faced with the Envoys--but they weren't any kind of pushover, either. We'd all developed a healthy respect for their courage and combat endurance by the time we slaughtered the last of them.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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91e758b
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Religion's just politics with higher stakes, Tak. You know that, you saw it in action on Sharya. No reason these people can't do the same when it comes to the crunch. These people are sheep. They'll do whatever their holy men tell them.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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79742b0
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Two hundred and fifty years is a long time ... Do you have any concept of what happens to emotional bonds over such a period? .... No. Your life experience cannot possibly encompass what it is to love the same person for two hundred and fifty years. In the end, if you endure, if you beat the traps of boredom and complacency, in the end what you are left with is not love. It is almost veneration. How then to match that respect, that venerati..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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bd0c513
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You know God does not manifest Himself," Halgan shouted. "That is also heresy. The Revelation is not corporeal. You know this. Why do you persist in this perverted speech?" "I like perverted. Maybe you would, too, if you gave it a chance." "Leave my men alone," Rakan said coldly. "Degenerate." Ringil smooched a kiss at him."
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Richard K. Morgan |
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a8d71e8
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His eyes rolled in their sockets like a panicked horse's.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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f7dd768
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from the discomfort of truth there is only one refuge and that is ignorance. i do not need to be comfortable, and i will not take refuge. i demand to KNOW.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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4256561
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Common men make a distinction between gods and demons, Poltar, but it's ignorance to talk that way. When the powers do our will, we worship them as gods; when they thwart and frustrate us, we hate and fear them as demons. They are the same creatures, the same twisted unhuman things. The shaman's path is negotiation, nothing more. We tend the relationship with the powers so they bring us more benefit than ruin. We can do no more.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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a4d1b97
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When they ask how I died," I said. "Tell them: Still Angry."
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Richard K. Morgan |
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9d2a65d
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If I know anything about stack engineers, they'll weld down the lid on your remote stack faster than politicians leaving a war zone.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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c8ccd48
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A Man Down Is Not a Man Dead. Leave No Stack Behind.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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b2eee23
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I thought that was what religion was. Simplification for the hard of thinking.
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Richard K. Morgan |