BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER – snippet 98:
And she, she realized wonderingly, wanted to do the same thing. To face whatever storm might come, whatever odds might be, because it was the right thing to do. Because he and his father, Archbishop Maikel, his nobles and his parliament, had decided it was their responsibility. Because they'd been right when they made that decision, that choice . . . and because she wanted to share in that same ability to do what was right because it was right.
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SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS – snippet 8:
Chapter 4
Extract from the Transcript of the Slowtrain funding debate of Lower House, Sysgov.
"… What the representative from Ceres is missing is that the costs of this expedition are being offset in several ways. While it is hard to quantify, precisely, what sort of saving in Safety, Security and Monitoring we're talking about, I have been told that we're going to save approximately 84% of our humint bill alone. Besides we get rid of a lot of misfits. Frankly, there is no place for them in the system."
Speaker of the ruling party, System Secretary Pablo Paris
______________________________________________________________
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SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS – snippet 7:
Chapter 3
Extract from the Transcript of the Sysgov. Space Development Agency Administration meeting 325:2120.
Director Palin: "One of the problems with handing over man's greatest enterprise to a bunch of fanatics and lunatics is that most of them are fanatics and lunatics, not really the sort of people we should use for such a grand enterprise."
Chief Director Morpet. "That's all very well, but the only people willing and ready to go are nutters by definition. Maybe we just have to shift that definition, or acknowledge that man's future among the stars lies in the hands of oddballs."
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BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER – snippet 97:
Several hours later, Cayleb and Sharleyan stood on a balcony high on the side of King Maikel's Tower, looking out across the sparse lights of Tellesberg proper and the brighter smear of light which was the perpetually busy waterfront.
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BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER – snippet 96:
.XI.
Royal Palace,
City of Tellesberg,
Kingdom of Charis
"Your Majesty?"
Sharleyan's head turned automatically towards the tall guardsman with the rakishly scarred cheek — Captain Athrawes — as he stepped deferentially into the private dining room. Then she realized Cayleb's head had done exactly the same thing, and she giggled.
She hated it when she giggled. Chuckles were acceptable. So was laughter. But giggles were invincibility girlish. They made her feel as if she were twelve years old again. Worse, they made her feel as if everyone else must think the same thing, yet she'd never quite been able to eradicate them, and she felt her cheeks heating with embarrassment.
But then she glanced at Cayleb. She saw the same devilish amusement dancing in his eyes, and that was too much. Giggles disappeared into laughter, and she shook her head at him.
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SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS – snippet 6:
Only his headlong sprint had saved his life, as there was now a smoking hole where the passage floor had been. This area was relatively unravaged otherwise. The walls of the passage were dense with hanging plant growth. Kretz crashed in among the fragile branches. Red fruits cascaded down onto him. An oddly lucid part of his stunned mind registered that these were the first fruiting bodies he'd seen. But this was hardly the time for exercising one of the specialties that had got him onto the intercept ship, xeno-botany. He cowered back into the bush.
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BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER – snippet 95:
He walked Styvyn out the door. The younger boy's head turned, keeping his eyes fixed on his mother until the door closed between them, and Staynair turned back to face her himself.
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SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS – snippet 5:
Chapter 2
Internal confidential e-vox. Inward laser transmission.
From: Field Agent P. Firston, deep-space sector 3.
To: Agent Supervisor FJ Lu-Hellens
re: Weapons seizure.
Habitat unit 36 (Free Federation of Aryan Survivalists).
Illegal weapons detected with remote sensors in the personal effects of the attached list of embarkees. Will require at least four full enforcement units, and heavy ordinance and armor for confiscation before departure. Permission to schedule raid for 3.30 CMT, 11/1/2153
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BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER – snippet 94:
.X.
Archbishop's Palace,
City of Tellesberg,
Kingdom of Charis
"Forgive me, Your Eminence."
Maikel Staynair looked up from the latest stack of paperwork as Father Bryahn Ushyr opened his office door. Given the tumult and excitement of Queen Sharleyan's arrival this morning, the archbishop had managed to get very little done this day, and some of the documents on his desk simply had to be dealt with as expeditiously as possible. It hadn't been easy to carve the necessary couple of hours out of his schedule to deal with them, and Father Bryahn knew that as well as Staynair did. On the other hand, the under-priest hadn't been chosen lightly as the archbishop's personal secretary and aide. Staynair trusted his judgment implicitly, and, in normal circumstances, Ushyr was as unflappable as any archbishop might have asked. Yet there was something peculiar about his voice this afternoon. Something very peculiar.
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SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS – snippet 4:
"Abret. Greet them," said Zawn, firmly. The frightened deep-space physicist responded slowly, raising just the one hand above his head, keeping his laser pointed at the aliens. They all stood like that for a very long time, looking at each other. They were disturbingly Miran-shaped, and yet alien. Wrong. Yes, they were bipeds, and had the normal arrangement of arms and a head. Two eyes, a mouth and a nose. But the hands were wrong. Five digits instead of the normal three and opposable. It looked as if one of their digits—the inner one—might be opposable. And the head and face were even more wrong. The heads had filaments on them, as if the aliens were suffering from extreme cold. And the face pigments-stripes were all different. The position of the eyes, the shape of the nares, the angle of the mouth were all slightly different, and the external part of what was probably an ear was too low. At least they were not showing their teeth. Eventually, Kretz said in whisper—ridiculous, because the aliens couldn't hear their radio transmissions and certainly couldn't understand them: "Can we stop greeting now? My arms are getting very tired."
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