Children Of Memory Quotes
"Thousands of years ago the humans of Earth reached out to the stars."
"A political crisis on Earth resulted in a cataclysmic war that poisoned the human homeworld."
"An uplift nanovirus... intended to raise up primates... instead began its work on a variety of invertebrates, most particularly one species of spider."
"The Portiid spiders developed a complex society, including organic technology and computing performed by colonies of ants."
"Humanity clawed its way back into space, rediscovering the records of its predecessors."
"In desperation ark ships were built, fleeing outwards on the promise that there were other worlds out there prepared for human life."
"The ark ship Gilgamesh... bridging the species divide and allowing humans to become Human, capital H."
"Their missions are now many, but chief amongst them is to search for and reach out to other life."
"The Ancients themselves, perhaps, living in some perfectly regulated society which would welcome their penurious relatives."
"You will fail, and when you do, you must do everything you can to fail as little as possible."
"Breathable atmosphere... Seventeen to nineteen per cent oxygen based on sampling to date."
"You're not supposed to be here," Gothi tells her, not accusing but wondering.
"Captain Heorest Holt guided all the way to Imir from Earth."
"Hold to the memory of our pledge, that there are things we shall not abandon."
"They shall not grow old, as we grow old. There are no years nor seasons where they sleep."
"The fate of the human race was at stake, after all. He would find a way."
"The honour would fall to them, the Key Crew of the Enkidu, the last scions of Old Earth."
"She’s never noticed a trail there before, but it’s where Yotta told her. Just a winding path that feet have made between the trees."
"The trees all look half-dead, compared to the pictures in her book, but that’s what trees look like, Earth trees on Imir."
"The last man alive who’d seen this world they lived on from the high places; all of it spread out below him like a tablecloth."
"And they lived. For a given proportion and value of 'they.' That would have to be enough because it was all they had."
"The trees have done well, for a given value of 'well.' Imir doesn’t really suit them."
"The burden of history isn't in its recollection, but in the silences that are left to echo in its wake."
"Life on Imir grinds you down, with its hard seasons and its hard work."
"The ancients had reached out to the stars, not to conquer, but to understand and coexist."
"The real journey isn't to the stars, but to the hearts and minds of those we encounter."
"In a universe so vast, the greatest discovery is that of another's soul."
"Amidst the stars, we find not only the universe but ourselves."
"The true measure of progress is not in the distance traveled, but in the connections made."
"Grandfather doesn’t mean the direct parent of a parent but just some past generation, grandfathers all the way down."
"You don’t believe me. You think I’m crazy."
"The speciation rate of beetles is quite remarkable."
"We profess an inordinate fondness for beetles."
"We are a scientist between us. That is how it is."
"There is a world of newness. Shiny things, Gethli."
"Once upon a time there was a world discovered by humans from Earth and they called it Nod."
"Mistakes, on a very grand level and with terrible consequences, were made."
"We are Miranda when we want to be—when we remember her, we are her, and she lives in us."
"The original Miranda may well still be a Human, exploring with her own crew, somewhere out among the stars."
"Miranda’s face was round, and her body stocky and compact, broader than the Human average."
"She wasn’t entirely trusted, and it hurt, but it was something she had to live with and hope would pass."
"We have all come out of our alcoves, away from our private research or games or rest, to welcome the newcomers."
"What if there were still people on the ship? What if some people were still on there, looking down, Watching…"
"She who sent us needs them urgently to complete her work."
"The militia are here for the establishment, the older Landfall families with a storied history."
"It makes them more like us. Or not even that. It makes them poor dependent cousins, like the out-farmers come into town, caps in hand."
"The best way to make yourself one of us is to find someone more them than you are, and put the boot in."
"If anything, the other refugees’ faces say it louder, because if it’s her, it’s not them."
"We are having difficulty cataloguing the settlement owing to the complexity and rapid rate of change amongst the population."
"I don’t know anything. But I’m good at working things out."
"You need to tell us about these strange people, lead my birds to them, point them out to us. And then we can make everything all right and go away, and you can get on with your lives."
"What you have to understand is that these are bad people."
"It’s not right. We don’t have the right to destroy what they are."
"You’re all dying! Everything here is. We can help you! Please, don’t do this! You need us! We can save you! All of you!"
"It’s as though every change screamed in their minds, demanding attention."
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
"It made her human body feel dull and restrictive; she longed for her own clutch of boneless limbs and a hide like a blank canvas."
"There was no I in ants, as Kern drily remarked, whereas there was one in spiders."
"I am a free being with an independent will."
"Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate you can set upon the freedom of my mind."
"Initial readings suggest oxygenated atmosphere at least. A very early stage of terraforming, I’d estimate."
"Everything is a discovery, only the first time."
"I'm twenty-six," Liff insisted to herself.
"We made the choice a long time ago, live like people, or live like machines."
"We can't just descend on them, I agree. But we can't stay away, either. I want to see it."
"If I don't find my friends, nothing will change, you understand."
"There's someone out there. A woman, out in the hills. Not one of us. A stranger."
"She's been like someone looking over my shoulder from the moment we broke atmosphere on this world, Liff. I have to go look for her."
"I’m fine," she told the others. Kern would know how much of a lie that was, from biological tells unique to what she was."
"You’re smiling." Or that was the tactful translation. "Doing that thing humans do with their faces" was a more precise version, but Miranda understood what her friend meant.
"You need me." Again the alien words and Miranda’s helplessly automatic translation. "You need all of us. Let us in. Or come outside, all of you. Come outside and let’s finish this. We need to be together again."
"It’s happening again," she whispers, shaking, staring at her hands as though expecting them to dissolve into mud, just like the things out there. "I’ve lost control. I’m becoming… I’m becoming…" Staring urgently into Liff’s blank face. "I’m un-becoming. Help me."
"You forgot me. How long since you last brought my name to mind? I, who was one of the first." Words Liff doesn’t even know, but she gets the translation hauled from Miranda, as if the monstrous thing outside was dragging the words from the teacher’s throat with a wire.
"I’m leaving," Liff says. "I’m walking home to my parents." A momentary flash of all those jagged fractures in her own mind, but she forces the pieces together. She has no time for that if she’s going to save Miranda from the Witch.
"They’re here," she says to the night. "But I can’t bring them to you."
"I don’t need you," the Witch says fiercely, desperately.
"What are you doing?" asks Miranda from the doorway. Liff squeaks and leaps up, almost falls out of the window, except Miranda is suddenly far too close, grabbing for her shoulder.
"The universe was full of things that seemed laden with intent until they turned out to be nothing more than the voice of mindless celestial mechanics."
"Anything too regular was likely to be natural, like the constant time-keeping of a pulsar."
"Anything too random was likely to be natural, no more than contours in the peachfuzz of background radiation."
"In the end, the only conclusion left to anyone was to validate what the Corvids had sifted out of the static. There was a signal."
"Amidst all of this, Fabian’s woes seemed almost irrelevant."
"Vanished into the ether, the way things generally didn’t, as far as he was concerned."
"The suspicious proximity raised the spectre of a hundred other possibilities to be ruled out before anyone really started talking about alien sentience."
"They’re not trying to contact it now," Portia pointed out. As with every other topic of conversation, they were mired in their own ignorance."
"Experiencing everything was what she was all about."
"Not imagining for a moment they were being overheard by alien invaders from the stars."
"He made them all queue up behind him as he descended the ramp. He was being ridiculous, he knew, but given what they’d just been through, he reckoned he was owed the honour."
"The air smelled of cold, of distant water, of nothing else."
"The work was so slow. He’d somehow imagined everything springing into being, a green tide across the surface of the world, but it was painstaking, careful work."
"I don’t have long, he realized. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t achieved a great deal in his long life, but this one thing had eluded him."
"Everyone could cook and wash and have light to read by when the evenings drew in."
"They’d brought down another load of woken cargo from the ship, pushing the envelope of their ability to support people yet again."
"And Esi was pregnant. She wasn’t the only one but she’d been the first."
"Sometimes the truth is poison, and nobody wants to bring poison back to their family."
"There was always more work, and Holt still didn’t have enough hours in the short Imiri day."
"He barely thought about Earth any more. His old-man dreams were all of the short years and short days of Imir."
"The rudimentary power grid still worked, most of the time. Outages were sporadic and brief, so far."
"Imagine how it feels for the simulation."
"We have to do something for them. The people of Landfall."