Daniel Abraham
Daniel Abraham is a Hugo-nominated, American fantasy/science-fiction writer.
“We regret the necessity of this action,” she said to everyone everywhere. “But in the cause of freedom, there can be no compromise.”
That’s what it’s come to, Miller thought, rubbing a hand across his chin. Pogroms after all. Cut off just a hundred more heads, just a thousand more heads, just ten thousand more heads, and then we’ll be free.
He probed himself like a doctor searching for inflammation. Did it hurt here? Did he feel the loss there?
He didn’t. There was only a sense of relief so profound it approached giddiness.
It’s the problem with politics. Your enemies are often your allies. And vice versa.
Holden decided that he was okay with not feeling any remorse for them. The moral complexity of the situation had grown past his ability to process it, so he just relaxed in the warm glow of victory instead.
There was life out there. They had proof of it now. And the proof came in the shape of a weapon, so what did that tell him?
“Too many dots,” Miller said. “Not enough lines.”
When, Miller wondered, does someone stop being human? There had to be a moment, some decision that you made and before it, you were one person, and after it, someone else...If he’d seen it in someone else—Muss, Havelock, Sematimba—he wouldn’t have taken more than a minute to realize they’d gone off the rails. Since it was him, he had taken longer to notice. But Holden was right. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost himself.
If Miller had ever been called upon to describe her, the phrase deceptive coloration would have figured in.
That man could take a visitation from God with thirty underdressed angels announcing that sex was okay after all and make it seem vaguely depressing.
She didn’t care. Not caring was how she got through the day.
“There’s a right thing to do,” Holden said.
“You don’t have a right thing, friend,” Miller said. “You’ve got a whole plateful of maybe a little less wrong.”
“Stop,” Holden said. “I don’t care. I don’t want to hear any more of your stories about how being a cop makes you wiser and deeper and able to face the truth about humanity. As far as I can tell, all it did was break you. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Dresden and his Protogen buddies thought they could choose who lives and who dies. That sound familiar? And don’t tell me it’s different this time, because everyone says that, every time. And it’s not.”