Daniel Polansky

The two old friends stood silently in the fading light, though you wouldn__ have known it to look at them. That they were old friends, I mean. Anyone could see it was getting dark.

There is no position so critical, no office so important, that the occasional, and even the more than occasional, utter incompetent will not wind up filling it. Heart surgeons, popes, presidents, it makes no difference. Look around and you will see an existence replete with people who are betraying, in a most egregious manner, the powers and responsibilities that have been entrusted to them.

Next to her a calico cat puffed away at a hubble-bubble. Puss__ watch cost more than his vest, and his vest cost more than his boots, and his boots cost more than a house. If you stripped him naked and sold off his costume, you__ walk away with enough money to retire__hough if you left him alive you wouldn__ have long to enjoy it. The only thing that could rival Puss__ vanity was his sadism.

Be careful,' I hissed, then released him. 'Keep one eye on your back, and two on your best friend.''That's three eyes.''You'll need four to survive what's coming,' I said.

The Quaker did not scream: not when the blood began to come swiftly down his face, not when the force of Elf's attack carried both of them tumbling out over the walls and down into the ether, the desperate and hoped-for outcome, a fatal embrace descending, together forever, into the darkness.

I remember the lightning in the air, and the lovers bidding goodbye to each other in the streets, and I can tell you what I think. We went to war because going to war is fun, because there's something in the human breast that trills at the thought, although perhaps not the reality, of murdering its fellows in vast numbers. Fighting a war ain't fun - fighting a war is pretty miserable. But starting a war? Hell, starting a war is better than a night floating on daeva's honey.

A chubby vole sat as guardian between the two sections, making sure the hoi polloi didn't get any ideas above their station. His name was Harold, and the most important thing he had learned in his life, as far as he was concerned, was that it was entirely possible to sleep with one's eyes open, or at least open enough to deceive passersby, if one was willing to put in a bit of practice. True, it wasn't as good as a full-on nap, but any degree of slumber was better than waking. As far as Harold was concerned, the biter part of existence lay in those little moments of oblivion that preceded the last.

The rows of empty jugs had multiplied with the speed of caged rabbits.

Thus far, the best that could be said for the day was that it was half over.