By now, the Mahahmbi think we've always been around. They already believed they were God's favorites when they came here, so it wasn't hard to persua… - Sheri S. Tepper

This led me to the thought that it might be easy to pretend to be a Seer. After all, if one pretended to have visions of the far distant future, how would anyone know if they came true or not?

Why pretend now that you cared?
"Why not pretend whatever I like if it makes my life easier? We learned that, you see, we Faithful. We learn to say to ourselves whatever we need to say to make the task easy. We learn to say, 'for God and Voorstod,' when we blow up some old lady in the toilet or some schoolyard full of children. We wouldn't necessarily do it for ourselves, you see, but we can do it for God and Voorstod."

The first rule of governance is never to choose who to sacrifice, snarled the Procurator. Or, at least, never to be seen to choose. Death and dismemberment must always be…inadvertent. Everybody's fault or nobody's fault!