When you poison a man in order to sell him the antidote, you don’t boast about it afterward to the victim! - Robert Silverberg

She shuttled between impish girlhood and neurotic womanhood.

I could have given him false consolation then, I suppose. I could have lied, and said that what he had seen was a fever dream, a fantasy, that Athilan would endure forever and a day. But I’m not much good at lying. And I knew that he wasn’t looking for lies from me, or consolations, or anything else that might make him feel good for a moment at the expense of the truth.

If the Government was going to all this trouble to keep people calm, then there had to be something big to worry about. That much was axiomatic.