Cheops' Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget. - Robert A. Heinlein

We white men in this country are inclined to underestimate the black man—I know I do—because we see him out of his cultural matrix. Those we know have had their own culture wrenched from them some generations back and a servile pseudo culture imposed on them by force. We forget that the black man has a culture of his own, older than ours and more solidly grounded, based on character and the power of the mind rather than the cheap, ephemeral tricks of mechanical gadgets. But it is a stern, fierce culture with no sentimental concern for the weak and the unfit, and it never quite dies out.

You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me — Jane — here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!

We don’t have to be convincing—not in the sense of getting converts. Real converts might prove to be a nuisance. We just have to be convincing enough to look like a legitimate religion to our overlords. And that doesn’t have to be very convincing. All religions look equally silly from the outside.