Hallucination doesn’t preclude a rational response to that same hallucination. - Alastair Reynolds

She worked quickly, but not because she considered the commission beneath her. It was simply the way she always approached her art. Preparation, forethought, hours of meditation, then an explosion of swift and decisive action, like the quick and merciful descent of a sword. Execution, in every sense of the word.

No act of knowledge acquisition is entirely without risk.

Are you sharpness personified?" Khouri poured herself a few final sips of coffee and then left the rest of it on the stove for when she got back. Coffee was her only vice, one acquired in her soldiering days on the Edge. The trick was to reach a knife-edge of alertness, but not be so buzzing that she could not point the weapon without shaking. "I think I've reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level, if that's what you mean.