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Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world

- Archimedes

A PLACE TO STAND

Bruce&039;s voice had a faraway touch and he was looking up left at the Void as he said, "Have you ever really wondered why the two sides of this war are called the Snakes and the Spiders? Snakes h - you always call the ene dirty But Spiders - our name for ourselves? Bear with nant by Nature, but this is a s and folkways Yes, Mark, I know that soions have nicknames like the Drunken Lions and the Snails, and that&039;s about as insulting as calling the British Expeditionary Force the Old Conteo to bands of vicious youths in cities slated for ruin to find a habit of nahten up the black a bit But simply - Spiders And Snakes, for that&039;s their name for themselves too, you know Spiders and Snakes What are our avein a dozen directions and I couldn&039;t stop it, although it made the shivers worse

Illy beside ht before, but he did have eight legs of a sort, and I re of him as a spider monkey, and hadn&039;t the Lunans had wisdoet the Change War rolling?

Or suppose, in the far future, Terra&039;s own spiders evolved intelligence and a cruel cannibal culture They&039;d be able to keep their existence secret I had no idea of who or ould be on Earth in Sevensee&039;s day, and wouldn&039;t it be perfect black hairy poisoned spider-ht and all of space and time?

And Beau - wasn&039;t there so real Snaky about him, the way he e, as Erich called them S S But SS stood for the Nazi Schutzstaffel, the Black Shirts, and what if some of those cruel, crazy Jerries had discovered tiht myself up with a jerk and asked et?"

Fro board, Doc shrieked up at Bruce like one of the daainst the Spiders! Don&039;t blaspheme! They can hear the Unborn whisper Others whip only the skin, but they whip the naked brain and heart," and Erich called out, "That&039;s enough, Bruce!"

But Bruce didn&039;t spare him a look and said, "But whatever the Spiders are and no matter how much they use, it&039;s plain as the telltale on the Maintainer that the Change War is not only going against the away froing and panicky anachronise Winds out of control This punch-drunk pounding on the Cretan-Dorian fracas as if it were the only battle going and the only way to work things Whisking Constantine fro a pocket subainst Drake&039;s woodensides - I&039;lI wage you hadn&039;t heard those! And now, to save Roods, they could have used Greek fire or even dynaaps and scars that will make in what&039;s left of history - the s of Greece and the vanishment of Provence and the troubadours and the Papacy&039;s Irish Captivity won&039;t be in it!"

The cut on his cheek had opened again and was oozing a little, but he didn&039;t pay any attention to it, and neither did we, as his lips thinned in irony and he said, "But I&039; that this is a cos operations on billions, trillions of planets and inhabited gas clouds through es and that we&039;re just one little world - one little solar system, Sevensee - and we can hardly expect our inscrutableresponsibilities, to be especially understanding or tender in their treatment of our pet books and centuries, our favorite prophets and periods, or unduly concerned about preserving any of the trifles that we just happen to hold dear

"Perhaps there are soo on living in a world without the Summa, the Field Equations, Process and Reality, Hamlet, Matthew, Keats, and the Odyssey, but ourto the needs of those rugged souls ant to go on living noyou that&039;s enough," was lost in the quickening flow of the New Boy&039;s words "I won&039;t spend ns of ourof leaves, the sharper shortages, the loss of the Express Room, the use of Recuperation Stations for ops and all the other frantic patchwork - last operation but one, ere saddled with three Soldiers from outside the Galaxy and, no fault of theirs, they were no earthly use Such little things ht happen at a bad spot in any war and are perhaps only local But there&039;s a big thing"

He paused again, to let us wonder, I guess Maud must have worked her way over to me, for I felt her dry little hand on my arm and she whispered out of the side of her mouth, "What do we do now?"

"We listen," I told her the sa soold-dusted eyebrow at et to ask her me, too, what? Crush on Bruce? Nuts! - because just then Bruce&039;s voice took up again in the faraway range

"Have you ever asked yourself how many operations the fabric of history can stand before it&039;s all stitches, whether too e won&039;t one day wear out the past? And the present and the future, too, the whole bleeding business Is the law of the Conservation of Reality anynae Death is as certain as Heat Death, and far faster Every operation leaves reality a bit cruder, a bit uglier, a bit more makeshift, and a whole lot less rich in those details and feelings that are our heritage, like the crude penciled sketch on canvas when you&039;ve stripped off the paint

"If that goes on, won&039;t the cos? How angers cut out of it? And there&039;s another thing about every operation - it wakes up the Zoe Winds die, it leaves thehtmare-ridden and frazzled Those of you who have been on operations in heavily worked-over temporal areas will knohat I ive you out of the sides of their eyes as if to say, &039;You again? For Christ&039;s sake, go away We&039;re the dead We&039;re the ones who don&039;t want to wake up, who don&039;t want to be De us&039;"

I looked around at the Ghostgirls; I couldn&039;t help it They&039;d so us, their backs to the Maintainers The Countess had dragged along the bottle of wine Erich had fetched her earlier and they were passing it back and forth The Countess had a big rose splotch across the ruffled white lace of her blouse

Bruce said, "There&039;ll coo crazy together and figuratively co, &039;We&039;ve had enough"

But I didn&039;t turn back to Bruce right away Phryne&039;s chiton had slipped off one shoulder and she and the Countess were sitting sagged forward, elbows on knees, legs spread - at least, as far as the Countess&039;s hobble skirt would let her - and swayed toward each other a little They were still surprisingly solid, although they hadn&039;t had any personal attention for a half hour, and they were looking up over my head with half-shut eyes and they see andsome of it

"We make a careful distinction between Zombies and Unborn, between those troubled by our operations whose lifelines lie in the past and those whose lifelines lie in the future But is there any distinction any longer? Can we tell the difference between the past and the future? Can we any longer locate the now, the real now of the cos Time we&039;re on, but that&039;s different and it&039;s not

"The Spiders tell us that the real now is somewhere in the last half of the 20th Century, which means that several of us here are also alive in the cos But do you s that story quite so easily, Ilhilihis, Sevensee? How does it strike the servants of the Triple Goddess? The Spiders of Octavian Roentlemen Zombies of the Greater South? Do the Unborn man the starships, Maud?

"The Spiders also tell us that, although the fog of battle makes the now hard to pin down precisely, it will return with the unconditional sunender of the Snakes and the establishment of cosmic peace, and roll on asthe continuue Do you really believe that? Or do you believe, as I do, that we&039;ve used up all the future as well as the past, wasted it in preed out of existence, stolen frorowth, the child-moment in which all life lies, the moment like a newborn baby that is the only home for hope there is?"

He let that start to sink in, then took a couple of quick steps and went on, his voice rising over Erich&039;s "Bruce, for the last ti to pick up a note of hope fros look terrifyingly black, there remains a chance - the slimmest chance, but still a chance - of saving the cos reality&039;s richness and giving the Ghosts good sleep and perhaps even regaining the real now We have thewere used not for war and destruction, but for healing, for the rowth, in brief, to bring a peace e - "

But my little commandant is quite an actor himself and knoee bit about the principles of scene-stealing and he was not going to let Bruce drown hi a Voice from the Mob He darted across our front, between us and the bar, took a n on the bloody box of bo above her elbohere I&039;d grabbed her and Illy was teasing a clutch of his tentacles out of irl, don&039;t ever do that"

Erich was standing on the chest and I noticed that his boots carefully straddled the circle of skulls, and I should have known anyway you could hardly push the at Bruce and saying, " - and thatsir Um Gottes willen, Bruce, listen toworse I&039;m older than you, Bruce Mark&039;s older Trust in your Kaot my attention, but I had much rather have hi "When your twelve-years&039; advantage was spent in soaking up the wisdoone paranoid, in a world whose thought-stream had already been muddied by one total war? Mark older than me? When all his ideas and loyalties are those of a wolf pack of unier than I a cynicisives you? Don&039;t lishman, and I come from an epoch when total as still a desecration and the flowers and buds of thoughts not yet whacked off or blighted I&039;m a poet and poets are wiser than anyone because they&039;re the only people who have the guts to think and feel at the saht, Sid? When I talk to all of you about a peace e, I want you to think about it concretely in ter help across thehelp that&039;s undeserved or knowledge that&039;s pre at all, but just to check with infinite tenderness and concern that everything&039;s safe and the glories of the universe unfolding as they were intended to - "