Cheyenne Quotes

Henry figured that the reason the Cheyenne had always ridden Appaloosas into battle was because by the time the men got there, they were so angry with the horses they were ready to kill everything.

A good friend will bail you out of jail. A best friend will be sitting next to you Saying, 'Damn. We fucked up.

Sometimes people did this, closed their eyes for a few seconds and imagined it gave them insights into what it was like to be her. Only, at the end, they could still open their eyes and see.

But just let me tell you something, son, a woman's love is like the morning dew, it's just as apt to settle on a horse turd as it is on a rose. So you better just get over it.

People like you are the reason People like me need medication.

Come to the Dark Side. We have chocolate.

Cheyenne snatched back her phone. "Someone took her brave pills today." "And washed them down with stupid juice," Casper added, cocking his gun.

Did you hear that?" Casper said. "Bats," Cheyenne replied. Casper gasped with horror. "You know I hate bats," he hissed. "Bats bats bats bats bats," Cheyenne said. "Stop it! We're not kids anymore!" Casper shouted. "This way, Braveheart.

I've been a Danish prince, a Texas slave-dealer, an Arab sheik, a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, and a Yankee navy lieutenant in my time, among other things, and none of 'em was as hard to sustain as my lifetime's impersonation of a British officer and gentleman.

A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then its finished; no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons.

Always remember you’re unique Just like everyone else.

You’re amazing. Don’t ever, ever forget that, Cheyenne. And as long as I’m around, I don’t intend to let you forget.

A Cheyenne elder of my acquaintance once told me that the best way to find something is not to go looking for it.

Like Cheyenne Mountain, today's fast good conceals remarkable technological advances behind an ordinary-looking façade.

Sometimes you know that no one can replace the person you love, and your heart will never be the same.

in which all children born belong to their mother’s tribe, this seemed to the Cheyennes to be the perfect means of assimilation into the white man’s world—a terrifying new world that even as early as 1854, the Native Americans clearly recognized held no place for them. Needless to say, the Cheyennes’ request was not well received by the white authorities—the peace conference collapsed, the Cheyennes went home, and, of course, the white women did not come. In this novel they do.

Sure.” Olivia smirked. “Good ol’ New York Public Library. I’m sure it’s up to date on the latest Demons that escape through well-guarded Demon Gates.

you're just pissed you liked it

For their part, the savage men appear to spend an inordinate amount of time lounging around their lodges, smoking and gossiping among themselves...so that it occurs to me that perhaps our cultures are not so different after all: the women do all the work while the men do all the talking.

I remember the words of Bill Tall Bull, a Cheyenne elder. As a young person, I spoke to him with a heavy heart, lamenting that I had no native language with which to speak to the plants and the places that I love. “They love to hear the old language,” he said, “it’s true.” “But,” he said, with fingers on his lips, “You don’t have to speak it here.” “If you speak it here,” he said, patting his chest, “They will hear you.

Zane brought her hand to his chest, over his heart and she felt the strong rapid beat through his shirt. “Feel that?” His throat worked as he swallowed. “It would break if I fell for you and anything happened that would take you away from me.” --Zane to Willow in 'The Edge of Sin' in the Real Men Last all Night anthology

Nothing and no one in life should ever be taken for granted!

But others of us believed that the only true happiness our Sara had ever known in her short life on this earth had been among these people. And we wished for her soul to go to the place the Cheyennes called Seano – the place of the dead – which is reached by following the Hanging Road in the Sky, the Milky Way. Here the Cheyennes believe that all the People who have ever died live with their Creator, He’amaveho’e. In Seano they live in villages just as they did on earth – hunting, working, eating, playing, loving, and making war. And all go to the place of the dead, regardless of whether they were good or bad on earth, virtuous or evil, brave or cowardly – everyone – and eventually in Seano all are reunited with the souls of their loved ones.

Why did people run around in random directions when shooting started instead of literally hitting the deck to stay out of the line of fire? How stupid could you get?

Jenn: Do you love him? Ani: Yeah, I do. Jenn: Then you can forgive him. It's not worth it to let love slip through your hands.

If I could have looked into the future to see what I would have become, I wouldn't have become the person I was always meant to be. ~ lw

Nobody' perfect, Cheyenne. We can all do better, but do it for yourself, not for me. Not for anyone else.

My mom believed that you make your own luck. Over the stove she had hung these old, maroon painted letters that spell out, “MANIFEST.” The idea being if you thought and dreamed about the way you wanted your life to be -- if you just envisioned it long enough, it would come into being. But as hard as I had manifested Astrid Heyman with her hand in mine, her blue eyes gazing into mine, her lips whispering something wild and funny and outrageous in my ear, she had remained totally unaware of my existence. Truly, to even dream of dreaming about Astrid, for a guy like me, in my relatively low position on the social ladder of Cheyenne Mountain High, was idiotic. And with her a senior and me a junior? Forget it. Astrid was just lit up with beauty: shining blonde ringlets, June sky blue eyes, slightly furrowed brow, always biting back a smile, champion diver on the swim team. Olympic level. Hell, Astrid was Olympic level in every possible way.

It’s when I have to acknowledge the past and all of those nameless, faceless people I’d assassinated, that I unravel inside.

I do believe our culture is doing a bad job raising boys. The evidence is in the shocking violence of Paducah, Jonesboro, Cheyenne, and Edinboro. It's in our overcrowded prisons and domestic violence shelters. It's in our Ritalin-controlled elementary schools and alcohol-soaked college campuses.

Griffin spoke around a mouthful of food. “What’s it like being blind?” “Do you think about what it’s like to have hair every second?” Cheyenne blew air out of her nose. “It’s just who I am now. I try not to think about it all the time.” Which was true. But it didn’t work. She never really forgot that she was blind. And even if she did for a minute, she could count on there being a reminder. Usually painful. She sighed. “At first, it feels like someone has thrown a blanket over your head. Some days you just want to scream, ‘I’m inside here! Doesn’t anybody out there see that? Doesn’t anybody remember me? I’m still the same person!’ ” Cheyenne fell silent. She knew the last sentence wasn’t true, even if she wanted it to be. She wasn’t the same person.

All yours, sweetheart,” Smithe added. “And Steele, I’m talking to Donovan. If there was ever anything sweet about you the Polar ice caps might melt.

A Touch of Crimson explodes with passion and heat. A hot, sexy angel to die for and a gutsy heroine make for one exciting read!

For a second, Hardyy felt sorry for her. She really was messed up. 'Nobody is perfect Cheyenne. We can all do better, but do it for yourself, not for me. Not for anyone else.

As long as the hearts of our women are high, the nation will live. But should the hearts of our women be on the ground, then all is lost.’ – CHEYENNE PROVERB

Beware of the man who does not talk and the dog who does not bark. —Cheyenne proverb

He knew that when he'd let Cheyenne lead him away, he'd lost his chance to find out the name of the girl who, without a single word spoken to him, had stolen his heart.

The race is on to find Cheyenne Wilder and to rescue her alive.

The announcements went on, the voice calling out portions of states, and cities—Seattle, Hanford, San Francisco, all the southern California coast, Helena, Cheyenne—but Randy only half-heard them. All he could hear, distinctly, were the sharp sobs out of Peyton’s throat.

She knew she couldn’t escape unscathed, and the trauma would take her a long time to get past. And she might never fully heal mentally. There was no denying the fact, though, that everything had changed for her. To know what to expect wasn’t the same as actually living it.

You know what. Cheyenne? I have neither the time nor the inclination to hate you. But i do have a favor to ask. The next time you Photoshop pictures of me in a bikini, give me bigger boobs.

I could picture how Caprice was before we lost her. Dark hair, beautiful smile, intelligent hazel eyes, quick wit. Now gone. Just gone. Like a chessboard where suddenly one of the knights disappeared. A blank spot on the board of life that could never truly be replaced because no two things were alike, no two beings alike.

I pretended to be a Cheyenne guide. I pretended to be a prairie woman. I pretended Henry was my old-timey husband taking me to our new homestead. I leaned down and patted Trouble’s neck. “Good boy,” I said. “Trusty steed.

Hellooo.” I held out my arm. “An amethyst woman with blue hair is telling you this.” She reached out and scraped her short nails over my arm. I snatched my arm back. “Ow.” Not body makeup.” She frowned and peered at the roots of my hair. “A good die-job or you’ve really got blue hair.” For now,” I said. “I’m half Drow.” She raised an eyebrow. Dark Elves.” Uh-huhhhh.” During the day I look normal, like you.” With an amused look she held up her arm, showing her dark, golden skin. “You’re Kenyan and Puerto Rican?

When wealth is lost, little is lost. When health is lost, something is lost, but when character is lost ALL is lost!

Jesus Christ.” The fury on Nick’s face was enough to send me reeling and he hit the table hard enough with his hand that it made the plates and the silverware on the table bounce and clatter. “You give me the names and approximate location of those men who gave you that ultimatum and I’ll kill every goddamned one of them.” I sighed before I said quietly. “I already did.

Out on the road outside Cheyenne Wells a great argument developed between Pomeray and Old Bull as to whether they were going to buy a little whiskey or lot of wine, one being a wino, the other an alcoholic. Not having eaten for a long time, feverish, they leaped out of the car and started making brawling gestures at each other which were supposed to represent a fistfight between two men...and the next moment they were embracing each other, old Pomeray tearfully, Old Bull raising his eyes with lonely sarcasm at the huge and indefatigable heavens above Colorado...because everybody was in a hole during the Depression, and felt it

Rhiada was quiet. "Fiona, donnae think about the possibilities until the problem arises. Worrying about what might happen doesnae prepare ye more fer when the bad things do happen—if they do. When the time comes that something gaes wrong, then ye can fret if ye feel like it.

draft a plan to move the capital. My first choice would be Lander. Hell, even Casper would be better than Cheyenne. But Casper would open its own can of worms, if you know what I mean. Or maybe I’d have some fun and piss almost everybody off and propose moving it to Jackson.

Stuart Maxwell told me in a shaky voice that the first time Cheyenne picked him out as her victim for the kissing game, it had been like a nightmare as he'd found himself cornered by the circle of girls, only to see Cheyenne's lips coming closer and closer, until finally the smell of cranberry Kiehl's lip balm had overwhelmed him. 'And that's when,' Stuart told me in a horrified voice, 'I knew it was all over.

And should Armageddon come, should a foreign enemy someday shower the United States with nuclear warheads, laying waste to the whole continent, entombed within Cheyenne Mountain, along with the high-tech marvels, the pale blue jumpsuits, comic books, and Bibles, future archeologists may find other clues to the nature of our civilization—Big King wrappers, hardened crusts of Cheesy Bread, Barbeque Wing bones, and the red, white, and blue of a Domino’s pizza box.

Back in the buffalo days, the Cheyenne prophet Sweet Medicine had seen a vision of men with hair on their faces who would come bringing a white sand that was poison to Indians. The prophecy had come true, the white sand was sugar, and Adeline blamed the white man for poisoning her right up to two hundred pounds.

JOHNNA: When a Cheyenne baby is born, their umbilical cord is dried and sewn into this pouch. Turtles for girls, lizards for boys. And we wear it for the rest of our lives. JEAN: Wow. JOHNNA: Because if we lose it, our souls belong nowhere and after we die our souls will walk the Earth looking for where we belong.

I ordered my favorite drink; vanilla iced blended coffee with whipped cream and caramel sauce on top. The whipped cream and caramel sauce were the best. Usually when no one was watching, I would lick the inside of the lid to get every last drop of the addictive syrup. Once, my dad caught me doing this and started laughing. I'd gotten caramel plastered over my nose. If Colt had ever seen me do this, I would never live it down. Glancing around, I indulged shamelessly and grinned." -Cheyenne

gazed at his destination in the valley below. If not for the smoke curling from its chimney, he might think the cabin abandoned. Agreeing to this was the stupidest thing he’d ever done. How on earth had he been talked into it? At the time, delivering the news to Nathan’s wife hadn’t seemed like much. He was heading to Cheyenne anyway. The

Gentler, Fiona, gentler. The strings are no’ bowstrings. Ye must be gentle wi’ them if ye wish to make any music at all.

Every stitch you knit can be a self-care practice. Knitting is our constant companion as we grow and expand our capacity for joy.

I lay down my armor and find solace in the moonlit melodies of your heart.

i allow wildflowers to blossom from the hollows of my broken bones ― healing comes in many ways

That the Lord would make him a whole lot more like Cheyenne. Not afraid of anything. Even falling in love again.

The bloodthirsty killers were the men who gunned down the Cheyenne children and women, then returned to mutilate the bodies and set the village on fire.

There’s an old Cheyenne saying about how, when a man is as wise as a serpent, he can afford to be as harmless as a dove.

More than 150 Cheyenne, mostly women and children, were murdered in cold blood that day, in a massacre that is now widely regarded as the worst atrocity committed in all the Indian wars.

I think life is too short not to say how you feel. You don’t have to say it back, but I wanted you to know tonight, right now, how I feel about you. I love you, Cheyenne Jensen. I love you with all of my heart.

Now here she was, blind, kidnapped, tied up, and going who knows where with a criminal. Her cell phone was gone. And she was very sick. No! Cheyenne mouthed the word to herself. She had to stay on track. Think. She was blind. That was a fact. That was her greatest weakness. But could she somehow use it to her advantage? And there were a few advantages to being blind—not many, certainly not enough. But a few. For one thing, she knew how to use all her other senses in a way that most sighted people never did. They smelled and heard and touched all the same things she did, but they had let that part of their brain go numb with disuse, so the sensations didn’t register. And Cheyenne had learned the hard way to always, always pay attention to what was around her, to pick up as many clues as she could. So how could she use her senses to her advantage? She

[T]he old stories of human relationships with animals can't be discounted. They are not primitive; they are primal. They reflect insights that came from considerable and elaborate systems of knowledge, intellectual traditions and ways of living that were tried, tested, and found true over many thousands of years and on all continents. But perhaps the truest story is with the animals themselves because we have found our exemplary ways through them, both in the older world and in the present time, both physically and spiritually. According to the traditions of the Seneca animal society, there were medicine animals in ancient times that entered into relationships with people. The animals themselves taught ceremonies that were to be performed in their names, saying they would provide help for humans if this relationship was kept. We have followed them, not only in the way the early European voyagers and prenavigators did, by following the migrations of whales in order to know their location, or by releasing birds from cages on their sailing vessels and following them towards land, but in ways more subtle and even more sustaining. In a discussion of the Wolf Dance of the Northwest, artists Bill Holm and William Reid said that 'It is often done by a woman or a group of women. The dance is supposed to come from the wolves. There are different versions of its origin and different songs, but the words say something like, 'Your name is widely known among the wolves. You are honored by the wolves.' In another recent account, a Northern Cheyenne ceremonialist said that after years spent recovering from removals and genocide, indigenous peoples are learning their lost songs back from the wolves who retained them during the grief-filled times, as thought the wolves, even though threatened in their own numbers, have had compassion for the people.... It seems we have always found our way across unknown lands, physical and spiritual, with the assistance of the animals. Our cultures are shaped around them and we are judged by the ways in which we treat them. For us, the animals are understood to be our equals. They are still our teachers. They are our helpers and healers. They have been our guardians and we have been theirs. We have asked for, and sometimes been given, if we've lived well enough, carefully enough, their extraordinary powers of endurance and vision, which we have added to our own knowledge, powers and gifts when we are not strong enough for the tasks required of us. We have deep obligations to them. Without other animals, we are made less. (from her essay "First People")

Right now she must be moving as fast as she could through the woods, knowing that the only thing she had on her side was a little bit of time. Griffin felt a grudging respect. He stepped up on the toilet seat and grabbed the casement. He was just swinging his leg out when the faintest of sounds made him look toward the tub. Now that he was two feet off the ground, he could just see over the blue shower curtain with its faded green and yellow seahorses. And what he saw was Cheyenne, crouched in the tub. Hiding behind the shower curtain.

She did not quite know how she was able to sing it through without making any more mistakes. Fiona was only aware of how melancholy the song seemed now, the last line of The Highlands Are Calling Me Home lingering as a sad echo in the air. It had never caused her chest to tighten as it did now. Perhaps having left the Highlands which had been her home made the song all the more dear to her, but perhaps it was also because it was a lament; in light of the inevitable war, the words seemed all the more meaningful. A lament, and yet a song of hope. . .They might all yet come home.

Do you live and work here?" Trinity clenched her fist against his chest, her thoughts spinning. "At the ranch?" The corner of his mouth quirked and he nodded. "Uh-huh." Oh lord. "That's just great." She rested her head against his muscled chest. "That's like leaving Eve in the garden of Eden not far from the apple tree. Irrisistable temptation within walking distance." Luke chuckled, his chest vibrating beneath her ear. "Irrisistable, huh?

They all chose Indian names for themselves. Teddy was Little Fox (“Naturally,” Ursula said). Nancy was Little Wolf (“Honiahaka” in Cheyenne, Mrs. Shawcross said. She had a book she referred to). Mrs. Shawcross herself was Great White Eagle (“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sylvie said, “talk about hubris”).

The mythic American character is made up of the virtues of fairness, self-reliance, toughness, and honesty. Those virtues are generally stuffed into a six-foot-tall, dark-haired, can-do kind of guy who is at once a family man, attractive to strange women, carefree, stable, realistic, and whimsical. in the lore of America, that man lives on the Great Plains. he's from Texas, Dodge City, Cheyenne, the Dakotas, or somewhere in Montana. In fact, the seedbed of this American character, from the days of de Tocqueville through Andrew Jackson, Wyattt Earp, Pony Express riders, pioneers, and cowboys to modern caricatures played by actors such as Tom Mix, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne has aways been the frontier. It's a place with plenty of room to roam, great sunsets, clear lines between right and wrong, and lots of horses. It's also a place that does not exist and never has. The truth is that there has never been much fairness out here.

We are ever seeking more certainty, more hope,” Rhiada replied at last, his voice humming, an echo of a song in it. “The less we hae, the more we wish for it. But were times none so dire as these, were life none so fragile, we would perhaps nae hold to it so, like a shining light in the midst of darkness. The greater the darkness, the more precious that hope becomes. Were our lives, our homes, our country, our freedoms, our princess—were these none so dear to us, we would nae risk it all to keep them. Men donnae die fer something they donnae believe in. Because we risk it, then it must be worth it in the end. Should that no’ give us hope?

Wrathful men do not see reason, and they will slay all in their path.

And for once, I dared to think of home.

Sharing thy concerns with someone is never a burden. It is only a burden upon thyself and other people when thou holdest it all in.

Hope, as fleeting and faroff as it was, had arise out of the darkness, but she was too timid yet to take ahold of it.

Ye cannae end fear without hope.

I am made up of fragments of poetry glued together hoping one day to become art.

With stardust on my wings, I am pure reckoning magic.

Life is full of battles. Ye cannae escape them. Ye can only prepare to stand yer ground and fight them.

These marks are proof that I am strong and I am brave and I am more beautiful now than I have ever been.

Im afraid to live in the future because of my past yet i dwell in the past and look forward to change in the future

Only God is the Giver and Master of Creativity and imagination because they are gifts that can only come from Him Alone!

Con Usted al lado, todo es el mejor destino

Tosh throws up her hands. 'Tell me what you want!' What I want... To smell the desert after rain? To awake each morning beneath a soft Cheyenne blanket, skin still heavy with his scent? To rip out the flawed cog inside of me that brought it all to a screeching halt, then wind back through the years and do everything all over again. Perhaps that is what I want. A different ending.

My pleasure. Listen,” he called after her, “this is as far as I can go. They poisoned the water out there and I can’t follow you now. If you do see Powell, will you give him a message for me?” “Sure,” she said, turning around. “Tell him I have his boots in my truck. In case he’s looking for ’em.” Chey smiled. It felt wrong on her face, but she liked it all the same. “I’ll do that.

The proud gold of the Redcrest blood interwoven with the pure silver of the ancient Celts—an almost sacred mingling, yet forbidden to coalesce with either of the peoples from which it had sprung.

In roughly that same time period, while General George Armstrong Custer achieved world fame in failure and catastrophe, Mackenzie would become obscure in victory. But it was Mackenzie, not Custer, who would teach the rest of the army how to fight Indians. As he moved his men across the broken, stream-crossed country, past immense herds of buffalo and prairie-dog towns that stretched to the horizon, Colonel Mackenzie did not have a clear idea of what he was doing, where precisely he was going, or how to fight Plains Indians in their homelands. Neither did he have the faintest idea that he would be the one largely responsible for defeating the last of the hostile Indians. He was new to this sort of Indian fighting, and would make many mistakes in the coming weeks. He would learn from them. For now, Mackenzie was the instrument of retribution. He had been dispatched to kill Comanches in their Great Plains fastness because, six years after the end of the Civil War, the western frontier was an open and bleeding wound, a smoking ruin littered with corpses and charred chimneys, a place where anarchy and torture killings had replaced the rule of law, where Indians and especially Comanches raided at will. Victorious in war, unchallenged by foreign foes in North America for the first time in its history, the Union now found itself unable to deal with the handful of remaining Indian tribes that had not been destroyed, assimilated, or forced to retreat meekly onto reservations where they quickly learned the meaning of abject subjugation and starvation. The hostiles were all residents of the Great Plains; all were mounted, well armed, and driven now by a mixture of vengeance and political desperation. They were Comanches, Kiowas, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, and Western Sioux. For Mackenzie on the southern plains, Comanches were the obvious target: No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.

I would also like to suggest that the traditions of genre exert their force here and there in the historical record. The genre I have in mind is the battle report, which falls back, in unconsciously, on Homer. When Stephen Ambrose says that forty thousand arrows were shot during the twenty or thirty minutes that it took the Sioux and Cheyenne to kill all the soldiers in the Fetterman massacre, I feel that what I'm getting is a trope, not a fact. Who would have been counting arrows on that cold day in Wyoming in 1866?

Voices grew loud in another room and I knew Aurelia would be impatient for my coming. ‘Marcella, please?’ I looked him full in the face and knew, in some strange way, that I could trust him with this. He meant nothing cruel by it; only kindness, as he always did.

They think I'm not dealing with my grief, but I simply refuse to give them the satisfaction of seeing it. I won't let them console me and feel like they've played their part well and done all they could do. I will not let them make today about them, and I refuse to make today about me. Today is about him.

The Sioux position, conveyed by White Face, is that the land needs to be returned; it needs to become tribal land again. White Face showed me what used to be several ancient sacred sites “where the Great Spirits dwell” and she wants those sites restored, so Sioux people can once again commune with the spirits. I reminded White Face that before the Sioux, there were Cheyenne Indians and other tribes on that land. So if America stole the land from the Sioux, didn’t the Sioux steal the land from the Cheyenne and other tribes? If the land is returned to the Sioux, shouldn’t the Sioux turn around and give it back to those who had it before? White Face looked flustered.

In the Cheyenne language, the word for home is 'Enovo,' which means 'you are home.' Not 'your home.' 'You are home': which could mean falling asleep on the couch at your grandmother's or sitting at the table of your auntie while she cooks or returning to the land your family takes care of or speaking your community's language. 'You are home' defines a system of relationships between humans, and between humans and their built environment and the web of life. A sense of well-being comes with a shared language, shared purpose, and common cause, a political community that stretches beyond the concept of nation with its vocabulary of rights. It is a consciousness of balance and happiness that is reflected in the very chemistry of our bodies.

He did not waste time greeting her, but fell upon her at once with a vicious snarl. With his powerful jaws he tore at her, pulled her apart. He ripped open her guts and they spilled with a rank smell across the broken road surface. He tore off her leg and threw it into the darkness like so much poisoned meat. The pain was intense, but she could not complain or fight him off. She lacked the energy to even raise her head. He tore and bit and ripped her apart and she could only experience it passively, as if from some remove. Somehow she knew that he wasn’t killing her. That he was saving her. When he was done, when all the silver was torn out of her body and cast away from her, she breathed a little easier, and then she sank into a fitful sleep. He stood watch over her throughout the night, occasionally howling as the moon rode its arc across the night sky. Occasionally he would lick her face, her ears, to wake her up, to keep her from fading out of existence altogether. Once when he could not wake her he grabbed her by the back of the neck and shook her violently until her eyes cracked open and her tongue leapt from her mouth and she croaked out a whine of outrage.

If I could have seen on that day how much could change in such a short time, would I have had the courage to go on? Would any of us? Was that why we were forbidden to see into the future? Perhaps that was why life happened in individual days, each one seeming so mundane and yet yielding to the whole, revealing years and events across the course of history, from the dawn of Time until its ending…

She leaned in and hugged me. “I know. Thanks. I love you, too. And for the record, Cheyenne and Landon are soul mates and if they don’t end up together, I want you to find a poltergeist to haunt the Easton Heights writers.” She pulled back, smiling at me, then reaching out to ruffle Lend’s hair. “Take care of each other, you two obnoxious kids.” Then, throwing her shoulders back and staring straight forward, she walked through the gate. I watched, dreading seeing her turn into dust or something, but gasped in relief and joy as her ruined, unnaturally preserved body blossomed into something new, something strong and proud and undeniably alive. She turned back, just once, and although she was nearly unrecognizable, I could see our Arianna in her smile that managed to maintain its trademark ironic twist. “I’m going to miss her,” I said. “What?” Lend shouted. “I said, I’m going to miss her!” “I can’t hear you! I’m going to miss her!

The bus trip from Denver to Frisco was uneventful except that my whole soul leaped to it the nearer we got to Frisco. Cheyenne again, in the afternoon this time, and then west over the range; crossing the Divide at midnight at Creston, arriving at Salt Lake City at dawn—a city of sprinklers, the least likely place for Dean to have been born; then out to Nevada in the hot sun, Reno by nightfall, its twinkling Chinese streets; then up the Sierra Nevada, pines, stars, mountain lodges signifying Frisco romances—a little girl in the back seat, crying to her mother, “Mama when do we get home to Truckee?” And Truckee itself, homey Truckee, and then down the hill to the flats of Sacramento. I suddenly realized I was in California. Warm, palmy air—air you can kiss—and palms. Along the storied Sacramento River on a superhighway; into the hills again; up, down; and suddenly the vast expanse of a bay (it was just before dawn) with the sleepy lights of Frisco festooned across.

With the lessons learned from the Mike SSN disaster in the North Sea off Norway, the Typhoon’s captain decided to remain where he was to await rescue. Mack knew the Russian captain had lost his cool; he was now in the South China Sea, where no Russian ships could come to his rescue. What’s more, Cheyenne had finally picked up the last Akula, whose captain had elected to pull off to be able to fight another day and which had managed to distance itself from the fray. Cheyenne was there as the Typhoon reached the surface. The Russian submarine had been severely damaged, but Mack ordered four more torpedoes into the defenseless Typhoon. There was seldom mercy in wartime, and Cheyenne’s and Mack’s orders were clear. If he had allowed the Typhoon to survive, its crew would have cut the missile hatches open with blow torches and completed their launch against Taiwan. The result of the additional four torpedoes exploding beneath the Typhoon caused major seawater system flooding. The ensuing scene was similar to the devastation experienced by the Yankee class SSBN southeast of the Bermudas years before. Only this time there was no capability to protect and remove the crew. Life rafts were put over the side, only to be attacked by the South China Sea shark population, so the crew watched helplessly from the huge, flat missile-tube deck. The oversized submarine started settling slowly deeper, the water level rising to within meters of the missile- tube deck, with the crew topside. The captain—the admiral-to-be-had already sent a message to his North Fleet Headquarters concerning the impending demise of his capital ship and the lack of help from his Akula escorts by name, two of which had been sunk. He had not been given any means to communicate with the Chinese, so he resorted to calling home. After that he went topside to be with his men, sat down, and held hands in a circle as their submarine slid beneath the surface of the sea, sailors to the end, for eternity.

The essentialist notion of “bad blood” is one of several biological metaphors inspired by a fear of the revenge of the cradle. People anticipate that if they leave even a few of a defeated enemy alive, the remnants will multiply and cause trouble down the line. Human cognition often works by analogy, and the concept of an irksome collection of procreating beings repeatedly calls to mind the concept of vermin.105 Perpetrators of genocide the world over keep rediscovering the same metaphors to the point of cliché. Despised people are rats, snakes, maggots, lice, flies, parasites, cockroaches, or (in parts of the world where they are pests) monkeys, baboons, and dogs.106 “Kill the nits and you will have no lice,” wrote an English commander in Ireland in 1641, justifying an order to kill thousands of Irish Catholics.107 “A nit would make a louse,” recalled a Californian settler leader in 1856 before slaying 240 Yuki in revenge for their killing of a horse.108 “Nits make lice,” said Colonel John Chivington before the Sand Creek Massacre, which killed hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho in 1864.109 Cankers, cancers, bacilli, and viruses are other insidious biological agents that lend themselves as figures of speech in the poetics of genocide. When it came to the Jews, Hitler mixed his metaphors, but they were always biological: Jews were viruses; Jews were bloodsucking parasites; Jews were a mongrel race; Jews had poisonous blood.110

And then it sends a signal to turn off the system.” “So the universe with the wallet in the chamber waiting to be sent still exists,” added Allen. “But the universe from which it is actually sent never does.”  “That is just so messed up,” said Blake in exasperation, and Jenna, Walsh, and Soyer nodded their agreement. “Here is my advice to all of you,” said Cargill. “The best thing to do is ignore time travel, and don’t think about the paradoxes too hard. If you do, your head really will explode,” he added with a wry smile. “Just think of it as duplication and teleportation. But always keep in mind that the universe seems to go out of its way to ensure that infinite alternate timelines aren’t allowed. So no matter what, we only ever get this one universe.” He sighed. “So we’d better make sure we don’t screw it up.”     48   Brian Hamilton hated Cheyenne Mountain. Sure, it was one of the most interesting places in the world to visit, but living there only worked if you were a bat. The Palomar facility had also been underground, but nothing like this. It had a much larger security perimeter, so trips to the surface were easier to make happen. Not that it really mattered. Soon enough he would be traveling on another assignment anyway, living in a hotel room somewhere. But what he really wanted was to work side by side with Edgar Knight, toward their common goal. He was tired of being Knight’s designated spy, having to watch Lee Cargill squander Q5’s vast resources and capabilities. Watching him crawl like a wounded baby when he could be soaring. Cargill was an idiot. He could transform the world, but he was too weak to do it. He could wipe out the asshole terrorists who wanted nothing more than to butcher the helpless. If you have the ultimate cure for cancer, you use it to wipe out the disease once and for all. You don’t wield your cure only as a last resort, when the cancer has all but choked the life out of you. Edgar Knight, on the other hand, was a man with vision. He was able to make the tough decisions. If you were captain of a life raft with a maximum capacity of ten people, choosing to take five passengers of a sinking ship on board was an easy decision, not a heroic one. But what about when there were fifty passengers? Was it heroic to take them all, dooming everyone to death? Or was the heroic move using force, if necessary, to limit this number, to ensure some would survive? Sure, from the outside this looked coldhearted, while the converse seemed compassionate. But watching the world circle the drain because you were too much of a pussy to make the hard decisions was the real crime. Survival of the fittest was harsh reality. In the animal kingdom it was eat or be eaten. If you saw a group of fuck-nuts just itching to nuke the world back into the Dark Ages—who believed the Messiah equivalent, the twelfth Imam, would only come out to play when Israel was destroyed, and worldwide Armageddon unleashed—you wiped them out. To a man. Or else they’d do the same to you. It had been three days since Cargill had reported that he was on the verge of acquiring Jenna Morrison and Aaron Blake.