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"Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen."
- Larry Niven
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| Subtle Knife | ||
| A knife able to cut through any material, and even cut through into different worlds. |
| It was an ordinary-looking dagger, with a double-sided blade of dull metal about eight inches long, a short crosspiece of the same metal, and a handle of rosewood. As he looked at it more closely, he saw that the rosewood was inlaid with gold wires, forming a design he didn't recognize until he turned the knife around and saw an angel, with wings folded. On the other side was a different angel, with wings upraised. The wires stood out a little from the surface, giving a firm grip, and as he picked it up he felt that it was light in the hand and strong and beautifully balanced, and that the blade was not dull after all. In fact, a swirl of cloudy colors seemed to live just under the surface of the metal: bruise purples, sea blues, earth browns, cloud grays, the deep green under heavy-foliaged trees, the clustering shades at the mouth of a tomb as evening falls over a deserted graveyard... If there was such a thing as shadow-colored, it was the blade of the subtle knife.
But the edges were different. In fact, the two edges differed from each other. One was clear bright steel, merging a little way back into those subtle shadow-colors, but steel of incomparable sharpness. |
| Technovelgy from The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2,
by Philip Pullman. Published by Scholastic in 1997 Additional resources -
|
The two edges have different purposes:
And he pressed the silver spoon against the blade. Will, holding the knife, felt only the slightest resistance as the tip of the spoon's handle fell to the table, cut clean off.
"The other edge," the old man went on, "is more subtle still. With it you can cut an opening out of this world altogether...
"This edge," said Giacomo Paradisi touching the steel with the handle of a spoon, "will cut through any material in the world. Look."
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
