"At least Clowns generally saw fit to announce their coming with whiteface and fright wigs and brilliant motley hung with coins, teeth and glistening biological horrors wrapped in blown glass."

"Flickering movements in the darkness around them vanished into the narrow shadows of the pillars when the patrol aimed their lanterns. Lieutenant wouldn't let the men fire into the darkness. The baby continued to cry intermittently, always distant."

"Ahriman had carefully crafted the manbone quena to play a classically human minor diatonic scale. The femur was salvaged from an ancient human starship in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. He had flensed the bone, hollowing it with iron picks to make his graceful flute."

""Ahriman," Port said, interrupting a molecular-level simulation of oceanic behavior. It had been tweaking hurricanes at micro-erg energy levels for amusement. "There is hydrogen.""