Heather's Library

Star Wars: Labyrinth of Evil
by James Luceno

p.22 In peaceful times Anakin might have been able to bridle his rage, but now he relied on it to drive him forward, to transform him into the person he needed to be."

p.49-50 Bail motioned to the identichip he had already slotted in the scanner. "It’s all there, Sergeant. I’m a member in good standing of the Republic Senate."
     The helmeted noncom glanced at the display screen, then looked down at Bail. "So it says. But I’m still going to need to see further identification."
     Bail sighed in exasperation and fished into the breast pocket of his brocaded tunic for his credit chip.
     The new Coruscant, he thought.
     Faceless, blaster-wielding soldiers on the shuttle landing platforms, in the plazas, arrayed in front of banks, hotels, theaters, wherever beings gathered or mingled. Scanning the crowds, stopping anyone who fir the current possible terrorist profile, conducting searches of individuals, belongings, residences. Not on a whim, because the cloned troopers didn’t operate like that. They answered merely to their training, and the duties they performed were for the good of the Republic.
     One heard rumors about antiwar demonstrations being put down by force; of disappearances and seizures of private property. Proof of such abuses of power rarely surfaced, and was quickly discredited.
     The omnipresence of the soldiers seemed to bother Bail more than it did his few friends on Courscant or his peers in the Senate. He had tried to attribute his agitation to the fact that he hailed from pacific Alderaan, but that explained only some of it. What bothered him most was the ease with which the majority of Courscanti had acclimated to the changes. Their willingness--almost an eagerness--to surrender personal freedoms in the name of security. And a false security, at that. For while Coruscant seemed far from the war, it was also at the center of it.

p.51 Before the war, widespread corruption had stifled the legislative process. Bills languished, measures sat for years without being addressed, votes were protested and subjected to endless recounts...But one effect of the war had been to replace corruption and inertia with dereliction of duty. Reasoned discourse and debate had become so rare as to be archaic. In a political climate where representatives were afraid to speak their minds, it was easier--and thought to be safer--to cede power to those who least appeared to have some grasp of the truth.

96 "In their eagerness to perfect me, I’m afraid they’ll wipe my memory!" the droid said.
     "Would that be such a bad thing," Anakin said, "after what you claim to have been through?"
     "How can I be expected to learn from my mistakes if I can no longer remember them?"

( more under the cut )

Dancing With An Alien
by Mary Logue

p.32 I had taken senior lifesaving and I knew the motto: "Reach, throw, row, go." There was nothing to reach this guy with, nothing to throw from the raft, no boat available to row out to him. So I was going. I hoped I could find him.

   I did the lifesaver's jump into the water. It's like a modified belly flop so your head doesn't go below water and you can keep your eyes on the spot the person went down.

p.77 There is never much doubt in Beatrice's life. She is very certain about what she believes in. She stopped going to church with her parents when she was nine. She told the pastor she didn't believe in a male god. She refused to say the pledge of allegiance in sixth grade, said it infringed on her civil rights.

p.97 I lay on my bed and listened to my heart beat. If you put your hand on your neck, it sounds like your heart is in your head. I decided my heart was in my head. I wasn't thinking anymore. I was simply feeling.

Ho-ming: Girl of New China
by Elizabeth Foreman Lewis

"Ih, er, san, si, wu, luh, chi, bah, diju, shi" -- numbers 1-10 in Chinese

p.17 Well, the roof above her was tilted and each corner turned upward that demons bent on mischief might find no footing thereon.

hsien = country

"I have the fidelity of the dog and I am treated like one."
     --Confucius

"C'heo si la!" Chinese: "Ugly unto death!"

NAMES: Lao Po-po, Ho-ming, sng, Mei-li, Li, Shui-niu, Je-je

Dream-Weaver
by Louise Lawrence

p.54 "What's religion?" asked Eth. "What's worship? What's god? I don't understand the words, Cable."
     Cable tried to explain the sense of the numinous and the almighty power of creation. On Arboth it was acknowledged in the universe itself, in the natural landscapes and the for essential elements, in the wind and the weather and the light of the Roth Star, in plants and animals and people. But on Malroth, people believed that all things came from El-Tesh. His words and wishes, interpreted by priests, became laws that no one could question, and rituals were devised to praise and placate him. This was called worship, said Cable, and anyone who questioned the dictates of the priests, who worshipped in a different way or refused to believe El-Tesh ever existed either as a god or as an entity apart from his image, were persecuted--imprisoned, sacrificed, or slaughtered. On Malroth, in the name of El-Tesh, the priests had assumed power over everyone else. Extracted payment from people for their prayers or intercession, anointed kings who had ruled the population on their behalf and gathered armies to quell rebellions, employed scholars to study science and invent new weapons for killing. And women were considered inferior to men because they lacked male genitalia and were not created in the image of El-Tesh. They had no power, no voice, no rights, no social status. And so, unopposed and with the blessings of El-Tesh, men were free to commit all manner of atrocities. They built machines to harness and subjugate the forces of nature, and finally they destroyed themselves and the planet.

p.61 In all there were seven etheric planes, Nemony told her. The physical plane was the lowest, between the so-called living and the so-called dead. Eth could not visit the higher planes, but she could not stay there and waking usually erased the memory, reduced to fragments she experienced there, dreamlike snatches and rainbow hues and gold light shining in an unremembered world, ethereal voices fading from her head. She was not a medium, as most dream-weavers were. No higher being guided her or chose her as an oracle, took over her body whenever she vacated it and used her vocal cords to speak. Once trained she would be like Nemony, an ordinary dream-weaver with no special skills.

NAMES: Sorren, Meera, Kanderin, Eth, Nemony, Yordan, Zella, Malroth, Liadd, Zuke

Left Behind #6: Assassins
by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

p.93 "They scooted their chairs back to soften the angle as they looked up at her."

p.230-231 David took double precautions by inserting a glitch into the computers in his department. The complicator was purely mathematical. A key component in plotting coordinates, of course, is measuring angles and computing distances between various points. On paper such calculations would take hours. On a calculator, less time. But on a computer, the results were virtually instantaneous. David planted, however what he called a floating multiplier. In layman's terms, any time the computer was assigned a calculations, a random component transposed side-by-side in the third, fourth, or fifth, step. Not even David knew which step it would select, let alone which digits. When the calculation was repeated, the error would be duplicated three times in a row, so checking the computer against itself was useless.

p.246 The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

p.254 "I was known as a straightforward, opinionated guy, and people pretty much liked me. Unless they was too sophisticated. If they was, I'd use the word was where I'm s'posed to use were, like I just did there, and tweak 'em to death."

NAMES: Hasse, Rehoboth, Bindura, Jurgen, Mwangati, Ngumo

Left Behind #4: Soul Harvest
by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (large print version)

p.39 Most appeared not to even see him, following one another as if trusting that someone somewhere near the front of the line had an idea where he might find help.

p.59 "How does something underground withstand the shifting of the earth?"
     "Part genius, part luck, I guess," Mac said.
     "The whole thing floats, suspended on some sort of a membrane filled with hydraulic fluid sitting on a platform of springs that serve as mammoth shock absorbers."

p.139 The pickup rattled and lurched over unpaved roads until it arrived at the outskirts of the city. Rayford was sickened by the smell. He still found it hard to accept that this was part of God's ultimate plan. Did this many people have to suffer to make some eternal point? He took cumfort that this was not God's desired result. Rayford believed God was true to his word, that he had given people enough chances that he could now justify allowing this to get their attention.

p.279 "You must've never been hit in the back of the head with an airplane."

p.312 He could find no pulse. He switched the wristbands.
     Buck knew this only bought him time. It wouldn't belong before someone discovered that this postmenopausal dead woman was not a pregnant twenty-two-year-old.

p.422 He wished he'd had some defense or assault training. There must be some strategic response to a man in your face carrying an Uzi.

NAMES: Kuntz, Cavenaugh