User Guide

A NEW SUN
APPENDIX 5
235
could feel the confusion in the room as shadows lurched forward, orders issued
in hisses. No shouts and no further fire … near perfect silence, he thought.
Amazing discipline, as if ….
No matter. He had moments, and moments were all he needed. Crouched in
the darkness he punched the release code into his lockbox. He flexed his
hands, deadly weapons in their own right, serpents awaiting their venom.
The box would not open. It remained inert, a block of dead cold metal in his
hands. He turned it quickly face up, tried to make out the letters printed on
top. “A. Shaw.” They had switched lockboxes on him.
A shadowy form rose above him, and he caught a sliver of blue light across
familiar features.
“You …” he said, wanting to buy time.
A dark metal shape crashed into him, and his vision burst into blue fireworks
on a night black sky.
From the Unity Library,
Doctor Yang’s Collection:
Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.
Tao Te Ching,
Steven Mitchell trans.