there was never any end to it. the quarter was like a tight gravitational system, with many small bodies swinging around each other in eccentric orbits, and the whole shrinking in upon itself as time went on, so that it grew more and more certain that one collision would engender half a dozen more.

and in the mind, too, each event went on forever. cudyk remembered burgess, in the stretcher as he was being carried home, weeping silently because he had failed to kill the man who had murdered his daughter's lover. and he remembered rack, sitting silent and weary as he waited for moskowitz to attend to him: sitting without anger for the man who had shot him, sitting with patience, filled with his own inner strength.

and de grasse, tortured soul, who had once more shown himself willing to sacrifice himself to any loyalty he felt.

even monk, even spider, lived not for himself but for rack.

there were all the traditional virtues, dripping their traditional gore: nobility, self-sacrifice, patience, even generosity. by any test except the test of results, rack was a great man and burgess another.

and the test of results was a two-edged razor: for by that test, cudyk himself was a total failure, a nonentity.

he thought, we are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men....

when every action led to disaster, those who did nothing were damned equally with those who acted.