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Old Rekohu__ claim to singularity, however, lay in its unique pacific creed. Since time immemorial, the Moriori__ priestly caste dictated that whosoever spilt a man__ blood killed his own mana - his honor, his worth, his standing & his soul. No Moriori would shelter, feed, converse with, or even see the persona non grata. If the ostracized murderer survived his first winter, the desperation of solitude usually drove him to a blowhole on Cape Young, where he took his life.Consider this, Mr. D__rnoq urged us. Two thousand savages (Mr. Evans__ best guess) enshrine __hou Shalt Not Kill_ in word & in deed & frame an oral __agna Carta_ to create a harmony unknown elsewhere for the sixty centuries since Adam first tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. War was as alien a concept to the Moriori as the telescope is to the Pygmy. Peace, not a hiatus betwixt wars but millennia of imperishable peace, rules these far-flung islands. Who can deny Old Rekohu lay closer to More__ Utopia than our States of Progress governed by war-hungry princelings in Versailles & Vienna, Washington & Westminster? __ere,_ declaimed Mr. D__rnoq, __nd where only, were those elusive phantasms, those noble savages, framed in flesh & blood!_ (Henry, as we later made our back to the Musket confessed, __ could never describe a race of savages too backwards to throw a spear as __oble.
David Mitchell Cloud Atlas
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Old Rekohu__ claim to singularity, however, lay in its unique pacific creed. Since time immemorial, the Moriori__ priestly caste dictated that whosoever spilt a man__ blood killed his own mana - his honor, his worth, his standing & his soul. No Moriori would shelter, feed, converse with, or even see the persona non grata. If the ostracized murderer survived his first winter, the desperation of solitude usually drove him to a blowhole on Cape Young, where he took his life.Consider this, Mr. D__rnoq urged us. Two thousand savages (Mr. Evans__ best guess) enshrine __hou Shalt Not Kill_ in word & in deed & frame an oral __agna Carta_ to create a harmony unknown elsewhere for the sixty centuries since Adam first tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. War was as alien a concept to the Moriori as the telescope is to the Pygmy. Peace, not a hiatus betwixt wars but millennia of imperishable peace, rules these far-flung islands. Who can deny Old Rekohu lay closer to More__ Utopia than our States of Progress governed by war-hungry princelings in Versailles & Vienna, Washington & Westminster? __ere,_ declaimed Mr. D__rnoq, __nd where only, were those elusive phantasms, those noble savages, framed in flesh & blood!_ (Henry, as we later made our back to the Musket confessed, __ could never describe a race of savages too backwards to throw a spear as __oble.

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There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman__he white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles__he work of a shell.The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries__omething between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey__ startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.

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What if the differences between social strata stem not from genomics or inherent xcellence or even dollars, but merely differences in knowledge? Would this not mean the whole Pyramid is built on shifting sands?" I speculated such a suggestion could be seen as a serious deviancy. Melphi seemed delited. "Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' consciences; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding up the mirror." I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves. Melphi relplied, "History suggests, not until they are made to.