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"There's a poetry in the materials we use to construct our world of artifacts; it speaks of our long history as a technological species."
- William Gibson
 |
| Subtle Knife | ||
| A knife able to cut through any material, and even cut through into different worlds. |
| It was an ordinary-looking dagger, with a double-sided blade of dull metal about eight inches long, a short crosspiece of the same metal, and a handle of rosewood. As he looked at it more closely, he saw that the rosewood was inlaid with gold wires, forming a design he didn't recognize until he turned the knife around and saw an angel, with wings folded. On the other side was a different angel, with wings upraised. The wires stood out a little from the surface, giving a firm grip, and as he picked it up he felt that it was light in the hand and strong and beautifully balanced, and that the blade was not dull after all. In fact, a swirl of cloudy colors seemed to live just under the surface of the metal: bruise purples, sea blues, earth browns, cloud grays, the deep green under heavy-foliaged trees, the clustering shades at the mouth of a tomb as evening falls over a deserted graveyard... If there was such a thing as shadow-colored, it was the blade of the subtle knife.
But the edges were different. In fact, the two edges differed from each other. One was clear bright steel, merging a little way back into those subtle shadow-colors, but steel of incomparable sharpness. |
| Technovelgy from The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2,
by Philip Pullman. Published by Scholastic in 1997 Additional resources -
|
The two edges have different purposes:
And he pressed the silver spoon against the blade. Will, holding the knife, felt only the slightest resistance as the tip of the spoon's handle fell to the table, cut clean off.
"The other edge," the old man went on, "is more subtle still. With it you can cut an opening out of this world altogether...
"This edge," said Giacomo Paradisi touching the steel with the handle of a spoon, "will cut through any material in the world. Look."
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'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
