Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Excerpt

But then again that was hardly news. If they could have done it themselves - if they hadn't been too damned scared to take on what needed to be done, for fear of their silk-socked lives - they never would have come to us. The Free Company was on the clock and there were only three commandments: look after your friends; do the job; come out richer. To these the pencilneck was adding an apocrypha of penalties for excessive damage and materials overspend which we fully intended to ignore, because he was the tool of a litigation-wary softass outfit and they were afraid not only of death but also of flesh-eating lawyers and class actions and angry investors and anti-trust and whatall, and the first and second commandments forbid stinting during a run. Thus we gazed upon his many provisos and codicils, and we said "bah."

- From The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway

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