Hildy wanted to say ‘I’m not sure’, but she realised that the man was being sarcastic, which was the last thing she expected. ‘I’m Hildy Frederiksen,’ she mumbled, aware that in all this vastness and mystery that one small fact could have little significance. Still, she wanted it put on record before it was wiped out of her mind.
‘Well, now,’ said the leader, still sarcastic but with a hint of sympathy in his voice, ‘you shouldn’t have told me that, should you? After all, when strangers meet by night on the fells, they should not disclose their names, nor the names of their fathers, until they have tested each other’s heart with shrewd enquiry.’
Then his face seemed to relax a little behind the fixed scowl of his visor. ‘Don’t ask me why, mind. It’s just the rule.’

Something the King had said about magic had started her thinking and, although her idea was scarcely distinguishable from healthy American paranoia, that was not in itself a reason for discarding it. God, guts and paranoia made America great.

He had never believed in God or any other sort of conspiracy theory, and he could never summon up enough credulity to be entertained by spy thrillers. But even he had sometimes wondered about the telelogy of his own particular field of interest. All computer programmers have at some stage come face to face with the one and only metaphysical question of what happens to all the stuff that gets swallowed by the computer.