" people of every caste and subcaste and sept and clan scrambled to grab some Stardust and paper, and what they found in their clutching hands sent them to their knees in joy and sadness. On each twinkling scrap of paper Courtney Hall had drawn what she had glimpsed in that instant of the things that lay beyond the wall, the things the Compassionate Society had pushed away and abandoned and forgotten, the old things, the things of wonder and terror and joy and pain. "

― Ian McDonald , Out on Blue Six