"It doesn't mean much of anything in a surface reading like that."
"That's what I would have said too. So much sawdust. I'm surprised to hear you admit it."
"I acknowledge it freely enough. A lot of that is just filler material in the oracular mode to put P.S. off the scent."
"P.S.?"
"Perfect Strangers. Those who are not Gnomons. Others, outsiders. P.S. or A.M. Perfect Strangers or the Ape Men."
"But to what purpose? Apes we may be, but why throw dust in our eyes? Can you explain?"
"Sure can. I thought it would be obvious. We do it to protect our secret knowledge. We don't know whose hands those books might fall into, Senator, and so we are obliged to put a lot of matter in there to weary and disgust the reader. The casual reader is put off at once. A page or two of that and the ordinary man is a limp rag. Even great scholars, men who are trained and well paid to read dull books, are soon beaten down by it."
—Charles Portis, Masters of Atlantis