Where We're At: Part 4.7: Against the Day

The Event

• The Chums are ... somewhere. Before the Event the town looks muddy and deserted; after the Event ("ripping apart the firmament over western China"), it looks cleansed and new and they know it's Shambhala. But the burst of light that un-hid Shambhala un-hid the Inconvenience at the moment (only that moment) the Event occurred, as well ("tor[e] the veil separating their own space from that of the everyday world").
• The Chums arrive at the site of the Event shortly after the Bol'shaia Igra does; Lindsay says it was the Trespassers.
• Vanderjuice, in Tierra del Fuego, messages the Inconvenience that everything there went chaotic--"gravity itself for a moment simply vanished." Vanderjuice relays the rumor that the Event was caused by an error in some kind of something Tesla was attempting to beam to Peary, in the Arctic. Tesla has abandoned his laboratory since Morgan abandoned him.
• The Chums meet with the Bol'shaia Igra. Padzitnoff wants to know why they didn't tell him/them sooner about the Trespassers; he's known since Venice and might have helped despite official (national) issues. The Russians want to believe the event was caused by the Japanese, or at least the Chinese. The Chums don't know what the American government thinks, because they no longer work for them; they've gone out on their own. Chick is bothered that Padznitnoff is communicating on the wireless without encryption.
• The event has changed the world as the Chums see it. Siberia is crossed by a network of rails , birds have vanished, huge modern cities have appeared. The sky is crowded with cargo balloons of all shapes and sizes, each tethered to its own piece of rolling-stock moving on its own track.
• News of the event radiates out. ("Was it Tchernobyl, the star of Revelation?... Was it... the general war which Europe this summer and autumn would stand at the threshold of, collapsed into a single event?")

• Dally is in Venice and is getting over Kit and working as a prostitute? Someone threatens her that he'll come for her that night, but that night never happens--it's light all night.

• In Trieste, Cyprian ("no longer entirely welcome in Venice") meets with newly-arrived cryptographer Bevis Moistleigh who's trying to decrypt messages about.. .something. All he's gotten so far is the Albanian word for disaster. They're both working for Theign; Bevis wonders why Theign has him decoding stuff from Italy, who's supposed to be an ally, and in German, because Germany isn't. Bevis wonders if the code is (or is related to) some kind of Crusade. They come out of the office into a weird light.

• Reef meets back up with Ruperta in Marienbad, but neither one much cares and she leaves. Reef moves on to touring the spas; he's claiming to have Railway Brain. The spa doctors know he's not sick but because he's a paying customer, they don't say anything. The Event happens and he understands "from the overhead voice--'Really Traverse you know you must abandon this farcical existence, rededicate yourself to real-world issues such as family vendetta, which though frowned upon by the truly virtuous represents even so a more productive use of your own precious time on Earth than the aimless quest to get one's ashes hauled...'"

• Yashmeen is in Vienna, working in a dress shop; Noellyn walks in. They're out to dinner (after sex) and it's not getting dark.

• "It went on for a month.... As nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded... most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility, and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day."

(p. 805)