Where We're At: Part 4.15: Against the Day

Reef, Yashmeen, Cyprian

• Reef, Yashmeen, and Cyprian are following the tourist casino circuit and end up at the Anarchist spa , Yz-les-Bains."It might have reminded Reef of a mining camp early in the history of a silver strike, except that these solemn young folks carried with them an austerity, a penultimacy before some unstated future, a Single Idea, whose power everything else ran off of. Here it was not silver or gold but something else. Reef could not quite see what it was." Ratty's there, and so are people Reef recognizes from the tunnels and (different) people Yashmeen recognizes from London/the TWIT. Cyprian's people killing Theign felt like release for a lot of operatives, including Ratty (now calling himself Reg); he's quit. The group is working toward "[t]he replacement of governments by other, more practical arrangements." There are many former TWIT people here--betrayed by TWIT.
• Ratty tells them that they, the Anarchists, have received a map (in code) of the Balkan Peninsula (where Austrians, generally, are profiting off people who've lived, worked, and died there for centuries). It shows, coded, plans for gas attacks?
  
• Coombs de Bottle is at Yz-les-Bains as well. The rate of self-inflicted bombing casualties among Anarchists is high and he wants to instruct them in basic bomb safety (he initially tried this while he was still working at the War Office; he was fired).
• The map ultimately came from Renfrew, via former students.
• If a general European war happens, the Anarchists will be the ultimate losers as the war provides reason for governments to further centralize in self-preservation--that's what war does--centralized government is arranged to facilitate war, not peace.
• There's Renfrew and Werfner's Interdikt field again, running across the Peninsula, waiting to be triggered. Yashmeen, pregnant and concerned for the future, wants to go disarm it. Cyprian had vowed never to return to the Balkans ("'Of the earth were alive, with a a planet- shaped consciousness, then the 'Balkan Peninsula' might easily map on to whatever in this consciousness most darkly wishes for its own destruction'") but Ratty's convincing him that he's their best bet. Besides, Cyprian's been looking or heading for some bigger purpose since meeting Danilo's cousin Vesna--real, not Danilo's hopeful hallucination-- in Serbia.
• Professor Sleepcoat is researching why the Lydian mode (F to B natural, rather than B flat) in missing in Balkan church and folk music. He's also looking into Pythagoreans. Since 1900 there have been song-gatherers all over Europe "as if somehow the work had to be done quickly, before each people's heritage of song was somehow lost for good." They'll travel as song-gatherers.
  
• This is Yashmeen's quest for transcendence.
• They meet Professor Sleepcoat and his party at Sofia and the whole group sets out.
• Reef, Yashmeen, and Cyprian's main task is to locate and disable the Interdikt line. The countryside is full of misdirection and showing the map makes townspeople shut up and be wary: "'You don't look for them... if they want to, they will find you. Better if they don't find you.'"
• They randomly run into Gabrovo Slim, whose life Cyprian saved. Gabrovo offers to house the trio at his farm--it'd be better for everyone including the baby. The farm is in the Rozovata Donlina, Valley of the Roses (which runs east-west bet ween the Balkans and the Sredna Gora), which Cyprian thinks is as good a place as any to look for the Interdikt. Cyprian asks whether anything's going on there-- there have been people there who shouldn't be, Germans, with machinery, dynamos, cables. People who've tried to see what they're doing have disappeared.
• They split from Professor Slipcoat. "Maybe that gap in the musical continuum, that silence, is a first announcement of something terrible, of which this structural silence is only an inoffensive metaphor."
• At Slim's farm is his wife Zhivka, who breeds, grows, and talks to her roses.
• Cyprian's aware that he's searching for something--not sex.
• The baby, a girl name Ljubica, is born.
• While Yashmeen's on the farm with the newborn, Cyprian and Reef are going out looking for the "Austrian minefield." Gabrovo shows them a hundred-foot tower with an antenna--it wasn't there before. Reef recognizes it as a Tesla rig (radio).
• A crowd of motorcyclists show up at the antenna house--they're Theign's elite shadowing unit, RUSH, including Mihaly Vamos, who's worked closely with Cyprian in Venice. Vamos tells Cyprian that they owe him for getting rid of Theign. He explains that the locals call the Interdikt the Zabraneno; whoever installed it is gone, and it no longer belongs to anyone--the Germans and Austrians disavow it, the locals are terrified of it, the Turks check it monthly, and the Brits, who RUSH still work for, just make sure no one triggers it by accident, because no one knows how to dismantle it, It acts as if it's alive and it protects itself. They take Cyprian and Reef to the thing; Cyprian senses something else there. The building is abandoned and holds hundreds of canisters of phosgene. But phosgene isn't especially exotic anymore--it can be made easily now by using light. The weapon is light, not gas. Super-bright light can be projected as destructive energy, causes blindness and fear. But there are no light sources there. It's another code; Cyprian is furious.
• They decide not to tell Yashmeen or Ratty's people what they've found--it's not what it was supposed to be.
• The trio leaves for Varna, on the Black Sea, to follow rich gamblers; Yashmeen assumes that like her, the men are focusing on the baby rather than Interdikt.
• They stumble on a rogue monastery on a hill; Cyprian is home. He stays.
• Reef and Yashmeen mourn Cyprian as they make their way west toward the Adriatic. They don't see much point anymore in heading toward the Black Sea. They head toward Macedonia. The sunlight is pitiless. Macedonia declares war on Turkey; as Serbs, Greeks, and Bulgarians invade, Reef, Yashmeen, and Ljubica see their choices narrow. This is what they were sent to stop, and clearly they didn't, so Yashmeen regards the mission as a failure and the assignment as over. They just want to get out.
• They're part of a vast array of refugees. They don't know what's going on further away; all Europe could be at war.
• They hear machine guns for the first time as Turkey falls and the history of Turkey in Europe ends. As they move west with the troops they find themselves wondering "if the permission they had felt when Cyprian was with them, the freedom to act extraordinarily, had come from residence in a world about to embrace its end--closer to the freedom of the suicide than that of the ungoverned spirit."
• They arrive at the lake at Ohrid. Before leaving, they send picture postcards of the war to everyone they know or knew, certain that none will arrive.
• They'll head for Albania. Cyprian had warned them to stay away and there's some sort of revolution in the north, but it's winter in the mountains and there's only one road.
• In Albania, everyone's shooting at everyone. They find themselves in a farm outbuilding; Ljubica makes friends with a dog. Later, Reef will learn that this dog is Ksenjia, Pugnax's mate; the Chums have been "invisibly but attentively" been watching over Reef and his family as they leave the Balkans; it's Ksenjia's task to steer then to safety without appearing to do so. And here are three Albanians, ready to shoot-- and there's Ramiz, whose life Reef saved in a Swiss tunnel. Ramiz's village takes them in.
• At last they reach the Adriatic; a fisherman gives them a ride to Corfu where they spend the rest of the winter and the spring. The Compassionate take steps to re-establish contact with Yashmeen. And there's Auberon--he got their postcard and figured they'd come through Corfu, so he's been waiting for them. Auberon's deserted and the English think he's dead. He's with Umeki Tsurigane, who he'd met when she was posted to the Japanese embassy at Constantinople--Kit introduced them; he'd been working there as a bartender. Auberon tells Yashmeen that Shambhala turned out to be "not a goal but an absence. Not the discovery of a place but the act of leaving the futureless place where I was." (And in the process he arrived in Constantinople and met Umeki.)

(p. 975.)

Where We're At: Part 4.11: Against the Day

Cyprian; Yashmeen; Reef

• Cyprian arrives back in Venice after having looked for (and not found) Yashmeen in Trieste. Vlado's associates tell him that Vlado is captured by Theign and has gone mad and is dangerous to everyone now; they're vowing revenge on his behalf. Cyprian agrees to look for Vlado; he feels responsible for Vlado having been caught. His new landlady tells him that Vlado is being held in the Aresenale.
• Cyprian randomly runs into Ratty McHugh (who's gotten married). Ratty tells him that Theign is always protected by bodyguards. Cyprian wants to put Bevis on him, but Bevis is off being in love with Jacintha. Ratty sends Cyprian to see the Principe Spongiatosta, who works for Ratty's organization.
  
• Theign had arranged an assignation between the Principe and Cyprian earlier but now the Principe, like Cyprian, wants to kill Theign ("who has since chosen a most dangerous path of vice and betrayal"). The Principe talks about power as an expression of collective will; the Americans are too young to understand. They discuss, theoretically, the idea that a foreign crown prince might hate Italy and when he comes to power would go to war to take back territory he believes to be his family's, and that this prince had people in Italy already; and that the problem for Italy is who could remain un-bought by the prince. Cyprian offers to ask around in Bosnia (the Usoks, Danilo's people) , where it's all about passion, not money.
• Cyprian randomly runs into Yashmeen; she's with Reef and she looks rich.
• Cyprian finds himself back to prostitution to raise money to go after Theign properly. He speaks to Danilo's cousin Zlatko. If Cyprian can corner him, they'll torture and kill him.
• Cyprian finds that Theign had been "intimate" with Austrian crown prince Franz Ferdinand. Clearly in sending Cyprian to Serbia, Theign had intended that Cyprian be killed. Theign had been playing England off Russia. As Cyprian's field skills bettered, Theign's had deteriorated "from overindulgence in various luxuries."
• Cyprian begins to follow Theign, invisibly--and then Theign sees him. Cyprian disappears as Theign goes to hurt him.
• Cyprian's dreaming of Yashmeen.
• The day of Theign's assassination arrives; the Usoks will do it. Cyprian thanks the Principe for his efforts in the matter; the Principe invites Cyprian to their masked ball the next week.
• Theign is captured by the Usoks; they take out his eyes (and kill him, we assume).
• Yashmeen sends a message to Cyprian that she wants to see him; he's jealous and emotional; she gives him Vlado's copybook. She seduces him, dominates him. They're in love, or something.
• Cyprian attends the Principe's masked ball dressed as a woman; his wig is made from Yashmeen's hair that she'd had cut to disguise herself. Reef and Yashmeen attend as well. Cyprian tries to seduce Reef at the ball; Yashmeen takes them both to a room upstairs.
• Cyprian's in love with Yashmeen; Reef's an amusement for her (and she for him). They're a threesome.
• Reef tells Cyprian about having deserted Stray and Jesse; Cyprian thinks he should tell Yashmeen.
• Reef dreams about Webb. Webb talks about small victories--his (we presume), not Reef's.
• Reef, Yashmeen, and Cyprian take off to be with the Anarchists; despite themselves they become rich gambling They randomly run into Wolfe Tone O'Rooney in Monte Carlo. Wolfe's on his way to Barcelona, which is "about to explode, as it had been doing periodically, with Anarchist unruliness." Reef wants to come along; Wolfe tells him to wait for bigger game.
• Something's changed between Yashmeen, Reef, and Cyprian.
• Yashmeen discovers that she's pregnant with Reef's child.

(p. 891)

Where We're At: Parts 4.8-4.9: Against the Day

Cyprian; Yashmeen

• When Austria announces that they're going to annex Bosnia, Theign sends Cyprian (from Vienna) there. He can bring Bevis along. He gives them a ridiculously tiny map; Bevis sees that as evidence that he knows they'll be killed before they'd need to use it.
• Yashmeen find the dress shop closed, and she's locked out of her apartment; she's being chased out of town. Cyprian thinks it's dangerous for her in Vienna and she needs to leave.
• Ratty meets Cyprian in Graz (Austria). Ratty's people think Theign is too close with the Austrians. Ratty warns Cyprian that where he's being sent is dangerous; he'd intervene if he could. He warns Cyprian that Theign is a danger to him (Cyprian). Cyprian asks Ratty to have someone watch out for Yashmeen and mentions that he's considering bringing her to Trieste; Ratty recommends Vlado Clissan (he's in Cyprian's organization and he hates Theign) there to watch over her.
• Theign tells Cyprian that his shop won't or can't help Yashmeen; the Okhrana are interested in her and they need to be friends with Russia. Cyprian reminds him that they had an agreement. In a lovers' quarrel, Theign offers to let him out of the agreement; Cyprian declines.
• Cyprian tells Yashmeen about Okhrana and Theign; Theign might know where she is. But Yashmeen, not Theign, is the love of his life. Cyprian tells her that Vlado will be in touch. They part.
• Vlado and Yashmeen meet; they become lovers; she falls in love with him; he cheats on her.
  

Cyprian, Danilo

• Cyprian is on the John of Asia, heading for Bosnia. Bevis will come onboard at Pola, Austria. Among the other travelers is Jacintha Drulov, who's probably a spy (and traveling with an older woman, Lady Quethlock, who she's claiming is her aunt). Bevis falls in lust with Jacintha. Bevis flirts with Jacintha by explaining the AppliedIdiotics school of spying; he's actually pretty clueless aside from the decryption stuff and may not understand that Jacintha's a spy.
• Cyprian and Bevis arrive in Sarajevo. It's lovely, but there is the occasional explosion.
• Danilo Ashkil is a Turkish Sephardic Jew. ("[I]n Bosnia the fez was like the veil, an emblem of submission, and wearing it one of the costs of doing business"). He speaks tons of languages and he trains spies who'll be working in the Balkans. Cyprian and Bevis are instructed to see him to safety--they'll bring him to Trieste.
• Danilo finds that Cyprian lacks a proper sense of time ("I know it is difficult for an Englishman, but try for a moment to imagine that, except in the most limited and trivial ways, history does not take place north of the forty-fifth parallel. What North Europe thinks of as its history is actually quite provincial and of limited interest." ) and posits that looking at things from a Constantinople-centered world, the war between Turkey and Russia (and the Treaty of Berlin which ended it) is the pivotal event of the 19th century.
• Danilo says he'll need a weapon for the escape; Bevis says they should see the Black Hand--which makes Cyprian wonder whether Bevis has been sent by Theign to spy on him, Cyprian, for Theign.
• Cyprian runs into Misha and Grisha. He thinks they still want to kill him for the Khautsch thing; they don't because no one would pay them for it. They tell them that Khautsch is somewhere in the area. (He'd been expected to commit suicide in Vienna and instead had shot his way out.) Blackmail, even for sexual preferences, is dead. Khautsch randomly walks into the cafe he's looking shabby. Cyprian wants to follow him (or maybe just talk to him) but Khautsch ditches Cyprian.
• Danilo tells Cyprian that the posting in Serbia is a set-up; his English employers have shopped him to the Austrians as a supposed Serbian agent; the Austrians will kill him. Cyprian should regard himself as owing England nothing anymore and should flee for his life.
• Cyprian, Bevis, and Danilo (he's feeling in danger as well) flee.
• Bevis disappears off a train within their first two weeks running and still in Bosnia. Cyprian forces Danilo to get off the train with him to search for Bevis. They pose as Serbian agents and meet Black Hand agents Batko and Senta, who tell them to stay off trains because the Austrians are looking for them.
• As autumn progresses, Cyprian and Danilo travel on foot, then, heading for the coast (?) to catch a boat out. They get shot at, and run; they're in the mountains. One night they see odd lights everywhere and a solitary figure in the distance.
• Danilo falls and breaks his leg; Cyprian uses a rifle as a splint and they make their way to a small village where Danilo can heal. Cyprian mothers Danilo; it's a different kind of desire. They make their way through Serbia and wait for the mountains to melt.
• They travel through Macedonia to Danilo's home town, Salonica. It's in Macedonia, which Greece, Russia, Turkey, and Bulgaria all want to control. (Salonica is the Greek city Thessaloniki.) The city's caught between the Austrians and the Turks. Cyprian meets Danilo's cousin, Vesna.
• Russia annexes Bosnia, with German approval.
• Danilo shows up one day with Gabrovo Slim, a Bulgarian. (The Greeks want to exterminate the Bulgarians.) He's in danger because the Greeks think he's a Macedonian revolutionary, which he is. Gabrovo and Cyprian trade clothes, and Danilo and Cyprian send Gabrovo on to Constantinople; he's to find Khalil at the spice bazaar when he gets there.
• Cyprian leaves for Trieste; Danilo, whose home is Salonica, stays.
• As Cyprian travels on ships toward Trieste, he randomly gets a train to Cetinje, Montenegro. There he meets Bevis, who had run off with Jacintha and been there all winter.

(page 848)

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)

Where We're At: Parts 4.1-4.2: Against the Day

Cyprian Latewood

• Cyprian, who we last saw mooning after Yashmeen at Cambridge, is posted to Trieste to monitor the docks and emigrant traffic to America. (Trieste and Fiume have become destinations for Austro-Hungarians who want to head west.) He's tracking who goes out, who comes back, and so forth.
• He'd previously been in Vienna, where Russians Misha and Grisha recruited him for a secret (must tell no one) something for someone they don't identify.They leave messages for him scheduling appointments at various locations; they're watching him. Finally he's summoned to an address in the Jewish quarter, where he's blindfolded, handcuffed, and caned by the Colonel. (who?) These assignations continue.
• Cyprian randomly runs into Ratty McHugh, his old school chum. He assumes that Ratty is working for some part of the British foreign service ("which Desk") and asks him to get him out of Vienna. Ratty needs to know exactly what kind of trouble Cyprian is in; he's in contact with people who might be able to help. ("[I]t isn't's if one starts off intending to live this way... 'Oh yes planning, you know, to seek a career in sodomy.'")
• Ratty arranges an appointment with Derrick Theign. Someone from Misha and Grisha is watching Ratty; Derrick plays it as a seduction.
• Derrick ditches the tails and sends him to Trieste. (Ratty wanted to return to England--but that's not safe, and actually he might be better off even further east than Trieste.) Then he (Derrick) sets up Grisha--he'll be arrested for having led Cyprian, as his ward, into an immoral life. Cyprian is told that the Colonel (an expert in south Slavic politics) knows where he's being sent (or where he is before he goes?). Derrick's shop has the Colonel arrested and Cyprian is free to go, owing (and now working for) Derrick.
• Derrick and Cyprian are moved to Venice--"It was occupied a fateful geopolitical cusp ever since it lay at the ancient intersection of Western and Eastern empires--as it still does in our day, though the empires have mutated around it".
• Derrick's a senior lieutenant in the navy, in the Naval Intelligence Department. He's nominally in Venice to look into stolen engineering documents. He explains that the Russians, meanwhile, have an aerial surveillance program going, in ships that are invisible.
• Derrick and Cyprian become lovers?
• Derrick's people lose track of Misha and Grisha.
• Derrick's actually in Venice to set up RUSH (rapid unit for shadowing and harassment), a crew of motorcyclists who will be able to maintain communication when war closes off telegraphs and trains, etc. Cyprian's to be one of the motorcyclists.
• Derrick sends Cyprian back to Vienna. Cyprian's of interest to British, Russian, (and Italian?) operatives all of whom want him dead.

• Cyprian returns to Vienna
• The Colonel was Max Khautsch.
• Cyprian meets Miskolci (a vampire who had worked for Theign; the vampires have their own telephone exchange in Buda-Pesth, which is of use to Theign); Dvindler, who Theign recruited in the baths (spas), Yzhitza, a whore. They all work or worked for Theign.
• There are many Socialist demonstrations going on.
• Cyprian randomly runs into Yashmeen. She's working at a dressmakers, apparently through some workings of TWIT. She complains that she's being watched, by someone local and also by Russians. She's scared. Cyprian says the Okhrana can be bought but the Austrians (Kundschaftsstelle) might be more of a problem.
• Cyprian takes Yashmeen's problem to Ratty McHugh.
• Ratty sees Yashmeen's problems relate to the "Shambhala Question" and thinks that Auberon should have been pulled back years ago.
• Ratty and Cyprian and Yashmeen meet. She tells them that she'd been contacted by Germans at Gottingen, and had been sent to Buda-Pesth where TWIT(?) was investigating the 'parapsychical.' (The Russians who've been following her are either part of the Anglo-Russian alliance or socialists.) Some of these Buda-Pesth people believe that they can predict the future. Ratty wants to know why they all left Vienna when Yashmeen did--did someone foresee something? Yashmeen explains that they were scared and no, it had nothing to do with Yevno/Monsieru Azeff, "notorious for blowing up Romanoffs whilst shopping his comrades". Yashmeen doesn't know why they left; apparently whatever they brought her to Buda-Pesth (where Mme. Eskimoff, Swome, agent Lajos Halasz, the Cohen, and others had been bickering) to do, it became clear that she couldn't.
• Cyprian returns to Venice and asks Theign to help Yashmeen.

page 723.

Where We're At: Parts 3.4-3.5: Bilocations

Deuce and Lake

• Return to his hometown, Egypt, Illinois. His sister Hope and her husband Levi are there. Deuce feels trapped.
• Since they got married Deuce no longer feels alone. Guilt re Webb eats him; he keeps finding ways (and things for which) to beg Lake's forgiveness; he doesn't realize how little it matters any more to Lake. Lake knows he killed Webb but hasn't acknowledged knowing to Deuce. She goads him; he claims he was just hired help: "They would've hired anybody" but can't quite talk about it.
• Deuce is afraid of ghosts and is waiting for Webb to find him.
• "Back in the mountains, right up till the day the Owners turned and came after him, he had felt not so much working on one side of the Law or the other as protected from the choice itself." (p 476)
• They arrive in Wall o'Death, Missouri, built around remains of a carnival inspired by the Chicago Expo. Only the Wall of Death itself remains intact; it's visited by motorcycling pilgrims. The sheriff, Eugene Boilster, takes them for an expected deputy peace officer and his wife; they take the role and the job.
• Happy La Foam is the local pharmacist.
• As deputy, Deuce is not so much looking after day to day stuff as protection against some some abstract emergency.
• The telegraph brings news from Mexico, reported by officer C. Marin, that Sloat Fresno has been killed and the killer escaped.
  
• Deuce realizes someone might be after him, too. He runs off to Texas to take revenge..
• Tace Boilster, wife of the sheriff, is Lake's friend. Lake tells Tace the whole story.
• Lake dreams about Mayva.
• A week or so later Deuce returns; he never came close to finding Frank.
• They finally discuss Webb when it's clear that he knows that she knows. He begs her for forgiveness. This is power for her.

Neville and Nigel, and Yashmeen

• Neville and Nigel are at Cambridge and are lusting for Yashmeen Halfcourt. She's interested in Cyprian Latewood, scion of the patent wallpaper Latewoods, who they know to be gay.They've spied on Yasmeen and her girlfriends swimming nude.
• Cyprian Latewood and his friend Reginald "Ratty" McHugh ("tyring without notable success to mope themselves back into the lilies-and-lassitude humour of the '90s" [p. 491])--Cyprian thinks he's in love with Yashmeen; Ratty claims she's a lesbian.
• Yashmeen's friends are Lorelei, Noellyn, and Faun. They call her Pinky.
• Ratty introduces Cyprian to Professor Renfrew. Renfrew is keeping dossiers on everyone. He calls his room with file cabinets full of dossiers his Map of the World. Ratty is one of Renfrew's favorites and while he has a louche reputation, he's involved with his work. Cyprian has noticed that Renfrew pays particular attention to Yashmeen.
• Term ends, Yashmeen returns to London. She's becoming impatient with TWIT's "protection" which amounts to surveillance. Lew Basnight is around but otherwise involved professionally. She studies Gottingen professor Riemann's Zeta function.
• Neville and Nigel develop an opium habit. Cyprian takes off for Berlin for vacation.
• Fall term. (Cyprian is getting religion--Christ conquered death.)
• Yashmeen remains obsessed with Riemann's Zeta function.She dumps Cyprian (?) to take off for Gottingen?.
• Renfrew, when he learns that Yashmeen is off to Gottingen, tries to get her to seduce Werfner? Spy on him? Distract him? He sends her a Snazzbury's Silent Frock, which doesn't rustle like normal dresses do. With the dress is a note that her appointment has been made and she's to wear the dress and bring her friends. The friends get fitted for frocks, as well.
• The Silent Frocks have military implications and are being bought up.
• Yashmeen daydreams about the Riemann problem and hits on the beginnings of a roulette system which will later make her rich.

page 504.