Where We're At: Part 4.6: Against the Day

Padzhitnoff and the Bolsha'ia Igra

• The morning of 30 June 1908, there's a "heavenwide blast of light." For miles around, tree trunks are bleached white. There was a huge sound, as well as light and heat.
• Padzhitnoff, of the Bolsha'ia Igra, has been spying for the Russian secret service (Okhrana).
• It's a time of pogroms and terror and blood; God has abandoned Russia.
• Padzitnoff instructs Ofitser Nauchny Gerasimoff to investigate the event--he's been instructed, in turn, by Okhrana, who believes that it may have been man-made and wants to know the weapons implications.
• Other crew members are Gennady, Pavel Sergeievitch, Bezumyoff.
• They speculate that the event was so intense that the expected crater got displaced in time rather than space. So there could be a hole in the earth no one can see. Maybe it was an artifact of repeated visits from the future. Padzitnoff wonders whether it was a test of some new missile gone awry and therefore never to be admitted actually happened.
• Meanwhile, Kit and Prance: Suddenly everything turned red, then orange as the explosion arrived. It's like when they passed through the Prophet's Gate? Kit thinks whatever it is is by Vanavara; Prance's remit was political, which he believes this isn't.
• And then the drums began, like thunder or like whatever it was that happened.
• Prance is being mistaken for a Japanese spy and is being shot at.
• Kit wonders whether the event was caused by the discharge (intentional or un) of the Quaternion weapon he'd turned over to Umeki Tsurigane.
• Stuff from the Tierra Del Fuego, directly opposite Siberia on the globe, is showing up in Siberia.
• Reports are made of a mysterious figure walking through the aftermath. Maybe it's Magyakan, who hasn't been seen since the event.
• And gradually the event receded and normalcy returned.
• White reindeer Ssagan talks to Kit and convinces his (own) herders that Kit needs him as a guide. He brings them to Tuva, on the border of Mongolia, and leaves. The Tuvan throat singers are in two states at once, like a shaman. Prance believes they've arrived at the heart of the earth--which Kit says would ordinarily have been the reason for the journey, but since the event, who knows? Are Auberon and all still even there?
• Prance detects the Inconvenience above them and is invited onboard the ship.

Kit

• Meanwhile, Kit is with a band of brodyagi, former hard-labor convicts.
• Kit comes upon the trailway line that's to link the Trans-Siberian and the Taklamakan.
• Kit comes upon an exploring party that includes Fleetwood Vibe (looking for the Tuva-to-Taklamakan railway which may or may not exist; it may be what Kit's been seeing), who tells him that Scarsdale's gone mad as a result of something that happened in Venice. Colfax has left the nest and is pitching professionally.
• Or is Fleetwood looking for Shambhala? Kit says he may have been there--Tannu Tuva. Fleetwood sensed other hidden cities that are grouped around the 30 June event site near Krasnoyarsk.
• Fleetwood dreams of the fallen thing that the Voromance Expedition had. And Kit's gone.
  

(page 792.)

Where we're at: Parts 2.1-2.4: Iceland Spar

How is it that everything made so very much sense at the end of part 1 and suddenly within the first 30 pages of part 2 everything's gone awry for me and nothing makes sense and I can't figure out what's going on? (It's Pynchon, that's how.)

Going back to summarize makes it all make sense to me.

So. We have:

• IGLOO (Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation), a radiational clearinghouse or intelligence center--they're offstage.
  
• The Tovarishchi Slutchainyi, like the Chums in Russia, led by Igor Padzhitnoff--they promote mischief, and Padzhitnoff drops cinderblocks on his victims. Ship is the Bol'shaia Igra. Padzhitnoff talks about some animal or thing that is so scary and so dangerous as to be nameless.
  
• The Voromance Expedition.
  
• Leader is Dr. Alden Voromance.
• Ship (schooner) is the Etienne-Louis Malus.
  
• The Chums have been instructed (at the end of part 1) to find the Voromance Expedition and convince them to give up their expedition and therefore are chasing (trying to catch up to) the Malus. The Malus is carrying what they believe to be a meteorite (which "harbor[ed] not merely a consciousness but an ancient purpose as well, and a plan for carrying it out") which is the problem.
• Meeting with Voromance at an Iceland hotel: Dr. V. Ganesh Rao, a Quarternionist ISO a gateway to the Ulterior; Dodge Flannellette, an American ISO practical uses for any discoveries. Also Dr. Templeton Blope, Otto Ghloix, Hastings Froyle.
  
• Fleetwood Vibe, son of Scarsdale, is nominally present at the Voromance Expedition meeting to record and document the proceedings; he's been instructed by Scarsdale to be looking for land for railroads. (Scarsdale's competition, [railroad tycoon E.H.] Harriman, is buying up land for what may be a trans-Bering Strait rail link.)
• Scarsdale Vibe is financing the Voromance Expedition.
  
• Constance Penhallow and her grandson, Hunter (who paints), in Iceland(?). Hunter stows away on the Malus and leaves with the Voromance Expedition.
• Kit Traverse, at Yale, finally meets his benefactor, Scarsdale Vibe. Vibe tries to name Kit as his heir; Kit declines because he knows (or doesn't really know) where the money came from.
  
• We meet more Vibes: Sons Colfax (Kit's roommate, a jock; Scarsdale finds him disappointingly obedient), Cragmont (offstage; ran off with a trapeze girl); Fleetwood, whom we've met. Vibe cousin is Dittany (female), who sleeps with Kit. Scarsdale's wife is Edwarda (Eddie), who lives in the Village next door to Scarsdale's dilletante brother, R. Wilshire Vibe; both are active in the NYC theater scene.
  
• In Africa, in flashback, Yitzhak Zilberfeld, a Zionist looking for land for a Jewish homeland, meets Fleetwood.
  

The Chums catch Voromance once, fail to convince him to turn back. They're chasing him again to prevent the Malus from reaching "the city" which may be New York City. They don't(?) make it in time, and the Malus's cargo causes a 9/11-type catastrophe.

A local Icelandic food is Meat Olaf.

Several bits about South Africa and treatment of the natives (and gold, and diamonds). As a more-developed country, we build and develop in lesser-developed countries to demonstrate to the natives that our machinery--i.e., our country-- is vastly more powerful than the natives are and can kill them. Is this the same setting that shows up in a V episode and in retrospect in Gravity's Rainbow? (And if it is, can wresting bears in Vienna be far behind?)

Odd that Scarsdale has a son Fleetwood and no other offspring along the lines of Bronxville or Mount Vernon West.

This takes us to page 170.