Where We're At: Parts 4.16-4.17: Against the Day

Stray, Ewball, Mayva

• Stray and Ewball are still together but they don't remember why anymore. Stray's got her own network of medical supplies, doctors, union hospitals, pharmacists, and she's getting food and medicine to where they're needed. She never realized that Ewball's motivation was just that he liked getting into trouble.
• Ewball decides to bring Stray to meet his family, who he hasn't seen in years, in Denver. Ewball's been using rare, incredibly valuable stamps (link) on this letters home.
• Mayva's working as the Ousts' housekeeper.
• Stray and Mayva bond again. Mayva's mellowed; she's mostly pretty happy.
• "[H]ow inevitable, right from the minute the first easterners showed up, would be the betrayal of everyday life out here, so hard-won, into the suburban penance the newcomers had long acceded to."

Frank

• Frank has remained in Chihuahua even though the US government has warned all Americans to leave Mexico because of the revolution. He ends up fighting with an irregular unit on behalf of Pascual Orozco, in revolt against both the government and the Madero Revolution. They're winning battles and heading for Jimenez.
• The land around Jimenez is famous for its meteorites. Frank recalls the piece of Iceland Spar from El Espinero that he used to see Sloat Fresno.
• Frank helps his insurgents create a macquina loca-- a train loaded with dynamite and sent at high speed at the enemy. Just before he jumps from the lit-dynamite train, he wonders if this isn't the path that El Espinero foretold for him. But ultimately his side is losing: the other side has cannons; his does not. He realizes he has no real reason to be where he is, and leaves for Mexico City.
• In Mexico City, Frank runs into Gunther, who's working in Oaxaca but stuck in the City because of the revolution. Gunther offers Frank a job mechanizing and maintaining the machines for his coffee plantation; Frank can train his crew. Besides, Gunther doesn't trust his foreman, and he really needs the help.
• Frank sees the Monument to National Independence and recognizes the face of the angel. (It's Dally, we assume.)
• Frank and Gunther return to Gunther's plantation.
• In town, Melpomene tells Frank about cucuji, giant luminous beetles that the Indian women tame and name. These bearers of light are souls--Melpomene introduces Frank to his own, and Frank realizes that he's seeing the soul of everyone who's ever passed through his life. There's something here about light as indivisible and telepathy-- Melpomene and other Indians communicate instantaneously.
• Frank has a vision that takes him back to his earlier vision with El Espinero. It takes him under a ceremonial arch into violence; he sees the Capital of Huerta coup. In real life, Frank's side has now definitely lost; Frank leaves Mexico rather than find out if someone's out to kill him.
• Frank arrives in Denver and runs into Doc (Willis) Turnstone, who's married to Wren Provenance. Wren tells him that Turnstone also knows Stray--she's helping the coal strikers in the tent city outside Walsenburg. Frank heads there; Turnstone tells him that Ewball should be there as well.
• Frank and Ewball meet; Ewball apologizes for messing with Stray, who Frank's been interested in forever. "But now she's all yours, pardner.....She always was." And he tells Frank where Mayva is. They travel to the Walsenburg tent city.

Where We're At: Parts 3.13-3.15: Bilocations

Kit amd Yashmeen

• Kit's credit line from Scarsdale Vibe has been cut off. ("'You have heard from them?' Had been all along, Kit realized--just wasn't listening.") Why had Scarsdale Vibe been so eager to let him go to Gottingen, anyway?
• Otzovists, god-builders, are all over the university. "A new subset of heretics, this time against Lenin and his Bolshevists... focused on what they call 'the fourth dimension.'" They think Yashmeen knows how to travel in the fourth dimension. Meanwhile, TWIT wants Yashmeen back to London.
  
• Actually, Yashmeen can travel in time--can step outside time.
• Kit is worried that Scarsdale Vibe's people will be trying to kill him--whatever the payoff or deal was, it's ended. They see him as a threat or maybe have guessed how much he knows.
• Yashmeen feels at risk as well, because of the Russian revolution.
• Yashmeen offers to see whether TWIT would be interested in employing Kit.
• Foley Walker is in Gottingen; Kit sees him. Foley appears, as an apparition, in Kit's room at night and explains that Kit knew things and didn't tell the Vibe Corp--Kit was dishonest. Now Foley's there because Scarsdale is curious how someone would react to a philanthropy in reverse.
• After a chloral hydrate party, Foley finds Kit; Humfried, who had previously overdosed and was being brought to the hospital, hides Kit by getting him admitted to the hospital ("'Achtung, Schwester! Here another dope-fiend is!'") and then leaves.
• Foley leaves town.
• Dr. Will Dingkopf is one of the doctors at the (mental) hospital. He's obsessed by Jews. (Again, "what kind of name is ___".)
• Ich bin ein Berliner wordplay-- a patient thinks he's a jelly donut. Turns out Yashmeen sent him, he's not nuts--he's Lionel Swome, TWIT travel coordinator, and this is the only way she could find to get in contact with Kit. Kit tries to escape and ends up sleeping by a fence. Yashmeen intervenes to get him released.
• Yashmeen believes that her father, Colonel Auberon Halfcourt, is involved with the efforts to discover Shambhala.
• Kit believes that for his own safety he needs to be out of Gottingen.
• TWIT is sending Kit and Yashmeen to elope in Switzerland (she's in danger in Gottingen as well). They're to behave as newlyweds until they split up and head in different directions--Kit, eastward toward Inner Asia and Shambhala.
• Sidney Reilly, Chong, recommended Kit to TWIT.
• Kit's to meet with Auberon Halfcourt in Kashgar and get his report on what happened in Shambhala and report back to TWIT.
• "As for what lies beneath those sands, you've got your choice--either Shambhala, as close to the Heavenly City as Earth has known, or Baku and Johannesburg all over again, unexplored reserves of gold, oil, Plutonian wealth, and the prospect of creating yet another subhuman class of workers to extract it."
• Gunther, Yashmeen's boyfriend, is being sent to one of his family's coffee plantations in Mexico.

p. 636

Frank

• Frank had intended to get back to chasing down Deuce but instead is again running arms in Tampico, Mexico with Ewball Oust. By chance they meet Gunther. Gunther tells Frank that Scarsdale Vibe has cut off Kit's funding and that Vibe and his henchmen are after Kit, who's fled Gottingen.
• Ewball runs into an old acquaintance, then called Steve now called Ramon, who is down on his luck and willing to do "anything that's too crazy or dangerous" and invites Ewball, Frank, and Gunther to a party as his villa that evening. All the gringo attendees at the party are ready to flee Mexico at a moment's notice.
• Frank asks Gunther for help wrt a shipment of semiautomatic weapons intended for the Mexican army; Gunther points him toward Eusenebio Gomez, who is acting as the sub-agent.
• Gomez turns out to be Wolfe Tone O'Rooney, the Irish revolutionary who knew Reef. Frank tells Wolfe that he killed Sloat. They talk about Deuce and Frank says that he wouldn't be terribly surprised if Lake ends up killing him--"if all this time she was just playing the long game." Wolfe hits it off with Ewball, and Frank, Ewball, and Wolfe hang out.
• By chance they run into Dwayne Provecho, from jail. Dwayne ratted out Frank and Ewball when they escaped (he was a plant), and he's got money now. He offers Frank and Ewball a consignment of Krag-Jorgensens. Ewball doesn't trust Dwayne but Frank takes the chance and heads off to Juarez for the deal.
• In El Paso, Frank meets his contact for the arms deal, one E. B. Soltera--and it's Stray. She claims to be a go-between.
• Frank tells Stray he's met Wolfe, and Wolfe has seen Reef (three years ago?) in New Orleans. Reef and Stray's son Jesse is staying with her brother and SIL? sister and BIL? , Willow and Holt.
• Stray and Frank run into Hatch and a sidekick with pointy ears; Hatch threatens Stray; Ewball appears unexpectedly.
• Frank's been having dreams about Webb.

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Where We're At: Parts 3.11-3.12: Bilocations

Kit

• Is in Gottingen with fellow students Gottlob and Humfried. Yashmeen's there, too. Kit meets Yashmeen.
• Yashmeen's out to prove Riemann's Hypothesis and she's feeling overly chaperoned.
• Kit compares how people are pouring into town with a silver camp in Colorado.
• They flirt; Yashmeen tells Kit about the TWIT and the "ghostly neo-Pythagorean cult of tetralatry or worship of the number four"
• Gottlob and Humfried show up at Kit's room; trying to hide, Yashmeen opens a door that didn't exist before and finds herself at the base of the city's coordinate system -- "return to zero." This kind of thing has happened to her before.
• Yashmeen explains to Kit that the political crisis in Europe maps into the crisis in (various school of) mathematics.
• The (1905) Russian Revolution is going on, and Russians are fleeing to all over Europe.
• Yashmeen is originally Russian; she was sold into slavery following a raid, and she sees her birth family in dreams.
• Yashmeen takes up with Gunther von Quassel.
• Gunther finds Yashmeen in Kit's room (with Humfried, as well) and challenges Kit to a duel. They end up talking math instead.
• Among the Russians is someone Yashmeen recognizes from Cambridge -- Sid, who's calling himself Chong. Werfner notices him as well and regards him as a spy sent by Renfrew.
• Meanwhile Kit begins to frequent the Applied Mechanics institute. He's interested in aerodynamics.

Lew Basnight

• Is still in London at the TWIT.
• Police Inspector Vance Aychrome of Scotland Yard comes to see him. Lew deals his (own?) Tarot cards and finds XII, The Hanged Man (and not XV, Renfrew and Werfner). The Hanged Man is currently Lamont Replevin, an antiques dealer. He's been selling a lot of stuff found by Germans in Inner Asia. Add to that that Sands was concerned about Shambhala and the Gas Office (communication by coal gas) is concerned about Replevin as well.
• Lew gets called to the Grand Cohen's office. Nookshaft's term as Grand Cohen is almost done; he's happy to be going back to being Associate Cohen soon. He tells Lew that Replevin has come into possession of a map of Shambhala--which everyone is after. But, notes Nookshaft, the map makes no sense unless viewed through a paramorphoscope.
• Lew picks the lock at Replevin's house (where the floor is "black floor-tiles, each surrounded by silvery grouting, some composite with that soft a shine to it") and finds Replevin hanging from the ceiling like the figure on the Tarot card listening to the daily gas broadcast (Lew tries to rescue him--oops). As a cover Lew explains himself as Gus Swallowfield, insurance underwriter for Pike's Peak Life and Casualty, and tries to sell insurance to Replevin. Replevin takes Lew up to his office, and Lew sees the map of Shambhala. He photographs it (purportedly photographing other stuff).
  
• Chaos = gas.

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