Where We're At: Part 5: Rue du Depart

End: Dally, Kit; Reef, Yashmeen; Frank, Stray, Jesse; the Chums.

• Dally is in Paris. She broadcasts (once) to Merle on the radio (she doesn't exactly KNOW that he's listening)--tells him all she's done since she left Telluride. She's appearing in a Wilshire Vibe-produced operetta. Earlier (1915), she'd married Kit. They'd lived in Torino; the war had begun and they were miserable together; she ran into and gotten back together with Clive Crouchmas (never mind that he'd tried to sell her into white slavery). Kit's in Ukraine or somewhere now "off on some grand search after she didn't know what". He keeps sending letters, and sometimes sounds like he wants to come back; she's not sure she wants him.
• Earlier in Torino, Kit went to the address Mulciber had given him and got work doing aircraft aerodynamics. He'd run into people from Gottingen. He'd invited Dally to come with him flying--she said no, didn't realize how important it was at the time. Divebombing a biplane at Torino factory strikers with his friend Renzo, Kit realized that it was all political; the strike was crushed, strikers killed.
• [Remaining in earlier in Torino] Dally had randomly seen Yashmeen and Reef, with Ljubica, walk by her building; they were refugees and had come looking for Kit; Kit and Reef made up; Reef worked for the Italian army rigging cableways (against Austria).
• Colfax Vibe showed up in Torino, too.
• Kit began flying for Italy. The nosedives are like bombing in Colorado. After a fight which started about who the real enemy was, Dally had left for Paris. She sent Kit a postcard with her address when she got there.
  

• Reef, Yashmeen, and Ljubica left Torino (and Kit), sailed to America claiming to be Italian immigrants. They made their way west looking for "someplace, some deep penultimate town the capitalist/Christer gridwork hadn't got to quite yet" and in Montana ran into Frank, Stray, and Jesse who are looking for the same thing. They join up. Jesse's a bit uncomfortable; he's been calling Frank "Pa". Yashmeen becomes pregnant again (daughter Plebecula); Stray and Frank's daughter Ginger is around Ljubica's age. Yashmeen and Stray may become lovers--it's not clear.

• Dally, Paris. She randomly runs into Kit's old friend Policarpe, from Belgium. He says that peace and plenty are the illusion; they're still in Hell and have been since 1914. And there's Kit. He'd seen Vanderjuice in Lvov after the war; Vanderjuice had earlier intended to kill Scarsdale and been saved by the Chums (who would take him or Kit wherever either would want to go). One day Vanderjuice vanished. Kit left and wandered and somehow was in Shambhala; he'd been on one of their stamps; and somehow he's also in Paris.

• The Chums watch postwar Paris from the sky. The wives are still there; they all become pregnant; the ship has expanded into a whole city; there are kids, dogs, pets. The Inconvenience has become its own destination "where any wish that can be made is at least addressed, if not always granted. For every with to come true would mean that in the known Creation, good unsought and uncompensated would have evolved somehow, to become at least more accessible to us. No one aboard Inconvenience has yet observed any sign of this. They know... it is there, like an approaching rainstorm, but invisible. Soon they will see the pressure-gauge begin to fall. They will feel the turn in the wind. They will put on smoked goggles for the glory of what is coming to part the sky. They fly toward grace."

End.

Where We're At: Parts 4.12-4.13: Against the Day

Dally; Crouchmas

• Hunter and Dally arrive in London (from Venice). The Principesa had wanted to pimp Dally to some Italian nobleman and Dally doubted that Kit would return to Venice, so why stay?
• Ruperta gets Dally set up in a bedsit while Hunter returns to the family house somewhere posher. Ruperta's vaguely jealous of Dally wrt Hunter even though she's not actually interested in him.
• Ruperta introduces Dally to sculptor Arturo Naunt, who needs a new model for his AODs (angels of death) for soldiers' tombstones.
• Meanwhile, Ruperta has been trying to make Hunter doubt Dally, and has heard from TWIT about Hunter's activities, and appoints herself as an anti-muse, trying to keep his work out of the public eye. But at a Vaughan Williams concert in Gloucester Cathedral she (literally) levitates to the ceiling on the music, and gets humility or religion or something She knows she's been horrible and needs to atone for every one of her bad deeds.
• Hunter's paintings begin to show odd empty spaces, as if a person or thing is missing in the compositions. He won't tell Dally what it is that he won't show.
• Dally randomly runs into Wilshire Vibe, who's producing in London and casts her in several of his shows. She becomes a big hit, taking bigger roles and attracting all sorts of attention.
• Among Dally's new suitors is Clive Crouchmas, "into whose gravitational field Ruperta [a friend or acquaintance since childhood] had been able to steer the girl." Crouchmas has become some sort of powerful government spending expert, and since spending is intimately connected with arming, he's in touch with "noted death merchant Basil Zaharoff." Actually, it's because Zaharoff is so attracted to redheads that Crouchmas is hanging around Dally at all.
• So Dally's being kept again, like in Venice--this time by Crouchmas.
• Dally randomly meets Lew Basnight at a party; he tells her about looking for the twenty-two major arcana and tells her about number XVII, the Star. Lew is the go-between between people he won't identify (not TWIT) who want to know how well Dally knows Crouchmas-- they might be willing to pay a lot for certain information about his business dealings related to railway guarantees. Lew's presenting it as about gathering information about Turkish politics rather than a personal betrayal of Crouchmas, who's involved with both England and Germany.
• Dally snoops in Crouchmas's papers in some large, looming, invisible building; detectives Crouchmas hired see her there. He decides to shop her to a harem. (Meanwhile, Zaharoff is trying to buy some Q-named weapon from Japan which the Japanese seem to be afraid of.) Crouchmas tells Dally he needs to go to Constantinople and invites her along; Lew okays it to her but warns her that no one trusts Crouchmas.
• Lew wonders whether Dally is tarot number XVII, The Star.
  

Dally; Kit

• Clive Crouchmas decides to use Dally as a bribe rather than sell her to a harem-- he's greedy more than he's out for revenge.
• Imi and Erno, the men working for Crouchmas, have heard Dally described as having red hair. Zaharoff's girls are also redheads; and Imi and Erno confuse Dally with a Zaharoff girl and prepare, on the Orient Express, to kidnap her.
• Meanwhile, Kit is on another train heading for Buda-Pesth and ultimately Venice and sees through the train windows what's happening to Dally and goes to help her. Imi and Erno let slip that Crouchmas hired them.
• Kit and Dally flee together into Szeged. Kit's already been on the run since accidentally saving the life of the wrong man (an enemy of CUP, the Committee for Union and Progress) in Pera. (In Pera, Kit had just earlier randomly run into Viktor Mulciber, from Ostend. Mulciber tells Kit that engineers (which he believes Kit to be) are in huge demand for aircraft companies, particularly one specific company in Turin which he referred Kit to.)
• Kit and Dally fall in love again; Imi and Erno go back to Buda-Pesth.
• Kit and Dally decide that their best bet is to get to Buda-Pesth then on to Venice.
• Dally tells Kit about Crouchmas, both the relationship and his discovery of her spying.
  

(p. 918!)

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 4.4-4.5: Against the Day

Kit, Auberon

• Yashmeen writes to Auberon (and sends the letter via Kit) that TWIT is no longer acting in her interest; they're not protecting her and they're not telling her what they have planned for her. They're leaving Switzerland and about to head for Buda-Pesth where she foresees danger and sorrow. They're still after Shambhala. ("[L]ike those religious charlatans who claim direct intercourse with God, there are an increasing number at the TWIT who presume a similar intimacy with the Hidden City; and who, more disturbingly, cannot separate it from the secular politics of present-day Europe." At Gottingen, she was useful to a group of Bolsheviks; the Russia-England alliance makes her useful to British intelligence; she doesn't know why TWIT wants her. "It is as if I possessed, without my knowledge, some key to an encrypted message of great moment, which others are locked in struggle to come into control of." She wonders about who he's been serving all this time. She dreamed about him last night--he said he wasn't what she's imagining him to be. She dreams (or has visions of) The Compassionate.
• Kit travels by steamer and mostly by train (the Trans-Caspian railroad) across Russia and eventually ends up in Kashgar.
• Kit meets Auberon Halfcourt and tells him that he believes that Yashmeen's being manipulated into breaking from TWIT--which would also be why she was removed from Gottingen. Auberon is living well in Kashgar; he's neither lost nor in need of rescue.
• Auberon's Russian counterpart is Colonel Yevgeny Prokladka. His staff, all in exile from points further west, control vice in the city. Klopski runs surround movies (?); Zipyagin controls prostitution; Chiungiz is his aide. Years ago Volodya had planned to use the Bol'shaia Igra to steal a huge jade statue.
• Mushtaq reports to Auberon that the Bol'shaia Igra is over west Taklamakan, "where its mission is obvious to the lowest camel-thief." Auberon replies that they can't exactly shoot the balloon out of the sky.
• The local prophet, the Doosra, thinks it's his destiny to control all of north Eurasia; he's armed; remote outposts on the trading route are falling to him(?). So, add a local power to England, Russia, Japan, China, Germany, and Islam who all were concerned with the area.
• The Doosra's representative asks Auberon (for England) to give the city to them.
• Auberon and Prokladka commiserate that the region will belong to Islam; neither Russia nor England can fight successfully for it.
• Mustaq had left Auberon when he rescued or kidnapped Yashmeen years ago.
• Lt. Dwight Prance is a Renfrew scholar who's there to do something with the Chinese. Someone will perform in some strange tongue and mesmerize them all so that by the time anyone can act it will be too late.
• Kit and Auberon talk. Auberon can't get back west; his being in Asia isn't his own choice. Auberon sees Kit as lost, so why not use him to establish relations with the Tungus (as in Tungu reindeer dance, from the Chicago expo) living east of the Yenisei--he's not been expressly forbidden by headquarters to do so. Kit agrees to go, and Prance will go with him.
• Auberon arranges for Kit to have an audience with the Doosra; Kit's to report back.
• The Doosra speaks fluent English with a "University-nitwit" accent.
• The Doosra says that Kit should seek out his (the Doosra's) master in the north and he will answer Kit's questions; Kit should come back and relay the answers to the English and the Russians. The Doosra is sending his henchman Hassan along for the journey, as protection.
• After poring over Yashmeen's letter and feeling unworthy, Auberon takes off into the mountains somewhere and arrives weeks later in Bukhara looking for a guide to Shambhala (as have been many Germans lately).

(page 767)

Kit
I don't get this section at all.

• Kit would not understand until he saw Lake Baikal why it had been necessary to travel there "and why, in the process of reaching it, penance, madness, and misdirection are inescapable."
• (Prance doesn't go to Baikal; he stays behind in Irkutsk.)
• Hassan tells Kit that he's (Kit has) already spoken to the Doosra's prophet--and there's Baikal, "part of a supernatural order included provisionally in this lower, broken one." Kit realizes that he should have started the journey through the Tushuk Tash, the arch; Hassan, who calls it the Prophet's Gate, disappears.
• The journey had begun by heading for the Tushuk Tash. The arch/gate is continually crumbling, "shedding pieces of itself from so high up that by the time they hit the ground they'd be invisible, followed by the whizzing sound of their descent, for they fell faster than the local speed of sound."
• As Kit passes through the gate he's overwhelmed by a wave of sound, a vision. He dreams of this moment repeatedly as they journey. The last time he dreams it, a voice he should know tells him "you are released."
• Once past the gate, Kit, Prance, and Hassan travel along the silk road, one oasis to the next. "[T]his space the Gate had opened to them was less geographic than to be measured among axes of sorrow and loss."
• Hassan gathers wild-growing marijuana to use for trade.
• They (Kit and Prance; Hassan took off at Lake Baikal) arrive in Irkutsk and it looks and feels like the San Juans, a mining town, to Kit. Kit's instructions from Auberon are to see Mr. Swithin Poundstock, a British nationalist in import/export. Poundstock's minting his own coinage, using old Chinese coins and black-market-but-real coin stamps to create British gold sovereigns. He shows them a map of eastern Siberia and shows them where they'll be operating--"the three great river basins east of the Yeniusei--Upper Tunguska, Stony Tunguska, Lower Tunguska." They're populated by clans that have been at war with one another forever.The key regional figure, moreso than even the Doosra's superior, is the shaman Magyakan, who's active in the Lower Tunguska tribe (Illimpiya).
• They arrive in Yeniseisk and start looking for Magyakan.
• Prance explains that differences in the major religions are nothing compared to how the major religions align against Shamanism, everywhere. "Every state religion, including your [Kit's] own, considers it irrational and pernicious, and has taken steps to eradicate it." It's not okay with the religions for humans to "be in touch with the powerful gods hiding in the landscape, with no need of any official church to mediate it for them."
• Prance is working for some organization in Whitehall.

( p. 778)

Where We're At: Part 4.3: Against the Day

Venice.

• Foley Walker returns to Venice from Gottingen and tells Scarsdale Vibe that Kit has taken off. Why? Foley thinks it's because Kit knows Scarsdale paid for Webb to be killed. Scarsdale wants to know when Kit knew.
• Foley's feeling like Scarsdale's increased the humiliating tasks he's asking of Foley and is beginning to get irritated.
• Reef and Kit watch Scarsdale diving (and Foley supervising) in the lagoon. They've been tracking him, waiting for a clear shot. Reef wonders whether Kit will follow through--he thinks Kit's had something else on his mind since the seance. Kit thinks Reef's talking like an anarchist--Reef doesn't deny.
• Dally randomly runs into Kit and Reef (Kit introduces her to Reef); later she and Hunter Penhallow run into Reef with Ruperta and Algernon(?). Hunter and Pert are old acquaintances. Hunter arranges to have dinner with Pert at a cafe where he and Dally scrounge after rich people (not their place, at all).
• The Principessa Spongiatosta, who Dally's staying with, has been meeting with Derrick Theign and other random people. Hunter tells Dally that the Princess is at risk but Dally will be fine if she's careful.
• Kit feels that Venice is unreal and wonders whether Inner Asia will feel any realer. (Real numbers, unreal/irrational numbers.)
• Dally offers to help Kit and Reef with whatever they're doing; they're conspicuous, she's not. If she doesn't know who they should be dealing with, she knows someone who does. Finally Kit tells her that Scarsdale Vibe killed Webb, and they're in Venice to kill Scarsdale Vibe. Dally pretty much knew this when she offered to help. Kit explains that moreover, something must have gone wrong in the States, because now Vibe's people are after him--that's why he left Germany. Kit's plan is to do the deed, then head for Inner Asia. Dally's kind of in love with him and feels like he's going to abandon her again--he says he'll come back but can't promise when. It also feels to Dally like Merle's craziness.
• Ruperta leaves for Marienbad; Hunter goes along for part of the ride.
• With Hunter gone, Dally joins forces with Kit and Reef. Vibe needs to be shot at close range so no one else gets hurt; Reef thinks Kit should do it, Kit thinks he'd be at risk from Scarsdale. Dally's getting impatient with the discussion and says that they're not the only ones looking to get to Vibe: "You're in Anarchist country, buckaroo. Sooner or later over here, they're bound to run out of royalty to shoot at and start lookin for more of the riffraff--politicians, captions of industry, so forth. And that's a list Scarsdale Vibe has been on for some time." Reef asks if there's really something already being planned.
• Dally takes them to meet Andrea Tacredi, the artist and anarchist. He's upset because Vibe is buying up Venetian art, turning passion into commerce. He's been talking anarchism and assassination.
• The Principessa takes Dally, who's mooning over Kit, to a big party where Scarsdale Vibe is also a guest. Reef and Kit are outside doing reconnaissance. Reef sees that Dally is in love with Kit; Kit doesn't. There's a huge storm and the city is flooded. A gunshot is heard as Vibe and Foley arrive. Tancredi is in the street looking out of place; he's carrying what he'd described as an infernal machine that would bring down Vibe; police or bodyguards hired by Vibe shoot and kill Tancredi. Vibe eggs on the police as they kick at the corpse. He sees Kit.
• Dally says that someone sold out Tancredi; she's mourning him. Kit has to leave (Venice and Dahlia because Vibe saw him). He promises to come back.
• The moment that Vibe saw Kit was the moment Kit realized he had no "future" (in the material success sense). He's running now not for anything or anyone (God, Yashmeen, Vectorism) but to save his own life.
• Reef blames Kit for not killing Vibe at the party. He walks away "soon absorbed into a mobility of hundreds of separate futures, whose destiny could not be told in any but a statistical way. And that was that."
• Kit leaves on a steamer for Trieste.

p. 747.

Where We're At: Parts 3.16-3.17: Bilocations

Reef

• Reef and Flaco are working as tunnel dynamiters in Europe. The Austrian Alps are hot; Austria wants to be able to move troops south into Italy as it sees fit. There's also a big tunnel in progress between Brigue, Switzerland, and Domodossola, Italy. They' re running into problems there because there are hot springs where the tunnels should go.
• The tunnel crews also include Nikos, Fulvio, Gerhardt, the opera singer, the Albanian (Ramiz), some of whom are "part-time Anarchists interested in furthering their chemical education."
• Ramiz is on the run from an Albanian family revenge situation. There's talk about how revenge works there versus the (American) West.
• Fulvio earlier met up with a Tatzelwurm--a snake with paws and sharp teeth; they live in the tunnels in Europe. Is the Tatzelwurm hell? Or are the dynamiters hell for the owners?
• Ruperta Chirpingdon-Groin happens to visit as part of the Euro-spa circuit. She's got Rodolfo as an (kept?) escort. Reef's sleeping with her again; she mentions that Scarsdale Vibe is buying up Renaissance art. He (Vibe) headed for Venice; Ruperta is as well.
• Philippe is involved when Reef saves Ramiz from a Tatzelwurm; Ramiz now is obligated, by Albanian tradition, to repay Reef. There's something here about reflections, maybe? Light?
• Reef leaves for Venice with Roberta. On the train going there, he has a visitation (or a vision) he still needs to avenge Webb; he needs to take out Scarsdale Vibe.

Kit and Yashmeen--and Reef

• Kit and Yashmeen take the train to Switzerland
• Yashmeen talks about the stranniki--underground men who felt a holy mission "ambassadors from some mysterious country very far away, unable to return because the way back was hidden." They're forced to wander the world seeking... something. She's one of them now--she had to leave Gottingen, didn't leave by choice. She's been expelled from the garden. She won't tell Kit why.
• Yashmeen reconnects with the TWIT at a sanatorium at Lago Maggiore; Kit tags along. And whoa, there's Reef. Reef: "[b]e content that you held out longer'n me, at least." Kit: "Just stupid. Just slow. Can't believe how long it took me to see."
• (Has Ruperta trained her spaniel, Moufette, to provide intimate services [to Ruperta]? Or did Reef just imagine it?)
• Kit introduces Reef to Yashmeen.
• Kit moves into the sanatorium where Reef and Ruperta are.
• Reef tells Kit that Scarsdale Vibe is heading for Venice. They should kill him?
• Madame Eskimoff shows up; she holds a seance and they talk to Webb, maybe. Reef calls it a con. She suggests that he try being the medium; he (with hanger-on Algie as the fourth) channels Webb: "I sold my anger too cheap." But what he doesn't say is that they should kill Scarsdale Vibe because Vibe had hired his (Webb's) killers. Reef doesn't know who he is any more; how did he sell out when in New Orleans he chose anarchism?
  
• Kit dreams of Webb. He'd turned against Webb when he accepted Vibe's money for school. Vectors never would have been Kit's salvation. He needs payback.
• Kit tells Yashmeen he wants to go to Venice; can she square it with Lionel Swome? Yashmeen says that getting her out of Gottingen was the main objective; Kit was convenient but isn't indebted. TWIT believes that Yashmeen owes her continued existence to them; they're taking her to Vienna and the Buda-Pesth, not her choice, for some sort of psychical research thing--she's to be the subject. He can write her care of her school pal Noellyn Fanshawe, who will forward letters.

(p. 677)

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.

page 614.

Where We're At: Parts 3.8-3.9: Bilocations

The Chums

• Are in Brussels for the annual memorial service for General Boulanger; they have ground leave at Ostend, where they run into the Quaternionists-in-exile at the Grand Hotel de la Nouvelle Digue. (They last saw Quaternionists at Candlebrow, which was one of the Quaternionists few safe harbors during the Quaternion Wars.)
• Most people no longer really see the Inconvenience; it's becoming invisible.
• De Decker's shop has an electromagnetic monitoring station that's been picking up messages intended for the Inconvenience's Tesla rig (a power generator). They're conflating these messages with rumors of a Quaternist weapon which Piet Woevre has been obsessed by.
• The Chums are getting intimidated by Pugnax's increasing ferocity; only Miles really communicates with him anymore.
• During the undersand voyage, Miles was taken by a vision of the holy city, separated from them only by time, a separation which was becoming increasingly frail.
• Miles sees one of the Trespassers--Ryder Thorn, who was also at Candlebrow-- on the ground is Ostend. Ryder arranges to meet with Miles and they take off on bicycles for Ypres (Flanders). Ryder tells Miles that the Trespassers know what will happen here ten years from now--it's his task to find out what Miles's people know. Miles claims to be only a cook for a bunch of balloonists--says he knows nothing. The Trespassers know that Miles was spying on them at Candlebrow; Miles denies it . Ryder explains that the Trespassers have the answer for time (and any study of time is ultimately about the human fear of mortality): "This world you take to be 'the' world will die, and descend into Hell, and all history after that will belong properly to the history of Hell...Flanders will be the mass grave of History... And that is not the most perverse part of it. They will all embrace death. Passionately." "The Flemish." "The world."
• The Trespassers come from the future and have no choice but to come here. Time was (will be) ripped open here and they can't cross back.
• Miles realizes that there's no technical knowhow behind the Trespassers' presence in his world-- it was a chance blundering on a shortcut enabled by whatever was going to happen at Flanders.
• Miles explains to the Chums that the Trespassers aren't in fact immortal and can't provide immortality or eternal youth as they promise.

page 556. More than halfway through.

Kit

• Arms tycoon Viktor Mulciber has been sent by Basil Zaharoff to Ostend to ask about the Quaternioneers (including Barry Nebulay, Dr. V. Ganesh Rao, Umeki Tsurigane, and Root; Kit has tagged along with Umeki) about the Qweapon. (Huh?) The weapon does something with time ("the fulfiller of the Trinity" [which could just mean the standard three dimensions]). Time is "the one force no one knows how to defeat, resist, or reverse. It kills all forms of life sooner or later." (Mulciber) Other arms dealers find the Quaternists as well.
• Piet Woevre has beaten them all, bought from Edoard Gevaert--what he bought is "something in a sleek leather case, shaped exquisitely by northern Italian maskmakers to the exact facets of the shape within, a perfectly tailored black skin, a deployment of light among a careful clutter of angles, a hundred blurry highlights." Woevre wants to destroy the world.
• Kit's in love (or lust) with Umeki. They're still in Ostend. So is Pleiade Lafrisee. Kit and Umeki run into Pleiade with Woevre. Kit thinks that Woevre is capable of killing via mayonnaise.
• De Decker sends operatives, including Woevre, to the hotel to make mischief. Kit sees Woevre, assumes he's the target, and takes off. Pino and Rocco run into him and offer him a ride to Bruges on their torpedo. They get lost in the canals and suddenly there's Woevre shooting at Kit; Pino and Rocco are gone. Woevre's not sure why he's shooting--why not?
• Woevre's been vaguely aware of the Inconvenience and he's seen the Chums on land. He knows he needs to take down the ship. He takes out the mysterious weapon he bought and tries to shoot... and sees a strange light and hears the voices of everyone he's ever killed. He ends up on his back; Kit helps him up; Woevre wants nothing more to do with whatever this weapon is and gives it to Kit. Woevre takes off and Kit hears shots.
• Umeki has been fooling with the weapon. It's double refracting. (Any light entering becomes a pair of rays, one ordinary, one extraordinary.) Kit has a dream about the weapon's power and knows he has to give it to Umeki. He does; she goes back to Japan.

page 567.

Where We're At: Parts 3.6-3.7: Bilocations

Dally and Erlys (and Kit Traverse)

• Katie has an audition in NYC that Wilshire Vibe arranged.
• Dally and Erlys and the Zombini family are in first class on the steamship Stupendica heading toward Europe.
• Erlys recounts meeting Merle Rideout on her way home from burying her ne'er-do-well husband, Bert Snidell, broke and visibly pregnant. This is in Cleveland. Merle takes her in. They travel to keep ahead of winter; Merle does odd jobs. When Erlys took off with Luca Zombini, she was planning to come back for Dally, but Merle just took off again. Luca was the first real passion of Erlys's life.
• Luca reminds Dally of Merle.
• Also on the ship is Kit, who Dally met at the Wilshire Vibe party. He's on his way to Germany to study math; he's interested in Dally.
• Kit's travelling first class but hanging out in fourth where he meets the other mathematician onboard, Root Tubsmith, heading for the University of Berlin to study with Fuchs, Schwarz, and Frobenius. Root specializes in fourth-dimensional geometry (Quarternions, which isn't taught at Yale) and studied under Manning at Brown.
• Dally tells Kit she knew Frank in Colorado. Dally and Kit flirt. Dally knows that Frank and Reef had been looking for someone and someone was looking for Frank. Kit tells her that his brothers don't realize that he, Kit, is in it too (i.e., he's being bankrolled by Scarsdale Vibe).
• Dally's half-sister Bria is interested in Kit's friend Root.
• The Stupendica is really two ships in one. She's also the battleship Emperor Maximilian (Austrian). Root has been poking around and found shell-rooms-to-be, powder magazines, spaces for gun turrets, torpedos, and so forth.
• Belowdecks, Kit and Root meet seamen including a stoker, O.I.C. Bodine.
• The ship receives a telegraph--British and German battle groups are engaged off the Moroccan coast and a state of general European war should be assumed--and everything changes. The ship is transformed into an Austro-Hungarian battleship. (Luca: "[i]t's the old Liner-to-Battleship effect.")
• Kit tries to leave belowdecks and is forced into working to load coal into boilers.The Chief Stoker is Oberhauptheitzer. They're off the coast of Morocco. Either the passenger ship was actually split away from the battleship or the passengers are hidden and Kit can't see them.
• They're initially supposed to go to Tangier (Morocco), controlled by local warlord Mulai Ahmed er-Raisuli but instead the captain heads for Agadir, "the Queen of the Iron Coast" (also in Morocco) because the passengers included a bunch of sequestered Germans who are being sent to "colonize" Morocco ("shadow-colonials on call") so that Germany can legitimize interest in Morocco.
• They land in Agadir; civilians, including Kit, are taken ashore and the battleship leaves.
• Kit ends up crewing on a steam trawler out of Ostend (Belgium), the Formalhaut. They travel back to Belgium and Kit leaves the ship.
• (Discussion of local belief that [Biblical] Jonah was bilocated, Straits of Gibraltar acting as metaphysical juncture point between two worlds.)
• The Zombinis remain on the Stupendica. Dally worries that Kit has disappeared. The ship lands at Trieste (Austria, at the time), its destination and they disembark.

Kit

• Kit lands in Ostend and tries to figure out how he's going to get to Gottingen.
• In a bar, he runs into an unruly band of Quaternions who seem to recognize him. He meets Barry Nebulay from Dublin. It's a Quaternion convention; Quaternions are feeling irrelevant (they lost out in electromagnetism to vectorists?). Kit takes up with the Quaternions, hoping to make enough at the casino to pay for travel to Gottingen.
• Down the hall from the Quaternions are a cell of Belgian nihilists--Eugenie, Fatou, Denis, and Policarpe-- called Young Congo. The Belgian and French intelligence communities are paying attention to them. They feel a moral obligation--some call it an obsession--to assassinate King Leopold of Belgium.
• Young Congo recently joined forces with Italian naval renegades Rocco and Pino, who have stolen plans for a low-speed manned torpedo (the Siluro Dirigible a Lenta Corsa), which they're building (they=Rocco and Pino? Rocco and Pino and Young Congo?) in order to attack King Leopold's royal yacht. This torpedo can target only stationary objects it can physically touch.
• Barry Nebulay introduces Kit to beautiful (and brilliant) female Quaternion UmekiTsurigane.
• Root Tubsmith shows up.
• In the casino, Kit meets Pleiade Lafrisee. The mathematicians win money for her; she buys them dinner.
• Pleiade is to meet Piet Woevre, formerly of the Force Publique in the Congo, a group known for police brutality. He's in Belgium to target "socialists", meaning Slavs and Jews. He's a hired killer; his section chief is de Decker. Woevre is obsessed with the Quaternions. ("Seems that, on the face of it, all mathematics leads, doesn't it, sooner or later, to some kind of human suffering" but the difference between him and them is that their suffering doesn't distinguish who it hits.) He's instructed to look into the group MKIV/ODC which might be involved with something related to torpedos.
• Woevre get s Pleiade to distract Kit; when Kit returns to his hotel his bedroll is gone, taken by the political police. They see him as a nihilist outlaw.
• Belgium is a pawn in international politics just like Colorado is, kind of.
• Pleiade takes Kit on a tour of the Mayonnaise Works, and someone tries to kill him (drown him in mayonnaise) there. He's rescued by Rocco and Pino. Kit didn't trust her to begin with. (Meanwhile, Barry's been teaching her about Quaternism.)

page 548.

Where We're At: Parts 2.12-2.16

Lake Traverse

• Lake and Mayva have moved to town and are working at a cafe. Lake meets and falls in love with Deuce Kindred. (He knows who she is; she doesn't know who he is.) Lake had been seeing Dr. Willis Turnstone, from the Miner's Hospital. Oleander Prudge (female) tells Mayva that Deuce killed Webb; Mayva tells Lake; Lake won't leave Deuce; Mayva leaves Lake.
• Lake and Deuce marry; she's a virgin bride (so whatever Webb thought she was doing, she wasn't). Sloat Fresno moves in with them and Lake is sleeping with both Deuce and Sloat (simultaneously).
• The mining company has noticed that the bombings have not ceased with Webb's death; either they went for the wrong guy or Deuce lied about killing him; Deuce is warned. Has Sloat sold Deuce out? Sloat leaves.

Frank Traverse
In Denver

• Frank hides out in Denver from whoever killed Webb and as time goes on to try to find out who killed Webb. He's being approached b y mine company middle-manager types who want to employ him--these are Vibe company reps. He learns that Vibe Corp was ultimately behind Webb's murder (and knows already that Vibe is paying for Kit's schooling at Yale). Vibe Corp is trying to buy Frank's loyalty? something? and because Frank won't accept the offer he's essentially unemployable in gold mining, which leads him to specialize in zinc and spend more time in Leadville and Lake County.
• Wren Provenance is a Radcliffe grad, anthropologist studying the southwest.
  
• Crime reporter Booth Verbing warns Frank that (Cap'n) Bulkley Wells's people down from Telluride (where Reef had been) have been looking for him. Another Stations of the Cross reference-Wren has arrived here after Stations of the Cross, etc.
  
• Frank explains to Wren that if Reef hasn't avenged Webb, the job falls to Frank. He knows that the gunners were Deuce and Sloat and that they were hired by the Mine Owners Association in Telluride.

In Telluride

• Frank goes to Telluride to search for Deuce and Sloat. The city is filled state Guardsmen.
• Gunfighter and hair-trigger temper Bob Meldrum is here; his day job is security at the Tomboy mine and he also works for Cap'n Wells.
• Ellmore Disco, a shopkeeper, is "the man to see" in town. Frank sees Ellmore to try to get an appointment with Cap'n Wells, ostensibly to try to sell him on a new system for zinc mining (extracting?); Ellmore tells Frank that Frank needs to be in good with Meldrum first. Loomis is Ellmore's aide and sidekick. La Blanca is Meldrum's wife.
• Frank meets Meldrum; Meldrum won't tell him about Wells's whereabouts but Meldrum does point him toward Merle Rideout, who is working as an amalgamator at the Little Hellkite mine--Frank can try to sell his new process to Merle. Frank backs up Meldrum in a bar fight. A Japanese trade delegation is in town including a representative of international spy Baron Akashi, a roving military attache in Europe (meanwhile, there's Russia-Finland issues--Russia occupies Finland at present); they may also or instead be interested in industrial spying.
• Frank rents a horse and sets out for Little Hellkite mine (it's haunted) to see Merle Rideout. He meets Dally, who is working as a dynamiter in the mines. Merle tells Frank that he knew Webb; Frank is looking for whoever pulled the trigger on Webb, not for Wells, the boss. Merle shows him a photo of Deuce and Sloat. Dally warns Frank that Bob Meldrum (and his sidekick Rudie) is after him; Dally helps him escape through the Silver Orchard brothel.
• Merle tells Frank about Dr. Stephen Emmens in New York, who transmutes silver to argentaurum, which looks like (and is passed off as, including to the U.S. Mint) gold. Look through spar to see whether it's gold or argentaurum(?). What if the Emmens process reduces the value of gold, "knock[ing] the Gold Standard right onto its glorified ass"? Merle tells Frank that what he, Frank thinks he's looking for really isn't what he is looking for; and that Webb was also looking for (and similarly misguided re) and sends him to talk to Doc Turnstone (Lake's old beau).
• Turnstone has seen gnomes in the mines, like Merle, Dally, and Frank have.
• Turnstone earlier had helped pistolero Jimmy Drop with back pain, worked a chiropractor circuit before being hired at the Miner's hospital (where he courted Lake and Lake dumped him for Deuce--this is the first Frank learns of Lake and Deuce). Deuce used to be part of Drop's gang; Drop offers to harm Deuce as a favor to Turnstone but also because he doesn't like Deuce ("nobody liked him, mean little brush snake").
• Frank meets Jimmy Drop. Drop knew Reef, who he says has gone all the way back east.
• Ellmore helps Frank disguise himself as a Mexican musician with Gaston Villa and his band.
• Frank visits Webb's grave; Webb's ghost tells him that Deuce and Sloat have left town and split up. Frank wants to find Deuce and Lake.
• Dally leaves town and heads east.

Kit Traverse

• is at Yale and is burned out. His mentor, Gibbs, the mathematician, has died. He's being watched by Vibe henchmen.
• Vanderjuice sends for him and gives him a letter (already opened and kept from Webb for some time already) from Lake telling him that Webb had been killed and Reef and Frank were avenging him. None of the Vibes, including Colfax, mention Webb; were Vibes behind the killing?
• Tesla has erected another transmitter, on Long Island, across the Sound.
• Vanderjuice tells Kit about his working for Scarsdale Vibe earlier (and yes, Vibe was financing Tesla's work at the same time as he was financing sabotaging it). Vanderjuice suggests that Kit get out, that he take the education being paid for as blood money and that he go to Germany to study with Dr. Hillbert at Gottingen, who is developing a "Spectral Theory" which requires a vector space of infinite, not just three, dimensions. This would move Kit much further into vectorism.
• Colfax and Kit boat to Long Island to meet Tesla; Tesla knows that Scarsdale Vibe played him; thanks Kit for earlier (Colorado) suggestions.
• Colfax has been reporting to Scarsdale about Kit and was supposed to kill him (because he wants out of being bought?). Colfax suggests that Kit get out, go to Germany.
• Kit meets with Scarsdale Vibe and Foley; subtext of the conversation is that Kit knows about Webb's killing. Scarsdale would be more comfortable now with Kit out of the picture and sends him off to Germany.
• Was Scarsdale bringing Kit east an act of mercy? Is he paying off Mayva (and thereby Lake) and employing Frank? Or was he doing it to corrupt Webb, the anarchist's, children? Scarsdale is increasingly isolated and Foley worries.

(p. 335)

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.

Where we're at: Parts 1.1-1.10: The Light Over the Ranges

So at the end of part 1, The Light Over the Ranges, we have:

• The Chums: Randolph, Lindsay, Darby (who I keep wanting to call Darby Crash), Miles, and Chick; and Pugnax, the dog. Plus shuffled offstage, Bindlestiffs (like the Chums) Riley, Zip, Penny Black. Chums' ship is the Inconvenience.
  
• The detectives: Nate Privett, detective, owns White City Investigations, and employee Lew Basnight (who apparently committed a crime he can't remember and was already ditched by wife Troth), who actually does the detecting and is presently trailing and infiltrating anarchists (and presumably was assigned to the Chums' Inconvenience to watch over related events at the Expo). They're in competition with Pinkertons. Basnight was a penitent at the Esthonia hotel (contact was Drave) and he's transferred to Denver after the Exposition. Previously, Basnight was involved in protecting Archduke Ferdinand (that Archduke Ferdinand) who was in Chicago for the Expo and was looking for new prey--such as Hungarians--to kill, and the archduke's bodyguard, Max Kautsch. All except Privett (maybe) and Basnight have been shuffled offstage.
• Professor Heino Vanderjuice (Yale) plus his handler in Chicago, Ray Ipsow, a socialist. Vanderjuice is also the Chums' "longtime friend and mentor". Vanderjuice works with electricity(?).
  
• Scarsdale Vibe, financier, with sidekick Foley Walker. Vibe hires Vanderjuice to defeat Tesla (who is backed by Pierpont Morgan, way offstage) in Tesla's quest to develop a free worldwide system of electricity. Vibe may also, we find out later, have money invested in Tesla's work.
  
• Merle Rideout, photographer, plus daughter Dally (Dahlia) and Chevrolette McAdoo the stripper. Plus offstage: Erlys, Dally's mother, and Zombini, the magician Erlys ran off with. After the Expo, Rideout (with Dally) gradually and randomly makes his way to Denver doing odd jobs along the way.
  Earlier, Rideout was an Etherist and another Etherist was Roswell Bounce; Blinky Morgan was a fugitive criminal. Roswell taught Merle photochemistry/photography.
  
• Webb Traverse, miner, dynamiter, and anarchist (socialist), Denver. Union man. Blacklisted for union? activity. Merle meets him in Denver. Wife is Mayva, kids are Reef, Frank, Kit (see below; male), Lake (female). Veikko is another dynamiter.
• Kit Traverse, electricity guy. Son of dynamiter Web Traverse. Worked for Tesla; Foley Walker met him by chance(?) and via Scarsdale Vibe sent him to study at Yale (presumably under Vanderjuice).
  

Setting notes: Chicago World's Expo 1893; Denver following.

Like most Pynchon, not a lot of women here except as accessories. Take away Oedipa Mass--maybe--and the whole oeuvre fails the Bechdel test.

I thought I had the cast pretty much straight, but I did need to refer back to the book to fill in a lot of these and various levels of detail. Still, it's clearer than Gravity's Rainbow was at this point, or maybe I've learned to read Pynchon better (or maybe I'm way off and just deluded).

These "where we're at" segments will be more frequent from here on out. 110 pages turned out to be way more than I expected to go back through and bullet out.