Where We're At: Part 3.1: Bilocations

The Chums:

• Lindsay got sidetracked when his regular physical revealed Incipient Gamomania, the abnormal desire to be married. (Chums must remain single.)
• While in NYC previously, Lindsay heard about the "'Turkish Corner' that really was supposed, in some not strictly metaphorical way, to provide an 'escape nook to Asia.' Like, 'One minute you're in a horrible high-bourgeois New York parlor, the next out on the Asian desert, on top of a Bactrian camel, searching for a lost subterranean city.'" After being sidetracked when his regular physical revealed Incipient Gamomania, the abnormal desire to be married (Chums must remain single), Lindsay finds finds himself on a camel traveling to meet the Chums. The camel detects something out there.
• The Chums are on the subdesertine frigate Saksaul (captain is Toadflax), traveling under the sand; the Inconvenience is parked back at an oasis. Toadflax claims that it's under the sand that the lost city of Shambhala will be found. He mentions that German professors have been poking around, looking--but you need the Saksaul's paramorphoscope to find it.
• The Saksaul's mission is to find Saksaul ("be there fustest with the mostest' as your general Forrest used to say") . But has Toadflax already discovered it? Civilian Stilton Gaspereaux controls the navigation room of the Saksaul--talks about the Crusades as holy pilgrimages. (p 436)
• Cities on the Sfiuncino Itinerary as stations of the cross.
• Iceland spar lets all them see the Sfiuncino Itinerary as a map they can go inside except distances are based on a fourth coordinate axis--a fourth dimension (time).
• They dock at Nuevo Rialto (old Manichean city, destroyed by Jenghiz Khan, briefly occupied by Venice ca 13th century). They encounter talking sand fleas the size of camels. The Chums strap on their hypops gear and explore Nuevo Rialto.
• In a bar Chick overhears oil prospectors Leonard and Lyle talking about heading next for Sodom and Gomorrah--for oil there as foretold by the Bible ("fixin to be the next Spindletop"). Is oil the real reason for Saksaul's journey? They'd accept Shambhala but really want oil? Lionel and Lyle would pay off the Chums for looking in the ship's logbook and noting oil (coal? "bituminous") deposits. Randolph gets caught with dynamite in Toadflax's cabin, where the safe with the log books (which would show where oil is) are. Oops.
• Back on the Inconvenience, Miles talks about souls in battle--what Darby and Chick saw in the time machine in NYC.
• Something attacks the Saksaul--perhaps it's Germans or Austrians, or standard oil or the Nobel brothers. Toadflax sends Gaspereaux with hypops gear to London to warn them and tell of their demise--he's to tell Inspector Sands in Whitehall. Many under-sand vessels are attacked and destroyed (crews, too) as under-sand petroleum deposits are attacked. Parts of the ships end up throughout the eastern world and this will change history.
• Inspector Sands --the real one, not someone using the all-purpose counter-terrorism code name--picks up Gaspereaux as a potential anarchist. Turns out Gaspereaux is part of intelligence.
• Gaspereaux explains to Sands that they've (which side? he's not sure) found Shambhala and it's intact--there's a force field around it--even though other underground ruins have been destroyed. Anyone who knows where it is can now enter and occupy it--all the powers want to and will fight for it. Or maybe this is just Gaspereaux's imagination/hallucination.

(page 448)

Where We're At: Parts 2.20-2.21: Iceland Spar

In New York City with the Chums (on leave); it's 1903:

• The Chums receive instructions via Plug Loafsley, a street Arab, whose headquarters is the Lollipop Lounge, a child bordello. While delivering the message Loafsley makes a casual sarcastic remark about "the time machine" and the Chums ask to meet with him further.
• Chick and Darby meet with Plug at the Lollipop Lounge to ask about the time machine; Plug takes them to see Dr. Zoot, under the Ninth Avenue el, who made the time machine. Zoot lets them have a sample ride, which he rescues them from--they see strange scary beings. He explains that he didn't build the defective machine; he bought it from Alonzo Meatman at the Ball in Hand bar at the annual summer time-travel conference at Candlebrow University in Ohio.

The Chums travel to Ohio to Candlebrow University.

• Vanderjuice is a guest lecturer at this year's conference. With Vanderjuice, the Chums visit the local junkyard and see hulls of many failed time machines--but not of Zoot's machine.
• The Chums go to the Ball in Hand bar to look for Alonzo Meatman. (Image of a girl with a pygmy lover here--third time so far for a pygmy lover.) They see a boy vanish, and leave. Chick returns and learns that the boy who vanished is Meatman.
• Meatman tells Chick that the resurrected ghosts (or whatever) are everywhere and takes Chick to meet the visiting dead.
• Chick meets Mr. Ace who explains he's come from the future for refuge from [his own] present: "We are here among you as seekers of refuge from our present--your future--a time of worldwide famine, exhausted fuel supplies, terminal poverty--the end of the capitalistic experiment. Once we came to understand the simple thermodynamic truth that Earth's resources were limited, in fact soon to run out, the whole capitalist illusion fell to pieces." Because of their economic heresy they've been forced to migrate in time--and here they are. Ace tells Chick that the Chums' assignments have all ultimately been to prevent the attempts of the future to enter the present and asks Chick to consider accepting occasional assignments from the future undead; compensation would be eternal youth (which is better than eternal life).
• Chick "[afterwards] [c]ould not rid himself of the impression...of having been psychically interfered with. Another image here of Deliverance.
• Chick reports back to the Chums--images of the Pilgrims and the Indians the Pilgrims' first winter. But what if they're not innocents, what if they're raiders, wanting to take something back to the future. Or maybe, says Chick, they're bunco artists, testing the Chums' loyalty to their Hierarchy.
• Chick brings Miles with him to meet again with Mr. Ace. Miles recognizes Ace-he's out for no good, Miles has seen them before watching him.
• The crew begins to find evidence of Trespass in the ship. (Chums, not just this bunch, had been believing that they were immune from aging by being Chums. On finding that false, they've been willing to sell out to gain (or regain) eternal youth.)
• To escape from the Trespassers, the Chums join the Marching Academy Harmonica Band at Candlebrow? In Illinois somewhere? The other student harmonicists are other Chums sections?
• Alonzo Meatman is there, too. He's a "squealer" (rat). He disappears.
• The Chums begin to wonder whether they're not actually harmonicists, whether it's all a hoax they're playing on themselves. They begin to forget the Chums, wonder whether they're actually readers who've been serving as volunteer decoys for the real Chums. They get used to the idea, the longing for the actual Chums ebbs.
• And finally they see in the distance a road, and the Inconvenience at the end of the road, and there's Pugnax. And the Trespassers are still there but the crew has learned to ignore them.
• Alonzo Meatman reappears with orders from Higher Authority--the Sfinciuno Itinerary, and orders to go to Inner Asia, Bukhara. They're to meet the frigate Saksaul, Captain Q. Zane Toadflax. They'll need Hypopsammotic Survival Apparatus ("Hypops apparatus"), which they ask Vanderjuice about. Vanderjuice tells them that Roswell Bounce invented it for the Vibe corporation.
• Bounce tells them that the Hypops apparatus lets one travel beneath sand (i.e., desert) as if beneath water. Vibe corporation stole the idea from him; he'll undercut their price. He sells six units to the Chums. Something about flight into the next dimension (time). They leave Candlebrow (and Alonzo still there) and proceed to Bukhara.

Page 428. End of Iceland Spar section.