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 4.6: 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 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.