The Against the Day Deathmarch
the honorable Cecil Vortex presiding
these few reading notes by Steve Evans

Provisional map &/or serving of madeleines &/or breadcrumb trail. Best consulted after reading. Key: section number, chapter number (counted consecutively from start), subsections as letters. MSIR = moment seen in retrospect. Only way to do this is quickly, so apologies for mistakes that creep in (& thanks for fixes). —SE

Go to leg 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

FIRST LEG (to 56, concluded 5 February 2007)
My notes start in the second week. I'll swing back for this opening chapters after we've finished. • AtD Wiki on 1-25 and 26-56.

SECOND LEG (to 118, concluded 12 February 2007)

1.7a-f (57-80) The Peregrinations of Merle & Dally
Merle, Erlys, and Dahlia (Dally). Erlys joins Zombini's act. The Aetherists. Michelson-Morly experiment & Blinky Morgan manhunt. Wanderings of Merle & Dally. Photography. Ball lightning named Skip. Enter Webb Traverse (77). Merle and Webb's conversation. Alchemy, capitalism, the anti-stone. • Atd Wiki on 57-80.

1.8a-b (81-96): Long Fuse: Webb & Veikko at Work on July 4th
Webb Traverse, Veikko Rautavaara. July 4th job. Rev. Moss Gatlin. Webb & Mayva's brood: Reef, Frank, Kit, Lake. Police dossiers. • Atd Wiki on 81-96.

1.9a-c (97-106): Kit, Tesla, and Vibe
4th of July 1899. Kit Traverse & Doc Tesla. Jack Gigg. Foley and Vibe ("The Twin Vibes"). Civil War "substitutes." Foley's bullet-in-the-head clairvoyance. Kit's scholarship. Quarrel betw. Webb & Kit. • Atd Wiki on 97-118.

1.10a-e (107-118): Chums in the Bowels of the Earth
Chums. Tesla Device. A position antipodal to Colorado Springs. The great masthead crisis. Suckling's flirtation with nihilism. Haymarket bombing. Communication by pearl. C. of C. in the Bowels of the Earth. Mission: intercept the Vormance Expedition.

THIRD LEG (to 170, concluded 19 February 2007)

2.11a-g (121-137): Hotel Borealis
(a121-25) Chums. The "Ray-rush." I.G.L.O.O. The BOL'SHAIA IGRA, Capt. Igor Padzhitnoff. Previous run-ins. The unnameable ("if it found them it would eat them, without necessarily killing them first"). Pugnax reading Eugene Sue. Into the zone of emergency. (b125-26) The "extra man." Ground leave. Inukshuk miniature in blue ivory. (c126-29) Background on Étienne-Louis Malus. Polarized light. Iceland ditty. Constance Penhallow witnesses arrival of the Malus. Her grandson Hunter Penhallow. Pre-Christian ancestors ("suicidally cheerful"). Harald Hardrade, the Ruthless, his expedition north. Ginnungagap. Near miss at extinction. Our source: Adam of Bremen. Conspiracy of ancestors "against the future." Penhallows made their money in Iceland spar. Hunter joins Vormance Expedition. (d129-31) Hotel Borealis, headquarters. Hunter's painting (ff to his "Venice" and "London" periods). Voices of the ice. Unnamed glacier. Restorative salsa. Passage from parrot's world to ice-scape effected by chant of "Cuidado cabron" ("preferably with a parrot accent"). Fleetwood Vibe present at Scarsdale's request. (e131-34, v. dense) Transnoctial Discussion Group. Heavenly City, Zion. Colonization of time. Dr. Templeton Blope. Hastings Throyle. Quaternionism. Square root of minus one. Dr. Rao. Ice creaking, "as if trying to express some argument of its own." Luminiferous Aether. Blope: "It's obvious Something doesn't want us to know." Otto Ghloix, expedition alienist. Icelandic "tradition of ghostliness." The Book of Iceland Spar (or, Against the Day?). Mineral consciousness. The Hidden People. (f134-37) Sun's unnameable device. Constance & Hunter's last night together. Into town for food. Narvik's Mush-It-Away Northern Cuisine. The proprietors' jokes. Two Venices (see 2.21). Hunter's "translations." The ice. (g136-37) Mid-morning, the Malus departs. Hunter's letter to his grandmother. • Atd Wiki on 119-148.

2.12a-b (138-148): From the Journals of Fleetwood Vibe
(a138-46) Nansen and Johansen ditty. Malus and Inconvenience converge. Making the nunatak visible. Aetheric Impulses. The caul/veil. Warnings against disturbing site. The odalisque of the snows. Face and open eyes. Practical concerns prevail. Buri, Odin, the first gods. Frozen visitant. Eskimo members of team depart. Uncritical buoyancy. Dodge Flannelette. Hastings Throyle. Magyakan's arrival via bilocation. His prophesy. Christian time and shamanic time. Pugnax and the sled dogs. Canine labor union. C of C take leave. Docked. The "unbounded part." "Those who claim to have heard it speak as it made its escape...." The terror commences. (b146-48): The Explorer's Club in DC. Exchange with General. Transvaal. Rand shares (see 167). Rumors of murder (see 169). Parable of Nansen's dwindling sled dogs (cannibalism, capitalism). The American Corporation. Disrupted time? The "bad dream I still try to wake from, the great city brought to sorrow and ruin." • Atd Wiki on 119-148.

2.13a (149-155): The Disaster
Inconvenience attempts to outrace Malus. The meteorite alibi. Board of Inquiry at the Museum of Museumology. The disaster in retrospect. Incendiary figure. Eskimo belief in "ruling component." Some established facts about the disaster. The creature already known to all. The strike. Cathedral of the Prefiguration. Negotiable Christian imagery. That "terrible all-night rape." Propitiatory structures. Hunter Penhallow's experience that night. The city grid distorted in destruction. Monumental gateway. A meeting in progress. On the way to refuge.

2.14a-d (156-170): Kit Traverse chez Vibe
(a156-62): The Yale-Harvard game (late November). Kit Traverse meets his benefactor. Scarsdale laments "the crockful of cucumbers I have sired." Colfax Vibe. His prowess at sport. Kit's vectorism. Cragmont Vibe and his trapeze girl bride. Fleetwood Vibe in Africa. Scene shifts to Vibe Manor on Long Island. "The forbidden level." Mrs. Edwarda Vibe, née Beef, of Indianapolis; resides with her maid, Vaseline, in Greenwich Village, next door to R. Wilshire Vibe, decadent and composer of musical dramas. Eddie, the "Diva of Delmonico's." (b162-63): Kit with Cousin Dittany Vibe in the stables. And in the palmetto tent. Strange music. (c163-68): R. Wilshire's ditty on African cannibalism, disliked by Fleetwood. Interview betw. Kit and Fleetwood. The "hidden place." In East Africa with Yitzhak Zilberfeld. Heavenly City, Zion. The modern state. Nomads vs. settlers. Elephant charge interrupts conversation. Uncompensated kindness. "Buy Rand shares" (see 146). Scarsdale Vibe: "I hate these climber sons of bitches worse" than communists. (d168-70): Fleetwood in Africa (from "a sickbed of remembrance"). In Johannesburg, eGoli, "City of Gold." Forcing Kaffir into the void. "The American stain, after all, would not be eradicated." Dead man's face. The karmic ledger. Vormance Expedition as way out.

FOURTH LEG (to 232, concluded 26 February 2007—but severe server troubles chez Vortex nearly stopped us in our tracks)

2.15a-f (171-188): Lew Basnight Decides Which Side He's On
(a171-74) Basnight and the Kieselguhr Kid (see 214). Burke Ponghill, “editor” (fabricator) of the Lodazal Weekly Tidings. (b174-78) Fb to Chicago, the assignment to Denver. Pullman Strike. Railroad as organism. (c178-79) The KKK in daylight. (d179-82) Back in Denver. Nate Privett’s visit. Interview with, perhaps, the Kid. (e182-86) Dr. Oyswharf, mad scientist. Lew trips on ‘Cyclomite. His meal. Beavers in the Brain ditty. Fb to Lew’s first dynamite blast at the Kankakee county fair. Assassination attempt: into the blast. The new Lew. Nigel and Neville of the “Oscar Wilde influence." (f186-866) Travels with Nigel and Neville. Gathering doom. To Galveston. A stowaway to England. Hurricane hits.

2.16a-h (189-198): Webb's End
(a189-91) Webb Traverse, troubles with daughter Lake. Child of the storm. With Rica Treemorn in Silverton. Fantasies of killing father. (b191-91) Mayva and Lake on their own. Webb and the Union. (c192-94) Deuce Kindred, his “fluorescence of vindictiveness.” Webb joins the company of those who "had allowed themselves to be charmed..., to their great consequent sorrow." (d194-94) Deuce and Company Rep work a deal. (e195-96) Sloat Fresno. Deuce a kind of anti-Lew, “’on assignment for the owners.’” (f196-97) Webb accused. (g197-98) Deuce and Sloat have at him. The division of labor: spiritual pain (Deuce) and physical (Sloat). (h198-98): On the way to Jeshimon. Spotted by Jimmy Drop.

2.17a-f (199-208): Frank and Reef Traverse
(a199-200) Frank and Reef Traverse head to Nevada. (b200-01) Depot at Nochecita. Estrella (“Stray”) Briggs, very pregnant. (c201-03) Sage and her suitors. Mormons. Cooper and his rig. Durango Dove ditty. (d203-08) Frank’s interview with Linnet Dawes, schoolteacher. Telegraphs and telephones. Reef takes Jimmy Drop’s call. (e208-08) Taking leave of Stray. (f208-08) To Jeshimon.

2.18a-f (209-218): Reef Retrieves His Dad
(a209-10) The telegraph poles and “Towers of Silence” of Jeshimon. Rev. Lube Carnal. (b210-14) An “ambience of limitless iniquity” in this “Lourdes of the licentious.” The Governor. His secretary of clemency, Flagg. Marshal Grimsford. Scaling the tower. (c214-15) The trail back to Telluride. Continuing the family business (Kieselguhr Kid). Reading The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth, begun in jail. (d215-17) Webb’s funeral. Joe Hill reference. The Jimmy Drop gang observes. (e217-17) Webb’s gun. (f217-18) Reef returns to Nochecita. Webb’s ghost.

2.19a-c (218-232): Lew Basnight amidst the TWITs
(a219-23) Neville, Nigel, and T.W.I.T. (“True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys”). HQ in Chunxton Crescent, London. The pattern (220). Nicholas Nookshaft, Grand Cohen. Gates of transfer. Theory of the Psychical Detective. (b223-25) Lew comes down with a case of innocence. Yashmeen Halfcourt. Arthur Edward Waite. (c225-232) The Icosadyad. The “grammar of their iniquity.” Examples of their “nomenclatural flexibility.” Madame Eskimoff, comely ecstatica. Rival university professors, Renfrew of Cambridge and Werfner of Göttingen, together form XV, The Devil. Assassinations of Serbian King and Queen foreseen. Parsons-Short Auxetophone, wax cylinder recordings. “Hard enough being a woman, you see, but a Pythagorean into the bargain—well.” The akousmata.

FIFTH LEG (to 280, concluded 5 March 2007)

2.20a-d (233-42): Lew in London & Cambridge
(a233-37) Transition from gas to electric light. A structure to the darkness that predates founding of city. Seeking cyclomite substitutes. A visit to Dr. Coombs De Bottle. Reverse engineering homemade bombs. Cricket. The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly (the G.B. of H.). Phosgene, a poison gas. (b237-39) Clive Crouchmas, early career at Ottoman Public Debt Administration. Gossip, “a secular force the T.W.I.T. would never transcend,” about Crouchmas and Miss Halfcourt. Grand Cohen Nookshaft’s theory of “some serious dissonance between psychical gifts and modern capitalism.” (c239-42) Lew to Cambridge to meet with Professor Renfrew. The “dense, warm, unaerated product known on this island as beer.” Talk of Auberon Halfcourt and his daughter. And, again, of the G.B. of H. Dangling globe “surrounded by an aether of tobacco smoke.” “Control Inner Asia...and you control the planet.” Renfrew on Werfner. (d242) Lew's report to the Cohen. “Does this make me a double agent?”  

2.21a-f (243-59): The Chums in Venice
(a243-48) Flying a loaner, “the semi-rigid Seccatura,” while the Inconvenience is docked. Zanni aboard with them. Miles brought to tears by those “Picardy thirds” (gondolier’s singing). Mirrorworks underwater. The Bol’shaia Igra, again. Ground leave and conspiracy theories about Padzhitnoff and crew. The Shadow-Doge-in-Exile Domenico Sfinciuno, his history. Venetian colonies in Inner Asia. Mission: locate the fabled Sfinciuno Itinerary. (b248-50) Prof. Svegli of the University of Pisa explains. Landmarks and anti-landmarks. Those seeking earthly power and those “whose aim is of course to transcend all questions of power.” Anamorphoscopes and paramorphoscopes. The specialists at Isola degle Specchi. Calcite, or Iceland spar, ca. 1669. The architecture of dream. (c250-53) Miles and “the prophetic vision of St. Mark, but in reverse.” The Being, and the Book of Promises. The real, unbearable Jerusalem. Chick and Renata. The way Time seems to work. Pre-christian origins of Tarot deck. This evening's card, XVI: The Tower. (d253-54) Aubade. Chums of Chance retirement plan. Dang irredentism. (e255) Inconvenience out of dry-dock. Pugnax, his petition. (f255-59) The battle of July 14 [1902]. The Campanile comes down. Time-abolishing gunners, Chick’s Contrabuoyancy Devices. “What shall be the next target of our ineptitude?” A “great wrong against History.” Captains St. Cosmo and Padzhitnoff review the engagement. The Russian's theory: “They appear out of...some other condition, and they vanish back into it.” Vibrational rays. Ryohei Uchida and the Black Dragon Society. Manchurian gold and opium. Gold standard. Trans-Siberian Railroad, “almost like a living organism” (see 2.15b) Choir of city bells absent the anchor of La Marangona.  

2.22a-l (260-272): Lake and Deuce in Love
(a260-62) Deuce and Hsiang-Chiao. First meeting of Lake and Deuce, at the Nonpareil Eating House. (b262-64) Irresistible attraction. Willis Turnstone, another suitor. Oleander Prudge. “You’re dishonoring your father’s memory.” (c264-65) Mayva’s demands and departure. (d265-66) Sloat tries to talk sense to Deuce. (e266-67) From November to January. The marriage ceremony. A Swede officiating. “Its name? Ja, I could tell, you—but....” (f267) Child of the storm. (g267) Really married. (h267-69) Deuce off with Sloat. Threesomes. Four Corners. (i269) A household of dubious coziness. (j269-70) You slay, you pay. Or get away. “The dynamite outrages continue.” Deuce under suspicion of leaving job unfinished. (k270-72) There just might be some people after him. Lake’s “strange patches of innocence.” Geezers on furlough from Hell. MSIR of Sloat’s possible sell-out. (l272) Sloat leaves. Luminous face suspended. Deuce no good with sacrifices.

2.23a-c (273-280): Frank Traverse in Leadville
(a273-77) Picks up from 2.18d (Webb’s burial). Overtures from the Vibe Corp, declined. Zinc in Leadville. Wren Provenance, “girl anthropologist.” Fb to first meeting. Wren’s fieldwork at Jennie Rogers’s House of Mirrors. Insincere dismay. “You’ve simply ruined me for everyday bourgeois sexuality. Whatever am I to do?” (b277-78) Wren’s studies of Aztlán, “mythic ancestral home of the Mexican people.” Thirteenth century terrors. Bones deliberately broken into. “Those human sacrifices the Aztecs became famous for.” (c278-80) Booth Virbling, reporter. One of Bulkley Wells’s people in from Telluride. Anecdote of Frank and the storm cloud. Reef off the job? “It moves on to the next in line.” Frank to Telluride without Wren.

SIXTH LEG (to 335, concluded 12 March 2007)

2.24a-c (281-295): Frank Traverse in Telluride
(a281-82) "It was the wrong color for a fire, and daybreak was out of the question, though the end of the world remained a possibility." To-Hell-you-ride. The smell. (b282-89) Looking for Bob Meldrum, gunfighter. Ellmore Disco, character sketch. E. Disco & Sons, a thriving enterprise. "Hell, Anarchists ain't the only ones with ideas about the future." The inaccessible Captain Bulkley Wells. Tokyo trade delegation. With Ellmore and Loomis Disco to Lupita's. The taquería's fair eponym. La Blanca, Meldrum's wife, inhabitant of "geometry of fear." Menudo. The "smaller a chili pepper gets, the hotter it usually is." (c289-95) A visit from Bob: "the darkly rigged-out gunslinger collapsing with an emotional sigh onto the settee." In the shadow of Butch Cassidy. To the Cosmopolitan. Merle Rideout. Magnetic ore separation. Zack, an old-timer. Japanese trade delegation, Kodaks at the ready. "Peevishness grew general." Baron Akashi, international spy. The anti-Tsarist Finns of San Miguel County. "Just a little teacup social's all." Chumps of Choice on 281-317.

2.25a-c (296-317) Frank Traverse with Merle and Dally Rideout
(a296-304) To Little Hellkite Mine. The "hum of voltage, louder than cicadas." Duendes. Dally Rideout, her voice. Her education. A photograph of Webb. The Fourth of July snapshot of Deuce and Sloat. Frank and Dally's getaway. "Some kind of...meat sandwich.... What's it for?" Saturday night at the Gallow's Frame Saloon. Ragtime. Charlie Fong Ding confirms a vacancy at the Silver Orchid. Dally's sexual education courtesy of California Peg. A crack shot. Ff to Finn's dreaming of Annie Oakley during their own civil war. "'Love,' whatever that turned out to be, would occupy a whole different piece of range." (b304-314) Merle and Frank discuss Dr. Stephen Emmens, his process for getting gold from silver: argentaurum. Viewed through a piece of spar. The light-carrying Aether. Gold standard and U.S. Mint. Lyman Gage. The tommyknockers. Doc Willis Turnstone, his heart broken by Lake. Fb to 1899, Turnstone and the Jimmy Drop gang. "Trust me, I'm an osteopath." The suburban imperative. First meeting Lake: "the minute Willis saw her he was a goner, though it took him a couple of weeks to realize it in his mind." Lake prefers Deuce. End Fb: Frank takes the news hard. With Jimmy Drop at the Busted Flush. Gossip. Fb to Ice Palace in Leadville. (c314-17) How Frank became Pancho the Bassoon Player with Gastón Villa and His Bughouse Band. To Webb's grave. Father's ghost, sister's wraith. "It's like we specialized, Pa." Dally departs for the east. Frank encourages her to look Kit up. • Chumps of Choice on 281-317.

2.26a-f (318-335) Kit Traverse between Yale and Göttingen
(a318-320) Kit's mantra: "Tengo que get el fuck out of aquí." Yale's fading charm. Death of Professor Gibbs in April. "No role for his destiny as a Vectorist within any set of Vibe goals he could imagine." (b320-322) Kit's dream of Webb. The Aether. Professor Vandersluice belatedly delivers Lake's letter to Kit. "He felt inside himself the presence of a small, wounded girl who was trying to cry." (c322-26) No condolences forthcoming from the Vibes. Kit recalls July 4, 1899. Tesla. Heino Vandersluice's "agreement" with Scarsdale Vibe a decade ago. Germany's the place: Doctors Hilbert and Minkowski. That Göttingen Rag (ditty). With 'Fax to Tesla's tower. (d326-28) In the masonry transmitter shack. Tesla's vision of the Magnifying Transmitter. (e328-29) Next morning: lost in that storm? Better, a math pilgrimage to Germany. (f329-335) To Vibe Corp Pearl Street headquarters to pitch the Germany idea. "Don't thank me. Become the next Edison." Kit returns to New Haven. The Two Vibes talk it over. "Should there be moral reservations, in a class war, about targeting one's enemies?" Coveting the bloodline of one's enermy. Foley's Civil War nightmare. Scarsdale: "What we need to do is start killing them in significant numbers, for nothing else has worked." Castle Vibe, its ruler "isolated in self-resonant fantasy." Foley's mission: to restrain. A plan for the whole Traverse family. • Chumps of Choice on 318-335.

SEVENTH LEG (to 373, concluded 19 March 2007)

2.27a-f (336-357) Dally Rideout Heads East
(a336) On the train. (b337-43) In New York at last. Befriended by Katie from Chillicothe. Mock Duck's boys. Mr. Hop Fung. "Which is how Dally found her way into the white-slave simulation industry." Rival tongs, On Leong vs. Hip Sing, "fighting in earnest since around 1900." R. Wilshire Vibe takes in the show. Casting for Shanghai Scampers. Tong war gets real. Con McVeety needs a card girl. (c343-47) McVeety's Theater. Lobby attractions. Some of the acts. The Phenomenal Dr. Ictibus and His Safe-Deflector Hat (vectors). Glimpses of "this Vibe specimen." Dally and Katie go dress shopping. The workers in the walls. Apparition of Erlys. (d348-51) An R. Wilshire Vibe party. Anti-wallflower device. Dally approached by a young man. And then by Chinchito. And then by "a smooth gent." "Seeing nickelodeon shows in the wallpaper." Rescued and restored to her rooming house. The "tall deliveress in the spangled cloak." (e351-53) Chez Zombini. Odd furnishings and newly-met step-siblings, including Bria, Nunzi, Cici, Concetta. (f353-57) Erlys's Psyche knot. Luca Zombini on the family business. Magician-grade velvet, "same as mirrors, only opposite." "It's all about the light, you control the light, you control the effect, capisci?" Iceland spar. A running problem: "according to Professor Vanderjuice up at Yale, I forgot the element of time...." Isle of Mirrors, Venice (see 2.21b). Booked to tour Europe. Dahlia and Erlys's big talk. "His name was Bert Snidell." The "subgods of theatrical timing" cut short the interview. • Chumps of Choice on 336-357.

2.28a-h (358-373) Reef Traverse's Rebirth as Thrapston Cheesely III
(a358-61) Reef and Stray to Arizona. Archie Dipple's camel roundup scheme. Stray's acquaintances, "practicioners of obliquity." Zigzag peregrinations. "But nowadays they were living in a nice little cabin up above the Uncompahgre." Baby Jesse in his dynamite crate crib. (b361-62) Part of an outlaw dynasty. Stray catches on. "This must be how a Kid talks to his Woman." Class war. (c362-66; see 2.15e) San Juan range a battleground. Reef's dead. Sheriff Burgess. Stray's vow. Reef heads to Denver: "see if I can't just locate that old Frank." Borrasca, his colt. The slides. One named after Bridget McGonigal, mine owner's wife, "for her practice of likewise letting go at completely unpredictable moments." Assassination attempt: by avalanche. Great descending wall. "[H]e was now dead and gone, and therefore born again." (d366-67) Back home in a hurry. (e367-71) Thrapston Cheesely III. A certain Madame Aubergine. The "provocative and voracious Ruperta Chirpingdon-Groin." Her "loose salon of neuraesthenics traveling hotspring to hotspring." To New Orleans. The Absinthe Frappés at Monsieur Peychaud's. "Voodoo was the least of it." Dope Breedlove and his Merry Coons. Talking anarchist theory in the break between sets. Wolfe Tone O'Rooney, traveling insurrectionist. Legend of the Kieselguhr Kid. Flopping at the Deux Espèces. Flaco, a shared passion for chemistry. (f373) "The only way to address the problem of the State is with counter-Death, also known as Chemistry." Barcelona. The prisoners of Montjuich in '93. (g372-73) After Czolgosz's assassination of McKinley [Sept. 1901], "everywhere it was run, Anarchist, run." Heading for a place promised "by certain hidden geometries of History." Wolfe becomes Eusebio Gómez. (h373) Curse of the drifter. "We're already ghosts." • Chumps of Choice on 358-373.

EIGHTH LEG (to 428, concluded 26 March 2007)

2.29a-g (374-396) Frank Traverse in Mexico
(a374-76) Frank's days of playing Galandronome with the Bughouse Bandeleros come to an end. Enter Ewball Oust. Talk of argentaurum and spar. "Like looking at somebody through a pure enough specimen and seeing not just the man but his ghost alongside him?" La Cucaracha. General Huerta: "he'll sure settle for a whistling gringo." (b376-83) To Guanajuato. Working for Empresas Oustianas, S.A. Cantina life. A dream of Deuce. Semana Santa. Nabbed by devoutly silent rurales. Transferred to the Crystal Palace. Enter Dwayne Provecho, prophesying apocalypse. Hoosegow dynamics. Sgt. Amparo Vásquez. Frank's dream of voyaging by air. Tip about Provecho's employers. Some "contract employment" for the Kieselguhr Kid. (c383-85) Tunneling out. "Five year curing in the ground." Train intercepted by guerrilleros. El Ñato and Joaquín. "Got a problem with that, pendejo?" (d385-91) El Famoso Chavalito del Quiselgúr. Frank proposes to swap identities with Ewball (see 2.26e, Kit and 'Fax). Doubtful habit of Conversation with a Parrot. Double refraction. First commission: the Governor's palace, while the others rob the mint. Halfhearted assault of the Huertistas. The Tarahumares. Ewball a crack shot. Adios Mexico for Frank. El Espinero, his wife, and younger sister, Estrella. Examing Frank's "member": "the laughter was easy to translate." (e391-92) Led by El Espinero to a silver working. Duende, tommyknocker. Spar specimen: "a twin crystal, pure, colorless, without a flaw, each identically mirrored half about the size of a human head and what Ewball would call 'of scalenohedral habit.'" Sloat Fresno. MSIR: a couple years later, talking it over with Ewball. (f392-94) Frank eats some hikuli (see 215e, Lew's first taste of cyclomite.) Two Estrellas. Cave of rain. Genesis of the desert. (g394-96) Taking leave of the Tarahumare. "It came to pass that one day...." Cantina parenthesis. Sloat Kindred's end. MSIR: "He would soon begin to understand how it all might turn, was already, well before he had the godforsaken little town at his back, turning, to regret."

2.30a-b (397-405) Chums in New York City
(a397-401) Ground-leave in Central Park. Higher ups "pass a remark" about a time machine. "Plug" Loafsley, his squalid empire. Chick and Darby to the Tenderloin. Encounter with a devoted reader outside the Lollipop Lounge. "Dat Nosewoit' kid, I ain't so sure about him." Smell "exhaled from the corrupted lungs of Depravity herself." Angela Grace, ten year old chanteuse, performs "Boids of d' Night" (ditty). (b401-05) Following Plug's snoot through the fog. "They approached a memorial arch, gray and time-corroded, seeming to date from some ancient catastrophe, far older than the city" (see sim. remark about London, 2.20a233). Dante's "doleful city" (see 2.13). Dr. Zoot's converted carriage house lab. "The Machine's appearance struck neither lad as particularly advanced." Spectral cavalry. The disconsolate company. "There became audible a continuous roar as of the ocean—but it was not the ocean—and soon cries as of beasts in open country, ferally purring stridencies passing overhead, sometimes too close for the lads to be altogether comfortable with—but they were not beasts. Everywhere rose the smell of excrement and dead tissue." The Hook. Dr. Zoot directs the Chums to Candlebrow U. and Alonzo Meatman. "You'll see, young fella. And you might wish you hadn't." • Chumps of Choice on 2.30-31 (397-428). RMPW on 2.30.

2.31a-c (406-428) Chums at Candlebrow U.
(a406-13) "Exactly the mixture of nostalgia and amnesia to provide...a reasonable counterfeit of the Timeless." Candlebrow Conferences, funded by the success of Gideon Candlebrow's edible-fat substitute Smegmo, "the Messiah of kitchen fats." Wells's The Time Machine, 1895. Professor Heino Vanderjuice, this year's guest lecturer. Miles experiences "nasotemporal transit." Darby amidst the co-eds. To the junkyard of failed time machines. Candlebrown Conferences "a form of Eternal Return." No aging or death. "Solid body returns, mind you, nothing figurative or plasmic about them." To the Ball in Hand in search of Alonzo Meatman. The Symmes Street scene. The dematerializing interlocutor. Chick invokes the S.O.D. Clause. Fb to incident over Hawaiian volcano. Chick "just sitting." Fb to Pugnax at Zennist monastery. Meatman rematerializes. Memories of First International Conference on Time Travel. Glamor gives way to controversy. The Old Stearinery Bell Tower, "inspired by the Campanile" (see 2.21f). (b413-18) Meatman, the lycopodium type. Chick's vision of the resurrection. "Has it come to this?" Meatman conducts Chick to "Mr. Ace." Ace's "aria." Refugees from an uninhabitable future, crossing "that dark fourth-dimensional Atlantic known as Time." Chums on unwitting mission to prevent "time-regime" incursions? Promise of Eternal Youth. Chick's full report. Miles accompanies Chick to second meeting with Ace. The clairvoyant's tears. The trespassers at the window. Pugnax keeps Chums "sound as straight as ever." (c418-28) Trespasser panic. "Duels were fought, lawsuits brought, all for nought." The Marching Academy Harmonica Band Aberration. A dormitory in Decatur. Bing Spooninger, band mascotte. 'Zo Meatman Goes Awol (ditty). Alonzo snitching for Commandant. Weekly visit recounted in really long sentences (421-22). The "surrogates" scenario. Groundhogs and "true" Chums. The Inconvenience returns: "Pugnax with his paws up on the quarterdeck rail, tailing going a mile a minute, barking with unrestrained joy." Better adapted now to the Trespasser problem. Meatman again, this time proffering the Sfinciuno Itinerary (see 2.21a). Orders to set course for Bukhara, rendezvous with Captain Q. Zane Toadflax and his Saksaul. Quick consult with Vandersluice. Roswell Bounce and his Hypops apparatus. "A practical way to submerge onesef beneath the sands and still be able to breathe, walk around so forth." Miles on the step "sidewise." The Tesla device: "Sheep can fly, too, after all. Can't they." Meatman observes departure of Inconvenience from the Bell Tower. • Chumps of Choice on 2.30-31 (397-428). RMPW on 2.31.

NINTH LEG (to 488, concluded 2 April 2007)

3.32a-d (432-448) Chums Beneath the Desert
(a432-33) Turkish Corners, and what's round them. Lindsay Nosegay's solo camel journey. Light as "secret determinant of history." A prejudicial C.A.C.A. finding. Nosegay's "Incipient Gamomania." Sand raptures. Rejoining the crew, or a close facsimile thereof. "Ghost-unit" worries laid to rest by Suckling's insult. (b434-43) "All hands prepare to submerge." Captain Toadflax. The search for Shambhala. A map and a paramorphoscope and "the right attitude." Stilton Gaspereaux, scholarly adventurer and paramorphoscope operator. Additional layers of encryption. A mountain peak seen "not all the time." A little lesson in Manichean beliefs. "That's the choice? Light or pussy? What kind of choice is that?" Approaching Nuova Rialto. The Passing of the Remarks. Battered caravanserai (allusion). Local sand fleas. The Chums pass an evening in Nuovo Rialto. Leonard and Lyle, oil prospectors. "Those onetime honkytonk cities of the plain." The Chums fear, once more, that they're being used, once more. Extraorindary thieves. "Marriage or under-sand duty.... What a choice!" Randolph's "awkward moment" with Q. Zane Toadflax. "Farewells were notable for their economy." The feast of Pugnax. (c443-45) Another of Miles's "extra-temporal excursions." The spectral cavalry (see 2.30b). The Saksaul comes to grief over the Sfinciuno Itinerary. Gasperaux's assignment. Onset of the Taklamakan War. Quaternion-ray weapons deployed, then disseminated. "[E]ventually to change the history of the World-Island beyond even the most unsound projections of those Powers who imagined themselves somehow, at this late date, still competing for it." (d445-48) In London. Inspector Sands, the real one. Gasperaux reveals himself to Bloggins, and soon to Sands. "Only way I could find a moment to chat with you." An interruption: "Damned Suffragettes again I shouldn't wonder." Over a pint at the Smoked Haddock. "The old Shambhala business again." The news sinks in. "By now I know that your most deranged utterances are only conventional history prematurely blurred." • RMPW on 3.32.

3.33a-d (449-59) Merle Rideout to Candlebrow U.
(a449-51) Merle on the day of Dally's departure (see 2.25 and 2.27). The doll Clarabella. Having missed something or someplace essential. To Audacity, Iowa. The "movy" industry in crisis. Wilt Flambo, watchmaker, projectionist, womanizer. A beer with Fisk. "The strange relation these moving pictures had with Time." (b451-55) Candlebrow found. Conferees on-hand: Russian, Indian, Sicilian, Merle. A twister lectured into being. To the stormcellar. The Eternal Return. The Lobatchevskian function. Always the same tornado, Thorvald by name. On West Symmes. Merle dedicates himself to the Mysteries of Time. Arrival of the Inconvenience and crew (circa 2.31). "Last I read...." (see 2.21). Reunion with Roswell Bounce. Fb to Bounce v. Vibe. A savior in Hercules. One use to which the Hypops might be put. (c455-58) Merle, Bounce, and the Anharmonic Pencil. The future of light. Irrational worship of the Geneva movement. Impervious to time. Another storm? "College girls with their hair in Psyche knots..." Politics of the Candlebrow conferences "would've made an average recital of Balkan history seem straightforward." The Creation's irreducible cussedness. The Engineers. (d458-59) Hermann Minkowski's lecture. Roswell and Merle talk over the chalkboard. "All's we need to do's translate this here into hardware...." • RMPW on 3.33.

3.34a-d (460-71) Frank Traverse Rejoins Mayva for a Moment
(a460-62) Headed to Nochecita. Frank "his own ghost"? Three nights like that. Linnet Dawes on Reef, Stray, and Jesse. To Fickle Creek, New Mexico. (b462-68) Another Saturday night. Hotel Noctámbulo, where insomnia prevailed. Joe Hill allusion. Motorcyclists. Zoltan, a Hungarian unable to handle Xs. Vang Feeley, with Stray. To Denver. Rev. Moss Gatlin and his Anarchist Heaven. With Moss to Cripple Creak. Memories of Webb and of Sloat, "stoogin for the plutes." The Union driven out and the town pacified. "Today's scab is tomorrow's striker." Enter Julius, about fifteen. News of Mayva at the nearby Cone Amor. (c468-70) Family news. Lois and Poutine have their cones. Widow's compensation. "Chore-runnin' angels, 'at's us." Phantom Dynamiter of the San Juans. All Mayva has to say about Lake. (d471) Frank takes leave. Mayva's carnival dreams. "And there I was with all o' you, right in the carnival, and didn't even know it." • RMPW on 3.34.

3.35a-k (472-88) Lake and Deuce in Wall o' Death, Missouri
(a472-74) "Oh, that place." Binaries by the river side. Hope, Deuce's sister, and Levi, her husband. Deuce's youthful urge to roam. (b474-75) A kitchen-table poker game kind of a marriage. Forgiveness, "not much more than some medium-sized chip." Saying and not saying. (c475-76) Deuce scared of ghosts, Webb's in particular. Dreams, childhood. (d476-77) To Wall o' Death, Missouri. Taken for the law. (e477-80) Deuce and "the municipal day." An "unspoken-of thing" he'd really been hired to deal with. Sloat's death reported. Telling Lake. Deuce departs. Lake and Tace Boilster chat. The "whole sad story." Tace's own tale of abuse. (f480-81) Lake dreams of Mayva. (g481) Deuce's return. Haunted by Sloat. (h481-84) Another exchange with Tace. Change him? Into what? Extenuating circumstances. Lake's Diary. "Dime-novels full of lurid goings-on." (i484-85) The hardcase goes helpless. Begging forgiveness, continuing to desire. Lake's "skillful stepping." (j485-86) Deuce "relentlessly...delivered into his own life." Childless. The Sioux shaman and other attempts at "cure." Tace the aspiring train-robber. (k486-88) Child of the Storm. The set-to. "Back to horizontal went Deuce." Talking with Tace about it later. • RMPW on 3.35.

TENTH LEG (to 547, concluded 10 April 2007)

3.36a-m (489-504) Yashmeen Halfcourt Sans Merci
(a489-90) Neville and Nigel, steaming. Yashmeen Halfcourt, "there in the moonglow." Cyprian Latewood, feckless scion and suitor to Yashmeen. Richelieu's recipes: opium beer, Spanish-fly. (b490-93) Cyprian Latewood and Reginald "Ratty" McHugh. Cyps declares his love for sapphic Yashmeen. To the derision of Capsheaf. The Divine Walt. Parable of poor Crayke and the Shetland ponies. (c493) Yashmeen, dit Pinky, "dark rock of our northern shore," upon which "blonde girls in their white veils, dash themselves...." (d493-94) Cyprian and Yashmeen. Her whisper conjures, as she knew it would, "an inelastic embarrassment which showed little sign of resolving itself." (e494-95) Lorelei, Noellyn, and Faun discuss Cyps with Pinky. (f495-96) Renfrew's "Map of the World." (g496-97) Summer vacation chez T.W.I.T. Lew Basnight otherwise occupied. Yashmeen's "all-but-erotic fascination with the thoughts of former Göttingen eminence G.F.B. Riemann. His Zeta-function. (h497-98) Autumn returns. Cyp finds Christ. Filtham's Tedium. Yashmeen takes refuge in "the Zeta-function problem." (i498-99) "So Göttingen it is." Taking leave of Cyp. (j499-501) Yashmeen and the Grand Cohen. "When you transmigrate into your next body, you might consider something a bit less eye-catching." Snazzburry's Silent Frock. (k501) Sinister spectre of the sound-cancelling frocks. "[T]heir voices did shake just perceptibly with gynecophobia." (l501-03) Lorelei, Noellyn, Faun, and Yashmeen to London. At the mercy of the Silent-Frocked, and cruelly smiling, corps. The lining. Later, on the Earl Court's Wheel. Yashmeen hits upon a roulette system (MSIR). (m503-04) Yashmeen departs. Cyp suffers "no such attack of sadness," strangely. • RMPW on 3.36. AtD Wiki on 489-524.

3.37a-l (505-524) Dally and Kit aboard the Stupendica and Emperor Maximilian
(a505) Katie McDivott sees Dally off. (b504) Katie, "never been to sea." (c505-10) Erlys and Dally. The eruption at Krakatoa in 1883.The sunsets thereafter. Having buried Burt, accepting a ride from Merle. Troubles Bert left behind. Travels with Merle through Kentucky and Tennessee. Dreaming Dally's face. Enter Luca Zombini, "the first real passion" of Erlys's life. First signs of self-reproach and sorrow. Erlys teases Dally about Kit. First class dining. (d510-11) Kit prefers fourth class. Talk of Frobenius. Enter Root Tubsmith, a Brown-educated Quaternion. (e511-14) Kit and Dally converse. That night at R. Wilshire Vibe's (see 2.27d). Word of Frank (see 2.25c). "She smlled falsely" (rare typo on 513). "He touched an imaginary hatbrim and was gone quick as that." Talking about Kit with Erlys. (f514) Talking about Kit with Bria. (g514-16) Separate vessels. Kit unwilling to accept "the irreversible theft from his life, the great simple fact of Webb's absence." The Stupendica and the Emperor Maximilian. Root's nosing around. Instantly convertible from leisure to war. (h516-19) O.I.C. Bodine, American stoker. The paroxysm. Engagements off the coast of Morocco. "A state of general European war should be presumed in effect." As metamorphosis unfolds, "[h]undreds of small inconveniences commenced." Zombini recognizes the "old Liner-to-Battleship effect." (i519-20) Peacetime again. Kit becomes "the Phantom of the Lower Decks." An indecisive Captain. The shadow-colonials on call. (j520-22) Civilians, including Kit, debark. Working on "the Two-Stupendica problem" with Moïsés, resident Jewish mystic. Jonah and Agadir. Puzzles of bilocation. (k522) Into the Bay of Biscay on the Fomalhaut. "Bloody Jonah in reverse." (l523-24) Meanwhile, aboard the Stupendica. Dally discovers an "alternate way to travel." Gibraltar, Venice, Trieste. "Never mind Kit for the moment—where was she?" • RMPW on 3.37. AtD Wiki on 489-524.

3.38a-f (525-547) Kit in Belgium with "Young Congo" and Quaternions-in-Exile
(a525-31) Kit regains dry land at Ostend. "He looked like debris washed up on the beach. Smelled that way too, come to think of it." Quarternions. Barry Nebulay, University of Dublin. Aftermath of the "Quarternion Wars" of the 1890s. The Grand Hôtel de la Nouvelle Digue. "Young Congo," a nihilist cell consisting of Eugénie, Fatou, Denis, and Policarpe. Kit recognizes himself as belonging (see the Marching Academy Harmonica Band Aberration at 2.31c). Kit has escaped the Vibe curse? Denis and Eugénie, former students of Elisée Reclus. "Africa remained the unspoken, the unpermitted term that kept them solid and resolute." Sipido and the Boers. Policarpe and "the Green Hour." Rocco and Pino, Italian torpedoists. The Siluro Dirigible a Lenta Corsa. (b531-40) Miss Umeki Tsurigane. The Anharmonic Pencil (see 3.33c). Catalog of Quaternions and apostates therefrom, quasi-Gibbsites and pseudo-Heavisiders, and full-bore Grassmanniacs. Bolshevics v. anarchists. The ijk lot, "drifters who set up their working tents for as long as the problem might demand, then struck camp again and moved on, always ad hoc and local...." Q's defined "the axes of space as imaginary" and left "Time to be the real term, and a scalar as well." "Of course the Vectorists went to war." Quizzical, queer Quaternioneer (ditty). Root Tubsmith's return. Heaviside as Whitman, Maxwell as Tennyson, Hamilton as Swinburne, Grassmann as Wordsworth, Gibbs as Longfell. "Is there an Oscar Wilde, by any chance?" To the Casino. "Broken symmetries everywhere." Pléiade Lafrisée. "Whatever else this cupcake might be up to, she was no piker." Russell on Hegel's "puns on the word 'is.'" Dr. V. Ganesh Rao, his program of "reincarnation on a budget, without the element of karma to worry about." (c540-42) Pléiade's rendezvous with the brutal Piet Woevre. "All mathematics leads, doesn't it, sooner or later, to some kind of human suffering." Woevre's many masters. A Quaternionic Weapon? (d542-44) Lured away. "They waited thus, the disquieted Vectorist and this wraith of Pléiade Lafrisée." Back home with the anarchists. Belgium as pawn. (e544-45) Pléiade of the "gray toque." Krafft-Ebing. A museum of mayonnaise. Richelieu's recipes (see 3.36a). Discussing Pléiade with Root. (f545-47) The Regional Mayonnaise Works at night. "He was being engulfed in a thick, slick, sour-smelling mayonnaise." Rocco and Pino's timely arrival. Deliverance. • RMPW on 3.38. AtD Wiki on 525-556.

ELEVENTH LEG (to 587, concluded 17 April 2007)

3.39a (548-556) Chums over Ostend
RMPW on 3.39. AtD Wiki on 525-556.

3.40 (557-567) Kit & Umeki in Ostend
RMPW on 3.40. AtD Wiki on 557-587.

3.41 (568-587) Dally & Hunter in Venice
RMPW on 3.41. AtD Wiki on 557-587.

TWELFTH LEG (to 636, concluded 24 April 2007)

3.42 (588-604) Kit and Yashmeen in Göttingen
RMPW on 3.42. AtD Wiki on 588-614.

3.43 (605-614) Lew in London
RMPW on 3.43. AtD Wiki on 588-614.

3.44 (615-636) Kit and Yashmeen in Göttingen
RMPW on 3.44. AtD Wiki on 615-643.

THIRTEENTH LEG (to 693, concluded 01 May 2007)

3.45 (637-43) Frank in Tampico
RMPW on 3.45. AtD Wiki on 615-643.

3.46 (644-51) Frank and Stray in El Paso
RMPW on 3.46. AtD Wiki on 644-677.

3.47 (652-660) Reef Works the Tunnels in the Alps
RMPW on 3.47. AtD Wiki on 644-677.

3.48 (661-677) Kit and Yashmeen; Kit and Reef
RMPW on 3.48. AtD Wiki on 644-677.

3.49 (678-93) Lew, T.W.I.T., and Renfrew in and around London
RMPW on 3.49. AtD Wiki on 678-694.

FOURTEENTH LEG (to 747, concluded 8 May 2007)

4.50 (697-711) Cyprian Latewood in Trieste & Environs
(a697-98) Cyprian Latewood (last seen here). The New Uskok movement. (b698-701) Fb to Cyprian's "descent into the secret world." In Vienna, with Misha and Grisha. "You might at least think before using your interesting mouth." Assignations with the Colonel. Ratty McHugh. A "career in sodomy." (c701-703) Derrick Theign, functionary. (d703-704) Posted to Trieste. (e704-705) The Colonel out of play. (f705-707) An object of someone's administration. Theign, the "Good Shepherd." His visits. The matter of Venice. "We of the futurity know that the unit in question was the sinister Siluro Dirigibile a Lenta Corsa." Masking device "that mimics open sky" of Russian aerostats and airships. (g707-708) Misha and Grisha "gone to ground." Derrick and Cyp have at it. (h708-711) Zanni. Communication by motorcyclists. Rapid Unit for Shadowing and Harassment (R.U.S.H.). Italian shark-skin vs. Scottish tweed. On the train back to Vienna. Operatives known and nonce. Cyp running for his life. | RMPW on 4.50. AtD Wiki on 695-723.

4.51 (712-723) Cyprian Latewood Back in Vienna; Yashmeen Halfcourt Reencountered
(a712-15) Cyprian's return to Vienna. Mozart's Piano Concerto in A Major, K. 488. A "hateful future nearly at hand and inescapable." Colonel Khäutsch. Interviews at the Hotel Klomser. Theign's acquaintances. Miskolci, "not exactly a vampire." Dracula vogue of the late '90s. Dvindler, his F.I.P. To simulate a peristaltic wave. Yzhitza, her Honigfalle [honey-pot] work. (b715-) Cyprian, flaneur. The Prater, old sanctuary of desire. Absorbed somehow into a mobility. Blundering into Socialist demonstrations. Yashmeen Halfcourt, shaken. Bedeviled by two or three Powers at once. Venedig in Wien. Ratty McHugh weighs in. The Shambhalan Question, no doubt. What sort of Russians? Werfner-Renfrew. An Hungarian element. A desire in the mass co-conscious for death and destruction. (c720-21) Madame Eskimoff, the T.W.I.T. group. (d721-22) "Now, about this frightfully irregular sexual life of yours, Cyprian." (e722-23) Cyps summoned to Venice. Derrick's "high-tessitura dismay" at the tryst. | RMPW on 4.51. AtD Wiki on 695-723.

4.52 (724-747) Twin Vibes and Two Traverses
(a724-25) Foley and Scarsdale share a meal. "The Traverse kid did a skip." (b725-28) The humiliation rate picks up a notch. The Sack of Rome described. Scarsdale submerged, Foley near the air-supply hoses. Observed by Reef and Kit. "And then the shitheads live forever." It's autumn. (c728-30) Dally Rideout at home in the Rialto market. Meeting up with Kit. Dally, Hunter, Reef, 'Pert, and Algernon. (d730-31) Dally at the Ca' Spongiatosta. The Principessa and Derrick Theign. "Mistaking confusion for depth." (e732-36) Kit, Reef, Dally. Kit and Dally alone. "Once she would have thought, Our first 'date.'" Escape plans. "They lingered then in one of those paralyses where anything anybody said would be wrong." Dally compares Kit to Merle in her mind. The Principessa proposes a diversion. (f736-39) Dally, Reef, and Kit discuss the "Hottentot." "Maybe that Vibe ogutha change his name to Jumbo." The mistake with Frick. To Laguna Morte for a chat with Tancredi. (g739) Forces of history. (h739-41) Scarsdale Vibe to attend the ball. Hours canonical only to storm. (i741) Reef and Kit discuss Dally, escape. (j741-43) Tancredi's attempt at Vibe, with "infernal machine." A "bounded and finite volume of God's absence." Tancredi mowed down. Vibe's dance of triumph. And Foley's muted reaction. Vibe stares straight at Kit. "Who—what—did you think you were up against?(k743-44) Vibe and Foley. Foley's tarantella. (l744-46) Dally mourns Tancredi, "all the creation that would not happen now." Kit's exclusion from a future. (m746) The brothers part on less than affectionate terms. Reef "absorbed into mobility." (n746-47) A night steamer to Trieste. Dally seeks "to establish some twofold self" for Kit. Terms on each side canceling. | RMPW on 4.52. AtD Wiki on 724-747.

FIFTEENTH LEG (to 792, concluded 15 May 2007)

4.53 (748-767) With Auberon Halfcourt in Kashgar
(a748-50) Yashmeen's letter to Auberon. Cites Rinpungpa's letter. (b751-53) Kit's route to Kashgar. (c753-56) The Hotel Tarim. Auberon Halfcourt and Col. Yevgeny Prokladka. Mushtaq, Halfcourt's colleague. Talk of the Bol'shaia Igra. A panorama presenting a series of so-called Chinese Enigmata. (d756-57) The Doosra. (e757-58) Al Mar-Fuad, his accent. "Suwwender the city to the Dooswa." (f758) Halfcourt and Prokladka. (g759-61) Auberon's remembrance of the child Yashmeen. "In that instant he had become, awkwardly, two creatures resident within the same life." Jade/yashm. (h761-62) Lt. Dwight Prance. Eurasia Irredenta. (i762-64) Halfcourt and Kit converse. Counterparts in hopelessness. The choiring clepsydras. Auberon looks askance at Kit. "What on earth sort of family produced wastrels like this?" Mission to the Tungus living east of the Yenisei. Kit and Prance, disguised as "Buriat pilgrims." Or British idiots. (j765) Kit's audience with the Doosra. The journey itself a kind of conscious Being. (k765-66) Mushtaq and Auberon discuss Yashmeen. Auberon rides out alone. (l766-67) A book-dealer's in Bukhara. Rinpungpa's letter. Directions to Shambhala. | RMPW on 4.52. AtD Wiki on 748-767.