Steve’s Seveneves Page
Neal
Stephenson’s Page | Harper-Collins
As with all my book pages, this is intended as,
well, primarily as memory aid for me (I mean, just where the hell do
books go after they've been read?) but if you can dig it, dig in. My
recommendation would be not to read ahead in these notes beyond where you’ve
read in the book, spoilers and such. (I’m sure I’ve got some stuff wrong…I’ve
tried to fix all errors, but if you see what you believe to be an error, email me,
and if I agree I’ll correct it with a grateful mention here.)
Basic stuff.
- Red fractions in brackets
indicate page-count milestones ([1/3] means you’re 1/3 the way
through, etc.)
- Meta stuff—my nerdly
comments, trivia, etc.—is in brackets and often italicized. You’ll get a feel.
- Bullets indicate a
section that starts with a quadruple space. It's weird at first but makes more
sense later, particularly in Part Three, when Stephenson abandons named
chapters entirely.
PART ONE
3 The Age of the One Moon
Mysterious agent cracks
Luna into 7 fragments [as stated in one
of the coolest first-sentences you’ll find in any novel!]
5 • Humans are passive patients, and
would be for the foreseeable future.
6 The Seven Sisters
Rufus MacQuarie telegraphs
ISS
7 • Amalthea; Dinah MacQuarie, on ISS (dubbed Izzy), tests geologic
robots; Dad messages “Look at the moon”
12 • Doc Dubois: genial science popularizer [Once I had the thought that Dubois had been inspired by Neil Degrasse
Tyson, I simply could NOT see Doob with any other face!]
14 • Ivy & Dinah actually get along well, thanks; Primordial Black
Hole hypothesis.
19 • Ivy & Dinah’s Q-codes
22 • Dubois names the Seven Sisters, falls in love with Amelia; Scoop
crashes into Kidney Bean; Doc: “Who cares how this happened? We need to focus
on what WILL happen.”
27 Scouts
Doob briefs the president:
“The moon chunks will ultimately become a ring system;” White Sky to Hard
Rain...for 50 to 100 centuries.
31 • We have 2 years to make an Ark. A swarmable Cloud Ark that can, as
needed, attach to and detach from Izzy/Amalthea; In the Banana, the president
briefs Izzy’s crew (who are named and briefly described); Dinah: “you’re going
to need to prep asteroids for human habitation...watch my back.”
39 • Soyuz arrives with four Russians and a Brit, in a capsule whose
remaining space is stuffed with zillions of sundries (“vitamins”)
44 • Radiation shielding strategy (Earth & Amalthea are great shields;)
geo-robots dig into a crater on Amalthea; Rhys, a creative engineer, banters
with Dinah about her bots, tensegrity & biomimetics.
50 • President JBF bio; CRATER LAKE SUMMIT, world leaders announce to
their countries simultaneously from Crater Lake lodge; Bulinsky on Flora &
Faunal genetic preservation; Mbangwa on cultural preservation; Crouch on Homo sapiens sapiens preservation (A
great casting of lots; a boy & a girl from each jurisdiction); Doob &
Amelia at Thanksgiving; No WAY that many males will be going, for several
reasons; Amelia will leave to be with family, not stay there with Doob.
65 • Dinah chats with Dad/Rufus; Rhys gifts Dinah with a big
banana-condensation ice lens; Dinah’s boss at Arjuna (Sean) “Forget rock, now
you work on ice;” Testing rock robots on ice; Dinah gets flirty with Rhys
72 • Integrated Truss Assembly; SCOUTS; LUKS; HUTS & Vestibyuls;
Initial scout testing – fatalities; Space morticianry; Tekla; Dinah observes
Tekla who’s in a Luk; Chocolate for Tekla; “No email;”
90 • Next Banana mtg.; Ulrika Ek; Kremlinology; Fyodor irked, boss
of suits.
93 • Meeting continues, Dinah resolves to at least keep rock robot
research on back burner; Tekla behaving strangely in her OVL (Orlan
suit/Veistbyul/Luk) Can’t close back door of suit, so can’t detach, so locked
in OVL receiving no “mail” (supplies); Dinah figures it out: Scouts Die; She glares
at Fyodor so he knows she knows; “I got this.”
97 • Tekla gets the news, they’re coming; Rhys’s orbiting neck chain,
and his Royal Society ancestors who studied them (Kucharski’s bullwhip-ish “Kickstelle”);
Lassoing Tekla’s LUK up against Dinah’s airlock; Tekla progressively pierces
her plastic pod’s protection; Bloody and wounded, but safely on Izzy;
Significant air loss, and annoyed superiors in Houston who, let’s face it, won’t
be irritated for too much longer.
109 Pioneers & Prospectors
• Post-coital, Dinah shows
Rhys vid from Arjuna ice Nats tests.
112 DAY 56. Hub 2 – human Habitrails; First wave of Pioneers: 6
arrivals on 6 new docks, Izzy’s population doubles; Larz; Slicing Amalthea for
radiation shield plating; “Why ice?” At Arjuna, some physics is nuclear, solar
is way too inadequate; RTGs • Larz’s Crypto messages from Arjnuna – Probst has
invited himself up.
119 DAY 68. Probst upon arrival: “This is all bullshit”; Tube suit, no
gloves; Tekla welcomes Sean, who discovers some manners.
124 • “It’s bullshit because it won’t last forever, which is the lullaby
you’re telling the ground-based folks. Cloud Ark will quickly exhaust all propellant,
it’s really no better than the Earth. You need water, and I’ve ID’d some comet
cores. Gimme all your robots.”
128 • Greg’s Skeleton.
129 DAY 73. Doc Dubois almost went into space 10 years ago, as a rich
space tourist’s understudy; Wife filed for divorce; Visits son Henry at college
in Seattle, arriving just before the moving truck; Helps Henry & housemates
pack & move; Heading east on I-90, Dubois sees a flash...not lightning, a
bolide; Traffic suddenly stops; A large 18-wheeler jackknifed to avoid
meteorite-distracted drivers; On to Moses Lake & its 2.6 mile runway; “New
Baikonur:” having a rocket assembly and launch pad close to Seattle, huge
runway, river, interstate.
141 DAY 80. Luisa Soter, new arrival, brushes up by watching the
YouTube clip of Prowse & Dubois at Moses Lake; Russians vs. “Disruptive”
Arjunas; Sean’s heading to a different orbit, via the Sun-Earth L1 gateway.
151 DAY 90. “105;” Many Arjuna launches from many pads, even Canaveral
& Vandenberg; An unusual travelling companion aft; NASA & Arjuna get
testy; Sean & Larz headed for Ymir
on Day 82; Barth shows Dinah a photo (she knows but can’t reveal); Ymir goes silent; Heliocentric
insertion; Day 144, 20%; Nine habitrail casualties; Izzy has been so greatly
expanded by Scouts & Pioneers, it’s a 3D maze now; Day 160, Ivy confides in
Dinah, appearing to pass some sort of torch…
163 Consolidation
• Adding so much more mass
to Izzy means more orbital decay and more reboosts; Consolidating Izzy, making
Habitrails less floppy; RTGs are better than solar panels; Gutter-Downspout
truss reinforcement.
169 DAY 260. Pres: “Dubois, you’re going; “But I don’t wanna!” I just
pardoned you, now get up there and convince everyone how awesome Cloud Ark will
be! (Whether you believe it or not.); Imagines Probst on his way to Ymir; “Only if I can take my embryo.”
“Done.”
175 DAY 287. Dark humor from both Arkers and Grounders (who are not
convinced Hard Rain is unsurvivable;) Dinah has neglected her T2 gravity time;
Message Shaping.
181 Casting of Lots
Two numbers (bolide
fragmentation rate, & days remaining); Fragmentation report; Doob avoids
looking up at lunar remnants; Peach Pit prevails; What is Cloud Ark’s
destination • Doob’s chipper ride to Bhutan; Meeting Bhutan dignitaries
• The Casting of Lots isn’t exactly random, turns out; Where do seven
billion souls go? Too steep, let’s walk/climb; Climbing to Tiger’s Nest
monastery, meeting the young Arkers, lots of crying;
197 DAY 306. Arklet structure, front doors, boiler rooms; First bolo,
small talk in the Habitrails; Dinah & Ivy share an Arklet; Dinah cries
spontaneously; Ivy ships Dinah & Marcus; Arklets get clear of Izzy; “We
have a lock, grappling achieved;” In 1g, new arrival Marcus is thrilled, but
long timers are having a rough go of it.
209 DAY 333. Doob finds a latent love of the outdoors, but Tav, flexing
his newly found (and widely praised) philosopher’s muscle, plays Devil’s
Advocate; Doob pops in on friends and family; [1/4] In
the mountains with Amelia and Enrique, Doob shares his vision of humanity’s
future.
216 Cloud Ark
Day 365. Doob records a lesson in an Arklet; X, Y, Z axes, but in
space you need three more numbers for velocity; Only 3 ways for objects to
orbit in formation, be physically connected, use thrusters, or orbit in single
file; It’s been a year since the moon disintegrated; Doob removes his “costume”
space suit; Moira Crew…
222 • …will be keeping
algae/plants from going extinct while curating the DNA museum.
PART TWO
229 DAY 700. 1276 arkies (and one dead stowaway) 172 General
Population; The political math of being sent up to Izzy…and not; Objects near
Izzy (nadir/zenith, left/right) will not stay by her side, only fore & aft
(i.e. single file, re p. 218) can fly in orbital “formation” with Izzy; 400km
Goldilocks altitude, but White Sky will still be a challenge; Arjuna had
expanded—and maxed—Amalthea’s protective silhouette, now she’s enveloped in
scaffolding; Heptads & Triads; Three weeks to White Sky; Izzy on GMT/zulu;
Staggered sleep cycles (three shifts) saves energy, minimizes number of people
awake at any moment; Doob on a treadmill, joined by Luisa who asks about
Venezuela/Kourou; Doob is preoccupied by Peach Pit and its spawn; Venezuelans
actually cast lots randomly and, for failing to send best/brightest, are being
left behind; Venzuelan protesters are sabotaging Kourou launches; Ivy joins
Doob & Moira on treadmills; Ivy says she’s been replaced by Marcus for
seeming weak (rescuing Tekla, allowing Probst to board with no notification…oh,
and most criminal of all, not having a Y chromosome); Yes, she’s worried about
Kourou, but it means shit has begun in
earnest, the beginning of the end; Ivy’s submariner BF Cal has submerged;
Doob visits Markus’s T3 Tank & Farm, sees Earth news on Farm SAMs;
President, sporting a Cloud Ark ribbon, describes Venezuelan governmental interference
posing as protesters and freedom fighters; Houston wants Doob to be “Doc” and
reassure those left behind on Earth…while pondering his message to a doomed
civilization he visits Embryo storage unit, then Zarya (aka Woo-woo Chapel Pod)
and even considers recording in the morgue; [Node X, SCRUM mining Colony, SCRUM
is political (What *is* Cloud Ark, post White Sky?); In a bolide swarm Izzy
*is* maneuverable, but only to a point, with enough notice slight deviations
should keep her intact; Abandon Amalthea?; Arjuna constructed Amalthea’s mining
dome and has been slowly hollowing out the asteroid]; Doob drops in on Dinah
just as Marcus is leaving (their relationship is not news, and actually kinda
handy, politically) so Doob briefs him on Venezuela.
258 • Space Troll has been transmitting clumsy morse on Rufus &
Dinah’s frequency; Rufus is going subterranean in Alaska mountains; Dinah
acknowledges the Troll, and contacts Rufus just as Doob knocks on her door; She
thinks Probst is the Space Troll.
264 • Probst succeeded, Ymir
is headed straight for L1.
266 • “It’s been two years since anyone heard from them, radio
failure?”; Dinah matches the MAC address of her old robots to the Troll; “All
Earth sees everything he says, he’d HAVE to encrypt any communication;” Sean
sends Dinah to his hidden code book; Receiving and decoding Probst’s 1st
message (he lost several people, hovering at L1?); Doob retires; Here’s where
Dinah boinking Markus gets interesting, Sean will want to make a deal; From
Earth L1 is essentially same dir. as Sun, so when Izzy is in daylight, she has
a comm window with Sean that’s 45 min open, 45 min closed; Dinah sends Sean a TBC
message; Ivy pops in to take a look down at NE South America… “Cal’s sub
surfaced, Kourou launches will resume…” They see LOTS of shit happening down at
Kourou…and a nuke detonates off Venezuela’s coast. “Venezuela’s navy had
mobilized, and under orders from JBF, Cal just immobilized it;” Dinah tells Ivy
about contacting Sean; Kourou launches immediately resume.
274 • Moira finds morning coffee in the Farm and ponders…..her dreams of
being a Space Barista; ...Tekla’s undeniable, beguiling hotness and the many
facets of her Ark-bound & earth-bound reputations; Relaxing morning coffee
is now crowded as people watch news reports of the eastern Caribbean battle;
Tekla discusses this news with Moira (who is quite preoccupied) and then Markus
(Moira sees they have quite a rapport); Moira despairs of her ongoing celibacy;
Arkers/Arkies; Moira receives new sperm/egg/embryo donations from Philippines,
catalogs & adds them into the Human Genetic Archive (HGA) shows Dr Andrada around
[1/3] and addresses his concerns; Sprice & Sprew!
288 • Martial Arts in zero gee is a new frontier (training what appears
to be a nascent law enforcement unit)
290 • Doob’s vid calls to his family have gone cold (running out of
things to say); Ponders accuracy of White Sky predictions, then discusses this
sensitivity analysis with Dinah (“it’s teetering…but we don’t know what will
ultimately set it off,” “Sean does…Eight Ball is inbound.”)
294 • Sal Guodian, The Only Lawyer In Space;
Cloud Ark Constitution; Markus asks about authority & power, “Let’s
war-game it, say someone rapes someone where we have no cameras… “ “Do we even have rape kits?” “Seriously, if I go to arrest
the rapist, what’s to keep him and his friends from simply resisting? Is a
police force discussed in CAC?” “Yeah but the more you need force, the less
power you have, if you think about it;” (Markus ignores Doob’s knock) “It will
be PSAPS (period of simplified admin procedures
and structures, aka martial
law) for at least a couple years…and you better start thinking this way because
shit like this will be happening soon;” Markus lets Doob in, Doob has info from
Probst (JBF did not like Dinah talking to Sean, Markus wonders if JBF has spies
on Izzy; Markus formally declares PSAPS and wheels start to turn, tells Steve
Lake to change all of Izzy’s passwords. “I can change all the ones I know,” “We
must then be vigilant about the ones you don’t.”
303 White Sky
“You nailed the name White
Sky,” “Sometimes being right is cold comfort;” BFR skyrockets after 8-Ball
arrives; Once Doob said goodbye to folks on the ground, he avoided speaking to
them again; Received a text from Henry at Moses Lake (preparing for the
Surge—the last gasp of rocket launches at onset of White Sky) and Markus “Stay
focused up here, they’re all dead Doob;” …and Marcus has bodyguards.
309 Hard Rain
…starts with the instantaneous
erasure of two Russian cities [combined pop. ≈ 2 mil] between the Black &
Caspian Seas; Many headed to high latitudes, Rufus and clan down in their
mines; Ivy’s mom auto-euthanizes; Adieu Notre Dame; Ivy texts Cal “I release
you;” On Izzy, “streaker alert” of incoming bolide, Izzy must react; Ship
thinking vs. Cloud thinking (each arklet must calculate all proximity threats);
Params & Parambulator; App display’s response to Izzy’s course change…some
red dots not correcting; Ivy & Cal trade tears and goodbyes (Cal had dived
to avoid an enormous tsunami); POTUS has gone dark; Markus orders habitrails be
kept clear; People in a pod scream as earth burns below; Luisa arrives to help,
Markus summons Ivy; Moira shares King’s College music with Ivy as she passes,
enroute to Markus; Markus tells Ivy the red dots (out of control vessels,
whether manned or unmanned) are a dangerous distraction he unfortunately
doesn’t have time for, asks Ivy to handle it. “We’ll scuttle them with frozen
corpses if we have to;” Luisa tells of the wailing in the pod, advises that he
make an announcement soon; Eastern seaboard of the US eats a 100’ tsunami,
destroying Manhattan, Norfolk (Cal’s base; his last text “no chain above me,”
sent a photo—shot through his engagement ring—looking up through the hatch of
his boat’s conning tower at the blazing sky); Dinah contacts Rufus, where,
despite his high latitude, the paint on his truck is bubbling; Markus on the
PA, “Cloud Ark Constitution is now in effect;” Flaming atmosphere sweeps from
equator to poles; Dinah’s last few transmissions to Dad, the MacQuaries have
500 people underground; Markus asks everyone to grieve one second for every day
since Agent day, 704; Dinah ponders her father’s last instructions, “Do the
right thing;” Ivy interrupts “We have a seriously disruptive arklet.”
327 • An x-37, remnant of the Space Shuttle program; Ivy, Dinah, and now
Tekla work with a tricked out Flivver; Clear of Izzy,
flivver heads for the wayward X-37; It’s JBF! …and Starling; Dinah enters
canister to save JBF, Bolide pierces canister and kills Starling.
336 • Conic sections and diversity of orbits; Dinah has trained for a
decompression, plugs holes, pressure returns; Ivy & Dinah agree to deorbit
the canister/coffin, JBF’s protests are met with a downright surgical tongue lashing from Ivy; Flynks;
They undock and attach a lamprey to the X-37, a half-km long wire with a light
electrical current, which interacting with Earth’s magnetic field induces just
enough force to get the X-37 clear and decelerated slightly; Parambulator app
still shows LOTS of reds…controlled collision elsewhere in the cloud; As Ivy
& Dinah approach Izzy, something’s not right; the controlled collision was
a near miss that stripped thermal sheathing off the HGA, causing them to wonder
about Moira’s success with genetic dispersal.
349 Ymir
At a sort of inquest, Julia
told her story in exhaustive detail, and is brusquely thanked for her time; She
has a friend waiting right outside the door; The minor collision was caused
when a close-passing arklet’s light thrust blew a weakened thermal blanket
(designed for sunshine, not Hard Rain) loose; 97% of the HGA samples were lost;
Dinah half exasperatedly proves why Moira is essentially faultless; Markus
& Moira break the news to Doob…but the HGA was only ever for appearances:
by the time we advance to where we can use the HGA for human genetic
heterozygosity, we will certainly have advanced to where we wouldn’t need the
HGA for that; T3 is barely within
Amalthea’s shield cone; Three options – “Dump & Run” (cut Amalthea loose,
climb to higher safer orbit), “Pure Swarm” (distribute EVERYTHING in arklets, and
the cloud climbs to safer orbit), Ymir
is coming in high, hot & heavy (Probst will deliver the ice!) 3rd option, “The
Big Ride” (take Sean’s iceberg Ymir
as an essentially limitless energy source, jack the whole current Ark with
Amalthea to lunar orbit); “Ymir is enroute, as per Sean’s final
transmission,” (his health had been iffy for a long time;) Markus will transfer
command to Ivy, take Dinah and some others and rendezvous with Ymir to guide it to Izzy. “Doob you
figure out how we do it.”
364 • Delta Vee; Marcus’s retrieval team, in a MIV christened New Caird; Mass Ratio (rocket’s mass at
launch over mass at end); LOX & LH2 & H2O.
371 • “Didn’t expect surface of Ymir
to be black [radiation darkened? –smr-];
2 years in space has not been kind to Vyacheslav; New Caird is going to get constantly dosed with radiation, no
avoiding it; High G burn (a couple of them pass out?) It’s a crazy plan and
could very well be suicidal AND fail; Probst saw early on exactly what needed
to be done and didn’t want to risk futzing about with politics, acting quickly
and decisively. Maybe Markus choosing to lead New Caird/Ymir mission was an acknowledgment and continuation of
that responsibility…; Sean had selected a crystalline ice shard; With so many
robots needed to a) mine ice for propulsion, b) maintain the shape of the
thrust nozzle, and c) remain on the shard’s surface to simply keep the thing in
one piece, Ymir is a very non-traditional
spaceship indeed; Stages/Levels of radiation sickness (% of crew vomiting); New Caird approaches Ymir & makes a close pass; Gammas,
Betas & Alphas; Dinah asks about radiation, Jiro hedges…; Dock is buried;
Bots ping Dinah; Bots on Ymir’s
surface grab hold of New Caird; Jiro
contacts Ymir’s reactor; Vycheslav
exits & exposes the buried docking port; (All on New Caird are rendered temporarily unconscious when Ymir’s hatch is opened?)
389 • Arklet orientations (“Tunnel” vs “Silo”); Jiro enters “top” floor
of Ymir’s command module; finds
Probst’s corpse in a bag; Radiation increases as he descends; Hatch in floor of
bottom story leads to 100m tunnel down to reactor; At end of tunnel near
reactor Jiro finds two bodies.
393 • An unappetizing post-mortem; Fuel fleas; In Ymir’s environment Dinah finds a certain charm; Next morning Jiro
tells the mission, as he was able to piece it together; Natural water was an
impure moderator – ruptured rod à radioactive gas sent out
the nozzle cone à some formed snowflakes and otherwise crystallized on ship around nozzle
à skittering surface bots, when handled by gloved crew, contaminated
gloves.
399 • …but this reactor engine worked;
Shard rotation, not so simple; …and earth’s now-heated atmosphere will
expand and rise to meet Izzy…will Ymir
sink or skip?
403 • Maimed by terrorists as a youth, Camila was sent up by Holland; 7
arklets ≈ 30 people; DAILY LIFE IN A HEPTAD, nationalities, culture regions;
JBF: “Why only clusters of 7?” Spencer drops by…because…Julia complained about
a noise (screwing with procedures, already bending her environment to her will)
chats with Zeke Peterson, who isn’t feeling her manipulative personality as she
campaigns against Markus.
411 • Ymir’s perigee is very
hard—if not impossible—to predict…Markus just eyeballs it; Vyacheslav will man New Caird, Dinah is busy with robots,
which are hollowing out Ymir while
leaving it structurally supported within.
417 • Doob ponders arkies vs GPoppers, Skypes Julia, during which call
she continues her campaigning and political maneuvering…which, it takes a bit,
but Doob spots her game, asking how many others she’s probed for info; He calls
her on her BS and like any good gaslighter she plays the victim: “Whoa, hey, stuck
a nerve?” Luisa hints that Julia is simply molding opinion as necessary—it’s
simply her nature to seek power.
424 • Approaching perigee, Ymir’s
speed increases; For the perigee deceleration burn, there’s no starting gun, no
ceremony, things just start happening, people man their stations; [1/2] Reactor comes online initiating the burn; Atmospheric
buffeting; Problems, jammed augers, over-rotated, running out of ice; MECO
(main engine cut-off), and Ymir’s
tumbling amid other problems. But the folks on Izzy saw the whole show and are
cheering.
431 • Julia meets with Martians; they War-Game a Mars mission; A year on
Mars before we’d run out of provisions; Julia can totally sell it to the
Arkies.
435 • Ivy meets with her defacto cabinet “So, we don’t even know who’s
in Julia’s heptad?” They note that Julia comes & goes, Spencer’s switching
systems off; Zeke appears and tells some of what Julia’s up to; She’s angling,
and the only answer to politics is more politics.
438 • Julia discusses commandeering & bundling a heptad and a triad
for the Mars mission.
440 • Ivy notes how Julia craves attention, just like Ivy’s grandmother
did when Ivy was young; Ivy sends Tekla to check on Julia’s heptad, and just
observe; “What if she tries to recruit me?” “Nothing yet,”
443 • On first perigee burn Ymir
didn’t lose enough velocity, but still lost a lot; Attitude thrusters not
strong enough (“no control authority); Markus undocks New Caird from Ymir; Dinah deals with bots, Markus and Vycheslav
tend to the thrusters; Vycheslav goes EVA; Markus “plants” (ie crashes) New Caird’s nose into Ymir’s structure…but Ymir collapses a bit too much, trapping
Markus, who orders them to execute the apogee burn, then signs off in the midst
of a coughing fit; Dinah realizes Markus’s suicide mission and is temporarily
paralyzed; Jiro pulls her focus; New
Caird fell off of Ymir...
453 • Tavistock blogs about the New
Caird incident; Julia sows dissent by lying about New Caird; Tekla sets her straight; Later Tekla offers intel about
Zeke…
459 • …just as Spencer’s intel
about Tekla predicted she would.
460 • The perigee burn—with the ship moving
nozzle first—coated Ymir with
radioactive rime, and Vycheslav, who was EVA, now needs to be quarantined;
Dinah FINALLY gets to rest…suggests, in the absence of working attitude
thrusters, that they scarf the rocket’s nozzle.
465 • Bolide scan; Cloud Ark is on a default-go for course corrections; Ivy
notes Tav’s interview with Ulrika…she highlighted Swarm Theory, and now Tav is
pushing for it HARD; Ivy
tells how Julia is hoarding critical supplies, we’ve ID’s the worst offenders.
469 • Julia reacts to Spencer’s intel about Ivy coming after hoarders;
“Mars mission is a go;” To cover Red
Rover’s launch, Spencer will fake a streaker alert.
473 • Dinah dreams of Mars; Izzy rendezvous will happen but it will take
a lot longer; Several successful burns; Jiro preps Dinah on engine
operation…because he’ll be finishing his tour of duty down in the boiler room.
476 • Ivy’s police detail arrive at a now-empty
storage arklet; Tekla smells a rat, and right then a Streaker Alert sounds,
“Remarkable coincidence,” she says.
478 • Ivy must tend to the Alert, but delegated it to Steve Lake; Lots
about this alert was unusual, bolide approached slowly, Parambulator chaotic
readings; Lake says “Looks like two bolides, from two
origins…this looks forged.”
480 • Julia: “Let’s move!” Red Rover mission prepares to depart with 24 people;
4 shipyard workers kidnapped; Martians attempt to leave, but shit gets fucked
up; Tekla goes after Julia, who shoots….but the
recoils is to strong….and an entire wall caves in on them in a massive decompression.
[Fake alert was at same time a real and large bolide arrived…]
485 • Jiro dies slowly in the boiler room, as planned; Through her
telescope Dinah sees all hell breaking loose on Izzy; Bodies drifting away, off
structure; (Vycheslav died the day before, from radiation); Mining Colony
signals Dinah (“Ignore stray arklets”) Dinah reads Julia’s public communique;
“Terrible tragedy, I was at shipyard sending off Red Hope. This disaster
highlights the danger the AC is in since Izzy can’t maneuver out of harm’s way.
Any arklet can leave, you know. It’s not safe to remain as we have seen. Join
me in high orbit; “Ivy responded, but not fast enough to keep a TON of arklets
from defecting with Julia; Flivvers come out to escort Ymir in; Dinah JETTISON’s Ymir’s
reactor engine.
493 • Dinah is welcomed back aboard Izzy; In a Banana meeting, Ivy
shares the numbers: 1552 at start of Hard Rain; 24 onboard Red Hope; 211 killed onboard Izzy today, leaving 113 alive there;
Approx 210 arklets took off with Red Hope (incl. the attached triad &
heptad); 70 arklets remained with Izzy, housing 300, along with the 11 empty
spares; About 800 people left with Julia; 400 stayed with Izzy; Doob: “We do
have enough engines for the Big Ride;” Camila feels tremendously betrayed by
Julia.
499 Endurance
Izzy gets a new coat of
ice; Christened Endurance (After another ship famously trapped
in ice!) Very slow altitude gain each orbit, but they burn fuel and weigh less so
progress becomes exponential…
503 • …but it still took three years; Rare contact with Swarm now, to
trade goods; Men are expendable, women are not; Coronal Mass Ejection…in three
years there were 10 more CMEs.
509 • Only 28 remain alive on Endurance; Doob notes they’re approaching
lunar orbit, Cleft altitude; Endurance needs to join the moon’s orbital plane,
but then, that’s where the rocks are; Looking for a circular orbit; Doob has
cancer; Swarm pings Endurance; (Swarm has suffered a political split, a war of
words; Has lots of arklets, not so many people left; Of the 800 that left with
Julia, eleven remain alive
(agriculture crashed, they’re eating the dead;)
521 • Luisa: “Yes, cannibalism is ghastly but we’ve all considered it.
Really this news dashes our hopes;” But we will treat them with compassion and
allow them onboard Endurance.
522 • Ivy & Dinah commune in the Kupol; Status report on the
condition of Earth’s surface (Yellowstone supervolcano erupted, etc.); Ivy
& Dinah continue existential fretting.
525 • Since Endurance has slowed to achieve circular orbit, rocks will
overtake them from behind now; The need to release Amalthea, lighten their mass
to make the dash for the Cleft.
528 • 48 hours til final burn to head to Cleft, but another CME
accelerates their time frame.
530 • Endurance rendezvous with Swarm…starts with a light crash…Aida’s
heptad came in too hot AND too fully loaded; Michael Park drifted off structure.
Moira’s consoling him, but he’s scanning Swarm email since they’re now on
network; Moira: “Don’t let them dock, it’s a trap, they slaughtered Tav and ate
him;” Ivy warns Zeke; LOTS OF CRAZY SHIT NOW HAPPENS ALL AT ONCE: Amalthea is
released; CME in three minutes; JBF is aboard, but something’s wrong with her;
Endurance engines burn hard; Zeke announces “We’re in combat, they shot Steve
Lake with JBF’s gun;” CME arrives; Swarm locks GPop out of their own network; Tekla,
Zeke and Julia arrive; Julia is a shredded mess, Zeke says “We killed four
already;” Tekla wants to kill Aida, Moira tries to keep her there, Zeke tazes
Tekla; Julia’s tongue has been bolted, Dinah unbolted it; “They tortured
Spencer for full network access then killed him.”
540 • Final big burn, and arrival at Cleft.
542 • Ivy lands Endurance within Cleft’s eponymous cleft.
543 Cleft
Landing Endurance, rotating
nose down to nadir, tail jacked up to zenith; It’s now a building; Sixteen humans
remain; Doob discusses the “Endomement” of their protective crevasse on his
final spacewalk; Aida’s not talking, but reading Swarm’s email backlog, JBFs
detachment from reality grew, they grieved by convincing themselves that
nothing had happened; After a CME killed 100, Tav blogged pensively about it
and people bought in; Finally Aida and followers (Black Bolo Brigade) rebelled
against JBF and her “mystics.”
548 • A week later eight healthy humans remained, all women; Council of
Seven Eves (Luisa had menopaused;) LOTS OF GOOD NEWS FINALLY: Power +
Provisions + Protection + Procreation = Promise; “We don’t need sperm;” Clones?
Loss of heterozygosity; Several mention diseases that run in their families and
thus know are in their respective genomes; Bipolar and Aggression are discussed
emotionally, philosophically at some length; Traits to breed for and/or against;
Things get quite testy; Dinah leaves the ship and plants a bomb on the window
so the other 7 can see it. It will detonate in 10 minutes if they don’t come to
an agreement; Now up for a vote and it
must be unanimous: “Moving forward, as you have children, if Moira can zap
ONE trait of your choice from your offspring’s genome, should she?” All say yes
except Aida who now feels, by dint of her past cannibalism, she and any of her
descendants will be judged by the others and theirs.
564 • Dinah never voted; “Marcus had chivalry; I’ll have Moira breed
that into my super hero kids” and flung the bomb up and away where it became a
sort of celebratory fireworks. [2/3]
PART THREE
569 FIVE THOUSAND YEARS LATER. ≈170 generations?; Kath Amalthova Two,
in a tent on the surface of New Earth, is roused by sunrise playing on her
tent’s fabric; Steps out, still sore from yesterday’s hike…you can’t hike like
that in space; She’s Survey, working for TerReForm; Survey = Military?; She’s
Moiran, looking for city life, and on New Earth that meant looking toward the
Eye…and indeed, it’s time to go to the Eye; Prepares her kite-suit (made of
nats, with urine funnel) and puts it on; She goes airborne over a mature
lakeside forest, dipping down to skim the lake and draw ballast water from it;
Later, surfing thermals, she sees a human below, at forest’s edge; Other
surveyors working there; Hangers in LEO (vertically rotating bolo cables, with
massive “hangers” at either end, rotating like a mill wheel to ferry vessels
from aviation altitudes and the hanger’s nadir—momentarily motionless as a
yo-yo at its lowest point—and fling them up to its zenith and LEO; 8 craft
board this hanger at this motionless moment, the lowest point in its rotation; Virtual
air pressure (generated by nats); Gravity in the no-longer-paused hanger is
3g…most folks are on hands & knees, and Kath Two low-crawls! One bad-ass
Teklan (Beled) is walking; The
Habitat Ring, with 9000 habitats; 4,000 years of Hard Rain; As the Hard Rain
lightened up, bots were used as sky-sweepers; Boneyard gaps between habitat
ring regions become frontiers; Races’ locations on the ring are described;
Racial purity varies among regions; Races’ color codes; Bluer shades (cyan,
purple, green, blue) represent cooler heads? (Tekla, Moira, Ivy, Dinah) vs red
shades (yellow, red, orange) hotheads? (Camila, Aida, Julia); Perpetual state
of war between Red arc & Blue arc.
593 • On flivver, Kath Two and Beled exchange salutes; Groups’ salutes’
origins discussed; Rhys asks Beled and Kath about their surveys, Beled’s was
uneventful, Kath no-commented on the human she sighted; Take Our Time folks (TOTs)
vs Get It Done folks (GIDs); Hu Noah and Leuk Markov (GIDs); Reds & Blues;
War on the Rocks (down on the surface of New Earth) ends with First Treaty in
4895; Great Seeding, Epigenetics (the study of how vast stretches of the genome
formerly thought inactive control gene expression); Moira’s one daughter (after
8 failed pregnancies) was named Cantabrigia; TOTers say “craft genomes
carefully,” while GIDers say “spit ‘em out fast & let nature select;” Habs
start small, but as you approach boneyard regions they tend to get very large…
598.1 • IMAGE: The Habitat Ring circa A+5000
598.2 • IMAGE: The Eye, while encircling/visiting one habitat. To the Eye’s lower left and to its upper right, along the Habitat
Ring’s orbit, you can see two other habitats. On p602 it is stated that the diameter of the main ring of the Eye is
50 km/31mi. Knowing this and using this image* we can determine that:
-
Width of Main Eye Ring ≈ 4.4km/2.7mi
-
Each habitat is roughly 30km/19mi long and ≈ 13km/8mi miles wide
[very close the
classic O’Neill Tube dimensions of 20 mi long
x 5 mi wide,
but then when Stephenson explicitly states the
size of the habs he has them being ≈ 2/3 that size.]
-
Four ribbon-like lateral rings in a diamond shape around the Main Ring are each
≈ 400m thick
-
thickness of the cable up to Big Rock (zenith) ≈ 900m
-
Center of hab to center of adjacent hab ≈ 82km/51mi
-
Gap between facing ends of adjacent habs ≈ 52 km/32mi (on p605* and later p614:
“20 km”)
-
Dimensions of habs’ surface rectangles ≈ 2x1 km/1x0.6mi
…One hab’s name was Steve
Lake (Kath Amalthova One had a friend there, but would
the friendship have survived her transition to Kath Two?); The Eye is like a
moving combination of bus *and* bus station; One could take an elevator down to
the Cradle; Kath Two kinda flirts with Beled; Whip Stations, between habitats.
606 • The Eye is like a train,
157 km long, with 720 giant cars, going in a circle where the locomotive is
connected to the tail of the caboose, circuits every 5+ minutes at 500 m/s;
Great Chain vs. Manhattan, with each car a city block; every 5th car = public
property; Apart from the Great Chain, not as many humans; More updates on Kath
Two, Beled & Rhys on their Flivver
trip up from the surface; Varps; Kath Two napped for 10 hours, which,
evidently, Moirans do; 18 years ago the Second Treaty ended the 2nd Red-Blue
War (“War in the Woods”) Amistics: Reds embrace pragmatism, Blues? I’m calling
their tendency “hyper-humanism;” Sooners; Indigens in RIZs; The human Kath Two
saw was non-RIZ; “Were our survey missions increased because maybe someone else
had seen other non-RIZ humans?”; Gap b/w habs ≈ 20 km; Varp view is better than
reality; Whip described; Flynks, niksht/Knickstelle; Whip coupling; They
approach the Eye which is currently visiting Habitat Akureyri, a double
barreled habitat design; Flivver arrives at Quarantine, where the three will be
inspected and tested for pathogens, clothes and gear will be sterilized.
620 • Kath Two’s “Soft” Interrogation.
Kath Two’s bracelet is still red; She can’t sleep, goes out for coffee, bumps
into a Q agent of Julian extraction; Gets a “soft” interrogation; Sees a video
display of The Parable of the Seven Fat and Seven Thin; Caricaturization; Kath
Amalthova Two says “let’s cut the bullshit,” and the questioning grows more
focused; The Julian mentions Kath’s possible transition to Kath Amalthova
Three.
631 • Doc is headed down to the
Cradle; Flivver riders disembark, board an On Ramp capsule and are “shot”
onto the Great Chain; In the terminal Kath Two is approached by a crow who
seems to speak to her; She goes to Aldebrandi Gardens and walks through Asian
jungle, Chihuahuan desert—The Eye passes Sean Probst & Surtsey habs)
Fynbos, Bayou habitat, Douglas Fir forest…follows path to Kupol Grove where Doc
Noah is with several students; Doc invites Kath Two to participate in a Cradle
Seven, which she has trouble understanding, since he has highest societal
status and she has essentially none; “We leave in 12 hours.”
638 • Moirans undergo profound personal transitions, effectively
becoming a new person (thus she’s now Kath Two, Kath One died at age 13);
Moirans leave caches of property in various locations rather than have a formal
home; Kath Two is a reader; Social Media is discussed, along with “Tav’s
Mistake” ….how one man (who had social media habits which in the 21st century
were not at all unusual) came to be emblematic, in the 71st century, of social
media’s evils. [… a commentary on modern
attitudes toward social media. Read why NTS considers himself to be a “sociomediapath.” –smr–]; [3/4] Kath
Two hops off the Chain, sees another video history, this one concerned Eve
Dinah, Eve Tekla & Catherine Dinova; All cameras owned by the original
eight eventually broke down, so there are no images or video from the 1st millennium;
Eye & tether structures described; Geography of New Earth; Tether comprises
16 cables, each of which comprises 16 smaller, etc. They break and are repaired
by robots constantly; Kath Two’s tether cabin.
647 • On the four-day tether elevator (Tethervator?) trip down to Cradle; Kath
Two finds a nook to curl up in, is joined by Beled, with Doc & Memmie makes
four of a Seven; Beled holds military rank, chats with Doc; The Julian Q-agent
Ariane Casablancova joins them, tries in vain to put everyone at ease; Doc says
they’ll be joined by two more on Cradle; Kath Two hypothesizes about Ariane’s
employer and googles her, but not enough to raise any red flags; Discussion of
God /religion, post-Epic…dukh, dukhos.
652 • Most of the mass of Cleft was raw material for the construction of The
Eye…except for the Endurance landing site; All Doob’s post-Epic predictions
came true; Cradle City, dimensions and descriptions; New Earth’s new
atmosphere; Wars were fought over Cradle real estate; More message birds;
Cradle is the most prestigious location in the system; On Cradle, Kath Two
heads south from Change Hill, across the bridge, to Capitol Hill, pausing at
the bridge’s arch’s apex; The west wind induced by Cradles being dragged west
along Earth’s equator is brutal here (“Hurricane Heights”).
660 • The Great Game; Long-Term Breeding Strategies of the Seven Eves;
Camila bred against aggression/assertiveness, Dinah, Ivy, Tekla & Moira saw
its value and bred for it; Eve Moira, as the geneticist, always had the last
move; Moirans…metamorphose?; Eves’ children: Gestations,
their children, Corrections à Stabilizations (12 gen?) à Propagation (500+ years) à Isolation (racial purity) à Caricaturization (selective breeding
for intensifying racial differences, see page 626) à Enhancement, which latter three led to
either Extinction or Cosmopolitanization; All speak Anglisky….or
rather, that’s how it was in Blue. Red, being incommunicado…who could say?
669 • On Capitol Hill Kath Two feels very much like she’s on Old Earth…and
she promptly gets lost there; A storm rolls…in? …over?;
Kath Two spies an especially inviting (what she hopes is a) pub…check the
address on her paper; Inside, the older yet no less hot bartender addresses her
by her complete name.
672 • Evolution of firearms; Modern armor
fools bullets instead of blocking them; Total War =
Mutually Assured Destruction, two wars down on New Earth; Kath Two analyzes bartender,
deduces much history…sooner child, military? Sure, a bar…but on Cradle? He’s
the Seven’s Dinan; Doc’s there, Beled
arrives; Ty leads them back into the Bolt Hole, where Ariane & Memmie
await along with the group’s Aidan, but he’s not just *any* Aidan…
682 • New Neanderthals, Neoanders vs. Teklans; Langobard; Bard has a meet
cute with Beled; Neoanders were sent down to Antimer, stayed; Bard is the
presentable face of his clan; Doc defers to Ariane; We will travel from Cayambe
to Beringia [Eastern Ecuador up the west
coast of the Americas, to the Bering Strait, more or less].
693 • The Cradle can set down for hours or days; Cradle lowered into
Cayambe socket…for 24 hours; Ty’s real job? Empath; The Crow’s Nest bar is a
source of info for its owners, not income; Moving through the crowd Ty walks
point (it’s what Dinans do) Beled pulls rear security; With The Seven now in four vehicles, Ariane spreads out the caravan; Ty
tells Kath Two “People are my books.”
701 • Aitrains = Jinn rings? Aitrain
station ; The Seven now in a glider,
launched via flynk whip-train; Ty imagines flynk activity; Kath Two pilots
the glider north from Cayambe (eastern Ecuador); Military divided into Button
Pushers, Ground Pounders & Snake Eaters; SE’s split into Queeds, Feelies
& Zerks; Ty tries to classify Beled: “Military, but not Queed…either a
Feelie or a Zerk;” Ty moves on and gets Bard’s story; Ty & Bard parlez
about their past lives on opposite sides of the Red/Blue Antimer border.
709 • Survey outposts vs TerReForm
bases; Magdalena TRF base [island, SE of
Cabo San Lucas and NE of—and slightly closer to—Puerta Vallarta]; Kath
Two’s not your typical airline pilot; Arriving
at Magdalena in great time; Locals are expecting Doc, which makes Ty wonder
about Ariane’s travel arrangements for the group: cloak-n-dagger in Cradle
& Cayambe, but here, a public welcome?
713 • Doc makes use of people’s
incorrect assumptions and prejudices about his age; Memmie is Doc’s
conversational cowcatcher and deplanes first at Magdalena base because the
greeters in this welcoming throng are always sincere, but always have ulterior
motives; Doc’s celebrity here eclipses Bard’s Neoander novelty; Ariane will
soon be removed from Doc’s list; Ariane, of the Red, grew up in Astrakhan
habitat, 3˚ 6’ from the capital city of the Baghdad region of the ring [3˚ 6’ of the 164,500 mi long Hab Ring
works out to ≈ 1400 mi (2300 km) or about 80-90 habitats;] Doc invites
Beled to treadmill next to him; Doc reads Beled’s surgery scars; Doc confirms
Beringia & Antimer as their destination.
719 • Magdalena to Hawaii—via the ground-effect (hovercraft-ish) vehicle Ark Madiba [Mandela]—in 12 hours; Arrive at an installation on the east side
of the northern tip of the Big Island, Mokupuku, staffed almost entirely by
Moirans; Kath Two sees these local Moirans set in their ways…that they’ve moved
away from her idea of what it means to be a Moiran; How many other
non-transferrable cultures (i.e. that could never go back up to the ring) had
formed?; Ark Madiba departs, north, to Blue Antimer (circular atoll,
with need of larger carnivores than Hawaii’s ecosystem); The Seven leave Ark Madiba
and catch a flight north over the impressive Antimer mountain range; New NE
Pacific geography described; The Cooling Off (1100 years ago); Qayaq’s pykrete
landing strip; Ashwall; Qayaq ends up being a hub; The Seven deplane at Quayq; Ty begins taking the lead…he’s a local
boy, but also, duh, he’s a Dinan (it’s what they do!); They ice-hike their way to a small town.
729 • Locals giving Bard the look; Sizing
up this pretty clearly non-Treaty-kosher town; Tall young Ivyn man (Einstein) strolls
up and asks if they’re heading over the mountains; Ty rebuffs him until Ariane
humors him. Evidently he knows the location of a pre-Zero (arti) ‘fact.
733 • Kath Two pilots them in another big glider; Tundra and low scrub
“seed spilling” pods are named (wait for it) ONANs J; The glider lands, they secure it, and
they hike; Kath Two, Beled, Ty & Bard are all variously armed; Weaponry
& ambots (earlier the three guys had got their red & blue ambots on the
same sheet of music); The hike becomes increasingly deeper & steeper; Einstein
won’t reveal anything, numerous hedgings and inconsistencies in his stories
[red flags no one seems to pick up on] Doc tries to extract info about the
‘fact from Einstein; They get there only to discover that the artifact has
recently been dug up; They find a 5000 year old radiator hose…are the excavators
still around?; Steering wheel totem; Looters looking for iron engine block; Broken shovel hammer…Doc reads the 5000
year old hieroglyphics printed on the handle (Srap Tasmaner!); They each
receive a signal, after which Doc says “This artifact-chasing side-venture
seems suddenly to be our intended purpose.”
746 • Diggers leave a totem at the
glider; They see sentinels (Rufus’s ancestors?); Rootstock; Memmie speaks to
Ariane; The guys consider the possibility of violence, the Diggers disable the
Seven’s buckies “…a hostile act, but not as hostile as what happens if we get
within range of their archers”; Ty & Doc approach two Diggers; After much
discussion, the Diggers speak, making a show of condemning “you cowards who ran
away;” Doc confirms they are of MacQuarie lineage, and graciously offers them
the “Srap Tasmaner” shovel handle; They completely
take this the wrong way, but because Doc is old they spare him…but instantly spear
Memmie with the sharpened handle, and
the battle is on…Ty deflects an attacker; Ariane seems to radio for help;
Ty snaps the attacker’s leg then deals with Memmie’s murderess (Marge) and an
older Digger; Ambots release from glider crates and speed to envelop Bard &
Beled; Bard’s ambots form chains/airtrains, then he & Beled scatter; Ariane
grabs Ty’s gun, grabs Marge, shoots Ty, who, now wounded, must release the old
guy he’s battling. This old guy goes after Kath Two then Ty, at which point
Kath Two shoots the old guy; Einstein neutralizes the ambot Ariane shot into
Ty’s chest; An enormous red rod drops from the sky, plucking Ariane & Marge
quickly into the sky like a finger of God.
762 • This Thor, a hanger-like transport, has snatched Ariane & Marge and
whisked them off to Red; Doc has a stroke seeing what happened to Memmie,
and soon dies himself; Ty, Kath Two & Einstein are chained away from the
Digger camp…Beled & Bard still MIA; Kath Two collapses into sleep, which Ty,
knowing she’s Moiran, senses will last; Ty & Einstein observe the Diggers
in their camp (lots of pregnant women & little kids, but few if any teens)
“I see a recent population explosion;” They’ve KNOWN about we Spacers and the
Hab Ring, but they hid, as per their religious narrative, from the “cowardly
& monstrous Spacers;” And Ariane…
769 • Three Diggers approach the
chained prisoners; Their elder, Donno,
chats with Ty about recent events, while the Diggers’s teen-aged walking
encyclopedia footnotes all unfamiliar terms used by Ty or Einstein; (Kath Two is
clearly enduring something…) “Your Julian betrayed you…” Donno’s group of
Diggers considers themselves the human race and claim the entire surface of
Earth as their territory; Pingers = aquatic? Diggers seem to know a lot about
Spacers; Donno perceives that a state of war exists and leaves abruptly; Sonar
Taxlaw (the walking encyclopedia) name explained; Red has known about the
Diggers, it seems; Einstein has taken a shine to Sonar Taxlaw; Ty considers the
nature of Pingers, wakes to howling wolves and figures that Ariane & Marge
are back up on a Red Hab by now…considers why Beled & Bard were chosen for
this Seven…or why he himself was, at the Crow’s Nest; Morning, keeping an eye
on Kath Two; Pingers in Submarines? [Yeah,
you had that thought too, just like I did. -smr-] More diggers appear,
apparently returning from a hunt, Donno approaches and wants a prisoner
exchange; Ty sends message-crows to summon Bard & Beled; Later that night
lights come out of the sky, Ty explains to Donno that this is a Red Invasion;
Bard & Beled signal they’re coming.
782 • Red landing party secures a perimeter, other Red pods land; Bard &
Beled return and extract Ty, Einstein and the still sick Kath Two; Sonor
Taxlaw explains her name…and defects; They climb away, then look back to see that
the Red “delegation” is putting on a
show for the Diggers; Aidan procession (clearly these Reds have known about
Diggers, they’re pushing all the right buttons with this display, right down to
knowing Rufus’s music); Checking Kath Two’s vital signs, Bard & Beled have contacted Blue HQ, who won’t come just yet;
They get some intel from Sonar Taxlaw: “We were heading south because the
Pingers wanted to meet us;” Ty has a plan for Blue HQ, “we have a second chance
with the natives…”
791 • Some background on Sonar Taxlaw…Digger
breeding age…how one becomes a Cyc; Much discussion of the post-Zero
underground…no one really knows why they decided to hide from Spacers, but once
they did they had to portray Spacers as alien mutants to justify it.
798 • Long hike south to shore; Ty imagines how this all would be
transpiring had it happened on the Red side of the 166˚ 30’ border; Blue
Military drops provisions for the Seven, three
Blue military gliders appear; As Ty watches them arrive he considers how
Blue leaders are selling this diplomatic failure to the public; An Ivyn named
Arjun chats with Ty, confirming that Red is playing it up for politics; Ty
tries to deal with his glaring and public failure; Red recognizes the Diggers’
surface sovereignty; Never having seen Rootstock people, Arjun asks about Sonar
Taxlaw (“No, she’s not a hostage,”) and Kath Two (“Classic POTESH…” which Hope,
Arjun’s Camite colleague/medic, now confirms); Red is winning the PR battle with
respect to the Ring public…but they have been for awhile (Discussion of Kulak,
Red’s answer to The Eye, and Gnomon, their initial plan for Cradle)…they were
pissed that Cradle had to be over the Equator, where there is almost no Red territory,
so they devised the Gnomon, a north-south oriented long thin cradle that could serve
locations farther off the equator; Six Aidan sub-races (Aretaics, Betas,
Camites, Neoanders, Jinns, Extats); Sonar tells of Red’s Torres Strait strategy,
filling in the 100-mile ocean between Australia & Papua New Guinea) How did
the Diggers know this? “Pingers told us;” The third of Arjun’s landing party, a
Teklan named Roskos Yur, doesn’t trust Ty…until Ty proves he’s several
pay-grades higher, and Roskos Yur relents: “What are my orders?” “March to the
sea…though someone will have to carry Kath Two,” “Um, no they won’t!” they all
see that Kath Two has emerged from her Moiran
epigenetic hibernation as Kath Three, who is, for lack of any better
description, Wonder Woman (Beled has Olympic sprinter speed and she’s dusting his ass.)
811 • Kathree’s hormones are RAGING for
physicality; She craves Beled now in the worst way, but now’s not the time, so
she vents it athletically, sprinting straight into the surf to cool her
broiling body; Beled asks her “Hey while you were face-down naked in the ocean,
did you hear any Pingers?” They proceed
along the coast but a headland juts out. It’s an
impact crater wall, with another headland wall on the far side, the two walls
concavely facing each other across the large crater-formed bay, with the
crater’s central impact peak centered between the walls and slightly offshore.
[Sorta like this: __(_._)__
] ; Pingers
faced three deluges, Hard Rain, Cloudy Century [p739] and now, the life
deluge of TerReForm; Sonar knows this because the Diggers have long been in
contact with the Pingers…Kathree sees a slate tablet & chalk under the
surf.
817 • Ty carries a crate out to offshore impact peak, where he discovers a
pipe running out to sea, and a sledgehammer near the pipe…this crater-on-the-coast
is a signaling device, and Ty begins hammering a message in Morse code; “Now we
wait a few days;” A character-by-character status update; What if Red
intercepted Ty’s signal; A Madibe-like
ark approaches (Ark Darwin), and their landing party deploys a tall communications/light
mast in the middle of the bay; Kathree sees Einstein & Sonar Taxlaw being interviewed
for TV; The interviewer is also the CO of this landing operation, giving all
the orders. She shares her varp with Kathree, showing her Red’s recently
released story of the Kulak, the debut of their answer to Blue’s Cradle, the Gnomon
(some explication from Cantabrigia Five.)
830 • Ty asks Sonar how the Diggers
knew about the pipe; She tells of Digger scouts who contacted Pingers 50 years
ago.
833 • Kathree is awakened by
approaching Diggers & Reds; Beled messages Ty “Turn the cove light on;” “Remember,”
Cantabrigia Five has warned, “no damaged Diggers;” A Red Neoander trashes a vid
bucky; Kathree ambots a Digger who was lining up a shot; (It occurs to Kathree
that Kath Two was the first casualty the other day (p761), technically dying before
Memmie or Doc, in the instant she decided to shoot the old Digger;) Kathree has
scampered up and outflanked the Reds/Diggers, and considers continuing behind their position…she encounters a
solo Aretaic who she offs efficiently, then comes face to face with a Digger
archer who has her dead to rights. Talking quickly she
convinces him that his own suspicions about Red’s duplicity are true, and he
simply leaves.
844 • Cantabrigia Five tells Ty that Red does NOT know about the Pingers,
which news he’s grateful for because it means his hypothesis about that was
correct and he can confidently tell Einstein to get ready to make history with what’s
in the pizza box.
845 • Kathree admires Bard’s ambot
whip-cracking skills; Ark Dawrin send
a few inflatables; Cantabrigia Five speaks into a camera, presumably giving
color commentary for the folks at home; Kathree sees Beled grappling with a
Neoander whom he neutralizes; A Beta pursues Beled, who dispatches her with a
rock upside the head; Roskos Yur, injured, bleeding and being carried by Bard, still
manages to plug the guy Beled thought he neutralized a moment earlier; Ark Darwin’s boats avoid the center of
the cove; Something’s clearly happening there…because…a person strolls out the water.
851 • Einstein & Sonar have the pizza box and await the Pinger’s
emergence; The Pinger is naked, hairless, sleek, has no visible genitals…with
two comrades, one of whom is female and the other who has the build of a seal
or otter…what the hairless hell? “Ty do you want this pizza box?” “No, it MUST
be presented by you, Einstein, an Ivyn!” In the pizza box was a large print of the
astonishing photo which sub-captain
and Ivy fiancée Call Blankenship had taken (p321-322) at the start of the Hard
Rain! The female Pinger recognized it instantly
and communicated her delight to her two comrades.
854 • More Pingers come ashore; The
language barrier is real, but the emotions are so positive now that the lead Pinger
actually gives Ty a little good-natured shit for his goofy wetsuit, as if to
say “Really? This works for you?” J ; The female Pinger, obviously
thrilled, gives Sonar Taxlaw a big hug! Observing all this, Cantabrigia Five
and Esa Arjun gaze skyward, satisfied that this
tableau, their tableau—an Ivyn boy
(who oh by the way is clearly romantically attached to a Digger girl) welcoming
Pingers ashore by presenting them with one of the most famous images in Blue’s
epic—is at least comparable to Red’s recent fanfare with the Diggers, and given
how few people on the Hab Ring woke up that morning knowing that the Pingers
even existed, might even be cooler.
855 Epilogue
Over lunch on Ark Darwin, Ty chats with Arjun while
Deep [the lead Pinger, presumably embarking on a Goodwill World Tour? Love to
see how they get him up in space!] munches fish & seaweed; “It looks like
they are more technologically advanced than the Diggers;” Red and the Diggers
assume control of the beach while Blue and the Pingers linger just offshore,
controlling the ocean; “If you look closely at the all 17 of Cal’s photos sent
to Eve Ivy, he clearly had ideas about how they could not only survive but
thrive after the Hard Rain…bottom line? Well-charted undersea canyons &
caves;” After Arjun leaves the table, Einstein & Sonar join Ty & Deep (Sooner,
Digger, Blue & Pinger…call it A Four) and interestingly, the first thing on Ty’s mind is how lucky the two
kids are to have found each other…”What’s it like?” And
everyone wants to know what The Purpose is. (Ty doesn’t know—nobody does of course—but
takes what seems a pretty admirable whack at it;) Ty’s going back to the Crow’s
Nest on Cradle, and offers free rooms there to
everyone at the table.
22DEC20
Modified: 30OCT21
Questions, comments: russillosm@gmail.com