ATDTDA (16): An awkward moment, 434-443 #3

[Paul Nightingale]

The Chums' "recreational visit to Nuovo Rialto" exposes another alternative
history, "perhaps the frigate's real [motive], for which Shambhala might be
serving only as a pretext" (440). Earlier, those who aspired to join the
Elect could never know that this is what motivated them to study the
Mysteries (438); such study had to be an end in itself, learning for its own
sake, all of which could never be exposed as a pretext. Similarly, the
"overheard scrap of conversation" (reminiscent of Plug's off-the-cuff
reference to "d' toime machine on 397) exposes the quest for Shambhala. At
the beginning of this section Toadflax patronises the Chums, and they are
content to project an appropriate naivety. By the end of the section they
have realised, in Randolph's words: "Once again we are being used to further
someone's hidden plans." (442)

Returning to the Saksaul, Randolph is "obsessed, recklessly so", and appears
to accept Darby's "peterman option" (443), a strategy doomed to failure:
however, Toadflax intervenes before the safe can be blown: so the existence
of the logbooks is never verified. For Lindsay, the theft of logbooks "would
make us no better than common thieves" (442); Randolph, however, thinks it
would make them "extraordinary thieves", leading him ("[i]n his increasingly
unbalanced state") to bypass Lindsay and ask Darby's (somewhat impractical)
advice. The natural order is again threatened: on this occasion Lindsay has
been unable to silence Darby (or even attempt it). Cf. Randolph's response
earlier, when Lindsay suggested Mr Ace's time travellers were after the
Chums' innocence: "I was thinking of something a little more tangible, [.].
Negotiable." (416)