Atdtda [4]: Highest form of capitalism, 109

[Paul Nightingale]

Global connections are reinforced when the location is identified,
"antipodal to Colorado Springs", not to mention the "[v]ermin brought ashore
with the cargo, sometimes all the way from California". The un-naming of
"de-christened fragments" reverses an earlier process of classification and
control exercised in the interests of old-fashioned colonialism; similarly,
the introduction of "[v]ermin" that are alien to the area mocks the way
anarchism has been spoken of, a form of alien (un-American) contamination.
This brief section, then, confirms the narrative as a kind of flip-side to
what has been happening in earlier scenes based in the US.

The work is done by "itinerant work crews" without a home, transported by a
"flagless vessel" and "body-jobbed away somewhere else in the hemisphere".
Not for the first time, Lenin comes to mind: here, his description of
Imperialism as the highest form of capitalism.

As "the itinerant work crews" depart, they are juxtaposed to "the boys", who
are refused any kind of characterisation or individuality. Their situation
here is in contrast to their previous--certainly in the opening
chapter--close association with the top-down view offered by the airship: it
indicates vulnerability, perhaps to more than "ocean waves [which come]
towering in one by one, arriving measured as the breath of some local god".
Cf the reference to "lavatorial assaults" and "the realm of folklore ..."
etc (5). Not surprisingly they are rendered speechless by their
circumstances. Cf the opening page of the novel, where they are introduced
and characterised only by speech.