Atdtda28: Talk, 796-797

[Paul Nightingale]

"As above, so below," says Miles to close 56.2; and then, the other side of
the section break, the "unacknowledged war" is indeed acknowledged, brought
into being discursively, "[s]lowly as God's justice". Not "God's justice",
then, but a simile, moving as slowly, somehow comparable: No one could dare
to say which was worse ..." etc. The Event ("Whatever had happened out there
...") is consequently self-authored ("... provided its own annunciation").
There is an emphasis on communication, with photography both the artefact
itself, a manufactured image, and the use of such images to provide some
kind of evidence (ie "... emerge, as if from a developing-bath"); and then
"one seismograph station to the next ..." etc (797), a kind of chain
reaction.

Previously, the Event has been experienced and struggled with, by the
Russians on 780-782, Kit/Prance to the end of Ch55 on 791, and then the
Chums on 792-794. The subsequent "sky rendezvous" (794-795) is less
concerned with the Event than with the respective crews' shop talk,
investments, wireless. Professor Vanderjuice offers a summary of American
gossip (793 794); and he reappears in the current section as some kind of
expert commentator (797). In the first instance, the reader is party to the
exchange between the Professor and the Chums, privileged witnesses to their
ongoing relationship. Here, the use of his full name positions the reader as
part of a generalised audience/Other, all of which underpins the tone of the
section as a whole: as below, so above.