AtD: (36) pages 1018-1029

[Bekah]

Next action section:

Chums of Chance
The prior section took place on April 20, 1914 - This one starts a  
few months later.

page 1018:
"The summer of 1914 found the Chums in heat stricken Europe ..."
http://tinyurl.com/6ymapc
(Also, I believe Barbara Tuchman  in "The Guns of August" made  
mention of a heat wave in the summer of 1914.)

"... when they hear of a huge updraft over the Sahara desert. "      
Wasn't there something about the African desert in (33)?

The Inconvenience, along with other ships,  has disaffiliated from  
the National Office which has even vacated its premises.  The ships  
have only a loose connection to other ships with "Chums of Chance"  
name and insignia.

****************
page 1019

This has increased flow of revenue so the Inconvenience adds better  
engines and increase the size of the mess hall and a cooking staff   
including a sous (2nd in command) chef from Tour d'Argent  
(specializes in duck)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_d'Argent


Chinese gong from assassination cult in Boxer Rebellion "The Chums of  
Chance and the Wrath of the Yellow Fang"
Boxer Rebellion - 1899 - 1901  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
Boxer_Rebellion


The 1903 Verzenay  champaign
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Verzenay_moulin.jpg


Darby opposes just going - wants someone to pay in advance for  
adventures.

Pugnax' friend - Ksenija,  a  Macedonian  sarplaninec sheepdog -
http://www.unet.com.mk/sharplaninec/history.htm
(nice - this dog is shaggy and beautiful imo)

Yes, they would go - unanimous - Darby too.

The boys apparently ride a huge updraft (sandstorm or enormous dust  
devil) over the deserts of North Africa
out to sea - going northwest.
Saharran anti-gravity
strangely red cylindrical cloud  - sands eternally ascending

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sahara_dust_plume_Nov_1998.jpg
Could be a haboob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haboob
a Sirocco?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sirocco_from_Libya.jpg
(goes the wrong way, though)
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Page 1020

pure aerodynamic lift - anti-paradise
(anti-paradise equates to hell? -  traveling up in a saharan dust  
storm might equate to that

Randolph:  "... if going up is like going north, with the common  
variable being cold, the analogous direction in Time, by the Second  
Law of Thermodynamics ought to be from past to future, in the  
direction of increasing entropy."

"Going up would be like going north.  - go high enough to descend to  
another planet.

  " Or, as the commander had put it then,  'Another "surface" but an  
earthly one. ... all too earthly. ' "
  "...each star and planet we can see in the sky is but the  
reflection of our single Earth along a different Minkowskian space- 
time track
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_space
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Minkowski


If each surface is the reflection of our own, and if going up is like  
going North,  both cold,  then the analogous Time element would be  
from Past to Future with increasing entropy.    So... the ship is  
going up but the instrument readings say down - to a surface none  
could see.

"... an antique but reliable sympiezometer..."   from little known  
Battle of Desconocido (sp. trans = "unknown") California

sympiezometer:  A type of barometer whereby the liquid is suspended  
below air or other gas rather than a vacuum, so that the atmospheric  
pressure acts against the weight of the liquid and the pressure of  
the gas.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sympiezometer


Hypops gear from Inner Asia assignment  (for travel under sand)
 From page 426 - Hypopsammotic... Hypops
Hypo- (under) + psammot- (sand, from Greek psammos)


Mountains of the Moon
"A small mountain range in central Africa between Uganda and the  
Democratic Republic of the Congo, long though falsely supposed to be  
the source of the Nile. Today called the Ruwenzori Range."


about to crash  into a range of obsidian mountains with red  
highlights, razor-sharp crestlines and vaporous twilight.

"Lighten Ship!"  and they escaped a crash with "inches to  
spare."    (lol)

****************

Page 1021

Randolph and Lindsay can find no maps to match the terrain - decide  
that it's the Pythagorean or Counter-Earth once postulated by  
Philolause of Tarentum
See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Earth


From:  http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Philosophy/Philosophers/P/desc.html
"Philolaus (Philolaus of Croton, Philolaus of Tarentum), fl. 5th  
century BC. A leading Pythagorean philosopher who survived the  
persecution of that school. He is widely attributed with having  
originated the theory of spherical universe."

and From:  http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Pythagoras.html

"In keeping with the assumed magical properties of the number ten,  
some of the Pythagoreans, led by Philolaus, added a tenth "wanderer"  
and proposed that there existed a counter-earth which, together with  
the earth and other "planets," orbited a central fire. Pythagoras  
believed that the planets produced sounds while tracing out their  
orbits, producing the "harmony of the spheres." While much of their  
studies were sheer mysticism, the Pythagoreans were the first to  
mathematicize the universe."

Foundational Memorandum
from the Star Trek Prime Directive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive

Pythagorean  Earth - Philolaus believed that only one side of our  
Earth was inhabited.   The other Earth he called Antichthon which was  
why nobody eveer saw it.

See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Earth

Antichthon  is the Greek word for Counter-Earth


They were on the other earth but also on the Earth they had never  
left.  They came to understand that they were lost - deposited on  
another Earth.  Safely back on Earth?

"Deposited by the great Saharan updraft on a planet from which they  
remained uncertain as to the chances of return, the boys could almost  
believe some days that they were safely back home on Earth - on  
others they found an American Republic whose welfare they believed  
they were sworn to advance  passed so irrevocably into the control of  
the evil and moronic that it seemed they could not, after all, have  
escaped the gravity of the Counter-Earth.   Sworn by their  
Foundational Memorandum never to interfere in the affairs of the  
"groundhogs," they looked on in helplessness and a depression of  
spirit new to them."

(Why did they believe they were sworn to advance the welfare of the  
American Republic?)

But now the boys had less revenue from travel and more from business  
and investments they wonder if days of global adventure are behind them.

Early autumn 1914 - when the war was really starting -  Russian agent  
"Baklashchan"  (an alias) visits wondering about Igor Padzhitnoff who  
has been missing since summer.

Actually,  "The Great Game" has been lost - Pazhitnoff and Tetris  
(the great game) are related - "The Great Game" is what was played  
out in the years 1813 - 1907 between England and Russia over the fate  
of  Central Asia -  ("The Great Game" by Peter Hopkirk - great book.)

The Chums are unaware of the current "world situation" and   
Baklashchan is not allowed to share info (old agreements).

Despite the "Eleventh Commandment" - boys agreed.  Payment in gold -  
in a Baktrian Camel.
a short, two humps, Asian camel -
http://tinyurl.com/3p9ozt


Please regard our regards to the Tsar and his family - we should be  
seeing them quite soon said Baklashchan.  (apparently a monarchist).
Baklashchan
Possibly a pun: "backlash chan" -- the land of backlashes.
Has resonance with Baluchistan palteau found in the area of Pakistan,  
Iran and Afghanistan. Or can refer to a backlash as in a reactionary  
political/social movement?

Bactrian camel
Dromedary vs. Bactrian: the mnemonic says count the humps in the  
first letter. Bactrian, two humps. One could say, a "bi-cameral"  
camel -- the "bi" motiff appears again. Also, this is the second  
mention of the bactrian camel. The first is on p. 431.

full moon
Assuming this scene takes place on the same planet we are on now, the  
first full moon of the early autumn of 1914 took place at exactly,  
5:59 am. (UT/GMT) on October 4th. Since the moon is almost full here,  
this scene probably took place on the night of Oct. 2 or 3rd. I have  
not found any event of note correlating with these dates -- though  
Jack Whiteside Parsons, occultist and JPL co-founder was born on  
October 2nd, 1914. And if you read his bio, this guy belongs in a  
Pynchon novel.


World-Island
See annotation at page 433

And WWI is on:


"Something  very peculiar indeed was going on down on the  
Surface ...  Entire blocks of sky were posted as off limits.... great  
explosions of a deep ... intensity... skycraft (to) groan...  
unexpected shortages...  champagne suspended ... countryside torn up  
with trenches."

"Trenches" Miles said,  as if it were a foreign technical term. "
http://tinyurl.com/6koq6q

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Page 1023

Miles was aware in some dim way that this,  long unspoken agreement -  
that when they learned to fly,  they paid with a waiver of allegiance  
to it and all that would occur on it.

(So they can't really be involved - but still,  why the allegiance to  
America?)

  They fly from place to place on this counter planet.   Pazhitnoff  
is  always a step ahead.  "We're chasing ourselves now.  We always  
knew he was haunting us."   (History haunts us?)

Miles:   " 'Are ghosts dreadful because they bring toward us in some  
from the future some component - in the vectorial sense, of our own  
deaths?  Are they partially, defectively, our own dead selves, thrust  
back, in recoil from the mirrorface at the end, to haunt us?'  "

Miles remembers West Flanders and the prophecy of Ray Thorn.
page 553-555,  Ray Thorn is apparently a "trespasser" who knows the  
future and has predicted WWI and Flanders Field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties

Flanders Field was at Ypres.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Flanders_Fields

And then the incredible sentence:
"They knew they were standing before a great chasm none could see to  
the bottom of.  But they launched themselves into it ... " (next page)

****************
Page 1024

... anyway.  Cheering and laughing.  It was their own "Adventure."   
They were juvenile heroes of a World-Narrative - unreflective and  
free, they went on hurling themselves into those depths by tens of  
thousands until one day they awoke, those who were still alive, and  
instead of finding themselves posed nobly against some dramatic moral  
geography, they were down crying in a mud trench swarming with rats  
and smelling of shit and death."


They find  Pazhitnoff but the ship's Romanoff crest has been changed  
to read- "Pomne o Golodayushchiki"   which means,  "Remember the  
Starving" and it's on red.     This is probably about mid February  
1917 because they will shortly be doing something that took place in  
March.


Pomne o Golodayushchiki
Russian: Remember the Starving. Incorrect. Should be: Pomni o  
Golodayushchikh.

   "Dobro pozhalovaat"  /  "Welcome."
He's taken down the Tsarist stuff and is now in hiding from the  
current regime. There is no more Okhrana, Tsar's secret police,  so   
Pazhitnoff's  ship now flies medical supplies to whomever is in need.

Tsar-Bell of Moscow

Famous bell that proved too heavy for the tower it was intended for;  
it was displayed on the ground for centuries (and may still be). See  
Tsar Kolokol & its picture.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bell

cranberry-flavored beer

Kvass, traditional Russian beverage made by fermenting a mash of  
stale rye bread. It can be flavored with, among other things,  
cranberries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass

  Great global influenza epidemic  (March 1918 - 1919)
http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
and quite a few books lately.

****************
Page 1025

"These days I think we are fugitives..."  -  About Baklashchan,   
Pazhitnoff  says he is a "podlets - a cringer."
Russia and Reform by Bernard Peres - pg 327 (pub. 1907) :
  "It has been said,  In Russia don't be born clever, but be born a  
'cringer," a ('a podlets.')"  - scoundrel
http://tinyurl.com/67ft8b

1025:35-38,  "... artillery shells ... reaching the tops of their  
trajectories and pausing in the air for an instant before the deadly  
plunge back to Earth." But this time, the Rainbow of Gravity is  
observed from above, a reverse parabola.)
http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/11/remember-starving.html

The Chums don't turn Pazhitnoff in and they all hide out in the  
mountains.  Shtab (Shtab (n.m.) means staff in Russian)
http://tinyurl.com/64sv8v
Probably the ICRC  - International Red Cross and Red Cresent
http://www.answers.com/topic/red-cross
is in Switzxerland.  Dunant recruited everyone he could to help him  
found the Red Cross including a chocolate manufacturer (back in 1859) .
http://www.ehl.icrc.org/images/stories/resources/1A/1a_stories_comp.pdf

"(Dunant) wrote a small book called A Memory of Solferino, in which  
he described what he had seen and made a simple proposal: Would it  
not be possible in time of peace and quiet to form relief societies  
for the purpose of having care given to the wounded in wartime by  
zealous, devoted and thoroughly qualified volunteers? The book led to  
the formation of the “International Committee for the relief of  
military wounded,” which evolved into the International Committee of  
the Red Cross. His vision also led to the development of Red Cross  
and Red Crescent societies around the world."

There is a disagreement about whether or not to turn Pazhitnoff in.    
fight - bad words - "English Slander of Women act of 1891
http://tinyurl.com/5db6fq

explostions and buzzing of military aircraft -

searchlights of evening

****************
Page  1026

Battle of Verdun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun

Mount Blanc
Mount Blanc, with a height of 15,800 ft at its summit, is the highest  
mountain in Western Europe. It is situated at the French/Italian  
border with each country claims the summit as her own. Mount Blanc is  
one of the most visited tourist destinations in the world.

the Revolution
On November 7, 1917, the Russian Bolsheviks overthrew Alexander  
Kerensky's democratic Provisional Government in Petrograd (St  
Petersburg) in a virtually bloodless coup. See November Revolution.

ostinati
In music, ostinato refers to a short phrase that is repeated several  
times. The 2-note bass pattern from "Jaws" is an ostinato, as is the  
opening bass part to "Sweet Emotion" by Aerosmith and the bass part  
to Pachelbel's Canon. Any repeated riff in a rock song is an  
ostinato, from the opening guitar riff of "(I Can't Get No)  
Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones to the voiced "Take a Chance"s by  
ABBA. Staccato is a direction in music meaning that the notes should  
be performed in an abrupt, sharp, clear-cut manner. It certainly  
pertains to machine-gun fire and Pynchon has the ostinati and the  
staccato "scored", which is also a musical term meaning the wriiten  
form of a musical composition.

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Page 1027

Swiss compassion - trains with passengers were greeted with flowers -  
schnapps,  chocolate,
War is horrendous -
In Swiss - other side of  tapestry -
work - cargo jobs sugar,  cooking fat, pasta -
waiting in border towns -
redistributing hay, cheese during famines (chronic)
across borders - oranges wheat -

Paddy appears - announces promotion - no more cargo - now personnel
Special situation - internees by train was inadvisable - not  
repatriated - who is being transported?

the negotiated exit in 1920 of the anti-Bolshevik Czech Legion, which  
had held much of the Trans-Siberian Railroad (cf. pp. 269, 567, 752...)


Needs speed - in Balkans - Siberia - to negotiate for Japanese  
expeditionary  Polchak's government
shot at - new experience - not personal -
their involvement had not begun until they had taken refuge on  
neutral ground


Paddy after long night in bars - happened to cross paths with Randolph
****************

Page 1028
what is it Paddy wonders.   Nothing special -  Eclisiastical -  
Marimas  - -Bell of Cathedral rings - all bells join.  In Europe  
something called Armistice had taken effect.

Martinmas
Feast day of St. Martin of Tours, November 11.

an armistice
The agreement between the Germans and the Allies to end World War I  
on November 11, 1918.

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Page 1029

Consequences may never end
They certainly haven't. The Balkans remain a powderkeg, and the Iraq  
War is a direct consequence of the destruction and partition of the  
Ottoman Empire in World war I. But the consequences of any act never  
really end...

Nebo-tovarishch
Russian: sky-comrade. A grammatically incorrect compound. It comes  
out as if the sky is the comrade. Should be something like tovarishch  
po nebu or nebesnyi tovarishch.

repeating great vertical circles
Like hot-air balloons (nondirigibles) in the "box" outside  
Albuquerque, New Mexico.

standard cubic feet
Measure of quantity of gas: number of cubic feet that would be  
occupied if the gas were at "standard conditions," i.e., 60 degrees  
Fahrenheit (usually) and 1 atmosphere or 14.7 pounds per square inch



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