Atdtda28: All the same I'd be looking into, 794-796

[Paul Nightingale]

At the beginning of the section: "Seen from the ground ..." etc. Cf. the
Chums' "protection lost" (793). Also cf. Miles' concluding line on 796.

And then, from the long-shot to a close-up: the "sky rendezvous" (794) and
changes in the Chums' relations with the Bol'shaia Igra, or at least
Padzhitnoff. Given the partial/parochial readings offered earlier, the
"sky-rendezvous" is characterised, initially, by some attempt at a common
cause, ie Padzhitnoff's distinction between his official/unofficial roles
and the "shared look of not so much disdain as sympathetic resignation to
the ways of the surface-world". One might infer that this opening exchange
features the two leaders, Padzhitnoff--identified at the outset--and
Randolph; the "shared look" indicates a possible intimacy here. However, the
dialogue passage that ensues doesn't attribute speech to any of the Chums in
particular until the top of 795, when Randolph is identified as a speaker,
followed in turn by Lindsay, Chick and Miles, but not Darby: the opening
paragraph ("The boys wore matching sable hats and wolfskin cloaks ..." etc,
794) indicates that all are present. By way of contrast, as the scene opens
out ("the Russian wireless receiver now came to life", 795) there is no
indication that other Russians are present. Anyone other than Padzhitnoff
remains silent, unacknowledged: the Chums collectively interact with
Padzhitnoff alone. However, if the Chums insist they are now independent (of
the government and corporations, if not of the banks), Padzhitnoff is still
tied to the official line, a purveyor of what "they want to believe" (794).

Post-Event, then: "Returning from the taiga, the crew of Inconvenience found
the Earth they thought they knew changed now in unpredictable ways ..." etc
(795). Yet, if this is some kind of modernist version of progress, the
environment transformed ("steel within cleared rights-of-way below shining
as river-courses once had"; then, the section ending on 796 with "quotidian
light" superseded by "an earthbound constellation of red and green
running-lights" and the irony of Miles' concluding comment), there is an
echo of their descent to Chicago on 10: "As they came in low over the
Stockyards, the smell found them ..." etc, "tall smokestacks unceasingly
vomiting black grease smoke". Here: "Industrial smoke ... climbed the sky
..." etc (795, with or without correct punctuation). From "[h]uge modern
cities" to the paragraph ending "without a living creature in sight"
(795-796); and then, finally, as indicated, nothing but the "earthbound
constellation of red and green running-lights" (796).

If the post-Event Siberian landscape recalls Chicago, the Event's impact
echoing that of capitalist rationalisation, so does the paragraph beginning
on 796. On 14, the gathering of airships: "... the Midwestern summer evening
whose fading light they were most of them too busy quite to catch the
melancholy of", down to "... the evening was thus atwitter, like the trees
of many a street in the city nearby, with aviatory pleasantries". Here, the
absence of "migratory European species" (795), a disruption of the natural
cycle. Then, Ch5 begins by pointing out that the Chicago setting offers the
Inconvenience a perfect disguise: it "would fit right in" etc (36). Here,
the Chums' cry of independence is perhaps undermined, "approach[ing] the
fringes of a great aerial flotilla" (796), again unpopulated, "immense and
crewless". Business as usual, it seems.