Atdtda36: Watch your step, everyone, 1018-1021 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

The Chums were last seen in 56.2 (794-796), where they contemplate
independence, eg '. we may have to incorporate soon' (795). That freedom, if
such it be, has now been realised: 'These days the boys were pretty much on
their own' as the monopolistic National Office 'ha[s] vacated its premises .
and left no forwarding address' (1018). A form of capitalism different to
that described by Vibe at the start of Ch67 (1000-1001). On 795 Padzhitnoff
introduces the Chums to wireless, a '[n]ew invention'; here, a 'greatly
improved flow of revenue, along with recent advances in lightweight engines
of higher horsepower, ha[ve] allowed Inconvenience to expand to considerable
size .' etc (1018-1019). Hence, both the Chums' organisation ('a loose
collection of independent operators', 1018) and Inconvenience itself have
been reinvented, the former fragmented, the latter somehow bigger (and cf
'the wreck of the first Inconvenience' on 1020).

On 1020, 'as they entered and were taken', Chick recalls 'his first days
aboard the Inconvenience', ie in Ch1 (where Pugnax is discovered reading
Henry James on 5-6; here, he is similarly picked out with a reference to his
new female companion, 1019). For the remainder of this section the narrative
will focus on Chick's pov, his reading ('The corollary, Chick had worked out
long ago .' etc, 1020) a counterpoint to that offered by the cults on 1018.
The reference to his first appearance, as described on 7-9, reminds us that
he is (with the possible exception of Ksenija, and excluding the 'top-notch
cooking staff' Miles has hired, 1019) the Chum with the shortest period of
service. Perhaps an outsider still, he is the Chum who here offers his
theory of 'alternate versions of the same Earth' (1020). One of the features
of Ch1 is the economical way in which the narrative sketches in the
hierarchy aboard Inconvenience, thereby establishing the way the Chums will
interact thereafter. Here, Chick is excluded from 'the two-lad Navigational
Committee' (1021) that eventually 'determine[s] that the ship had most
likely come upon the Pythagorean or Counter-Earth', which Chick then has to
explain to Darby and Miles. Darby, as ever a somewhat caustic presence,
offers scepticism, gives voice to an alternative narrative. In the section's
first paragraph (1018) the reader is distanced from '[n]aturist cults', a
reminder of competing belief systems; and then, as the section ends (1021),
Darby distances the reader from Miles/Chick.