Atdtda38: All together now, 1084-1085

[Paul Nightingale]

The previous section describes 'the Agreement' by which relationships
between the Chums and their wives are regulated (1083). Insofar as this
brings up the narrative function, throughout the novel, of contracts both
formal and figurative, one might see it as a way of describing a sense of
destiny. With regard to the Chums, this destiny is often one that undermines
their agency: at the beginning of Ch30, for example, 'their employers
remained unknown to them, and contracts which they didn't even get to sign
were simply distributed, unannounced and often it seemed blindly, from on
high' (397 - one might think here of the significance that Weber attributes
to the contract in different social formations). In this final section
contracts are again featured, 'longer and longer, eventually overflowing the
edges of the main table in the mess decks' (1084). There is a desire, then,
to be all-inclusive: insofar as this means that nothing should remain
outside what can be spoken of, or beyond representation, one can see it as a
desire for omnipotence, or a perspective that nothing can escape (cf Dally's
function in this chapter). The reference to 'Darby's grim obsessiveness' (cf
Blaze teasing him in the previous section, 1083) perhaps marks the latest
stage of his development (cf his emergence as 'Ship's Legal Officer' on
398). The doomed nature of a quest for the contract that contains
everything, of course, with consequent possibilities for resistance, leads
to what Foucault would describe as docile bodies.

Domestic arrangements are also developed further in this final section: that
children provide continuity implies ageing, of course, and that process has
been kept at a distance for the Chums thus far. The future projected here
includes 'children of all ages' (1084), perhaps a reference to the
apparently ageless Chums. The section's opening line names Heartsease but
not Randolph: does she stand in for him, the leader therefore replaced, at
the narrative's conclusion by both partner and anticipated child/heir?
Moreover, the chain of command is respected here when the other girls
announce their respective pregnancies after Heartsease. One might note in
conclusion that, in this final chapter, the narrative has confirmed family
relationships for Reef and Frank, if not Kit, even though the latter's
separation from Dally is not offered as final (see the reference to
grandchildren on 910). The 'supranational idea' indicated in the previous
section (1083) finds elaboration in the novel's final paragraph, which
invokes some kind of ark-like structure designed, by implication, to save
its inhabitants from disaster: that the Inconvenience has been 'transformed
into its own destination' (1085) suggests self-sufficiency, no longer a
means to an end, here 'sky-pilgrimage'. While the final two sections offer a
brief summary of the fate of the Inconvenience, there are few references to
the Chums as individuals, one reference to Lindsay (1083), one to Darby
(1084) and one to Miles (1085).

Throughout the novel the Inconvenience has been evolving and 'is constantly
having her engineering updated'; not least, '[h]er ascents are effortless
now', which might recall Kit's work earlier in the chapter (1069-1071).
There is a connection here between the progress brought about by
technological advances and the observation that the airship has now
reproduced a society stratified by wealth and poverty, including 'slum
conditions' (1084). Further, that 'people on the ground' cannot see the
Inconvenience might be considered a form of false consciousness - cf the
early reference to 'lavatorial assaults from the sky' as 'folklore,
superstition, or perhaps, . the religious' (5). Not least, then, the novel's
final pages returns the reader to its opening.


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