BtZ42 48-54: Foxes once more

[Monte Davis]

SPOILERS (if that matters to you)















***

I like Laura's brown fox and lazy dog, but GR is going to recycle both in
more complex configurations than just Slothrop vs lab dogs... not least
because, as noted before, both dogs and foxes can appear as prey or
predators depending on context (remember Mike Jing's recent query about the
imagined "personal Rockets" that will track each of us like hounds).

A few of the later fox references that seem especially salient (Viking
edition pagination):

53.30
the snow tracked over by foxes, rabbits, long‑lost dogs, and winter birds
but no humans.

58.28
A skulk of foxes, a cowardice of curs are tonight’s traffic whispering in
the yards and lanes.

131.19
The true king only dies a mock death. Remember. Any number of young men may
be selected to die in his place while the real king, foxy old bastard, goes
on.

138.19 They gather, thicker as the days pass, English ghosts, so many
jostling in the nights, memories unloosening into the winter, seeds that
will never take hold, so lost, now only an every-so-often word, a clue for
the living—”Foxes,” calls SpectroE across astral spaces, the word intended
for Mr. Pointsman who is not present, who won’t be told because the few Psi
Section who’re there to hear it get cryptic debris of this sort every
sitting—if recorded at all it finds its way into Milton Gloaming’s
word-counting project—“Foxes,” a buzzing echo on the afternoon, Carroll
Eventyr, “The White Visitation”’s resident medium, curls thickly tightened
across his head, speaking the word “Foxes,” out of very red, thin lips

242.24
[General Wivern:] “Slothrop, there are no ‘SG’ documents.”
First impulse is to rattle the parts list in the man’s face, but today he
 is the shrewd Yankee foxing the redcoats.

450.16 [re the facilities of the toiletship Rucksichtslos]
“Crew morale,” whispered the foxes at the Ministry meetings, “sailors’
superstitions. Mirrors at high midnight. We know, don’t we?”

            The officers’ latrines, by contrast, are done in red velvet.
The decor is 1930s Safety Manual. That is, all over the walls,
photograffiti, are pictures of Horrible Disasters in German Naval History.
Collisions, magazine explosions, U-boat sinkings, just the thing if you’re
an officer trying to take a shit. The Foxes have been busy. Commanding
officers get whole suites, private shower or sunken bathtub...
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