BEg2 ch 21 maybe not Windust / ch 22 really only 2

[Michael Bailey]

“Bring out the Naser once, people jump to conclusions. Some women can’t
resist a military connection, however remote. I was never a field type, in
my heart I’m always behind some desk. Not like—”
            “What?”

         “Never mind.”

         It is insanely unlikely he was about to mention Windust. Insane,
right? But who else, then?



- maybe Moskowitz, police sniffer is remotely military
- but Windust is also remotely military, doubtless on to his next
subjugation when the troops move in to enforce the previous one.

The question would be why doesn’t she ask - she’s not shy about asking for
the provenance of Speedwell’s “Hitler with 4711” pictures.

But maybe that shyness kicks in sometimes, where Windust is concerned, or
eg when not asking Felix Boingeaux if he’s the one who sent her the
Epperdew sex romp VHS.



Ch 22 really only 2 major things,
One is the trip to the Deep Web
The other is tête-à-tête with Shawn the emotherapist

Although Eric escorts her in the Deep Web, he’s absent from the chapter
after breaking the last bit of crypto so she can listen to the Colonel.

It’s Reg she’s friends with; Reg has fallen out of touch and, even while
still available, was skittish to the point of not being very useful after
giving her the pointers to hashslingrz & later to the Deseret.

So it’s reasonable that she’s not leaning on Eric for interpretation or
sharing impressions - he’s only a Reg subcontractor and a severanced one at
that.

The Colonel - who is this briefing for?
One might think that as a Colonel, he’s part of the operation. But then why
is his language so judgemental about it - has (or rather, *had*) the legit
US Army discovered this time travel operation & was preparing to put the
kibosh on it?
If so - what happened to the Colonel and his troops? Did they attend to the
briefing & scoot off to their various parts in the plan; how did they fare?


Then the other part of the chapter, addressing Windust with Shawn.
It doesn’t seem like she is able to recount the tunnel/Colonel stuff, maybe
she wants to spare Shawn the danger of knowing too much.

She broaches the topic circuitously through the subject of Shawn’s
therapist, the Lacanian Argentinian emigré Leopoldo, expelled from
comparatively Edenic Buenos Aires by the vicious tango of neoliberalism
into a precarious existence in NYC - recruiting analysees maddened by
non-functional pay phones into a modestly priced therapy with “fewer
sessions per week.”

Leopoldo’s animosity towards policies Windust foisted upon Argentina,
filtered through Shawn, whose political sensibilities show once again (as
with the Afghan Buddhas,) allow Maxine to segue onto the topic of Windust,
but not the Colonel.

The Colonel and his briefing seem like a bad dream, or a 50s SF movie, or
even like madness. Which is, again, probably more extreme than she wants to
load onto Shawn.

Whom can she tell?