Page 375

8 November — Interdependence Day: Eschaton · first-time reader guide · all scenes

When you've finished these pages: three things worth a second look, at the bottom.

One page of the Tucson mountainside night: Marathe and Steeply again, near midnight now, the dialogue paused into pure tableau — Steeply smoking and bobbing on the toes of his high heels, Marathe hunched under the plaid blanket in a practiced posture that lets him half-sleep "while still attending to every detail." Nothing is argued this time; the page is tradecraft and disclosure, and its one paragraph of news repays slow reading.

Terms, in order of appearance

Sonora Desert (p. 375) — real desert; Tucson really does sit in it.
U.S.O.U.S. (p. 375) — the United States Office of Unspecified Services, Steeply's outfit (since pp. 88–93).
electrolysized (p. 375) — electrolysis: hair removal by needle, follicle by follicle; what's been done to Steeply's face.
"launching even one ship" (p. 375) — Marlowe's Faustus on Helen of Troy: "the face that launch'd a thousand ships."

After you read: three things

1. The assignment is a key you already hold. Steeply, back from divorce leave, is newly fielded "wearing prosthetic breasts and woman-journalist credentials, assigned to cultivate some of the Entertainment's alleged filmmaker's relatives and inner circles." On pp. 242–58 Orin spent a phone call complaining about a "soft profile" journalist from Moment magazine — a lady named Helen. The page doesn't do the matching; both cards are simply face-up now.

2. The cover name is never printed — the joke hands it to you. Marathe mocks the alias by doubting that the "meaty electrolysized face of Steeply would be responsible of launching even one ship or vessel." Run the Marlowe line backward and you have the name; it's the same one in item 1.

3. Negation as information. "The shirt Marathe wore beneath his windbreaker was not of Hawaiian type" — a detail nobody asked for. Endnote 47, back on p. 126, tied loud Hawaiian shirts to Québecois-insurgent insignia; the sentence is quietly telling you which cell Marathe does not belong to. And note the page's flattest, largest sentence: Marathe still doesn't know what his own betrayal is for — "what exactly it was that Hugh Steeply of U.S.O.U.S. wished to learn from him, or verify."

Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.