Marathe and Steeply: the Entertainment named (pp. 92–93)

The casualty ledger opens, and it opens as an argument against comfort. The brass back at the Office would love to file the incident under error, mistaken identity, sick hoax — Steeply lists the antitheories — but the body count won't let them: twenty-three people "lost for all time," a physician, his wife, embassy staff, neighbors, and the police who kept walking in before anyone could cut the power. That last detail is the quiet terror inside the number: the responders became casualties, the rescue kept feeding itself into the loop. "The local constabulary were shall we say unprepared for an Entertainment like this," which is the understatement the whole century is built on — there was no preparation possible, because the thing kills through the one faculty every rescuer has to keep open to do the rescuing.