Orin and Hal on the phone (pp. 1018–1019)
but especially the Concavity, the cartographic fact of a Concavity in our map and a new Convexity in theirs, that the maps now say it’s Canadian soil, this toxified like area: […] Look, let us secede, and we’ll take the Concavity with us when we secede, it’ll be our problem not yours, it’ll go on the maps as Québecois and not Canadian, it’ll be our blot and our bone of dissension with O.N.A.N., and Canadian honor will be desmirched, and Canada’s pathetic standing in O.N.A.N. and the like world community of standings will be rehabilitated because of the ingenious way Ottawa’s parliament will have re-gerrymandered O.N.A.N.’s map without taking on the U.S. directly? […] We get our own Notre Rai Pays, and you get the slap in the face of the Concavity off your map.
Context
Orin relaying the Subject's "crux-type proposal" — Steeply's own probe passing through Orin like a signal through a repeater — and the entire poser is conducted in map-language: the Concavity is a "cartographic fact," soil that is toxic in the territory but Canadian only because "the maps now say" so, and secession becomes an editing operation — re-gerrymander O.N.A.N.'s map, move the blot from your map to ours, and everybody wins while the physical waste never moves an inch. The book's geopolitics as pure map-manipulation, with the territory left holding the seepage. (Orin-voice oddities preserved as written: "desmirched," "toxified like area.")