Gertraude's terminal illness; Marathe agrees to betray the A.F.R. for U.S. cardiac care — the triple/quadruple-agent structure

pivotal · ~YDAU-1 to YDAU (Gertraude's coma ~1 yr as of the desert night)

• When: the arrangement runs into the YDAU present; Gertraude's coma is "fourteen months" (scene 088) / "almost one year" (scene 156) as of the 30 April – 1 May YDAU meeting
• What: Gertraude is dying of ventricular restenosis ("irreversible"); she has been in an exit-less coma; the Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart could keep her alive (comatose) for years. To secure this advanced U.S. cardiac technology and hidden protection for his family, Marathe has agreed to betray the A.F.R. to B.S.S. The layered structure: Fortier believes Marathe is a "triple agent" only pretending to betray Québec while feeding B.S.S. controlled information; in fact Marathe is really betraying them (probably for the medical tech), i.e. "only pretending only to pretend"; Steeply and B.S.S. know this, and Fortier does not know they know — leaving Marathe effectively a quadruple agent whose true final loyalty is the book's open crux. Discovery by his "Mont-Tremblant countrymen" means death. And the danger has a second, older layer: "Suspected but unknown by Marathe, Fortier plans to have Marathe view the Entertainment by force before plans for the dissemination of copies from a Master are firm in execution" — not because Fortier doubts the betrayal's motive, but because Fortier "had overseen both jeux du prochain train at which Marathe's elder brothers had been struck and killed" (event 2) and "has long nursed a suspicion that Marathe nurses dreams of redress for this"; Marathe also knows "it is not impossible that Fortier deliberately allowed" the pure-malice agenda to leak through him, to deepen O.N.A.N.'s fear (n302 pp. 1054-1055).