Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Well, maybe I'll look at it and weigh it (and I could do that in more than
> one way!) and at least think about it.
It definitely gets better. I'm on page 235 and I can't put it down. The first
80 pages were tough going for me, with long descriptive passages in
Stephenson's invented vocabulary, but now that I have gotten used to
the vocabulary, and some action and mystery has started, it has me
hooked. Here's a sample that doesn't give anything away and gives a
flavor for the book (also chosen because it has less jargon than most
passages):
We had to run across the meadow. Cord had left her big tool-harness behind at
the machine hall, only to reveal a smaller, vestlike one that I guessed held
the stuff she'd not be without under any circumstances. When we broke into a
run, she clanked and jounced for a few paces until she cinched down some
straps, and then she was able to keep pace with us as we rushed through the
clover. Our meadow had been colonized by Saeculars who were having midday
picnics. Some were even grilling meat. They watched us run by as if our being
late were a performance for their amusement. Children were chivvied forward for
a better view. Adults trained speelycaptors on us and laughed out loud to see
us caring so much.
We came in the meadow door, ran up stairs into a wardroom where stacks of dusty
pews and altars were shoved against the walls, and nearly tripped over Lio and
Arsibalt. Lio was sitting on the floor with his legs doubled under him.
Arsibalt sat on a short bench, knees far apart, leaning forward so that the
blood streaming from his nostrils would puddle neatly on the floor.
Lio's lip was puffy and bleeding. The flesh around his left eye was ochre,
suggesting it would be black tomorrow. He was staring into a dim corner of the
room. Arsibalt let out a shuddering moan, as if he'd been sobbing, and was just
now managing it.
"Fight?" I asked
Lio nodded.
"Between the two of you or --"
Lio shook his head.
"We were set upon!" Arsibalt proclaimed, shouting at his blood-puddle.
"Intra or extra?" Jesry demanded.
"Extramuros. We were en route to my pater's basilica. I wished only to learn
whether he would speak to me. A vehicle drove by once, twice, thrice. It
circled us like a lowering raptor. Four men emerged. One had his arm in a
sling; he looked on and cheered the other three."
Jesry and I both looked at Lio, who took our meaning immediately.
"Useless. Useless," he said.
"What was useless?" Cord asked. The sound of her voice caused Arsibalt to look
up.
Lio was not the sort to care that we had a visitor -- but he did answer her
question. "My vlor. All of the Vale-lore I have ever studied."
"It can't have been that bad!" Jesry exclaimed. Which was funny since, over the
years, no one had been more persistent than Jesry in telling Lio how useless
his vlor was.
By way of an answer Lio rolled to his feet, glided over, grasped the edge of
Jesry's hood, and yanked it down over his face. Not only was Jesry now blind,
but because of how the bolt was wound around his body, it interfered with his
arms and made it surprisingly difficult for him to expose his face again. Lio
gave him the tiniest of nudges and he lost his balance so badly that I had to
hug him and force him upright.
"That's what they did to you?" I asked. Lio nodded.
"Tilt your head back, not forward," Cord was saying to Arsibalt. "There's a
vein up here." She pointed to the bridge of her nose. "Pinch it. That's right.
My name is Cord, I am a sib of...Erasmas."
"Enchanted," Arsibalt said, muffled by his hand, as he had taken Cord's advice.
"I am Arsibalt, bastard of the local Bazian arch-prelate, if you can believe
such a thing."
"The bleeding is slowing down, I think," Cord said. From one of her pockets she
had drawn out a pair of purple wads which unfolded to gloves of some stretchy
membranous stuff. She wiggled her hands into them. I was baffled for a few
moments, then realized that this was a precaution against infection: something
I never would have thought of.
"Fortunately, my blood supply is simply enormous, because of my size," Arsibalt
pointed out, "otherwise, I fear I should exsanguinate."
Some of Cord's pockets were narrow and tall and ranked in neat rows. From two
of these she drew out blunt plugs of white fibrous stuff, about the size of her
little finger, with strings trailing from them. "What on earth [sic] are
those?" Arsibalt wanted to know.
"Blood soaker-uppers," Cord said, "one for each nostril, if you would like."
She gave them over into Arsibalt's gory hands, and watched, a little bit
nervous and a little bit fascinated, as Arsibalt gingerly put them in. Lio,
Jesry, and I looked on speechless.
Suur Ala came in with an armload of rags, most of which she threw on the floor
to cover the blood-puddle. She and Cord used the rest to wipe the bloof off
Arsibalt's lips and chins. The whole time they were appraising each other, as
if in a competition to see which was the scientist and which was the specimen.
By the time I got my wits about me to make introductions, they knew so much
about each other that names hardly mattered.
>From yet another pocket Cord produced a complex metal thing all folded in on
>itself. She evoluted it into a miniature scissors, which she used to snip off
>the strings dangling from Arsibalt's nostrils.
So bossy, so stern a person was Suur Ala that, until this moment, I had feared
that she and Cord were going to fall upon each other like two cats in a
pillowcase. But when she drew focus on those blood soaker-uppers, she gave Cord
a happy look which Cord returned.
We frog-marched Arsibalt out of there, hid his carnage under a huge scarlet
robe, and came out for Provener only a few minutes late. We were greeted by
titters from some who assumed we'd been extramuros getting drunk. Most of these
wags were Apert visitors, but I heard amusement even from the Thousanders. I
was expecting that Jesry and I would have to do most of the work, but, on the
contrary, Lio and Arsibalt pushed with far more than their usual strength.
After Provener, the Warden Fendant crossed the chancel and came through our
screen to interview Lio and Arsibalt. Jesry and I stood off to one side. Cord
stood close and listened. This influenced Lio to use a lot of Fluccish, to the
annoyance of Fraa Delrakhones. Arsibalt, on the other hand, kept using words
like rapscallions.
>From his description of the vehicle the thugs had driven and the clothes they
>had worn, Cord knew them. "They are a local --" she said and stopped.
"Gang?" Delrakhones offered.
She shrugged. "A gang that keeps pictures of fictional gangs from old speelys
on their walls."
"How fascinating!" Arsibalt proclaimed, while Fraa Delrakhones was absorbing
this detail. "It is, then, a sort of meta-gang..."
"But they stil do gangy stuff for real," Cord said, "as I don't have to tell
you."
It became clear from the nature of the questions Delrakhones asked that he was
trying to work out which iconography the gang subscribed to. He did not seem to
grasp something that was clear enough to me and Cord: namely, that there were
extras who would beat up avout simply because it was more entertaining than not
beating them up -- not because they subscribed to some ridiculous theory of
what we were. He was assuming that rapscallions bothered to have theories.
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