CHAPTER 2
Note
!V June 10, 1991 tojrf: July 16, 1991 I think okay.
!V QU I use Peregrine and Pilgrim almost interchangeably for
!V this pack. Is that okay, or should I fix on one?
!V CHKd spelling/meaning "peregrine"
!V June 10, 1991 Latin "peregrinator" = English "pilgrim"
!V The English word "peregrine" is an adjective meaning "roving"
!V (or a noun meaning a type falcon)
An hour's difference either way and Peregrine Wickwrackrum's life would have been very different.
Note
!iNCON to talk of deaths here?
! I think it's okay, if they were really pilgrims
!jrf2 after first sentence: Something to connect these 2 sentences --
!jrf2 ie, Earlier in his life, Pilgrim couldn't have borne the
!jrf2 the company, but ...
The three travelers were headed west, down from the Icefangs towards Flenser's Castle on Hidden Island. There were in his life when he couldn't have borne the company, but in the last decade Peregrine had become much more sociable. He liked traveling with others nowadays. On his last trek through the Great Sandy, there had been five packs in his party. Part of that had been a matter of safety: some deaths are almost inevitable when the distance between oases can be a thousand miles -- and the oases themselves are transient. But aside from safety, he had learned a lot in conversation with the others.
Note
!CHKd newby in my 2 slang dictionaries and my webster. Not there
He was not so happy with his current companions. Neither were truly pilgrims; both had secrets. Scriber Jaqueramaphan was fun, an amusing goofball and fount of uncoordinated information.... There was also a good chance he was a spy. That was okay, as long as people didn't think Peregrine was working with him. The third of their party was the one who really bothered him. Tyrathect was a newby, not all together yet; she had no taken name. Tyrathect claimed to be a school teacher, but somewhere in her (him? gender preference wasn't entirely clear yet) was a killer. The creature was obviously a Flenserist fanatic, standoffish and rigid much of the time. Almost certainly, she was fleeing the purge that followed Flenser's unsuccessful attempt to take power in the east.
Note
!jrf2 suggests "purge" instead of "pogrom"
!jrf "what the hell" anachronistic?
!V ||||||||||||| why not, if I use it elsewhere?
!jrf2 Because if Tines don't have a hell, it's really odd. We say
!jrf2 "what the hell" because our Western culture has a Hell, so it
!jrf2 has meaning for us. Find a Tinish analog. NO
He'd run into these two at Eastgate, on the Republican side of the Icefangs. They both wanted to visit the Castle on Hidden Island. And what the hell, that was only a sixty-mile detour off the main trail to Woodcarvers; they all would have to cross the mountains. Besides, he had wanted to visit Flenser's Domain for years. Maybe one of these two could get him in. So much of the world reviled the Flenserists. Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.
Note
!jrf2 by "enough" (above) do you mean to suggest that there's
!jrf2 good sometimes
!jrf2 among the carnage only when enough rules are broken or just:
!V June 10, 1991 ||||||
!V Definitely not
!jrf2 "when lots of rules are broken"?
!mARK 01Jun89
!V May 31, 1991 QU for clv: When historically was the nature of
!V glacier and glacier-valleys realized (the dynamics)?
!V clv: Agassiz mid XIX, though an observant local could have
!V deduced the dynamics of mountain glaciers most any time
!V May 31, 1991 "summer patches" is awkward and ambiguous
This afternoon, they'd finally come in sight of the coastal islands. Peregrine had been here only fifty years before. Even so, he wasn't prepared for the beauty of this land. The Northwest Coast was by far the mildest arctic in the world. In high summer, with unending day, the bottoms of the glacier-reamed valleys turned all to green. God the carver had stooped to touch these lands ... and His chisels had been made of ice. Now, all that was left of the ice and snow were misty arcs at the eastern horizon and remnant patches scattered on the near hills. Those patches melted and melted through the summer, starting little creeks that merged with one another to cascade down the steep sides of the valleys. On his right, Peregrine trotted across a level stretch of ground that was soggy with standing water. The chill on his feet felt wonderful; he didn't even mind the midges that swirled around him.
Tyrathect was across the valley, paralleling his course, but above the heather line. She'd been fairly talkative till the valley curved and the farmland and the islands came into view. Somewhere out there was Flenser's Castle, and her dark appointment.
Note
!Slightly iNCON but good
! I say to leave it, but try to make it more consistent by PROwriting
! For instance, don't make it so terrible to separate for brief times
Scriber Jaqueramaphan had been all over, mindlessly running around on both sides of the valley. He'd collect in twos or threes and execute some jape that made even the dour Tyrathect laugh, then climb to a height and report what he saw beyond. He'd been the first to see the coast. That had sobered him some. His clowning was dangerous enough without doing it in the neighborhood of known rapists.
Wickwrackrum called a pause, and got himself together to adjust the straps on his backpacks. The rest of the afternoon was going to be tense. He'd have to decide whether he really wanted to enter the Castle with his friends. There are limits to an adventurous spirit, even in a pilgrim.
Note
!INCON usage hei? since you show it later in Samnorsk
! Oops: Hei really is Norsk for Hey or Hey there. Yecco.
! Okay. So maybe I should eliminate it from Tinish? -- done 03Feb91
! May be sort of awkward feeling, though
!CHKd sp bass
"Hey, do you hear something bass?" Tyrathect called from across the valley. Peregrine listened. There was a rumbling -- powerful, but almost below his range of hearing. For an instant, fear crossed his puzzlement. A century before, he'd been in a monster earthquake. This sound was similar, but the ground was still beneath his feet. Would that mean no landslides and flashfloods? He hunkered down, looking out in all directions.
"It's in the sky!" Jaqueramaphan was pointing.
Note
!qU How is parallax possible without a background?
! Solution: Make the torch visible as a shape
! Guinness says human acuity is 1 minute of arc. The torch must be several
! times this, actually. Seems reasonable that they would start hearing
! it around 50000ft ~ 15km. If Wicky has human far visual acuity then
! that would make the torch substantially longer than 3e-4*15000m = 4.5m
! In the text you imply the violent heating effect of the torch is 300m,
! so this looks quite consistent with being able to see its shape on
! first sighting
! Human interpupil is .07m and stereo range is 10m, so with a
! interpupil of 10m we have range 1429m, and even
! 30m gives only 4287m = 2.66miles
!V June 20, 1991 actually, with multiple eyes, some forms of res
!V might be enhanced (even if individually, they are not better
!V than humand -- and puppies are worse, remember), thus conceivably
!V the ranging could be somewhat better
! You should revise the TINES.TXT file appropriately
A spot of glare hung almost overhead, a tiny spear of light. No memories, not even legends came to Wickwrackrum's mind. He spread out, all eyes on the slowly moving light. God's Choir. It must be miles up, and still he heard it. He looked away from the light, afterimages dancing painfully in his eyes.
"It's getting brighter, louder," said Jaqueramaphan. "I think it's coming down on the hills yonder, on the coast."
Peregrine pulled himself together and ran west, shouting to the others. He would get as close as was safe, and watch. He didn't look up again. It was just too bright. It cast shadows in broad daylight!
He ran another half mile. The star was still in the air. He couldn't remember a falling star so slow, though some of the biggest made terrible explosions. In fact ... there were no stories from folks who had been near such things. His wild, pilgrim curiosity faded before that recollection. He looked in all directions. Tyrathect was nowhere in sight; Jaqueramaphan was huddled next to some boulders ahead.
Note
!CHKd sp timberline
And the light was so bright that where his clothes did not protect him, Wickwrackrum felt a blaze of heat. The noise from the sky was outright pain now. Peregrine dived over the edge of the valley side, rolled and staggered and fell down the steep walls of rock. He was in the shade now: only sunlight lay upon him! The far side of the valley shone in the glare; crisp shadows moved with the unseen thing behind him. The noise was still a bass rumble, but so loud it numbed the mind. Peregrine stumbled past the timberline, and continued till he was sheltered by a hundred yards of forest. That should have helped a lot, but the noise was been growing still louder....
Note
!jrf2 "battle pitched" means what in this context?
!V June 10, 1991 deleted the reference from the previous paragraph
!connect with fønwind fires
!PROwrite this difference in summers later on.
Mercifully, he blacked out for a moment or two. When he came around, the star sound was gone. The ringing it left in his tympana was a great confusion. He staggered about in a daze. It seemed to be raining -- except that some of the droplets glowed. Little fires were starting here and there in the forest. He hid beneath dense-crowned trees till the burning rocks stopped falling. The fires didn't spread; the summer had been relatively wet.
Note
!PROwrite crickers and woodborers
Peregrine lay quietly, waiting for more burning rocks or new star noise. Nothing. The wind in the tree tops lessened. He could hear the birds and crickers and woodborers. He walked to the forest edge and peeked out in several places. Discounting the patches of burnt heather, everything looked normal. But his viewpoint was very restricted: he could see high valley walls, a few hilltops. Ha! There was Scriber Jaqueramaphan, three hundred yards further up. Most of him was hunkered down in holes and hollows, but he had a couple of members looking toward where the star had fallen. Peregrine squinted. Scriber was such a buffoon most of the time. But sometimes it just seemed a cover; if he really was a fool, he was one with a streak of genius. More than once, Wicky had seen him at a distance, working in pairs with some strange tool.... As now: the other was holding something long and pointed to his eye.
Wickwrackrum crept out of the forest, keeping close together and making as little noise as possible. He climbed carefully around the rocks, slipping from hummock to heather hummock, till he was just short of the valley crest and some fifty yards from Jaqueramaphan. He could hear the other thinking to himself. Any closer, and Scriber would hear him, even bunched up and quiet as he was.
"Ssst!" said Wickwrackrum.
Note
!mARK 02Jun89
!PROwrite this stuff (Hightalk ...) in later, too
!INCON what about this reference to ears
!V I think I've done an adequate fix-up
!V (there may be targets of opportunity, later)
!V PRO write ears IMPER
!V Interesting, there are only two references
!V to ears in Blabber "The Blabber's ears perked up."
!V "clipped the receiver to her ear"
!V It does make some sense that they would have dog-like ears for
!V "low-freq" sounds: "low-sound ears"
!PRB tympanum tympana ears etc yecco. Latin: drum Greek tympanon drum
! Webster tympanum, pl tympana or tympanums. My reading of the definition
! I suggest that packs can use each in either way
! allows it to used a membrane for sending or for receiving
! tympani=timpani a set of three kettledrums. Comes from italian and
! thence
! from Latin tympanum
! tympany -- resonance on percussion
!hld "intra-pack" probably sounds like high compression 100K baud modem
!hld one of the trellis-coded things. Some pattern in it has periodicitiy
! in
!hld limb-motion time scale. White noise with chipr and warble perhaps.
!hld Could possibly use "spread-spectrum" pseudo-noise coding to allow
!hld some amount of independence between intra pack commm. Nervous
!hld systems seem to be able to generate chaotic "almos periodic"
!hld clocks that could be used as correlation filters.
!hld V IMP:
!hld I wouldn't use same membranes for sending and receiving. Bad problems
!hld with cooking the receiver with ~120dB power differences between
!hld the receiver threshold and the transmitter output. Also, I don't
!hld see and easy way to use direct membrane drive for high frequencies
!hld The max direct muscle contraction rate for a single muscle fiber
!hld is about 1KHz.
!hld A possible out it a piezo-membrane, a biological analog of a PVDF
!hld electret; There would still be a problem with the ~1KHz nerve
!hld pulse rates. I'd use some specialized multi band transmitters --
!hld ie, "organ pipe array" with enough controlled coupling between
!hld pipes to make trellis coding and phased array directionality work.
The buzzing and muttering stopped in an instant of shocked surprise. Jaqueramaphan stuffed the mysterious seeing tool into a backpack and pulled himself together, thinking very quietly. They stared at each other for a moment, then Scriber made silly squirling gestures at his shoulder tympana. Listen up. "Can you talk like this?" His voice came very high-pitched, up where some people can't make voluntary conversation, where low-sound ears are deaf. Hightalk could be confusing, but it was very directional and faded quickly with distance; no one else would hear them. Peregrine nodded, "Hightalk is no problem." The trick was to use tones pure enough not to confuse.
Note
!CHKd sp: hill crest
"Take a look over the hill crest, friend pilgrim. There is something new under the sun."
Peregrine moved up another thirty yards, keeping a lookout in all directions. He could see the straits now, gleaming rough silver in the afternoon sunlight. Behind him, the north side of the valley was lost in shadow. He sent one member ahead, skittering between the hummocks to look down on the plain where the star had landed.
Note
!pRB iNCON How fast would this cool? You're assuming <12h
God's Choir, he thought to himself (but quietly). He brought up another member to get a parallax view. The thing looked like a huge adobe hut mounted on stilts.... But this was the fallen star: the ground beneath it glowed dull red. Curtains of mist rose from the moist heather all around. The torn earth had been thrown in long lines that radiated from a spot beneath it.
Note
!PRO write what Tyra was up to over the next few hours?
!V June 10, 1991 She was snooping, unseen by all -- remember
!V Tyrathect knows this country
!V I don't think I will, though something would be
!V possible along these lines at the end of the Tyrathect scene in
!V c13.txt
He nodded at Jaqueramaphan. "Where is Tyrathect?"
Scriber shrugged. "A couple of miles back, I'll bet. I'm keeping an eye out for her.... Do you see the others though, the troopers from Flenser's Castle?"
"No!" Peregrine looked west from the landing site. There. They were almost a mile away, in camouflage jackets, belly crawling across the hummocky terrain. He could see at least three troopers. They were big guys, six each. "How could they get here so fast?" He glanced at the sun. "It can't be more than half an hour since all this started."
"Their good luck." Jaqueramaphan returned to the crest and looked over. "I'll bet they were already on the mainland when the star came down. This is all Flenser territory; they must have patrols." He hunkered down so just two pairs of eyes would be visible to those below. "That's an ambush formation, you know."
"You don't seem very happy to see them. These are your friends, remember? The people you've come to see."
Scriber cocked his heads sarcastically. "Yeah, yeah. Don't rub it in. I think you've known from the beginning that I'm not all for Flenser."
"I guessed."
"Well, the game is over now. Whatever came down this afternoon is worth more to ... uh, my friends than anything I could have learned on Hidden Island."
"What about Tyrathect?"
Note
!V okay :
!pROwrite Servant, Servant of the Flenser
! Also get rid of the term High Lord. -- not sure I did (January 24, 1991)
! The ranking should be essentially:
! The Master (Flenser)
! The Lords (includes Flenser, Steel, Tyrathect)
! The Servants (of various ranks) of the Flenser
! Shreck is a "high Servant" (c30)
! Servant used most often in c04 (occasionally elsewhere,
! inlcuding c15 and c30, so I don't think I'm going to try
! explicitly to make more common (or less) June 11, 1991
! Military ranks (some in parallel with the Servants)
! Outsiders may use the term Flenserist to apply to any member of the
! movement, June 11, 1991
! and Flenserists to apply to all the members June 11, 1991
!V TUF May 31, 1991 Unfortunately, the next paragraph appears to be
!V the first use of the term "Servant"
"Heh, heh. Our esteemed companion is more than genuine, I fear. I'd bet she's a Flenser Lord, not the low-rank Servant she seems at first glance. I expect that many of her kind are leaking back over the mountains these days, happy to get out of the Long Lakes Republic. Hide your behinds, fellow. If she spots us, those troopers will get us sure."
Peregrine moved deeper into the hollows and burrows that pocked the heather. He had an excellent view back along the valley. If Tyrathect were not already on the scene, he'd see her long before she would him.
"Peregrine?"
"Yes?"
"You're a pilgrim. You've traveled the world ... since the beginning of time, you'd have us believe. How far do your memories really go back?"
Note
!V May 31, 1991 Why should a pilgrim's memories be any longer than
!V other people's? In fact, they should be shorter.
Given the situation, Wickwrackrum was inclined to honesty. "Like you'd expect: a few hundred years. Then we're talking about legends, recollections of things that probably happened, but with the details all mixed and muddled."
Note
!NÆH: REN Scriber isn't quite right; how about Scrivner? Scribner?
! Or something that shows his perceived brilliance?
!NÆH: REN Also consider spelling Peregrin instead of Peregrine
! Latin is Peregrinator
!Some PRB QU with using given names here?
!V June 10, 1991 TUF:
!V May 31, 1991 Is being "new" clear enough (even in V's own mind?)
"Well, I haven't traveled much, and I'm fairly new. But I do read. A lot. There's never been anything like this before. That is a made thing down there. It came from higher than I can measure. You've read Aramstriquesa or Astrologer Belelele? You know what this could be?"
Note
!V June 10, 1991 TUF:
!V May 31, 1991 Are these packs mentioned anywhere else?
!V No, not as of June 1, 1991
!Almost INCON. This implies another merging with an adult member. Praps
! Rum was a puppy of the same pack as that member. I don't want to get
! too much into it without a lot more background, since it would make
! Pilgrim's life look too violent
! Or maybe the newby reference far below is to Rum's previous pack, and
! it's
! Rum that is being referred to directly below:
Wickwrackrum didn't recognize the names. But he was a pilgrim. There were lands so far away that no one spoke any language he knew. In the Southseas he met folk who thought there was no world beyond their islands and who ran from his boats when he came ashore. Even more, one part of him had been an islander and had watched that coming ashore.
He stuck a head into the open and looked again at the fallen star, the visitor from farther than he had ever been ... and he wondered where this pilgrimage might end.
Note
!V June 1, 1991 I consider the two preceding paragraphs to be an answer
!V (perhaps too subtle) to the motivational questions that jrf2
!V raises in c04