Made it to the end, finally. Brilliant, jazz. I fully intend to read it again within the next two years, god willing. One last passge, slightly random, but with a line I loved. It’s a backflash passage in the book’s chronology. The protagonist here is Mondaugen, a scientist who is tracking signals in the atmosphere, and has been stationed in a German fortress which has devolved into a bacchanal while they wait out a siege (you know). Anyway:
He bent to kiss one shoulder. “No,” she moaned, and then went berserk; picked up a flacon of Cologne water, inverted it on his head, arose from her vanity, hitting Mondaugen in the jaw with the shoulder he was trying to kiss. He, felled, loss consciousness for a fraction of a minute, woke to see here cakewalking out the door, singing Auf dem Zippel-Zappel-Zeppelin, a tune popular at the turn of the century.
He staggered to the corridor; she’d vanished. Feeling rather a sexual failure, Mondaugen set out for his turret and oscillograph, and the comforts of Science, which are glacial and few.
3C Review 