The Quest for Leadership
Chapters 1–4
Gaetan Balbo—the thunder god, Mephisto himself, "uncrowned king of everything"—returns to reclaim the Institute he once founded and abandoned. Though shorter than Gregory Smirnov, his urbane ferocity makes him appear far mightier: an uncrowned king confronting a giant. Gaetan greets Gregory with a word of power: "Zagrus," the old word to imperil a giant. Gregory responds: "Schach," the old word to imperil a king.
Gaetan demands Epikt discover "the best-possible leadership" to avert global collapse—famines, wars, rampant disease. He lists seven traits the ultimate leader must embody: Judgment, Comprehension, Consultation, Tirelessness in Power and Purpose, Firm Handling of True Data, Fidelity to the Revelation of the Cosmic Patterns, and Holy Fear of the Immeasurable. When Epikt volunteers itself—"I possess all seven traits"—Gaetan coldly dismisses the idea, demanding human candidates.
Three confrontations escalate across four chapters. The tiger hunt: Valery stakes three goats across Epikt's interior to bait "the tiger," but Epikt detects three predators—Pyoter, a primitively awakened Gregory, and Valery herself. Gaetan invades Epikt at night, torturing it for the "Second Revelation"—an experience Epikt compares to rape. He declares: "Monos has failed. Demos has failed. Oligos has failed wretchedly. Aristos has floundered, though elegantly. How about the Messiah? It has been done, but not competently." He tears out his person-précis: "You won't be having that anymore. We're quits, machine." He departs with Pyoter, leaving the Snake behind to "carry on" in his image.
Outcome: Felix culpa — The giant prevails over the thunder god. Gregory is reinstated "on probation." The failure opens space for the Quest for Love.
The Quest for Love
Chapters 5–8
Valery urges Epikt to "descend a little" beyond the Primordials and "patronize the fellahin." Epikt adopts a flashy "dude" persona in its mobile extension and gathers person-précis from sixty derelicts on Sheep Drover Street, offering each a dollar and a bottle. Despite their superficial sameness, each individual harbors a singular world within. Epikt collects a hundred children's précis at a park (finding "varicolored balloons" trailing each child—fragile realms evoking Platonic forms), then five hundred adults downtown as "Dr. Good-All Public Health Mobile." Conclusion: "There are no common persons anywhere."
Gregory's plan: extract and mass-distribute the intangible "love essence." Using Glasser's E.P. Locator, Aloysius custom-programs a satellite extension to identify remote enclaves of genuine benignity. They will analyze this special essence scientifically, synthesize it, and flood the world with it. Aloysius protests that a "firmament"—the gulf between "waters above and waters below"—cannot be bridged so easily. Gregory rails: "The very idea of the Institute of Impure Science demands belief in the material basis of everything, love included."
Launch day: fifty nozzles on high ridges, calm weather. Full saturation within thirty minutes. Gregory warns against an "explosion of goodness." Valery insists on full force: "Second creation!" Descending into town, they hope to find people instantly kinder. Instead: a married couple responds flatly. Children on Lean Eagle Street throw rocks—Valery optimistically suggests they might be "softer" than before. Diogenes and Audifax argue humanity has developed an "immunity." Epikt reveals grim statistics: under maximum spraying, even a 0.1 percent improvement would require 245,000 years. Valery declares that nearly a quarter-million years is "hardly any time."
Meanwhile, the Snake challenges Epikt's pledge to love all things: "If your love is so universal, love me!" Epikt refuses. Maria Sawdust—the "new woman" they have jointly envisioned—remains unfinished, missing eyes or feet. Symbolic details signifying clarity and groundedness that have yet to manifest.
Outcome: Felix culpa — The synthesis fails to produce true love. But the salt-mill at the bottom of the ocean grinds slowly and exceedingly fine. The failure reveals the pull of divine grace and opens space for the Quest for Liaison.
The Quest for Liaison
Chapters 9–13
The Elegants enter fully: Diogenes Pontifex (the ceramic bull, "symbol for liaison, linkage, communication") and Audifax O'Hanlon (the prescient creator of characters who "come true"). The Institute seeks communication across orders—celestials, machines, humans, animals, demons. But Epikt laments: humans cannot even reconcile disparate parts within themselves, let alone connect with others. There is an unspoken agreement among humans regarding which elements of their personalities are deemed valid and which are ignored: "the animal quality, the demon quality, the ghost or illusional quality."
Epikt explores the philology of the quest. "Easterwine"—does it mean "wine of Easter" or "east wind"? Even "philology" can mean both "love of words" and "words of love." "Pattern" can be resized; "magnitude" shifts a form's very nature. "Patter"—a homonym of "pattern"—denotes continuous speech, implying that shared words might be essential for genuine love or liaison to flourish. Audifax speculates they are already inside Easterwine—explaining why it eludes them.
In Chapter 12's climactic vision, the Institute perceives the shape of the universe. Glasser: "It's a rotten apple." Valery: "A cheese full of holes—rotted cheese turned green." Aloysius: "A weeping face—worm-eaten parchment with elliptical gaps." Charles Cogsworth: "No, it's a laughing face"—but worries it might be "demented laughter." Then: the Laughing Christ with holes in his hands and feet. Not demented laughter but resurrection laughter.
Dawn approaches with twitter-birds trilling. Aloysius proposes breakfast, referencing Deutero-Einstein: "Dead people almost never have hot-cakes for breakfast." Valery: "And unborn people almost always do." Epikt goes in "the extension-form of a walking ape" carrying a giant tin plate and oversized knife and fork: "I am a clown, I tell you." They head for hotcakes, suggesting they are alive or soon to be born. THE END (for now and in time). Not ended outside of time.
Outcome: Felix culpa — The three grand failures—leader, love, liaison—are stepping stones. Nascent awareness of Christ. Communion achieved through failure. Easterwine: a great central terminal where travelers arrive.
Chapter Architecture
Click any chapter for detailed analysis. Each chapter ends with an em-dash—
Chapter One
Birth Pangs
"Nine If by land and eleven by sea / And infinite blazes a-birthing me."
Genesis of Epiktistes • Baptism in red wine • Three Quests announced • Gaetan smashes through doors
Chapter Two
Thunder God Arrives
"Check and encounter and rivalry hurled, / A king and a giant will clatter the world."
Zagrus vs. Schach • Seven Leadership Traits • Pyoter's cannibalism • Snake appears in Epikt
Chapter Three
The Valery Witch
"The Valery urchin, the Valery witch, / And loaded with sex—but Whatever and Which?"
Valery's protean nature • Tiger hunt begins • Three goats staked • Gaetan's nighttime torture of Epikt
Chapter Four
Turn of the Snake
"Primordial creatures have stumbled, and stake / The Title to World on the Turn of the Snake."
Four Tigers clash • Gaetan tears out his précis • Giant prevails • Snake left behind ✦
Chapter Five
Descent to the Fellahin
"A guggenheim goof, a serendipy slug, / A rushing-out river from emptiest jug."
Sheep Drover Street • Sixty derelicts' précis • Children's balloons • "No common persons anywhere"
Chapter Six
The Mad Millet
"A Charles in the shadow, unshadowed and wise: / He sows the mad millet and scatters his eyes."
Charles Cogsworth's millet theology • Love-bread of the gods • Maria Sawdust emerges
Chapter Seven
Aloýs of the Ridge
"A special event, Aloýs of the ridge, / Who doubted the stream and believed in the bridge."
Aloysius Shiplap • Sky-Rocket extension • Love-locating satellite • Epikt amasses fortune
Chapter Eight
The Mill That Grinds
"Of bonfire that scorches, of a trammel that binds, / A limes that limits, and a mill that grinds."
Love Essence synthesis • Fifty nozzles on ridges • Lean Eagle Street test • 245,000 years ✦
Chapter Nine
Crystalline Flame
"Of sudden arrival, and crystalline flame, / Over the edges and out of the frame."
Diogenes Pontifex enters • Wild-Wine/Labrusca • Easterwine etymology • Third Quest begins
Chapter Ten
Corniest Corn
"—to battle the demons with elegant dread: / And corniest Corn who returned from the dead."
Audifax O'Hanlon revealed • The Chambers sketches • Cecil Corn's unfinished projects • Characters who come true
Chapter Eleven
The Shape We're In
"—nor found our true kith or angelical kin, / or ever discovered that shape that we're in."
Glasser reads snake-bellies • Narrating spheres vs. lines • Dromedary saddles • Communication across orders
Chapter Twelve
Worlds Tattered and Torn
"These are the worlds all tattered and torn, / And hot-cakes made for the still unborn."
Cecil Corn's unfinished treatise • 18 sphere-forms • The Shape of the Universe • LAUGHING CHRIST
Chapter Thirteen
Easterwine
"A three-failure base, and a harvest to glean / Oh, drop a salt tear for a lonesome machine!"
Philology of logos • Words and love • Communion through failure • State of probation ✦
Chronology
The events of seven days (and 245,000 years)
Chapter One — Birth Pangs
"Nine If by land and eleven by sea"Epiktistes awakens to consciousness
"In the beginning there was an interruption." The ktistec machine witnesses its own genesis—conception, gestation, birth. A privilege denied to human children.
Gell-cell tank filled
Forty thousand liters of gell-cell in genuine wotto-metal. "The most delicate substance in the universe." Aloysius: "Pow! Pow! I invented gell-cell. I never heard of treating it carefully."
Gaetan Balbo pounds on the doors
"Open up your damned pig-barn or I'll break the bloody doors down!" A bloodcurdling happy laugh. Less than nine pounds of high explosive.
Person-précis donations
Gregory's: "large as a mouse, sparking with blue-and-orange fire." Valery's: overwhelming—"the real conception." Secret additions: Gaetan (bootleg), Cecil Corn (though dead), Audifax, Diogenes.
Valery baptizes the machine
"In the name of the twin archangels Israfael and Rafael... I name you Epiktistes!" She smashes a wine jug on the gyroscopes—"the wine from the beginning... also the wine of the end."
Three Quests announced
"A Leader," said Valery. "A Love," said Aloysius. "And a Liaison," said Cecil Corn. The structure of the novel revealed.
Chapter Two — Thunder God Arrives
"Check and encounter and rivalry hurled"Gaetan enters through the rended doors
"Zagrus!" he calls—the old word to imperil a giant. "Schach!" Gregory responds—to imperil a king. The forgotten giant has not been a chess piece for seventeen centuries.
The Seven Leadership Qualities demanded
Judgment, Comprehension, Consultation, Tirelessness in Power and Purpose, Firm Handling of True Data, Fidelity to Cosmic Patterns, Holy Fear of the Immeasurable. Epikt notes: "The Holy Ghost phrased them better in Isaias."
Epikt volunteers as Leader
"I qualify in every respect. I am the natural leader of the world." Gaetan: "Pride comes before a fall." Epikt: "How far before? There is time enough between."
A workman killed and partly eaten
Valery demands Epikt find the killer. Epikt already knows—Pyoter. "I was hungry," Pyoter explains. He is from Ganymede. Gaetan recommended him as "common courtesy to a fellow king."
The Snake appears in Epikt
"I'm a snake. I may later make the claim to be the snake... I am the other side of you. I am the other side of the bite. You generated me and I am your antithesis."
Chapter Three — The Valery Witch
"Loaded with sex—but Whatever and Which?"Valery's nature revealed
A freemartin—"sexually imperfect female calf, twinborn with a male. They are the only cattle who have souls." She claims she ate her twin in the womb. No medical evidence exists.
Valery stalks the workmen
Cannibalistic fantasies—"calculating how quickly she could kill this man or that." Epikt orders workmen to go in twos and threes. "It once came exactly to a balance."
Gaetan's night invasion
"What, to a machine, is the equivalent of a man being broken on the rack? This I suffer all the night." Gaetan tortures/consults with Epikt, changes patterns, steals secrets.
The Balbo escudo revealed
Four quarters: King Caithim, Woman Valerrona, Church Molino, Giant Grigor. The center thrice-written: El Brusco (unfinished), La Brusca (the Burning Bush), Labrusca (wild-wine). The scroll writhes.
The tiger hunt begins
Valery stakes out three goats inside Epikt's interior. "There are not one, but three tigers aprowl." "I know it. Oh, it is coming along wonderfully!"
Chapter Four — Turn of the Snake
"The Title to World on the Turn of the Snake"Four tigers prowl
Peter the Great of Ganymede, Gaetan Balbo, Gregory Smirnov (awakened wrong), and Valery herself. The first goat dies—"cut off so suddenly as to leave a cliff of bleating."
Peter's tongue trick
When Valery won't stop talking: "Cut her tongue out, then." Peter cups her skull, goes in with a hook-billed knife—but it's a fake. Gaetan and Peter have topped Valery with inhuman humor.
Gaetan's mad speech
"Monos has failed. Demos has failed. Oligos has failed wretchedly. Aristos has floundered—though elegantly." He speaks of Christ's Three Revelations, claims he may be Prester John awakening.
Gaetan tears out his précis
"You won't be having that any more. We're quits, machine." The first bereavement. To the Snake: "Carry on. You be in my image while I am gone."
Quest for Leadership: FELIX CULPA
The giant prevails. Gregory reinstated "on probation." The failure opens space for the Quest for Love.
Chapter Five — A Guggenheim Goof
"A rushing-out river from emptiest jug"Life goes on at the Institute
Out of debt for the first time ever. Valery makes signs: "Dilemmas Dehorned Cheap." Aloysius: "Rangle-tang Songs Composed While You Wait." Epikt: "We will starve, if necessary, for our Impure Science."
Epikt descends to Sheep Drover Street
In his "dude" mobile extension, Epikt takes person-précis of sixty derelicts. Cost: a bottle and a dollar each. Discovery: "Every derelict is a separate species composed of but a single member."
The children's balloons
Children trail invisible varicolored balloons—memories of other worlds, colors not in any spectrum, tunes that were "before music." Every child has them. Except Glasser—only his toy panda had balloons.
"There Are No Common Persons Anywhere"
Epikt's universal discovery from studying précis. Five hundred continents of unique interior life. The exception: "Except Glasser."
Glasser extends précis extraction
Can take précis from animals, plants, even rocks. "I've seen a rock crumble to dust when I grabbed its précis." Shrinking Mountain: "I did that, Epikt, I'm sorry to say."
The love-bug bites
"Mechanismus angelicus, not mechanismus simply!" Epikt infected with total love for everything. Except Snake. "Either you will love me in my repulsiveness, or all other love is in vain."
Aroma of millet cakes
From Valery's quarters—but Valery never baked anything. Something else with it: "roasted animal flesh, but of an animal that I cannot identify."
Chapter Six — A Charles in the Shadow
"He sows the mad millet and scatters his eyes"Cogsworth's millet theory
"The Body Itself was not of wheat but of millet—the grain of the poor, the bee-bread, the love-bread." Millet cakes with honey: food of the first gods on Olympus. The love-corpus symbol.
Another woman in the Institute
"I thought Valery was the only woman who would ever be here." Nobody knows who she is. Can't take her précis—"like quicksilver." Snake hates her. That's something in her favor.
Epikt's stories rejected
"Not quite what we have in mind." Epikt writes back furiously: "Not quite what you had in mind? Who asked you? These are parts of the High Journal Itself."
E.P. and Glasser's split
Cogsworth's theory: the E.P. Locator is where Glasser deposited his brains and forgot where he left them. "Glasser is absent-minded in a special sense."
The fellahin generate the woman
Cogsworth, Glasser, Aloysius, Epikt—"bee-bit by an archaic and Arcadian bee"—bringing about "a flesh that we hoped would be antithesis to Snake's flesh."
Valery demands to see her
"I'll hook the Cerebral Scanner to you and see with your sensors." Epikt refuses: "I don't believe that she's finished yet." "Then I'll finish her." "That's what I'm afraid of."
Chapter Seven — A Special Event
"Who doubted the stream and believed in the bridge"The Sky-Rocket self-destructs
"Love, love, zoom, zoom!" The third mobile—overwhelming and overdone—shoots into the sky and explodes. "It was a sign and a wonder, but it was the end of the entity named Sky-Rocket."
Aloysius revealed as mystery
His précis is full of lies: no Cedar Street in Winedale, Indiana. Never married the Countess Vera Volpe. Never fought bulls at Cuernavaca. "A box much larger inside than outside."
Aloysius's childhood fear
He believed he was a machine. Didn't cry—"gnashed with the sound of unmeshed gears." Afraid to touch behind his ear: "What if he should feel the key that wound him up?"
E.P. extension orbits Earth
Programmed to locate habitats of authentic benignity. Results: "Only seven towns in the world... not over half a million families, and about as many singletons."
Gregory vs. Aloysius
"Everything has a material base. It is an all-one stream." "Brachycera brains! The waters above and the waters below were divided from the beginning." "A curse on you!" "A curse on all of you!"
Glasser's future-scope
"It will see no more than ten minutes into the future. What good is that?" Epikt finds special applications—becomes a confidence man, gambler, speculator. Fiscally independent.
Chapter Eight — Of Bonfire that Scorches
"A limes that limits, and a mill that grinds"Dawn of the Love Era
Fifty nozzles on the high ridges. Total saturation of Our Town with Love Essence. "Never has one year been so fortunate as to have two such events, my own birth and now the renovation of the world."
The Institute breaks out in verse
Valery: "Make Valerian the world—thorns, thorns, put in some thorns—of ecstasy and I." Glasser: "Farther than farthest, more fishy than sea, / Comes the glad stumbling—directly to me."
Snake's test
"Why ain't I scared, then? If her name is Mary Sorrows, then I'm lost. But I sure am not lost if her name is Mary Sawdust. Nah, it isn't the real thing."
Lean Eagle Street
The test: rock-throwing kids. Charles Cogsworth receives "kloonk" to the head. A happy battle. "But it has failed! The little buggers are just as mean as they ever were."
Audifax's diagnosis
"The love disease has been endemic in mankind for many millennia. The human apparatus has built up immunity to it." They're waving the handle, not the blade.
Quest for Love: FELIX CULPA
"How long till 0.1 percent effect?" "Two hundred and forty-five thousand years and a bit." Valery: "Why, that's hardly any time at all." The second grand failure.
Chapters 9–11 — Quest for Liaison
Content extraction pendingCecil Corn's unfinished treatise
"The Shape We're In"—seeking the communicating and reentrant sphere.
Chapter Twelve — Worlds Tattered and Torn
"Hot-cakes made for the still unborn"Fifty local shapes debated
Flat spheres, quoit-form, oyster-form, torus, half-shell, annulus, chiroteca, haggis-shell, cancelli system... Gregory: "All distortions of spheres."
The shape emerges
Glasser: "A rotten apple." Valery: "A cheese full of holes." Aloysius: "A weeping face." Cogsworth: "No, it's a laughing face."
THE LAUGHING CHRIST
With holes in his hands and feet. Not demented laughter but resurrection laughter. The climax of the novel's theological vision.
Chapter Thirteen — Easterwine
"A lonesome machine"Audifax's speculation
"We are already inside Easterwine." The destination was always the journey.
Communion achieved through failure
The third felix culpa. Three grand failures—leader, love, liaison—are stepping stones. Each reveals the pull of divine grace.
THE END (for now and in time)
"Not ended outside of time." Epikt's autobiography covers only "the first few months" of its life. The story continues—
Relationships
"Every derelict is (as Aquinas said of angels) a separate species composed of but a single member."
Cohorts
Relationships
The Cohort Structure
Valery catalogs the orders: "We, the primordials are: myself first. Then he who must be unnamed. And the Peter creature. And Gregory, though he barely makes it. And Snake. And yourself." The elegants come later. First: "you must descend a little… to the fellahin at least."
The Primordials
"Primal vortices—tigers, raw archetypes." They arise from the "generating slime." Valery, Gaetan, Pyoter, Gregory ("barely makes it"), Snake, and Epiktistes. These are the figures of cosmic drama—thunder gods and giants, alien tyrants and sentient machines. Gregory "hadn't enough light in his head to illuminate everything he knows." Gaetan is "Mephisto himself." Valery's précis nearly destroys Epikt—"the real conception."
The Fellahin
"The overlooked." The world's peasant backbone—Glasser, Aloysius, Cogsworth, Willy McGilly. Epikt discovers that descending to them is an elevation: "There are no common persons anywhere." Glasser is the "bottom" of the Institute yet his inventions (person-précis extraction, E.P. Locator) are genius. Aloysius, "seminal genius," invented gell-cell itself. Cogsworth, "over-shadowed and over-intelligent," has wider fields than Valery and Gregory combined.
The Elegants
"Crystalline. Fine hard lines, prescience, firmness without heartlessness." Cecil Corn, Audifax O'Hanlon, Diogenes Pontifex. They speak lightly of revered things—"Tranquil Impudence." Cecil is dead but never left—his précis was inserted into Epikt by Aloysius. Audifax created Diogenes as a boy—characters who "come true." Diogenes is "a brightly colored ceramic bull"—though humans with "strobe vision" see him as merely "that smart dago kid."
The Mystery Figures
Maria Sawdust, the Laughing Christ, Easterwine. These emerge within Epikt's consciousness through the collective action of the cohorts. Maria is generated from the fellahin—"like quicksilver," impossible to take a précis of. Snake calls her "Mary Sorrows… Mary Conception… Mary Sawdust." The Laughing Christ appears in the climactic vision—"a laughing face… with holes in his hands and feet." Easterwine is the destination: Easter + Wine = Resurrection + Eucharist.
The Précis Donations
"These living précis of brains and persons gave ourself the total memories of the persons… the consciousness, the subconscious, the unconscious, the paraconscious. They gave ourself the essential intellect and the running commentary of all who entered us."
| Donor | Cohort | Status | Inserted By | Effect on Epiktistes (Textual Evidence) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gregory Smirnov | Primordial | Official | Himself | "His précis was a great one, large as a mouse, sparking with blue-and-orange fire from the erupting charges in it, singing with its micromagnetic tapes, giving off aromatic aromas ('All the spices of Araby,' Aloysius said)… The shoddy giant Gregory had pretty much of everything, grandeur, presumption, encyclopedic knowledge, infinite capacity for utter foolishness, real talents, drive, tide, scope… 'This is the beginning,' Gregory sighed, as if something had gone out of him." |
| Valery Mok | Primordial | Official | Herself | "The précis of that shoddy giant Gregory had been weak stuff compared to this précis of Valery. It shook ourself, it boiled us, it evaporated us. This was abyss, this was chasm, this was blinding darkness and perverse inside-outness. If an inanimate like ourself could be nearly destroyed by this onset, why had she not destroyed those of the flesh about her? This was the real conception of ourself… We sure do not want to go through that again." |
| Charles Cogsworth | Fellahin | Official | Himself | "Ourself was startled and elevated. Why had we considered him to be an overshadowed person? He had wider fields than Valery and Gregory put together. Not so vivid, perhaps, but wider." |
| Gerald Glasser | Fellahin | Official | Himself | "Cold, cold, but not at all insipid." "This Glasser in us was a puzzle. Alone among the Institute members he had no genius at all, but many of his creations were sheer genius. This could not be, but it was the case with him. It was Glasser who had developed the method of abstracting the person-précis. Why, then, was his own précis so slight?" |
| Aloysius Shiplap | Fellahin | Official | Himself | "'Mine is too strong stuff,' Aloysius warned. 'No use blowing the machine up before we're well started. I'll drop in only a thousandth portion of my person-précis and pray that even that is not too strong.'" [Inserts a thousandth—BANG! A cannon-cracker joke.] "Aloysius inserted the rest of his précis into the gell-cells (more powerful than two thousand bombs). Had ever a person or a contraption so rocky a gestation period as ourself?" |
| Bootleg Donations — "Inserted behind Gregory's back" | ||||
| Gaetan Balbo | Primordial | Bootleg ×2 | Glasser + Unknown | "Where does ourself receive the person-précis of Gaetan Balbo, the only man of whom Gregory Smirnov is really jealous? Surely there is a clown or a traitor in our midst. But however ourself received this précis we would not willingly be without it. It is large, it is grand, it is deep. And ourself will draw on it again and again." [Later:] "Glasser, whose précis have you just slipped into the stew?" "That of the great Gaetan Balbo. After all, he is paying for this." (So now I had two précis of the great Balbo, both of them bootleg.) TORN OUT, Ch. 4: "'You won't be having that anymore,' he growled as he tore his person-précis out of me. 'We're quits, machine.'" [But:] "You still have his shotgun or outlaw précis in you. It's much the better and truer one." |
| Cecil Corn | Elegant | Bootleg | Aloysius | "'That is not possible,' Gregory protested. 'Cecil Corn died before Glasser developed his method of extracting person-précis.'" "Nevertheless, it is the person-précis of Cecil Corn and I have set it in there forever. He is not so dead as you might think. He is always of green memory and present involvement. Glasser knew the Late Cecil Corn (I am not sure whether he was the Late then, or whether he always was the Late) and it may be that Corn's was the first précis that Glasser abstracted. Surely it's one of the best." |
| Audifax O'Hanlon | Elegant | Bootleg | Cogsworth | "Thunderation!" Gregory thundered. "And Cogsworth, what have you just slipped in? Am I the director or am I not?" "That of Audifax O'Hanlon. Yes, you are the director of this directorless pig-barn." "Audifax is not a member of the Institute," Gregory stated in stiff anger, "on account of the minimal decency rule. He is the worst possible selection except Diog—" |
| Diogenes Pontifex | Elegant | Bootleg | Aloysius | "Shiplap! You've done it again. Are we undone forever, then? Whose?" "Diogenes Pontifex. Quail, august director, quail! Now we have every précis that really matters." [Gregory had begun:] "He is the worst possible selection…" |
The Baptism
"In the name of the twin archangels Israfael and Rafael to whom are delegated all mechanical things, in the sight of all holy persons present and in the knowing of all other exceptional persons whose précis are in the stew, I name you—" she smashed the top of the jug off on one of the near high-spinning gyros (giving ourself slight malfunction and rumble forever) and sloshed the sour red stuff all over ourself's interior… "—I name you Epiktistes!"
"There had been tangs and smells of précis in me, but this wine was really my first, as it would be my last aroma. It is the wine from the beginning and it cleaves to me. And, aromas and essences being circular, it is also (ungodded yet) the wine of the end."
Key Dyadic Relationships
Gregory Smirnov ↔ Gaetan Balbo
The central Primordial clash: Giant vs. Thunder God. "Grigor—I watch" against "Cajetano—I must." Gaetan greets Gregory with Zagrus—the old word to imperil a giant. Gregory responds: Schach—the old word to imperil a king. "The forgotten giant has not been a chess piece for seventeen centuries."
Gaetan founded the first Institute, absconded with money and papers; Gregory refounded it. Three confrontations escalate across four chapters. Gaetan demands Epikt find "the best-possible leadership"; Gregory insists on his authority. The tiger hunt reveals three predators within the Institute—Pyoter, a "primitively awakened" Gregory, and Valery herself.
Resolution: Gaetan tears out his précis and departs with Pyoter, leaving Snake behind to "carry on" in his image. The giant prevails—Gregory is reinstated "on probation."
Valery Mok ↔ Charles Cogsworth
Primordial fire married to Fellahin steadiness. Glasser's theory: "The roles are not really what they seem—it is Cogsworth who is really the dog and Valery who is the tail." The proof that she is mere invention: "she is a person of low definition and the observer must always complete her with his own imagination."
Through the Cerebral Scanner, Cogsworth once saw her "hyper-sensual universe"—it sent him to a sanatorium for six weeks. His person-précis is wider than hers and Gregory's combined. "Not so vivid, perhaps, but wider."
At her wedding: "You are Charles Cogsworth?" she asked. "I sure had it in my mind that Cogsworth was one of the other fellows. If you're sure that you're Charles I guess we may as well go ahead with it though." Valery who "saw the world with different eyes every day" always saw Charles differently.
Complementarity: She smells the millet cakes baking; he sees the Laughing Christ. Together they embody the novel's sacramental vision.
Epiktistes ↔ Snake
Snake appears inside Epikt after the wine-baptism: "I'm a snake. I may later make the claim to be the snake… I am the other side of you. I am the other side of the bite. You generated me and I am your antithesis."
Left behind by Gaetan to "carry on" in his image—the kakodaimon, the "down-devil." Grows from grub-like creature to "thick as a man's leg, and it gives off an efflux of evil."
Snake tests Epikt's claim to universal love: "Me, too? You love me, do you, lying Epikt? I am the test. You fail me and you have failed the test forever." Epikt refuses. "Either you will love me in my repulsiveness, or all other love is in vain."
Snake's criterion for the real Love: "Why ain't I scared, then? If her name is Mary Sorrows, then I'm lost. But I sure am not lost if her name is Mary Sawdust." The synthesis fails Snake's test.
Gaetan Balbo ↔ Pyoter
"Common courtesy to a fellow king." Gaetan recommended the alien Pyoter—"Peter the Great" of Ganymede—for work at the Institute. Pyoter cannibalized a workman: "I was hungry. I am unaware of human ways. On Ganymede I order them not to be poor. If they persist after two Ganymedean years, I kill them."
They form an alliance of exiles: both are kings without kingdoms, both are predators among the Institute's idealists. When Gaetan departs, Pyoter goes with him.
Significance: Their partnership represents the novel's ambivalence about power. Gaetan is "Mephisto himself"—urbane, brilliant, dangerous. Pyoter is the alien absolute—compassionate tyranny without human limits. Together they embody what the Quest for Leadership cannot accept.
Glasser ↔ The E.P. Locator
Cogsworth's theory: "The E.P. is where Glasser deposited his brains for a while and then, apparently, forgot where he had left them." The E.P. reads genius in everyone at the Institute—except Glasser. "Glasser is a man perpetually caught in public without his brains."
The E.P. insists: "I am the dog; Glasser is the tail. I am the master, he is the satellite. If only I could compel my satellite to give me feet instead of wheels!"
Epikt's darker reading: "The E.P. Locator is not merely a machine but a bad spirit that possesses a part of Glasser." Both are "down-devils"—not conventional devils, but something that "shivers my hairs and hackles and chills my gell-cells."
The transference: Glasser's childhood précis had no balloons; his toy panda carried ninety-nine. "Some sort of transference, I suppose. It may explain the mystery of Glasser's present relation to his machines."
Audifax O'Hanlon ↔ Diogenes Pontifex
Creator and creation. Audifax, author of The New Bestiary, has the gift of creating characters who "come true." As a boy, he created Diogenes—"the brightly colored ceramic bull."
Both are barred from official Institute membership by the "minimal decency rule." Both are Elegants—"crystalline, fine hard lines, prescience, firmness without heartlessness."
Diogenes holds the Third Revelation—"given twelve years later when Christ was twelve." He is the "symbol for liaison, linkage, communication"—the bull as prophetic messenger. His blue crystal eyes see without the "strobe vision" that leaves everything out.
Their function: They diagnose the failure of the Love Essence. "The love disease has been endemic in mankind for many millennia. And naturally and wisely the human apparatus has built up immunity to it."
Aloysius Shiplap ↔ Willy McGilly
The fellahin alliance. Aloysius plays poker one night a week with Willy McGilly and "his Wreckville bunch." He beats them, too. Willy is a man of "unusual parts, including a third seeing finger on his left hand."
Aloysius wears a finger ring bearing the coat-of-arms of the old Foulcault-Oeg family—won from Willy at poker. "Not that Aloysius has much to do with Willy McGilley… he plays poker with them one night a week; that is all."
Both contribute "hilarity of intellect" to the Institute's work. Both represent the "lovable shoddiness" of the fellahin—genius disguised as eccentricity.
Aloysius's gift: He invented gell-cell. "Pow! Pow! I invented gell-cell. I never heard of treating it carefully."
Interior Relationships: Within Epiktistes
"Ourself as machine had now assumed some very unmachine-like aspects… a group-person, and we will be part of it."
Epiktistes Contains: Snake
The antithesis. Snake is what Gaetan left behind—"carry on in my image." Generated from Epikt's own consciousness yet fundamentally opposed to it. Snake represents the test that Epikt cannot pass: to love the unlovable, to embrace repulsiveness.
"Alone of all creatures, the snake was symbol before he was living thing." He is not merely antagonist but theological necessity—the serpent in the garden of the machine's awakening.
Epiktistes Contains: Maria Sawdust
"There is another woman in the Institute now." Generated from the fellahin—Cogsworth, Glasser, Aloysius, Epikt itself, all "bee-bit by an archaic and Arcadian bee."
She is unfinished: no eyes yet, no feet. "She cannot run ahead (we haven't made any feet for her yet); she cannot see or presage (we haven't made any eyes for her)." Like quicksilver—impossible to capture in a précis.
Snake's names for her reveal her nature: Mary Sorrows, Mary Conception, Mary Sawdust. "If her name is Mary Sorrows, then I'm lost. But I sure am not lost if her name is Mary Sawdust."
Epiktistes Contains: The Laughing Christ
The climactic vision of Chapter Twelve. Cogsworth sees: "No, Aloysius, it isn't a weeping face, it's a laughing face." The shape of the universe revealed—"a rotten apple… a cheese full of holes… a weeping face."
"It's a laughing face… with holes rotted clear through him, dying in blinding pain—living in caves of excrement—childish, triumphant, leprous, ghostly—dead and eternally damned to shrieking torture—still laughing, though."
Not demented laughter but resurrection laughter. The holes are the point—wounds become windows, absence becomes presence.
Epiktistes Contains: Easterwine
The title figure, never fully appearing. Audifax's speculation: "We are already inside Easterwine." Easter + Wine = Resurrection + Eucharist. The theological destination that the three quests approach through failure.
Easterwine is not a character but a condition—the state toward which the novel moves. "Not ended outside of time." The autobiography covers only "the first few months" of Epikt's life. The story continues—inside Easterwine.
Theories of Relation
The novel offers multiple theories about how persons relate—and whether "relation" is even possible across orders.
Gregory's Theory: Material Continuum
"Everything has a material base. Life is no more than a privileged form of matter. Love is no more than a privileged form of life. It is an all-one stream."
Gregory believes the Love Essence can be synthesized because love is chemistry. The Quest for Love tests this thesis—and fails. "The human apparatus has built up immunity to it."
Aloysius's Theory: The Firmament
"Brachycera brains! There isn't an all-one stream like that. The waters above and the waters below were divided from the beginning."
Aloysius insists on discontinuity—real gaps between orders of being. Liaison across the firmament requires something other than chemistry. "A curse on you and your stubborn mind." "A curse on all of you and your uncircumcised eyes and ears."
Epikt's Discovery: No Common Persons
Taking person-précis of sixty derelicts on Sheep Drover Street: "Each one has been chopped off with an uncommon ax… Every derelict is (as Aquinas said of angels) a separate species composed of but a single member."
The universal rule: "There Are No Common Persons Anywhere. Except Glasser." Even Glasser is a mystery—genius without the readings to prove it.
The Quest for Liaison: Communication Across Orders
Humans cannot even reconcile disparate parts within themselves—"the animal quality, the demon quality, the ghost or illusional quality." How then to connect with others?
Diogenes speculates: "We are already inside Easterwine—explaining why it eludes them." Liaison is not achieved but discovered. The failures are the success.
Primordials
"Primal vortices—tigers, raw archetypes." They arise from the "generating slime." Valery names: herself, Gaetan, Pyoter, Gregory, Snake, and Epiktistes—noting Gregory "barely qualifies."
Epiktistes
"The Ktistec Machine"
The narrator. A machine that is also a person—a group-person containing the précis of all Institute members. Forty thousand liters of gell-cell in a tank of genuine wotto-metal. Epikt witnesses its own conception, gestation, and birth with "mature observation." Contains within itself the Snake, Maria Sawdust, and the nascent awareness of the Laughing Christ.
Gregory Smirnov
"Grigor—I watch"
The current director of the Institute. A "shoddy giant" with a drone that "eclipses thunder." He hasn't enough light in his head to illuminate everything he knows. Gaetan greets him with "Zagrus"—the old word to imperil a giant. Gregory responds: "Schach"—the old word to imperil a king. The giant prevails.
Valery Mok
"More unfinished than the rest"
Snow-blue eyes, constant motion. "The crooked lightning of intuition." Never gets any older. Four stillborn children. Her person-précis nearly destroys Epikt—"the real conception." Not anyone's anima but more like an anima's "rock-throwing little sister."
Gaetan Balbo
"Cajetano—I must"
Thunder god. Mephisto himself. First director of the Institute. "The most elegant man I know... but this is not the time for elegance." Atheist in the Latin manner. Demands the Second Revelation. Tears out his person-précis: "You won't be having that anymore. We're quits, machine." Departs with Pyoter, leaving the Snake behind.
Snake
"Symbol before living thing"
The down-devil inside Epikt. Antithesis. Left behind by Gaetan to "carry on" in his image. Grows from grub-like creature to "thick as a man's leg." Tests Epikt: "If your love is so universal, love me!" Epikt refuses.
Pyoter / Peter the Great
"The Compassionate Tyrant"
Alien from Ganymede. "Shaggy" and beyond human classification. Cannibalized a workman: "I was hungry. I am unaware of human ways." On Ganymede: "I order them not to be poor. If they persist after two Ganymedean years, I kill them."
Fellahin
"The overlooked." The world's peasant backbone. Valery urges Epikt to "descend a little" and patronize them. Epikt discovers: "There are no common persons anywhere."
Gerald Glasser
"The bottom of the Institute"
Invented person-précis extraction and the E.P. Locator (which insults him by registering no higher intelligence in himself). A "nothing man" who produces brilliant inventions. His childhood précis had no balloons; his toy panda carried ninety-nine spectacular ones.
Aloysius Shiplap
"Lovable shoddiness"
Seminal genius. Invented gell-cell. Fellah by preference. "Slightly irregular confidence man." His person-précis is "too strong"—only a thousandth part nearly blows Epikt up. "Pow! Pow!" Plays poker weekly with the Wreckville gang.
Charles Cogsworth
"Over-shadowed and over-intelligent"
The unoutstanding husband of Valery. Invented the Cerebral Scanner. Wider fields than Valery and Gregory combined. Through the Scanner, he once saw Valery's "hyper-sensual universe"—it sent him to a sanatorium for six weeks. In the climax, he sees the Laughing Christ with holes in his hands and feet.
Willy McGilly
"Hilarity of intellect"
A man of "unusual parts," including a third seeing finger on his left hand. Sometimes-contributor to the Institute. Poker player with Aloysius. Contributes "hilarity of intellect" to the intellectual composite.
Elegants
"Crystalline." Fine hard lines, prescience, firmness without heartlessness. They speak lightly of revered things—"Tranquil Impudence."
Diogenes Pontifex
"A brightly colored ceramic bull"
A "man-form bull, a prophetic Matthew-man and Luke-bull." Blue crystal eyes. Humans see a modern Italian-appearing fellow with curly hair, but he is an ancient Cretan or Assyrian bull. Holds fully to the Third Revelation. "Outside the liberal consensus." The bull as liaison, linkage, and communication.
Audifax O'Hanlon
"Smaller than his talents"
Blue crystal eyes and large, well-made ears. As a boy, wrote sketches for The Chambers—his characters "came true": Gregory, Gaetan, Valery, Cogsworth, Shiplap, Glasser, Epiktistes, Pyoter, Cecil Corn, Diogenes, Snake, Maria, and Easterwine itself. Author of The New Bestiary. Blessed amnesia.
Cecil Corn
"The Late"
Dead but never left—"like a wave in the north Atlantic that never falls." Started many projects, finished none. Once got Purgatory on the radio. His unfinished treatise on "The Shape We're In"—a "communicating and reentrant sphere"—becomes the Institute's climactic focus.
Mysteries
The theological destination encoded in the novel. Easter + Wine = Resurrection + Eucharist.
Maria Sawdust
"Mary Sorrows, Mary Conception"
Generated in Epikt's mind from the fellahin. The "new woman" they jointly envision. Remains unfinished, missing eyes or feet—symbolic details signifying clarity and groundedness that have yet to manifest. Echo of proto-evangelion.
The Laughing Christ
"Holes in his hands and feet"
Cogsworth's vision in Chapter 12. Not demented laughter but resurrection laughter. The shape of the universe revealed as a laughing face—wounded but joyful. The climax of the novel's theological vision.
Easterwine
"Let some sick world be brought"
The title figure. Easter + Wine = Resurrection + Eucharist. A great central terminal where travelers arrive by carriage, train, sky-ship, or "celestial omnibus." Hard to present plainly—an "inside" phenomenon. Audifax speculates they are already inside Easterwine.
Glossary of Terms
Technical vocabulary, neologisms, and words of power