Dalgetty and his captors fly to the Islas de Revillagigedo in a large triphibian airboat. He and a guard are in a luxurious rear cabin with reclining seats, an inlaid table and a broad window showing a staircase.
Dalgetty remembers the old house where he grew up. Although I liked the description of the house, I had overlooked its setting:
"It had lain on broad wooded grounds in the fair hills of Maine, with a little river running down to a bay winged with sailboats. There had been neighbors - quiet-spoken folk..." (p. 118)
His captors want to know:
What are the ultimate aims of the Psychotechnic Institute?
What are its means to its ends?
How far along is it?
What has it learned but not published?
How much does it know about the movement that opposes it and that has now kidnapped two of its members?
That movement knows that a fully developed psychotechnics would change society and possibly humanity and also that unpublished information is being reserved for some unstated purpose. The movement, about which the reader knows nothing as yet, wants the information for its own purposes. Another manifestation of the protean enemy?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't think I had ever consciously been aware of the Revillagigedo Islands before reading this blog piece of yours. I looked them up and in some ways they remind me of the Galapagos Islands, which we see in "The Year of the Ransom." I also thought of Herman Melville's stories set in those islands.
Ad astra! Sean
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