Gradisil (GollanczF.)
Page 61
‘I’m sorry,’ says Paul. That’s wat he says instead of goodbye; for this is the moment that the inner door is pulled shut by an implacably determined Sol, and with barely a shudder (for this Central Hall of the Uplands is so large a structure) the air and the organic matter inside the sealed space is ejected into the vacuum which is the fields and hills and valleys of the Uplands itself.
chronology
Acknowledgments
To thank: Simon Spanton; James Lovegrove; Roger Levy; Rachel Roberts; Justina Robson; Gillian Redfearn; Ariel; Keith Brooke; Avraam Kawa; Charles Kinbote; Steve Calcutt; Brian Green; Julie Green; Sophie and Brian Coughlan. Tony Atkins read a portion of this manuscript and made very helpful comments. The observations on the erroneous nature of the saw ‘as the twig is bent so the tree grows’ in Part II is adapted, although not quoted, from Les Murray’s 1990 poem ‘Experiential’. I am greatly indebted to Wikipedia, in which invaluable resource I consulted various articles on the magnetosphere, electromagnetism and Maxwell’s equations. I have also made use of Ira H. Abbott and Albert E. Von Doenhoff’s Theory of Wing Sections, Including a Summary of Airfoil Data (Dover Publications 1959).
1 Three uplanders: Zhenia Allen had died in 2127. Farmer Pictus had sold all rights in his percentage of the idea to Hope in 2129, after finally growiŋ tired of the long period of frustration at the slow pace of project development; he went on to copyright certain ideas to do with undersea habitation. John Church had vanished in 2130 - a not uncharacteristic action for him, but one which left his percentage of the rights in the idea in legal limbo. By 2131, where we now are, Hope was the only main partner left from the original 4. Meanwhile prolonged financial drought had reduced the MM permanent staff to only 3 people, and only one full-timer.