Character guide

Martel III

major

Also known as Scanner Martel, Martel Scanner, IV Martel

Martel is a Scanner of the Instrumentality, a man cut apart for the Up-and-Out and fitted with a chestbox that lets him rule his own terror — until he doesn't. He comes to Adam Stone under a false name, invoking his wife Luci, and asks to be held at Wirepoint while he tells the truth about the worlds' life and death. His divided body, half haberman, half husband, is the wound the story keeps pressing on.

Underhill

major

Also known as The Deal Underhill

Underhill is one of the four Partners aboard the Fighting Room, a low, brutish type whose telepathy never refined his character — only made him serviceable. His tenderness with the Lady May, sealed into her projectile with padded claws, sits oddly against his scarred ears and dull mind. Their wordless affection across species is the story's warmest thing, and the thing most likely to be spent.

Adam Stone

major

Also known as Stone, Dimly behind Stone

Adam Stone looks like a jolly guide from the Pleasure Gallery, not a man who stood at the edge of the Up-and-Out without haberman protection. He keeps himself lawfully armed, greets a self-declared Scanner with calm and a question — whose life and death? — and answers cryptically that he has loaded the ships with life. His composure under a stranger's confession is the hinge the early plot turns on.

Luci

supporting

Luci is the domestic warmth Martel limps home to, feeding him old-book smells and music wires while he tries to relearn being a body. Her gaiety is a little forced, and she knows more than she says about what he has become. When the lamb-chop scent trips every alarm in his chestbox, her innocent dinner game becomes the first test of whether a Scanner can survive being human.

Vomact

supporting

Also known as Finally Vomact, the Lady Vomact, the Vomact kith

Vomact belongs to the layered world of Scanner captains, kith, and titled houses that frame the Fighting Room's mission. The name carries the weight of lineage and authority — the kind of standing that decides who commands a ship and who is merely sent. Even at the edges of the action, the Vomact thread reminds the reader that this war is fought inside an old, ceremonious society.

Father Moontree

supporting

Also known as The Shuffle Father Moontree

Father Moontree is the ritual and command presence aboard the Fighting Room, phoning the captain to clear for planoform and intoning the order to move. His telepathic crew catches his meaning long before his heavy human speech arrives, so his voice becomes a measure of how fast the real fight is. He is the calm, ceremonial center of a crew whose cats and children think faster than he can talk.

Parizianski

supporting

Also known as Scanner Parizianski, Parizianski Scanner

Parizianski belongs to the silent brotherhood of Scanners, men whose brains are cut from sense and speech and who must talk with their fingers or shout like a broken phone. He is warmth trapped in a face he cannot govern, and when Vomact summons them all to a Top Emergency, he is the one who keeps asking why — why call cranched men, why drag them from the Up-and-Out. His blunt, arm-waving bewilderment gives the gathering its first human crack, making the reader feel the cost of what these men have traded away.

Lady May

supporting

Also known as The Lady May

Lady May is Underhill's Partner in the Fighting Room, a cat whose mind brushes his with images of a golden-faced son and soft downy fur even as she scans space for enemies. She perceives faster than he can, and when the little girl named West finds something immense and greedy in the dark, it is Lady May who is already in line, already firing. Her tenderness and her ferocity are the same instinct, and that doubleness is what makes the early battle scenes feel both loving and lethal.

Chang

supporting

Chang is the one Scanner in or between the Earths who can pass for a Man, a trick of practiced voice and controlled face that his father insisted on. He cannot feel or taste or hear any more than the others, yet he talks anyway, because it lifts the people near him — and because Luci, who lost Martel to the cranched emergency, deserves a voice that sounds alive. His careful performance of humanity is the quiet counter-argument to everything the Scanners have surrendered, and it makes him the story's most unsettling kind of hope.

Woodley

minor

Also known as the glum Woodley

A Scanner with a gloomy disposition.

Captain Wow

minor

A minor character with a distinctive name.

Henry Haberman

minor

Also known as Haberman, the Haberman, the Habermans

A character referenced in the Scanner world.

Miss West

minor

Also known as West

A female character with limited presence.

Jack Bearden

minor

Also known as Bearden, the astonished Bearden

A character who reacts with surprise to events.

Scanner Smith

minor

Also known as Smith

A Scanner with a common surname.

Old Henderson

minor

Also known as Henderson

An older character mentioned in the narrative.

Ariel

minor

Also known as the Ariel

A named entity, possibly a ship or character.

Dogwood

minor

A minor character or reference.