Character guide

Asir

major

Also known as Asir of Franic

Asir of Franic survives execution only to be scarred as an outcast and banished from the plains, his hands still leaking through bandages as he staggers to Welkir's door. What he carries is worse than the wound: thief's wisdom that the air is boiling away into the sky, and that the vaults hold the key to rekindling the Blaze of the Winds. The council will not hear him, the vaults are guarded by a sleeper called Big Joe, and dawn will find him in the hills — yet he keeps talking, because the alternative is a world that strangles its own children.

John Smith XVI

major

Also known as John XVI, John, The seventh John Smith, Smith, John Smith, Smith XVI

John Smith XVI sits down to a historic broadcast with Ivan Ivanovitch, the masked chieftain of the Asian League, and finds his careful disarmament preamble met with a gutteral 'Why?' and an accusation of talking Achesonian. The Red knows things he shouldn't — that Smith cannot speak the Russo-Asian dialect, that his prepared text is a shield rather than an offer. The seventh man to carry his name, he is learning that a title inherited sixteen times over buys no leverage in a conversation where the other side has already stopped pretending.

Inspector Norris

major

Also known as Norris, Inspector, Mister Norris, Mrs. Norris

Inspector Norris drives his district with a radiophone that never brings Anne's voice, chasing a memo from Chief Franklin: find and test every Bermuda-K-99 born in July 2234, because Delmont passed one nonstandard unit and may have passed more. He has eleven empty cages and forty-nine occupied by the previous inspector's unclaimed inventory awaiting destruction. A class-C man allowed no children of his own, he knows exactly what it means to be measured against a normalcy test — and the deadline is seven days.

Big Hogey Parker

major

Also known as Hogey, Big Hogey, li'l Hogey, little Hogey

Big Hogey Parker is dropped off on a barren stretch of Great Plains highway, drunk, legs failing him, duffle bag lost twice, insisting he's okay to a bus driver who has two daughters and a job he should quit. He used to be a tumbler; now he has to be a hoofer, on account of li'l Hogey, and Marie is going to be sore that he's a week late. Nobody knows he's coming — it's a surprise — and the sun is going down forge-red over dust that hangs in the air like yellow smoke.

Mitch Laskell

major

Also known as Mitch, Laskell

Mitch Laskell has always gotten along in the Navy — the undersea equivalent of a fighter pilot, a man who grinned when he streaked in for a kill — and he has never needed a philosophy to do it. Then a message crackles through the command-set and something in him refuses, and he sits on the floor of a tiny compartment with the microphone dangling, trying to explain to himself why quitting feels less like cowardice than going back. He suspects Garson, he suspects himself, and he knows the word coward will make him wince either way.

Spaceman Old Donegal

major

Also known as a Spaceman Old Donegal, Old Donegal, Donegal

Old Donegal lies paralyzed in his own rented flat, listening to the Keith mansion's servants set up the terrace for late afternoon guests, while his wife Martha squeezes a hand he can barely feel and begs him to let her call the priest. He knows the operations failed, knows the cancer is climbing his spine toward his brain, and has decided to let them keep the secret they think they're keeping from him — because Martha could bear his death, but not his calm. So he jokes about the moon-run at sixty-three, and mutters requiescat over his own hand, and calls himself a maudlin ass for it.

Martha

supporting

Martha is the woman who tends Donny through his final illness, her brittle smiles and swallowed grief the counterweight to his dry, deflecting humor. She cannot bear the thought that he might accept death gracefully, since that would feel like being deliberately abandoned, so he performs complaint and false hope to comfort her. Her stubborn insistence on the priest, and his stubborn refusal, becomes the quiet battleground of the story's central tenderness.

the man

supporting

Also known as The man

Asir stole the holy phrases of his masters, not just their wealth, and for that the village suspends him by his wrists while a squat executioner plays mumblety-peg with the bleeding-blade. Cocky even in agony, he clings to the hope that Mara went to plead with the Chief Commoner, though he knows she is about as trustworthy as a wild hüffen. His slow dying and the question of whether anyone will speak for him drive the story's opening movement.

the girl

supporting

Also known as Letha—you, the girl

She is the owner whose grief over a failing K-48 series neutroid has become a fantasy Doctor Georges cannot bring himself to shatter. Unable to pay for treatment no hospital would give a machine, she becomes the reason Georges asks Norris for an unclaimed animal and a faked serial number. Her unseen presence haunts the story's central moral pressure, the question of what we owe the things we love.

Anne

supporting

Anne is the quiet domestic anchor of the neutroid roundup, the woman who answers the door and notices the welts on her husband's cheek before he will explain them. Her flat, joyless tone and her unreturned smile suggest a marriage worn thin by the work Norris does. She matters because her weariness measures the cost of the hunt long before the hunt itself is finished.

the old man

supporting

He is a dying man who has decided that the dead must humor the mourners, so he complains about the bed and proposes returning to the moon-run at sixty-three to spare Martha the sight of him accepting death calmly. His hands no longer obey him, his thoughts blur, and he hears the Keiths' servants setting up a party next door with detached, almost comic clarity. His performance of stubborn vitality is the story's whole emotional engine.

Chief Franklin

supporting

Also known as Franklin, Chief, Chief Agent Franklin

Franklin is a man who kept promising his wife one more tour would be the last, and who signed on for every bonus run from station to moon-base to make good on it. Now he stands at a fence post near the Hauptman farmhouse, shaking and unable to face the door, dreading Marie's question about the money. His collapse on the road home is the story's early pivot, the moment the promise breaks before the reunion even begins.

Chief Miler

supporting

Also known as Chief, Miler

A chief whose authority is tested by the desperate logistics of a fleet returning home, weighing duty to his men against the cost of touching Earth again.

Big Joe

supporting

A burly farmer with a florid face and an old gasoline car, who picks up a staggering stranger on a dusty road and delivers him toward Marie Hauptman's place.

Evon

supporting

Also known as a confused Evon

A figure remembered in fragments of confusion, tied to the fleet's tangled history and the uneasy choices that brought its people back to Earth.

Peony

supporting

A woman whose name surfaces amid the fleet's reckonings with home, carrying the weight of what was left behind and what waits below.

the priest

minor

Also known as The priest

A religious figure appearing in the story.

Ivan IX

minor

Also known as Ivan Ivanovitch IX, the third Ivan, Ivan Ivanovitch, Ivan

A royal or numbered character, possibly a ruler.

Mara

minor

A named female character with limited presence.

Donny

minor

Also known as Donny - boy

A young male character with a narrative role.

Tokra

minor

A character with a few mentions.

Unknown

supporting

An unnamed presence haunting the fleet's margins, glimpsed in ritual and rumor as the baron's crew debates whether to land on the world that birthed them.

Father Paulson

minor

Also known as Paulson, Father

A priest or father figure with a narrative role.

Analyst Meikl

minor

Also known as Meikl, Analyst

An analyst character with a role in the plot.

Baltun Meikl

minor

Also known as Meikl

A character possibly related to Analyst Meikl.

O'Reilley

minor

A named character with multiple proper mentions.

Ven Klaeden

minor

Also known as ven Klaeden

A character with a noble or military title.

Honey

minor

Also known as Nora

A character named Honey, possibly a female role.

Letha

minor

A named female character, possibly the girl.

Doctor Georges

minor

A doctor character with a role in the story.

Ken

minor

A named character with limited mentions.

Sheriff Yates

minor

Also known as Yates

A sheriff character with a minor role.

Baron ven Klaeden

minor

Also known as Baron, Ernstli Baron ven Klaeden, ven Klaeden

A baron with a noble title, possibly related to Ven Klaeden.

Welkir

minor

A named character with a minor role.

Oley

minor

A character with a few proper mentions.

Franklin Norris

minor

A character possibly combining Chief Franklin and Norris.

Unit Sugar William Niner Zero

minor

Also known as Sugar William Niner Zero, William Niner Zero

A military unit or code-named character.

The Asian

minor

A character identified by ethnicity, with a minor role.

Terry

minor

A named character with many proper mentions.

the Peoplesfriend

minor

Also known as Peoplesfriend, The Peoplesfriend

A character or title referring to a friend of the people.

Slubil

minor

A named character with a minor role.

Delmont

minor

A named character with only proper mentions.

Secretary Garson

minor

Also known as Garson

A secretary character with a minor role.

Marrita

minor

A named female character with limited presence.

Daddy

minor

Also known as Daddy - O

A paternal figure or nickname.

the Keiths

minor

Also known as The Keiths, the Ronald Keiths

A family or group named Keith.

Edward

minor

A named character with a minor role.

Mrs. Sarah Glubbes

minor

Also known as a Mrs. Sarah Glubbes, Mrs. Glubbes

A minor female character.

the Red

minor

Also known as The Red

A character or entity referred to as Red.

Marie Hauptman

minor

Also known as Marie

A named female character.

Marie Parker

minor

Also known as Marie

A character possibly related to Big Hogey Parker.

Father Paul

minor

Also known as Father

A priest or father figure.

Mother

minor

A maternal figure.

Anne

minor

A separate Anne character with fewer mentions.

Phobos

minor

A character or entity named Phobos.

Six

minor

Also known as Number Six

A numbered character.

Captain Barkley

minor

Also known as Barkley

A captain with a minor role.

Hooky

minor

A named character with a minor role.

Mama

minor

A maternal figure.

Bluff

minor

A character with a minor narrative role.

Caid

minor

A named character with few mentions.

Mither

minor

A named character with a minor role.

James Duncan

minor

A named character with very few mentions.

Rabble

minor

A character or group referred to as Rabble.

Andrei Sorkin

minor

A named character with minimal presence.