Glossary for DESCENDING ROAD

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C60: a specific type of chemical buckyball: a near-spherical structure consisting of 60 linked carbon atoms defining the surface of the sphere geodesically.

Cab Driver: American driver of taxi in Shanghai area

cableport: an interface connector implanted in a human being’s skin, for linking external communication equipment directly into processors translating between external signals and internal neuronal signals in the human’s nervous system.

Caladrina: the proprietor of a very-popular restaurant and club at Aswar Tyrae crossing.

Caldron: the information net spanning all cities and areas occupied by people. In its access-limited hierarchies is stored the most-actively-used range of codified human knowledge, representing about two percent of the total contents of the Archives.

Calendar Notes: The major calendars of Tarnus and their cultural and social relationships

calendars: calendar, calendars: Tarnus societies use two primary calendars: the administrative calendar, usually called the City Calendar; and the Moon calendar, or Calendar of Lulith. A third calendar, the Visitor Calendar, is occasionally used in certain coll ceremonies.

callbox: a communicator installed in a starship to provide a physical (not wireless or electrical) link between different people aboard the ship.

callisharn: an indigenous plant (i.e., not imported by the Colonists) growing in the narrow tropical region of the planet. Every three or four years, these bushlike trees grow a forty-foot trunk, at the top of which their flowers and seed pods spring out in a spiky mass about five feet across. The seeds are food for the orneys, which deposit the seed cores in their droppings across the tropic zone during their stay there in the cold season.

candyjack: a confection containing layers of sweet ionized carbohydrates that act as a low-powered electrical battery, causing a pulsating flow of energy into the taste receptors. Highly popular among adults when eaten along with intoxicants.

canizard: canizard, canizards: a hand-size lizard, genetically modified to sing like a bird. Ornamental in appearance, indolent in behavior except when singing. Easily tamed and kept, as long as they are kept well fed on a variety of city beetles.

cannibalize: cannibalization, cannibalize, cannibalized: to strip parts and assemblies from a system or machine and reclaim them for another. The starship builders used cannibalization to reuse the ship’s wall panels. struts, hatches, and many other parts to construct the landers needed to ferry the ship’s passengers down to their destination planets.

carapiece: carapiece, carapieces: a hardshell-like backpack. When worn, a carapiece make the wearer appear hunchbacked or turtle-armored. A carapiece provides considerable protection in the wearer’s rear.

carbox: a cleansing agent used to purify hydroponic fluids used in city food farms.

Carchesme: Arlen‘s primary materials engineer and physicist.

cardioversion: the process of restoring an acceptable heart rhythm to an individual whose heart has stopped or gone into a nonfunctional state.

cardioverter: a device for performing cardioversion.

caressatine: a form of music using a mix of transformed natural sounds and rhythms and synthesized, very soft, lyrical harmonies. Often used in therapeutic and soothing settings, and for helping induce trance and sleep states.

Carrie: Annakouri, Carrie, Carrie Annakouri: Carrie Annakouri, one of the passengers serving on the arrival crew of the starship Tompuso.

cartcase: cartcase, cartcases: a waist-fitted storage box for beamer cartridges, carried by corpos, militia and bluecops.

cartfeed: the cartridge feeder on a beam weapon.

catsuit: catsuit, catsuits: tight-fitting clothing much like a skinsuit but much tougher, to the point of protecting the wearer from all but the most determined knife-thrusts. A lighter form of toughcloth.

ceilidh: a social gathering based in Scottish and Irish tradition, often featuring music, dance, poetry recital, storytelling, and special ceremonies marking important events.

cellstock: a bath of transformative ribosomes, enzymes, generalized cell components, and a variety of nutrients used in reconstructive therapy for a living person’s body immersed in the bath. Commonly used in locations where damage and injury are frequent, such as the deep-space starship-assembly sites.

cellstone: a form of synthetically-structured stone used in building walls, both surface and underground. Characterized by hollow polyhedral cells separated by thick facets of near-crystalline stone formed from stonefluid. Surface ordinarily regularly-patterned and rough. About half the density of solid brick or ash block.

Centro: for the rebels, the code name for a primary communications and command nexus during the fight for the South Power Complex.

cerametal: an alloy of ceramic and metal used in the barrels of beam guns to radiate away heat generated when the weapon is fired repeatedly.

Chan: a minor divinity often invoked by members of Kai Ren Hau coll.

Chandra: Chandra, Chandra Chatham, Chatham: Chandra Chatham, starship officer and partner with Barbara Arnell.

Chang: code name.

Chanie: Chanie, Chanie Okamo, Okamo: Chanie Okamo, assistant to Gene Hackshaw.

Chanzar: Andrew‘s second oldest brother, Wranmar Luce‘s second son.

chatbird: birds or synthetic birdlike creatures used for communication between entities in the Archives and people in the City. Some believe that the Archive entities use them as a kind of machina ex deo, projecting shifts in the City‘s existence.

chch: a word in Marra‘s extremely-limited anjive vocabulary.

chem: chem, chems: a City term for recreational pharmaceuticals.

chemtorch: chemtorch, chemtorches: wandlike chemical light sources, ignited into cold (usually green) light by snapping off the tip or rapping the butt end on a hard surface. A good chemtorch gives light enough to recognize faces twenty feet away, and will last at least two hours. Most chemtorches can be temporarily deactivated and then restarted.

chemtube: chemtube, chemtubes: a plast or glass conduit used in a barhole for carrying chems from the mixers to the customers.

Chen: Dr. Chen, cryosleep specialist physician, working to develop the cold sleep technologies needed to support the starship migrations.

chender: one of the sweetest and most tart fruits grown on surface farms. Especially valued in cities due to its inability to grow in hydroponic conditions. Flavor similar to a mixture of apple and orange, with a tang of allspice. The fruit, the size of a round fist and brown when picked, dries well and makes good preserves.

childcarer: andro equivalent of an au pair girl.

Children: usually refers to the streetchildren on the City, who live in clans in the lower reaches.

chillberry: the hard outer shell of a small indigenous Tarnus plant found on dry hillsides north and west of the City, and imported for use in foods and drinks. It is ground to powder and mixed with ethanol to produce a very sharp wintergreen-like flavor, having strong overtones of thymol with a trace of nutmeg.

Chim: administrative assignment officer of the regional militia command in which Linas served.

chioim: an andro name for a color in the five-octave andro color spectrum. chioim is in the human range (375-750 nm), and its name refers to the human color blue-green. In relation to neighboring colors in a musical scale with red at A, this would be E. From tabular data: chioim is the name of a color in the spectrum visible to andros. chioim is in the Human-Visible (375-750 nm). In the five ‘octaves’ of the andro color spectrum, chioim equates to a musical E, and is in the same place in the octave as Blue-Green. More information is available in the reference table titled ANDRO COLOR NAMES. From tabular data for “chioim": chioim is the name of a color in the spectrum visible to andros. chioim is in the Human-Visible (375-750 nm). In the five ‘octaves’ of the andro color spectrum, chioim equates to a musical E, and is in the same place in the octave as Blue-Green. More information is available in the reference table titled ANDRO COLOR NAMES.

chisernari: short, bent lycopods growing in low groves in the mountains in the west of the Upper Continent, Muathen. They are green-leaved and brown-streaked, their trunks tough and wound together against mountain winds. They are home to the tiny riaviti birds.

chlor: a powerful cleanser designed to remove all traces of genesign.

CIB: Cybernetic Investigations Bureau, the vertically-aligned arm of the regional and city governments responsible for controlling use of andros and genetic engineering, as provided in the Gene Laws. Gullinder‘s Hounds enforce all restriction of the use of gene enhancements on andros.

CIB team: the CIB teams are charged with investigating and resolving violations of Gene Law in the Fourth Region.

CIBer: a member of the CIB. Term pronounced “cyber”.

cicadal: an indigenous insectlike creature much like our cicada, but larger, and viviparous.

Cinchar Dikio: a leader of an Incarnastar village, where Bonnin and Ramoya live.

cinnaroot: a confection made from the dried root of a City-grown plant, tasting much like cinnamon and pepper.

circ: short for ‘circulation’.

citroids: citro, citroids: citrus-fruit derivatives bred without skins, having permeable membranes to leak their sweet contents into drinks and foods when in contact with water. Collectively referred to as citro.

City: the largest of all the underground cities on the planet. It sits in a highly-stable and very large geological formation of rock near the middle of the Upper Continent, reaching twenty to thirty miles laterally and at least a mile and a half below the surface. Its vastness amazed its discoverers. They named it Gran Dar, but the name has been generally forgotten in favor of the term ‘The City'.

City Calendar: The City calendar has uniform months of 32 days each, with an eight-day week used for business activity. The City calendar also has three nested cycles of years used to make adjustments to maintain seasonal consistency. The shortest (first, or inner) cycle is nine years, leaving over only about 0.06 of one day; the intermediate (second, or middle) cycle is 180 years long, leaving over only about 0.002 of one day; the longest (third, or outer) cycle is 4500 years long, leaving over only a fraction of a day that registers in the seventh decimal place.; While accurate, the calendar carries complications with the intersection of the corrective addition and subtraction of days for the cycles. One day is removed every 9 years for the first cycle. One day is removed about every 16 years for the second cycle. And one day is added every 500 years for the third cycle. The days are adjusted successively in successive months marked independently in each cycle, so that in a year in which all three cycles require adjustment of a day, three months scattered throughout the year may be of lengths different from the usual 32 days (two of 31, and one of 33, in such a case). No adjustment of more than one day is ever made. If the first and second cycles require removal of a day in the same month, the removal for the second cycle is advanced one month. If all three cycles require adjustment in the same month, or if the first or second cycle requires a day’s removal in the same month as the third cycle requires a day’s addition, the adjustments cancel.; The City calendar uses number designations for the days and months. For the eight-day week, names are used; in CLang, they are (starting from the Rest Day): Dibarr, Juadi, Kiudi-a, Dimani, Ididai, Diusin, Usoudi, and Arija-ka.; See also Moon Calendar, and for a more complete rendering, see Calendar Notes.

City Diagrams: Some illustrations of features of the City.

City Guide: a narrator takes the researcher on a tour through the features and structure of the City.

City News Office: City News Office, CNO, Worst Liars: the City Government sensi feed. From tabular data: City News Office is the sensi center of Gran Dar, considered the second largest supplier. Most of the sensi sources are described briefly in the reference table titled SENSI SUPPLIERS. Ordinary people refer to City News Office in private conversation as the Worst Liars. From tabular data for “City News Office": City News Office is the sensi center of Gran Dar, considered the second largest supplier. Most of the sensi sources are described briefly in the reference table titled SENSI SUPPLIERS. Ordinary people refer to City News Office in private conversation as the Worst Liars.

CityGov: a short name for City Government.

CLang: the most widely used language on Tarnus. See ComLang

Clara: passenger on starship Tompuso.

claustrofunk: the odor of the air in cramped quarters aboard a spacecraft. No matter how carefully filtered and deodorized, no matter how large the volume enclosed, no matter how fanatical the personal hygiene standards enforced, the air in any spacefaring vessel seems to acquire and retain a fulsomely fetid character all its own. The starship Tompuso is no exception.

cleaner: cleaner, cleaners: a worker responsible for removing debris from City streets, particularly organic debris, especially particularly human remains. Although cleaners are not permitted to dump their findings down the City airshafts, they sometimes do so anyway, especially when the load is moby overripe. The songs of the cleaners are also legendary. Parents with children hurry them past cleaners at work, and when the children inevitably ask why, the answer comes in the vein of “You’d better hope they don’t come and bag you in the night.” Such answers usually stifle further questions.

cleanercritter: cleanercritter, cleanercritters: a small automated cleaning animal, used in keeping City floors clear of mess and dirt.

cleanspace: adjective, like ‘cleanroom’.

clipgun: clipgun, clipguns: a hand weapon firing lightweight spinelike projectiles designed to have the discouraging effects of an encounter with a porcupine, a creature of ancient Earth. The spines take several forms, sometimes made of corrosive metal, sometimes toxin-bearing, and sometimes hooked for penetration assisted by the target’s movements (as is done with hyperflechettes).

cloax: a type of small barhole in the City, frequented more by women than by men.

clock time: There are 24.92337 Earth hours per Tarnus day, making 1.038474 Earth seconds per Tarnus second. The clock runs in a 24-hour cycle, with six spans of four hours each, each hour 60 minutes, each minute sixty beats. Since the day on Tarnus is longer than an Earth day (in Earth hours), the second is made correspondingly longer to allow the same structure of hours, minutes, and seconds. Tarnus time units in physics and other sciences have been uncoupled from the time units of daily life from the time of the Colonization itself.

coat up: coat up, coated up, coating up: to cover one’s body surfaces with a layer of protective gel.

cocandies: cocandies, cocandy: street confections containing cocaine and amphetamine analogues.

cock: cock, cocks: a term for a man that emphasizes the aggressive side of his character.

cockbuster: cockbuster, cockbusters: a military instructor, usually a barker or top barker.

codeplate: codeplate, codeplates: a personal-recognition device installed in wall panels. Operates through combinations of genetic, chemical and physical matching of an individual’s hand against a stored set of parameters.

codpiece: codpiece, codpieces: high-technology versions of the medieval-Earth male genital display-case. Good storage place for stickweapons and jectors. Often equipped with prosthetics designed to women’s specifications. Most styled as upright close-to-body bulges reaching to the navel or above; some, especially among the more military colls like Argazindar, constructed as forward-aiming prows that could be swung up to the belly position in dangerous situations.

coes: a slang term for ‘friends’, ‘mates’, or ‘companions’.

cognator: an automated language translation mechanism, built into the Tarnus Archives for use by researchers.

coll: coll, colls: one of the great tribelike social unit of the descendants of the Colonists. Each coll claimed descent from one or more of the original group of humans who landed on the planet, claiming spiritual connection to the original humans who had landed from space on this world, now the world, the only world. The meanings of their names are lost in the passage of thousands of years, probably during the inter-dynastic wars, when many records of the Colonization were ferreted out and destroyed by the Originals. Over thousands of years, industrialization and technology had inexorably oozed wealth into a privileged crevice of society; for the rest of the people, clutching the fringes of an automated life, the colls enforced the sharing of what remained.; Each coll has its own unique dialect range of terms, usages and sounds, but the most marked aspect of coll language differences lies in the written forms, especially in the skin inscriptions. These attain the level of art and poetry, and their makers ascribe spiritual powers to them.

Coll Union: the group of colls united in rebellion against the City and regional governments. Includes Arcus, Incarnastar, Gellin Sintherou, and Novander Wye colls.

collechi: adjectival form of ‘coll'.

Colls, Languages, and Members: The organization, history, and characteristics of the social colls, or collectives, of Tarnus

Colonist: Colonist, Colonists: the first humans to arrive on the planet, descending six hundred strong on a large landing vehicle from the slow starship that had brought them in cold sleep over a ten-thousand-year journey. Fifty had remained on board the orbiting starship, some because they were too sick to withstand the rigors of reentry, some because they feared leaving the only home they had known. They maintained communication with those who had landed, and tended the great archives of the starship, downloading vast amounts of information to the lander for storage and application in the planned society. The lander had no way to ascend to the starship again; consequently, those who stayed behind either perished or returned to cold sleep. The Colonists went to work immediately to establish a lasting society. The fate of those in cold sleep on the starship is not known.

ComLang: the one language spoken all over Tarnus, bridging all the colls and places of settlement. Often called ‘Clang’, which is sometimes pronounced ‘see-lang’. It is a long-evolved descendant of Share, which dominated the speech of the peoples of Earth at the time of the emigration of the Colonists to Tarnus.; The evolution of Clang was deeply shaped by the founding, development and interactions of the colls, the social familial structures that underlie all of the culture of Tarnus. All of the Colonists spoke Share fluently, but they also brought the influences of other languages as well: Latinas, Russ, and many others. When the colls first formed their own separate communities in different areas of Tarnus, linguistic differentiation began; it was amplified by the personal preferences of the coll founders, and accelerated as coll members sought to distinguish their communities from the others. The Kai Ren Hau, for example, have tenaciously retained their close connection with the ancient Sinese language of their Colonist founders, even to the extent of evolving a wide range of powerful, beautiful and complex ideographic and logographic written forms.

comm: comm, comms: communications unit, communications system. Radio communications and intelligent voice interfaces make long-distance conversation and information movement a trivial process. Many levels and types of comm units and channels exist, the simplest for everyday use, the most complex and sophisticated for military and police use. The sensi provides the broadest bandwidth, but it only operates within the cities and along certain major intercity rail routes.

commscreen: commscreen, commscreens: display unit for the comm, as large as wall-size or as small as a palm. Supply pseudo-three-dimensional images, in full color, for the viewer.

compfabric: name for one or more of the nets of computational nodes dseigned, built and maintained by the Regional government, in close symbiosis with the University. The term itself reflects the closely-woven architecture of the systems, which consist of layer upon folded layer of interwoven biological semiconductor networks, interconnected with other similar networks via the lightpipes or lightwires.

ConNexus: a Poly Town barhole favored by Arlen.

Conosoid: n., a brand name for a tranquilizing drug used by most andros living in conditions of extreme, long-term stress.

Cordelia: one of the small inner moons of Uranus, nearest to the planet.

core grotesque: spoken fully in these exact words, signifies a problem, object, or person of loathsome, repellent, and repugnant character.

corp: corp, corps: a large economic and semi-governmental entity, like the multinational corporation but claiming a wider range of human rights for itself. Key corps are Arcorp, Rhocorp, DurCorp, and UniCorp.

corpo: corpo, corpos: common term for the corporate police. These organizations serve as civil police in areas where all property belongs to the corp; these areas constitute most of the land mass of the planet.

corpsec: corporate security or corporate security forces. The intelligence and covert services of the large corporations, the corps.

Corsang Run: Corsang Run, Festival of Mothers, Festival of the Mothers: an annual festival celebrating both fertility and restraint, in which nearly all colls participate.

Cortevail: an andro woman working with the Coll Union rebels. Her partner is Rion.

coshine: n., a drug given with andro upgrades (see headsmith) to offset some of the pain and disorientation caused by the upgrades’ neural transformations. Also used as a popular City drug to induce or enhance a shine. The term’s derivation, of little interest to most people besides andros, is a play on words using the mathematical relationship between sine and cosine that relates real and complex numbers. This relationship is defined in ancient Earth terms as Euler’s Formula. The play is on the implication that mixing shine and coshine properly can make the imaginary real. Very andro humor.

counterdancing: dance steps performed in lines moving adjacent but in opposite directions. Common during Corsang Run.

counterfire: a weapon with an intelligent viewer and a memory. In a combat or sniper scenario, the viewer displays the trajectories and origin-points of recent fire as colored vectors indicating the direction (incoming accentuated) and type of projectile. A sniper firing a flash-muzzled and silenced ballistic from deep in a room is instantly targetable in the viewer display. The best of these allow the user to keep certain trajectories on the display and eliminate others. For beam weapons with steerable fire, the viewer is coupled directly to the steering unit, enabling the user to return fire instantly and precisely without having to take exact aim. Such weapons can be mounted and left unattended to return fire automatically, thus reducing the risk of injury or death to the user.

Country Doctor: a medical professional serving Tarnus surface dwellers in the rural areas, often outside the severe restrictions imposed by Regional law.

coversuit: coversuit, coversuits: a thick coverall, with many pleats and folds, worn by service workers in the lower City.

Craessa: personal aide to Director Mentrius Adrili.

Crank: an often-used verb with many applications, all centering around frequent, rapid, heartfelt, repetitive movement. Its initial capital letter indicates emphasis in speech. 1. (vulgar) to have vigorous sexual intercourse; 2. to run after or away from something; 3. to argue or shout, especially in anjive; 4. to attempt a task with stubborn persistence.

crapper: crapper, crappers: exclamation, referring to the pipes leading from the sewage-recycling plant into the hydroponic farms.

Crascha: the proprietor of Joovlies, a cloax where Winjilles Thringe and her band often play.

Crash Range: the mountains to the north of Muathen, the Upper Continent, where the Colonists' lander is reputed to have come down on a high-altitude plateau. The Range is forbidding, offering peaks about as high as the Himalayas of ancient Earth, stretching in serrated rows along a swath east and west that cuts Muathen from the polar lands to its north.

Crasstilizi: one of the many body plans for the vanished humans of the pre-Colonist era. The Crasstilizi were large and slow-moving, but great poets, having written words immortalized in the floors of the spiral ways of the City, in writing that can no longer be read.

crawlpipe: crawlpipe, crawlpipes: a tubular access tunnel less than a meter in diameter, made with a slick floor-surface and handholds on its ceiling. The user lies back and pulls along with the handholds. Normally level; the slick surface offers little or no purchase for ascent. Common in the City.

crazeglass: a cheap form of glass strengthened by tempering, confined smashing, and filling with strong plastic binders. Often used for water tanks.

Cressi: Andrew and Leil‘s second child (after Engel), first daughter (in an alternate reality created briefly by Andrew near the end of his rise to power).

Cressida: one of the small inner moons of Uranus, fourth nearest to the planet.

crosstime: n., a closed timelike loop in spacetime, resulting from rotation of a slice of the manifold in which spacetime is embedded.

crosswort: a medicinal plant.

cryo ichor: the cryopreservative medium, able to maintain its fluid character all the way to the lowest temperatures of cryosleep.

cryopreservatives: cryogenics, cryopreservative, cryopreservatives: chemicals and microbes organized and interconnected in a system for maintaining the life of a host person during cryosleep.

cryosleep: a state of life suspended down to the atomic level, applied with limited success in the starship migrations. Entering cryosleep takes four stages altogether: 1) a room-temperature diffusion stage for installing the preservative biofactory in the body; 2) a second room-temperature stage for activating the biofactory to produce preservatives; 3) a first descent stage for cooling the body to about the boiling point of liquid nitrogen; 4) a second descent stage for cooling the body to about two degrees above absolute zero.

Cryosleep Security Officer: head of security for cryosleep research

cryotechnicians: crewmembers of the starships trained and responsible for bringing other passengers up from cryosleep upon arrival at the destination star system.

cryoviruses: viral microbes comprising part of the mix of cryopreservatives.

cryssteel: a multiphase composite material fabricated of the hardest metals, ceramics, and slow-flow resilient plastics to make it capable of scoring any known surface.

cubb: cubb, cubbies, cubbs, cubby, sleepcubbies, sleepcubby: the smallest form of dwelling-place in the City, usually comprising a raised bed with a covered latrine at its foot, and sometimes a tiny table and heater that unfold over the middle of the bed. Floor space is optional; a single door opens onto an understreet where many such living quarters are packed in side by side.

Cupid: one of the small inner moons of Uranus, ninth nearest to the planet.

CV button: the trigger on a medical emergency system for activating cardioversion to restore functional rhythm to the heart of a victim.

cyantha: a small fruit, bitter but with a meaty, sweet aftertaste.

cyberenhanced: given special sensory, information-processing, and motor extensions, not grown in as with andro headsmith drugs, but installed in localized parts of the body and brain. This mode of installation circumvents Gene Law.

cyberparty: cyberparties, cyberparty: a sensi-based interconnection of a flashmob of friends and revelers, usually involving sexual and drug experiences enhanced by the sensi‘s higher levels of experience sharing.

cyberwear: external, wearable versions of cyberenhancements, giving the wearer some sensory, motor or mental boosts.

cyberworld: a term for innerspace, the shared virtual reality of the andros.

cybrains: intelligences built up from combinations of electronic/photonic circuitry and biological neurons and glia.

Cynad: a locator name, referring to an area within Arlen‘s andro farms.

Cytoman: one of the andro inns in the mountains, not far from the mines at Drevill.

cytomegaly: a condition in which the walls between human tissue cells break down and the cell contents merge.