3 quoted lines
.James Wynn wrote:
I really think you ar e both misreading this. It's "enormous darkness OVERHEAD blotting the sundrenched fields". If the darkness is overhead, then it can't blot the sun-drenched fields which --on Urth-- are below. I think you guys are thinking of "blot out" which is a different picture. If it is the shadow of a transport "blotting the fields" then it can't be overhead. What we are to envision is the blackness of the Nightside against the "sun-drenched fields" of the Dayside.
I'm not sure what you understand by 'blot'. I don't think it's impossible to say that something overhead 'blots' the fields by casting a shadow on them. (Not 'blot out', since they don't become completely invisible.)
1 quoted line
It is not the line of chems that is dirty, nor a transport. It is the Whorl itself which has only recently been completed. Marble is a maid chem and so sees everything in terms of whether it needs cleaning or not.
I can't read it this way. The line of soldiers, on your reading, is a long way off, so that it just looks like a speck; Marble says 'It looks so dirty'; and a soldier replies 'Why don't you dust it?' How can he, if he's so far off?
And anyway, this doesn't explain the context. Marble sees the Trivigaunti airship, and the words 'Why don't you dust it?' arise spontaneously in her mind. Gradually, she recovers the whole scene. Why? Because the airship reminds her of another great object she once saw hanging over her in the sky. While we're not told in so many words what this was, the idea that it was the transport taking her to the Whorl seems a very plausible one. That also makes sense of 'Where was this?',a pertinent question if the answer is 'On Urth', less so of it is just some location on the Whorl.