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There’s some nice dovetailing going on here, as Cal’s superpowers and Kay’s ambitions combine with the technology of Red to make this globe-trotting evangelising possible. Lots of different story elements have combined in this latter half of Arc 4, which I hope makes for a satisfying read.
Kay is building a mythology around herself by this point. She knows she can’t make progress simply through rational argument, because the situation goes beyond rationality. The circumstances are too complex to ever explain properly. Instead she’s relying on drama and emotion to drive her movement forward.
Jona, the pilot, is a good example of a minor character who appears briefly and has only limited impact on the plot. Jona, like Ezekiel and Sile and Karim, has little agency of his own. He’s a pawn, there to move plot points around for our chief protagonists. They never have the airtime required to turn them into more nuanaced supporting characters, like Holt and Simons. Nevertheless I always try to imbue them with some immediate character, such that they resonate in some form. Jona, in particular, I enjoy for his ability to take everything in his stride.
The incursion into the top offices of the Perlyn government at the end of this chapter is a reminder of the power Cal and Kay now wield. That power in the wrong hands, or if they made the wrong decisions, would be catastrophic and deadly. Indeed, without Kay’s influence that would have been Cal’s likely path.
In fact, taking the right path explicitly requires Kay, Cal and Marv to work together. Remove any one of them and the moral core starts to erode.
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