So Gideon Goldenrod is a pretty fun guy. He enjoys jokes and laughter and you'll get to know him a little more through this chapter. Hopefully the name rings a bell because he's been mentioned a handful of times in earlier chapters, because he is in Joe's will listed as a "confidant". Since it has been like 2 years since the relevant chapters were published, if you want to re-read anything to get an idea of what was said about this guy before, probably you only would need to take a look at "He Was The Astronomer", but also don't worry too much about it because it'll all be re-explained soon.

Gideon Goldenrod's ship is called the Liana, which has some meaning to it but I'll explain that another time maybe. Also you should imagine in your mind that this whole chapter is spoken in Arabic. I was almost going to try to translate the whole chapter into Arabic but I realized I want people who have been reading it in english so far to understand it so I didn't do that. Thanks to my friend Violet for Arabic consultation on these pages.