Against the Day (82 page)
Authors: Thomas Pynchon
Tags: #Literary, #World?s Columbian Exposition, #(1893, #Fiction, #Chicago (Ill.), #Historical
been going on, but it’s not over yet, it’s at such a critical
stage, and the less said right now the better. But someday . . .”
“Are
you going away again?”
“So
soon?”
“We must. We’re just so sorry. The
reunion feast was delicious and much appreciated, the harmonica recital one we
shall never forget, especially the ‘coon’ material. But now . . .”
So,
once again, the familiar dwindling dot in the sky.
“Don’t be blue, pal, it must’ve been
important, they really wanted to stay this time, you could tell.”
“What
are we going to do with all this extra food?”
“And
all the beer nobody drank!”
“Somehow
I don’t think
that
’ll
be
a problem.”
But that was the beginning of a
certain release from longing, as if they had been living in a remote valley,
far from any highways, and one day noticed that just beyond one of the
ridgelines all this time there’d been a road, and down this road, as they
watched, came a wagon, then a couple of riders, then a coach and another wagon,
in daylight which slowly lost its stark isotropy and was flowed into by clouds
and chimney smoke and even episodes of weather, until presently there was a
steady stream of traffic, audible day and night, with folks beginning to
venture over into their valley to visit, and offering rides to towns nearby the
boys hadn’t even known existed, and next thing anybody knew, they were on the
move again in a world scarcely different from the
one
they had left. And one day, at the edge of one of these
towns, skyready, brightwork gleaming, newly painted and refitted and around the
corner of a gigantic hangar, waiting for them, as if they had never been away,
there was their ship the good old
Inconvenience.
And Pugnax with his
paws up on the quarterdeck rail, tail going a mile a minute, barking with un
restrained joy.
Somewhere the Trespassers went on
about their old toxic business, but by now the crew of the
Inconvenience,
more
closely tuned to their presence and long disabused of any faith in their
miracleworking abilities, were somehow better able to avoid them, to warn
others of possible mischief, even now and then to take steps in opposition.
Failed experimental casseroles from Miles’s galley, dropped from altitudes
moderate enough to maintain cohesion, seemed effective, as well as prank
telephone calls to paving contractors ordering large volumes of cement to be
delivered and poured at known Trespasser locations.
Needless to say, differences of
opinion within the little band on how best to
proceed were sharp, as was some of
the language in their steeringcommittee meetings. The politics were not
simplified by the unannounced reappearance of Harmonica Academy Marching Band
squealer Alonzo Meatman, just strolling in one day whistling “After the Ball,”
in cakewalk rhythm as if among them no history had ever transpired.
He had brought with him, carefully
and multiply sealed, a copy of the enigmatic map they had once journeyed to
Venice in search of, thereby nearly meeting flaming destruction over the Piazza
San Marco.
“We were there, too,” said Meatman
with a disagreeable smile, “only I guess you didn’t see us. “
“And
now you’re trying to sell this,” Randolph supposed.
“Today,
for you, it’s free of charge.”
“And what has given you the curious
impression,” inquired Lindsay, “that having once narrowly avoided dissolution
by so injudiciously seeking this mischievous document, we might now exhibit toward
it even the least vestige of interest?”
The
treacherous Meatman shrugged. “Ask your Tesla machine.”
And sure enough, as if having
eavesdropped on this exchange as part of a detailed surveillance maintained
over the Chums even from its deep bureaucratic distance, Higher Authority now
chose once again to insert its own
weighty extremity
into their lives.
One night after Evening Quarters, the
Tesla device came squawking to life, and the boys gathered around to listen.
“Having taken delivery,” announced a deep, reverberant voice, “from duly
authorized agent Alonzo R. Meatman of the map informally known as the Sfinciuno
Itinerary, signing all receipt forms properly, you are directed to set course
immediately for Bukhara in Inner Asia, where you will report T.D.Y. to His
Majesty’s Subdesertine Frigate
Saksaul,
Captain Q. Zane Toadflax,
Commander. It is assumed that the
Inconvenience
already has a complete
allocation of currentmodel Hypopsammotic Survival Apparatus on board, as no
further expenditure for that purpose will be approved.”
The machine fell silent, the pointers
of its dozen or so dials returning to their restingpins. “What the heck are
they talking about?” squinted Darby puzzledly.
“Professor
Vanderjuice will know,” Randolph said.
“Why, staggering sanddunes!”
exclaimed the Professor. “I happen to know just the fellow, Roswell Bounce, in
fact he invented the Hypops apparatus, though the Vibe organization, which
claims a monopoly, won’t, I fear, be flexible about the price.”
They
found Roswell Bounce cheerfully leering at coeds in the little plaza in front
of the Student Union. As early as 1899, the Professor had informed them,
Roswell had grasped the principles of what would become the standardissue
Hypopsammotic Survival Apparatus or “Hypops,” revolutionizing desert travel by
providing a practical way to submerge oneself beneath the sands and still be
able to breathe, walk around, so forth.
“You control your molecular resonance
frequencies, ’s basically all it is,” explained Roswell, “include a fineadjustment
feature onto it to compensate for parameter drift, so as to keep everything
solidlooking but dispersed enough that you’re still able to walk through it all
’th no more effort than swimming in a swimming hole. Sonofabitch Vibe Corp.
stole it from me, and I feel no hesitation about beating their prices. How many
were you looking for?”
They arranged for six units, one of
which Roswell agreed readily to modify for Pugnax, all at a surprisingly
reasonable club price, which included C.O.D. express delivery, with an
additional discount for cash payment.
“A remarkable contraption,” marveled
Chick, who as Scientific Officer was especially intrigued.
“If we may move about these days
beneath the sea wheresoever we will,” opined Professor Vanderjuice, “the next
obvious step is to proceed to that medium which is wavelike as the sea, yet
also particulate.”
“He
means sand,” said Roswell, “but it almost sounds like light, don’t it.”
“But setting aside the density, the
inertia, the constant abrasion of working surfaces,” Randolph wondered, “how
can you travel underneath the sand and even see where you’re going?”
“By redeploying energy on the order
of what it would take to change the displaced sand into something
transparent—quartz or glass, say. Obviously,” the Professor explained,
“one wouldn’t want to be in the middle of that much heat, so one must arrange
to translate oneself in Time, compensating for the speed of light in the
transparent medium. As long as the sand has only been winddeposited without
local obstruction, we assume the familiar mechanics of waterwaves generally to
apply, and if we wished to move deeper, say in an undersand vessel, new
elements analogous to vortexformation would enter the wavehistory—in any
case, expressible by some set of wavefunctions.”
“Which always include Time,” said
Chick, “so if you were looking for some way to reverse or invert those
curves—wouldn’t that imply some form of passage backward in Time?”
“Well that’s just what I’ve been
looking into here all summer,” Roswell said. “They invited me to lead a
seminar. Call me Professor if you want. You too,
Girlies!” he called out amiably to a
group of presentable young women, some with their hats off and their hair down,
who were picnicking on the grass nearby.
It took only a few days for the
Hypops units to arrive at the express office in town, and the boys meanwhile
prepared for departure with feelings of regret, unable to escape a suspicion
that somewhere in the bustle of lectures, exhibits, picnics, and socials they
had missed something ~esssential, which might never be recovered, even by way
of a working time machine.
“It was about flight,” Miles,
temporarily lapsing into English, theorized, “flight into the next dimension.
We were always at the mercy of Time, as much as any civilian ‘groundhog.’ We
went from two dimensions, infant’s floorspace, out into townand mapspace, ever
toddling our way into the third dimension, till as Chums recruits we could take
the fateful leap skyward
. . .
and
now, after these years of skyroving, maybe some of us are ready to step
‘sidewise’ once more, into the next dimension—into Time—our fate,
our lord, our destroyer.”
“Thanks
a lot, Bugbrains,” Darby said. “What’s for lunch?”
“Bug
brains,” replied Miles, with a kindly grin. “Fricaseed, I think.”
The next Tesla transmission was to
ascertain their exact moment of departure, but with no further details as to
their mission. After weeks engaged with the mysteries of Time, the boys had run
at last into the blank, featureless wall of its most literal expression, the
timetable.
“Have a pleasant flight,” the voice
said. “There’ll be further instructions when you arrive in Bukhara.”
Darby tossed his skybag into his
locker, seething with annoyance. “And how much longer,” he yelled at the
instrument, “are we supposed to put up with your damned disrespect?”
“Until
mutiny is legalized,” Lindsay warned primly.
“Can’t
say till
pigs fly,
can we?” Darby with a meaningful sneer at the X.O.
“Confound
you, you insubordinate wiseacre—”
“They just can’t abide anybody having
too much fun, ’s what it is,” Darby was certain. “Anything they can’t control
is too much like skylarking for those autocratic bastards.”
“Suckling!” Lindsay’s face draining
rapidly of its color. “It is as I have ever feared—”
“Oh compose yourself, Mrs. Grundy, I
refer only to the Tsarlike, yet clearly illegitimate, aspects of their
behavior.”
“Oh. Oh, well. . .” Lindsay, taken
somewhat aback, regarded blinkingly the newly legalistic Darby but did not
pursue his reprimand.
“I’d
be getting in the air,” drawled the Tesla device, “if I were you fellows.
Mustn’t jeopardize a perfect record of doing as you’re told.
Sheep can fly, too, after all. Can’t they.”
And presently, with Alonzo Meatman up
in the illstarred Bell Tower observing through binoculars, the
Inconvenience
rose over Candlebrow, with every appearance of sullenness, into a windless
and humid day, and left the Mysteries of Time to those with enough of that
commodity to devote to its proper study.
Three
Bilocations
hile the
Inconvenience
was in New York, Lindsay had
heard rumors of a “Turkish Corner” that really
was
supposed, in some not
strictly metaphorical way, to provide an “escape nook to Asia.” Like, “One
minute you’re in a horrible highbourgeois New York parlor, the next out on the
Asian desert, on top of a Bactrian camel, searching for a lost subterranean
city.”
“After
a brief visit to Chinatown to inhale some fumes, you mean.”
“Not
exactly. Not as subjective as that.”
“Not
just mental transportation, you’re saying, but actual, physical—”
“Translation
of the body, sort of lateral resurrection, if you like.”
“Say,
who wouldn’t? Where is this miraculous nook?”
“Where indeed
. . .
behind which of those heaped thousands on thousands of
windows lighted and dark? A formidable quest, you’d have to say.”
Well,
the last week or so in its way had unfolded at least as suddenly.
Cameling along by night, Lindsay
Noseworth found himself now actually enjoying his solitude, away from the
constant chaos of a typical deck watch— visual field saturated in stars,
fourspace at its purest, more stars than he could ever remember seeing, though
who’d had time for them, with so many small chores to keep his eyes bent to the
quotidian? To tell the truth, he’d been growing doubtful about starlight in any
practical way, having lately been studying historic world battles, attempting
to learn what lighting conditions might have been like during the action, even
coming to suspect that light might be a
secret determinant of history
—beyond
how it had lit a battlefield or an opposing fleet, how might it have come
warping through a particular window during a critical assembly of state, or
looked as the sun was setting
across some significant river, or struck in a particular way
the hair, and thereby delayed the execution, of a politically dangerous wife
one was determined to be rid of—
“Ahh
. . .” D—n! There, there it was again, the fatal word! the word he
had been forbidden, on doctor’s orders, in fact, even to
subvocalize . . .
The Chums of Chance C.A.C.A., or
Comprehensive Annual Coverage Agreement, required quarterly health checkups at
official Examining Stations, by insurancecompany croakers. Last time Lindsay
went in, back in Medicine Hat, Alberta, they had run some tests and caught signs
of Incipient Gamomania, “That is, the abnormal desire to be married.”
“Abnormal? What’s abnormal in that?
When have I ever kept it a secret that my governing desire in life is to be no
longer one, but two, a two which is, moreover, one—that is,
denumerably
two, yet—”
“There. That’s exactly the sort of
thing we mean.” Outside, it was summer, and in the last light, townsfolk were
out bowling on the green. Laughter, calls of children, quiet bursts of
applause, and something about it all made Lindsay, forever denied any such
tranquil community, briefly fear for the structural integrity of his heart.
Since then he had been receiving, with a somewhat alarming frequency,
questionnaires printed on official forms, thinly disguised demands for samples
of his bodily fluids, unannounced visits from bespectacled, bearded gentlemen
speaking in a variety of European accents and actually
wearing white coats
who
wished to examine him. Finally the
Inconvenience
had flown on without
him, Chick Counterfly temporarily assuming X.O. duties, in order that Lindsay
might enter the C. of C. Biometric Institute of Neuropathy, to undergo a
“battery” of mental tests, upon release from which he was to proceed with all
haste to a certain uncharted Inner Asian oasis serving as a base for the
subdesertine craft in the region, for rendezvous with H.M.S.F.
Saksaul.
Like Balaam’s ass, it was the camel
tonight who first detected something amiss, freezing in midstep, violently
clenching every muscle in its body, and attempting uncamellike cries it hoped
its rider might at least become alarmed by the queerness of.
Presently, from just over the dune to
his left, Lindsay heard someone calling his name.
“Yes do stop for a moment Lindsay,”
added a voice from the other side of the track, whose source was no more
visible.
“We
have messages for you,” hissed an augmented choir of voices.
“All right now, old scout,” Lindsay
reassured the camel, “it’s quite common out here, reported as long ago as Marco
Polo, I’ve personally run into something like it in the Far North as well, yes
plenty of times.” More loudly, as if re
plying to the nowaccelerating
importunacy, “Simple Rapture of the Sands, absence of light, hearing grows
sharper, energy reallocated across the sensorium—”
“LINDSAY
Lindsay
Lindsaylindsay . . .”
The camel looked around at him with a
long eyeroll meant, mutatis mutandis, to convey skepticism.
“You must leave this track you were
told never to step from, come to us, just over this dune—”
“I shall wait here,” advised the
aeronaut, as primly as the situation permitted. “If you will, come to me.”
“Plenty of
wives
over here,”
the voices called. “Don’t forget that this is the Desert
. . . .
”
“With
its wellknown demands upon the mind . . .”
“. .
. which so often may be resolved as
polygamy.
”
“Heh,
heh . . .”
“
Wives
in blossom, panspectral
fields full of
wives
Lindsay, here is the Great WifeBazaar of the
WorldIsland
. . . .
”
And not only the sibilant words but
also liquid sounds, kisses, suction, mixed in with the unceasing friction of
sand in its travels. An obscure local insult directed at himself? Or was it the
camel they were trying to lure?
So star after star climbed to its
meridian and then descended, and the camel took his way a step at a time, and
all was saturated in expectancy
. . . .
At dawn a brief wind arrived, from
somewhere up ahead. Lindsay recognized the smell of wild “Euphrates” poplars
coming into blossom. An oasis, a real one, had been waiting out there all night
just past his reach, where now, among the redispositions of the morning, he rode
in to find the rest of the crew, lying around experiencing the effects of the
water here, which, somewhat oddtasting but far from actually poisonous, was in
fact much preferred, by the large population of travelers out here who knew of
it, to either aryq or hasheesh, as a facilitator of passage between the worlds.
Lindsay shook his head at the tableau
of chemical debauchery before him. For a terrible moment, he was certain,
beyond reason, that none of these figures were his real fellow crewmen at all,
but rather a
ghostUnit,
from some Abode he wished never to visit,
resolved on working him mischief, who had been painstakingly, intricately
masked to
look like
Chums of Chance.
But then Darby Suckling caught sight
of him, and the moment passed. “Eeyynnhh, will ya look at who’s here. Hey,
Nutso! When’d they let you out of that B.I.N.? I thought you’d be locked up for
good.”
Relieved,
Lindsay limited his reply to a seventeensyllable allpurpose
threat of physical violence, failing even to mention
Suckling’s mother.
·
·
·
“Now, set the
Special Desert Detail
. . . .
Secure hatches fore and aft
. . . .
All hands prepare to submerge
. . . .
”
That excitement peculiar to undersand
travel could be felt as ship’s personnel moved busily forward and aft in the
dimlylighted spaces of the subdesertine frigate
Saksaul.
Diamondedged
sandaugers cranked up to operating speed, beginning to bite all but
frictionlessly into the sands of the Inner Asian desert, as steeringvanes
smoothly came into play, increasing the angle of penetration. Any observer upon
a nearby dune might have watched, perhaps in superstitious terror, as the
craft, unhurriedly pursuing its dive into the lightless world, at last vanished
beneath the sands, only a shortlived dustdevil remaining behind where the fan
tail had been.
Once having reached standard
operating depth, the ship leveled off and was brought to cruising speed. Down
in the engineering spaces, the Viscosity Gang began to throw one by one the
switches that would couple to the ship’s main engine their banks of socalled
Eta/Nu Transformators, causing the observation windows up on the bridge to
start trembling like drumheads, and a succession of colors to now across the
polished surfaces, as the view out the windows, pari passu, began to clear.
“Now light all cruisinglamps,”
ordered Captain Toadflax. As the searchlight filaments, fashioned of a secret
alloy, became heated to the correct operating temperature and wavelength, the
view beneath the dunes, blurry at first but soon adjusted, sprang vividly to
life.
It as little resembled the upperworld
view of the desert as the depths of an ocean do its own surface. Enormous
schools of what might have been some beetle species swarmed, as if curious,
iridescently in and out of the searchlightbeams, while, too far away to examine
in any detail—in some cases, indeed, well past the smeared boundaries of
the visible—darker shapes kept pace with the ship’s progress, showing now
and then a flash, bright as unsheathed steel. Presently, according to the
charts, felt more than seen, there rose to port and starboard the jagged
mountain ranges known to longtime Inner Asian sanddogs as the Deep Blavatsky.
“Only way a man can hang on to his
wits,” as Captain Toadflax jovially informed his guests, “is to be stationed at
an instrument he can’t avoid tending to. These windows here are basically just
for the entertainment of lubbers such as yourselves, no offense of course.”
“None taken!” replied the Chums, as
they had long learned to do, in cheery unison. Indeed, their demeanor today
struck more than one observer as almost provokingly selfsatisfied. Their
mammoth airship was back at the
oasis encampment, safely within a
picket of Gurkhas fabled for their merciless dedication to perimeter defense.
Miles Blundell, as Commissary, had put up a number of appetizing picnic
luncheons, sizable enough to share with any members of the
Saksaul
’s
crew whose delight in
sandduty cuisine might have begun, however tentatively, to ebb. And before them
lay exactly the sort of adventure that was sure to appeal to their toooften
illconsidered taste for the histrionic yet unprofitable.
“It is down here—” declared
Captain Toadflax, “quite intact and, make no mistake, inhabited as
well—that the true Shambhala will be found, just as real as anything. And
those German professors,” jerking an irascible thumb upward, “who keep waltzing
out here by the wagonload, can dig till they’re too blistered to dig anymore,
and they still won’t ever find it, not without the right equipment—the
map you fellows brought, plus our ship’s Paramorphoscope. And as any Tibetan
lama will tell you, the right attitude.”