Authors: Thomas Pynchon
So, yes yes this is a scholasticism here, Rocket state-cosmology . . . the Rocket
does lead that way—among others—past these visible serpent coils that lash up above
the surface of Earth in rainbow light, in steel tetany . . . these storms, these things
of Earth’s deep breast we were never told . . . past them, through the violence, to
a numbered cosmos, a quaint brownwood-paneled, Victorian kind of Brain War, as between
quaternions and vector analysis in the 1880s—the nostalgia of Aether, the silver,
pendulumed, stone-anchored, knurled-brass, filigreed elegantly functional shapes of
your grandfathers. These sepia tones are here, certainly. But the Rocket has to be
many things, it must answer to a number of different shapes in the dreams of those
who touch it—in combat, in tunnel, on paper—it must survive heresies shining, unconfoundable . . .
and heretics there will be: Gnostics who have been taken in a rush of wind and fire
to chambers of the Rocket-throne . . . Kabbalists who study the Rocket as Torah, letter
by letter—rivets, burner cup and brass rose, its text is theirs to permute and combine
into new revelations, always unfolding . . . Manichaeans who see two Rockets, good
and evil, who speak together in the sacred idiolalia of the Primal Twins (some say
their names are Enzian and Blicero) of a good Rocket to take us to the stars, an evil
Rocket for the World’s suicide, the two perpetually in struggle.
But these heretics will be sought and the dominion of silence will enlarge as each
one goes down . . . they will
all
be sought out. Each will have his personal Rocket. Stored in its target-seeker will
be the heretic’s EEG, the spikes and susurrations of heartbeat, the ghost-blossomings
of personal infrared, each Rocket will know its intended and hunt him, ride him a
green-doped and silent hound, through our World, shining and pointed in the sky at
his back, his guardian executioner rushing in,
rushing closer. . . .
Here are the objectives. To make the run over tracks that may end abruptly at riverside
or in carbonized trainyard, over roads even the unpaved alternates to which are patrolled
now by Russian and British and American troops in a hardening occupation, a fear of
winter bleaching the men all more formal, into braces of Attention they ignored during
the summer, closer adherence now to the paperwork as colors of trees and brush begin
their change, as purple blurs out over miles of heath, and nights come sooner. To
have to stay out in the rains of early Virgo: the children who stowed away on the
trek against all orders are down now with coughs and fevers, sniffling at night, hoarse
little voices inside oversize uniform jackets. To brew tea for them from fennel, betony,
Whitsun roses, sunflowers, mallow leaves—to loot sulfa drugs and penicillin. To avoid
raising road-dust when the sun has dried the ruts and crowns again by noon. To sleep
in the fields. To hide the rocket sections under haystacks, behind the single wall
of a gutted railroad shed, among rainy willows down beside the river beds. To disperse
at any alarm, or often at random, just for drill—to flow like a net, down out of the
Harz, up the ravines, sleeping in the dry glazed spaces of deserted spas (official
pain, official death watching all night from the porcelain eyes of statues), digging
in nights’ perimeters, smelling pine needles boots and trench-shovels have crushed. . . .
To keep faith that it is not trek this time, nor struggle, but truly Destiny, the
00001 sliding like an oiled bolt into the receivership of the railway system prepared
for it last spring, a route only apparently in ruins, carefully crafted by the War,
by special techniques of bombardment, to take this most immachinate of techniques,
the Rocket—the Rocket, this most terribly potential of bombardments. . . .
The 00001 goes disassembled, in sections—warhead, guidance, fuel and oxidizer tanks,
tail section. If they all make it to the firing site, it will have to be put back
together there.
“Show me the society that never said, ‘I am created among men,’” Christian walks with
Enzian in the fields above the encampment,” ‘to protect you each from violence, to
give shelter in time of disaster’—but Enzian, what protection
is
there? what can protect us from
that,
” gesturing down the valley at the yellow-gray camouflage netting they can both, X-ray
eyed for this one journey, see through. . . .
Enzian and the younger man somehow have drifted into these long walks. Nothing deliberate
on either side. Is this how successions occur? Each man is suspicious. But there are
no more of the old uncomfortable silences. No competing.
“It comes as the Revealer. Showing that no society can protect, never could—they are
as foolish as shields of paper. . . .” He must tell Christian everything he knows,
everything he suspects or has dreamed. Proclaiming none of it for truth. But he must
keep nothing back for himself. Nothing is his to keep. “They have lied to us. They
can’t keep us from dying, so They lie to us about death. A cooperative structure of
lies. What have They ever given us in return for the trust, the love—They actually
say ‘love’—we’re supposed to owe Them? Can They keep us from even catching cold? from
lice, from being alone? from
anything?
Before the Rocket we went on believing, because we wanted to. But the Rocket can
penetrate, from the sky, at any given point. Nowhere is safe. We can’t believe Them
any more. Not if we are still sane, and love the truth.”
“We are,” nods Christian. “We do.” He isn’t looking at Enzian to confirm it, either.
“Yes.”
“Then . . . in the absence of faith . . .”
One night, in the rain, their laager stops for the night at a deserted research station,
where the Germans, close to the end of the War, were developing a sonic death-mirror.
Tall paraboloids of concrete are staggered, white and monolithic, across the plain.
The idea was to set off an explosion in front of the paraboloid, at the exact focal
point. The concrete mirror would then throw back a perfect shock wave to destroy anything
in its path. Thousands of guinea pigs, dogs and cows were experimentally blasted to
death here—reams of death-curve data were compiled. But the project was a lemon. Only
good at short range, and you rapidly came to a falloff point where the amount of explosives
needed might as well be deployed some other way. Fog, wind, hardly visible ripples
or snags in the terrain, anything less than perfect conditions, could ruin the shock
wave’s deadly shape. Still, Enzian can envision a war, a place for them, “a desert.
Lure your enemy to a desert. The Kalahari. Wait for the wind to die.”
“Who would fight for a desert?” Katje wants to know. She’s wearing a hooded green
slicker looks even too big for Enzian.
Christian squatting down, looking up at the pale curve of reflector they’ve come to
the base of and have gathered at in the rain, sharing a smoke, taking a moment away
from the rest of the trek, “not ‘for.’ What he’s saying is ‘in.’”
Saves trouble later if you can get the Texts straight soon as they’re spoken. “Thank
you,” sez Oberst Enzian.
A hundred meters away, huddled into another white paraboloid, watching them, is a
fat kid in a gray tanker jacket. Out of its pocket peer two furry little bright eyes.
It is fat Ludwig and his lost lemming Ursula—he has found her at last and after all
and despite everything. For a week they have been drifting alongside the trek, just
past visibility, pacing the Africans day by day . . . among trees at the tops of escarpments,
at the fires’ edges at night Ludwig is there, watching . . . accumulating evidence,
or terms of an equation . . . a boy and his lemming, out to see the Zone. Mostly what
he’s seen is a lot of chewing gum and a lot of foreign cock. How else does a foot-loose
kid get by in the Zone these days? Ursula is preserved. Ludwig has fallen into a fate
worse than death and found it’s negotiable. So not all lemmings go over the cliff,
and not all children are preserved against snuggling into the sin of profit. To expect
any more, or less, of the Zone is to disagree with the terms of the Creation.
When Enzian rides point he has the habit of falling into reveries, whether the driver
is talking or not. In night without headlamps, a mist coarse enough to be falling,
or now and then blown like a wet silk scarf in the face, inside and outside the same
temperature and darkness, balances like these allow him to float just under waking,
feet and arms bug-upwards pushing at the rubbery glass surface-tension between the
two levels, sticking in it, dream-caressed at hands and feet become supersensitive,
a good home-style horizontalless drowse. The engine of the stolen truck is muffled
in old mattresses tied over the hood. Henryk the Hare, driving, keeps a leery eye
on the temperature gauge. He’s called “the Hare” because he can never get messages
right, as in the old Herero story. So reverences are dying.
A figure slips into the road, flashlight circling slowly. Enzian un-snaps the isinglass
window, leans out into the heavy mist, and calls “faster than the speed of light.”
The figure waves him on. But in the last edge of Enzian’s glance back, in the light
from the flash
rain is sticking to the black face in big fat globules
, sticking as water does to black greasepaint, but not to Herero skin—
“Think we can make a U-turn here?” The shoulders are treacherous, and both men know
it. Back in the direction of camp the line of slow-rolling lowlands is lit up by a
thud of apricot light.
“Shit,” Henryk the Hare jamming it in reverse, waiting for orders from Enzian as they
grind slowly backwards. The one with the flashlight may have been the only lookout,
there may be no enemy concentration for miles. But—
“There.” Beside the road, a prone body. It’s Mieczislav Omuzire, with a bad head wound.
“Get him in, come on.” They load him into the back of the idling truck, and cover
him with a shelter half. No time to find out how bad it is. The blackface sentry has
vanished for good. From the direction they’re backing in comes the stick-rattle of
rifle fire.
“We’re going into this
backwards?
”
“Have
you
heard any mortar fire?”
“Since the one? No.”
“Andreas must have knocked it out then.”
“Oh,
they’ll
be all right, Nguarorerue. I’m worrying about
us.”
Orutyene dead. Okandio, Ekori, Omuzire wounded, Ekori critically. The hostiles were
white.
“How many?”
“Dozen maybe.”
“We can’t count on a safe perimeter—” blue-white flashlight blobbing ellipse-to-parabola
across the shaking map, “till Braunschweig. If it’s still there.” Rain hits the map
in loud spatters.
“Where’s the railroad?” puts in Christian. He gets an interested look from Andreas.
It’s mutual. There’s a good deal of interest here lately. The railroad is 6 or 7 miles
northwest.
The people come empty their belongings next to the Rocket’s trailer rigs. Saplings
are being axed down, each blow loud and carrying . . . a frame is being constructed,
bundles of clothing, pots and kettles stuffed here and there under the long tarpaulin
between bent-sapling hoops, to simulate pieces of rocket. Andreas is calling, “All
decoys muster by the cook wagon,” fishing in his pockets for the list he keeps. The
decoy trek will move on northward, no violent shift in direction—the rest will angle
east, back toward the Russian Army. If they get just close enough, the British and
American armies may move more cautiously. It may be possible to ride the interface,
like gliding at the edge of a thunderstorm . . . all the way to the end between armies
East and West.
Andreas sits dangling feet kicking heels against tailgate
bong . . . bong . . .
tolling departure. Enzian looks up, quizzical. Andreas wants to say something. Finally:
“Christian goes with you, then?”
“Yes?” Blinking under rain-beaded eyebrows. “Oh, for God’s sake, Andreas.”
“Well? The decoys are supposed to make it too, right?”
“Look, take him with
you
, if you want.”
“I only wanted to find out,” Andreas shrugs, “what’s been settled.”
“You could have asked me. Nothing’s been ‘settled.’”
“Maybe not by you. That’s your game. You think it’ll preserve you. But it doesn’t
work for
us.
We have to know what’s really going to happen.”
Enzian kneels and begins to lift the heavy iron tailgate. He knows how phony it looks.
Who will believe that in his heart he wants to belong to them out there, the vast
Humility sleepless, dying, in pain tonight across the Zone? the preterite he loves,
knowing he’s always to be a stranger. . . . Chains rattle above him. When the edge
of the gate is level with his chin, he looks up, into Andreas’s eyes. His arms are
braced tight. His elbows ache. It is an offering. He wants to ask, How many others
have written me off? Is there a fate only I’ve been kept blind to? But habits persist,
in their own life. He struggles to his feet, silently, lifting the dead weight, slamming
it into place. Together they slip bolts through at each corner. “See you there,” Enzian
waves, and turns away. He swallows a tablet of German desoxyephedrine then pops in
a stick of gum. Speed makes teeth grind, gum gets chewed by grinding teeth, chewing
on gum is a technique, developed during the late War by women, to keep from crying.
Not that he wants to cry for the separation. He wants to cry for himself: for what
they all must believe is going to happen to him. The more they believe it, the better
chance there is. His people are going to demolish him if they can. . . .
Chomp, chomp, hmm good evening ladies, nice job on the lashings there Ljubica, chomp,
how’s the head Mieczislav, bet they were surprised when the bullets
bounced off!
heh-heh chomp, chomp, evening “Sparks”
(Ozohande)
, anything from Hamburg yet on the liquid oxygen, damned Oururu better come through-ru,
or we gonna have a bad-ass time trying to lay low till he do-ru—oh shit who’s
that—