Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

  “Oh, Son.” He shook his Head. He didn’t continue.

  “It’s your Mate,” Doctor Isaac assur’d him, “It’s what happens when your Mate dies.”

  Solitude grew upon him, despite his nominal return to the social Webwork. Neighbors near and far, including owners of textile mills he would once never have spat upon, believing him vers’d in ev’ry Philosophick Art, kept bringing him repair jobs. The work-shed grew clutter’d with shafts and weft-forks, pirn winders and pistons, silk-reels and boiler gauges. Scents of Lavender, wild Roses, and Kitchen-Smoke pass’d in and out with Bees and Wasps, thro’ the unmortar’d walls, pierc’d ev’rywhere with bright openings to the sunlit Garden outside, and the abiding Day. Mason might be found sitting at a Pine Table, bow’d over a curious Mirror. The beings who visited had names, and Titles, and signs of Recognition. Often they would approach through Number, Logarithms, the manipulation of Numbers and Letters, emerging as it were from among the symbols. . . .

  His principal income in those years came from pen-and-paper Work, laborious, pre-mechanickal, his only Instrument a set of Logarithmick Tables,— reducing and perfecting Mayer’s solar and lunar Data. These form’d the basis of the Nautical Almanac, which Maskelyne edited, and in whose Introduction the A.R. was generous in acknowledging Mason’s work. Mason came to believe that thro’ Taurean persistence he had refin’d the values to well within an error that entitl’d him to the £5,000 Prize offer’d by the Board of Longitude. But “Enemies” succeeded in reducing it to an offer of £750, which he refus’d, upon Principle, tho’ Mary at the news withdrew in Dismay.

  Did he now include among his Enemies Maskelyne?

  The A.R. had shar’d with Mason his delight over the new Planet,— he had taken it for a Comet,— wishing Mr. Herschel joy of his great Accomplishment. Suddenly the family of Planets had a new member, tho’ previously observ’d by Bradley, Halley, Flamsteed, Le Monnier, the Chinese, the Arabs, everyone it seem’d, yet attended to by none of them. ’Twas impossible to find an Astronomer in the Kingdom who was not wandering about in that epoch beaming like a Booby over the unforeseen enlargement of his realm of study. Yet to Mason was it Purgatory,— some antepenultimate blow. What fore-inklings of the dark Forces of Over-Throw that assaulted his own Mind came visiting?— small stinging Presences darting in from the periphery of his senses to whisper, to bite, to inject Venoms . . . Beings from the new Planet. Infesting. . . . Mason has seen in the Glass, unexpectedly, something beyond simple reflection,— outside of the world,— a procession of luminous Phantoms, carrying bowls, bones, incense, drums, their Attention directed to nothing he may imagine, belonging to unknown purposes, flowing by thick as Eels, pauselessly, for how long before or after his interception, he could never know. There may be found, within the malodorous Grotto of the Selves, a conscious Denial of all that Reason holds true. Something that knows, unarguably as it knows Flesh is sooner or later Meat, that there are Beings who are not wise, or spiritually advanced, or indeed capable of Human kindness, but ever and implacably cruel, hiding, haunting, waiting,— known only to the blood-scented deserts of the Night,— and any who see them out of Disguise are instantly pursued,— and none escape, however long and fruitful be the years till the Shadow creeps ’cross the Sill-plate, its Advent how mute. Spheres of Darkness, Darkness impure,— Plexities of Honor and Sin we may never clearly sight, for when we venture near they fall silent, Murdering must be silent, by Potions and Spells, by summonings from beyond the Horizons, of Spirits who dwell a little over the Line between the Day and its annihilation, between the number’d and the unimagin’d,— between common safety and Ruin ever solitary. . . .

  The Royal Society by then had divided into “Men of Science,” such as Maskelyne and Mr. Hutton, and “Macaronis,” such as Henry Cavendish and Mr. Joseph Banks, a Dispute culminating for Maskelyne, with his own set of Enemies, at the Instant he found his name absent from the List of Royal Society Council Members for 1783–84, and had an Excursion into Vertigo unsought. At this Cusp of vulnerability, Mason, with the Exquisiteness of a Picador, launch’d his Dart.

  At The Mitre, of all Places, amid pipe-fumes and the muffl’d ring of pewter upon oak, they ended up waving half-eaten Chops in lieu of pointed Fingers. From an innocent discussion of the Great Meteor of the Summer previous, they abruptly surrender’d to Earthly Spite.

  “If they are Souls falling to Earth, becoming incarnate, then ’tis of Moment, which Point of the Zodiack they appear to radiate from.”

  “Like most of them that night, this had its Radiant in Perseus. If that’s any help to you.”

  Mason mimicking the preacherly rise and fall, “Perseus, home to most baleful Algol, the Ghoul-Star,— when upon its Meridian, directly above New-York, the American Sodom,— the Star that others nam’d Lilith,— or Satan’s, or Medusa’s, Head . . . would the Soul I seek, emerge and fall from a region so attainted? Never. You know that very well. You little Viper. What have you ever lost?”

  Even Mun, who loved a brisk Punch-up as well as the next truculent Sot, now chose rather to pull his Brother away, first to another Table, and presently out the Door and on to another Tavern altogether. “You’ll not dismiss me again,” cried Mason. “I fail’d to see Hatred for what it was,— believing you but a long-winded Fool, ever attempting to buy my regard with Gifts in your power,— ”

  “I may have priz’d your good opinion,” Maskelyne in that meek Tone Mason knew promis’d a Stab unannounc’d.

  Striking instead, “Why should it matter to you? Certainly not out of Respect for the better Astronomer,— ”

  “ ’Twas plain Recompense, no more than that. Schiehallion, which you rejected,— Day-Labor for the B. of L., without which your Family should have starv’d,— all in my humble Gratitude, for being allow’d, once, to approach Bradley,— ”

  “Better we’d starv’d,— for you came closer than you ought,— the worse for him.”

  “An Usurper? Is that what you make of me? Must I now be slain? Can you never get beyond it?”

  “No need to slay a Man who isn’t There.”

  Maskelyne understood that Mason meant, not There upon the Royal Society Council. His parsonical Scowl dropp’d from forehead to Eyes, as we clench our Faces sometimes, against Sentiment. No records survive, however, of when Nevil Maskelyne did, or did not, weep. What he did do now, was turn away from Mason, and for the first time, and the last time, not turn back to face him. The last Mason saw of him was the back of his Wig. The next year, after several dramatick Votes and Skirmishes, tho’ not all that many Stick-enhanc’d Injuries, ev’ryone in the Royal Soc. ended most frightful Chums, and Maskelyne was back on the Council, remaining so thereafter, Year upon Year, till his Passing.

  Mason struggles to wake. He arises, glides to the Door, and emerges from an ordinary Modern House, in one of the plainest cities on Earth, to find ascending before him one single dark extended Petroglyph,— a Town-enclos’d Hill-side, upon which lie the all-but-undamag’d remains of an ancient City, late Roman or early Italian temples and public buildings, in taupes and browns, Lombardy Poplars of a Green very dark. . . . There is writing on some of the Structures, but Mason cannot read it. Does not yet know it is writing. Perhaps when Night has fallen, he will be able to look up, to question the Sky.

  “I think he’s waking.” She is up and a-bustle, the children secreting themselves in corners, older ones shepherding younger ones to nearby rooms. Mary beckons Franklin in.

  Mason is gone gray, metallic whiskers sprout from his Face, even his eyelashes are grizzl’d. Franklin is surpriz’d to find that Mason has lost his Squint, that as the years have pass’d, his Face has been able somehow to enter the Ease of a Symmetry it must ever have sought, once he abandon’d the Night Sky, and took refuge indoors from the Day.

  “I trust you will soon be out of this Bed, Sir.”

  “Whilst I’m of use,” Mason says, “they sha
n’t seek my dissolution, not in the thick of this Dispute over the Bradley Obs so-call’d, these being, many of them, my own. No one wants to repeat what went on between Newton and Flamsteed. Excepting perhaps one of Kabbalistick Turn, who believes those Arrays of Numerals to be the magical Text that will deliver him to Immortality. Or suspects that Bradley found something, something as important as the Aberration, but more ominous,— something France may not have, or not right away, and Jesuits must not learn of, ever,— something so useful and deadly, that rather than publish his suspicions, or even reduce the data any further, Bradley simply left them as an exercise for anyone strongly enough interested. And what could that be? What Phantom Shape, implicit in the Figures?”

  “Ah, you old Quizzer,” Franklin tries to beam, Mason continuing to regard him, not pleading, but as if it didn’t matter much what Franklin thinks.

  “ ’Tis a Construction,” Mason weakly, “a great single Engine, the size of a Continent. I have all the proofs you may require. Not all the Connexions are made yet, that’s why some of it is still invisible. Day by day the Pioneers and Surveyors go on, more points are being tied in, and soon becoming visible, as above, new Stars are recorded and named and plac’d in Almanacks. . . .”

  “You’ve found it, have ye? This certainly isn’t that Curious Design with the trifling Cost that you sent me along with your Letter.”

  “Sir, you have encounter’d Deists before, and know that our Bible is Nature, wherein the Pentateuch, is the Sky. I have found there, written ev’ry Night, in Astral Gematria, Messages of Great Urgency to our Time, and to your Continent, Sir.”

  “Now to be your own as well, may an old Continental hope, Sir.”

  Mary looks in. “Well, young Mary,” Mason’s eyes elsewhere, unclaimable, “it turn’d out to be simple after all. Didn’t it.”

  “You’re safe, Charlie,” she whispers. “You’re safe.” She prays.

  Mary would return to England with the younger Children,— William and Dr. Isaac, Rebekah’s Sons, would stay, and be Americans. Would stay, and ensign their Father into his Death. Mr. Shippen, Revd Peters, Mr. Ewing, all Commissioners of the Line twenty years earlier, now will prove, each in his Way, their Salvation upon this Shore.

  “Since I was ten,” said Doc, “I wanted you to take me and Willy to America. I kept hoping, ev’ry Birthday, this would be the year. I knew next time you’d take us.”

  “We can get jobs,” said William, “save enough to go out where you were,— ”

  “Marry and go out where you were,” said Doc.

  “The Stars are so close you won’t need a Telescope.”

  “The Fish jump into your Arms. The Indians know Magick.”

  “We’ll go there. We’ll live there.”

  “We’ll fish there. And you too.”

  Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner, a collection of short stories, Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, and, most recently, Inherent Vice. He received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974.