Against the Day

by Thomas Pynchon

  After that meeting, curiously, Alonzo was heard from no more. The Commandant’s A.D.C. signed him out, handed him his weekly voucher for services rendered, watched him saunter away between the symmetric lines of trees before turning back to his own desk-work. . . .

  Meantime, now and then in the interstices of what was after all not a perpetual midwestern holiday, the former crew of the Inconvenience became aware of doubts creeping in. What if they weren’t harmonica players? really? If it was all just some elaborate hoax they’d chosen to play on themselves, to keep distracted from a reality too frightening to receive the vast undiscriminating light of the Sky, perhaps the not-to-be-spoken-of betrayal now firmly installed at the heart of the . . . the Organization whose name curiously had begun to escape them . . . some secret deal, of an unspecified nature, with an ancient enemy . . . but they could find no entries in any of the daily Logs to help them remember. . . .

  Had they gone, themselves, through some mutation into imperfect replicas of who they once were? meant to revisit the scenes of unresolved conflicts, the way ghosts are said to revisit places where destinies took a wrong turn, or revisit in dreams the dreaming body of one loved more than either might have known, as if whatever happened between them could in that way be put right again? Were they now but torn and trailing after-images of clandestine identities needed on some mission long ended, forgotten, but unwilling or unable to be released from it? Perhaps even surrogates recruited to stay behind on the ground, allowing the “real” Chums to take to the Sky and so escape some unbearable situation? None of them may really ever have been up in a skyship, ever walked the exotic streets or been charmed by the natives of any far-off duty station. They may only have once been readers of the Chums of Chance Series of boys’ books, authorized somehow to serve as volunteer decoys. Once, long ago, from soft hills, from creekside towns, from libraries that let kids lie on the floor where it’s cool and read the summer afternoons away, the Chums had needed them . . . they came.

  WANTED Boys for challenging assignments, must be fit, dutiful, ready, able to play the harmonica (“At a Georgia Camp Meeting” in all keys, modest fines for wrong notes), and be willing to put in long hours of rehearsal time on the Instrument . . . Adventure guaranteed!

  So that when the “real” Chums flew away, the boys were left to the uncertain sanctuary of the Harmonica Marching Band Training Academy. . . . But life on the surface kept on taking its usual fees, year by year, while the other Chums remained merrily aloft, kiting off tax-free to assignments all over the world, perhaps not even remembering their “deps” that well anymore, for there was so much to occupy the adventurous spirit, and the others—“groundhogs” in Chums parlance—had known, surely, of the risks and the costs of their surrogacy. And some would drift away from here as once, already long ago, from their wholesome heartland towns, into the smoke and confusion of urban densities unimagined when they began, to join other ensembles playing music of the newer races, arrangements of Negro blues, Polish polkas, Jewish klezmer, though others, unable to find any clear route out of the past, would return again and again to the old performance sites, to Venice, Italy, and Paris, France, and the luxury resorts of old Mexico, to play the same medleys of cakewalks and rags and patriotic airs, to sit at the same café tables, haunt the same skeins of narrow streets, gaze unhappily on Saturday evenings at the local youngsters circulating and flirting through the little plazas, unsure whether their own youth was behind them or yet to come. Waiting as always for the “true” Chums to return, longing to hear, “You were splendid, fellows. We wish we could tell you about everything that’s 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, sky-ready, 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 unrestrained 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 miracle-working 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 steering-committee 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 current-model Hypopsammotic Survival Apparatus on board, as no further expenditure for that purpose will be approved.”

  T
he machine fell silent, the pointers of its dozen or so dials returning to their resting-pins. “What the heck are they talking about?” squinted Darby puzzledly.

  “Professor Vanderjuice will know,” Randolph said.

  “Why, staggering sand-dunes!” 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 co-eds 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 standard-issue 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 fine-adjustment feature onto it to compensate for parameter drift, so as to keep everything solid-looking 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 wind-deposited without local obstruction, we assume the familiar mechanics of water-waves generally to apply, and if we wished to move deeper, say in an under-sand vessel, new elements analogous to vortex-formation would enter the wave-history—in any case, expressible by some set of wave-functions.”

  “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 essential, 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 floor-space, out into town- and map-space, 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 sky-roving, 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, Bug-brains,” 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 sky-bag 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 Tsar-like, 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 ill-starred 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

  While 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 high-bourgeois 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, four-space 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�
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  “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 insurance-company 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—”