Thomas Pynchon - Against the Day

The Penguin Press

New York

2012

THE PENGUIN PRESS

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This edition published in 2012 by The Penguin Press,

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Copyright Thomas Pynchon, 2006

All rights reserved

Originally published by The Penguin Press, 2006

Publishers Note

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-101-59466-7

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Its always night, or we wouldnt need light.

THELONIOUS MONK

One

The Light
Over the Ranges

N ow single up all lines!

Cheerly now... handsomely... very well! Prepare to cast her off!

Windy City, here we come!

Hurrah! Up we go!

It was amid such lively exclamation that the hydrogen skyship Inconvenience, its gondola draped with patriotic bunting, carrying a five-lad crew belonging to that celebrated aeronautics club known as the Chums of Chance, ascended briskly into the morning, and soon caught the southerly wind.

When the ship reached cruising altitude, those features left behind on the ground having now dwindled to all but microscopic size, Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander, announced, Now secure the Special Sky Detail, and the boys, each dressed neatly in the summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue, spiritedly complied.

They were bound this day for the city of Chicago, and the Worlds Columbian Exposition recently opened there. Since their orders had come through, the scuttlebutt among the excited and curious crew had been of little besides the fabled White City, its great Ferris wheel, alabaster temples of commerce and industry, sparkling lagoons, and the thousand more such wonders, of both a scientific and an artistic nature, which awaited them there.

Oh, boy! cried Darby Suckling, as he leaned over the lifelines to watch the national heartland deeply swung in a whirling blur of green far below, his tow-colored locks streaming in the wind past the gondola like a banner to leeward. (Darby, as my faithful readers will remember, was the baby of the crew, and served as both factotum and mascotte, singing as well the difficult treble parts whenever these adolescent aeronauts found it impossible to contain song of some kind.) I cant hardly wait! he exclaimed.

For which you have just earned five more demerits! advised a stern voice close to his ear, as he was abruptly seized from behind and lifted clear of the lifelines. Or shall we say ten? How many times, continued Lindsay Noseworth, second-in-command here and known for his impatience with all manifestations of the slack, have you been warned, Suckling, against informality of speech? With the deftness of long habit, he flipped Darby upside down, and held the flyweight lad dangling by the ankles out into empty spaceterra firma by now being easily half a mile belowproceeding to lecture him on the many evils of looseness in ones expression, not least among them being the ease with which it may lead to profanity, and worse. As all the while, however, Darby was screaming in terror, it is doubtful how many of the useful sentiments actually found their mark.

Say, that is enough, Lindsay, advised Randolph St. Cosmo. The lad has work to do, and if you frighten him that way, he sure wont be of much use.

All right, short-stuff, turn to, muttered Lindsay, reluctantly setting the terrified Darby back on his feet. As Master-at-Arms, in charge of discipline aboard the ship, he went about his job with a humorless severity which might, to the impartial observer, easily have suggested a form of monomania. But considering the ease with which this high-spirited crew were apt to find pretexts for skylarkingresulting more than once in the sort of close call which causes aeronauts to freeze with horrorRandolph usually allowed his second-in-command to err on the side of vehemence.

From the far end of the gondola now came a prolonged crash, followed by an intemperate muttering that caused Randolph, as always, to frown and reach for his stomach. I have only tripped over one of these picnic baskets, called out Handyman Apprentice Miles Blundell, the one all the crockery was in, s what it looks like.... I guess I did not see it, Professor.

Perhaps its familiarity, Randolph suggested plaintively, rendered it temporarily invisible to you. His reproof, though approaching the caustic, was well founded, for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crews physical safety. As Miles now went about picking up pieces of the damaged porcelain, he evoked the mirth of one Chick Counterfly, the newest member of the crew, who was leaning against a stay, observing him.

Ha, ha, cried young Counterfly, say, but if you aint the most slob-footed chap I ever seen! Ha, ha, ha! An angry retort sprang to Miless lips, but he suppressed it, reminding himself that, as insult and provocation came naturally to the class from which the newcomer sprang, it was upon his unhealthy past that one must blame the lads habits of speech.

Why dont you give me some of that fancy silverware, Blundell? young Counterfly now continued. And when we get to Chicago well find us a hock shop a-and

I recall to your attention, replied Miles politely, that all tableware bearing the Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property, to be kept aboard ship for use during official meal periods.

Like Sunday school around here, muttered the picklesome youth.

At one end of the gondola, largely oblivious to the coming and going on deck, with his tail thumping expressively now and then against the planking, and his nose among the pages of a volume by Mr. Henry James, lay a dog of no particular breed, to all appearances absorbed by the text before him. Ever since the Chums, during a confidential assignment in Our Nations Capital (see