Mason & Dixon (99 page)

"Bonny time to be tellin' me thah'...?"

"You were the Baby, the Baby can do no wrong, don't you know thah'?"

"So Dad came to an agreement," Jeremiah press'd, "with Mr. Bird."

"Dear knaahs, Jeremiah."

"How could he repay Mr. Bird," Dixon asks of Mason, years later. "Thah's what I can't see."

Of course it matters to him. Mason has his own mysteries in this regard,— what could the Miller of Wherr have done for the Director-to-be of the Honorable E.I.C.? Bread? "Coal?" he speculates.

"A few pence off upon the Chaldron,— 'twould add up. Yet in that Quantity,— "

"Suggests a need for high heat, sustain'd over time. Glass? Iron?"

Mason is content for the moment simply to sit, inside The Jolly Pitman and a Carousing of Geordies, feeling settled, quietly plumb, seeing against the neutral gray of the smoke all the sun-flashes from the Day, the clear slacks, the sand bottoms, the nettles and rose bay willow-herb, the sudden streak of light as the most gigantic Carp he'd ever run across in his life, keeled, what in legend will be recalled as but inches from his foot. It was the notoriously long-lived Canny Bob, said to've been chased by the Romans who once encamped up above Binchester. "But as you froze there, seemingly the object of Torpidinous assault," Dixon tells him, after Bob has made his escape, "I hesitated to approach you, for fear of electrocuting myself. At least I was able for once to observe him at some leisure,— he strangely seem'd to like you, Mason. I've never had that good a chance at him, no one I know has been as close as you. The Romans 'round here used to say, 'Carpe carpum,' that is, 'Seize the Carp'." "All right. I waited too long. But think how embarrassed all your friends would have felt, had a Stranger taken him,— and my first time on the river, too. Just as well, really." There is a fragility about Dixon now,

 
a softer way of reflecting light, such that Mason must accordingly grow gentle with him. No child has yet summon'd from him such care.

"Tha must attend closely to the Dace up here as well, for they look exactly like Chub, yet are they night and Day when it comes to the fight they'll put up...?"

"Excuse me, one looks at the Fins. 'Tis fairly obvious which is which."

"Not here, I fear. Nor will River Wear Chub have much to do with the Bread-baits you no doubt learn'd to use down in Gloucester."

"What then? Some rare Beetle, I imagine."

"Some rare Beef would better do the Trick... ? They are blood-crazed, and feral."

Despite their best Efforts, talk will ever drift to their separate Tran
sits. "Maskelyne kept me over there," says Mason. "Nothing but
Weather, Day after Day. Couldn't get enough Obs for him. Would have
taken the projected age of the Universe. Brought me back upon a
meat-ship
              
"

In the Hold were hundreds of Lamb carcasses,— once a sure occasion for Resentment prolong'd, now accepted as part of a Day inflicted by Fate, ever darkening,— exil'd to which, he must, in ways unnam'd,— perhaps, this late, unable to include "simply,"— persist. In the heavy weather of late November, the carcasses thump'd against the Bulkheads, keeping exhausted and increasingly irritated Mason from sleep. Deep in the mid-watch, his Mental Bung at last violently ejected by the Gases of Rage, he ran screaming to undog the hatch into the forward cargo space, and was immediately caught, a careless Innocent at some Ball of the Dead, among a sliding, thick meat Battery, the pale corpses only a bit larger than he, cold as the cold of the Sea that lay, he helpfully reminded himself, just the other side of these Timbers curving into candle-less blackness,— oof! as the ship roll'd, some dead Weight, odorous of sheep-fat, went speeding by headed for the Port side, nearly knocking Mason upon his Arse, and obliging him immediately to spin away upon one Foot, whilst the Ship pitch'd heavily, down and up,— fine Business. His intention, a true Phlegmatick's, having been but to locate the offending Carcass,— being unable to allow in his Data more than one,— and secure it, somehow, imagining the Meat-Hold well supplied with any Lines and Hardware he might need.

Fool. Here were the Representatives of ev'ry sheep he had ever spoken ill of,— and now he was at their Mercy. But they are dead, he told himself. Aye, but not only dead. Here was a category beyond Dead, in its pointless Humiliation, its superfluous Defeat,— stripp'd, the naked faces bruis'd and cut by the repeated battering of the others in this, their final Flock, they slither'd lethally 'round him. He had a clear moment in which he saw them moving of their own Will,— nothing to do with the movements of the Ship,— elaborately, the way dancers at Assemblies danc'd.

"Well I certainly wouldn't want to be a Disruption, here!" Mason roar'd at them, waiting, blind as a Corn in a Mill, to be crush'd. The situation held little hope for him,— wherever he stepp'd, he slipp'd, there being no purchase upon the Deck, owing to the untallied Tons of Fat that had long made frictionless ev'ry surface,— Mason instantly recognizing the same proximity to pure Equations of Motion as he had felt observing Stars and Planets in empty Space, with only the beautiful Silence missing now—

"However'd tha get out of thah' one?" Dixon wonders.

"Ahrrhh! the Smell alone might have done for me. Quite snapp'd me back, yes it did, like a Spring, back to that damn'd Cape. I recall being very annoy'd, that my last Earthly Memories should be of that dismal place. Purgatory has to be better, I told myself, maybe even Hell.—
 
Fortunately, just then, a Party of Sailors, who for some reason were neither on Watch nor asleep, seeming indeed almost furtive in Demeanor, res-cu'd me. I noted too a puzzling air of Jollification, some of it directed at me. 'How is it in there?' one of them ask'd, with what, upon Shore, would certainly've been taken as an insinuating Leer. Not 'How was it,'— which is odd enough, no, what this Sailor distinctly said—

"Why aye, Mason, tha see it, don't tha ...? they were Sailors...? 'Tis probably a standard practice, upon those Meat-Voyages...? Something a foremast Swab, in his Day's unrelenting bleakness, might have to look forward to, when the Midnight Hour creeps 'round...?"

"What.—
 
Do you mean,— Oh, Dixon, really."

Dixon shrugs. "If a Lad were wide awake, kept his wits about him, why the pitch of Danger...? eeh, eeh! at thah' speed, thah' lack of Friction.. . ? and one's Mates in there as well,— might be just the Thing,—

"And then at the Dock," Mason continues brusquely, " - at Preston,— for the Captain declared that he 'would not risk Liverpool,'— this

 
enormous crowd were waiting,— some of them quite fashionable-looking indeed, significant Wigs and so forth, running about, screaming, setting fire to Factors' Sheds, and now and then, to one another. 'Twas the Food Riots,— the same having pitch'd, as I'd thought, to full fury when I sail'd for Ireland, now a year later, far from having abated, reach'd even to Proud Preston. And what of the rest of England? My Father? Had they burn'd down the Mill yet?

"No one was there to meet me. The Sunlight abovedecks was smear'd, the Shadows deeper than Day-time's. The Mob, many of them small and frail from Hunger, yet possess'd by a Titanic Resentment that provided them the Strength, storm'd the Ship, and began removing Lamb carcasses (the Abasement of these not yet complete), and throwing them into the Water,— casting away food they might rather have taken with them, and had to eat. The loud insanity, the pure murderous Thumping. Thou wouldn't've wish'd to go out there at that moment, either. The Captain allow'd me to shelter in his Quarters, till it should be safe to emerge,— proving meantime an engaging conversationalist, particularly upon the Topick of Mutton, as to which he seem'd most well inform'd, and even strangely...affectionate,—

"Of course,— being, as tha'd say, the Sultan of the Arrangement." "Well, it never occurr'd to me. Too late to do anything about it—" "Pity...? Tha might've had a bit of Fun in there, at least...?" "Aahhrr— With its Corollary, that whatever I do imagine as Fun, invariably produces Misery...."

"Not only for thee," adds Dixon, pretending to scrutinize the Fire, "but for ev'ry Unfortunate within thy Ambit, as well."

"Gave thee a rough time, didn't I, Friend." Reaching to rest his hand for a moment upon Dixon's Shoulder, before removing it again.

"Oh," Dixon nodding away at an Angle from any direct view of his Partner's Face, "as rough times go,...the French were worse...? Then five Years of Mosquitoes, of course—" The old Astronomers sit for a while in what might be an Embrace, but that they forbear to touch.

"Quite a Lark, you must have had
    
I returned from the North Cape in

some Con-fusion,— wishing but to put distance between my back and

 
Hammerfost, a-Southing I went, in a true Panick, all the way to London. Hoping the while, that I had only slamm'd my Nob once too often upon the roof-beams of that Dwarf's Hovel the Navy styl'd an Observatory.... Would have welcomed the chance to see thee, to talk, but Maskelyne was being a Nuisance as ever, and thou were yet in Ulster....

"Bayley went to the North Cape. I was put off about seventy miles down the coast, at Hammerfost, on Hammerfost Island. The Ground was frozen so hard it took a week to dig a hole for a Post to fix the Clock to. Then it snow'd for a week, sometimes with violent Winds, and Hail. The days just before the Transit were hazy, and now and then very hazy indeed. On the morning of the Transit, the first sight I had of the Planet, she was already half immerg'd. Ten minutes later, for one instant, thro' a thin cloud, it seem'd she was upon the Sun. Yet no thread of Light. Six hours on, the same thing. Caught her going off the Disk, internal Contact was already past,— one swift View, and then the Clouds came in again. Got the Eclipse later, next day took the Dip to the Horizon. Here was the World's Other End,— one stood upon a great Bluff and look'd out upon the Arctic Ocean, the Horizon strangely nearer than it ought to've been. 'Twas amid this terminal Geometry, that I was visited." Mason appearing to hear no resonance, "— Taken, then,— yet further North."

"Ah,— " Can Dixon see the Apprehension in his Face? "How far was that?"

"Hours...? Days...? He appear'd with no warning. Very large eyes, what you would call quite large indeed. I had no idea who, or how many, might have been dwelling in this desolate place. 'You must come with me,' quoth he.

" 'I have a ship leaving in a few hours, man,' I mumbl'd, and kept on with my paper-work.

" 'H.M.S. Emerald, Captain Douglas. There will be no wind until we return. Come.' I looked up. He was undeniably there,— I had not been upon the island long enough for Rapture of the North to have set in. For a moment I thought 'twas Stig, a Shadow of Stig, you recollect our mystickal

Axman, with his Nostalgia for the North, so in command of him
Yet my

Visitor's eyes were too strange even for Stig,— his aspect, his speech, were nothing I recogniz'd. We descended to the Shore, and went out upon a great Floe of Ice, and so one Floe to another, until all had frozen into a continuous Plain. In his movement he seem'd as much a Visitor as I in this Country. From his Pack he unfolded a small Sledge of Caribou Hide, stretch'd upon an ingeniously hinged framework of Whalebone, and from a curious black Case produced a Device of elaborately coil'd Wires, set upon Gimbals, which he affix'd to the Prow of the vehicle. 'Hurry!' I had barely climb'd aboard when the whole concern spun about, till pointing, as a Needle-man I surmis'd, to the North Magnetick Pole, and began to move, faster and ever faster, with a rising Whine, over the Ice-Prairie. 'Sir,' I would have shouted, had the swiftness of our Travel allowed me breath, 'Sir, not so far!' when I'd really meant to say, 'not so fast.' We sped thus northward in perpetual sunlight. Night would not come to that Latitude. The Sun up there, from mid-May to late July, does not set. The phantoms, the horrors, when they came, would not be those of Night.

"Nor, as things turn'd out, would it be a Journey to the North Pole. The Pole itself, to be nice, hung beyond us in empty space,— for as I was soon to observe, at the top of the World, somewhere between eighty and ninety degrees North, the Earth's Surface, all 'round the Parallel, began to curve sharply inward, leaving a great circum-polar Emptiness," as Mason shifts uncomfortably and looks about for something to smoke or eat, "directly toward which our path was taking us, at first gently, then with some insistence, down-hill, ever downward, and thus, gradually, around the great Curve of its Rim.—
 
And 'twas so that we enter'd, by its great northern Portal, upon the inner Surface of the Earth." A patiently challenging smile.

Mason sits rhythmickally inserting into his Face an assortment of Meg Bland's Cookies, Tarts, and Muffins,.. .pretending to be silent by choice, lest any phrase emerge too farinaceously inflected.

Dixon continues cheerfully.—

"The Ice giving way to Tundra, we proceeded, ever downhill, into a not-quite-total darkness, the pressure of the Air slowly increasing, each sound soon taking on a whispering after-tone, as from a sort of immense composite Echo,— until we were well inside, hundreds of miles below the Outer Surface, having clung to what we now walked upon quite handily all the way, excepting that we arriv'd upside-down as bats in a belfry...."

The Interior had remain'd less studied philosophickally, than endur'd anxiously, by those who might choose to travel Diametrickally across it,—

 
means of Flight having been develop'd early in the History of the Inner Surface. "Their God, like that of the Iroquois, lives at their Horizon,— here 'tis their North or South Horizon, each a more and less dim Ellipse of Sky-light. The Curve of the Rim is illuminated, depending on the position of the Sun, in greater or lesser Relievo,— chains of mountains, thin strokes of towers, the eternally spilling lives of thousands dwelling in the long Estuarial Towns wrapping from Outside to Inside as the water rushes away in uncommonly long waterfalls, downward for hours, unbrak'd, till at last debouching into an interior Lake of great size, upside-down but perfectly secured to its Lake-bed by Gravity as well as Centrifugal Force, and in which upside-down swimmers glide at perfect ease, hanging over an Abyss thousands of miles deep. From wherever one is, to raise one's Eyes is to see the land and Water rise ahead of one and behind as well, higher and higher till lost in the Thickening of the Atmosphere.... In the larger sense, then, to journey anywhere, in this Terra Concava, is ever to ascend. With its Corollary,— Outside, here upon the Convexity,— to go anywhere is ever to descend."