Mason & Dixon (90 page)

"This Visto.. .is a result of what we have chosen, in our Lives, to work at," Dixon bewilder'd that the Topick is even coming up, " - unlike some mechanickal water-fowl, we have to, what on our planet is styl'd, 'work,'...?"

"Running Lines is what surveyors do" explains Mason.

"Thankee, Mason," says Dixon. "And one of the few things Star-gazing's good for, is finding out where you are, exactly, upon the Surface of the Earth. Put huz two together with enough Axmen, you have a sort of Visto-Engine. Two Clients wish'd to have a Visto for one of their Boundaries. Here we are. What other reason should we be together for?"

"Thankee, Dixon," says Mason.

Later that night, and, as he hopes, out of the Duck's Hearing, Mason says, "I've been thinking about that Chicken today."

"Aye, Ah knoah how lonely it gets out here, tho' aren't they said to be moody...?"

"Only a moment, dear Colleague, pray you.—
 
Suppose Right Lines cause Narcolepsy in all Fowl, including,—

"— the Duck," Dixon exclaims. "Why aye! As in the Chinaman's Refrain, there's all thah' Bad Energy, flowing there night and Day,— bad for us, anyhow. But for the Duck? Who knows? Mightn't it, rather, be nourishing her? helping to increase her Powers,— even...uncommonly so?"

"Exactly. 'Twould explain her relentless Presence near it, .. .humm... yes, the trick,— should we wish to play it,— would be to see to her perfect location upon the Line,— symmetrickally bisected."

"Facing East, or West?"

"What matter? she can turn upon a farthing however fast she goes."

"Pond-Larvae," offers Armand, feeling like a Traitor, "- - she still fancies them....”

"A Decoy. We need a painted Wood representation of a Duck."

"Tom Hynes is the very man, Sir, hand him a Pine Log and he'll carve ye a Quacker ye can't tell from real even close enough to scare it away."

"It must look like an Automatick Duck, not a natural one."

Tom does a better job on the Decoy, than he knows. Soon the Duck is spending hours, still'd, companionably close to the expressionless Object. One day, in an Access, she throws herself upon it, going to beak-bite its Neck, and of course the Truth comes out. "Wood." For a moment it seems she will sigh, ascend, accelerate once more, back into her Realm of Velocity and Spleen. Instead, "Well, it's a beginning," she says. "It floats like a Duck,— it fools other Ducks, who are quite sophisticated in these matters, into believing it a Duck. It's a Basis. Complexity of Character might develop, in time—" Quiet, good-looking, ever there to drop in on after a long Tour of Flying,— and where there's one withal, why, there's more of the same.. .Famine to Feast! Who needs bright Conversation?

".. .and that's why, around those foothills, some nights when the Wind is blowing backwards and the Moon's just gone behind the Clouds, you can hear the Hum of her going by, due West, due East, and that forlorn come-back call, and then folks'll say, ' 'Tis the Frenchman's Duck, out cruising the Line.''

"Why doesn't somebody set her free," the children of settlers up and down the Line want to know. "Go in, get her, bring her out?"

"Not so easy. Anybody finds a chance to try it, she disappears. She's like a Ghost who haunts a house, unable to depart."

"A Ghost usually has unfinish'd Business. What, think you, detains the Duck?"

"A simple, immoderate Desire for the Orthogonal," in the Opinion of Professor Voam, "which cannot allow her even the thought of life away from that much Straightness, the Leagues of perfect straightness, perfect alignment with Earth's Spin,— flying back and forth, East and West, forever, the buffeting of the Magnetick currents, the ebb and flow of Nations over the Land-Surface, the Pulse and Breath of the solid Planet, the Dance with the Moon, the entire great Massive Progress 'round and 'round the Sun...."

For a while after becoming a Resident of the Visto, the Duck accosts Travelers for Miles up and down the Line, ever seeking Armand. For a

 
chance at Revenge, it is worth slowing into Visibility,— besides giving
her an opportunity to chat. "Here,"— producing from some interior
Recess a sheaf of Notices in print, clipp'd from various newspapers and
Street-bills,— "here,— voilà, with the Flauteur, and the Tambourine-
Player? in the Center, 'tis moi, tnoi
   
Listen to what Voltaire wrote

about me, to the Count and Countess d'Argental,— '...sans la voix de la Le More et le Canard de Vaucanson, vous n'auriez rien que fit ressouvenir de la gloire de la France,' all right? Le More, who's that? some Soprano. Fine, I'm a big-hearted sort of Fille, the Glory of France certainly knows how to share a Stage. You think it was easy ev'ry night with those two Musicians? Listening again and again to that Ordure? You'd think now and then a little Besozzi, at least,— any Besozzi would've done. Relief? forget it, not in the Rooms we work'd. Took all my Stage Discipline not to start quacking along with those grand high C's. One admires the man, genius Engineer, but his taste, musickally speaking, runs from None to Doubtful.

"The true humiliation came at the end of each Exhibition, when Vaucanson actually open'd me up, and show'd to anyone who wish'd to stare, any Bas-mondain, the intricate Web within of Wheels, levers, and wires, unto the last tiny piece of Linkage, nay, the very falling Plummet that gave me Life,— nowadays, itself 'morphos'd, so as to fall without end.... They pointed, titter'd, sketch'd exquisitely in the air,— Indignity absolute. He would never allow anyone the least suspicion that I might after all be real. Inside me lay Truth Mechanickal,— outside was but clever impersonation. I was that much his Creature, that he own'd the right to deny my Soul.

"His undoing was in modifying my Design, hoping to produce Venus from a Machine, as you might say. My submission was not yet complete enough. In the years before the late War, as Publick tastes veer'd in quite another Direction and we were left becalm'd, each in the Company of few but the other, his demands grew less and less those of a Man of Science. He wish'd, rather, to hear Sounds of affection and contentment, in his presence. He got nothing more abandon'd than Wing Caresses, perhaps a Beak-Bite.. .a limited Repertoire, but all the same, one felt.. .compro-mis'd. He wish'd to control utterly, not an Automaton, but a creature capable of Love, not only for Drakes and Ducklings, but for himself. The

 
approach of his middle years, the winds blowing as from an untravel'd North..."

'Tis on their way back East for the last time, that the Duck learns to hold perfectly still in the Air, at any altitude, and remain there whilst the earth Spins beneath her. She understands that she may now shift north or south, to any Latitude she likes, without being restricted any more to the Line and its Visto. But she is curious about where else the Parallel goes. She ascends, one evening after Mess, and as the Party, with their Tents, all go rolling away into the Shadow, they in their Turn watch her, pois'd above the last lit Meridian, recede over the Horizon and vanish. Next morning here she comes roaring in at well over seven hundred miles per hour, coasting to a smooth stop and settling upon the Cook-tent's Peak with not a Feather out of place. "Interesting Planet," is her comment. "I have been o'er the Foot of the Italian Boot, close by Bukhara and Samarkand,— "I can't wait to do the Equator. Ye have tapp'd into but five degrees of three hundred sixty, twenty minutes of a Day it would cause you Astonishment and Distress to learn of your minor tho' morally problematick part in."

"A Global Scheme! Ah knew it!" Dixon beginning to scream, "what'd Ah tell thee?"

"Get a grip on yerrself, man," mutters Mason, "what happen'd to 'We're men of Science'?"

"And Men of Science," cries Dixon, "may be but the simple Tools of others, with no more idea of what they are about, than a Hammer knows of a House."

("Ah," sighs Euphrenia, "all too true. The Life of an Automaton cannot, however conceiv'd, strike anyone as enviable."

"Excuse us, Aunt," ventures DePugh, "but did we understand you to say,- "

"Don't get her started!" Brae hisses.

"Have you, Aunt," Ethelmer fiendishly pretending Interest, "really shar'd the Life of— "

"Shar'd! Why, in my own Student Days, in far-off Paris, France, I was oblig'd to keep Starvation off my Sill, by pretending to be an Automaton Oboe player. My Manager, Signore Drivelli (actually, under the Statutes of the Two Sicilies, we were man and wife), not only charg'd Admission,

 
but also took bets on the side as to how long I could play between breaths."

"Zabby," pleads Mr. LeSpark, "speak with her about this sometime, could you please, it being your Family?"

"What was your best Time?" asks Ethelmer.

"Never went longer than twenty minutes or so, but I could've easily tootl'd on all night, the secret being to sneak Charges of Air in thro' your Nose, using the cheeks as a Plenum, for Storage, as 'tis in the Bag-Pipes,— The Musick written for Oboe is notoriously lacking in places to breathe. The Notes just keep coming, sixteen or thirty-two of 'em ev'ry time you tap your foot, not to mention the embellishments you're expected to put in yourself, for no extra Fee of course,— the principal Reason so many of us go insane being, not from forcing air into a small mouthpiece, but in all the sneakery and diversion of Attention requir'd to keep blowing,— in India they understand how important the breath is,— being indeed the Soul in different form,— and how dangerous it is to meddle unnaturally with the rhythms proper to it....")

As Dixon becomes possess'd by the Horizon, Hugh Crawfford is seen to walk to and fro shaking his head, presently muttering softly. Mason corners him behind a Waggon. "Out with it, Sir,— things are too precarious here for you to be concealing your opinions from me."

"Not concealing. Withholding, maybe,— " Mason, losing his composure, lunges for and attempts to strangle the Guide. They slip and stagger in the newly fallen Leaves. "Very well,— Mason! off, off, attend me, this is a Mountain Dulcimer, that I put together by Hand once, when there wasn't much else to do,— " and in a wild Note-scape, almost minor, almost Celtick, commences an uncommonly amazing Hammering and Plucking. When Mason appears soothed enough, "Now, I've seen Mr. Dixon's Ailment before,— yes,— with trappers, with traders,

With rangers and strangers, the Frenchies out there call it 'Rap-ture de West,' Brother, Sooner or later, It's go-ing, to take ye,

 
Away to the sunset, Along with the rest,

So 'tis hey, ye Dirt-Farmers, I'm gone, for the Prairies, And over, the Mountains, and Down to the Sea, if I Get back some Day, tho' the World shine as Morning, yet Ever will sunsets be Beck'ning to me—

But out under the Moon, Chestnut Ridge and Cheat behind them, and Monongahela to cross, into an Overture of meadow to the Horizon, lowlands become to them a dream whilst under a Spell, the way it gives back the Light, the way it withholds its Shadows,— who might not come to believe in an Eternal West? In a Momentum that bears all away? "Men are remov'd by it, and women, from where they were,— as if surrender'd to a great current of Westering. You will hear of gold cities, marble cities, men that fly, women that fight, fantastickal creatures never dream'd in Europe,— something always to take and draw you that way," Mr. Craw-fford puffing meanwhile upon an Indian Pipe, whose Bowl, finely carv'd of soft stone, by a Quebec Frenchman he had dealings with years ago, depicts a female head of Classical beauty, her Locks spilling beyond obsessiveness, all blacken'd with fire and grease, smok'd out of for all those years, having held a thousand Stems, from Reeds stirr'd by the Mists of Niagara, to Cane at the mouth of the Mississippi, "— you recall to me myself, in my first days out here, up all night, going West by way of the Stars. It's said some have a gift for it, like dowsing, and can run true bearings indefinitely under the most obscur'd of Skies. Many of Colonel Byrd's Companions running the Line 'twixt Virginia and Carolina possess'd the gift,— when the Party split, with half going 'round the Great Dismal and half right across, becoming detain'd in that Cypress Purgatory for weeks, 'twas the Westering Certainty that got 'em thro' safe.... I've even managed to keep my Latitude for the odd few seconds, so I take an amateur's Interest, and thus far, by my estimate, you are hardly the width of a pipestem out. As to what draws Mr. Dixon,— I

 
don't mean to present it lightly. We say the Westering's 'got' him. And I also tell you this so you'll know that when"— here Mason draws a sharp breath,— "something requires an unpremeditated cessation to the Line, well,— Mr. Dixon...may not be inclin'd to stop."

"He wouldn't take a chance with his— " but the Guide has put a hand upon Mason's arm, motioning with his head as Dixon comes into view,— he has been wandering among the tents and Waggons, looking troubled, very tall and out of scale in the uncertain dinner-time light. By the time he's out of earshot again, it has occurr'd to Mason, "You said what? an unpremeditated,—

"Cessation."

"Is there something else I should know?"

There is, nor does it take long in coming. Mortality at last touches the Expedition. William Baker and John Carpenter are kill'd by the Fall of a single Tree, on September 17th, a Thursday. 'Tis possible they'd sign'd up together, and work'd together,— their names are enter'd together in Mr. McClean's records. The next week, Carpenter's is enter'd by mistake, to be follow'd by a trailing Line over to a row of Zeros, for Days work'd in the Week. Mo must have forgot,— so may the Book-keeper's Page be haunted,— a Ghost-Entry, John Carpenter's Soul lingering,— William Baker's, to Appearance, having mov'd on.

"This is a Disaster," Mason curl'd as a dying Leaf, dispos'd to give it all up. "You agree, don't you, Jeremiah, you know it doesn't happen, it never happens, that two are kill'd in the fall of a single Tree?"

"Their People have them,— they'll be safe?" too vex'd in Reassuring himself, to see Mason's Point.

"You were the one looking for a Sign, weren't you, well there's your miserable Sign, why aren't you reading it."

" 'Twas a tall old Chestnut, they set their Wedges wrong, and then it fell where they hadn't guess'd it would. What else, pray?"