Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

“Geometry and slaughter!” ejaculates Squire Haligast, “— The future of war, yet ancient as the mindless Exactitudes of Alexander’s Phalanx.” “Perhaps,” the Revd suggests, “we attribute to the Armies of old, a level of common Belief long inaccessible to our own skeptical Souls. Making the Prussian example all the more mystical,— whom or what can any modern army believe in enough to obey? If not God, nor one’s King . . . ?” “They submit,” Zsuzsa replies, “to the preëmptive needs of the Manœuvre,— a Soldier’s Faith at last must rest in the Impurity of his own desires. What can Hansel possibly wish for, that Heinz in front of him, and Dieter behind, and a couple of Fritzes on either side, have not already desir’d,— multiplied by all the ranks and files, stretching away across the Plain? The same blonde from down the Street, the same Pot of beer, the same sack of Gold deliver’d by some Elf, for doing nothing. Who is unique? Who is not own’d by someone? What do any of their desires matter, if they can be of no use to the Manœuvre, where all is timed from a single Pulse, each understanding no more than he must,— ”