Shadow Ticket

by Thomas Pynchon

tightening in on whatever is centered in its crosshairs, which at the moment happens to be Hicks’s head.

The day has darkened, the shop is quiet, the evening trimotor hop over to Grand Rapids will be taking off soon, everybody’s knocked off work except for Hicks and Boynt, Boynt’s shoes restless on the rug, last light of day severely raking over the prairie down across the town, bouncing off the Lake, rebouncing off the ceiling, desktop, Boynt’s eyeglasses.

maybe somebody believes you’re worth travel expenses, even if it’s only 50 smackers.” “You say 50?” Wait. “Boynt, now that’s 50 one-way, but…how about—” “Let’s take it one direction at a time, ain’t it,” handing over an envelope with a train ticket inside. “Union Station, tomorrow noon sharp, don’t be late. Pack light.”

consider how maybe we’re doing you an act of uncompensated kindness here, what our friends of the Jewish faith call a mitzvah. Don’t bother to thank me or anything.

Ubiquitous…you’re out, ev- -v’rywhere, you’re ubiquitous…like the airwaves, through the air, it’s iniquitous…that you

never-seem to care, how ridiculous-ly I’m yearning, in- -to what a sap I’m turning… you’re-here-and, then you’re there,

I try-to-act debonair, Like I know I’m s’posed to be—how I-wish-you’d, c’mere and, kiss-me-quick, Till-we’re-both-of-us brainless, as-a-brick,

Though it’s got kinda thick-with-dust, once it sure did the trick with us, ’n’ you, you’ve gone all…u-biquitous…

Streamlining on into afternoon deepening to blue evening, through Depression Pittsburgh, a ghost city, fires at the iron- and steelworks banked, massive structures unlit, though not unoccupied.

sleep it seems nowhere in the cards. The rhythm of the rails does nothing for Hicks the rest of the night but repeat wottachump, wottachump, wottachump till dawn, which arrives sometime between Harrisburg and Paoli.

Hicks figures he’d better do a courtesy drop-by at the New York branch of U-Ops, which he finds slightly west of Broadway beneath a neon sign featuring a pair of eyeballs electrically switching back and forth between bloodshot vein-crazed and lens-blank pop-bottle green.

About all Hicks can recall is having what he thought was an innocent beer, which in fact turned out to’ve been visited by a needle full of something in the chloral hydrate family, sending him off to dreamland before he could remember how to find a coaster to set his glass on.

Porfirio brings out a gold case full of Kyriazi Frères, Hicks takes one and lights up, grabbing another to put behind his ear. “For later.” “An optimistic thought, ‘later.’ ” A pause to inhale. “I assume you’re taking precautions.”

“Against…?” “There’s a betting book already open on you. The smart-money narrative has it that you are an American gangster, being deported to somewhere in Eastern Europe. Traveling in the custody of Lieutenant-Commander and Mrs. Quarrender, of the British Intelligence,

“It’s an open secret. You might want to have a word with them. Try

not to bring my name up if you can help it.”

“He looks so innocent, Alf. One can trust him, surely.” The Quarrenders tap a shuttlecock-weight glance back and forth. “See here then McTaggart, you can keep a secret can’t you, hmm no I thought not.”

As adventuresome younger children of merchant families were once sent eastward to make their fortunes, so nowadays children of civil service families are sent out to gather not riches, but negotiable intelligence, military and political. “Used to be a gentleman’s game.

I’m only a private op.”

course.” “Routine ticket, only over here for as long as it takes, till everything’s back to normal.”

“do you really not know? ‘Normal’? Things will never go back to the way they were, it’ll all just keep getting more, what...

“Parlor tricks,” footnotes Philippa. “Many are the misguided,” Alf putting a hand on hers, “who need to believe that’s all it is, poor old dear, seen it a hundred times, hasn’t she, but can’t admit it.” While not a dues-paying member of the Society for Psychical Research, Alf is more sensitized in these matters than Philippa, who attends impatiently to her fingernails or hums music hall tunes whenever Alf reports a sighting of uncertain luminosity, or a wordless voice that might be more than wind strumming the guy wires of the radio masts.

“Let’s talk it over sometime,” Stuffy suggests. “Better if there’s beer on the table. You ever get to Fiume, that’s our home port these days,

there’s some swell beer joints, it’s the Milwaukee of the Adriatic.”

The train stops at Belgrade for about an hour. Hicks, nodding in and out of slumber, is aware that at some point Alf and Pips, after an unexpected wire from London, “Uncle Bostwick having another episode. Please do try to pop round forthwith. Regards from all,” have taken their leave,

“A runaway cheese heiress you have been assigned to locate and return to the U.S. whose father”—ominous pause—“Bruno…Air-mont,”

our most sought-after public enemy.”

Cheese Fraud routinely committed by a counterfeit cheese operation Continent-wide,

far worse than most civilians realize. Half the time don’t know what they’re eating anyway. Nor have the least idea how difficult the International Cheese Syndicate can become. The Roquefort police, the Gorgonzola squadri, even Switzerland—harmless by comparison. InChSyn are the mad dog of Cheese Enforcement, authorized to conduct special operations, come in through windows,

“Cheese Fraud being a metaphor of course, a screen, a front for something more geopolitical, some grand face-off between the cheese-based or colonialist powers, basically northwest Europe, and the vast teeming cheeselessness of Asia,

Orientals over the generations have grown unfamiliar with cheese,

Bruno has been over here in Central Europe for some

time now,

reached an arrangement with the InChSyn about the time the Swiss Cheese Union took its fateful step of declaring fondue the national dish.

is Daphne in on this too?”

“In your investigations you cannot have failed to notice how often fathers and daughters are run by strange emotions, which, although occasionally dangerous, do continue to guarantee job security for us all.”

The mystery of Dad-daughter friction means fiction.

Europe trembles, not only with fear but with desire. Desire for what has almost arrived, deepening over us, a long erotic buildup before the shuddering instant of clarity, a violent collapse of civil order which will spread from a radiant point in or near Vienna, rapidly and without limit in every direction, and so across the continents,

enough edible prey to solve the Meat Question forever…”

“So…you’re bringing me in to Vienna?” “We are continuing on to Budapest.”

just down the river in Budapest carouses a psychical Mardi Gras in every shade of the supernatural no matter how lurid.

Budapest just at the moment is the metropolis and beating heart of asport/apport activities,

“The chief beneficiaries according to the Evidenzbüro are a syndicate of fences closely associated with Bruno Airmont.”

We have found it necessary to seek help in Budapest, and come to arrangements with the noted apportist Dr. Zoltán von Kiss.

Ace Lomax is your new assignment. The paperwork will arrive in a few days.”

And if I decide to skip on you? That could happen too.” “Where would you go? We would arrest you before you could get anywhere. Here’s the warrant, all filled in, approved, signed and stamped, Unlawful Flight to Avoid Employment.”

pretty soon there’s no place to run to

anymore.

“Meanwhile please accept this gift fr...

“Mr. McTaggart, may we introduce the Walther PPK. Newest model,

The Oktogon is jumping. A good percentage of the foot traffic in this part of Budapest look to be young women, turned out far more snazzily than anybody working West Wells Street, or the Loop for that matter.