Echo Round His Bones

by Thomas Disch

  It was of course misleading to consider two lives among the many millions affected. Strategy was global; the policy of optimum benefit was selected by a computer in possession of all the facts.

  Guilt? A man may murder another man, or three or four, and be culpable; but who could assume the guilt of megadeaths? Ordinarily the answer would have been simply -- the enemy. But the enemy was so far away, and his guilt so ingrained in the confusions of history -- camouflaged, so to speak -- that sometimes Hansard doubted that the answer was so simple and so convenient for his own conscience.

  Unwholesome, purposeless speculations. What had Pittmann said? "Conscience is a luxury for civilians."

  Hansard ate his dinner alone, then went to his room and tried to listen to music. But tonight everything sounded like German beer-hall polkas. At last he took a mild barbiturate, standard issue for the men of the Mars Command Posts.

  He was walking with Nathan Junior through a field of sere grass. The air was drowsy with the buzzing of flies. They were hunting deer. Nathan Junior carried the shotgun just as his father had shown him to. Hansard carried the lunch pail. Something terrible was going to happen. The color of the grass changed from yellow to brown, from brown to black. There was a loud buzzing in Hansard's ears.

  He picked up the receiver of the phone. "Yes?"

  "Ah, there you are, Nathan!"

  "General Pittmann."

  "I thought you might enjoy a game of Ping-pong."

  "When?" Hansard asked.

  "Right now?"

  "That sounds like a good idea," said Hansard. And it did.

  ELEVEN

  THE NATURE OF THE WORLD

  "You have to be very quick," said Bridie, "or it might happen that two objects will occupy the same place at the same time -- a highly undesirable condition. That's why we're so careful always to be here from two to three in the afternoon, when transmissions are made."

  Hansard snatched away the can of pâté de foie gras that the small transmitter had just produced as an echo. The lab technician reached into the right-hand receiver and placed can[1] that he had just transmitted there into the right-hand transmitter. He pressed a button, transmitting can[1] to the left-hand receiver and at the same time producing can[2] which Hansard immediately removed from the transmitter. The pile of cans[2] that had been thus produced that afternoon filled a large basket at Hansard's feet.

  "It seems to me," said Hansard judiciously, not interrupting his stockpiling, "that all this contradicts the laws of conservation. Where do these cans come from? How does a single can in the Real World produce a gross of cans here?"

  "If you want an answer to your question, Nathan, we'll have to start with First Principles. Otherwise it would be like explaining a nuclear reactor to someone who believes in the indivisibility of the atom. In a sense, though, your question isn't far afield from what it was that gave Bernard the whole idea of subspecies of reality. He'd already built the first experimental model of the machine, and the press hadn't decided whether to treat him like God or like a maniac, when he realized that he'd overlooked the notorious fact that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

  "But there seemed to be no reaction corresponding to the action of transmission -- nothing that could be measured. Of course it was there, in the mathematics, and Bernard busied himself with that. Are you familiar with topological transformations? No? But you do know that there are non-Euclidean geometries, and that these have the same validity as the common-sense varieties?

  "Well, matter transmission is essentially a topological transformation from our world of common-sense spaces to . . . somewhere else, and then back again. It is just at the moment that the transmitted body reaches that 'somewhere else' that the reaction takes place that forms the 'echo.' Which tells you very little, I fear, that you haven't already figured out for yourself. But have patience; I will get to your question.

  "The consequence, you see, of Bernard's ex post facto reasoning was an entirely new physics, a physics in which our universe is just a special case; indeed, a trivial case, as a point is a trivial case of the circle. There are, in this physics, progressive levels of reality, and matter can exist at each level. Now at the same time that there can be radical changes in the nature of the material world, there need not be corresponding changes in energic relationships."

  "That is to say?" Hansard asked.

  "That is to say that sub-two reality enjoys the same light of common day as sub-one reality, though that light issues from a sun composed of sub-one atoms; a fortunate consequence of the double nature of light, which seems to be both wave and particle -- and highly beneficial for us."

  "Highly necessary, too. I can see that for myself. But how much energy spillover is there? Sound, for instance, doesn't carry over from the sub-one to the sub-two world."

  "Because it is produced by the collision of sub-one particles and carried in a medium of sub-one gases. Similarly we can receive radiant heat from the sub-one universe, but not heat produced by conduction or convection. Magnetism and gravity still act on sublimated bodies, but Bernard has proved experimentally that the gravitational attraction isn't mutual. But we'd best not go into that. It's an embarrassing notion for someone like who wants to go on living in a comfortable old-fashioned Newtonian universe."

  "And you receive radio and television broadcasts from the Real World. I've learned that much."

  "Yes, if we possess a sub-two receiver."

  "But in that case, why don't you communicate with the Real World by broadcasting to them? Tell them about your situation on short-wave radio."

  "Have you ever tried shining a flashlight in the eyes of somebody in the Real World? No? Well, it's the same principle: We can see by their sunlight, but they're oblivious to light issuing from a light source constituted of secondary matter. The same would hold true of any radio broadcasts we might make. The Real World always remains real for us secondary creatures -- all too real. But for primary beings our secondary world might as well not exist, for all the difference it makes to them. No, there is no communication backwards.

  "As Bernard pointed out, the sublimation of matter that the transmitter causes is irreversible -- another case of entropy, of the universal backsliding of all things. So, no matter how much paté we can pile up here, we must permanently remain second-class citizens."

  "But in that case I don't understand why Panofsky -- Panofsky-Sub-One, that is, back there in the Real World -- keeps providing for you."

  "Faith," said the new Bridgetta, who was helping Hansard to stack the cans in such a way that they did not become too heavy to keep on top of the floor, "it's all done on faith. We must be thankful that Bernard is a Catholic, and has lots of experience believing unlikely things. Oh, I'm sorry," she said, glancing at Bridie. "It's your story."

  "You needn't practice being Bridget yet, darling. Not until you've been able to dye your hair. Besides, as it's been two years since I was in the Real World, you're the better qualified to tell about that."

  "Once Bernard had figured out the theory behind it," Bridgetta began, "he tried to extrapolate the problems that a sublimated being would have to face in an unsublimated world. None of the necessities would be available naturally to him: no food, no water, not even air. But he would definitely exist and be alive for as long as one can stay alive under such conditions. The first problem was to provide a supply of sublimated air, and fortunately such a supply was at hand in the pumping station that was to be built to supply the Command Posts.

  "Bernard invented all kinds of specious reasons for having that transmitter built here under the D.C. Dome instead of, as first planned, by Lake Superior. After only a month of transmitting, the dome would have been filled, and as long as the pumps keep pumping, the supply is more than adequate to compensate for what is lost through the traffic locks. Unfortunately the locations of the general cargo transmitters were specified in the rider to the Emergency Allocation Act, so we couldn't look forward to having all the initial advan
tages of Robinson Crusoe."

  "Though you do have cannibals," Hansard observed.

  "That was something else Bernard could do nothing about. He wanted to have the Camp Jackson manmitter built outside the dome, which would have solved our problem neatly."

  "And mine too."

  "Excuse me, that was a rather careless statement. But he was right: those men do pose a threat. The best we can hope for is that they don't discover us. Fortunately, one doesn't leave footprints here."

  "There'd be no problem at all, if you just told the government about this. Then those men could be supplied with the food -- and officers -- that they need."

  "Bernard looks on the government in a different light than you do, Captain," Bridie said rather coldly. "You forget that his relations with the government have not usually been of an agreeable nature. When it has not directly hindered his work, it expropriates and perverts it. No, don't try to argue about that with me, I'm only trying to explain Bernard's attitude. Furthermore, the government's scientists would not have understood the refinements of his theory, for they are still debating the validity of the mathematics on which the transmitter itself was based. Then, if the scientists could be convinced, try to imagine how you would go about explaining to an Army general that there are people just like you and me who are invisible, who can walk through walls and to whom we must send food, though it is probable that we will never, never be able to demonstrate -- in any tangible way -- that they exist."

  "When you put it like that, I don't see how he's convinced himself ."

  "Faith," Bridgetta said again, earnestly.

  "Faith and reason," Bridie corrected. "Don't forget that Bernard has spent his life as a mathematician. A balanced equation is tangible proof for him . Though our existence is abstract at best, he can believe in us just as readily as in the Pythagorean theorem."

  "And out of that kernel of belief has come . . . all this?" Hansard waved his hand at the goods lining the shelves of the room. "What possible reason does he give this lab assistant for carrying on this idiot work? It certainly can make no sense to him, if he's unaware that he's producing groceries for us."

  "In the case of food, Bernard tells them that he's concerned about possible nutritional losses that might be caused by excessive and repeated transmissions. Preposterous, of course, but you must remember that the very idea of the machine is preposterous to most people. Remember too that the government will do all it can to humor Bernard, so long as he remains tame. The mattress, for instance. Have you heard the story of the mattress?"

  Hansard shook his head.

  "For a while," Bridgetta said, taking her cue from Bridie, "whenever I was transmitted anywhere, Bernard insisted that I wrap myself in a mattress. To keep myself from being bumped , he explained to the secret service guards. Of course, it was really to give us something besides a floor to sleep on. But it did make a spectacular entrance at the Paris Embassy. Madame Viandot thought it was a new fashion from New York and ordered three mattresses for herself the next day."

  "And no one ever suspects? The things you transmit are so evidently survival items."

  "No one has any reason to suspect that survival is a problem for us. The lab assistants, of course, are constantly complaining about the meaningless tasks that Bernard sets for them, and once Bazeley of NASA came around to ask what Bernard was up to. But he only has to hint that he's doing research on a receiverless transmitter, and they fall over themselves to be obliging. For all they know, Bernard's still good for another golden egg."

  "Well, does that explain everything, Captain?" Bridie asked.

  "Yes, thank you very much. I appreciate your giving me so much time."

  Bridie smiled acidly. "But you've forgotten, you know, the biggest problem of all. You haven't learned how it is that you can walk."

  "Christ, I've gone all this time without realizing it was a problem! How is it that I'm able to walk across the same floor I can swim through?"

  "Don't feel dumb, Captain," said Bridgetta. "It's only natural to take for granted that things that you've always been able to do are possible. For Bernard, however, lacking any direct experience, this was the chief theoretical difficulty standing in the way of survival. He could never be certain that as soon as we arrive here we just don't start sinking into the ground. That's why I was so relieved when I arrived this morning -- because I found myself on terra firma. Firm enough, at least, if I don't wear heels."

  "But how does it work? What keeps me from just sinking down, if gravity is acting on me, as you say?"

  "Call it surface tension," said Bridie, "though actually it is a form of potential energy that is inherent in all matter at whatever level of reality. Like static electricity, it forms an equipotential surface over all objects -- a sort of 'skin' of energy. What keeps sublimated objects above the ground -- the cans on the shelves, for instance, or your feet -- is the small repellent force generated by the two surfaces; a force that decreases in proportion to the distance between the two realities.

  "Thus a sub-four and, perhaps, a sub-three can would sink through a sub-one shell. But in two adjacent fields of reality the repellent force is quite sufficient for most purposes, though not so great that it cannot be overcome by an opposing force. And therefore second-degree matter can interpenetrate first-degree matter, and you can 'swim' through the floor. All this we've learned here.

  "Panofsky-Sub-One has never been able to be sure, and so he keeps providing us with things we really don't need -- boards and linoleum rugs. When we try to spread the rugs, they just curl up into the floor. Still, we can be grateful that he errs on the side of caution."

  "I am afraid that I am sinking deeper and deeper now, though. Sub-three and sub-four cans. I'd never even considered the possibility."

  "Imagine what would happen if one of us were transmitted. A sub-two person going through a transmitter would leave behind a sub-three echo of himself. Surely you've been in caves and heard the echo of an echo? As a matter of fact, you've already described such a case. When that unpleasant sergeant donated his head to Mars, the transmission would have produced a sub-three head, though God only knows what's become of it. Sub-one water, as you may have found out, won't support sub-two bodies. A convenient rule-of-thumb is this: After sublimation, the solids of the unsublimated world appear to have the properties of liquids; liquids, the properties of gas, and gas the properties of that unfashionable commodity, an aether."

  "But to return a moment to what became of Worsaw-Sub-Two: his head was taken off by a sub-one transmitter. How is that?"

  "As I said earlier, energic relationships don't change as one descends the scale of reality. A sub-two transmitter, for instance, could not transmit a sub-one object, but a sub-two object, such as Worsaw's head, will be transmitted by a sub-one transmitter."

  "Well, all this has convinced me of one thing."

  "And that?" Bridgetta asked.

  "I'm never going to be transmitted again."

  "I don't understand," said Bridie.

  "If I've been having a hell of a time surviving here, think what it would be like for Hansard-Sub-Three."

  "Oh, you don't have to worry on that score. After all, if he didn't immediately begin to sink into the earth he would very soon die of suffocation, since he would lack a supply of sub-three air. No, at this point, Hansard-SubThree -- or Bridgetta-Sub-Three, for that matter -- is not a viable form."

  Panofsky entered the room then, driving his wheel chair through the wall. "Have you justified our little euthanasia program, my love?" he asked cheerily.

  "I was just getting to that," Bridie said.

  "It won't really be necessary now," Hansard said. "I can appreciate the need for some sort of measure, so long as you keep being transmitted regularly. It seems to me that you keep the population at a lower level than need be, but no doubt there are reasons for that."

  "There are," Panofsky assured him. "And the reason that we must keep going through the transmitter and replicating ourselv
es is that back there I can't be sure that the population is large enough. Not all our losses are voluntary, you know. On more than one occasion I've driven this chair and myself into the ground and drowned. Not I, strictly speaking, but the equivalent, me. So then, Nathan, you understand everything, eh?"

  "There's only one thing I still don't understand, sir."

  "And that?"

  "You."