Echo Round His Bones

by Thomas Disch

  "Oh, put that gun away, Nathan! What do you think I'm going to do -- attack you with a butter knife? I'm too weak to . . . " he closed his eyes ". . . to finish sentences. It won't do you any good, Nathan, this noble gesture of yours. If you'd waited till the last minute, perhaps you might have prevented me. But then, this is only one post. What of the other? What of Russia? Foolish Nathan. . . .

  "Why did you poison me?"

  Hansard stared at the general coldly. Pittmann had very delicately balanced himself in the spindly tubular chair so that he could not fall out of it when he was unconscious.

  "I always wondered, you know . . . I always wondered what it would be like to die. I like it." He fell asleep, smiling.

  Hansard chuckled. He knew Pittmann would be mortified when he woke up next day. There had been nothing but Army-issue barbiturates in the coffee, which were guaranteed nonlethal in any quantity. Hansard left the officers' mess, locking the door behind him.

  He returned to his cabin to work on what Panofsky had promised would be "a trifle of rewiring." The adjustments that had to be made in the standard transmitter elements that Hansard had rifled from storage taxed his manual abilities to the limit, but he had had the advantage of having performed the same task only hours before under Panofsky's supervision. It was exasperating just now, at the moment of highest crisis, to have to work electronic jigsaw puzzles. But it was possible. He needn't even feel rushed. Indeed, with so much at stake, he did not dare to.

  When all the assemblies were put together and had been checked and rechecked, Hansard fitted them into two overnight bags -- all but the essential "fix." This he hid in the observatory ventilation shaft.

  As fate would have it, it was Worsaw whom he found on duty before the entrance to the manmitter.

  "Private Worsaw, the General asked me to tell you to report to him on the double in the observatory."

  "Sir?" Worsaw looked doubtful. It was not likely Pittmann would be interested in seeing him .

  "I shall stand duty for you here, of course. Better not keep him waiting. I suspect his request has something to do with those chevrons missing from your sleeves." Hansard winked, a friendly conspirator's wink.

  Worsaw saluted briskly and took his leave. Poor fool, Hansard thought. He too walks out of my life smiling. He was happy that he had not been required once again, and this time definitively, to kill Worsaw. He never wanted to kill anyone again.

  Hansard entered the manmitter with the key he had taken from Pittmann. After taking out the first of the devices he would need, he depressed the button that operated the manmitter. The letters stencilled on the steel wall flickered from MARS to EARTH. He was home again, but there was no time to kiss the terran ground. His arrival would not have been unannounced; neither would it be welcome.

  He looked at his watch. Two-eighteen p.m. He had, he estimated, another three minutes. He had found that he could hold his breath no longer than that. He made the last connections in the receiverless transmitter just as the door of the receiver sprang open and the guards burst in.

  They opened fire on the man who was no longer there.

  "Receiverless transmitters?" Hansard had objected, when first Panofsky had outlined his plan. "But you've said yourself that such a thing isn't possible. And it doesn't make sense ."

  "Sense!" Panofsky jeered. "What is sense? Does gravity make sense? Do wavicles? Does the Blessed Trinity? God glories in paradoxes more than in syllogisms. But I was quite sincere in what I told you. Strictly speaking, a receiverless transmitter isn't possible. But who says the receiver has to be where you want your bundles transmitted? Why not send it along with them?"

  "Yes, and why don't I lift myself up by my boot straps?" Hansard replied sourly.

  "The heart of the matter," Panofsky continued imperturbably, "lies in that word 'instantaneous.' If matter transmission is truly instantaneous and not just very very fast, like light, then, at the exact instant of transmission, where is the object we're transmitting? It is here , or is it there? And the answer, of course, is that it is both here and there . And thus -- the receiverless transmitter, socalled. We just attach a set of three transmitters and three receivers to the object, posit the transmitters as being here and the receivers as being there, press the button, and poof ! You see?"

  Hansard shook his head glumly.

  "But you've already seen it work! You traveled all over the house in it."

  "Oh, I know it happened. But the state I'm in now, you could as easily convince me that it's magic that makes it work, as the laws of nature. That's what it is -- even down to the magic number three."

  "Numbers are magic, of course, and none more so than three. But there is also a reason for that number. Three points establish a plane. It is the hypothetical plane that those three receivers define by which we can place the transmitted object at exactly that point in space where we wish it to be."

  "Even I can call your bluff on that one, Doctor. It takes four points to define an object's position in space. Three will determine a plane, but for a solid body you need four. That's simple Eudidean geometry."

  "And you'll get a good grade in that subject. In fact, there does have to be a fourth transmitter-receiver for the whole thing to work at all. And the fourth one doesn't travel along with the others. It stays behind and serves as the point of reference. The 'here' posit of the transmitter and the 'there' posit of the receiver can be considered to form two immense pyramids sharing a common apex at the 'fix' point."

  "And where will my fix be?"

  "On Mars, of course. Where else could it be?"

  Naturally enough, the first point for which Panofsky had been able to obtain exact information concerning longitude, latitude, and altitude had been his own residence; and it was there, in the library, that Hansard came first after leaving Camp Jackson/Virginia. Panofsky and Bridgetta being away in Moscow, Hansard was conveniently alone. He placed the first transmitter-receiver at the agreed-upon location behind the uniform edition of Bulwer-Lytton. Then, taking up the two bags with the rest of the equipment he set off once again, a comfortable thirty seconds ahead of schedule.

  It had been more difficult to find sufficiently detailed information concerning two other locations. The data on the Great Pyramid of Egypt Panofsky had discovered in a back number of The Journal of Theosophical Science .

  Hansard arrived at the apex of the Great Pyramid at night. He had never seen a desert from such a height under moonlight before and, despite the urgency of his task, he had to pause to gaze down at the scene with awe. Someone, perhaps a tourist, glimpsed Hansard's silhouette against the moon and began shouting at him. The night wind carried his words off and Hansard caught only scattered wisps of sound, not enough even to tell what language the man was speaking -- much less his meaning. Hansard left the second of the transmitter-receivers atop the crumbling stone, and moved on to the third and last point of the triangulation.

  He found himself in the midst of a vast concrete expanse from which there projected, at wide intervals, the small knobs of the headstones. This was the eighty acres of the Viet Nam War-Dead Memorial erected outside Canberra by the new Liberal Government that had taken Australia out of the war. With a magnanimity unparalleled in history, the government had here commemorated the enemy's dead in equal number with its own.

  Hansard set the last receiver-transmitter upon one of the headstones. Only one minute twenty-three seconds had passed since he'd made the first jump from Camp Jackson/Virginia. There was time, some few seconds, for reverence.

  "It was wrong," Hansard said with great definiteness.

  And, though he did not go on to say so, the wrong was irretrievable. The boy was dead forever. This very headstone might mark his grave.

  That was all the time he could allow for reverence. He pressed down the button of the third transmitter-receiver. A delayed-action mechanism provided him with fifteen seconds' grace. He unzipped the second of the two bags and took out the neutralizer. It had an effective range of six
feet.

  "You'd better go now," he said to himself. It was Hansard[2] who said this, but there was no reply from Hansard[1].

  Only then did Hansard[2] realize that he had been deceived all this while; that in an inviolable part of his mind, Hansard[1] had formed his intention and kept it secret from his other self. It was too late to argue with him, for suddenly the ground under Hansard[2]'s feet became solid, and he knew that the earth had just been turned upside down on its axis and transmitted to the other side of the solar system.

  "Impossible!" Hansard had said. "And if it could be done, it would be a madness worse than the bombs."

  "Fudge, Nathan! Haven't you learned yet that I'm always right?"

  "What will become of all the people in the Real World? You should think of their welfare before you consider ours."

  "The chief immediate consequence for them will be that people in the northern hemisphere will suddenly see the constellations usual to southern skies. In consequence, there will probably be more than a' few shipwrecks on the night-side of earth. A small enough price to pay, considering the alternative."

  "But how will this prevent the bombs? They'll be coming from Mars to their receiver-satellites, in any case."

  "But the receiver satellites will lie outside the earth's field of transmission. Earth-Sub-One will cross the solar system and leave the satellites behind."

  "So they can drop their bombs on Earth-Sub-Two?"

  "You forget that for anything constituted of primary matter, secondary matter seems not to exist. From the point of view of those bombs, earth will seem to have disappeared. Moreover, they will cease to be satellites, since the echo of earth remaining behind has no gravitational grip on them. They'll fly off tangent to their orbits and eventually be dragged down into the sun." Panofsky grinned. "Imagine, though, what your people on Mars will think when the earth suddenly disappears from the sky! Will they blame it on the Russians?"

  Hansard was not ready to make jokes on the subject. "But . . . the magnitude of it! The whole damn earth! "

  "Is that meant to be an objection? Great magnitudes often simplify an operation. Clock towers were built before wrist watches, and the solar system has often been called a celestial timepiece. Consider that, in transmitting the earth, I waste none of its momentum. Placed properly and pointed in the right direction, it should proceed in its immemorial orbit about the sun without a hairbreath of wobble. I can't guarantee quite that exactitude, but my calculations show that nothing too terrible should result."

  "And turning it upside down?"

  "To conserve the order of the seasons which, as you certainly should know, are caused by the earth's position along its orbit about the sun. In effect, I am advancing the earth six months through time. Turning it topsy-turvy will compensate for that exactly."

  There was no air for him to breathe.

  You fool! Hansard[2] thought angrily. Why did you stay inside the field of neutralization? Why?

  What difference, now? There was a sadness in the tone of the reply that Hansard[2] could not believe to be his own. The six weeks they had lived apart had, after all, made them different men.

  Do you suppose you're even now? Do you think your lost life can make up for his? Fool!

  Not for his sake, no.

  Then why? why? What of Bridgetta?

  Hansard[1] did not, or could not, reply. Perhaps, for him, there would not have been a Bridgetta. Reluctantly Hansard[2] disengaged his body from its sheath of fibers. The discarded and soon lifeless body did not sink to the ground (which was not ground for it) but slowly, ever so slowly, lifted into the air and drifted above the vast concrete field, like a helium balloon, withered, at the end of a long day. The gravitational pull of the newly-created earth[2] had no effect upon the primary matter of that body, and it was being pulled inexorably toward the Real Moon low in the West, hidden behind clouds.

  The moon, in turn, had begun its slow plunge toward the sun. There was no longer any force to hold it in place.

  A residue at the back of Hansard[2]'s mind told him why his sub-one self had gone willingly to his own death. He was ashamed of having, to his way of thinking, been guilty of that most heinous of crimes -- mutiny.

  Hansard[2] removed the breathing equipment he had been wearing since the night before. He did not need it, for now he had a world of air to breathe again, a world of ground to walk upon, and a world of men to give meaning to his own manhood. This, the echo of a world, was his Real World now.

  And there would not be a war to destroy it.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE HAPPY ENDING

  Hansard's taxi came to a stop outside the New St. George, a hotel which in the ordinary scheme of things he would not have been able to afford. He asked the man at the desk the number of Panofsky's suite. It was, perhaps, not wholly by chance, the same that Hansard had occupied, invisibly, forty days before. He found the two Panofskys alone.

  "Nathan! How good to see you, Nathan!" They drove their wheel chairs toward him with one accord, braking just short of a collision.

  "I was afraid," said the Panofsky in the skullcap, "that I would have to leave without seeing you."

  "He's off to Rome, you know," the other Panofsky explained, "to see the Pope. For the time being, anyone who travels via transmitter is under Vatican interdict; so Bernard will fly. You flew yourself, didn't you, Nathan?" Hansard nodded. "But it took you such a long time!"

  "The Egyptian emigration authorities were just a little upset to find me in their country. And then, when the moon began to disappear . . ."

  "Ooof, the moon! I am so stupid, I deserve not to live. A kick in the pants I deserve."

  Hansard was skeptical. "You can't mean that you actually overlooked that this would happen? That you thought of everything but that?"

  The two Panofskys exchanged a guilty look. "Such at least," the first said mildly, "we have given the government to believe."

  "But let's not speak of it, for though the government is treating us a little more civilly now, this room is surely bugged. Tell me, Nathan, do you think the end justifies the means? Once in a while, perhaps? It is true that without the moon there will be no tides, either here or on Earth-Sub-One; the ocean currents will become confused, and there will be terrible disasters, yes -- disorders, tragedies. But on the other hand there has not been a war. Besides, I have a plan in readiness -- it is being explained now to the Russians -- for recovering the moon. But you had better explain it to Nathan, Bernard; I'm late for my plane. Is there anything I can do for you in Rome, Nathan? Arrange a wedding, perhaps, at St. John Lateran?"

  "Off to His Holiness, busybody! You know the Captain dislikes to be nudged.

  "The moon," he continued, when his double had departed, "is at this moment populated by a number of very perplexed, not to say frantic scientists -- Russians -- none of whom have an inkling of what is happening to the solar system. Similarly, on Earth-Sub-One, no one will have any notion of what's going on -- no one but myself, Panofsky-Sub-One, and even he may be upset to think that someone else has, all unknown to him, developed a receiverless transmitter and put it to such apocalyptic use.

  "Here, meanwhile, I have been explaining -- to the President, to committees of every kind, finally even to the press -- what has been done and why. And though they are all very outraged, I think they are secretly glad -- like a matador waking up in a hospital, amazed at still being alive after his excesses of courage. They have listened to me, and a few have understood. Those who didn't understand believed.

  "So, this is what is being done: A number of our military and scientific personnel have been transmitted to Earth-Sub-One, and there they will try to do what you did -- reintegrate with their sub-one selves. When any one of them has accomplished this, he will use a receiverless transmitter to travel to the moon, dealing with that body as you have dealt with the earth.

  "The moon-sub-one will be returned to its proper orbit, leaving behind a sub-two echo which can then be returned to its proper
orbit, leaving behind a sub-three moon which, sad to say, will have to fall into the sun . . . unless its sub-three inhabitants, still equipped with receiverless transmitters, decide to take it somewhere else. And why shouldn't they? While their stores last they can travel anywhere in the universe. Perhaps that moon will be the first interstellar voyager.

  "It is all very complicated, isn't it? If you'd like to take' a bath, our suite has three huge bathtubs. I always find that a bath helps when things become too complicated."

  "Thank you, not a bath. But I had hoped . . ."

  "Of course, Nathan! Of course she is here. Enter! Enter, Bridgetta!"

  She rode in on ripples of laughter. He did not know which Bridgetta she was, Bridie, Jet, Bridget, or any other. But it made no difference. They were all but a single woman whom he loved, and he embraced her, saying, "Darling," and they kissed, a kiss that was like laughing still.