by Thomas Disch
"Professor Panofsky," said Hansard stiffly (though there was now a kind of grace in his stiffness that had not been there before), "I would like to ask for the hand of your wife Bridgetta in marriage."
"You have my blessings, both of you, but first you had better come to an understanding with your rivals."
"No," Hansard said, "this time it is for her to decide how she wants to dispose of me."
"Not Bridgetta's rivals, Nathan, yours." And with a flourish of laughter, of music, the two Nathan Hansards who had been waiting in the adjoining room entered, arm-in-arm with two more Bridgettas. They arranged themselves before him with the modest symmetry of a Mozart finale. He had known they would be here, he had known it these many days (since, after all, he was not the final, the Australian Hansard[2], but the penultimate Hansard[2] who had remained behind after the transmission to Canberra, an echo atop the Great Pyramid), and yet he had not till now believed it. He grasped each of their extended hands in his own, and they stood there so a little while, as though about to begin a children's ring-game.
And here we are, quite at the end of our story -- or very close to the end. Our hero is to be rewarded for his labors; the world is saved from annihilation; even the moon has been recovered, and Panofsky, for the first time in his life, is free. Now is the loveliest of June weather, though (it is true) one has to go outside the dome to appreciate the young summer in all its glory. Now is the perfect time to take a boat out on the river, or just go walking along country roads, though these (it is true) become harder and harder to find.
But perhaps for our hero it will not be hard at all. Love bathes all landscapes in a softening light. It is only ourselves, at our greater distance, with our cooler view, who may feel a little sad to think that the world's loveliness will not always and everywhere bear too close examination.
However, even that is changing! Even the world will change now and become a better world, milder and mightier, and more humane. There will be power, and power to spare, to do all the things that were so hard to do till now. There will be no more boundaries, but everywhere freedom and unconstraint. There will be no more war. There will be room to move about in, places to go, destinies -- all the universe, in fact. What a splendid world! What grand fun it would be to live there!
But it is too late, for we are now quite at the end of our story. The rest belongs to them.
It had been a wedding in the grand manner -- cascades of white lace, orange blossoms, organ music, a minister with the broadest, the stateliest, of A's. And now they stood -- Hansard and Bridgetta, and Hansard and Bridgetta, and Hansard and Bridgetta -- on the threshold of the transmitter. Each couple had chosen a different destination for their honeymoon; the first to Ceylon, the second a cruise up the Amazon, and the third . . .
"Are you ready?" Panofsky asked.
In reply Hansard lifted up his bride and carried her over the threshold. Panofsky pushed the button that would transmit them to the Vatican. Hansard had never before seen the Sistine Chapel. He gasped.
Hansard sighed. "It doesn't seem to be working, does it?'
Bridgetta laughed softly, without stopping to nibble at his ear.
He carried her back across the threshold, through the closed door. Hansard and Bridgetta, and Hansard and Bridgetta, were waiting for them outside the transmitter. They pointed to Panofsky, who was writing on a note pad on the worktable. Panofsky finished the note, turned and smiled, though it could not be said he smiled quite at them, and left the room.
Unthinkingly, Hansard tried to pick the piece of paper off the table. The tertiary flesh of his hand passed through the secondary matter.
It was now as it had been: The pumps that had been pumping air to Mars were pumping still, though they pumped air of second-degree reality, which left behind the echo of an echo, and this air the six lovers, themselves the echoes of their echoes, could breathe.
"What does it say?" asked Bridgetta, though she could read the note as well as Hansard. But she wanted to hear him say the words:
"Happy Honeymoon."
echo
round
his
bones
------------------
It all began when Captain Nathan Hansard of "A"
Artillery company of Camp Jackson/Mars Com-
mand Post went to Mars. The message he was sent
there to deliver made him wish he were dead -- in
only six weeks' time the total nuclear arsenal of
Camp Jackson/Mars was to be released upon the
enemy.
Something had to be done and fast. Captain Hans-
ard left for Earth via the instantaneous transmitter
of matter, hoping to arrive immediately. But when
he sank into the manmitter's once solid steel floor,
he realized that he was a ghost. Only he did not
remember dying. . . . Well then, it was as a ghost
that he would have to try and save mankind from
atomic destruction. . . .
Here is an unusual -- and ingenious -- SF novel by
one of the most talented and popular science fiction
writers of our day.