Echo Round His Bones (19 page)

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.
"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.