Then Hansard was unable to see any more. His upper body was once more
plunged into "solid" matter. Surely they had not already sunk as far as
the floor in their struggle?
Suddenly Warsaw released his grip. Hansard fought free and surfaced.
The water was tinged a deep pink. Had his shoulder wound bled that much?
The headless corpse of ex-Sergeant Warsaw floated up lazily to the surface,
air still bubbling out the windpipe.
Hansard did not at once understand. Their fight had carried them into the
transmitter itself. It was then that Hansard had found himself unable
to see. Warsaw, unthinkingly pursuing his advantage, had entered the
transmitter at a point several inches above Hansard's point of entry,
and passed through the plane of transmission. The various molecules
of his head had joined the stream of water that was being transmitted
continuously to Mars.
Finding an area of water as yet untainted by the blood, Hansard drank,
then filled his canteen. He dragged the decapitated body down through
the water and outside the station. There he shoved it beneath a tulip
bed. It was a better burial than he would have received at Worsaw's hands.
He checked the wound in his shoulder. It was superficial. It seemed strange,
now that he thought of it, that Worsaw's confederates had not come in
response to the shots that had been fired; more than strange. He looked
about desperately for the lost .45.
Then Hansard heard it.
It sounded like a marching band advancing down Gove Street. From the
prominence of the hill Hansard could see much of Gove Street, and it
was filled with nothing but its usual swift stream of headlights.
The invisible marching band became very loud. It was playing
The Stars
and Stripes Forever
.
EIGHT
BRIDGETTA
The same afternoon that Hansard had waited out, drowsy, hungry, half
aware, on the steps of the Arlington Library witnessed elsewhere a
dialogue that was to be of decisive consequence for our story. Herewith
a small part of that conversation:
" We are all in agreement."
"But when aren't you, popsicle?
We're
in agreement too, you know."
"If it's a question of food, then one of us is perfectly willing to go
without. We're already overpopulated, or we will be by tomorrow. Besides,
I should think you'd
enjoy
a new face around here."
"It is not a matter of largesse, and you are mistaken to think that I
could prefer any face to your own. Your cheeks are like pomegranates,
your nose like a cherry. You are another Tuesday Weld."
"For heaven's sake, Tuesday Weld is pushing
fifty
, grandfather!"
"Grandfather, indeed! I'm your husband. Sometimes I think you don't
believe it. Is that why you want that young stud around here, so you
can be unfaithful to me? Frailty, thy name is -- "
"I should like to have the
opportunity
. What good is virtue that is never
tried?"
"I am deeply hurt." Then, after a suitable pause: "But it is so typically
American a name, like Coca-Cola on the tongue: Tuesday Weld."
"The Army's also typically American. But you won't give him a chance."
" You will, I'm sure, my darling. Is it his uniform you love him for?"
"He cuts a handsome figure in his uniform. I can't deny it."
"Oof! I hate uniforms. I hate people from the Army. They want to destroy
the world. They are going to destroy the world. And they would like to
keep me prisoner forever -- God damn the Army. There is no justice.
I am outraged."
She, calmly: "But if they're going to destroy the world, it seems all the
better reason why, while there's still time, we might show some charity."
"All right, then, you can have his head on a silver platter. I knew from
the first you wouldn't stop till you'd had your way. If you can find him
before
they
do, you can bring him home and feed him a meal. Like a stray
dog, eh? But if he makes messes, or whines at night . . ."
"We get rid of him, my love. Of course."
"Kiss me, popsicle. No, not there -- on the nose."
Hansard walked down the slope to where he had left his clothes. He dressed,
hesitated, then walked through the wall built about the power station.
Worsaw's confederates had disappeared. A very few late strollers passed by
on the sidewalk; taxis and buses sped past in the street; and all these
soundless goings-on were accompanied by the incongruous Sousa march-tune,
as though a film were being shown with the wrong sound track.
He was very weak. Indeed if it had not been for this supererogatory
strangeness, he would very likely have let himself bed down for the
night on the roof of the power station.
Among the strollers a woman came down the street toward Hansard. Even
worn down as he was, even knowing she was of the Real World, and hence
inaccessible, he could not help noticing her. In the lamplight her red
hair took on a murky tinge of purple. And admirable eyes -- what joke
made them glint as they did now? The same, doubtless, that curled the
corners of her lavender lips. And her figure -- what could be inferred of
it beneath the jumble of synthetic ostrich plumes of her evening coat --
that was admirable too. She reminded him . . .
The woman stopped on the sidewalk, not three feet away from Hansard.
She turned to study the blank face of the wall behind Hansard. She seemed,
almost, to be looking at
him
.
"I wish she were," he said aloud.
The smile on the woman's thin lips widened. The Sousa march was now
very loud, but not too loud to drown the sound of her laughter. It was
a discreet laugh, scarcely more than a titter.
But he had heard it.
She lifted a gloved hand and touched the tip of a finger to the end of
Hansard's nose.
And he felt it.
"She
is
, she
is
," the woman said softly. "Or isn't that what
you'd wished?"
"I -- " Hansard's mouth hung open stupidly. Too many things needed to
be said all at once, and the one that took priority was only a banal:
"I -- I'm hungry."
"And so, perhaps, are those other little men who may still be watching
our carcasses for all that John Philip Sousa can do. And therefore I
suggest that you follow me, keeping at a healthy distance, until we're
well out of the neighborhood. You have strength left in you for another
couple miles, I hope."
He nodded his head, and with no more ado she turned on her heel (a low
heel, out of keeping with the elegance of the coat) and returned in the
direction from which she'd come. Halfway up Gove Street she reached into
a window recess and took out a pocket radio and two miniature amplifying
units. She turned the radio off, and the music ceased.
"Good thing they were playing Sousa," she commented. "A Brahms quartet
wouldn't have been half as frightful. On the other hand a little
Moussorgsky . . . And by the way, here's a chocolate bar. That should
help for now."
His hand trembled taking off the tinsel wrapping. The taste of the chocolate
exploded through his mouth like a bomb, and tears welled from his eyes.
"Thank you," he said, when he had finished eating it.
"I should hope so. But this is still not the place to talk. Follow me
a little further. I know a lovely little place on ahead where we can
sit down and rest. Are you bleeding? Do you need a bandage? No? Then,
come along."
As he followed her this time, the paranoid suspicion came to him that she
was fattening him up on chocolate bars, as the witch fattened Hansel,
so that when it was time to cook him he would make a better meal. It
did not occur to him, then, that if she had a source of chocolate bars
she wouldn't have to cook
him
. But he was very weak and most of his
attention had to be devoted, lightheaded as he was, to the business of
staying upright.
After a few turnings and short-cuts through opaque obstacles, she led him
up the steps of a brightly-lighted Howard Johnson's. They sat across from
each other in a green-and-orange plastic booth, where she presented him
with a second candy bar and accepted his offer of a drink from the canteen.
"I suppose I should introduce myself," she said.
"I'm sorry. I seem to remember your face from somewhere, but I can't
remember . . ."
" But -- I was about to say -- I
won't
introduce myself, not quite yet
at least. Not until you've told me something about yourself."
With marvelous restraint Hansard pushed the remaining half of the candy
bar aside. "My name is Nathan Hansard. I'm a captain in the United States
Army, serial number -- "
"Oh, for heaven's sake, this isn't a prisoner-of-war camp. Just tell me
what's happened to you since you went through the manmitter."
When Hansard had finished his narrative, she nodded her head approvingly,
making the high-piled hair (which was a much healthier shade of red under
the incandescent light) to tremble becomingly. "Very noble, Captain.
Really very noble and brave, as you realize full-well without
my
saying so. I see now I was wrong not to have spoken to you yesterday."
"Yesterday? Ah, now I do remember. You were looking at me from the other
side of the reflecting pooi."
She nodded, and went on: "But you can understand why we've had to be
suspicious. Just because a man is good-looking is no guarantee he won't
want to . . . put me in his cooking pot."
Hansard smiled. Fortified by the candy bars, he was able to concentrate
more of his attention on the personal graces of his benefactress.
"I understand. In fact I have to confess that I wasn't without suspicions
of my own when I was following you up Gove Street a little while ago.
You look so . . . well-fed."
"Ah, you have a smooth tongue, Captain. You'll surely turn my head with
your flattery. Another candy bar?"
"Not just now, thank you. And I must also thank you, I think, for saving
my life. It was your radio, wasn't it, that turned them away?"
"Yes. I had been waiting farther up Gove Street, hoping I could spot you
before they did. I didn't know where else to look, but I was certain the
transmitter would be your only source of water. But you got through the
wall without my ever seeing you. When I heard the gunshots I had to assume
you were already inside, and I turned on the radio full blast. Once one
has become accustomed to the silences of this world, music takes on a
rather dreadful intensity. Or rather, I suppose, we're able to hear it
the way it was meant to be heard."
"Well, again I must thank you. Thank you, Miss . . . ?"
"Mrs."
"Excuse me. With your gloves on, I couldn't tell."
"But you can just call me Bridgetta. My husband calls me Jet, but I think
that's vulgar. Of course, so does he -- that's why he uses it. He thinks
it's American to be vulgar. He doesn't understand that vulgarity isn't
fashionable any more. It's because he first arrived in the States in
the late Sixties that -- "
"I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid you'll have to speak a bit more slowly.
My mind isn't as quick as it would be if it had a full stomach."
"Excuse me. Panofsky."
"Panofsky?" He was more than ever lost.
"You asked my name, and that's what it is -- Mrs. Panofsky, Bridgetta
Panofsky, wife of Bernard. You've perhaps heard of my husband?"
"God damn," Hansard said. " God damn!"
There were many celebrities of that year -- writers, actors, or criminals
-- who might have entertained as high an estimate of their own notoriety
and of whom Hansard would have been as unaware as we today perforce must be.
But the name Panofsky was known to everyone. Literally, to
all
.
"I've heard of him, yes," Hansard said.
Bridgetta smiled coolly, allowing him time to reassemble his composure.
"Then that's why -- " Hansard exclaimed, as he began to program himself
with remembered data.
"Yes," she said, "that's why we're like you --
sublimated
."
"Eh? I'm afraid I never had time to read Freud."
"Sublimated is only Bernie's word for being
this
way." Illustratively,
she brushed her hand through a bouquet of plastic flowers that graced the
Formica tabletop. "You see, the powers-that-be have let Bernie equip the
homestead with transmitters so he can carry on his research there. Bernie
can do just about anything, if he tells them it's for research. Except
drive out the front door. The existence of the transmitters in Elba --
that's what we call the homestead -- is strictly . . . what's the favorite
word now for very,
very
private?"
"Priority-A."
"Just so. And for once the whole rigmarole has worked to his advantage.
Since no one knows we have transmitters, no one comes to bother us at
Elba -- as they do in the State Department."
"The State Department! I saw you there too -- almost a week ago. I'm sure
it was you, except your hair was another color. And the man with you,
in the wheelchair, that would have been Panofsky?"
"Panofsky-Sub-One, if you saw him in the State Department."
"Again, slowly?"
"We use a numeral subscript to distinguish between our different levels
of reality. For instance, there must be a Nathan Hansard on Mars now.
He'd be Hansard-Sub-one, and you're Hansard-Sub-Two."
"But if you know the State Department manmitter is watched, why do you
use it?"
"We only use it coming back from someplace, not going there. A week ago
-- where would we have been coming from? Moscow, I think. Borominska
was premiering in a revival of Tudor's
Lilac Garden
. Bernie insisted
on being there."
Hansard recalled now, from a long-ago article in
Time
, the fact that
Panofsky was an ardent balletomane and made frequent -- and instantaneous
-- excursions via manmitter to the world's ballet capitals throughout
their seasons, these brief tours being the single concession that the
government had agreed to make to Panofsky for the loss of his freedom.
At any performance of significance, Panofsky was to be seen in the box
of honor, or, at the intermission, outside his box, presiding regally
over a strange mélange of secret service guards and ballet enthusiasts,
always the dominating figure in such groups -- even in his wheelchair.
"Tell me," she asked after a pause, "do you like me better as a redhead?"
"It's hard to decide. There's something to be said on both sides of
the question."