Read Echo Round His Bones Online
Authors: Thomas Disch
Echo Round His Bones (3 page)
In the late sixties, and already a middle-aged man, Panofsky masterminded
his final escape plan: He and three confederates were the last men known
to have got over the Berlin Wall. Within a year he had obtained an associate
professorship in mathematics at a Catholic university in Washington D.C.
By 1970 topology was an unfashionable field; even Game Theory, after a
long heyday, was losing favor to the newer science of Irrationality.
In consequence, though Panofsky was one of the world's foremost topologists,
the research grant that he received was trifling. In all his work, he never
used a computer and never employed more than a single assistant, and even
in building the pilot model of the transmitter he spent only $18,560.
There wasn't a mathematician in the country who didn't agree that Panofsky's
example had set the prestige of their science back fifty years.
It is an almost invariable rule that the great mathematicians have done
their most original work in their youth, and Panofsky had been no exception.
The theoretical basis of the transmitter had been laid as long ago as 1943,
when in fashioning his own topological axioms, the fourteen-year-old prisoner
naďvely evolved certain features discordant with the classical theories --
chiefly the principle that became known as the Paradox of the Exploding
Klein Bottle. It was to be the work of his next forty years to try to
resolve these discrepancies; then, this proving impossible, to exploit
them.
The first transmission was made on Christmas Day of 1983, when Panofsky
transported a small silver crucifix (weight: 7.4 grams) from his laboratory
on the campus to his home seven blocks away. Because of the circumstances
surrounding this event, Panofsky's achievement was not given serious
attention by the scientific community for almost a year. It did not help
that the press insisted on speaking of the transmission as a "miracle,"
or that a shrewd New York entrepreneur, Max Brede (pronounced Brady),
was selling replicas (in plated nickel) of the Miraculous Hopping Cross
within weeks of the first newspaper stories.
But of course it was a fact, not a miracle, and facts can be verified.
Quickly enough Panofsky's invention was taken seriously -- and taken away.
The Army, under the Emergency Allocation of Resources Act (rather hastily
drawn up by Congress for the occasion) had appropriated the transmitter,
despite all that Panofsky and his sponsors (which now included not only
his university, but General Motors and Ford-Chrysler as well) could do.
Since that time Panofsky found himself once again a prisoner, for it was
obviously contrary to the nation's best interests that the mind that
harbored such strategic secrets should experience all the dangers
of freedom.
Like the President, and ten or twelve other "most valuable" men, Panofsky
lived virtually under house arrest. To be sure, it was the most elegant
of houses, having been specially constructed for him on a site facing
the university campus. But the gilt of the cage did little to cheer the
prisoner within, whose singular (and in advertent) manner of escaping
from these circumstances we shall have opportunity to consider later in
this history.
The invention suffered a fate similar to the inventor's. The transmitters,
as we have already seen, were even more fastly guarded than he, and were
used almost exclusively for defense purposes (though the State Department
had managed to have its chief embassies provided with small, one-man models),
to the despair of Panofsky and a minority of editorialists -- both right
and left -- and to the secret relief of every major element of the economy.
Understandably, the business community dreaded to think what chaos would
result from the widespread use of a mode of transportation that was
instantaneous, weighed (in the final improved model) a mere 49-1/2 ounces,
and consumed virtually no power.
Yet even in its limited military application the transmitter had changed
the face of the earth. In 1983, the year of the Miraculous Hopping Cross,
the Russians had established a thriving and populous base on the moon,
while the United States had twice suffered the ignominy of having lost
the teams of astronauts they had tried to land in the Mare Imbrium. More
than prestige was involved, for the Russians claimed to have developed a
missile that could be launched from the moon with fifty per cent greater
accuracy than the then presently existing ICBM's; a boast made more
probable by Russia's unilateral earthside disarmament. International
pressures began to mount that the United States follow suit, ignoring
the fact that the Russian disarmament was more apparent than real. With
the advent of the transmitter, the situation was reversed.
By 1985, thanks to its transmitters, the United States manpower on Mars
exceeded Soviet lunar manpower by four hundred per cent. All American
nuclear weapons were removed to the neighboring planet and by 1986 world
disarmament was a fact, if not a very significant one. For the sword of
Damocles was still poised above the earth, and the thread by which it
hung seemed more frayed than ever.
The missiles that were stockpiled on Mars were not, strictly speaking,
to be launched from that planet, but rather to be transmitted thence to
satellites in permanent orbit above enemy territory; and these satellites,
in turn, would relay them to their destinations. The satellites were
clap-trap affairs, their only purpose being to keep aloft the 49-1/2 ounces
of receiving equipment -- and a miniature radar that could trigger the
self-annihilation of the receiver should any object approach it nearer
than fifty feet -- i.e., should the Russians try to kidnap one. Once
at the satellite, each missile was programmed to home in on its target
by itself.
If only the receivers could have been dispensed with! The strategists
of the Pentagon sighed for that millennial possibility, but it was
not to be: all their mathematicians confirmed Panofsky's assurance that
transmission could only be made from one machine
here
to another machine
there. If the necessity for that second machine (the receiver) had not
existed, anything might have been possible. Anything -- but particularly a
conclusive end to the Cold War. A victory! For with a means of delivering
bombs
directly and instantaneously
from Mars to Russian soil . . .
From Mars? From anywhere -- from the other end of the galaxy, if need be.
Without the necessity of sending a receiver on ahead to one's destination,
distances were meaningless. Mars could be dispensed with; the satellites
could be dispensed with; in the long run, with the universe at one's
disposal, even earth could probably be dispensed with.
But the receivers, alas, were necessary. The relay satellites were
necessary. And Mars, or some such storehouse, was necessary.
And finally there was that necessity which all the other necessities
took for granted -- the necessity for Armageddon. Bombs, after all,
are made to be dropped.
"Welcome to Mars, Nathan."
"It's good to be back, sir."
"To be -- Oh, well, thank you. It's good to
have
you back. Sit down,
and tell me about the trip."
General Pittmann sat down in one of two facing easy chairs, and crossed
his legs so that his ankle rested on his knee. He might have been a store
mannikin, so perfectly did his tailored uniform drape itself about him
while preserving its immaculate crease. Perfect too were the manicured
nails, the thick hair just starting to gray, the deeply tanned and
artificially weathered complexion, and the unemphatic and slightly
mocking smile.
"The trip was uneventful but never dull for a moment. This case, sir,
contains a letter for you. Priority-A. I was instructed by General Foss
to see you take it out of the case."
"Old Chatterbox Foss, eh? Here's the key, Nathan. Will you open it up
for me? I've been expecting something on this order."
As General Pittmann read the letter, the smile disappeared from his face
and a slight frown creased his brow, but even this seemed somehow decorative.
"As I feared," he said, handing the letter to Hansard, who regarded it
doubtfully. "Yes, read it, Nathan. It will ease my mind if someone else
knows. I'll take my chances that you're not a security risk."
The letter directed that the total nuclear arsenal of Camp Jackson/Mars
be released on the enemy, who was unnamed, who did not need to be named,
on the first day of June 1990, according to existing Operational Plan B.
It was signed by President Lee Madigan and sealed with the Great Seal.
Hansard handed the letter back to his superior. "It hardly gives a person
a chance to breathe," he commented with calculated ambiguity.
The smile ventured a tentative return. "Oh, we have six weeks of breathing
-- and I'm certain that before the deadline falls due, the order will have
been rescinded. Yes, surely it will. This is mere brinkmanship. The news
of the order will be leaked through the usual channels, and the Russians
will negotiate whatever issue has brought the matter up. Jamaica,
I should imagine, in this case. Also, Madigan has to show he isn't soft.
How will they know to dread our bombs unless we're ready to drop them?
We are ready to drop them, aren't we, Nathan?"
"The command isn't mine to give, sir."
"Nor mine. It is the President's. But it is ours to obey. It is our finger,
mine or yours -- " As if in demonstration, Pittmann lifted a single
manicured finger in the immemorial gesture of the young Baptist. " --
which must be prepared to press the button. But don't you feel, for
instance, that such an action would be -- as I've somewhere seen it
called -- genocidal?"
"As you've said, sir, the whole concept of a deterrent force is valueless
if we refuse to employ it."
"Which doesn't quite answer my question."
"With your permission, sir, I don't think it's my place to answer such
a question."
"Nor is it, indeed, mine to ask it. You're right, Nathan. Sometimes
it is the wisest course to step back from too precise a knowledge of
consequences. That is part of the rationale, I'm sure, of our being on
Mars and the Russians on the moon. We can take a more disinterested view
out here."
"Out here . . ." Hansard echoed, gilding away from a subject he had little
taste for. "It's strange, but I have no feeling yet of being out
here
at all. Camp Jackson/Mars and Camp Jackson/Virginia are so much the same."
"The sense of their difference will come all too quickly. But if you're
in a hurry, you might visit the viewing dome and look out at the dust and
the rocks and the dusty rocky craters. Otherwise, we have few tourist
attractions here. The sense of difference lies more in the absence of
earth than in the presence of the dust and rocks, as you will find. Tell
me, Nathan, have you wondered why you've been chosen for this assignment?"
"As your aide, sir."
"Of course. But I had upward of a dozen aides in Washington, several of
them closer than you, as chance would have it."
"Then I appreciate that you've chosen me from among them."
"It wasn't I who chose you -- though I approve the choice -- but the
psychologists. We're here, you and I, mostly on account of our latest
multiphasics -- those tests we took in December with all those dirty
questions. It seems we are very solid personality types."
"I'm glad to hear it."
"It hasn't always been the case with you, has it, Nathan?"
"You've seen my file, sir, so you know. But all that happened in the past.
I've matured since then."
"Maturity, ah, yes. Undoubtedly we're mature enough for the work. We can
do what has to be done, even if we don't quite like to give it a name."
Hansard regarded the general curiously, for his speech was most
uncharacteristic of the terran Pittmann that Hansard had known.
Mars was having an effect on him.
"But all that is neither here nor there, and you must be anxious to see
your quarters and look over the lovely Martian landscape. You'll be
disillusioned quickly enough without my help. The great problem here
is boredom. The great problem anywhere is boredom; but here it is
more acute. The library is well stocked though not exactly up to the
minute. The Army usually seems to regard books less than ten years old as
subversive. I suggest that you try something solid and dull and very long,
like
War and Peace
. No, I forgot -- they don't have that here. For my
own part, I've been going through
Gibbon's Decline and Fall
.
"Some day, when the time lies heavier on your hands, remind me to tell you
the story of Stilicho, the barbarian who was the general of the Roman Armies.
A paragon of fidelity, Stilicho. Honorius, the Emperor he served, was
some kind of cretin and spent all his time breeding poultry. The Empire
was falling apart at the seams; there were Goths and Vandals everywhere,
and only Stilicho was holding them off. Honorius, at the instigation of
a eunuch, finally had him assassinated. It was his only definitive act.
"It's a wonderful allegory. But I see you're anxious to sightsee.
Officers' mess is at thirteen hundred hours. As we two are the only
officers here, I shall probably see you then. And, Captain -- "
"Sir?"
"There's no need for you to frown so. I assure you, it's all brinkmanship
and bluff. It's happened ten times before, to my sure knowledge. In a week
or two it will be all over.
"Or," the general added to himself, sotto voce, when Mansard had left
the room, "in six weeks at the very limit."
THREE
THE ECHO
The antechamber locked against the steel wall of the transmitter, and the
portal opened inward with a discreet
click
. Crouching, Hansard and the
private entered. The door closed behind them.
Here there were no special effects; neither rumblings nor flashing lights.
The noise in his ears was the pulse of his own blood. The feeling in his
stomach was a cramped muscle. As he had done in the practice session,
he stared intently at the sign stencilled with white paint on the wall
of the vault:
CAMP JACKSON/EARTH
MATTER TRANSMITTER
For the briefest of moments he thought the EARTH had flickered to MARS,
but he decided his nerves were playing tricks, for EARTH, solidly EARTH,
it had remained. He waited. It should have taken only a few seconds
for the technician in the glass booths outside to flick the switch that
would transfer them to Mars. Mansard wondered if something had gone wrong.
his final escape plan: He and three confederates were the last men known
to have got over the Berlin Wall. Within a year he had obtained an associate
professorship in mathematics at a Catholic university in Washington D.C.
By 1970 topology was an unfashionable field; even Game Theory, after a
long heyday, was losing favor to the newer science of Irrationality.
In consequence, though Panofsky was one of the world's foremost topologists,
the research grant that he received was trifling. In all his work, he never
used a computer and never employed more than a single assistant, and even
in building the pilot model of the transmitter he spent only $18,560.
There wasn't a mathematician in the country who didn't agree that Panofsky's
example had set the prestige of their science back fifty years.
It is an almost invariable rule that the great mathematicians have done
their most original work in their youth, and Panofsky had been no exception.
The theoretical basis of the transmitter had been laid as long ago as 1943,
when in fashioning his own topological axioms, the fourteen-year-old prisoner
naďvely evolved certain features discordant with the classical theories --
chiefly the principle that became known as the Paradox of the Exploding
Klein Bottle. It was to be the work of his next forty years to try to
resolve these discrepancies; then, this proving impossible, to exploit
them.
The first transmission was made on Christmas Day of 1983, when Panofsky
transported a small silver crucifix (weight: 7.4 grams) from his laboratory
on the campus to his home seven blocks away. Because of the circumstances
surrounding this event, Panofsky's achievement was not given serious
attention by the scientific community for almost a year. It did not help
that the press insisted on speaking of the transmission as a "miracle,"
or that a shrewd New York entrepreneur, Max Brede (pronounced Brady),
was selling replicas (in plated nickel) of the Miraculous Hopping Cross
within weeks of the first newspaper stories.
But of course it was a fact, not a miracle, and facts can be verified.
Quickly enough Panofsky's invention was taken seriously -- and taken away.
The Army, under the Emergency Allocation of Resources Act (rather hastily
drawn up by Congress for the occasion) had appropriated the transmitter,
despite all that Panofsky and his sponsors (which now included not only
his university, but General Motors and Ford-Chrysler as well) could do.
Since that time Panofsky found himself once again a prisoner, for it was
obviously contrary to the nation's best interests that the mind that
harbored such strategic secrets should experience all the dangers
of freedom.
Like the President, and ten or twelve other "most valuable" men, Panofsky
lived virtually under house arrest. To be sure, it was the most elegant
of houses, having been specially constructed for him on a site facing
the university campus. But the gilt of the cage did little to cheer the
prisoner within, whose singular (and in advertent) manner of escaping
from these circumstances we shall have opportunity to consider later in
this history.
The invention suffered a fate similar to the inventor's. The transmitters,
as we have already seen, were even more fastly guarded than he, and were
used almost exclusively for defense purposes (though the State Department
had managed to have its chief embassies provided with small, one-man models),
to the despair of Panofsky and a minority of editorialists -- both right
and left -- and to the secret relief of every major element of the economy.
Understandably, the business community dreaded to think what chaos would
result from the widespread use of a mode of transportation that was
instantaneous, weighed (in the final improved model) a mere 49-1/2 ounces,
and consumed virtually no power.
Yet even in its limited military application the transmitter had changed
the face of the earth. In 1983, the year of the Miraculous Hopping Cross,
the Russians had established a thriving and populous base on the moon,
while the United States had twice suffered the ignominy of having lost
the teams of astronauts they had tried to land in the Mare Imbrium. More
than prestige was involved, for the Russians claimed to have developed a
missile that could be launched from the moon with fifty per cent greater
accuracy than the then presently existing ICBM's; a boast made more
probable by Russia's unilateral earthside disarmament. International
pressures began to mount that the United States follow suit, ignoring
the fact that the Russian disarmament was more apparent than real. With
the advent of the transmitter, the situation was reversed.
By 1985, thanks to its transmitters, the United States manpower on Mars
exceeded Soviet lunar manpower by four hundred per cent. All American
nuclear weapons were removed to the neighboring planet and by 1986 world
disarmament was a fact, if not a very significant one. For the sword of
Damocles was still poised above the earth, and the thread by which it
hung seemed more frayed than ever.
The missiles that were stockpiled on Mars were not, strictly speaking,
to be launched from that planet, but rather to be transmitted thence to
satellites in permanent orbit above enemy territory; and these satellites,
in turn, would relay them to their destinations. The satellites were
clap-trap affairs, their only purpose being to keep aloft the 49-1/2 ounces
of receiving equipment -- and a miniature radar that could trigger the
self-annihilation of the receiver should any object approach it nearer
than fifty feet -- i.e., should the Russians try to kidnap one. Once
at the satellite, each missile was programmed to home in on its target
by itself.
If only the receivers could have been dispensed with! The strategists
of the Pentagon sighed for that millennial possibility, but it was
not to be: all their mathematicians confirmed Panofsky's assurance that
transmission could only be made from one machine
here
to another machine
there. If the necessity for that second machine (the receiver) had not
existed, anything might have been possible. Anything -- but particularly a
conclusive end to the Cold War. A victory! For with a means of delivering
bombs
directly and instantaneously
from Mars to Russian soil . . .
From Mars? From anywhere -- from the other end of the galaxy, if need be.
Without the necessity of sending a receiver on ahead to one's destination,
distances were meaningless. Mars could be dispensed with; the satellites
could be dispensed with; in the long run, with the universe at one's
disposal, even earth could probably be dispensed with.
But the receivers, alas, were necessary. The relay satellites were
necessary. And Mars, or some such storehouse, was necessary.
And finally there was that necessity which all the other necessities
took for granted -- the necessity for Armageddon. Bombs, after all,
are made to be dropped.
"Welcome to Mars, Nathan."
"It's good to be back, sir."
"To be -- Oh, well, thank you. It's good to
have
you back. Sit down,
and tell me about the trip."
General Pittmann sat down in one of two facing easy chairs, and crossed
his legs so that his ankle rested on his knee. He might have been a store
mannikin, so perfectly did his tailored uniform drape itself about him
while preserving its immaculate crease. Perfect too were the manicured
nails, the thick hair just starting to gray, the deeply tanned and
artificially weathered complexion, and the unemphatic and slightly
mocking smile.
"The trip was uneventful but never dull for a moment. This case, sir,
contains a letter for you. Priority-A. I was instructed by General Foss
to see you take it out of the case."
"Old Chatterbox Foss, eh? Here's the key, Nathan. Will you open it up
for me? I've been expecting something on this order."
As General Pittmann read the letter, the smile disappeared from his face
and a slight frown creased his brow, but even this seemed somehow decorative.
"As I feared," he said, handing the letter to Hansard, who regarded it
doubtfully. "Yes, read it, Nathan. It will ease my mind if someone else
knows. I'll take my chances that you're not a security risk."
The letter directed that the total nuclear arsenal of Camp Jackson/Mars
be released on the enemy, who was unnamed, who did not need to be named,
on the first day of June 1990, according to existing Operational Plan B.
It was signed by President Lee Madigan and sealed with the Great Seal.
Hansard handed the letter back to his superior. "It hardly gives a person
a chance to breathe," he commented with calculated ambiguity.
The smile ventured a tentative return. "Oh, we have six weeks of breathing
-- and I'm certain that before the deadline falls due, the order will have
been rescinded. Yes, surely it will. This is mere brinkmanship. The news
of the order will be leaked through the usual channels, and the Russians
will negotiate whatever issue has brought the matter up. Jamaica,
I should imagine, in this case. Also, Madigan has to show he isn't soft.
How will they know to dread our bombs unless we're ready to drop them?
We are ready to drop them, aren't we, Nathan?"
"The command isn't mine to give, sir."
"Nor mine. It is the President's. But it is ours to obey. It is our finger,
mine or yours -- " As if in demonstration, Pittmann lifted a single
manicured finger in the immemorial gesture of the young Baptist. " --
which must be prepared to press the button. But don't you feel, for
instance, that such an action would be -- as I've somewhere seen it
called -- genocidal?"
"As you've said, sir, the whole concept of a deterrent force is valueless
if we refuse to employ it."
"Which doesn't quite answer my question."
"With your permission, sir, I don't think it's my place to answer such
a question."
"Nor is it, indeed, mine to ask it. You're right, Nathan. Sometimes
it is the wisest course to step back from too precise a knowledge of
consequences. That is part of the rationale, I'm sure, of our being on
Mars and the Russians on the moon. We can take a more disinterested view
out here."
"Out here . . ." Hansard echoed, gilding away from a subject he had little
taste for. "It's strange, but I have no feeling yet of being out
here
at all. Camp Jackson/Mars and Camp Jackson/Virginia are so much the same."
"The sense of their difference will come all too quickly. But if you're
in a hurry, you might visit the viewing dome and look out at the dust and
the rocks and the dusty rocky craters. Otherwise, we have few tourist
attractions here. The sense of difference lies more in the absence of
earth than in the presence of the dust and rocks, as you will find. Tell
me, Nathan, have you wondered why you've been chosen for this assignment?"
"As your aide, sir."
"Of course. But I had upward of a dozen aides in Washington, several of
them closer than you, as chance would have it."
"Then I appreciate that you've chosen me from among them."
"It wasn't I who chose you -- though I approve the choice -- but the
psychologists. We're here, you and I, mostly on account of our latest
multiphasics -- those tests we took in December with all those dirty
questions. It seems we are very solid personality types."
"I'm glad to hear it."
"It hasn't always been the case with you, has it, Nathan?"
"You've seen my file, sir, so you know. But all that happened in the past.
I've matured since then."
"Maturity, ah, yes. Undoubtedly we're mature enough for the work. We can
do what has to be done, even if we don't quite like to give it a name."
Hansard regarded the general curiously, for his speech was most
uncharacteristic of the terran Pittmann that Hansard had known.
Mars was having an effect on him.
"But all that is neither here nor there, and you must be anxious to see
your quarters and look over the lovely Martian landscape. You'll be
disillusioned quickly enough without my help. The great problem here
is boredom. The great problem anywhere is boredom; but here it is
more acute. The library is well stocked though not exactly up to the
minute. The Army usually seems to regard books less than ten years old as
subversive. I suggest that you try something solid and dull and very long,
like
War and Peace
. No, I forgot -- they don't have that here. For my
own part, I've been going through
Gibbon's Decline and Fall
.
"Some day, when the time lies heavier on your hands, remind me to tell you
the story of Stilicho, the barbarian who was the general of the Roman Armies.
A paragon of fidelity, Stilicho. Honorius, the Emperor he served, was
some kind of cretin and spent all his time breeding poultry. The Empire
was falling apart at the seams; there were Goths and Vandals everywhere,
and only Stilicho was holding them off. Honorius, at the instigation of
a eunuch, finally had him assassinated. It was his only definitive act.
"It's a wonderful allegory. But I see you're anxious to sightsee.
Officers' mess is at thirteen hundred hours. As we two are the only
officers here, I shall probably see you then. And, Captain -- "
"Sir?"
"There's no need for you to frown so. I assure you, it's all brinkmanship
and bluff. It's happened ten times before, to my sure knowledge. In a week
or two it will be all over.
"Or," the general added to himself, sotto voce, when Mansard had left
the room, "in six weeks at the very limit."
THREE
THE ECHO
The antechamber locked against the steel wall of the transmitter, and the
portal opened inward with a discreet
click
. Crouching, Hansard and the
private entered. The door closed behind them.
Here there were no special effects; neither rumblings nor flashing lights.
The noise in his ears was the pulse of his own blood. The feeling in his
stomach was a cramped muscle. As he had done in the practice session,
he stared intently at the sign stencilled with white paint on the wall
of the vault:
CAMP JACKSON/EARTH
MATTER TRANSMITTER
For the briefest of moments he thought the EARTH had flickered to MARS,
but he decided his nerves were playing tricks, for EARTH, solidly EARTH,
it had remained. He waited. It should have taken only a few seconds
for the technician in the glass booths outside to flick the switch that
would transfer them to Mars. Mansard wondered if something had gone wrong.
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