"Panofsky-Sub-One has never been able to be sure, and so he keeps
providing us with things we really don't need -- boards and linoleum
rugs. When we try to spread the rugs, they just curl up into the floor.
Still, we can be grateful that he errs on the side of caution."
"I am afraid that I am sinking deeper and deeper now, though. Sub-three
and sub-four cans. I'd never even considered the possibility."
"Imagine what would happen if one of us were transmitted. A sub-two person
going through a transmitter would leave behind a sub-three echo of himself.
Surely you've been in caves and heard the echo of an echo? As a matter
of fact, you've already described such a case. When that unpleasant
sergeant donated his head to Mars, the transmission would have produced a
sub-three head, though God only knows what's become of it. Sub-one water,
as you may have found out, won't support sub-two bodies. A convenient
rule-of-thumb is this: After sublimation, the solids of the unsublimated
world appear to have the properties of liquids; liquids, the properties of
gas, and gas the properties of that unfashionable commodity, an aether."
"But to return a moment to what became of Worsaw-Sub-Two: his head was
taken off by a sub-one transmitter. How is that?"
"As I said earlier, energic relationships don't change as one descends
the scale of reality. A sub-two transmitter, for instance, could not
transmit a sub-one object, but a sub-two object, such as Worsaw's head,
will be transmitted by a sub-one transmitter."
"Well, all this has convinced me of one thing."
"And that?" Bridgetta asked.
"I'm never going to be transmitted again."
"I don't understand," said Bridie.
"If I've been having a hell of a time surviving here, think what it would
be like for Hansard-Sub-Three."
"Oh, you don't have to worry on that score. After all, if he didn't
immediately begin to sink into the earth he would very soon die of
suffocation, since he would lack a supply of sub-three air. No, at this
point, Hansard-SubThree -- or Bridgetta-Sub-Three, for that matter --
is not a viable form."
Panofsky entered the room then, driving his wheel chair through the wall.
"Have you justified our little euthanasia program, my love?" he asked
cheerily.
"I was just getting to that," Bridie said.
"It won't really be necessary now," Hansard said. "I can appreciate the
need for some sort of measure, so long as you keep being transmitted
regularly. It seems to me that you keep the population at a lower level
than need be, but no doubt there are reasons for that."
"There are," Panofsky assured him. "And the reason that we must keep going
through the transmitter and replicating ourselves is that back there
I can't be sure that the population is large enough. Not all our losses
are voluntary, you know. On more than one occasion I've driven this
chair and myself into the ground and drowned. Not I, strictly speaking,
but the equivalent, me. So then, Nathan, you understand everything, eh?"
"There's only one thing I still don't understand, sir."
"And that?"
"You."
"Oh, but that's always the great mystery. Even Bridgetta cannot penetrate to
the essential Panofsky, but keeps peeling off layers like an onion. Not my
metaphor, of course -- Ibsen's. But what, particularly, puzzles you?"
"That you should try to do this all on your own. I'm sure if you spoke to
someone in the government, though they might be skeptical at first,
they would, eventually believe you and aid you."
"I'm just as sure of that, Nathan, and so I have said nothing. One of the
few consolations of being here is that I am, for the first time in my life,
a free man. I have at last found a way of escaping successfully.
The government's first act of assistance would no doubt be to send a crew
of men through the transmitters to supervise me here."
"If your luck turned, and Worsaw were to discover you, you'd be thankful
for such supervision."
"That's the chance I take."
Hansard shook his head disapprovingly, but by the set of his jaw it was
evident that he had decided not to pursue the argument.
"Consider, Nathan, what I have already suffered at the government's hands,
and then think if I could gladly invite them
here
. They have taken my
invention -- which could have made the world a paradise -- and turned it
into a weapon, as though the world wants for new weapons. I should despair
if I thought it were possible for my achievement to be suppressed forever.
Happily, as Norbert Wiener observes, the greatest guarantee that a thing
will be done is simply the knowledge that it is possible. So that in the
long run, unless they prefer annihilation -- and they may, they may --
my work will not have been for nothing."
There was a long pause during which Hansard considered how most tactfully
to protest against Panofsky's apolitical attitude. Didn't the man see
the moral necessity of the war? Was he not himself a refugee from the
tyranny of East Germany? But before he could formulate these objections
clearly, Panofsky had resumed speaking, in a rather more wistful tone.
"Imagine what it might be like. Think what a source of
power
the
transmitter represents. The mind staggers. Even
my
mind staggers."
"Of power?" Hansard asked.
"Instead of moving something laterally, suppose one were to transmit it
upwards. Water, for instance. A circular waterfall could be created,
which could power a dynamo, and only the smallest fraction of the
dynamo's power would be needed to operate the transmitter itself. In
effect, a perpetual motion machine."
"Then it
does
violate the laws of conservation!"
"At our level of reality, yes. But within the larger system, no. In other
words, another universe somewhere is shortly going to experience a
considerable power drain. Let us hope they have no means of plugging
the hole, eh?"
"My God," said Hansard, who was still envisioning the circular waterfall.
"It
would
change everything."
"Everything," Panofsky agreed. "And it will change our view of the universe
as well. Not too long ago, in 1600, I regret to say that the Catholic Church
burned Giordano Bruno as a heretic. The church will have to change its
position now. The universe is infinite, after all; but there is no need
for God to be embarrassed on that account. God can simply be
more
infinite. The bigger the universe, the vaster must be God's might.
There are, just as Bruno envisioned them, worlds no telescope will ever
see; worlds beyond those worlds, worlds still beyond infinities of worlds.
Imagine, Nathan, if the earth itself were to be transmitted, and if
Earth-Sub-Two were transmitted afterwards, then Earth-Sub-Three. . . .
And not just once, but each a dozen, a hundred, numberless times, each
transmission producing its own echo."
"Is it possible?"
"Much more is possible, though perhaps not just now. The solar system
itself could be transported. We could take our sun with us as we journey
about the galaxies. Is it possible? With a transmitter such as this,
anything is possible. And what do
you
use it for? What is the only use
the military mind can find for such a marvel? To dispense bombs with it!"
"Does the President know about that waterfall-machine you spoke of?"
"Of course he does. It was immediately evident to every scientist in
the country that such a thing is possible now."
"Then why isn't it being built? Why, with a source of unlimited power,
there never need be a war again -- or hunger, or poverty."
"You'll have to answer that question, Captain, for you represent the
government, not I."
"You know," said Hansard, unhappily, "perhaps I don't."
TWELVE
THE NATURE OF THE SOUL
"Then you still don't want to tell him about it?" Bridie asked.
"To what end?" Panofsky said. "Why call him back from vacation when there's
nothing he can do to alter the situation?"
"He might gather his roses a little more quickly, if he knew," Jet said.
"I think we might best consult the tastes of the lady most directly
concerned," said Panofsky, turning to regard Bridgetta, who was now a
blonde and no longer, in fact, Bridgetta, but merely Bridget. Her smile
spoke for her: she was satisfied.
"Any more objections?" Panofsky asked.
"It's best so, of course," said Jet. "It was only selfishness that made
me want to share my fear with him. But it becomes harder and harder,
as the time advances, to pretend to be lighthearted."
"The effort will be good for both of us," Bridie said. "Pretending makes
it so."
"Furthermore," said Panofsky, "we have every reason to suppose it will be
called off. The day is fully a month away."
"Not quite that long," corrected his double.
"Well, very nearly a month. After all, it's not as though this were being
decided by merely human wit. The best computers in the world are blowing
fuses this very minute to do something about it. It's all game theory and
bluffing. I, for one, am not worried about it. Not in the least." But when
Panofsky's eyes looked across the room and met the eyes of his double,
his gaze faltered and his assurance failed.
"Well," said the double somberly, "I, for another,
am
."
Toward the end of Hansard's second week at Elba, and five days after the
preceding conversation had taken place, our hero found himself doing
something he had promised himself never to do again -- arguing with
his host. Panofsky had made another passing reference to his "little
euthanasia program," and Hansard had furrowed his brow just enough to
show that he considered it a little murder program; but he steadfastly
refused to discuss it.
"It's hardly fair, Nathan, for you to sit in judgment -- and Minos himself
could not more prominently sit in judgment than you -- your face crinkles
up like Saran Wrap -- and never allow the poor sinner a chance to justify
himself, if he can."
"I'll allow that something of the sort has to be done, but . . ."
"But? But? Now, it really isn't fair to stop at that
but
, is it?"
"I was going to say that it seems a perfectly reasonable attitude,
from the scientific point-of-view, but it seems strange in a Catholic."
"What a picture you must have of science, Nathan! You pronounce the word
as though it were a euphemism for something unspeakable, as if science were
the antithesis of the ethical -- as, since the bomb, it has in part become."
"I have nothing against the bomb," Hansard protested hastily.
Panofsky allowed this to pass with scarcely the raising of an eyebrow.
"But it is curious that you should imagine an opposition between science
and Catholicism which, I am sure, you regard as wholly irrational. No?
Yes. A dismal prospect, if evil can only be opposed by unreason."
"Honestly, Dr. Panofsky, I don't follow you when you go off on figure-eights
like that. What I had in mind was simply this: Catholics are supposed to
believe in immortal souls, and that sort of thing. In fact you've already
said that you do. But suicide is -- I don't know the technical term for it."
"A mortal sin. And so it is, but fortunately I cannot commit that sin
at this level of reality. Only Panofsky-Sub-One can commit suicide,
in the sense that it's a sin."
"Well, if you take poison and die from it, what else can you call it?"
"First, Nathan, I must explain to you the nature of the soul. At conception,
when the soul is created, it is unique, only one, indivisible. God made it
so. Do you think I can create souls? Of course not. No more can the
transmitter, which I invented, create souls. So that the apparent
multiplicity of my selves means nothing in God's eyes. I would not go
so far as to maintain that I am a mere
illusion
. Rather let us say that
I am an epiphenomenon."
"But physically your existence on this plane of reality is just as . . .
as existent as it ever was. You breathe. You eat. You
think
."
"Ah, but thinking is not a
soul
. Machines can think."
"Then you're no longer bound by any moral laws whatever?"
"On the contrary, natural law, the law derived from reason as opposed to
that which is revealed to us divinely, has as binding a force
here
as
in the Real World, just as the laws of physics work
here
. But natural law
has always condoned suicide in certain circumstances: consider all those
noble Romans throwing themselves on their swords. It is only in these
Years of Grace that suicide has become an evil because it is in contradiction
to the second supernatural virtue -- hope. It is not allowed for a Christian
to despair."
"Then you've ceased to be a Christian?"
"I am a Christian perhaps, but not a man. That is to say, the fact that
I no longer possess a soul does not prevent me from believing as I always
have. I am the same Panofsky as ever, so far as you or I can see, for it
is not given to us to see the soul. When Hoffmann sold his soul, he lost
his shadow, or was it the other way around? In any case, it was a visible
sign. But how much sadder to lose something which one cannot even be sure
afterward of having ever possessed. Happily, I am prepared for this paradox
by being a modern.
"Camus, you know, was troubled by a similar disparity between the strict
atheism which he felt reason required, and his feeling that it was wrong
to do evil. But
why
was it wrong? For no reason at all. But still one
must have some basis for action, for choosing. So one just tries to do
the best one can, from day to day, without examining the ethical dilemma
too closely . . . which is more concentration-camp philosophy. I'm sorry
I have nothing better to offer you."
"But if it's all meaningless -- and isn't that what a soul is all about,
meaningfulness? -- then why does Panofsky-Sub-One keep providing for you?
Why should he care?"
"That is a question that I hope he will never chance to ask himself.
Happily, up to now he has devoted all his attention to our physical
rather than our spiritual condition. If he were to convince himself
that we are soulless, he might very well stop sending us supplies."
"I just can't believe that, Doctor."
"Only because you're not a Catholic."
"Look, if what you said that day in the transmitting room were to happen,
if the whole damn world were to be transmitted -- what then? With all the
people on it, the Pope, everyone?"