"Nathan, what a splendid question! I'd never thought of that. Of course
the basic situation remains unaltered, but the
magnitude
of it! A whole
world without shadows! Yes, and for a final paradox, what if such a
transmission were to take place not tomorrow but two thousand years ago,
and Christ himself . . . Nathan, you
do
have an instinct for these
things. You may have changed my mind, which is an almost unheard-of thing
at my age. I will certainly have to give a good deal of thought to the
question. But now that I've shown you my soul, such as it is or isn't,
would you like to show me yours?"
Hansard's brow furrowed more deeply this time. "I don't understand."
"Why is it, Nathan, that you wake up screaming in the middle of the night?"
And yet another week later.
"I'm sorry," Hansard said, "for flying off the handle with you like that."
"Not with me, I'm afraid," said Panofsky, "though Bernard did tell me
about that incident. As a matter of fact, Nathan, I scolded him on your
behalf. Your dreams are nobody's business but your own. I think Bernard's
let himself become something of a snoop since he left the Real World.
That happens to all of us to some degree, but he could confine his
eavesdropping to that world and leave
us
alone."
Hansard laughed uneasily. "It's funny you should say that, because I'd
just come to tell you -- to tell
him
-- that he was right. Or, perhaps,
not exactly right, but . . ."
"But you were going to answer his question anyhow? Confession does ease
the soul, as they say. Especially -- I've always observed -- the souls
of Protestants, in which category I would include those of your stamp.
It's because they're so severe with themselves that the fact of mercy
overwhelms them."
"I'm not looking for mercy," Hansard said dourly.
"Precisely my point. You'll be all the more surprised to find it. Tell me,
Nathan, did you fight in Viet Nam back in the Sixties?"
Hansard turned pale. "I was just about to tell you about that. How did
you know?"
"It's nothing telepathic -- just a simple inference. If you're thirty-eight
now, you would have come of age for the draft at the height of the whole
mess. Some very nasty things happened in that war. We civilians with our
heads in the sand probably got little idea of what went on, even though
the newspapers were full of stories almost every day. Women and children?"
Hansard nodded. "It was a child, a little boy, he couldn't have been
much older than five."
"You had to shoot him in self-defense?"
"I incinerated him in self-defense."
They were silent together a long while, though it was not, on Panofsky's
part, an unsympathetic silence.
Then Hansard said, reaching for a tone of ordinariness, "But you knew it
all before I even told you. You anticipated everything I had to tell you."
"We sinners are never as unique as we suppose ourselves to be. When a boy
of thirteen goes into the confessional with his nails bitten to the quick,
the priest will not be surprised to learn that he has committed sins of
impurity. When a grown man, an Army captain, who usually evidences the
most strait-laced moral code, wakes up screaming in the night, one looks
for a cause commensurable to the pain. Also, Nathan, your case is not
unique. There have been a dozen novels written about that war by other
men who woke up screaming. But why is it, after all this time, you wanted
to speak about it?"
"I haven't been able to tell Bridgetta. I tried to, and I couldn't.
I thought perhaps I'd be able to, if I told you about it first."
"And why were you anxious to tell her?"
"I've always thought that one of the reasons my first marriage never
worked was because I didn't tell Marion about that boy. She wouldn't
let me, the one time I tried. This time I won't make that mistake."
"This is news! You're marrying the girl then?"
"In another week. There's going to be a big society wedding at Grace
Episcopal, and we thought we'd just sneak in and make it a double
wedding. I hope you'll be able to be there to give the bride away."
But before Panofsky could commit himself, Bridie came into the room
unannounced and wearing a look of grave concern. "You'd better come
and see this, Bernard. We have them on the screen now, and it's just as
we feared."
Hansard followed Bridie and Panofsky into the sitting room adjoining
Bridgetta's bedchamber. There Bridgetta-Sub-One, in a terrycloth bathrobe
and her hair wound up in a towel, was standing a few feet back from the
12-inch screen of the videophone. The Sub-Two residents of Elba were
crowded close about another receiver, apparently on an extension line
from the first.
The image on the screen that Bridgetta-Sub-One was watching was of Panofsky,
but on the other screen there were
two
Panofskys, the second of them
with what appeared to be a cloud of cellophane wreathing his head. With
the two Panofskys crowded before the screen and the others pictured on
it, there were a total of four functioning Panofskys visible to Hansard
in a single glance. It was too much, by at least one.
"What in hell is -- " he began, but Bridie silenced him with a peremptory
gesture.
No sound came from either videophone, but this did not seem to dampen
the interest of the spectators. While he waited for this strange charade
to end, Hansard reasoned. He reasoned that (1) the videophone that
Bridgetta-Sub-One was watching belonged to the Real World (which was
confirmable by sticking a finger into it); that (2) the Panofsky pictured
upon it must therefore be Panofsky-Sub-One (and hadn't there been talk
lately of his having gone off for the Bolshoi's spring season?), and that
(3) the
second
Panofsky, visible on the screen of the other videophone
(which
was
tangible to Hans ard's touch), must be a sublimated Panofsky.
When the call was concluded and the image had shrunk to a small dot of
light, Panofsky congratulated Hansard on his reasoning. "One of our
knottiest problems," the old man went on, "was establishing communications
with the others of us around the world. You see, I've made as much provision
as I can for the Sub-Two Panofskys produced by the transmissions from
Paris or Moscow back to Washington. There is a gas mask and oxygen supply
stored beneath the seat of my wheel chair at all times. It gives me --
or him, whichever way you choose to regard it -- more or less twenty-four
hours' time; enough for one last night at the Bolshoi and sometimes a
visit to the Kremlin.
"But of what use is it to be a perfect spy, if one can't communicate
what one has unearthed? The method that had to be employed was soon
obvious to us, but we had to wait for Panofsky-Sub-One to think of it,
and sometimes that man can be almost military in his thinking. But at last
the solution occurred to him. What we do now is this: At a predetermined
time, to be indicated on my desk calendar, Bridgetta-Sub-One receives
a call here at Elba from Panofsky-Sub-One who is in another city. Today
it was Moscow. Once the connection has been established, it is a simple
matter for the Panofsky-Sub-Two then in Moscow to be on hand and give
his report at the same time.
"It requires a bit of hithering and thithering on Panofsky-Sub-One's part.
Usually he goes from Moscow, after the curtain falls at the Bolshoi,
to Paris for supper, and returns to Moscow next day for another performance
-- and to make the phone call. The sublimated Panofsky does not, of course,
appear on the screen of Bridgetta's receiver, but on
this
one, which has
itself been sublimated, he does appear. There is no sound, for the
Panofsky-Sub-One on the other end has only the air he has brought with
him. But we have learned to lip-read, so that is hunky-dory."
"Hunky-dory!" Jet whispered, with a shudder. "Not hunky-dory!"
While the first Panofsky sat back to savor his Americanism, the other
sighed. "I wish there were some simpler way. This method is so wasteful
of lives. There are none of the resources in those other cities that we
have here at Elba. It is hard to bring everything one requires for even
a short visit. The breathing equipment is bulky, and the secret service
guards think it strange that Panofsky-Sub-One should always insist on
bringing it along."
"Fortunately," the first Panofsky interrupted (they were neither wearing
the skull cap at the moment), "he has a reputation for eccentricity. He
has invented a delightfully paranoid theory concerning foreign germs."
The two Panofskys smiled in ironic appreciation of this theory.
"But there are compensations," said the second.
"Oh, yes. There is usually time to see one last performance, and from a
vantage better even than the conductor's. Since being sublimated
I
have
seen nothing, less than nothing. Here we are in one of the chief cities
of the world, the capital of the most affluent culture on earth, and
have you ever seen what is called ballet here? It is vomit! I protest
against it vehemently. But in Moscow . . . ah! Tonight, for instance, we
were told that Malinova was extraordinary in the second act of
Giselle
."
The second Panofsky sighed more deeply. "Now more than ever does it seem
rich to die. For
him
, that is."
"Exactly.
We
shall both be dead inside of two weeks. And
we
will never
have seen that
Giselle
. I'd willingly give two weeks of my life to
see that."
"Two weeks?" Hansard asked.
"Oh, Bernard!" Bridgetta cried out. "You promised not to say anything."
"My dear, excuse me. It just slipped out."
"Why should you be dead in two weeks?" asked Hansard. "There's something
you've been keeping back from me. I've felt it in the air ever since I
came here."
"May I tell him?" Panofsky inquired of Bridgetta.
"What choice is there now? Nathan, don't look like that. I didn't want you
to know, because . . . because we were so happy."
"In two weeks, Captain Hansard, all hell breaks loose. To be precise, on
the first of June. My double in Moscow just informed us that the Kremlin
is being as foolishly resolute and resolutely foolish as Washington."
"I find that hard to believe," said Hansard.
"Nevertheless, it is so. Bridgetta, may I show him the letter?"
"Try to understand, Mr. Hansard," Bridie said (for Bridgetta, in tears
now, was able to do no more than nod her head yes), "that when Bridget
followed you that day and took this out of its hiding place in the
Monument, she was only concerned to find out who you were. We had no
way of knowing if we could trust you. We weren't expecting anything of
this sort."
"You mean to say you opened that attaché case? But it was Priority-A!"
Panofsky removed a folded paper from his coat pocket and handed it to
Hansard. "The case contained only this letter, Nathan. And since this
letter was signed, a month ago, nothing has altered."
After he had digested the President's written order, after he had convinced
himself of its authenticity, Hansard said, "But the diplomats . . .
Or the United Nations . . ."
"No," said Jet dismally. "I've been watching them here in Washington every
day. The President, the Secretary of Defense, the Russian ambassador --
none of them will unbend. Because CASS-9 won't. They've become the slaves
of that computer. And now the President and the Cabinet and all the
important officers of the Pentagon have gone into hiding. They've been
away for a week. It bodes no good."
"I simply can't believe that if nobody
wants
the war -- "
"Has anybody
ever
wanted the war? But it was bound to happen, you know.
The whole effectiveness of our arsenal as a deterrent force was based on
the possibility of it being used. Now that possibility will be realized."
"But there's been no aggression, no provocation . . ."
"CASS-9, apparently, does not need to be provoked. I'll confess that,
with respect to game theory, I am naďve."
The second Panofsky, who had been listening intently the while, hit the arm
of his wheel chair with his fist and swore.
"He is so especially distressed," his double explained, "because he knows
he could stop it. If only there were a way for him to speak to
Panofsky-Sub-One."
"If all that you say is true, though," Hansard said, deliberately,
"it seems to be too late for the explanations of men of good will."
"You mistake my meaning, Nathan. He, Bernard Panofsky, singlehanded,
could stop the war -- snap! like that. It is all written out on vellum;
a splendid, magnificent, preposterous plan. But it cannot be carried
through by any of us, only by someone of the Real World. And so it is
all no good, a failure . . ."
"Singlehanded?" Hansard asked, with a note of proessional incredulity.
"Alas, yes," said both Panofskys in chorus.
Then one of them removed the skull cap from his pocket and put it on his
head. "If you please, Bernard -- I will tell him how."
THIRTEEN
MARS
Here there were no usual measures of time. The Camp lived on a twenty-four
-hour earth-day; but a complete rotation of Mars took thirty-six minutes
longer, so that only once in forty days was the high noon of the sun in
perfect agreement with the high noon dictated by the clocks on the wall.
Five weeks of anxious waiting had slipped by in a twinkling. Five weeks
in a limbo of inactivity and the ritual gesturing of the run-throughs
and inspections. Five weeks going up and down the olive-drab corridors,
eating tinfoil dinners, swilling hot coffee, thinking the same well-worn
thoughts which, through repetition (just as the food seemed to lose its
flavor day by day), grew wearisome and were set aside.
Like a spring brook in the dry season of the year, conversation subsided
to a trickle. The enlisted men passed the long hours with endless poker
games. General Pittmann kept more and more to himself, and so, perforce,
did Captain Hansard.
A strange condition, a condition difficult to describe except in negatives.
Life was reduced to a minimum of automatic processes -- waking, sleeping,
eating, walking here and there, watching the time slip by, listening to
silences. The Camp's narrow world of rooms and corridors came to seem
somehow . . . unreal.