Echo Round His Bones Page 3

  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 soli
d 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.

  "They sure do take their own sweet time," the Negro private complained.

  Mansard watched as the second-hand of his wrist watch moved twice around the dial. The private seated across from him rose to his feet with an uncanny quietness and walked over to the portal, which here seemed no more than a hairline-thin circle drawn upon the solid steel. As a preventive measure against claustrophobia, however, a massive functionless doorhandle ornamented its surface.

  "This son of a bitch ain't working!" the private said. "We're stuck in this goddamn tomb!"

  "Calm down, Private -- and sit down. You heard what they said at the practice session about touching the walls. Keep your hand away from that handle."

  But the private, thoroughly panicked, had not heard Hansard's words. "I'm getting out of here. I'm not gonna -- "

  His hand was only centimeters away from the doorhandle when he saw the other hand. It was freckled and covered with a nap of red hair. It was reaching for him through the steel wall.

  The private screamed and stumbled backward. Even these clumsy movements were performed with that same catlike quietness. A second disembodied hand, differing from the first in that it held a revolver, appeared. Then, bit by bit, the plane of the door surrendered the entire front of the body so that it formed a sort of bas-relief. The private continued his muted screaming.

  Hansard did not at first recognize the apparition as Worsaw. Perhaps, after all, it was not Worsaw, for Hansard had seen him only minutes before, in uniform and clean-shaven -- and this man, this Worsaw, was dressed in walking shorts and a tee-shirt and sported a full red beard.

  "Hiya, Meatball," he said (and certainly it was Worsaw's voice that spoke), addressing the private, who became silent once more. "How'd you like to be integrated?" A rhetorical question, for without waiting for a reply he shot the private three times in the, face. The body crumpled backward against -- and partly through -- the wall.

  Hansard had heard of no other cases of insanity produced by transmittal, but then he knew so little about it altogether. Perhaps he was not mad, but only dreaming. Except that in dreams the dreamers should not be discountenanced by the bizarreness of the dream-world.

  "That takes care of one son of a bitch," the spectral Worsaw said.

  Before the man's murderous inference could be realized, Hansard acted. In a single motion he threw himself from the bench, and the attaché case that he had been holding at Worsaw's gun hand. The gun went off, doing harm only to the case.

  In leaping from the bench, Hansard had landed on the floor of the steel vault, or, more precisely, in it , for his hands had sunk several inches into the steel, which felt like chilled turpentine against his skin. This was strange, really very strange. But for the time being Hansard had accepted the logic of this dream-world and was not to be distracted from his immediate purpose, which was to disarm Worsaw, by any untimely sense of wonderment. He sprang up to catch hold of Worsaw's hand, but found that with the same movement his legs sank knee-deep into the insubstantial floor.

  Hansard's actions would have been fatally slow, except that when the attaché case had struck Worsaw the latter staggered backward half a step. Mere inches, but far enough so that his face vanished into the wall out of which it had materialized. But the gun and the hand that held it were still within the vault and Hansard, lunging and sinking at once, caught hold of the former.

  He tried to lever the weapon out of Worsaw's hand, but Worsaw held fast to it. As he struggled, Hansard found himself sinking deeper into the floor, and the drag of his weight unbalanced Worsaw. Hansard gave a violent twist to the arm of the falling man. The gun fired.

  And Worsaw was dead.

  Hansard, waist-deep in chrome-vanadium steel, stared at the bleeding body before him. He tried not to think, fearing that if he ventured even the smallest speculation he would hse all capacity for action. It was hard to maintain even the most provisional faith in the dream-world.

  He found that if he moved slowly he was able to raise himself out of the floor, which then supported the full weight of his body in the customary manner of steel floors. He picked up the attaché case (even here in the dream-world, a Priority-A letter commands respect), and sat down carefully on the bench.

  Avoiding the sight of the two corpses, be stared intently at the sign stencilled on the wall of the vault:

  CAMP JACKSON/EARTH MATTER TRANSMITTER

  He counted to ten (no better strategy suggested itself), but the corpses were still there afterward; and when he poked the toe of his shoe at the floor, he punctured the steel with his foot. He was stuck in his dream.

  Which was only a polite way of saying, he realized, that he was mad. But damn it, he didn't feel mad.

  There was no time for finer flights of epistemology, for at that moment another man entered through the wall of the vault. It was Worsaw. He was barechested and wearing skivvies, and Hansard was glad to see that his hands were empty. The living Worsaw looked at the dead Worsaw on the floor and swore.

  Now Hansard did panic, though in his panic he did a wiser thing than he could have conceived soberly. He ran away. He turned around on the bench where he had been sitting and ran away through the steel wall.

  Coming out of the wall, he fell four feet and sank up to the middle of his calves in the concrete floor. Directly in front of him, not two feet away, was one of the M.P.'s that guarded the manmitter.

  "Guard!" he shouted. "Guard, there's someone -- " His voice died in his throat as the hand that he had placed upon the guard's shoulder sank through his flesh as through a light mist of sea spray. The guard gave no sign that he had felt Hansard's hand or heard his voice.

  But others did -- and now Hansard became aware that the hall was filled with unauthorized personnel. Some of them Hansard recognized as men from his own company, though like the two Worsaws, they were all bearded and dressed as though they were on furlough in Hawaii; others were complete strangers. They moved about the hall freely, unchallenge
d by the guards to whom they seemed to be invisible.

  Worsaw stepped out of the steel wall behind Hansard. He was holding the gun that had belonged to his dead double. "All right, Captain, the fun's done. Now, let's see what you got in that briefcase."

  Hansard broke into a sprint, but two of Worsaw's confederates blocked his path in the direction he had taken.

  "Don't waste bullets, Snooky," one of these men shouted -- a scrawny, towheaded man that Hansard recognized as Corporal Lesh. "We'll get him."

  Hansard veered to the right, rounding the corner of the manmitter. There, in a heap before the door of the Steel Womb, were half the men of "A" Company -- all eight of the Negroes and five whites -- in their uniforms and either dead or dying. Nearby was another, more orderly pile of bodies; here the remaining men of the company were bound hand and foot. A second Lesh and a man unknown to Hansard stood guard over them with rifles.