Echo Round His Bones

Echo Round His Bones by Thomas Disch Page B

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Authors: Thomas Disch
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in a

soundless pantomime of pursuit: a lion padding after an inaudible quarry

through a silent jungle.

After several turnings, they entered an area of luxury apartment buildings.

The figure turned in at the main entrance of one of these buildings.

Hansard, reluctant to follow him inside (for he might have joined more

of his confederates within), waited in the doorway of the building opposite.

An hour passed.

With misgivings -- for he had never till now intruded upon the private

lives of dwellers in the Real World -- Hansard began his own exploration

of the building, starting at the top floor and working his way down

through the ceilings. He encountered families at dinner, or stupefied

before the television; witnessed soundless quarrels, and surprised

people in yet more private moments: A suspicion of his quarry's intent in

coming here grew in Hansard's mind, and in Apartment 4-E this suspicion

was confirmed.

Hansard found him in the apartment of an attractive and evidently

newlywed couple. In the twilit room, the man was sitting upon their bed

and pretending to guide, with his intangible touch, the most intimate

motions of their love. While the voyeur's attention was thus directed

toward the lovers Hansard approached him from behind, slipped his tie

around the man's throat and tightened the slip-knot. The voyeur fell

backward off the bed, and Hansard saw now for the first time who his

enemy had been -- Colonel Willard Ives.

Hansard dragged Ives, choking, out of the bedroom. He wrested away the

man's canteen and drank greedily from it. He had been all day without water.

While Hansard was drinking from the canteen the colonel attempted to escape.

Two evenings ago, in Ives's office, it would have been unthinkable that

he should ever have occasion to assault his superior officer. But now the

circumstances were exceptional, and Hansard performed that unthinkable

action with scarcely a scruple. Afterward he gave Ives his handkerchief

to stop the bleeding of his nose.

"I'll have you court-marshaled for this," Ives snuffled, without much

conviction. "I'll see that you -- I'll teach you to -- "

Hansard, whose character had been made somewhat unpliable by fourteen

years of military life, was not without retroactive qualms. "Accept my

apologies, Colonel. But I can hardly be expected to regard you in the

light of my superior at the moment -- when I see you obeying the orders

of a corporal."

Ives looked up, eyes wide with emotion. "You called me Colonel . Then,

you know me. . . back there?"

"I was talking with you in your office only two nights ago, Colonel.

Surely you remember?"

"No. No, not with me." Ives bit his lower lip, and Hansard realized that

this was not, in fact, the same man. This Ives was a good seventy-five

pounds lighter than his double in the Real World, and there were innumerable

other details -- the shaggy hair, the darker complexion, the cringing

manner -- that showed him to be much changed from his old (or would

it be his other?) self. "I was never a colonel. I was only a major

when I went through the manmitter two years ago. Sometimes he brings

me to my office -- to the Colonel's office -- and humiliates me there,

in front of him. That's the only reason he wants me alive -- so he can

humiliate me. Starve me and humiliate me. If I had any courage, I'd . . .

I'd . . . kill myself. I would. I'd go outside the dome . . . and . . ."

Choking with pity for himself, he was obliged to stop speaking.

"He?" Hansard asked.

"Worsaw. The one you killed in the manmitter. I wish you'd killed all

three of him, instead of just the one."

"How many men -- of our sort -- are there in Camp Jackson?"

Ives turned his gaze away from Hansard's. "I don't know."

"Colonel -- or Major, if you prefer -- I should not like to hurt you again."

"Wouldn't you? I doubt that. You're just the same as Worsaw. You're all

the same, all of you. As soon as the discipline is gone you lose all

sense of

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