The Penultimate Truth

12

As he stood staring at the incomprehensible sign at its chest area the leady said to him, "Excuse us, sir, for our unpardonable treatment of you, but we were anxious to remove you from your tunnel and at the same time, if possible, close it over. Perhaps you can tell us direct, making possible the avoidance of using further detection devices. Are there any more individuals from your tank preparing to or in the process of following you up?"

Nicholas mumbled, "No."

"I see," the leady said, and nodded as if satisfied. "Our next question is this. What caused you to tunnel vertically, in defiance of the familiar ordinance and the grave penalties involved?"

Its companion, the partially damaged leady, added, "In other words, sir, kindly tell us why you are here."

After a time Nicholas said haltingly, "I--came to get something."

"Would you tell us the nature of this 'something'?" the intact leady asked.

For the life of him he could not make out if he should say or not; the whole environment, the world around him and these inhabitants, metallic and yet polite, pressing at him and yet respectful, bewildered him and made him disoriented.

"We will allow you a moment," the intact leady said, "to compose yourself. However, we must insist on your answering." It moved toward him, then, a device in its manual extremity. "I would like you to submit to a polygraphic reading of your statements; in other words, sir, a measuring by an independent percept system of the veracity of your answers. No offense is meant, sir; this is routine."

Before he knew what was happening, the lie detector had been clamped around his wrist.

"Now, sir," the intact leady said. "What description of conditions as they obtain here on the Earth's surface did you provide your fellow tankers below by means of the intercom system which we just now rendered inoperative; please give us ample and specific details."

He said haltingly, "I--don't know."

The damaged leady spoke up, directly to its companion. "There is no need to ask him that; I was near enough to monitor the conversation."

"Please run the playback," the intact leady said.

To Nicholas' aversion and consternation there all at once issued from the damaged leady's voice box the tape recording of his own conversation with those below. Out of the leady's mouth came the squeaky, distant but clear words, as if the leady was now himself, mimicking him horribly.

"_Hey, President St. James! Are you through?_"

And then his own voice, but slightly speeded-up, it seemed to him, answering. "_I'm through_."

"_Start telling; talk to us about it_."

"_First of all, the sky is gray because--_"

He had to stand there, by the pair of leadies, and hear everything once over again in its entirety; and all the time he wondered to himself, again and again, _What is going on?_

At last the total conversation had been run; the two leadies conferred. "He did not tell them anything of value," the intact leady decided.

"I agree." The damaged leady nodded. "Ask him again if they will be coming up." Both metal heads swiveled toward Nicholas; they regarded him intently. "Mr. St. James, will you be followed either now or later?"

"No," he said hoarsely.

"The polygraph," the damaged leady said, "bears out his statement. Now, once more, Mr. St. James; the purpose of your tunneling to the surface. I insist respectfully, sir, that you tell us; you _must_ say why you are here."

"No," he said.

The damaged leady said to its companion, "Contact Mr. Lantano and inquire whether we should kill Mr. St. James or turn him over to the Runcible organization or the Berlin psychiatrists. Your transmitter is operative; mine was destroyed by Mr. St. James' weapon."

After a pause the intact leady said, "Mr. Lantano is not at the villa; the domestic staff and yard workers say that he is at the Agency in New York City."

"Can they contact him there?"

A long, long pause. Then, at last, the intact leady said, "They have contacted the Agency by vidline. Mr. Lantano was there, using the 'vac, but he has left since and no one at the Agency seems to know where or when he will turn up; he left no message with them." It added, "We will have to decide on our own."

"I disagree," the damaged leady said. "We must contact the nearest Yance-man, in Mr. Lantano's absence, and rely on his judgment, not our own. By means of the vidline at the villa we can perhaps contact Mr. Arthur B. Tauber to the east, at his demesne. Or if not him, then anyone at the New York Agency; the point is that Mr. St. James has told no one below in his tank anything as to the conditions on the surface and hence his death would be regarded by them as a bona fide war casualty. They would be satisfied."

"Your last point is well made," the intact leady said. "I think we should go, then, and kill him, and not bother the Yance-man Mr. Arthur B. Tauber who anyhow would be at the Agency and by the time we--"

"Agreed." The damaged leady brought forth a tubelike apparatus, and Nicholas knew that this was the dealer out of death; this would be it, for him, with no further debate: the colloquy between the two leadies--and he kept thinking over and over again, _we made them, ourselves, down in our shops; these are the products of our own hands_--this conversation was over and the decision had been made.

He said, "Wait."

The two leadies, as if out of formal, correct politeness, waited; did not kill him quite yet.

"Tell me," he said, "why, if you're Wes-Dem and not Pac-Peop, and I know you're Wes-Dem; I can see the writing on both of you--why would you kill me?" Appealing to them, to the extraordinary perceptive and rational neural equipment, the highly organized cephalic capabilities of the two of them--they were type VI--he said, "I came up here to get an artiforg pancreas, so we can fulfill our quota of war work. An artiforg; you understand? For our chief mechanic. For the war effort." But, he thought, I don't see the signs of any war. I see the remains, indication of a war that has passed... he saw ruins, but they were inactive; there was a quality of age about the landscape, and far off he did actually see trees. And the trees looked new and young and healthy. Then that's it, he thought. _The war is over_. One side won or anyhow the fighting has ceased and now these leadies belong not to Wes-Dem, are not part of a governmental army, but are the property of the individual whose name is stamped on them, this David Lantano. And it is from him that they take their orders-- when they can find him. But he is not at the moment around to appeal to. And because of that, I have to die.

"The polygraph," the damaged leady said, "indicates great mentation on Mr. St. James' part. Perhaps it would be humane to inform him--" It broke off. Because it had been pulverized; where it had stood a heap of disconnected fragments teetered, an upright column that toppled and rapidly came apart. The intact leady spun about, spun full-circle, like a tall metal top; it sought in a veteran expert way the origin of the force that had obliterated its companion, and while it was doing that the concentrated beam of murder touched it, too, and it ceased to whirl. It collapsed, broke apart and settled and Nicholas found himself alone, facing nothing that lived or spoke or thought, even artificial constructs; the silence, everywhere, had replaced the feral activity of the two leadies who had been about to dispatch him and he was glad of that, intensely and absolutely relieved that they had been destroyed, and yet he did not comprehend; he looked in every direction, as the intact leady had done, and he, like it, saw nothing, only the boulders, the tufts of weeds, and, far off, the ruins of Cheyenne.

"Hey," he said loudly; he began to walk up and down, searching, as if he might stumble over it, the benign entity, any moment, as if it might be fly-sized, a bug at his feet, something insignificant that he could only locate by almost stepping on it. But--he found nothing. And the silence went on.

A voice, magnified by a power-driven horn, boomed, "Go to Cheyenne."

He hopped, turned; behind one of the boulders the man lurked, speaking but concealing himself. Why?

"In Cheyenne," the booming voice said, "you'll find ex-tankers who came up previously. Not from your tank, of course. But they'll accept you. They'll show you the deep cellars where there's minimal radioactivity, where you'll be safe for a while until you can decide what you want to do."

"I want an artiforg," he said, doggedly, like some reflex machine; it was all he could think of. "Our chief mechanic--"

"I realize that," the booming, horn-amplified voice said. "But I still advise, _go to Cheyenne_. It'll take you hours of walking and this area is hot; you must not stay up here too long. Get down into the Cheyenne cellars!"

"And you can't tell me who you are?"

"Do you have to know?"

Nicholas said, "I don't 'have to know.' But I'd like to. It would mean a lot to me." He waited. "Please," he said.

After a pause of overt, genuine reluctance a figure stepped from behind a boulder--so close to him that he leaped; the mechanical reinforcement of the voice had been a technical deception to distract efforts to locate the origin of the sound--it had successfully given a totally false impression of great vastness and distance to both him and the latter of the two leadies. And all spurious.

The figure who stood there was--

Talbot Yancy.