The Penultimate Truth

22

To Nicholas the bearded ex-tanker Jack Blair said dolefully, "I guess we don't have a cot for you to sleep on, Nick. Not right away. So you'll have to bed down on the cement."

They stood in the dim basement of what had once been an insurance company's central offices. The insurance company had long ago vanished, along with its mighty concrete and steel structure; the basement, however, remained. And was much appreciated.

And all around, on every side, Nicholas saw other ex-tankers, now residents in a sense of the surface. But still so completely, palpably deprived; so devoid, in the most literal physical sense, of what was theirs.

"Not much of a way," Blair said, seeing his expression, "of inheriting the Earth. Maybe we haven't been meek enough."

"Maybe too meek," Nicholas said.

"You're beginning to feel that hate," Blair said acutely. "The desire to get back at them. It's a fine idea. But how? If you think of a way, tell us; all of us. Meanwhile--" He began searching around. "A more immediate issue is your need for bedding. Lantano gave us--"

"I'd like to see this Lantano," Nicholas said. "This one Yance-man that seems to have a decent gene or two." And through him, he thought, bargain for the artiforg.

Blair said, "You should get to, pretty soon. This is usually just about the time he drops by. You'll recognize him because he's so dark. From the radiation burns." He glanced up and then said quietly, "Here he is now."

The man who had entered the basement shelter had not come alone; behind him a file of leadies lurched under their loads, supplies for the ex-tankers squatting here in the ruins. And he was dark; his skin shone a reddish-black. But, Nicholas realized, not from radiation burns.

And, as Lantano made his way through the basement, among the cots, stepping over people, their meager stores, saying hello here, smiling to someone there, Nicholas thought, _My god, when he came through the entrance he looked like an old man, weathered, dried-out, but now, closer, Lantano appeared middle-aged; the aura of extreme age had been an illusion due to the scrawny quality of the man and the peculiar stiffness in the way he walked; it was as if he were delicate, feared an injury, a fall._

Going up to him, Nicholas said, "Mr. Lantano."

The man with the retinue of leadies--who were now opening their bundles and spreading out the contents for distribution--stopped, glanced at Nicholas. "Yes?" he said, with a ragged, burdened and quite fleeting smile of greeting.

Blair plucked at Nicholas' sleeve. "Don't keep him long; remember he's sick. From the burns. He's got to make it back to his villa so he can lie down." To the dark man, Blair said, "Isn't that right, Mr. Lantano?"

Nodding, the dark man continued to gaze at Nicholas. "Yes, Mr. Blair. I am sick. Otherwise I would get here oftener." Lantano turned, then, to be sure his leadies were distributing their goods as rapidly and efficiently as possible; he turned his attention away from Nicholas.

"He was oppressed and despised," Nicholas said.

At once Lantano turned back, eyed him intently; his eyes, black, deep-set, burned as if overpowered, as if the surge of energy within him had gone beyond the safe limit--the blaze seemed to consume the actual organ of sight through which it found expression, and Nicholas felt awe. "Yes, my friend. What was it you asked me for? A bed to sleep on?"

"That's right," Blair chimed in eagerly. "We're out of cots, Mr. Lantano; we could use ten more, in fact, just to be on the safe side, because there's always somebody like this Nick St. James here every day, it seems like. More and more all the time."

"Perhaps," Lantano said, "the illusion is wearing thin. An error here and there. A weak video signal that interrupts... is that why you came up, Nick?"

"No," Nicholas said. "I want a pancreas. I have twenty thousand dollars." He reached into what remained--after the mauling by the leady--of his coat. But the wallet was gone. It had fallen then, when the leady had clawed him, or when it had hooked and dragged him, or during the hours of walking... any time. He had no idea. He stood, empty-handed, with no idea what to say or do; he simply stood facing Lantano in silence.

After a time Lantano said, "I couldn't have gotten it for you anyhow, Nick." His tone was faint but compassionate. And the eyes. They still burned. Still overpowered by the flame that was not mere life; it was archetypal--it went beyond the individual, the mere animalman as such. It drew from whatever final source energy of this sort sprang; Nicholas had no idea about it, no understanding: he had never seen it before.

"Like I said," Blair reminded him. "That Brose has got--"

Lantano said, "Your quote was wrong. 'He was despised and rejected of men.' Did you mean me?" He indicated his retinue of leadies, who by now had finished distributing their stores to the ex-tankers. "I'm not doing too badly. Nick; I have forty leadies, not bad for a start. Especially not bad considering this legally is still only a hot-spot and not a demesne."

"Your color," Nicholas said. "Your skin."

"Chrissakes!" Blair grated, grabbing at him, drawing him away from Lantano. In an angry low voice he said into Nicholas's ear, "What do you want to do, embarrass him? He knows he's burned; my god, he comes here and keeps us alive and you go and--"

"But he's not burned," Nicholas said. _He's an Indian_, he said to himself. _A full-blooded Cherokee, from the looks of his nose. And he's explained his skin color away as radiation burns; why? Is there some law that would bar him from being... he could not remember the term. Yance-man. Part of those who ruled; the insiders. Maybe it was strictly white, as back in the old days, the previous prejudiced centuries._

Lantano said, "Mr. St. James, Nick--I'm sorry you had such a traumatic first-meeting with my retinue, today. Those two leadies; they were so militant because--" His voice was calm; he seemed tranquil, not disturbed by anything Nicholas had said: he was not really sensitive about his skin; Blair was completely wrong. "--other demesne owners," Lantano was saying, "bordering this hot-spot. They'd like to acquire it. They send their leadies in to make Geiger counter readings; they're hoping it's too hot, that it'll kill me, and then this area will be open once more." He smiled. Grimly.

"Is it too hot?" Nicholas asked him. "What do their readings give?"

"Their readings give nothing. Because they never survive. My own metallic companions destroy them; how hot this area has become is my business alone. But--you see, that makes my leadies dangerous. Try to understand, Nick; I had to pick those who were old vets of the war; I needed their toughness, their training and ability. Yance-men-- you understand that term?--prize the new, undented, undamaged leadies being minted below. But I have such a special problem; I must defend myself." His voice, hauntingly melodic, was almost a chant, as if only half-uttered; Nicholas had to strain to hear it. As if, he thought, Lantano was becoming unreal. Fading.

And, as he looked once more at the dark man he again made out the lines of age, and this time, with those lines, a familiar configuration. As if, in aging, Lantano had become--someone else.

"Nick," Lantano said softly, "what was that about my skin?"

There was silence; he did not say.

"Go ahead," Lantano said.

"You're a--" He scrutinized Lantano intently and now, instead of age he saw--a youth. A supple man, younger than himself; no more than nineteen or twenty. It must be the radiation, Nicholas thought; it consumes him, the very marrow of his bones. Withers, calcifies, speeds up the destroying of cell-walls, of tissue; he is sick--Blair was right.

And yet the man rehealed. Visibly. It was as if he oscillated; he swung into degeneration, into submission to the radioactivity with which he had, twelve hours a day, to live... and then, as it ate him, he pulled himself back from the edge; he was recharged.

Time curled and poked at him, tinkered insidiously at the metabolism of his body. But--never totally overtook him. Never really won.

"'Blessed,' " Nicholas said, " 'are the peacemakers.' " He then was silent. That seemed to be the extent of his contribution. He could not say what he knew, what his hobby of years, his interest in North American Indians and their artifacts and culture, had provided him as a basis for understanding what these other ex-tankers around him had not, could not; their own phobias about radiation, phobias developed while still below in their tanks, and now augmented, had misled them, concealed from them what was to his eyes obvious.

And yet he was still puzzled, because obviously Lantano had allowed them to think of him this way, as injured, burned. And--he did seem to be wounded. Not, perhaps, in regard to his skin, but more deeply. And so, fundamentally, the ex-tankers' view was correct.

"Why," Lantano said, "are the peacemakers blessed?"

That stumped Nicholas. And it was he who had said it.

He did not know what he meant; the idea had arisen as he contemplated Lantano; that was all he knew, just as a moment ago another outside-of-time observation had risen, unsolicited to his conscious mind, that about the man who was despised and rejected. And that man had been--well, in his own mind he knew who that man had been, even though most persons at the Tom Mix had attended the Sunday services as a mere formality. For him, however, it had been real; he had believed. Just as he had also believed--although _feared_ was a more accurate word--that someday they might need to know how the North American Indians had survived, because they themselves might need to know the art of chipping flint arrowheads and processing animal hides.

"Come and see me," Lantano said to him, "at my villa. Several rooms are complete; I am able to live comfortably while the noisy metal men bang away at the job of hauling concrete slabs and chunks which once made up bank buildings and freeway ramps and drive-ins and--"

Nicholas interrupted, "Can I stay there? Instead of here?"

After a pause Lantano said, "Of course. You can see that my wife and children are safe from the predations of the leadies of the four neighboring demesnes while I'm at the Agency; you can strawboss my little defensive police force." Turning, he signaled to his retinue; it began to file from the basement.

"Well I see," Blair said enviously, "you made it big."

Nicholas said, "I'm sorry." He did not know why Lantano awed him, why he wanted to go with him. A mystery, he thought; there is an enigma about this man who when you first catch sight of him is old, then not so old, is middle-aged, and then when you are up close he is all at once a youth. A wife and child? Then he can't be as young as he now seems. Because David Lantano, striding out of the basement ahead of him, moved like a man in his early twenties, in the full vigor of youth before it became weighed down by the responsibilities of wife, children: of marriage.

_Time_, Nicholas thought. _It's as if a force that grips us all in a one-way path of power, a total power on its part, none on ours, has for him divided; he is moved by it and yet simultaneously, or perhaps alternately, he seizes it and grips it and he then moves on to suit his own needs._

He followed after Lantano and his file of leadies, out of the basement, up into the gray light of a partial day.

"There are colorful sunsets," Lantano said, pausing and glancing back. "Which make up for the dinginess of the daytime atmosphere. Did you ever see Los Angeles in the days of the smog?"

"I never lived on the West Coast," Nicholas said. And then he thought, _But smog ceased to afflict Los Angeles by 1980; I wasn't even born, then_. "Lantano," he said, "_how old are you?_"

There was no answer from the man ahead of him.

In the sky something passed slowly, very high. From east to west.

"A satellite," Nicholas said, excitedly. "My god, I haven't seen one in all these years."

"An eye-spy," Lantano said. "Taking photographs; it's reentered the atmosphere to get a clearer shot. I wonder why. What would interest anyone here? Rival demesne owners? Domini who'd like to see me a corpse? Do I look like a corpse, Nick?" He halted. "Answer me. Am I here, Nick, _or am I dead?_ What's your opinion? Is the flesh that hung--" He became silent, then; all at once he turned and continued on.

Nicholas, despite his fatigue from the four-hour hike to Cheyenne from the tunnel, managed to keep up. Hoping, as he trudged on, that it was not far.

"You've never seen a demesne villa, have you?" Lantano said.

"I've never even seen a demesne," Nicholas said.

"Then I'll fly you over a few of them," Lantano said. "By flapple. It will interest you, the view from above; you'll think it's a park--no roads, no cities. Very pretty, except that the animals are all dead. All gone. Forever."

They trudged on. Overhead, the satellite had almost disappeared beyond the line of the horizon, into the gray smoglike haze that, Nicholas realized, would remain in suspension for generations to come.