The Penultimate Truth

24

The little dark-skinned boy said shyly, "My name is Timmy."

Beside him his smaller sister squirmed, smiled, whispered, "I'm Dora."

Nicholas said, "Timmy and Dora." To Mrs. Lantano, who stood off to one side, he said, "You two have nice children." And, seeing David Lantano's wife, he thought of his own, of Rita, still below; the doomed life of the ant tanks. Eternal, evidently; because even the decently inclined individuals who dwelt on the surface, men such as David Lantano and, if what he understood was correct, the conapt construction magnate, Louis Runcible: even these men had no plans, no hopes, nothing to offer the tankers. Except, as in Runcible's case, hygenic, pleasant prisons above ground instead of the darker, more cramped prisons below. And Lantano--

His leadies would have killed me, Nicholas realized. Except for Talbot Yancy's appearance on the scene, and with a usable weapon.

To Lantano he said, "How can they say Yancy is a fraud? Blair said so; all of them said so. You say so."

Enigmatically, Lantano said, "Every leader who has ever ruled--"

"This is different," Nicholas said. "And I think you know it. This isn't a question of the man versus his public image; this is an issue that has never been raised--as far as I know--in history. The possibility that there is no such person at all. And yet I saw him. He saved my life." I came up here, he realized, to learn two things: that Talbot Yancy does not exist, as we always believed, and--that he does; that he is real enough to destroy two feral, professional, veteran leadies who, in the absence of authoritative restraint, would revert, would kill without even serious debate. Kill a man as a perfectly natural act; part of their job. Perhaps even a major part.

"As a component in his makeup," Lantano said, "every world leader has had _some_ fictional aspect. Especially during the last century. And of course in Roman times. What, for instance, was Nero really like? We don't know. _They_ didn't know. And the same is true about Claudius. Was Claudius an idiot or a great, even saintly, man? And the prophets, the religious--"

"You'll never answer," Nicholas said. It was obvious.

Seated on the long wrought black iron and foam-rubber couch with the two children, Isabella Lantano said, "You are right, Mr. St. James; he won't answer. But he knows." Her eyes, powerful and immense, fixed them on her husband. They, she and David Lantano, exchanged glances, meaningful and silent; Nicholas, excluded, got to his feet and wandered about the high, beam-ceiling living room, aimlessly, feeling acutely helpless.

"Have a drink," Lantano said. "Tequila. We brought back a very fine stock from Mexico City/Amecameca." He added, "At that time I was speaking before the Recon Dis-In Council, discovering to my satisfaction just how disinterested they really are."

"What is this council?" Nicholas asked.

"The true high court of this, our only, world."

"What did you try to get from them?" Nicholas asked. "In the way of a ruling?"

After a long interval Lantano said, laconically, "A ruling on a very academic question. The precise legal status of the Protector. Versus the Agency. Versus General Holt and Marshal Harenzany--" He broke off, because one of his household staff of leadies had entered the living room and was approaching him deferentially. "Versus Stanton Brose," he finished. "What is it?" he asked the leady.

"Dominus, there is a Yance-man at the periphery of the guarded area," the leady said respectfully. "With his household retinue, thirty leadies in all; he is extremely agitated and wants to see you socially. With him in addition comes a group of humans referred to as Footemen commandos who protect his person against real or imaginary dangers, according to orders, he declares, from Geneva. He appears quite frightened and he said to tell you that his best friend is dead and 'he is next.' Those were his words as I recorded them, Mr. Lantano. He said, 'Unless Lantano'--he forgot the obligatory polite formality in his agitation. 'Unless Lantano can help me I am next.' Shall we admit him?"

To Nicholas, Lantano said, "That would be a Yance-man from Northern California named Joseph Adams. An admirer of certain aspects of my work." To the leady he said, after reflecting a moment, "Tell him to come in and sit down. But at nine I have a business meeting scheduled." He examined his watch. "It's almost nine now; make sure he understands he can't stay for long." As the leady departed Lantano said to Nicholas, "This one is not entirely without reputability. You may find him interesting; what he does at least produces conflicts within him. But--" Lantano gestured, with finality; for him it had been decided. "He goes along. After and during the doubts. He has them but--he goes along." Lantano's voice sank, and again shockingly, the ancient, wizened visage appeared, even older than before; this was not middle-age: this was the glimpse which Nicholas had witnessed as Lantano stepped into the Cheyenne basement, only now he saw it--briefly---close up. And then it was gone. As if it had been only a play of the fire's light; not a change in the man at all. And yet he knew, understood, that it really was within the man, and, as he glanced around at Lantano's wife and two children, he caught a fleeting impression, based on the three of them; he saw, as if from the corner of his eye, a waning within them, too--except that for the two children it was more a growth, an augmentation into maturity and vigor; they seemed, abruptly, temporarily, older. And then that passed, also.

But he had seen it. Seen the children as--adolescents. And Mrs. Lantano gray and nodding, in the doze of a timeless half-sleep, a hibernation that was a conservation of departing, former powers.

"Here they come," Isabella Lantano said.

Clanking noisily, a group of leadies filed into the living room, came to a halt; from within them, slipping out from behind, stepped four human beings who glanced about in a cautious, professional way. And then, after them, appeared one scared, lone man. Joseph Adams, Nicholas realized; the man vibrated with apprehension, as if gouged from within, already--not merely potentially--a victim of some liquidagile, ubiquitous, death-disturbing force.

"Thanks," Adams said huskily to Lantano. "I won't stay long. I was a good friend of Verne Lindblom; we worked together. His death--I'm not so worried about myself." He gestured at first his corps of leadies, then the human commandos protecting him; his double shield. "It's the shock of _his_ death. I mean, this is a lonely life anyhow, at best." Trembling, he seated himself near the fire, not far from Lantano, glancing at Isabella and the two children, then at Nicholas, with disoriented vagueness. "I went to his demesne, in Pennsylvania; they know me there, his leadies; they recognized me because he and I used to play chess together in the evenings. So they let me in."

"And what did you find?" Lantano said in a strangely harsh voice; Nicholas was surprised at the animosity of his tone.

Adams said, "The type VI leady in charge--it took the initiative of letting me have a reading which the brain-pattern recording apparatus in the wall had picked up. The killer's distinctive Alpha-wave. I took it to Megavac 6-V and ran it; the 'vac has cards of everyone in the Yance organization." His voice shook; his hands as well.

"And," Lantano said, "whose card did it pop?"

After a pause Adams said, "Stanton Brose's. Therefore I guess it must have been Brose who killed him. Killed my best friend."

"So now," Lantano said, "you not only have no best friend but you have instead an enemy."

"Yes; I suppose Brose will kill me next, As he did Arlene Davidson and then Hig and then Verne, These Footemen--" He gestured at the four of them. "Without them I'd be dead already."

Thoughtfully, Lantano nodded and said, "Very likely." He said it as if he knew.

"What I came here for," Adams said, "is to ask your help. From what I saw of you--nobody has your ability. Brose needs you; without such people, young brilliant new Yance-men like you coming into the Agency, we'll ultimately make a mistake--Brose himself will get more and more senile as that brain deteriorates; sooner or later he'll pass on a tape that's got a major flaw. Like the flaws in Fischer's two documentaries; something like the Boeing 707 or Josef Stalin conversing in English--you know about those."

"Yes," Lantano said. "I know. There are more, too. But generally still not detected. Both versions are marred in small, insidious ways. So I'm essential to Brose; well, so?" He glanced at Adams, waiting.

"You tell him," Adams said raggedly, as if having trouble breathing, "that if I'm killed, you'll pull your talents out of the Agency."

"And why should I do that?"

"Because," Adams said, "someday it'll be you. If Brose is allowed to get away with this."

"What do you think caused Brose to kill your friend Lindblom?"

He must have decided that the special project--" Adams halted, was silent, struggling with himself.

"You all had done your job," Lantano said. "And as soon as each of you had he was dispatched. Arlene Davidson, once the carefully articulated sketches--not properly sketches at all but superbly realistic drawings, perfected as to every detail--had been prepared. Hig, as soon as he had located the artifacts at the site of the Utah diggings. Lindblom, as soon as he had completed the actual artifacts themselves and they'd been shot back in time. You, at the point where your three articles for _Natural World_ are finished. Are they finished?" He glanced up, acutely.

"Yes "Adams nodded. "I handed them over to the Agency today. To be processed. Printed up in fake back-dated editions, aged and so on; you seem to know. But--" He returned Lantano's acute gaze. "Hig died too soon. He did not call the artifacts to Runcible's attention, although he had the camera and tape going. There are other Brose agents on Runcible's payroll and they report--and the camera reports--that Runcible does not know; beyond doubt he's absolutely ignorant of the presence--former presence--of the artifacts. So..." His voice lowered, became a bewildered mumble. "Something went wrong.

"Yes," Lantano agreed, "something went wrong at the one really critical moment. You're right; Hig was killed an instant too soon. I'll tell you something more. Your friend Lindblom was murdered by a German wartime invention called a Gestalt-macher; it does two distinctly separate jobs: first, it assassinates its victim instantly and without inordinate pain, which, to the German mind, makes it ethically acceptable. And then it lays down a trail of--"

"Clues," Adams interrupted. "I know; we've heard of it. We know it exists in the advanced weapons archives, which naturally only Brose can get into. Then the Alpha-wave pattern that Verne's continuous action monitor picked up-" He was silent, clasping and unclasping his hands. "It was spurious. Laid down deliberately by the Gestaltmacher. Fakes. That's what makes up the Gestalt, clues like that, profile indicators. Did the other clues--"

"All delineated Brose; they agreed. Webster Foote, who will be here any moment, fed the seven data to the Moscow computer and it popped only Brose's card. Just as Megavac 6-V did for you, on the basis of just the single datum. But one--that one--was enough."

"Then," Adams said hoarsely, "Brose did not kill Verne; it was someone else. Who not only wanted Lindblom killed but wanted us to believe Brose did it. An enemy of Brose." His face worked frantically, and Nicholas, watching, realized that the man's world had disintegrated; momentarily, the man had no intellectual, idiocrastic basis by which to orient himself; psychologically he floated, lost in a toneless, untended sea.

Lantano, however, did not seem much moved by Adams' disorganization and despair. He said, sharply, "But the Gestalt-macher was nabbed at the death locus, kept from escaping by Lindblom's alert staff of leadies. The person who set up the macher, who dispatched it with those clue data in it, knew the Lindblom had a death rattle. _Don't virtually all Vance-men carry death rattles?_ You do." He pointed at Adams' neck, and Nicholas saw a hair-thin loop of gold, a band of some unusual metal.

"That is--a fact," Adams admitted, bewildered now to the extent that speech for him was almost impossible.

"And so Brose saw a way of manufacturing a de facto case that he was not the authorizing source for the macher. Since its clues pointed to him, and it is axiomatic that the trail of clues deposited by a macher are spurious, then Foote, whose job it is to know this, knew, as Brose intended, that Brose was to be thought of as the killer--that this was what the killer wanted; and Brose was innocent." He paused. "However, Brose is not innocent. Brose programmed the macher. To indict himself and by that means certify to the police mind his innocence."

Adams said, "I don't understand." He shook his head. "I just do not understand, Lantano; don't say it again--I heard what you said. I know what the words mean. It's just too-"

"Too convoluted," Lantano agreed. "A machine that kills, that also lays down false clues; only in this case the false clues are authentic. We have here, Adams, _the ultimate in fakery_, the last stage in the evolution of an organization created for the purpose of manufacturing hoaxes. Convincingly. Here's Foote." Lantano rose, turned toward the door. It opened, and a single individual, without, Nicholas noted, a retinue of leadies plus human detectives to guard him, entered, a leather strapless binder-type case under his arm.

"Adams," Foote said. "I'm pleased to see they didn't get to you."

Somberly, with a peculiar weariness, David Lantano introduced everyone around; for the first time he acknowledged Nicholas' presence in regard to the distraught, frightened Yance-man, Joseph Adams.

"I'm sorry, Adams," Lantano said, "but I'm afraid my conference with Mr. Foote is confidential. You'll have to leave."

Huskily, Adams said, "Will you help me or not?" He rose, but did not move away. And his human, as well as artificial, bodyguard remained inert, watching the goings-on intently. "I need help, Lantano. There's no place I can go to hide from him; he'll get me because he has access to those advanced weapons; god knows what's in those archives." He appealed, then, with a silent, wild glance at Nicholas, seeking even _his_ assistance.

Nicholas said, "There's one place he might not find you." He had been pondering this for several minutes, since he had first managed to grasp the nature of Adams' situation.

"Where?" Adams said.

"Down in an ant tank."

Adams regarded him, his expression too lax, too confused by conflict, to be made out.

"My tank," Nicholas said, deliberately--because so many other persons were present--not naming his tank. "I can relocate the vertical tunnel. I intend to go back, with or without the artiforg I came for; you could come with me."

Foote said, "Ah. The artiforg. It's for you. The pancreas." He seated himself, unzipped his leather binder. "Someone in your tank? A valuable person, a dearly beloved old aunt? Artiforgs, as Mr. Lantano has undoubtedly already told you--"

"I'm going to keep trying," Nicholas said.