The Penultimate Truth Page 9

  Halting the spool, Colleen looked up at him.

  "Hitler lands secretly in the U.S. in May of 1942," Adams said, "in a Boeing 707 fan-jet. Those didn't come into use until the mid-i 960s. There was only one jet plane extant during World War Two, a German-made fighter, and it never saw service."

  "Oh my god," Colleen said, open-mouthed.

  "But it worked," Adams said. "People in Pac-Peop believed it—by 1982 they were so used to seeing jets that they forgot that in '42 there were only what they called—" He couldn't remember.

  "Prop planes," Colleen said.

  "I think I can see," Adams said, "why the master monad of the archives referred me back to these, to the original source. All the way back to the work of Gottlieb Fischer, the first Yance-man; the man in fact who dreamed up the idea of Talbot Yancy." But who, unfortunately, had not lived to see the simulacrum actually built—and brought by the two power blocs into use. "The monad wanted me to see," he said, "that my anxiety about the quality of my work is undue. Excessive, because our work, our collective, historic efforts from the very beginning, starting with these two documentaries, has been marred. When you and I go out to fake things you and I and all the rest of us are just plain bound, at some place, sooner or later, to slip up."

  "Yes." She nodded. "We're just mortals. We're not perfect."

  "But the strange thing is," Adams said, "I didn't have that feeling about David Lantano. I had a fear reaction and now I see why. He's different. He is—or could be—perfect. Not like us. So what does that make him? Not a human?"

  "God knows," Colleen said, nervously.

  "Don't say that," he said. "For some reason I don't care to think about God in connection with David Lantano." Maybe, he thought, because the man is so close to the forces of death, living there as he does in that hot-spot, seared day after day by the radiation. As if, although it's burning him, killing him, he's imbibing back some mystical power.

  He was again aware of his own mortality, the delicate stability of forces that, from the bio-chemical level on up, permitted a human being to exist.

  But David Lantano had learned to live at the heart of those forces, and even to draw on them. How had he done this? Lantano, he thought, has a right to draw on something beyond our range; I'd just like to know how he manages it; I'd like to do it, too.

  To Colleen he said, "I've learned the thing from these spoils of Fischer's two documentaries of 1982 that I'm supposed to learn, so I guess I can knock off." He rose, picked up the spools. "What I learned was this. Earlier today I saw and heard a speech by a twenty-two-year-old young new Yance-man and it scared me, and then I scanned these two versions of Fischer's 1982 documentary, and what I learned was this."

  She waited, expectantly, with feminine, earth-mother patience.

  "Even Fischer," he said, "the greatest of us all, couldn't have competed with David Lantano." This was what he had learned, certainly. But he was—at least right now—not sure exactly what it meant.

  He had a feeling about it, however. One of these days he and the Yance-man class as a whole, including Brose himself, were going to find out.

  CHAPTER 11

  A sensitive rugged little device, operating on a sonarlike principle and attached to his suit, a sort of geologic version of what a submarine might employ, told Nicholas St. James as he labored away with the undersized portable scoop that he had toiled at last to within a yard of the surface.

  He ceased work, trying to become at least temporarily calm. Because, he realized, in approximately fifteen minutes from now I will break through and then I will be stalked.

  It hardly appealed to him, this instinctive knowledge that very quickly now he would become a quarry.

  Something artificial and complicated, with thousands of accurate miniaturized components, with feedback and backup systems, with percept-extensors, power sources that were self-contained and virtually eternal, and, worst of all, tropisms that involved the essential quality of life: the factor called warmth.

  The unhappy fact was simply this: that by being alive he attracted attention; this was the reality of the surface of Earth, and he had to be prepared for it, because he was going to have to enter into a dodge, a flight. He could not fight. There was no way to win. Either he evaded or he died. And the evasion must begin the instant he broke through, and, here in the stuffy darkness of the narrow tunnel, as he breathed canned air and clung insectlike to the spikes driven into the tunnel side itself, he thought that perhaps it's already too late.

  Perhaps already, even before he broke through, he had been detected. The vibrations of his little overworked heated-up, about-to-give-out portable scoop. Or his breathing. Or—and always to this, the grotesque basic malign misuse of the basis of life—his body-heat might have triggered off an autonomic mine (he had seen them on TV) and the mine would already have detached itself from the spot at which it had screwed itself in until it had become invisible . . . detached itself and was now crawling over the rubble that littered Earth's surface like the bad remains of some dirty, gigantic, psychopathic, everybody-stewedand-falling-down all-night party. Crawling so that it would intersect, meet him at the locus, the exact point, at which he broke through. Utter perfection, he thought, in the synchronization of time and space as coordinates between himself and it. Between what he was doing and what it was doing.

  He knew it was there. Had known, really, from the moment he entered the tunnel and was, from below, at once sealed in. "You activists," he said, "you committee people; you ought to be here now."

  His oxygen mask stifled his voice; it scarcely reached his own ears; he experienced it as a vibration transmitted through his facial bones. I wish Dale Nunes had stopped me, he thought. How could I know, he thought, that I could be this afraid?

  This must be the neurological spring that sets psychotic paranoia going, he reflected. The acute, unpleasant awareness of being watched. It was, he decided, the most ugly feeling he had ever had; even the fear component was minor; the sense of conspicuousness itself was the overwhelming factor, the unbearable part.

  He started up the scoop; it groaned, once more began to dig; dirt and rock gave way above him, and pulverized, burned, converted into energy or whatever the scoop did—a waste product like fine ash filtered from the posterior of the scoop, nothing more. Its mechanical metabolism had used up the rest, and so the tunnel did not simply fill behind him.

  Therefore—he could turn back.

  But he didn't. He went on.

  Whining, the insignificantly sized speaker of his intercom to the committee in the Tom Mix ant tank below said, "Hey, President St. James; are you okay? We've been waiting an hour and you haven't said a word."

  He said, "The only word I have to say," and then he shut up; why say it? They had heard the word before and anyhow they already knew how he felt. And anyhow—I am their elected President, he realized, and elected Presidents, even of subsurface ant tanks, don't officially use words like that. He scooped on. The intercom was silent; they had gotten the message.

  Ten minutes later light flashed down at him; a mass of dirt, roots and stones tumbled into his face, and although his goggles and mask, in fact his entire helmet-structure protected him, he cringed. Sunlight. Horrible and gray and so sharp that he felt urgent hatred at it; he clawed upward, trying to lacerate it as if it were an eye, an eye that would never close. Sunlight. The diurnal, nocturnal cycle again, after fifteen years. If I could pray, he thought, I would. Pray, I suppose, that the sight of this, one of the oldest of gods, the solar deity, is not the forerunner of death; that I will live long enough to see this rhythm of day and night, not just one scalding, paltry glance.

  "I'm through," he said into the intercom.

  There was no answer. Either the battery had at last run down—but his helmet light still shone, although minutely, now, in the presence of the overhead midday sky. He shook the intercom savagely; all at once it seemed more important to find his way back to contact with the tank below than to go on—my go
d, he thought, my wife and my brother, my people; I'm cut off.

  The urge to scramble back down; it was panic; it made him struggle beetlelike: he tossed dirt and stones up onto the surface and sent others raining down—he tore himself loose from the tunnel, scrabbled and clutched at the clammy, flat earth which was surface earth; horizontal, with no end. And he lay on it, fully, all parts of him pressed down as if he meant to imprint his form; I will leave an impression, he thought wildly. A dent the size of a human; it'll never go away, even if Ido.

  Opening his eyes he looked north—it was easy to tell north; he found it indicated in the rocks and grass, the dry, brown, desperately sick tufts of weedy grass under and around him; the polar field drew everything, rotated all life toward itself—and then he looked up and was amazed that the sky appeared so gray, not blue at all. Dust, he decided. From, of course, the war; the particles have never completely settled. He felt disappointed.

  But the ground. Something alive staggered over his hand; it was a chitinous life form which he admired anyhow, just in his memory and knowledge of it. The ant held some small white particle in its mandibles and he watched it go; they were not bright, as a race, but at least they didn't give up. And—they had stayed up here; fifteen years ago they hadn't run: they had faced the Dies Irae, the Day of Wrath, and were still here. As witness this sample, this representative; he had, in it, seen not one ant but all ants, and eternally, as if it had staggered by him outside of time.

  His intercom sputtered on, then. "Hey, President St. James! Are you through?" Jabbering excitement, contained in the miniscule apparatus.

  "I'm through."

  "Start telling; talk to us about it."

  "First of all," he said, "the sky is gray because of the suspension of particles. That's sort of disappointing."

  "Yeah, that's a shame!" They scuffled, hovered, at the other end.

  Nicholas said, "I can't make out much. The ruins of Cheyenne are to my right; I see a couple of buildings still standing, but otherwise it's pretty bad. It's a long way off, the ruins; on the horizon. Closer to me are boulders. Actually—" It could be worse, and he was puzzled. Because far off he saw what appeared to be trees. "According to TV," he said, "there should be that big military base just across the Nebraska border; as we had planned I'll start northeast and hope—"

  "Don't forget," the speaker rattled excitedly, "that according to all the rumors the blackmarket guys are supposed to be living in city ruins, in cellars and old H-bomb shelters. So if it doesn't look promising northeast head up directly north toward the remains of Cheyenne and see if you can contact someone there. I mean, there ought to be a lot of real deep cellars in a big city like that; a lot of local protection you know, on an individual basis, for one or two fellas here and there. And I mean, don't forget; they know how to keep away from the leadies; they'd have to. Right? Can you hear me?"

  Nicholas said, "I hear you. All right; I'll—"

  "And you have that box of hot-foil scatter particles to throw the thermotropic killing machines off; right? And the pellets for the constructs that are iserntropic—start flinging them around as you go. Ha-ha. Hansel and Gretel; right? Only you want the breadcrumbs eaten up."

  He got warily, unsteadily to his feet.

  And then they had him. He heard them move; released by his change of position they came and he turned with the meager weapon provided him by the smart shop boys from the tank. The first leady soared up as if helium-filled and utterly weightless, so that the beam of his handmade laser pistol passed beneath it; the leady was an old pro and it descended, spiraled so that it was slightly behind him as the other, bent over centipedelike, traveling at enormous speed directly at him, extended something which he could not make out: it was not firing at him, it was trying to nip him. He backed away, fired the miserable handmade laser pistol once more, uselessly, saw a portion of the leady's anatomy go, and then the other one, behind him, hooked him. The hook, he thought, of termination; the hook dragged him and he bounced over the rocks and tufts of weeds, as if caught by a vehicle that would not stop. He tried to disengage the hook; it had his suit and some of the flesh of his upper back and clearly the leady knew that he was helpless; he could not even turn over.

  And then he understood why. What they were doing.

  They were dragging him away from the tunnel as fast as possible; first, the leady which had gaffed him from behind, and the other, although no longer intact, which was still managing to fill in the tunnel entrance, sealing it; the leady turned some sort of beam on the ground, and the soil and rocks and tufts of weeds bubbled, boiled; steam rose and the entrance was gone, disfigured and obliterated. And then the dragging ceased. The leady halted, shoved him upright, knocked the intercom from his hand and crunched it with its pedal extremity. Systematically, the leady tore everything from him, gun, helmet, mask, oxygen tank, spaceman's suit—it ripped and shredded until, satisfied, it came to a halt. Stopped.

  "You're Soviet leadies?" Nicholas said, then, gasping. Obviously they were. Wes-Dem leadies would hardly—

  And then he saw stamped on the frame of the leady closest to him, not Cyrillic script, not Russian words, but English. Clearly enameled words, done with a stencil and one swipe of a wide brush—but not done in a tank subsurface; this had been added later, when the leady had risen to the surface by chute. Perhaps it had even been made in the Tom Mix, but that was over, changed, because the weird enameled notice read:

  PROPERTY OF DAVID LANTANO

  AGENCY IDENT 3-567-587-1

  IF RETURNED NO QUESTIONS ASKED

  BUT CONDITION MUST VARY BETWEEN

  GOOD AND EXCELLENT

  CHAPTER 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."