The Penultimate Truth (23 page)

     "Fine," Lantano agreed. "What about nine p.m. at my villa? Nine as computed by my time-zone here. For you that would be--"

     "Sir, I can count time," Foote said. "I'll be there. And I'm sure, with your extraordinary abilities, you'll be able to make use of these maps. You can dispatch your own leadies if you wish, or my corporation can--"

     "At nine tonight, my time, then," Lantano said, and rang off.

     "Why?" Cencio asked Foote, after a pause.

     Foote said, "To plant the continual vid monitor."

     "Of course." Cencio flushed.

     "Run that animated sequence again," Foote said thoughtfully, "of Lantano at middle-age. Stop it at the point where he is aged the most. I noticed a quality about him, just now, on the vidscreen . . ."

     As he again set up the magnifying equipment, the film, the animator, the projector, Cencio said, "What quality?"

     "It seemed to me," Foote said, "that Lantano, as he aged, began to resemble someone. I could not place who, but someone I know well." As he had faced even the young Lantano on the big vidscreen he had experienced it, the _déjâ vu_.

     A moment later, in the darkened room, he was viewing a still of Lantano at middle-age, but seen from above; again the angle was bad, and always would be, when the photographing instrument was so vertically oriented, as a satellite naturally had to be. But--he could discern it anyhow, because, as the satellite made its pass, both Lantano and the ex-tanker came to a halt and peered up.

     "I know who," Cencio said, suddenly. "Talbot Yancy."

     "Except that he's dark," Foote said. "This man here."

     "But if that skin-bleach were applied, that wartime dermal--"

     "No, Yancy is considerably older. When we get a good shot of Lantano at say sixty-five, not fifty, then maybe we'll have something." _And when I have got inside his villa_, Foote knew, _we will thereafter have operating the equipment to produce that shot. And this will be tonight; only a few more hours_.

     _What is this Lantano?_ he asked himself.

     And got no answer.

     At least--not yet.

     But over the years he had learned to be patient. He was a professional; he would, in Lantano's incomplete villa, establish a video monitor which sooner or later would tell him additional facts, and ultimately one day, hopefully not too long from now, the pivotal fact would emerge, and all would be tied together: the deaths of Davidson, Hig and Lindblom, the destruct of the two leadies, the peculiar aging of Lantano--and, as he aged, that even queerer fact that he grew more and more to resemble a plastic and metal dummy bolted to a wooden desk in New York City . . . oh, Foote thought; then that would explain that peculiar and up to now anomalous strip of film which showed the origin of the destruct beam that took out the two leadies. It was we had thought, someone _resembling_ Talbot Yancy.

     It was David Lantano at the extreme old end of his oscillation; _we have seen it already_. The key fact had already emerged.

     Brose, he thought, you have made a major mismove; you have lost your monopoly on the contents of the advanced weapons archives. Someone else has gotten hold of time-travel equipment and he is using it to destroy you. How did he get hold of it? That doesn't matter; _that he has it_: that's the point.

     "Gottlieb Fischer," he said aloud. "The idea for Yancy originated with him; so the crisis is actually in the past." And he who possesses the ability to travel in time has access to the past, he realized. There is a junction, a connection, between David Lantano, who or whatever he is, and Gottlieb Fischer, back in 1982 or '4 or right up to Fischer's death; but no later than his death . . . and probably slightly before Fischer began his work on the Yancy _Prinzip_, his variation on the _Führer Prinzip_: his new solution to the problem of who shall lead, since, if men are too blind to govern themselves, how can they be trusted to govern others? The answer is der Führer, as every German knows, and Gottlieb Fischer was a German. Brose then stole the idea from Fischer, as we all know, and turned that idea into an actuality; the dummy, one in Moscow and one in New York, bolted to the oak desk, programmed by the computer which in turn is fed speeches by well trained elite idea men--all that can be legitimately credited to Stanton Brose, but what we did not guess is that Gottlieb Fischer stole _his_ part, the original germinal concept, from someone else.

     Sometime near the year 1982, the German film producer _saw Talbot Yancy_. And derived his Führer, not from his own creativity, his artistic genius, but from simple observation. And who would Gottlieb Fischer, circa 1982, be seeing? Actors. Hundreds of them. Sorted over to play roles in his two vast phony documentaries--actors picked especially for their ability to portray world leaders. In other words, actors who had that _charisma_, the magic.

     To Cencio he said slowly, thoughtfully, plucking his lower lip, "I think, if I comb versions A and B, the two Fischer works of invention, I will in one of the faked scenes, sooner or later, come across a Talbot Yancy. In makeup, of course; doing a character role." Playing Stalin, he decided. Or Roosevelt. Any of them--or all. What the documentaries lacked were proper credits; who played what great world leader: we need that list, and that list does not and never did exist; it was carefully _not_ made.

     Cencio said, "We own our own prints of the two versions, you realize."

     "All right. Go through them and extract each of the faked scenes. Separate them from the authentic clips that--"

     Cencio laughed sardonically. "Good lord. Save us." He shut his eyes, rocked back and forth. "Who, honestly, can _ever_ do that? No one knew then, knows now, will know--"

     True; a good point. The _whole_ point, in fact. "All right," Foote said. "Just start running them. Until you catch a glimpse of the Protector. He'll be one of the great charismatic leaders, one of the big four; he won't be Mussolini or Chamberlain, so you can bypass them." God in heaven, he thought; suppose he's the "Hitler" who lands in the Boeing 707 fanjet at Washington, D.C. to hold secret conversations with F. D . R.? _Is that what rules the millions of tankers today_, the actor who struck Gottlieb Fischer as just right to undertake the task of impersonating Adolf Hitler?

     It could, however, be a bit part. The role of some general. Even one of those "G.I. Joe" scenes in the foxholes.

     "It'll take me weeks," Cencio said, obviously realizing the same thing. "And do we have weeks? If people are being killed--"

     "Joseph Adams is protected," Foote said. "And Brose--too bad if he gets it; more power to his hidden enemy."

     --His hidden enemy who is obviously and clearly David Lantano. But that merely led back to his original inquiry; who or what is David Lantano?

     Anyhow now he had a partial answer--at least ad hoc. It had yet to be tested. David Lantano, at the extreme old age end of his oscillation, was hired by Gottlieb Fischer to play a part--or was at least interviewed--in one or the other versions of the 1982 documentaries; there, that was his hypothesis. And now to test it.

     And the next step was going to be hard--the step which followed the positive identification of Yancy--that is, David Lantano--in one or both of the 1982 documentaries.

     The next step, and this fitted the talents of Webster Foote, Limited of London, was to chisel with highly specialized equipment undetected and silently into the incomplete villa of David Lantano while Lantano was at the Agency in New York. And gain at least momentary possession of the time travel instrumentality which Lantano utilized.

     It'll be tough, Foote knew. But we have the machines to track it down; it's been our job since 2014. And this time we're not merely doing a job for a client; this is for ourselves.

     Because, he realized, our own lives are currently--and involuntarily-- posted as stakes in this; it is, has already proven to be, the ultimate pot for which the players are wagering, striving, lying, faking and haggling.

     "A law firm," he said aloud. "Wagering, Striving, Lying, Faking and Haggling. Associates. They can represent us before the Recon Dis-In Council when we sue Brose."

     "On what grounds?"

     "On the grounds," Foote said quietly, "that the duly elected world leader is the Protector, Talbot Yancy, as every tanker knows; as the Estes Park Government has asserted for fifteen consecutive straight years. And such a man really exists. Hence--_Brose holds no legal power_." Since the legal power, he said to himself, is Q.E.D. all Yancy's and Pac-Peop as well as Wes-Dem has been claiming, chanting, this.

     And, I think, Yancy has begun to put forth a request for the validation of that claim, Foote decided. At last.

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.