The Penultimate Truth (3 page)

     All at once the great communal screen turned from lusterless gray to beaming white. And the speaker system said, "Good evening."

     In Wheeling Hall the audience of fifteen hundred mumbled, "Good evening." It was a legal formality, in that no aud-receptor carried anything up; the lines carried data only one way: down. From above to below.

     "News bulletin," the announcer's voice continued. On the screen a stopped-tape: buildings caught and suspended in half-disintegration. And then the tape traveled on. And the buildings, with a roar like the odious tap-tap-tapping of distant, alien drums, pitched into dust and rained down, dissolved; smoke took their place, and, like ants, countless leadies who had inhabited Detroit spilled out and ran, as if from a tipped-over quart jar. They were squashed systematically by invisible forces.

     The aud-track grew; the drums drifted foward and the camera, no doubt from an eye-spy Wes-Dem satellite, panned up on one great public building, library, church, school or bank; perhaps all of these combined. It showed, somewhat slowed down, the solidity of the structure as it demolecularized. Objects have been carried back to their dust-origin again. And it could have been us up there, not leadies, because he himself had lived a year in Detroit as a child.

     Thank god for all of them, Commies and U.S. citizens alike, that the war had broken out on a colony world, in a hassle as to which bloc, Wes-Dem or Pac-Peop, held the bigger-dog's share. Because in that first year of war on Mars the populations of Earth had been hurried underground. And, he thought, we're still here and it isn't good but it beats _that_; he watched the screen fixedly, saw a flock of leadies melt--hence the name--and, to his horror, still try to run while melting. He looked away.

     "Awful," Commissioner Nunes, beside him, muttered, gray-faced. All at once in the empty seat to Nicholas' right Rita appeared, in bathrobe and slippers; with her came Nicholas' kid brother, Stu. Both, staring at the screen, said nothing to him, as if he weren't there. In fact each person in Wheeling Hall was isolated, now, by the catastrophe on the giant TV screen, and the announcer, then, said it for them.

     "This--was--Detroit. May 19th. Year of God 2025. Amen."

     It only took a few seconds, once the defensive shield around a city had been broken, to get in and do this.

     For fifteen years Detroit had existed intact. Well, Marshal Harenzany, meeting in the thoroughly protected Kremlin with the Supreme Soviet, could pay a painter to paint, as symbol of a direct hit, a tiny spire on the door of their chamber. Chalk up one more U.S. city for their side.

     And, in Nicholas' mind, through the horror of seeing this decapitation of one of the few-remaining heads of Western Civilization--which he really did believe in and love--there came the niggling, selfish, personal thought once more. _It means a higher quota_. More must be achieved underground as less, every day, remained above.

     Nunes murmured, "Yancy will explain, now. How it happened to happen. So get ready." And Nunes of course was right, because the Protector never gave up; he had that grand turtlelike unwillingness, which Nicholas admired in the man, to admit that this blow was mortal. And yet--

     They did get to us, Nicholas realized . . . . and even you, Talbot Yancy, our spir-pol-mil leader, brave enough to live in your surface fortress in the Rockies: even you, good friend, can't undo what's just been done.

     "My fellow Americans," Yancy' s voice came, and it was not even weary. Nicholas blinked, startled by the vigor. Yancy seemed almost unaffected, to have remained true to the _stoa_, to his West Point heritage; he viewed it all, accepted and understood, but no emotion unhinged his calm reason.

     "You have seen," Yancy continued in his low, late middle-age voice, that of a seasoned old warrior, ramrod in body, clear in mind; good for a few more years . . . not like the husk, the dying thing in the clinic bed over which Carol watched. "--a terrible thing. Nothing is left of Detroit and as you know a good deal of war material has emerged by her fair autofacs, all these years, and now that is lost. But we have sacrificed no human life, the one commodity which we cannot, will not, relinquish."

     "Good point," Nunes muttered, jotting notes.

     Beside Nicholas, all at once, Carol Tigh appeared, in her white smock, low shoes; he rose, instinctively, stood to face her.

     "He passed away," Carol said. "Souza. Just now. I at once froze him; I was right there at the bed, so there was no time loss. Braintissue won't have suffered. He just--went." She tried to smile, and then tears filled her eyes. It shocked him; he had never seen Carol cry, and something in him was horrified, as if it was wicked, this that he saw.

     "We shall endure this," the aud-track of the coax transmission from the Estes Park fortress continued, and now, on the screen, Yancy's face appeared and the war, the rolling clouds of matter in suspension or turned to hot gas, faded. And it was a stiff, firm man at a large oak desk in some hidden spot where Soviet, even the awful deadly new Sino-twenty red-dot missiles, had never found him.

     Nicholas got Carol seated, got her attention turned to the screen.

     "With each passing day," Yancy said, and he spoke with pride, a good and reasonable pride, "we grow stronger. Not weaker. _You_ are stronger." And by god he looked, then, directly at Nicholas and Carol and Dale Nunes and Stu and Rita and all the rest of them at the Tom Mix, at every one of them except Souza, who was dead; and when you are dead, Nicholas realized, no one, not even the Protector, can tell you that you are growing stronger. And when you died just now, we also died. Unless that pancreas, at whatever cost, from whatever ugly blackmarket source which robs a military hospital, can be obtained.

     Sooner or later, Nicholas realized, despite the law against it, I will have to go up to the surface.

3

     When the I-am-larger-than-you image of Talbot Yancy's leather and iron face had left the screen and the lackluster gray had returned, Commissioner Dale Nunes hopped to his feet and said to the assembly, "And now, folks. Questions."

     The audience remained inert. As inert as it could manage--and get away with it.

     Required to by his elected status, Nicholas rose and stood by Dale. "It must be a colloquy between us and the Estes Park Government," he said.

     From the back of Wheeling Hall a sharp voice--it could have been male or female--said, "President St. James, did Maury Souza die? I see Dr. Tigh here."

     Nicholas said, "Yes. But he's in quick-freeze so there's still hope. Now, people, you've listened to the Protector. Before that you saw the infiltration and demolition of Detroit. You know we're already behind in our quota; we must supply twenty-five leadies this month, and next--"

     "What next month?" a voice from the multitude, bitter and dispirited, said. "We won't be here next month."

     "Oh yes," Nicholas answered. "We can survive an audit. Let me remind you. The initial penalty is only a cut in food supply of five percent. Only after that can draft notices be served on any of us, and even then it would halt at a decimation--one man from each group of ten. Only if we fail three months running do we face possible--I say _possible_--closure. But we always have legal remedy; we can send our attorney before the High Court at Estes Park, and I assure you we will, before we surrender to a closure."

     A voice called, "Have you again asked for a replacement chief mechanic?"

     "Yes," Nicholas said. But there are no more Maury Souzas in the world, he thought. Except in other tanks. And out of--what is the number last given?--out of one hundred and sixty thousand ant tanks in the Western Hemisphere none is going to negotiate a release of a really adequate chief mechanic, even if we could somehow make contact with a few of those other tanks. Any more than five years ago when that tank to the north, the Judy Garland, bored that horizontal shaft through to us and pleaded--literally pleaded--just for a loan of Souza. For one month. And we said no.

     "All right," Commissioner Nunes said briskly, since no voluntary questions had arisen. "I'll make a spotcheck to see if the Protector's message got across." He pointed to a young married couple. "What was the cause of the failure of our defensive screen around Detroit? Rise and give your names, please."

     The young couple reluctantly rose; the husband said, "Jack and Myra Frankis. Our failure was due to the introduction of the new Pac-Peop Type Three Galatea spatter-missile that infiltrated in submolecular particles. I guess. Something like that." He hopefully reseated himself, drawing his wife down beside him.

     "All right," Nunes said; that was acceptable. "And why has Pac-Peop technology forged ahead of ours temporarily?" He glanced around, spied a victim to be interrogated. "Is it a failure of our leadership?"

     The middle-aged, spinsterish lady rose. "Miss Gertrude Prout. No, it is not due to a failure of our leadership." She instantly sat down again.

     "What then," Nunes said, still addressing her, "is it due to? Would you please rise, madam, in giving your response? Thank you." Miss Prout had again risen, "Did _we_ fail?" Nunes prompted her. "Not this tank but we tankers, producers of war material, in general."

     "Yes," Miss Prout said in her frail, obedient voice. "We failed to provide--" She faltered; she could not recall what they had failed to provide. There was a strained, unhappy silence.

     Nicholas took charge. "People, we produce the basic instrument by which the war is conducted; it's because leadies can live on a radioactive surface among a multiform culture of bacteria and chlinesterasedestroying nerve gas--"

     "Cholinesterase," Nunes corrected.

     "--that we're alive. We owe our lives to these constructs built down in our shops. That's all Commissioner Nunes means. It's vital to understand why we must--"

     "I'll handle this," Nunes said quietly.

     Nicholas said, "No, Dale. I will."

     "You already made one unpatriotic statement. The cholinesterase-destroying nerve gas was a U.S. invention. Now, I can _order_ you to take your seat."

     "However," Nicholas said, "I won't. These people are tired; this is not the time to badger them. Souza's death--"

     "This is _exactly_ the time to badger them," Nunes said, "because, and I am trained, Nick, from the Berlin Psychiatric Waffen-Institute, by Mrs. Morgen's own clinicians, to know." He raised his voice, addressing the audience. "As you all realize, our chief mechanic was--"

     A hostile, jeering voice sounded from the rows. "Tell you what: we'll give you a bag of turnips, Commissioner. Pol-Com Nunes, _sir_. And let's see the bottle of blood you can squeeze out. Okay?" People, here and there, murmured in agreement, in approval.

     "I told you," Nicholas said to the commissioner, who had flushed and was strangling his notes with his spasmodically clenching fingers. "Now will you let them go back to bed?"

     Aloud, Nunes said, "There is a disagreement between your elected president and I. As a compromise, I will ask only one more question." He paused, surveyed them all; in weary fear they waited. The sole hostile, articulated vocal entity was silent, now; Nunes had them because Nunes, alone in the tank, was not a citizen but an official of Wes-Dem itself and could, if he ordered, have living, human police slide down the chute from above or, if Brose's agents weren't immediately in the vicinity, then a commando team of General Holt's veteran armed leadies.

     "The Commissioner," Nicholas announced, "will ask one question. And then, thank god, let's go to bed." He seated himself.

     Nunes, reflecting, said in a slow, cold voice, "How can we make up to Mr. Yancy for our failure?"

     To himself Nicholas moaned. But no one, not even Nicholas, had the legal power or any kind of power to halt the man whom the hostile, earlier voice from the audience had correctly called their pol-com. And yet under the Law this was not altogether bad. Because through Commissioner Nunes a direct human link existed between their tank and the Estes Park Government; theoretically by way of Nunes they could answer back and the colloquy, even now, within the heart of the worldwide war, could exist between the tanks and the government.

     But it was hard on the tankers to be subjected to Dale Nunes' rah-rah tactics whenever Dale--or rather his superiors above ground--saw fit, such as now, at bedtime. But look at the alternative.

     It had been suggested to him (and he had promptly, at great and deliberate effort, forgotten forever the names of those who had come to him) that their pol-com be quietly dispatched some night. No, Nicholas had said. It won't work. Because they'll send another. And--Dale Nunes is a man. Not a force. And would you prefer to deal with Estes Park as a _force_, on your TV screen, which you could see and hear . . . but not talk back to?

     So as sore as Commissioner Nunes made him, Nicholas accepted the necessity of his presence in the Tom Mix. The radicals who had come slipping up, late one night, with their idea of instant, easy solution to the pol-com problem, had been thoroughly, firmly dissuaded. Or at least so Nicholas hoped.

     Anyhow Nunes was still alive. So apparently his argument to the radicals had been convincing . . . and this was three years ago, when Nunes had first put in his eager-beaver appearance.