The Penultimate Truth (5 page)

     Rita said to the committee, her voice harsh, "Then you do it; you collected the money. Draw lots. Don't stick my husband with this." Her voice became gentle. "Nunes is less apt to notice one of you missing than Nick. It might even be several days before he checks up, but once Nick goes Nunes will know, and--"

     "And what, Mrs. St. James?" Hailer said, determinedly but politely. "There's nothing Nunes can do, once President St. James is out of here up the chute and onto the surface."

     Rita said, "When he returns, Jack. Then Nunes will execute him." To himself Nicholas thought, And the hell of it is, I probably won't even get back.

     Jorgenson, with clear, sincere reluctance, reached into the jacket of his work overalls, brought out a small object, flat like a cigarette case.

     "Mr. President," he said huskily, in a formal, dignified tone, that of an official bearer of tidings, "Do you know what this is?"

     _Sure_, Nicholas thought. _It's a shop-made bomb. And, if I don't go, and go today, you'll wire it somewhere here in my cubby or my office, set it timewise or booby-trap it wirewise and it'll go off and blow me to bits and also probably my wife and perhaps even my kid brother and his wife or whoever is in my office with me at the time, if it's in my office. And you men--enough of you, anyhow--are electricians; professional wirers and component-assemblers, as we all are to a certain extent. . . you'll know how to do it so it'll have a one hundred percent chance of success. Therefore, he realized, if I don't go to the surface your committee absolutely and for sure will destroy me--plus perhaps innocent others around me--and if I do go, Nunes will be tipped off by some stooge among the fifteen hundred citizens of the tank and he'll shoot me when I'm approximately half-way up the chute on my illegal-and this is wartime and military law obtains-- journey to the surface_.

     Flanders said, "President, listen; I know you think you're going to have to try to make it up the chute, with those leadies always or nearly always hanging around up there with a damaged leady to drop down . . . but _listen_."

     "A tunnel," Nicholas said.

     "Yes. We bored it this morning early, as soon as the autofac power-supply came on to drown out the noise of the scoop and the other junk we had to use. It's absolutely vertical. A masterpiece."

     Jorgenson said, "It takes off from the roof of room BAA on floor one; a storeroom for reduction gears for type II leadies. A chain goes up it and is staked--securely, I guarantee; I swear--at the surface, hidden among some--"

     "Lies," Nicholas said.

     Blinking, Jorgenson said, "No, honest--"

     "You couldn't bore a vertical tube to the surface in two hours," Nicholas said. "What's the truth?"

     After a long, disheartened pause, Flanders mumbled, "We got the tunnel started. We got up about forty feet. The portable scoop is secured there. We figured we'd get you in the tunnel, with oxygen equipment, and then seal it off at the bottom, to deaden the vibrations and noise."

     "And," Nicholas said, "I'd lodge myself there in the tunnel and scoop away until I emerged. How long had you calculated it'd take me, working alone and with only that small portable scoop, none of the big gear?"

     After an interval someone among the committee murmured. "Two days. We've got food and water already, in fact one of those selfcontained spaceman suits they used to use when there were flights to Mars. Compensation for moisture, waste-material----everything. It still beats trying to make it up the chute, with those leadies up there."

     "And Nunes," Nicholas said, "at the bottom."

     "Nunes will be breaking up the fight on floor--"

     "Okay," Nicholas said. "I'll do it."

     They gaped at him.

     Rita, half to herself, let out a sob, a cry of despair.

     To her, Nicholas said, "It beats being blown to bits. They mean it." He indicated the small flat packet which Jorgenson held. _Ipse dixit_, he said to himself; I know _that_ much foreign language. An assertion made but not proved. And in this case I don't want to see it proved; even our pol-com, Commissioner Nunes, would be appalled by what that device can do when triggered off.

     He went into the bathroom, then, and shut--and locked--the door after him. For this moment, brief as it was, of quiet. Of being a mere biochemical organism, not President St. James of the Tom Mix World War III antiseptic subsurface communal living tank, established in June of 2010. A.D. _Long_ A.D., he thought; a hell of a long time After Christ.

     What I ought to do, he decided, is come back, not with the artiforg, but with the Bag Plague for you all. Every single last one of you.

     His bitterness surprised him. But of course it was superficial. Because, and he realized it as he began running hot water by which to shave, the actuality is that I'm a frightened man. I don't want to lodge myself for forty-eight hours in that vertical tunnel, waiting to hear Nunes cut through below me or a team of Brose's leady police pick up the sound of my scoop from above, and then, if not that, emerge into the radioactivity, the rubble, the war. Into the pox of death from which we've fled, hidden ourselves: _I don't want to emerge on the surface, even for a necessary cause_.

     He despised himself for his attitude; it was hard, as he began to lather his jowls, to look at himself in the mirror. In fact it was impossible. So he opened the bathroom door on Stu and Edie's side and called, "Hey, can I borrow your electhc razor?"

     "Sure," his kid brother said, and produced it.

     "What's the matter, Nick?" Edie said, with unusual--for her-- compassion. "Good lord, you look just awful."

     "I am awful," Nicholas said, and seated himself on their rumpled, unmade bed to shave. "It takes force," he said. "to make me do the right thing." He didn't feel like talking about it; he shaved in introverted silence.

5

     Over green countryside, the fields, the meadows, the open world of North American forests with occasional clusters of buildings, demesnes at odd, unexpected locations, Joseph Adams flew by flapple from his own demesne on the Pacific where he was dominus to the Agency in New York City, where he was one Yance-man among many. His work day, the longed-for and at last achieved Monday, had come.

     Beside him on the seat lay a leather briefcase, initialed JWA in gold, which contained his handwritten speech. Behind him, crowded together in the rear seat, four leadies from his personal entourage.

     Meanwhile, by vidphone, he discussed biz with his associate from the Agency, Verne Lindblom. Verne, not an idea man, not a user of words but an artist in the visual sense, was in a better position than Joseph Adams to know exactly what their superior Ernest Eisenbludt in Moscow had in mind scenewise, was up to at the studio.

     "It's San Francisco next," Lindbiom said. "I'm building it now."

     "What scale?" Adams asked.

     "No scale,"

     "_Life-size?_" Adams was incredulous. "Brose has okayed it? This isn't another of Eisenbludt's hare-brained storms of creative--"

     "Just a segment. Nob Hill and overlooking the bay. Should take about a month to construct; there's no rush. Hell, they just ran that Detroit sequence last night." Lindblom sounded relaxed. And, as a master craftsman, he could afford to be. Idea men were one-fourth poscred a dozen, but the actual fabricators--they were a closed guild which even Brose, with all his agents, couldn't crack. They were like the red-stained-glass makers of France in the Thirteenth century; if they perished their skills perished with them.

     "Want to hear my new speech?"

     "God no," Lindblom said genially.

     "It's hand-done." Adams spoke with humility. "I kicked out that gadget; it was getting me into a rut."

     "Listen," Lindblom said, all of a sudden serious. "I heard a rumor. You're going to be pulled off speeches and put onto a special project. Don't ask me what; my source didn't know." He added, "A Footeman told me."

     "Hmm." He tried to look calm, to show poise. But inside he felt queasy. Undoubtedly--since it took priority over his regular job--this emanated from Brose's bureau. And there was something about Brose and his special projects that he did not like. Although just what .

     "It's something you might enjoy," Lindblom said. "Has to do with archeology."

     Adams grinned. "I get it. Soviet missiles are going to destruct Carthage."

     "And you're going to program Hector and Priam and all those fellas. Get out your Sophocles. Your pony or cribsheet or whatever."

     "'My friends,'" Adams intoned in solemn parody, "'I have grave news for you, but we shall overcome. The new Soviet ICBM Hatcheck Girl A-3 missile, with a C-warhead, has strewn radioactive common table salt over an area surrounding Carthage fifty square miles wide, but this only goes to show--' " He paused. "What did Carthage produce, autofac-wise? Vases?" Anyhow that was Lindblom's job. The display of postcards, scanned by the multifax lens-system of the TV cameras at Eisenbludt' s mammoth, intricate--in fact endlessly prop-filled--studios in Moscow. " 'This, my good people and friends, is all that remains, but I am informed by General Holt that our own strike, utilizing our newly developed offensive terror weapon, the Polyphemus X-B peashooter, has decimated the entire war fleet of Athens, and with god's help we shall--'"

     "You know," Lindblom said meditatively, from the tiny speaker of the flapple's vidset. "You'd feel damn funny if one of Brose's people were monitoring this."

     Below, a wide river like wet silver wiggled from north to south, and Joseph Adams leaned out to view the Mississippi and acknowledge its beauty. No reconcrews had accomplished this; what glistened in the morning sun was an element of the old creation. The original world which did not need to be recreated, reconned, because it had never departed. This sight, like that of the Pacific, always sobered him, because it meant that something had proved stronger; something had escaped.

     "Let him monitor," Adams said, filled with vigor; he drew strength from the wavering silver line below--strength enough to ring off, cut the switch of the vidset. Just in case Brose was monitoring.

     And then, beyond the Mississippi, he saw a manmade focus of upright, hard structures, and these, too, gave him a funny feeling. Because these were the Ozymandias-who-he? great conapt dwellings erected by that busy builder, Louis Runcible. That one-man ant army that, in its marches, did not gnaw down with its mandibles but set up, with its many metal arms, one gigantic dormlike structure, including kids' play-grounds, swimming pools, ping-pong tables and dart boards.

     Ye shall know the truth, Adams thought, and by this thou shalt enslave. Or, as Yancy would put it, "My fellow Americans. I have before me a document so sacred and momentous that I am going to ask you to--" And so on. Now he felt tired, and he had not even reached 580 Fifth Avenue, New York and the Agency, had not begun his day. Alone, at his demesne on the Pacific, he felt the weedy, twisted fog of loneliness grow by day and by night and clog the passages of his throat; here, in transit across the reconned and not-yet-oh-lord but soon-to-be-reconned areas--and of course the still hot-spots, which lay like ringworm circles every so often--he felt this uneasy shame. He glowed with guilt, not because recon was bad, but--it was bad, and he knew who and what _it_ was.

     I wish there was one missile left, he said to himself. In orbit. And we could touch one of those quaint old-time buttons the brass once had at their disposal, and that missile would go _pfoooooom!_ At Geneva. And Stanton Brose.

     By god, Adams thought, maybe I will program the 'vac one day not with a speech, even a good speech like the one here beside me that I got off last night finally, but the very simple, calm statement of what gives. I'll get through the 'vac to the sim itself, then onto aud and vid tape, because since that's autonomic there's no editing, unless of course Eisenbludt happens to stroll in . . . and even he, technically, can't touch the speech part of the reading matter.

     And then the sky will fail in.

     But that ought to be interesting to watch, Adams mused. If you could get far enough off to watch.

     "Listen," he would program to Megavac 6-V. And all those funny little dingbats that the 'vac had in it would spin, and out of the sim's mouth would come the utterance but transformed; the simple word would be given that fine, corroborative detail to supply verisimilitude to what was--let us face it, he thought caustically---an otherwise _incredibly_ bald and unconvincing narrative. What entered Megavac 6-V as a mere _logos_ would emerge for the TV lenses and mikes to capture in the guise of a pronouncement, one which nobody in his right mind--especially if encapsulated subsurface for fifteen years-- would doubt. But--it would be a paradox, because Yancy himself would be pontificating it; like the old saw, "Everything I say is a lie," this would confound itself, tie its skinny, slippery self into a good hard sailor's knot.

     And what would be achieved? Since, after all, Geneva would pounce on it . . . and we are not amused, Joseph Adams articulated within his own mind, the voice which he, like every other Yance-man, had long ago introjected. The super ego, as the prewar intellectuals had called it, or, before that the ayenbite of inwyt, or some such rustic Medieval old phrase.