The Penultimate Truth (24 page)

     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.

25

     As he unzipped his leather binder, Webster Foote managed to let a roll of papers bounce out and onto the floor; he bent forward to retrieve them, and, in that moment, saw his chance and made use of it; as with his left hand he snatched back the decoy, the rolled-up blank documents, with his right he placed within the cushions of the couch on which he sat--a deliberately selected spot--an aud-vid transmitting monitor; it would not merely perceive and store data; it would instantaneously transmit all it picked up to a Footeman at the nearest tracking substation.

     To Foote, the harassed Yance-man Joseph Adams said, "You fed the clue data to the Moscow computer and it popped Brose's card. So in your mind Brose is innocent, because the clues are spurious, laid down by a Gestalt-macher; someone hostile to both Lindblom and Brose did it."

     Eying him, wondering how he knew this, Foote said, "Hmm."

     "This is true," Adams said hoarsely. "I know because I fed the Alpha-wave pattern to Megavac 6-V myself and got the same card. But David Lantano--" He jerked his head toward the dark young Yance-man. "He points out that Brose could have programmed the macher, knowing it'd be caught; and you did catch it."

     "Well," Foote said warily, "we have an object. But we haven't yet got into it; the thing resists entry. We assume it's a cammed stage of a German-made wartime device; yes, that's so." He saw no reason to deny it at this point; however, since Joseph Adams and David Lantano knew this, it now of course would have to be told Brose. And as soon as possible, Foote realized. _Brose must get it _from me_ and not them. So I had better get out of here as soon as / can manage it, back into my flapple where i'll have access to vid-transmission by satellite relay to Geneva_. Because if Brose learns the news from them and not from me, my reputation will suffer permanent impairment; I can't afford this. He felt nettled, aggrieved.

     _Do you mean_, he said to himself, _that I fell for a cover--or, more accurately, a double cover? The crime was committed by that portable TV receiver--so-called, so-appearing--but Brose really dispatched it, set it up to delineate _himself?_ And to think that I never, even with my extrasensory ability, happened onto that idea_.

     _It's this Lantano_, he realized; _the idea is his. Inspired. The man is dangerously so, dangerously gifted_.

     In his ear a receiver-speaker, grafted subdermal so as to be invisible, piped, "We're picking up the aud-vid signals clearly, Mr. F. It's extremely well-placed. We'll get everything in that one room from now on."

     Reflexively, still deep in thought, Foote unrolled his military maps, which showed ordinance dispositions of essential military stores; these had been top secret . . . classified, the old argot had been. Made available to him originally by General Holt, via the Agency. For purposes of a former job he had performed for Brose; the actual maps had been returned; these were Xeroxed copies. He studied them now, perfunctorily, prepared to begin the tedious cover discussion with Lantano . . . and then, without warning, summarily, his extrasensory faculty bumped him jarringly, flooded his mind with intimation, and he scanned closely, keenly, the top map. It showed an area near the Atlantic Coast of North Carolina. Three U.S. Army weapons arsenals were indicated, subsurface stores which had long ago been excavated by Brose's leadies and everything of value removed. This was so indicated by check-makers on the map. But--

     The distribution of the arsenals indicated that they had been set up to supply highly mobile armored tactical surface units, probably engaged--or it had been so anticipated--in handling Soviet leadies landed by the giant troop carrier USSR transoceanic subs of the 1990s. And a quadripatrite division of such arsenals had been common in those days: three of weapons, fuel and repair parts for the heavy U.S. rexeroid-shielded tanks capable of surviving a direct hit by a ground-to-ground A-head missile . . . these were the three that had been dug up. But no fourth subsurface depot was indicated, and yet it should have existed fifty miles or so in the rear; that would have contained the medical supplies--if any had been provided for the personnel of the highly mobile mechanized defensive units drawing on the three weapons arsenals closer to the coastline.