The Penultimate Truth (28 page)

     "They seem," Adams said, "able to agree. Foote supplied the map; Lantano the leadies and the digging equipment. They'll find some way to divide the trove." _What's amazing_, he thought, _is that you are getting your pancreas without conditions. They've asked nothing in exchange. So they're not bad _men_, not in any typical, ordinary sense; together Foote and Lantano, with dignity and caritas, arranged for you to obtain what B rose has deprived you-and everyone else on the planet--of, what he has hoarded for himself. B rose-- who was absolutely without _caritas__.

     "I thought you were supposed to meet them in New York," Nicholas said to Adams.

     "They'll make out." From Megavac 6-V they could get Stanton Brose's Alpha-wave pattern; they would think of that sooner or later, when he did not show--in fact probably already had. And, if they could not mount the dart weapon in his office, if they, using Foote's tools and skills, could not pick the intricate door lock, could not enter, they could--and would--find a serviceable place in the corridor, the sole passage to the office, the route which Stanton Brose would have to follow to reach the office. He knew, intuited on a very deep, absolute level, that together Foote and Lantano would manage somehow to work it out.

     They would never forget, however, that he had failed to show. If they did not get Brose then the old, half-senile mass of fat would no doubt destroy them, and possibly Adams as well; if they did--well, probably at some convenient later date, when Foote and Lantano, especially Lantano, had gained power, replaced Brose, they would track him down. There would be plenty of time for vengeance. Ultimately, in either case, _it would come_. Whatever the outcome of the weapon planting which at this moment was taking place in the agency hallway or office at 580 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

     "Did you ever tell Lantano," he asked Nicholas, "which ant tank you came from?"

     "Hell no," Nicholas said. "I have to protect the people down there; I've got a wife and a kid brother, down in--" He broke off. "I told that ex-tanker in the Cheyenne ruins, though. That Jack Blair." He shrugged stoically. "But Blair probably won't remember; they all, there in those ruins, seemed a little scrambled witwise." Soberly, he said to Adams then, "I'm the elected President of the tank. I carry a terrific responsibility. That's why it was me they sent up to the surface to get this artiforg." He turned, started toward the parked flapple.

     Adams said, "Can I go along?"

     "To--" Nicholas looked startled, but principally preoccupied; it was the artiforg that concerned him--the object and the task of getting it back intact with him to his tank. "You want to go below with me, you mean? Why?"

     "I want to hide," Adams said, simply.

     After a pause Nicholas said, "You mean Lantano."

     "I mean," Adams said, "everyone. They got my one and only living friend; they'll get me. But if I'm down below, and they won't know which tank, maybe, unles your pol-com happens to report--"

     "My pol-com," Nicholas said tonelessly, "came from the surface, from Estes Park, after the end of the war. He knew. So there isn't going to be any pol-com at the Tom Mix. Anyhow, not that one."

     Another death, Adams realized. And also "necessary." Like each of the others; like mine will be, eventually. And yet--this rule, this necessity, has always existed, and for everything that has ever lived. What we've got here is only a special case, only a hastening of the natural, organic process.

     "Sure," Nicholas said. "You're welcome. I know from what you said at Lantano's demesne you're as unhappy as hell up here."

     "'Hell,' " Adams echoed. Yes, it was, literally, the burning place of the dead; the place of fires, the flicker of red, the charred background, the pits, summed up and summoned up by the war of thirteen years ago-he had been living it, first in the scorching blaze of the war itself, then in its other, later form, the cool, approaching mist, and then once more in its more awful searing aspect; igniting him, cramming him with this time a new, entirely new, agony: from the moment he had learned of Verne Lindblom's death.

     "You'll have to get used to the overcrowding down there," Nicholas said as the two of them made their way toward the parked flapple, Adams' leadies trailing behind. "And you can't bring them--" He gestured at the retinue of leadies. "--with you; you'll have to come alone. There's no room; in fact in our cubby we share the bathroom--"

     "Good enough," Adams said. He would agree to anything, give up his last leady, be stripped of that, too, and gladly. And--he would be more than willing to share the bathroom with those inhabiting the adjoining room. He would not endure it; he would thrive. Because it would make up for the loneliness of his years as dominus of his vast, silent, forest-surrounded demesne, with its ocean fog; the gruesome, empty Pacific fog.

     The tankers would not understand that. Maybe they would even marvel at his ability to adjust to such crowded conditions--after having been a functionary, as he would tell them, _have_ to tell them, of the Estes Park Wes-Dem Government. Like the pol-coms he had descended into their tank to share their deprivations with them . . . or so they would think.

     Ironic.

28

     They were, presently, airborne. The flapple, in the night's darkness, headed northwest, toward the Cheyenne hot-spot. With only the two men aboard. All leadies, both Adams' and Lantano's, had been left behind to dig. Adams wondered if they had begun to scrap, yet, if the fracas that was latent between the two factions had broken out overtly. Probably so.

     To reopen the vertical tunnel to the Tom Mix tank proved a major problem. It was not until dawn that the two of them at last managed, with equipment brought from Adams' demesne on the Pacific Coast, to cut away the hard, fused crust which Lantano's two leadies had installed as a barrier to further use of the shaft. Nicholas and Adams had been lucky to find the spot at all; however the thoroughness of the leadies' job had assisted them. The spot had been conspicuous, even at night, by its temporary barrenness, by the smooth and lifeless artificial surface, an almost obsidian-like disfiguration among the tufted weeds and rubble.

     Now the entrance once again gaped. The professional work of the no longer extant leadies had been undone. But it had taken hours.

     Setting it on auto, Joseph Adams dispatched the flapple; it rose, disappeared into the gray, early morning light. Left here it would have acted as a clear giveaway. And the problem still remained of resealing the tunnel's entrance after them in such a manner that it would not even with instruments be detected.

     For this purpose he and Adams had composed a plug. A section of hard dirt, weed-covered, sheared to fit the tunnel-mouth exactly. This, in actuality, was relatively a simple aspect of the job; he and Adams now squeezed down into the tunnel, and then, by means of a series of small-link chains attached to steel stakes driven into the underside of the plug, they dragged the piece of hard earth and weeds after them and over them; all at once the gray light of morning vanished and they had only their lanterns. By pulling the chains taut they wedged the plug securely in place.

     And then, with great care, they detached all metal pieces from the plug, the stakes and the chains . . . detectors, used later on, would have registered the presence of the metal; that would have been the tropism that would have distinguished their trail of escape, for the hounds who would one day be coming.

     Five minutes later Nicholas, with his boots, kicked loose the seal at the base of the tunnel; the tank's committee of activists, acting under Jorgenson's expert direction, had carefully made the seal susceptible to easy removal from above--after all, if Nicholas returned, with or without the artiforg, he would have to come by this route.

     Squeezed into the small storeroom of floor one the entire leadership of the committee, Hailer and Flanders and Jorgenson, all of them waited with their strange little hand-made laser pistols which they had turned out in the ant tank's shops.

     "We've been listening to you for an hour," Jorgenson said. "Banging and rattling around up there, reopening the tunnel. Naturally we have a full-time alarm system rigged; it woke us at exactly four a.m. How did you make out?" He saw then, in Nicholas' hands, the aluminum cylinder.

     "He got it," Hailer said.

     Nicholas said, "I got it." He handed the cylinder to Jorgenson, turned then to help Adams out of the tunnel and into the crowded storeroom. "What about Dale Nunes? Did he file a report up to--"

     "Nunes," Jorgenson said, "is dead. An industrial accident. In the bottom-floor shops; he was--you know. Exhorting us to greater productivity. And he got too near a power cable. And for some reason--I forget now--but anyhow the cable wasn't properly shielded."

     Hailer said, "And some oaf pushed Nunes backward so that he fell onto the cable. And it wiped him out." He added, "We already buried him. It was either that or have him report to up above on your absence."

     "And in your name," Jorgenson said, "like you were still here, we sent an official report to the surface, to Estes Park. Asking for another pol-com to replace Commissioner Nunes, and of course expressing our regrets."

     There was silence.

     Nicholas said, "I'll take the artiforg to Carol." And then he said to them all, "I didn't bring this back so we could make our quota. I brought it for Souza' s sake as such. For his life. But the quota is over."

     "How come?" Jorgenson said, perceptively. "What is it, up there?" He saw Adams, then, realized all at once that Nicholas had not returned alone. "Who's this? You better explain."

     Nicholas said, "I will when the mood strikes me."

     "He's still President of the tank," Flanders reminded Jorgenson. "He can wait as long as he wants; chrissakes, he brought the pancreas; I mean, does he have to deliver a speech in addition?"

     "I was just curious," Jorgenson, backing down, said lamely.

     "Where's Carol?" Nicholas said, as with Joseph Adams, he passed through the gang of committee members toward the door of the storeroom. He reached the door, took hold of the knob--

     The door was locked.

     Jorgenson said, "We can't leave here, Mr. President. None of us."

     "Who says so?" Nicholas said, after a pause.

     "Carol herself," Haller said. "Because of you. The Bag Plague or the Stink of Shrink or any other bacterial contamination that you--" He gestured at Adams. "--and this fella may have on you. And we're all of us we're stuck, too, because we said, christ, we got to be at the bottom of the tunnel. In case it _isn't_ Nick that we heard, that set off the alann. And if it was--" He hesitated. "Well, we felt we ought to be here. To sort of, you know; officially be on hand. To greet you." He glanced down in embarrassment. "Even if you didn't have the artiforg. Because after all you tried."

     "You risked your life," Jorgenson said, in agreement.

     Nicholas said acidly, "Under the threat of being blown up by you shop boys; and my wife and brother along with me."

     "Maybe so," Jorgenson said, "but you did go, and you got it, so you didn't just poke your head out, then slide back down again and say, 'Sorry, fellas; no luck.' As you could have done. Hell, we couldn't have disproved it. Proved you hadn't tried." They all seemed embarrassed, now. Guilty, Nicholas thought; that was more it. Ashamed of the terror tactic they had used to get him to go. Now, he realized their President has returned, with the artiforg; old Maury Souza will be revived, restored to his position. Our production of leadies will resume and we will meet our quotas. Except that their ant tank President knows the truth, now. Which he did not when he originally left, climbed the tunnel, emerged on Earth's surface--to learn what Commissioner Dale Nunes had known all the time.

     No wonder Nunes had insisted everyone act solely through channels-- that is, through Nunes. Make no _direct_ contact with the world above.

     No wonder a pol-com in each ant tank was essential.

     It had always been obvious the the pol-com performed a vital function for somebody--presumably for the Estes Park Government. But only by journeying to the surface himself--and coming back here again-- had he seen just how vital, and for whose benefit, that function had been.

     "Okay," Nicholas said to the committee; he let go of the doorknob, gave up. "And what did Carol intend next? A decontamination process of some sort?" To 'cide bacteria, microbes and viruses which he knew to be nonexistent; it was a temptation to tell them now--but he refrained. The time, he knew; it has to be exactly right. This must not be mishandled, because if it is there will be too great a reaction. Too much--justified--anger. They will burst up, through the large chute, the leady chutes, break out, carrying their handmade laser pistols . and the veteran, expert leadies will massacre them as they emerge. And, for us, it will be over.

     Jorgenson said, "We've already notified Carol by intercom that it is you; she ought to be here any second. Be patient. Souza's deep in the freeze; he can wait another hour. She'll graft in the pancreas sometime around midday. Meanwhile we're all supposed to take off all our clothes, pile them up, then outside the door there's this chamber we built down in the shops; we'll pass through it, naked, one by one, and jets of 'cide of different types will--"