The Penultimate Truth (29 page)

     To Nicholas, Adams said, "I never, I just never realized. How completely they accept it. It's incredible." He seemed dazed. "We thought of it I guess as an intellectual acceptance. But _this_." He gestured.

     "All the way," Nicholas said, nodding. "In every emotional level. Down to the basic phobic animal level; to the very deepest layer." He began to remove his clothes, resignedly. Until the time arrived to tell them, there was no choice; the ritual had to be gone through.

     At last, as if prodded by a remote reflex of some dim, uncertain source, Adams, too, began unbuttoning his shirt.

29

     At one o'clock that afternoon Carol Tigh performed--successfully--the pancreas insertion operation on the still-frozen dead Maury Souza, and then, using the tank's most precious medical equipment, the old man's circulation, heartbeat, respiration were artificially, externally restored; the heart began to pump blood, then, on its own, and following that one the artificial function stimulators were cautiously and expertly detached from him.

     The EEG and EKG records, during the next, critical hours, indicated that body processes were occurring normally; old Souza had a good chance--a very good chance--of recovering and living out a few more good, important years.

     So that was that. Nicholas, after standing at the bedside of the old mechanic for a long time, watching the monitoring machinery spill out their ribbons of tape, at last turned away, satisfied.

     It was time at last for him once again to face his little overcrowded, jammed-together family in their adjoining cubbies with their shared, quarreled-over-daily bathroom. Once more he would resume the old life of the tank.

     For a while.

     And then, he said to himself as he walked alone down the clinic corridor and to the terminal ramp which led to his own floor, his residential floor, the trumpet shall sound and--not the dead--but the deceived shall be raised. And not incorruptible, sad to say, but highly mortal, perishable, and--mad.

     A nest of hot, scorched wasps, rising to attack. This tank first, but by then we will have established contact with our neighboring tanks, will have told them, too. Pass it on, we'll say, he said to himself. Until everyone knows. And finally a worldwide network of angry wasps; and if they all swarm simultaneously, no army of leadies can get them. Just _some_ of them. A third, perhaps. But no more.

     However, it all depended on the TV transmissions during the next twenty-four hours. What Talbot Yancy, either real or imaginary, had to say to them.

     He would wait, first, on that.

     And which would it be, Brose or Lantano? Who, at this hour, lived and held power, and who had died?

     The next Yancy speech, the next dose of reading matter, would tell him. Probably within the first ten words uttered by the face on the screen.

     And which, he asked himself as he arrived at the door of his little cubby, do we want to see emerge? Adams would know better than I; David Lantano was good to me, made it possible for me to obtain the artiforg. But David Lantano's leadies before that, began the act of killing me . . . would have, if the man himself, in his older, artificially lighter skinned Yancy phase, hadn't intervened. Or perhaps something else had emerged up there or will emerge in time; neither Lantano nor Brose but a combination--Joseph Adams, as they had worked together to reopen the tunnel, had conjectured about this--a new alignment, of Webster Foote and his worldwide police corporation with Louis Runcible and his unwieldy economic supergigantic overgrown satrapy. Pitted against the Agency and its army of leadies, many of them wise old tomcats with kinks in their tails, left over from the war and ready at any pretext to fight again . . . whether commanded by Stanton Brose or David Lantano.

     He opened the door of his cubby.

     There sat Rita, composed, waiting. "Hi," she said quietly.

     "Hi." He stood awkwardly in the doorway, not knowing whether to enter or not, trying to read her attitude.

     Rising, Rita said, "It's nice to have you back. To see you. How are you?" She came toward him, then, hesitantly, also uncertain, as he was. "You didn't get the Bag Plague, then. That's what I was most afraid of. From what I've heard and seen on TV and what Dale Nunes said before he--disappeared."

     He put his arms around her, hugged her.

     "This is fine," Rita said, hugging him fiercely back. "But Nick, an all-points came through just a few seconds ago; we're supposed to be in Wheeling Hall right now, listening to the Protector, but I'm not going--Nunes, as you know, is dead, and so right now there's nobody to _make_ us go. So I'll stay here. With you." She held him against her; however, he very swiftly disengaged her arms. "What is it?" she said, then, bewildered.

     "I'm going to Wheeling Hall." He strode to the door.

     "What does it matter--"

     He did not take time to answer; he sprinted down the hall, to the ramp.

     A moment later, with perhaps no more than a fifth or sixth of the citizens of the tank, Nicholas St. James entered Wheeling Hall. Catching sight of Joseph Adams he made his way over to him, seated himself rapidly beside him.

     The giant floor-to-ceiling TV screen was lit and active; it pulsed but showed nothing.

     Adams, briefly, said, "We're waiting. There has been what the announcer just now called a 'delay.' " His face was pale, stark. "He, that is, Yancy--he started to appear; then the image was cut off. As if--" He glanced at Nicholas. "the coax had been cut."

     "Jesus," Nicholas said, and felt his heart beat, retrieve its rhythm, at last continue to labor on after a fashion. "So they're still fighting it out."

     "We'll know," Adams said, speaking coolly, professionally. "It won't be long." His tension seemed deliberately technical. And kept so.

     "Was he at his big oak desk? With the flag behind?"

     "Couldn't tell. Too fragmentary; it lasted--they were able to keep it on--just a split second. I think--" Adams' voice was low but quite clearly audible as, around them, tankers leisurely, with no particular concern, took their seats, yawned, murmured, chatted. They did not know; they just did not know what this meant, to them, to their future collective and intimate, personally lived, individual lives. "--to tell you the truth, the showdown evidently did _not_ come at nine o'clock a.m. New York Time. Apparently it's just coming now." He examined his watch. "It's six p.m. at the Agency. So something, god knows what, has been going on all day long." He turned his attention back to the big TV screen, then. And became silent. Waiting.

     "The dart," Nicholas said, "missed, then."

     "Perhaps. But that wouldn't be the end. Lantano wouldn't give up and die. Let's take this step by step. First of all, that particular weapon assembly, if it fails to meet its target, so notifies its installer owner. So no matter where he may be say a thousand miles away, Lantano would know instantly the bad news. And Foote--he'd be up to something in the meantime anyhow; I hope at Capetown. If he has the brains I know he has, definitely at Capetown. And would have disclosed to Runcible the whole business about the special project. And remember this: there are, in those conapts of Runcible's, thousands upon thousands of ex-tankers who Runcible might already have trained, armed, prepared for--" He broke off.

     On the screen appeared the enormous, three-dimensional, full-color familiar ruddy but tanned, healthy, hard-cut features of Talbot Yancy.

     "My fellow Americans," Yancy said, in his grave and firm, momentous yet considerate, even gracious voice. "I am humble before the sight of God to announce to you a matter of such infinite significance that I can only pray to the Almighty and thank Him that we, you and I together, have lived to see this day. My friends--" The voice, now, had choked with emotion; contained, however, by the iron, military inspired stoicism of the man. Masculine always, yet nonetheless overwhelmed; that was Talbot Yancy at this instant, and Nicholas simply could not fathom this that he saw: was this the simulacrum which had always confronted them from the TV screen, or was this--

     The camera retreated. Now the oak desk. The flag. As always.

     Nicholas said to Joseph Adams, "Brose got them. Before they got him." He felt leaden, dulled. It was over.

     Well, that was that. And--maybe for the better. Who knew? Who would ever know? And still the great real task lay ahead, for him, for all the tankers. Nothing less than a total, absolute war to the end, to try to break through and stay broken through to the Earth's surface.

     On the screen in a trembling, overcome voice Talbot Yancy said, "Today I can inform you, every one of you down beneath the ground where you have for so long labored, year in, year out--"

     Adams grated, "_Get to it_."

     "--without complaint, enduring and suffering, and always having faith . . . now, my friends, that faith which has so long been tested can be justified. The war, my friends, is over."

     After a moment--Wheeling Hall and the people scattered here and there in it were dead-still--Nicholas turned; he and Adams looked at each other.

     "And soon, my friends," Yancy continued in his heavy, solemn way, "you shall come up to your own sunlit world once again. You will be shocked, at first, by what you see; it will not be easy, and this will be slow, I must tell you; slow in coming; it must be done bit by bit. But it is here now. All fighting has ceased. The Soviet Union, Cuba, all members of Pac-Peop, has as an entitey resigned itself, agreed, at last, to--"

     "Lantano," Adams said, unbelievingly.

     Getting to his feet, Nicholas walked up the aisle, out of Wheeling Hall.

     In the corridor, alone, he stood in silence, thinking. Evidently Lantano, with or without Webster Foote, had after all gotten Brose, either early in the morning with the high velocity dart, or, if not then and by that weapon, later on. And in some other but absolutely professional, equally serviceable way. Aimed, of necessity, at the old brain itself, because that alone could not be replaced. When that organ was gone it was over. And it is over.

     Brose, he realized, is dead. There is no doubt of it. This was the proof--what we were waiting for. The one, the only sign we down here would receive. The reign of the Yance-man, the fraud of thirteen years, or forty-three if you start with Fischer's documentaries--all over.

     For better or worse.

     Appearing beside him Adams stood for a moment; neither of them spoke and then Adams said, "It all depends on Runcible and Foote, at this point. Maybe they can drag Lantano into a stalemate. Moderate him. What in the old U.S. Government was called 'balance of power.' Possibly through an appearance before the Recon Dis-In Council; insist on--" He gestured. "God knows. I hope _they_ do. It's a mess, Nick; honest to god--I know without being up there and seeing; it's a terrible mess and it'll be a mess for a long time."

     "But," Nicholas said, "we're going to start emerging."

     Adams said, "What I'm waiting to see is how Lantano or whoever it is that's running the simulacrum now, or however they're transmitting--I want to see how they explain those thousands of miles of grass and trees. Instead of an endless waste surface of radioactive rubble." He grinned, grimaced, twitched rapidly; half a dozen, then steadily deeper, stronger and more profound conflicting ideas and emotions flew across his features as, in his mind, he saw swiftly into one possibility after another: the idea man, the Yance-man in him, the person that he was, came, under these conditions, the excitement, the fear and stress, back into being. "What the hell," he said, "can they--whoever 'they' are--possibly say? _Could_ there be a plausible cover story? Lord, I can't think of one. Anyhow right now, right on the spot. Lantano, though. You have no realization, Nick; he might. He's brilliant. Yes, he very possibly might."

     "You think," Nicholas said, "that the biggest lie is still to come?"

     After a long, visibly tormented pause Adams said, "Yes."

     "They can't just tell the truth?"

     "The what? Listen, Nick; whoever they are, whatever combination out of all the possible crazy bedfellow conniving, double-dealing deals and deal-outs, whatever group or person has gotten its paws, temporarily anyhow, on the winning cards, after his long day of-- whatever took place; they have a job, Nick: they have the job, now. Of explaining away an entire planet of green, neatly trimmed, leadygardener cared-for park. _This is it_. And not just satisfactorily explaining it to you or me or a couple of ex-tankers here or there but to hundreds and hundreds of millions of hostile, really furious skeptics who are going to scrutinize every single word that ever issues out of a TV set--by anybody!--from this moment forever into the future. Would you like that job, Nick? Just exactly how well would you like to have to do that?"

     "I wouldn't," Nicholas said.

     Adams said, "I would." His face writhed, in suffering, and with what seemed to Nicholas as authentic and unmistakable devouring yearning. "I wish to god I were in on it; I wish I were sitting in my office at the Agency right now, at 580 Fifth Avenue, New York, monitoring this transmission as it goes out over the coax. It's my job. Was my job. But the fog scared me, the loneliness; I let it get me. But I could go back now and it wouldn't get me; I wouldn't let it. Because this is so important; we were working up to this all the time, this moment when we had to account for it all. Even if we didn't know. It added up to this _and I'm not there_, now that this moment's finally come; I'm off and hiding--I ran." His suffering, the sense of loss, the knowing he was severed from them and it, palpably grew, made him gag as if he had been brutally butted in the depths of his stomach; as if physically thrust back so that now he was falling, and helplessly, with nothing to cling to: Adams caught at the empty air, flailing, futile. And yet still he was trying.