The Penultimate Truth

  After a time Lantano said, "I couldn't have gotten it for you anyhow, Nick." His tone was faint but compassionate. And the eyes. They still burned. Still overpowered by the flame that was not mere life; it was archetypal—it went beyond the individual, the mere animalman as such. It drew from whatever final source energy of this sort sprang; Nicholas had no idea about it, no understanding: he had never seen it before.

  "Like I said," Blair reminded him. "That Brose has got—"

  Lantano said, "Your quote was wrong. 'He was despised and rejected of men.' Did you mean me?" He indicated his retinue of leadies, who by now had finished distributing their stores to the ex-tankers. "I'm not doing too badly. Nick; I have forty leadies, not bad for a start. Especially not bad considering this legally is still only a hot-spot and not a demesne."

  "Your color," Nicholas said. "Your skin."

  "Chrissakes!" Blair grated, grabbing at him, drawing him away from Lantano. In an angry low voice he said into Nicholas's ear, "What do you want to do, embarrass him? He knows he's burned; my god, he comes here and keeps us alive and you go and—"

  "But he's not burned," Nicholas said. He's an Indian, he said to himself. A full-blooded Cherokee, from the looks of his nose. And he's explained his skin color away as radiation burns; why? Is there some law that would bar him from being . . . he could not remember the term. Yance-man. Part of those who ruled; the insiders. Maybe it was strictly white, as back in the old days, the previous prejudiced centuries.

  Lantano said, "Mr. St. James, Nick—I'm sorry you had such a traumatic first-meeting with my retinue, today. Those two leadies; they were so militant because—" His voice was calm; he seemed tranquil, not disturbed by anything Nicholas had said: he was not really sensitive about his skin; Blair was completely wrong. "—other demesne owners," Lantano was saying, "bordering this hot-spot. They'd like to acquire it. They send their leadies in to make Geiger counter readings; they're hoping it's too hot, that it'll kill me, and then this area will be open once more." He smiled. Grimly.

  "Is it too hot?" Nicholas asked him. "What do their readings give?"

  "Their readings give nothing. Because they never survive. My own metallic companions destroy them; how hot this area has become is my business alone. But—you see, that makes my leadies dangerous. Try to understand, Nick; I had to pick those who were old vets of the war; I needed their toughness, their training and ability. Yance-men— you understand that term?—prize the new, undented, undamaged leadies being minted below. But I have such a special problem; I must defend myself." His voice, hauntingly melodic, was almost a chant, as if only half-uttered; Nicholas had to strain to hear it. As if, he thought, Lantano was becoming unreal. Fading.

  And, as he looked once more at the dark man he again made out the lines of age, and this time, with those lines, a familiar configuration. As if, in aging, Lantano had become—someone else.

  "Nick," Lantano said softly, "what was that about my skin?"

  There was silence; he did not say.

  "Go ahead," Lantano said.

  "You're a—" He scrutinized Lantano intently and now, instead of age he saw—a youth. A supple man, younger than himself; no more than nineteen or twenty. It must be the radiation, Nicholas thought; it consumes him, the very marrow of his bones. Withers, calcifies, speeds up the destroying of cell-walls, of tissue; he is sick—Blair was right.

  And yet the man rehealed. Visibly. It was as if he oscillated; he swung into degeneration, into submission to the radioactivity with which he had, twelve hours a day, to live . . . and then, as it ate him, he pulled himself back from the edge; he was recharged.

  Time curled and poked at him, tinkered insidiously at the metabolism of his body. But—never totally overtook him. Never really won.

  "'Blessed,' " Nicholas said, " 'are the peacemakers.' " He then was silent. That seemed to be the extent of his contribution. He could not say what he knew, what his hobby of years, his interest in North American Indians and their artifacts and culture, had provided him as a basis for understanding what these other ex-tankers around him had not, could not; their own phobias about radiation, phobias developed while still below in their tanks, and now augmented, had misled them, concealed from them what was to his eyes obvious.

  And yet he was still puzzled, because obviously Lantano had allowed them to think of him this way, as injured, burned. And—he did seem to be wounded. Not, perhaps, in regard to his skin, but more deeply. And so, fundamentally, the ex-tankers' view was correct.

  "Why," Lantano said, "are the peacemakers blessed?"

  That stumped Nicholas. And it was he who had said it.

  He did not know what he meant; the idea had arisen as he contemplated Lantano; that was all he knew, just as a moment ago another outside-of-time observation had risen, unsolicited to his conscious mind, that about the man who was despised and rejected. And that man had been—well, in his own mind he knew who that man had been, even though most persons at the Tom Mix had attended the Sunday services as a mere formality. For him, however, it had been real; he had believed. Just as he had also believed—although feared was a more accurate word—that someday they might need to know how the North American Indians had survived, because they themselves might need to know the art of chipping flint arrowheads and processing animal hides.

  "Come and see me," Lantano said to him, "at my villa. Several rooms are complete; I am able to live comfortably while the noisy metal men bang away at the job of hauling concrete slabs and chunks which once made up bank buildings and freeway ramps and drive-ins and—"

  Nicholas interrupted, "Can I stay there? Instead of here?"

  After a pause Lantano said, "Of course. You can see that my wife and children are safe from the predations of the leadies of the four neighboring demesnes while I'm at the Agency; you can strawboss my little defensive police force." Turning, he signaled to his retinue; it began to file from the basement.

  "Well I see," Blair said enviously, "you made it big."

  Nicholas said, "I'm sorry." He did not know why Lantano awed him, why he wanted to go with him. A mystery, he thought; there is an enigma about this man who when you first catch sight of him is old, then not so old, is middle-aged, and then when you are up close he is all at once a youth. A wife and child? Then he can't be as young as he now seems. Because David Lantano, striding out of the basement ahead of him, moved like a man in his early twenties, in the full vigor of youth before it became weighed down by the responsibilities of wife, children: of marriage.

  Time, Nicholas thought. It's as if a force that grips us all in a one-way path of power, a total power on its part, none on ours, has for him divided; he is moved by it and yet simultaneously, or perhaps alternately, he seizes it and grips it and he then moves on to suit his own needs.

  He followed after Lantano and his file of leadies, out of the basement, up into the gray light of a partial day.

  "There are colorful sunsets," Lantano said, pausing and glancing back. "Which make up for the dinginess of the daytime atmosphere. Did you ever see Los Angeles in the days of the smog?"

  "I never lived on the West Coast," Nicholas said. And then he thought, But smog ceased to afflict Los Angeles by 1980; I wasn't even born, then. "Lantano," he said, "how old are you?"

  There was no answer from the man ahead of him.

  In the sky something passed slowly, very high. From east to west.

  "A satellite," Nicholas said, excitedly. "My god, I haven't seen one in all these years."

  "An eye-spy," Lantano said. "Taking photographs; it's reentered the atmosphere to get a clearer shot. I wonder why. What would interest anyone here? Rival demesne owners? Domini who'd like to see me a corpse? Do I look like a corpse, Nick?" He halted. "Answer me. Am I here, Nick, or am I dead? What's your opinion? Is the flesh that hung—" He became silent, then; all at once he turned and continued on.

  Nicholas, despite his fatigue from the four-hour hike to Cheyenne from the tunnel, managed to keep up. Hoping, as he trudged
on, that it was not far.

  "You've never seen a demesne villa, have you?" Lantano said.

  "I've never even seen a demesne," Nicholas said.

  "Then I'll fly you over a few of them," Lantano said. "By flapple. It will interest you, the view from above; you'll think it's a park—no roads, no cities. Very pretty, except that the animals are all dead. All gone. Forever."

  They trudged on. Overhead, the satellite had almost disappeared beyond the line of the horizon, into the gray smoglike haze that, Nicholas realized, would remain in suspension for generations to come.

  CHAPTER 23

  Poring over the segment of positive, Cencio, the loupe in his right eye, said, "Two men. Ten leadies. Walking through the Cheyenne ruins in the direction of Lantano's incomplete villa. Want a blowup?"

  "Yes," Webster Foote said, instantly. It had been worth instructing the corporation's satellite briefly to reenter; they would possess a much better picture, now.

  The room darkened and then the square of white appeared on the wall, and then that square was modified as the film segment was fed into the projector which at the same time, at 1200x, magnified. The animator, his dearly prized gadget, began to work; the twelve figures shuffled forward.

  "The same man," Cencio said, "who was with the two destructed leadies. But that's not Lantano with him; Lantano is a young man, in his twenties. That man there is middle-aged. I'll get the folio on him and show you." He disappeared. Webster Foote, alone, continued to watch the animated, developing episode; the twelve figures in motion, toiling along, the ex-tanker clearly quite tired, the man with him— certainly it was David Lantano. Yet, as Cencio said, clearly a man in his late middle-age. Strange, Webster Foote said to himself. The radiation must account for it. It's killing him and this is the fashion that his death is taking; a premature aging. Lantano had better get out of there before it's too late; before it doesn't matter.

  "See?" Cencio said, returning with the Lantano folio; he switched on the room lights, halted the animation of the film segment. "Born in 2002; that makes him twenty-three. So how can that man there—" He shut the room lights off once more. "That is not David Lantano."

  "His father?"

  "According to the folio his father died before the war." Cencio, under a small lamp at the desk, examined the records which the corporation had gathered pertaining to the Yance-man David Lantano. "Evidently Lantano, interestingly, is an ex-tanker. Anyhow walked out of the San Francisco ruins one day, asked for asylum in one of Runcible's conapts. Sent, routinely, to the Berlin Psychiatric WaffenInstitute. Mrs. Morgen found him to be of unusual aptitude; recommended that he be admitted to the Agency on a trial basis. Began writing speeches; is doing so now. Brilliant speeches, it says here."

  "That's him on that screen," Webster Foote said, "and the radiation is killing him. So due to his greed to acquire a demesne he's not going to live, and the Agency loses a brilliant speech writer and he his life."

  "He's got a wife and two children. So he's not sterile. They all walked out of the S .F. ruins together, a little family. Touching."

  "They'll probably die with him. Before the year's up. Start the animator going again, my boy."

  Obligingly, Cencio started the animator once more into action. The tired ex-tanker still lagged behind. For an interval the two men were lost behind and within a great semi-standing building; then, once more, they emerged into the light of day, the leadies stringing in a file behind them.

  Suddenly Webster Foote exclaimed, leaned forward: "My god. Stop the animator."

  Again Cencio stopped the action of the scene; the figures froze as they were.

  "Can you get a greater enlargement of just Lantano?" Foote asked.

  With great skill Cencio maneuvered the magnifying stages of lenses, manipulated both coarse and fine focuses; the figure on the screen, the first, darker human grew until there was nothing but him on the screen. Only the one obviously youthful, vigorous man.

  Both Cencio and Webster Foote gazed in disconcerted, agitated silence.

  "Well, my boy," Foote said at last. "That knocks the radiation damage theory."

  "That's how he ought to look. Like he does now. That fits his chronological age."

  Foote said, "There is, in the advanced weapons archives at the New York Agency, some kind of time travel weapon which has been tinkered with until it's a scoop they can use for depositing objects into the past. Only Brose has access to it. But what we're seeing now suggests that Lantano has got his hands on either the original weapon or the adaptation made of it by the Agency. I think we would be well advised to have a perpetual vid monitor kept on Lantano if it's at all possible. Could we plant one on a leady of his immediate entourage? It's risky, I realize, but if he finds it all he can do is rip it off; he can't prove who put it there. And we only need a few more shots; just another handful." The animator, meanwhile, had run the sequence to its limit; unable to carry it any further it merely buzzed, while on the screen the figures once more were frozen. Cencio put on the room lights; both men moved about, stretching, pondering.

  "What few more shots?" Cencio asked.

  "Of him as old as he gets in his oscillations," Foote said.

  "Maybe we've seen it. Already."

  "But maybe not. Do you know," Foote said, suddenly gripped by his extrasensory hunch experience; it overpowered him—never had it struck him with such force. "That man is not white; he's a Negro or an Indian or something."

  "But there aren't any more Indians," Cencio said. "Remember that article circulated just before the war; the ethnic resettlement program established on Mars involved virtually all of them, and they were killed in the first year, when the fighting was confined to Mars; those who remained behind on Earth—"

  "Well, this one's still here," Foote said. "So that's that. We don't need twenty Indians; we need just one—overlooked, I mean."

  One of his lab technicians came to the door of the room, knocked respectfully. "Mr. Foote, sir. A report of that portable TV set. That you wanted torn down."

  Foote said, "You got it open and it's a standard model prewar Philco 3-D color TV portable with—"

  "Can't open it."

  "What about those rexeroid bits?" Rexeroid, a compound from Jupiter, generally could penetrate anything. And he had kept one in his London labs for just such occasions as this.

  "The case of the object, sir, is rexeroid; the bit goes in a quarter inch and then—the substance took the edge off the bit so it won't cut. In other words we're out one rexeroid bit. We've sent for more, but they'll have to come from Luna; that's where the nearest available supply exists. None of the Yance-men have any, including Eisenbludt in Moscow. Or if they do have any they won't release them; you know how competitive the Yance-men are. Afraid if they lend you—"

  "Don't sermonize," Foote said. "Just keep trying. Anyhow I took a look at that case; it's not an alloy at all—it's plastic."

  "Then it's a plastic we've never before seen."

  Foote said, "It's an advanced weapon, undoubtedly from the Agency's closed archives, although possibly someone dug it up. Anyhow developed at the end of the war and never used. Do you mean to say you don't recognize the fine German hand when you see it? That's a Gestalt-macher; I know it." He tapped his forehead. "This extra knob on my frontal lobe says so. Without proof. You get into it and you'll see; ejectors that spout blood, hair, words, brain waves, threads, handprints." And, he thought, a cyanide-tipped homeostatic, homotropic dart. The first and last; that most of all. "You've tried heating it, of course."

  "Not too high. To about 240; afraid if we go higher—"

  "Try up to 350. And report if it shows any sign of flow."

  "All right, sir." The lab technician departed.

  Foote said to Cencio, "They'll never get it open. It's not rexeroid; it's a thermoplastic. But that clever German thermoplastic that flows at one precise split half degree; above and below it's even harder than rexeroid. You have to get exactly the proper temperature; inside it's
got a heating coil that melts it when it wants to change shape. If they keep trying long enough—"

  "Or," Cencio said, "if they get it too hot there won't be anything left inside it but ash."

  That was true. The Germans had even thought of that; the mechanism was built so that unusual pressures—such as heat, drills, probes of any sort—acted to trigger a demolition circuit. And the thing did not even burst in a visible way; its works simply disintegrated . . . so that one still continued to strive to gain entry—entry into a gadget which had already long, long ago fused itself into a shapeless nothing, workswise.

  Those late wartime units, Foote thought, are too clever. Just too damn clever for us mortals; can you imagine what would have been dreamed up in another year? If the autofacs hadn't been destroyed, all the surface shops and labs and proving grounds . . . like that one, sole outfit that made artiforgs.

  The intercom clicked on and Miss Grey said, "Sir, Yance-man David Lantano is on the line wanting you. Are you in?"

  Foote glanced at Cencio. "Saw the satellite reenter. Knows we took extra-careful shots of him. He's going to ask why." Rapidly, he tried to think why. The ex-tanker? Good; he had something there, because, according to law Lantano had to turn over any tanker who bored through within his demesne area to the Berlin psychiatrists. Into the intercom he said, "Put Lantano on, Miss Grey."

  On the big vidscreen the face of David Lantano appeared, and Webster Foote saw, fascinated, that it was the youthful phase of the age-oscillation or cycle; in any case it was the proper twenty-three-year-old man who confronted him.

  "I have never had the pleasure of making your acquaintance," Foote said politely (Yance-men, as a general rule, enjoyed this sort of bending-the-knee). "However I know your reading matter. Extraordinary."

  Lantano said, "We would like an artiforg. A pancreas."

  "Oh dear."

  "You can locate one. Dug up. We will pay highly."

  "There aren't any." Foote thought, Why? Who needs it? You? Did your ex-tanker friend bore to the surface for it? Probably the latter, and you are being charitable or anyhow going through the motions. "Not a chance, Mr. Lantano." And then an idea came to him. "Allow me," he said, "to visit your villa, however, for a few moments. I have some maps, military maps from the war, which indicate areas not dug into which conceivably might contain stored artiforgs; these were U.S. Air Force hospitals in remote places. Alaska, North Canada. On the old picket line fringes and on the East Coast. Perhaps between us—"