The Penultimate Truth

"Mr. Adams. A word with you, sir."

The thing, which had somehow managed to wedge itself into the chair at his desk, was Stanton Brose.

6

"Why certainly, Mr. Brose," Joseph Adams said, and under his tongue his salivary glands strained with sickness; he turned his back, then, and set his briefcase down and was amazed at his somatic nausea, his response to finding Brose here in his own office. He was not frightened; not intimidated, not even angered that Brose had managed to walk in despite the elaborate locks, walked in and taken over--none of that counted, because the ill convulsion of his body startled every other reaction out of existence.

"Would you like a moment to compose yourself, Mr. Adams?" The voice, wheedling, thin, like a guy wire plucked by an evil pneumatic spirit.

"Y-yes," Adams said.

"Pardon? I can't hear, you know; I must see your lips."

_My lips_, Adams thought. He turned. "I need," he said, "a moment. I had flapple trouble." Then he remembered that he had left the four loyal companions, the veteran leadies of his retinue, in the parked flapple. "Would you--" he began, but Brose cut him off, not impolitely but simply as if he were not talking.

"A new project of some importance has arisen," Brose said in his plucked-wire, strumming voice. "You're to do the reading matter on it. It consists of this..." Brose paused, then found a vast ugly handkerchief which he dabbled at his mouth with, as if molding the flesh of his face like soft, toothpastelike plastic into proper shape. "No written documents or line transmissions are to exist as to this project; _no records_. All, only, oral face-to-face exchanges between the principals; myself, you, Lindblom who will build the artifacts."

Ha, Adams thought, and exulted. Webster Foote, Limited, the London-based planetwide private police investigation agency had already snooped, nosed the news into being; Brose, despite his obviously psychopathic security precautions, had lost even as he began. Nothing could have pleased Adams more; he felt the nausea drain away and he lit a cigar, paced about, nodding soberly, showing his willingness to participate in this most vital, secret enterprise. "Yes sir," he said.

"You know Louis Runcible."

"The conapt building man," Adams said.

"Look toward me, Adams."

Looking toward him, Joseph Adams said, "I passed over one of his conapt centers. His dungeons."

"Well," Brose strummed, "they chose to come up. And they didn't have the ability to join us; we couldn't use them so what else but those row-on-row little apts? At least they've got Chinese checkers. And components are more restful to build than assembling complete leadies."

"It is just," Adams said, "that there is a three thousand mile stretch of grass between my demesne and here that I have to pass over every day. Twice. And I wonder sometimes. And I remember how it looked in the old days before the war and before they were induced to go down into those tanks."

"Had they not, Adams, they would be dead."

"Oh," Adams said slowly, "I know they'd be dead; they'd be ash and the leadies would be using that ash to make mortar out of. It's just that sometimes I think of Route 66."

"Whazzat, Adams?"

"A highway. That co

"A freeway!"

"No, sir, Just a highway; let it pass." And he felt a weariness so strong that he actually thought for a split second that he'd suffered a cardiac arrest or some other fundamental physical collapse; he very carefully stopped inhaling his cigar and seated himself in a guest-type chair facing the desk, and blinked, breathed, wondered what had occurred.

"Okay," Adams continued, "I know Runcible; he's basking in Capetown and he really does try--I know he does--to adequately provide for the tankers who surface; they've got built-in electric ranges, swibbles, wubfur carpeting wall-to-wall, 3-D TV, each group of ten living units has a leady to do chores such as cleaning . what's up, Mr. Brose?" He waited, panting with fright.

Brose said, "Recently a hot-spot cooled off in southern Utah, near St. George, where it was... the maps still give it. Near the Arizona border. Red rock hills in that area. Runcible's geigers picked up the drop in r.a. before anybody else's, and he got it, staked his claim; the rest." Brose gestured deprecatingly, but with resignation. "In a few days he intends to send in his autonomic 'dozers and start breaking ground for a new constellation of conapts... you know, he has all that big primitive heavy-duty construction equipment that he carts all over the world."

"You need that," Adams said, "to build the kind of structures he erects. Those conapts go up fast."

"Well," Brose said, "we want that area."

_You liar_, Adams thought to himself. He got up, turned his back to Brose and said aloud, "You liar!"

"I can't hear."

Turning back, Adams said, "It's just rock, there. Who wants to put a demesne there? My god, some of us have demesnes that contain a million and a half acres!" He stared at Brose. It can't be true, he said to himself. Runcible got in there first because no one cared enough about that region to want to know the readings; no one paid Webster Foote to have Foote field reps and techs keep tabs on that hot-spot and Runcible got it by default. So don't try to jolly me along, he said to himself, and felt hatred for Brose, now; the nausea was gone and an authentic emotion had replaced it inside him.

Evidently Brose perceived some of this on Adams' face. "I guess that is pretty no-good land, there," Brose admitted. "War or no war."

"If you want me to manage the aud-portion of the project," Adams said, and was almost unhinged to hear himself actually say this to Brose, to the man's face, "you had better tell me the truth. Because I don't feel very good. I was up all night writing a speech--by hand. And the fog bothered me. Fog gets to me; I should never have set up my demesne on the Pacific south of San Francisco. I should have tried down by San Diego."

Brose said, "I'll tell you. Correct; we don't care--no Yance-man with all his marbles could possibly care--about that arid land at the old Utah-Arizona border. Look at these." He managed to flap his pseudopodialike flippers until they co

Peering, he saw careful, really lovely drawings. It was like looking over an Oriental silk screen scroll from the--future? Now he saw that the objects depicted were--u

"These are artifacts," Brose said, "which Mr. Lindblom will make; superb craftsman that he is he will have no difficulty."

"But what do they do?" All at once Adams understood. These were fake crypto-weapons. And not just that; he saw, as the scroll-like document unrolled in Brose's flippers, additional artifacts.

Skulls.

Some were Homo sapiens.

Some were not.

"All these," Brose said, "Lindblom will manufacture. But you must be consulted first. Because before they are found--"

"'Found!'"

"These completed objects, made up by Lindblom, using Eisenbludt's studios in Moscow, will be planted on the land Runcible is about to break for his new conapts. However, it must be established in advance that they are of incalculable archeological worth. A series of articles in the prewar scientific journal _Natural World_, which as you know was formerly available to every educated man in the world, must analyze these as--"

The office door opened. Looking wary, Verne Lindblom entered. "I was told to come here," he said to Brose; he glanced, then, at Adams. But said nothing more. However, they both understood; the vid-conversation which had taken place a half hour ago was not to be referred to.