The Penultimate Truth

"Say," Adams grated, staring out the window of the office at the other buildings of the Agency.

"They think Runcible is systematically tipping off one ant tank after another," Lindblom said. "To the fact that the war is over. _Someone_ is. They know that. Webster Foote and his field people found that out during routine interviews of a group of tankers who surfaced a month or so ago."

Brose complained with growing peevish suspicion, "What's going on? You two are conversing."

At that, Adams turned from the window to face Brose; Lindblom, too, turned toward the monster concoction wedged somehow into the chair at the desk. "Not conversing," Adams said to Brose. "Just meditating."

On Lindblom's face there was no expression. Only empty, stonelike detachment. He had been given a task; he intended to do it. He recommended to Adams by his ma

But suppose it were not Runcible. Suppose it were someone else. Then this entire project, the faked artifacts, the articles in _Natural World_, the "leak" of the find, the litigation before the Recon Dis-In Council, the destruction of Runcible's economic empire and his imprisonment:

It was all for nothing.

Joseph Adams trembled. Because, unlike Brose, unlike Verne Lindblom and probably Robert Hig and anyone and everyone else co

And his intuition was not going to halt the project.

Not one bit.

Again turning his back to Brose, Adam said, "Lindblom, they may be wrong. It may not be Runcible."

There was no answer. Lindblom could not respond because he was, at the moment, facing Brose, who now, on his feet, was waddling and groping his way, supported by a magnesium crutch, toward the office door, mumbling as he departed.

"Honest to god," Adams said, staring fixedly out the window, "I'll write the articles, but if it isn't him, I'm going to tip him off." He turned, then, toward Lindblom, tried to read his reaction.

It was not there to read. But Lindblom had heard.

The reaction would come, sooner or later; Joseph Adams knew this man, this personal friend, had worked with him enough to be sure of it.

It would be a strong reaction. After a great deal of soul-searching Verne Lindblom would probably agree, probably help him find a way of tipping off Runcible without leaving a trail back to the source that Brose's agents could trace; Brose's agents and the private hired talents of the Footemen operating in conjunction. On the other hand--

He had to face it; _was_ facing it.

Verne Lindblom was a Yance-man, fundamentally. Before and beyond any other consideration.

His reaction might be to report Adams' statement to Brose.

The agents of Brose would, then, within minutes, show up at Joseph Adams' demesne and kill him.

It was that simple.

And at the moment there was no way he could tell which direction his long-time friend Lindblom would jump; Adams did not possess the services of an international psychiatric profile-analysis organization, as Brose did.

He could only wait. And pray.

And prayer, he thought caustically, went out twenty years ago, even _before_ the war.

The field technician of the private police corporation Webster Foote, Limited, crouched in his cramped bunker and said into his aud receiver which transmitted to headquarters in London, "Sir, I have on tape a two-way conversation."

"On that same matter we discussed?" Webster Foote's voice came, distantly.

"Evidently."

"All right. You know who's the acting contact with Louis Runcible; see that he gets it."

"I'm sorry to say that this--"

"Convey it anyhow. We do what we can with what we have." The far-off voice of Webster Foote was authoritative; this, coming from him, was a pronouncement of judgment as well as an order.

"Yes, Mr. Foote, S.A.P."

"Indeed," Webster Foote agreed. "Soon as possible." And, in London, at his end, he broke the aud-transmission.

The Webster Foote, Limited field technician turned at once back to his banks of detection and recording apparatuses, economically operating at low gain but satisfactory output level; he examined the visual, graphic tapes appearing ceaselessly to be certain that during the audcontact with his superior he had missed nothing. Now was _not_ the time to miss anything.

He had not.

7

And meanwhile, the superb handwrought speech, untouched, remained in Joseph Adams' briefcase.

Lindblom remained, shakily lighting a cigarette and trying not to involve himself--for the moment--in further conversation. He had had enough; he remained because he was too exhausted to go.

"You have it in your power," Adams said as he seated himself at his desk, opened his briefcase and got out his speech, "to get me picked off."

"I know," Lindblom muttered.

Walking toward the door Adams said, "I'm going to 'vac this. Get it to the sim and on tape and then the hell with it. Then--what do we call the new project, this forging of nonterran artifacts to put a man in prison whose whole life is devoted to seeing that decent housing is--"

"The Nazis," Lindblom interrupted, "had no written orders regarding the Final Solution, the genocide of the Jews. It was done orally. Told by superior to subordinate, handed down by word of mouth, if you don't object to an abs-urd mixed metaphor. You probably do."

"Let's go have a cup of coffee," Adams said.

Lindblom shrugged. "What the hell. _They've_ decided it's Runcible; who are we to say it isn't? Show me--conjure up--someone else who would benefit by tipping off tanks."

"I'd be glad to," Adams said, and saw Lindblom look disconcerted. "Any one of the thousands of tankers living in Runcible's conapts. All it would take would be one who got away, wasn't picked up by Brose's agents or Footemen, made his way back to his own ant tank. Then, from it, contacted a neighboring tank, then from that tank to--"

"Yeah," Lindblom agreed, stolidly. "Sure. Why not? Except would his fellow tankers let him back into his tank? Wouldn't they think he was hot or had--what name did we make up to call it?--the Bag Plague. They'd massacre him on sight. Because they believe the reading matter we give them on TV every damn day of the week and twice on Saturday night, just in case; they'd think he was a living missile. And anyhow, there's more you don't know. You ought to hand over a few bucks to the Foote organization now and then; pick up a little inside news. These tankers that had been tipped off about conditions up here--they weren't tipped off by anybody they knew; it wasn't one of their own members coming back."

"Okay, the tanker couldn't reach his own tank; so instead--"

"They got it," Lindblom said, "over the coax."

For a moment Adams failed to understand; he stared at Lindblom.

"That's right," Lindblom said. "On their TV set. For about one minute, and very feeble. But enough."

"Good god," Adams said, and he thought, There are millions of them down there. What would it be like if someone cut into the _main_ coax, the chief, sole and central trunk from Estes Park that reaches _all_ the tanks. What would it be like to have the earth open and millions of humans, imprisoned subsurface for fifteen years, believing in a radioactive waste above, with missiles and bacteria and rubble and warring armies--the demesne system would sustain a death blow and the great park over which he flappled twice daily would become a densely populated civilization once more, not quite as before the war, but close enough. Roads would reappear. Cities.

And--ultimately there would be another war.

That was the rationale. The masses had egged their leaders on to war in both Wes-Dem and Pac-Peop. But once the masses were out of the way, stuffed down below into antiseptic tanks, the ruling elite of both East and West were free to conclude a deal... although, strangely, in a sense it had not been them at all, not Brose, not General Holt who had been C. in C. of Wes-Dem or even Marshal Harenzany, the top officer in the hierarchy of Soviet brass. But the fact that both Holt and Harenzany knew when it was time to use the missiles (and had done so) and when time had come to quit--this was all true, and without it, without their joint reasonability, peace would not have been possible, but underneath this collaboration of the two top military men lay something else, something which to Adams was real and strange and in a sense deeply moving.