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But it hadn't been put on the coaxial cable, of course; the tankers had never seen that sequence. The sim had been opened up, thoroughly gone over, tested and checked and certified; a miniaturized component had been spat on, denounced as the malefactor--and, at a work bench in one of the shops of Runcible's conapts, a workman had been quietly relieved of his duties and possibly his life... without ever knowing why or what--because in the first place he hadn't known what the tiny output coil or diode or just plain _thing_ had been used for.
The sim began to move. And Joseph Adams shut his eyes, standing as he was, out of range of the cameras, hidden with this small, dark, very young but expert Yance-man, the author of the words about to be uttered. Maybe it'll go out of its mind, Adams thought wildly, and began to recite pornographic ballads. Or, like one of those antique disc records of the previous century: repeat a word repeat a word repeat a word...
"My fellow Americans," the sim said in its firm, familiar, nearhoarse but utterly controlled voice.
To himself Joseph Adams said, _Yes, Mr. Yancy. Yes sir_.
8
Joseph Adams listened to the partial text of the speech, up to the point where the dark young Yance-man had ceased feeding the script to the 'vac, and then, when the sim became rigid and the cameras--at the precise second--shut down, he turned to the man beside him, the author, and said:
"I take off my hat to you. You're good." He had almost been captured himself, as he had stood watching the simulacrum of the Protector Talbot Yancy deliver with absolutely the proper intonation, in the exact and correct ma
But a good speech is a good speech. Whoever delivers it. A kid in high school, reciting Tom Paine... the material is still great, and this reciter doesn't falter or stumble or get the words wrong. The 'vac and all these main-men standing around see to that. _And_, he thought, _so do we. We know what we're doing_.
"Who are you?" he asked this strangely capable young Yance-man.
"Dave something. I forget," the man said, almost mystically absorbed, even now that the sim had become inoperative once more.
"You forget your _name?_" Puzzled, he waited, and then he realized that this was merely an elliptical way by which the dark young man was telling him something: that he was a relatively new Yance-man, not yet fully established in the hierarchy. "Lantano," Adams said. "You're David Lantano, living in the hotspot near Cheye
"That's right."
"No wonder you're black." Radiation-burned, Adams realized. The youth, eager to acquire land for a demesne, had gone in too soon; all the rumors, passed back and forth in the idle hours of evening by the worldwide elite, appeared true: it had been far too soon, and physically young David Lantano was suffering.
Philosophically, Lantano said, "I'm alive."
"But look at you. What about your bone marrow?"
"Tests show there's not too much impairment of red-cell production. I expect to recuperate. And it's cooling daily. I've gotten over the worst part." Wryly, Lantano said, "You should come and visit me, Adams; I've had my leadies working night and day; the villa itself is almost complete."
Adams said, "I wouldn't go into the Cheye
"Until," Lantano said, "the Cheye
Viewing the dark--in truth severely scorched--youth, Adams realized how fortunate he himself was. To be fully established; his villa was long-built, his grounds were fully planted, green throughout. And he had entered the West Coast hot-spot south of San Francisco at a safe time; he had relied on Footemen reports, brought at great cost, and look how it had all worked out. In contrast to this.
Lantano would have his fine villa, his vast stone building made out of the rubble, the concrete that had been the city of Cheye
And that, according to the Recon Dis-In Council's ruling, put the area up for grabs once again; it would be a rush by eager Yance-men to get in and acquire what Lantano had left behind. An ultimate end to Adams pathetic irony: the youth's villa, built at such cost--at the expense of his life-would go to someone else who did not have to build, supervise a gang of leadies day after day .
"I presume," Adams said, "that you get the hell out of Cheye
"I come here. I work. As you see me now." Lantano returned to the keyboard of Megavac 6-V; Adams trailed after him. "As you say, Adams, I have a job to do. I expect to live to perform it." Once more Lantano seated himself at the keyboard, facing his copy.
"Well, at least it hasn't impaired your mind," Adams said.
Smiling, Lantano said, "Thanks."
For one hour Joseph Adams stood by while Lantano fed his speech to Megavac 6-V, and when he had read it all and then, as it emerged from the 'vac to the sim, had heard it actually delivered by the dignified, gray-haired father-figure Talbot Yancy himself, he felt, overwhelmingly, the futility of his own speech. The dreadful contrast.
What he himself gripped in his briefcase was begi
Where does a barely grown radiation-burned unestablished new Yance-man get such ideas? Adams asked himself. And the ability to express them. And--the knowhow as to exactly what the 'vac's treatment of the copy would result in... how it would ultimately emerge as spoken by the sim before the cameras. Didn't it take years to learn this? It had taken _him_ years to learn what _he_ knew. To write a sentence and, after examining it, know approximately--that is, sufficiently accurately--how it would in its terminal stage sound, be. What, in other words, would appear on the TV screens of the millions of tankers subsurface, who viewed and believed, were taken in day after day by what was fatuously called _reading matter_.
A polite term, Adams reflected, for a substance lacking substance. But this wasn't strictly true; as for instance young Dave Lantano's speech here and now. It preserved the essential illusion--in fact, Adams had grudgingly to admit--the illusion of Yancy's reality was heightened. But--
"Your speech," he said to Lantano, "isn't just clever. It has real wisdom. Like one of Cicero's orations." Proudly, he traced his own work to such eminent ancient sources as Cicero and Seneca, to speeches in Shakespeare's history plays, and to Tom Paine.
As he stuffed the pages of his copy back into his own briefcase, David Lantano said soberly, "I appreciate your comment, Adams; especially coming from you it means something."