The Penultimate Truth

"I--don't know," Adams muttered, at last.

"Morally," Lantano said, "it would be right. I am sure of that. Mr. Foote knows that. Nick here knows that--already. You know it, too, Adams. Don't you?" He waited; Adams did not answer. To Foote, Lantano said, "He knows it. He's one of the few Yance-men who does, who faces it. Especially now, after Lindblom's death."

"Kill him with what?" Adams said, then.

Lantano said, regarding Foote's military map intently, "I'll supply you with the weapon. Leave that part to me. I think we've arrived at the crux, here." He put his forefinger on the spot which Foote had indicated on the military map. "Go ahead and dig; I'll pay the costs." Once more he turned to Adams, who stood at the door entirely surrounded by his leadies and Footemen escort. "Brose has to be killed. It's only a matter of time. And by whom. And through what technical construct." To Foote he said, "What weapon would you recommend? Adams will encounter Brose at the Agency sometime later this week, in his own office. Adams' office. So he need not carry it on him; it can be in the office, cammed in place; he need only have the triggering mechanism on him or auto-arranged in advance."

Extraordinary, Foote thought. _Is this what I came here for?_ It was supposedly a pretext, my visit here, to plant a monitoring device. By which I could learn more about David Lantano. But instead--I have been drawn into, or anyhow invited to enter, a conspiracy to kill the most powerful human being in the world. And the man with the greatest repertory of advanced weapons at his disposal.

The man, Foote realized, we all really terribly fear.

And this conversation, due to the aud-vid bug he had planted in the couch, _was being monitored_. And, by an incredible, maddening irony, by his own technicians. But his own corporation's experts, at the local tracking substation and then at the London office itself. Too late now, to shut it off; the data, the important message, had been sent out already. And, of course, somewhere in the corporation Webster Foote, Limited, Brose had his agents; eventually, although not perhaps right away, the news of this conversation in utter and complete bona fide detail, would arrive, through cha

Aloud Foote said, "You have Brose' s Alpha-wave pattern. In the wall monitor at Lindblom's demesne. And you have access to it--" He spoke, now, to Adams.

"Tropism," Lantano said, and nodded.

"Since Lindblom's leadies recognize you as the deceased's closest friend--" Foote hesitated and then he said, numbly, "I therefore recommend yes; the Alpha-wave pattern as the tropism. A conventional homeostatic high-velocity cyanide dart. Set to release from some recess in your Agency office the moment its dispatching mechanism receives and records that idiosyncratic Alpha-wave pattern as present."

There was silence.

"Could it be set up tonight?" Lantano asked Foote.

"It takes only a few minutes to install the barn for such a dart," Foote said. "And to program the dispatching mechanism within the barn housing. And to load the barn with the dart itself."

Adams said. "Do--you have such hardware?" He spoke to Foote.

"No," Foote said. Which was the truth. Unfortunately. He could not come through.

"I have," Lantano said.

Foote said, "There are hundreds of those wartime cyanide homeostatic high velocity darts left over from the days when the Communist international assassins were in business, and literally thousands of the low velocity ones that could be corrected after release, such as that which killed Verne Lindblom. But they're old. They exist but they can't be relied on; too many years have--"

"I said," Lantano said, "_that I have one_. The complete assembly: dart, barn, housing, dispatching mechanism. And in mint condition."

"Then," Foote said, "you must also have access to time travel equipment. This hardware you speak of, it must come directly from fifteen to twenty years ago."

Presently Lantano nodded. "I do." He clenched his hands together, violently. "But I don't know how to set up the assembly. The wartime and prewar CP assassins who used those were specially trained. But I think with your general knowledge of the field--" He glanced at Foote. "You could. Will you?"

"Tonight?" Foote said.

"Brose," Lantano said, "will visit Adams' office possibly as early as tomorrow. If it's installed tonight, Brose could be dead within the next twelve to twenty-four hours. The alternative of course, needless to say, is death for each and every human being in this room. Because within the next _forty-eight_ hours, news of this discussion will be in Brose's hands." He added, "Due to some monitoring device, Foote, which you yourself brought; I don't know what it is, where it is, when and how you installed it, but I know it's in the room. And functioning."

"True," Foote said, at last.

"So we have to continue," Adams spoke up. "Tonight, as he says. All right, I'll fly to Lindblom's demesne and get the Alpha-wave pattern back; I returned it to the type VI chief leady, there." He hesitated, suddenly realizing something. "The Gestalt-macher possessed that pattern. How did it get it? The person who programmed it had the pattern; only Brose would have the pattern. So I guess you are right, Lantano. It had to be Brose who fed the data to the machine."

"Did you think," Lantano said quietly, "that perhaps I dispatched that machine to kill your friend?"

Adams hesitated. "I don't know. Someone did; that's all I knew. Except that I got that card popped; it seemed to me--"

"I think you did," Foote said.

Glancing at him, Latano smiled. It was not the smile of a young man; it had in it ancient, wild craft. An elliptic untamed wisdom which could afford to be gentle, could be tolerant because it had seen so much.

"You're an American Indian," Foote said, all at once understanding. "From the past. Who somehow, in the past, got hold of one of our modern-day time travel devices. How did you get it, Lantano? Did Brose send a scoop back to your era, _is that it?_"

After a time Lantano said, "The artifacts that Lindblom made. He utilized the ingredients of the original advanced prototype of the wartime weapon based on that principle. A geologist made an error; some of the artifacts appeared not subsurface but on the ground, in plain sight. I came along; I was leading a war party. You would not have recognized me, then; I was dressed differently. And all painted."

The ex-tanker, Nicholas St. James, said, "Cherokee."

"Yes." Lantano nodded. "By your reckoning, fifteenth century. So I've had a long time to prepare for this."

"Prepare for what?" Foote said.

Lantano said, "You know who I am, Foote. Or rather, who I've been in the past, in 1982, to be specific. And who I will be. Shortly. Your men are going over the documentaries. I'll save you some long and difficult research; you will find me in episode nineteen of version A. Briefly."

"And whom," Foote said levelly, "do you portray?"

"General Dwight David Eisenhower. In that spurious, utterly faked scene contrived by Gottlieb Fischer, in which Churchill, Roosevelt--or rather the actors impersonating them for Fischer's didactic purposes-- confer with Eisenhower and the decision is reached as to exactly how long they can stall the invasion of the continent. D-day, it was called. I read a very interesting phony line... I will never forget it."

"I remember that," Nicholas said suddenly.

They turned toward him, all of them.

"You said," Nicholas said, " 'I think the weather is sufficiently rough. To hamper the landings and so account for our failure to establish our beachheads successfully.' Fischer had you say that."