The Penultimate Truth

As Adams stared fixedly at the control before him, his leadies in a brief skirmish--almost gruesomely silent--killed the four Footemen. The noise, after a time so short that Adams could not really believe or accept that the act had been accomplished, came to its termination; a rear door of the flapple was opened, and with much straining and groaning and clanking, the leadies dumped out the bodies of the four Footemen, out into the emptiness of space and the remoteness of a night, which, it seemed to Adams had begun but would never end.

Adams said, "I just couldn't go to New York." He shuts his eyes. _In nomine Domini_, he thought. Four men dead; awful, and he would always wear, carry with him, the mark: _he_ had ordered it--and without using his own hands. Which made it just that much worse. _But they put that gun to my head_, he realized, _and in my fear I went insane; they threatened to kill me if! didn't go to New York, and since / can't do that--god help each of us, he thought. That to live we have to destroy; this price has to be paid, this bad bargain: four lives for one_.

Anyhow it was done. And so he turned the flapple toward the south; it moved southeast, now, toward the Carolinas. Instead of toward New York. Which he would never see again.

It took him hours to sight the illuminated blotch in the darkness below which was the scene of the diggings.

The flapple, at Adams' instruction, began its spiral down. Toward the spot where Nicholas St. James, the ex-tanker, dug with the assistance of David Lantano's leadies, seeking the possible buried U.S. Army prewar medical storehouse and the artiforgs--if they existed, and if this was the correct spot--somewhere below the surface.

Once landed, Adams made his way toward the diggings. Off to one side, the ex-tanker Nicholas St. James sat among cartons and boxes and Adams realized that the location had proved correct. The U.S. Army dump had been located; already prewar supplies were being recovered. It was, in Yance-man argot, christmas morning.

Glancing up at the sight of the first leady, Nicholas peered. "Who is it?" he said. Simultaneously, Lantano's leadies ceased their toiling; without command they moved toward Nicholas, to protect him; their manual extensors dropped so as to make contact with the weapons which they, at their mid-sections, carried. It was done swiftly, smoothly, and of course at once.

Adams gave an order and his own leadies moved about him, too, in an equally defensive pattern. The two men, now, were separated each by his own leadies; only leady faced leady--neither man could see the other.

"St. James--remember me? Joe Adams; I met you at Dave Lantano's demesne. I've come by to see what luck you had. In getting your artiforg."

"Real luck," Nicholas yelled back. "But what's this deploying of these leadies for? Who's fighting who and what for?"

"I don't want to fight," Adams said. "Can I retire my leadies? Will you do the same with yours and give me your word there won't be any hostile interaction?"

Sounding genuinely puzzled, Nicholas said, "But there's no war; Blair said so, and I saw the demesnes. Why should there by any 'hostile interaction' between you and me?"

"No reasons." Adams signaled his leadies; they withdrew reluctantly, because after all, each of them was a veteran of the war, the true war which had been fought thirteen years ago.

Alone, as a single human, Adams approached the ex-tanker. "Did you find the particular artiforg you need?"

Excitedly, like an overjoyed, enthralled small boy, Nicholas said, "Yes! Three artiforgs, a heart, a kidney, I found it--an artiforg pancreas, still in its original protective carton--it's sealed in an aluminum drum." He displayed it proudly. "Plastic-dipped to keep out air; undoubtedly it's as good as when it was first made. This container was built to protect its contents for, look, right here; for fifty years."

"Then you did it," Adams said. _You got it_, he thought to himself, _what you emerged into the light of day for. Your journey is over. You lucky guy_, he thought. _If only it were that simple for me. If what I needed, lacked, required so that I might live, could be held in the hand, inspected, its ink markings read. Picked up and manually gripped; some object, material and hard-and my fears equally concrete. Limited, as has been your case, to the fear of not finding one specific clearly defined wartime construct, and that construct now found and possessed, as much as we can in this life ever possess anything, really retain and keep it. And look what I have lost_, he thought. _My demesne, my job; I am going to give up the surface of Earth. In order not to follow Verne Lindblom. Because_, he said to himself, _I know it was David Lantano who did it. I knew that the moment Lantano admitted that he had the weapon assembly in his possession. The components that make up the killing agent known to us all: the high velocity--or as in Verne's case, low velocity--cyanide-tipped homeostatic dart. And not rusty but in working order... as was the one which reached Verne Lindblom's heart._

_Mint condition, as Lantano had said. Derived directly from the war-years, from thirteen years ago, by means of Lantano's time-travel equipment. And to be set up in my office to kill B rose exactly as Verne was killed; admittedly it will be instantaneous and painless, but it is still murder, as was mine of the four Footemen commandos. But--this is how we stand. And I'm leaving. Descending. lf I can._

"You're going back to your tank?" he asked Nicholas.

"Right away. The shorter a time old Souza is in freeze the better; there's always the chance of some brain decay. I'm going to leave Lantano's leadies here to keep on digging, get the rest up; I guess Lantano and Foote can split it or anyhow come to an agreement."

"They seem," Adams said, "able to agree. Foote supplied the map; Lantano the leadies and the digging equipment. They'll find some way to divide the trove." _What's amazing_, he thought, _is that you are getting your pancreas without conditions. They've asked nothing in exchange. So they're not bad _men_, not in any typical, ordinary sense; together Foote and Lantano, with dignity and caritas, arranged for you to obtain what B rose has deprived you-and everyone else on the planet--of, what he has hoarded for himself. B rose-- who was absolutely without _caritas__.

"I thought you were supposed to meet them in New York," Nicholas said to Adams.

"They'll make out." From Megavac 6-V they could get Stanton Brose's Alpha-wave pattern; they would think of that sooner or later, when he did not show--in fact probably already had. And, if they could not mount the dart weapon in his office, if they, using Foote's tools and skills, could not pick the intricate door lock, could not enter, they could--and would--find a serviceable place in the corridor, the sole passage to the office, the route which Stanton Brose would have to follow to reach the office. He knew, intuited on a very deep, absolute level, that together Foote and Lantano would manage somehow to work it out.

They would never forget, however, that he had failed to show. If they did not get Brose then the old, half-senile mass of fat would no doubt destroy them, and possibly Adams as well; if they did--well, probably at some convenient later date, when Foote and Lantano, especially Lantano, had gained power, replaced Brose, they would track him down. There would be plenty of time for vengeance. Ultimately, in either case, _it would come_. Whatever the outcome of the weapon planting which at this moment was taking place in the agency hallway or office at 580 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

"Did you ever tell Lantano," he asked Nicholas, "which ant tank you came from?"

"Hell no," Nicholas said. "I have to protect the people down there; I've got a wife and a kid brother, down in--" He broke off. "I told that ex-tanker in the Cheye