The Penultimate Truth

The bathroom door opened and Stu said, "I'm finished."

Nicholas started for the bathroom. And then--there was a knock at the cubby's hall door.

Going to it, bowing to the necessity created by his elected office, Nicholas opened the hall door and found himself facing what he recognized at once to be a committee. Jorgenson, Haller, Flanders-- again at his door, the activists of the tank and behind them Peterson and Grandi and Martino and Giller and Christenson; their supporters. He sighed. And let them in.

Soundlessly--they knew enough to be that--the committee entered his cubby, filled it up. As soon as the hall door was shut, Jorgenson said, "Here's how we're going to work it, President. We stayed up to four this morning thrashing it out." His voice was low, hard, determined.

"Thrashed out what?" Nicholas said, but he knew.

"We'll handle that pol-com, that Nunes. We'll stage a fracas on floor twenty; access to twenty is hard because of the way those crates of leady components are piled. It'll take him half an hour to break up the fight. And that'll give you time. The time you need."

"Coffee?" Nicholas said, returning to the kitchen.

"Today," Jorgenson said.

Not answering, Nicholas drank his coffee. And wished he were in the bathroom. Locked in where his wife, his brother, his brother's wife and this committee--none of them could get to him. Even Carol, he thought. He wished he could--at least for a minute--lock them all out. And just sit, in the loneliness and silence of the bathroom; just be.

And then if he could just be, maybe he could think. Find himself. Not Nicholas St. James, the president of ant tank the Tom Mix, but himself the man; and then he would know, really know, if Commissioner Nunes were right and the law was the law. Or if Carol Tigh were right, and there was something strange or wrong--whatever she had happened onto with her reservoir of aud-tapes of Yancy's speeches over the last year. _Coup de grace_, he thought. _That's this, right here, for me, the dispatching conk over the head_.

He turned to confront the committee of activists, his coffee cup in hand. "Today," he said, mocking Jorgenson, whom he didn't particularly care for; Jorgenson was a red-necked, heavy-set type, the beer and pretzel sort.

"We know it has to be done in a hurry," Hailer spoke up, his voice low; he was conscious of Rita, who stood at the mirror fixing her hair, and it made him nervous--in fact the whole committee was nervous. Afraid, of course, of the cop, the pol-com. And yet they had come here anyhow.

"Let me tell you the situation as regards artiforgs," Nicholas began, but at once Flanders broke in.

"We know all there is to know. All we _want_ to know. Listen, President; _we know the plot they've hatched up_." The six or seven members of the committee glared at him with nervous anger and frustration; the small cubby--or rather, standard-sized--in which Nicholas lived and now stood writhed with their discomfort.

"Who?" he asked.

Jorgenson said, "The bigshot at Estes Park. Who run everything. Tell their mickey mouse size little thugs like Nunes who to put the finger on."

"What's the plot?"

"The plot," Flanders said, almost stammering in his ticlike tenseness, "is they're short on food and they want a pretext to abolish an ant tank here and there; we don't know how many they want to shut down, and force the tankers up to the surface to die--many tanks, maybe, or just a few... it depends on how much trouble they're having with rations."

"So see," Haller said beseechingly to Nicholas, his voice rising (the man next to him punched him and he instantly dropped his voice to a whisper), "they need a pretext. They get it as soon as we fail to supply our monthly quota of leadies. And last night after the TV films of Detroit getting it, when Yancy a

Rita, at the mirror, said harshly, "Like you want Nicholas to die when he goes up after that artiforg."

Spi

"Nick is not your father," Rita said. "Not a magician. Not a wheel in the Estes Park Government. He can't manufacture an artificial pancreas. He can't--"

"Here's the money," Jorgenson said. And handed Nicholas a fat white envelope. "All Wes-Dem fifty notes. Forty in all. Twenty thousand Wes-Dem dollars. Late last night while Nunes was snoozing we went all over the tank, collecting." This sum represented the wages of half the tank for--he could not compute, under the stress of the moment. But for a long, long time. The committee had worked very hard.

Rita said to the committee, her voice harsh, "Then you do it; you collected the money. Draw lots. Don't stick my husband with this." Her voice became gentle. "Nunes is less apt to notice one of you missing than Nick. It might even be several days before he checks up, but once Nick goes Nunes will know, and--"

"And what, Mrs. St. James?" Hailer said, determinedly but politely. "There's nothing Nunes can do, once President St. James is out of here up the chute and onto the surface."

Rita said, "When he returns, Jack. Then Nunes will execute him." To himself Nicholas thought, And the hell of it is, I probably won't even get back.

Jorgenson, with clear, sincere reluctance, reached into the jacket of his work overalls, brought out a small object, flat like a cigarette case.

"Mr. President," he said huskily, in a formal, dignified tone, that of an official bearer of tidings, "Do you know what this is?"

_Sure_, Nicholas thought. _It's a shop-made bomb. And, if I don't go, and go today, you'll wire it somewhere here in my cubby or my office, set it timewise or booby-trap it wirewise and it'll go off and blow me to bits and also probably my wife and perhaps even my kid brother and his wife or whoever is in my office with me at the time, if it's in my office. And you men--enough of you, anyhow--are electricians; professional wirers and component-assemblers, as we all are to a certain extent... you'll know how to do it so it'll have a one hundred percent chance of success. Therefore, he realized, if I don't go to the surface your committee absolutely and for sure will destroy me--plus perhaps i

Flanders said, "President, listen; I know you think you're going to have to try to make it up the chute, with those leadies always or nearly always hanging around up there with a damaged leady to drop down... but _listen_."

"A tu

"Yes. We bored it this morning early, as soon as the autofac power-supply came on to drown out the noise of the scoop and the other junk we had to use. It's absolutely vertical. A masterpiece."

Jorgenson said, "It takes off from the roof of room BAA on floor one; a storeroom for reduction gears for type II leadies. A chain goes up it and is staked--securely, I guarantee; I swear--at the surface, hidden among some--"

"Lies," Nicholas said.

Blinking, Jorgenson said, "No, honest--"

"You couldn't bore a vertical tube to the surface in two hours," Nicholas said. "What's the truth?"

After a long, disheartened pause, Flanders mumbled, "We got the tu