The Penultimate Truth

"And," Nicholas said, "I'd lodge myself there in the tu

After an interval someone among the committee murmured. "Two days. We've got food and water already, in fact one of those selfcontained spaceman suits they used to use when there were flights to Mars. Compensation for moisture, waste-material----everything. It still beats trying to make it up the chute, with those leadies up there."

"And Nunes," Nicholas said, "at the bottom."

"Nunes will be breaking up the fight on floor--"

"Okay," Nicholas said. "I'll do it."

They gaped at him.

Rita, half to herself, let out a sob, a cry of despair.

To her, Nicholas said, "It beats being blown to bits. They mean it." He indicated the small flat packet which Jorgenson held. _Ipse dixit_, he said to himself; I know _that_ much foreign language. An assertion made but not proved. And in this case I don't want to see it proved; even our pol-com, Commissioner Nunes, would be appalled by what that device can do when triggered off.

He went into the bathroom, then, and shut--and locked--the door after him. For this moment, brief as it was, of quiet. Of being a mere biochemical organism, not President St. James of the Tom Mix World War III antiseptic subsurface communal living tank, established in June of 2010. A.D. _Long_ A.D., he thought; a hell of a long time After Christ.

What I ought to do, he decided, is come back, not with the artiforg, but with the Bag Plague for you all. Every single last one of you.

His bitterness surprised him. But of course it was superficial. Because, and he realized it as he began ru

He despised himself for his attitude; it was hard, as he began to lather his jowls, to look at himself in the mirror. In fact it was impossible. So he opened the bathroom door on Stu and Edie's side and called, "Hey, can I borrow your electhc razor?"

"Sure," his kid brother said, and produced it.

"What's the matter, Nick?" Edie said, with unusual--for her-- compassion. "Good lord, you look just awful."

"I am awful," Nicholas said, and seated himself on their rumpled, unmade bed to shave. "It takes force," he said. "to make me do the right thing." He didn't feel like talking about it; he shaved in introverted silence.

5

Over green countryside, the fields, the meadows, the open world of North American forests with occasional clusters of buildings, demesnes at odd, unexpected locations, Joseph Adams flew by flapple from his own demesne on the Pacific where he was dominus to the Agency in New York City, where he was one Yance-man among many. His work day, the longed-for and at last achieved Monday, had come.

Beside him on the seat lay a leather briefcase, initialed JWA in gold, which contained his handwritten speech. Behind him, crowded together in the rear seat, four leadies from his personal entourage.

Meanwhile, by vidphone, he discussed biz with his associate from the Agency, Verne Lindblom. Verne, not an idea man, not a user of words but an artist in the visual sense, was in a better position than Joseph Adams to know exactly what their superior Ernest Eisenbludt in Moscow had in mind scenewise, was up to at the studio.

"It's San Francisco next," Lindbiom said. "I'm building it now."

"What scale?" Adams asked.

"No scale,"

"_Life-size?_" Adams was incredulous. "Brose has okayed it? This isn't another of Eisenbludt's hare-brained storms of creative--"

"Just a segment. Nob Hill and overlooking the bay. Should take about a month to construct; there's no rush. Hell, they just ran that Detroit sequence last night." Lindblom sounded relaxed. And, as a master craftsman, he could afford to be. Idea men were one-fourth poscred a dozen, but the actual fabricators--they were a closed guild which even Brose, with all his agents, couldn't crack. They were like the red-stained-glass makers of France in the Thirteenth century; if they perished their skills perished with them.

"Want to hear my new speech?"

"God no," Lindblom said genially.

"It's hand-done." Adams spoke with humility. "I kicked out that gadget; it was getting me into a rut."

"Listen," Lindblom said, all of a sudden serious. "I heard a rumor. You're going to be pulled off speeches and put onto a special project. Don't ask me what; my source didn't know." He added, "A Footeman told me."

"Hmm." He tried to look calm, to show poise. But inside he felt queasy. Undoubtedly--since it took priority over his regular job--this emanated from Brose's bureau. And there was something about Brose and his special projects that he did not like. Although just what .

"It's something you might enjoy," Lindblom said. "Has to do with archeology."

Adams gri

"And you're going to program Hector and Priam and all those fellas. Get out your Sophocles. Your pony or cribsheet or whatever."

"'My friends,'" Adams intoned in solemn parody, "'I have grave news for you, but we shall overcome. The new Soviet ICBM Hatcheck Girl A-3 missile, with a C-warhead, has strewn radioactive common table salt over an area surrounding Carthage fifty square miles wide, but this only goes to show--' " He paused. "What did Carthage produce, autofac-wise? Vases?" Anyhow that was Lindblom's job. The display of postcards, sca

"You know," Lindblom said meditatively, from the tiny speaker of the flapple's vidset. "You'd feel damn fu

Below, a wide river like wet silver wiggled from north to south, and Joseph Adams leaned out to view the Mississippi and acknowledge its beauty. No reconcrews had accomplished this; what glistened in the morning sun was an element of the old creation. The original world which did not need to be recreated, reco

"Let him monitor," Adams said, filled with vigor; he drew strength from the wavering silver line below--strength enough to ring off, cut the switch of the vidset. Just in case Brose was monitoring.

And then, beyond the Mississippi, he saw a manmade focus of upright, hard structures, and these, too, gave him a fu

Ye shall know the truth, Adams thought, and by this thou shalt enslave. Or, as Yancy would put it, "My fellow Americans. I have before me a document so sacred and momentous that I am going to ask you to--" And so on. Now he felt tired, and he had not even reached 580 Fifth Avenue, New York and the Agency, had not begun his day. Alone, at his demesne on the Pacific, he felt the weedy, twisted fog of loneliness grow by day and by night and clog the passages of his throat; here, in transit across the reco