The Penultimate Truth

17

In his London office Webster Foote studied with a jeweler's loupe-- old-fashioned gadgets fascinated him--the gradually unreeling photographic record which eye-spy satellite 65, owned by Webster Foote, Limited of London, had taken during its pass 456,765, Nor-Hem-W.

"Here," his photo expert, Jeremy Cencio, said, pointing. "All right, my boy." Reaching, Webster Foote stopped the unreeling of the continuous positive; he swung a 1200x microscope into position at the locus, manually adjusted first a coarse and then the fine focus-he had a slight astigmatism in his right eye, so he utilized the left--and saw, on the film, what Cencio wanted him to see.

Cencio said, "This is roughly the region where Colorado and Nebraska and Wyoming come together. South of what once was Cheyenne, before the war, a major city of the United States."

"Oh indeed."

"Shall I animate this segment?"

Webster Foote said, "Yes. Please. And project it waliwise." A moment later, as the room lights darkened, a square appeared on the wall, projection of the segment of film. Cencio started the animating equipment, which altered the film from a still into a sequence of several minutes.

Enlarged by way of 1200x microscope, which intervened between the film and the animating construct, a scene, looked down at from above, of course, could be made out. A man and two leadies.

As he watched, Webster Foote saw one of the leadies prepare to kill the man; he saw the unmistakable move of its right manual extremity toward what he, as a professional, knew it carried at that spot of its mechanical anatomy. The man was about to be extinguished.

And then, like a puff, a sneeze of dust, one leady whisked out, and its companion whirled frantically in what technically was called a circus-motion pattern, all circuits at peak-velocity as it strove to locate the source of the destruct beam--and then it, too, condensed into disconnected motes that floated and drifted.

"That's all," Cencio said, and turned on the room light.

"That would be the demesne area of--" Foot consulted one of the police corporation's reference works. "A Mr. David Lantano. No, not a demesne; still in preparation. Not a full year, yet; so legally it remains technically a hot-spot. But under Lantano's jurisdiction."

"Presumably those are--were--Lantano's leadies."

"Yes." Foote nodded absently. "I tell you, my boy. Go over all the adjoining segments with the 400x lens until you find the source of the destruct beam that took out those two leadies. See who--"

The vidcom in his office pinged; it was his secretary, Miss Grey, and the signal, three winks of light along with the ping, meant that the call was urgent.

"Excuse me," Foote said, and turned to the full size vidset on which the call would be, by Miss Grey, relayed for his attention.

The face of Louis Runcible appeared, heavy, rather ruddy and fleshy, the old-fashioned rimless glasses... the dome of his head a little more bald since Foote had last seen him; a little less of the fine white hair combed across, ear to ear. "Your field rep," Runcible said, "told me to call you the instant anything unusual occurred in my business operations."

"Yes!" Foote leaned eagerly toward the screen, grabbed at the key of the aud-vid recorder to be sure this call was permanently registering. "Go ahead, Louis. What turned up?"

"Somebody murdered one of my engineers. Lasered him in the back of the head, while he was at the new site in Southern Utah. So your extrasensory perception was right; they're out to get me." Runcible, on the vidscreen, looked more indignant than frightened, but that, for him, would be natural.

"You can continue your ground-breaking without this man?" Foote asked.

"Oh sure. We're digging away. We didn't even find him until evidently an hour or so after it happened; no one noticed, with all the work in progress. Hig was his name. Bob Hig. Not one of my best, but not too bad, either."

"Keep digging, then," Foote said. "We'll of course send a field rep to the spot to examine the body of Hig; he should be there within half an hour, released by one of our substations. And meanwhile keep in touch. This may be their first move in a sequence." He did not need to specify who "they" were; both he and Runcible understood perfectly.

The call terminated, Foote returned to the examination of the continuous film-strip made by the satellite.

"Any luck on pinpointing the origin of that destruct beam?" he asked Cencio. He wondered if there were any connection between the murder of Runcible's engineer and the taking out of these two leadies. It always appealed to him, tying separate events together; he enjoyed a pattern which wove all strands into harmony. But as the connection between these two despiteous events, however, even his extrasensory vision did not provide him with any knowledge. Perhaps in time...

"No luck," Cencio said. "So far."

"Are they trying to scare Runcible into stopping work in Utah?" Foote asked rhetorically, aloud. "Because that's hardly the way; Louis can lose engineer after engineer and survive. My god, with the weapons they have at the Agency, especially the advanced prototypes that Brose has access to--they could wipe out the entire site, all the men, leadies and machinery that loiter around there. And not just an engineer... not a top one at that." It made no sense.

"No hunch?" Cencio asked him. "No Psionic foresight?"

"Yes," Webster Foote said; he had an odd inkling. It grew in his mind until it amounted to a true precog revelation. "Two leadies dissolved," he said. "Then one of Runcible's construction crew in Utah lasered in the back of the head, the moment they start breaking ground... I foresee--" He broke off. Another death, he said to himself. And soon. He examined his round, ancient pocket watch. "It was the _back_ of the head. Assassination. Look for someone in the Yance-man class."

"A Yance-man--murdered?" Cencio stared at him.

"Very soon now," Foote said. "If not already."

"And we'll be called."

"Oh yes," Foote said. "And this time not by Runcible but by Brose. Because--" And his extrasensory talent told him this; plainly. "It'll be someone Brose is depending on; this will upset Brose extravagantly--we'll get quite an agitated call."

"Let's wait and see," Cencio said, skeptically, "if you're right."

"I know I'm right as to what's going to happen," Foote said. "The question is--_when?_" Because his talent was very bad on timing, and he recognized this; he could be days, even a week off. But not much more than that. "Suppose," Foote said thoughtfully, "the murder of this person was not directed at Runcible. It just doesn't hurt Louis enough; he can't be the target." Suppose, he thought, _although Hig was an employee of Runcible's, this is directed at Stanton Brose_.

Was that so bad?

"Do you like Brose?" he asked his photo expert assistant in charge of all visual satellite-tracking data.

"I never thought about it one way or another," Cencio said.

Foote said, "I have. I don't like Brose. I wouldn't lift my left little finger to help him. If! could avoid it." But how could he avoid it? Brose, acting through General Holt and Marshal Harenzany, had an army of veteran leadies at his disposal, plus the advanced weapons archives at the Agency. Brose could get at him, at Webster Foote, Limited of London, any time he wanted.

But perhaps there was someone else, someone not afraid of Brose.

"We will know whether such a person exists," Foote said, "when and only when a Yance-man valuable to Brose is killed." As, with his parapsychological talent, he foresaw.

"What sort of person?"

"A new sort," Foote said. "Of the kind we have never seen." That, as far as he knew, did not exist.

_I will sit here at my desk_, Foote said to himself, _and wait and hope to get a vidcall from fat, horrid old spiderish Stanton B rose. Telling me in lugubrious terms that an essential Yance-man in his immediate circle has been dispatched, and in no crude, barbaric but on the contrary highly--as they like to phrase it--sophisticated manner. And when that call comes, I will go out on a two week binge_.

He began the wait as of now. By his round, archaic pocket watch, nine a.m., London time. And, in just a minuscule way, he initiated the celebration: he took one small pinch, one for each nostril, of Mrs. Cluny's Superfine Preferred Mixture high-grade snuff.

On the main floor public corridor of the New York Agency, Joseph Adams, seeing no one in sight, stepped rapidly into a pay vidphone booth. He shut the door, managed to deposit the metal poscred coin.

"Capetown, please. The villa of Louis Runcible." He was shaking so badly that he could barely hold the aud receiver to his ear.

"Seven dollars for the first--" the operator said; it was a leady, highly efficient and brisk.

"Okay." Quickly he shoved a five and two ones into the slot, and then, as the connection was put through, Adams, with a convulsive, hasty but thorough motion, covered the vidscreen with a handkerchief; he had now blocked the visual portion of the transmission, leaving only the aud.

In his ear a female voice said, "Miss Lombard, Mr. Runcible's secretary; who is calling, please?"

Joseph Adams said hoarsely, not having to alter deliberately his voice to make it unrecognizable; it emerged that way on its own, "I have an absolutely urgent message for Mr. Runcible's ears alone."

"Who is this, please? If you--"

"I can't do it," Joseph Adams grated. "Maybe the line is tapped. Maybe--"

"What is it, sir? Could you speak up, please? And the visual signal doesn't seem to be coming through at all. Could you reconnect in a better channel?"

"Goodbye," Joseph Adams said. _I just can't take the chance_, he thought in fear.

"I'll put you through, sir; if you'll just wait--"

He hung up the receiver.

Removing the handkerchief, still shaking, he got to his feet, left the public vidphone booth. Well, he almost had done it. Tried; I did try, he said to himself. So close.

Then a wire? Or a special registered 'stant mail letter, no name signed, letters cut from homeopapes.

Can't, he realized; can't ever do it. Darn sorry, Louis Runcible; the bonds are too strong. The ties; they're too long, old, tight. I have introjected them and now they act as a part of me; they live here inside, within me. Life-long. Now and now on.

He walked unhastily, feeling a membrane of numbness transport itself with him, hovering as he walked up the corridor away from the vidphone booth. Back to his own office. As if nothing had happened.

Nothing had. It was gall-bitter truth: nothing, nothing at all.

So it would progress on its own, the thing. Force he did not understand, substantial but remote, eluding, butterflylike, his perception even at the edge: shapes that winged across the sky of his life and left no trail, no sensation; he felt blind and afraid and helpless. And still he walked. Because it was natural. And, for him, there was nothing else.

And as he walked, it moved. Stirred; he felt it roll forth. Coasting in a direction which was unveering: straight ahead.