The Penultimate Truth

21

The clues. The trail, beginning at the bent aluminum frame of the room's window, where the glass had been melted away; Webster Foote's two leadies crouched at the frame, photographed and analyzed the exact extent of the warpage of the metal, recorded its misalignment, calculated the pressure, in terms of pounds, which would have produced such a warp.

Foote's leadies gathered data like the good and successful machines they were. But he himself felt nothing, stared sightlessly; he was not interested, not involved.

"Spot of blood, Mr. Foote," one of the leadies informed him.

"Good," he said tonelessly.

The Lindblom leady which had opened the deeply embedded case set within the closet wall now informed him, "The brain pattern recept shows on its permanent record, in its repository, the presence of--"

"A man," Foote said. "Who passed by it and emitted an Alphawave pattern."

"The aud recorder, too, contains--"

"The man spoke," Foote said. "He came here to kill a sleeping victim and yet he spoke, loudly enough to get his voice on the iron oxide tape."

"And not only loudly," the leady said, "but distinctly. Would you care to have that sequence of tape rerun for you right now?"

Foote murmured, "No, I'll wait. Later."

One of his own leadies exclaimed in shrill, metallic triumph, "Three human hairs, not those of the victim."

"Keep going," Foote said. There'll be more clues by which to identify the murderer, he said to himself. We've got his unique brain wave pattern, his distinctive voice; we know his weight, we have hairs from his head, a drop of blood--although it seems rather strange that he should all at once have, for no reason, bled a drop, right in the middle of the room: a drop and no more.

Within the next few minutes a fragment of cloth fiber was found. And then, on a low table, fingerprints, not those of the victim.

"You can stop, now," Foote said to his two leadies.

"But sir," one of them said, "we may also find--"

"That's all," Foote said. "All which the standard model 2004 Eisenwerke Gestalt-macher produces. Voice, fingerprints, hairs, drop of blood, fiber of clothing, indication of body weight and idiosyncratic Alpha-wave brain emanation pattern--that's the extent and that's sufficient. Based on those, any reasonably adequate computer can pop a signal card; _you've got seven factors of delineation_." And actually six were unnecessary. The brain-emanation pattern alone--if not the fingerprints--was adequate.

This was what annoyed him about this wartime West German invention; it overdid its job. Ninety percent of its circuitry, its activities, could have been left out--in which event as portable TV receiver it would have tended to possess the proper weight. But that was the German mentality, their love of the _Gestalt_, the complete picture.

Now, with the trail of clues, the data which made the Gestalt, in his possession, the question arose as to which population-catalog computer to consult. Actually he had his choice of three, and each possessed an enormous memory bank, an adequate library of crossindexed reference aspects; in fact, by an odd coincidence, the exact aspects which his team of leadies had for the last hour been gathering in these two rooms

He could go to Moscow. The big BB-7 would probably find him the reference card to which these seven aspects, this Gestalt, pertained. Or the 109-A3 at Estes Park. Or even Megavac 6-V at the Yance-man Agency in New York; he could utilize it, relatively small and specialized as it was, in that its memory file consisted solely of Yance-men past and present. Because, Foote intuited, the Gestalt depicted a Yance-man and not one out of all the millions of subsurface tankers; the existence of reference cards representing them was not required. So why not Megavac 6-V?

One very good reason presented itself to Webster Foote immediately. His client, Stanton Brose, would automatically, at his _Festung_ in Geneva, be notified of the event, would be handed a duplicate first of the data fed to the computer and then the computer's response.

And it might serve the interests of all parties concerned that Brose have that information.

Therefore the big BB-7 in Moscow, which was the furthest removed from Brose's control.

As Foote and his two leadies, each of them again lugging a heavy case, got back into their flapple, he said to himself, I wonder whose card the computer will pop... and, theoretically anyhow, set the wheels of punitive justice turning. What individual, within the Yanceman class, was this Gestalt-macher programmed to indict? Carefully, as he set the ersatz television set on the seat beside him, again conscious of its inordinate weight--the quality which it could not conceal and hence that which had given it away... it could mimic any object of its general size but it could not decide to cease being affected by Earth's gravity.

He had, already, an idea of whose card would emerge. But it would be interesting to have his precog hunch verified.

Three hours later, after happily napping while his flapple made the trip by means of its automatic circuit, Webster Foote arrived in Moscow.

Below him lay the you-kicked-the-toy-basket-over-so-you-pick-it-all-up installations of Eisenbludt's film studios; interested, as he always was, to view this immense factory of the counterfeit, Foote peered down, noting that subsequent to his last trip here the studios had once more expanded: several new buildings of pasted-together rubble had sprung up, leady-built and probably already buzzing offkey with the industrious activity of cranking out fake destructs of cities... as he recalled, San Francisco came next on the Agency's agenda and this no doubt meant bridges, water, hills--a nice multisided entity to be erected by all the artisans concerned.

And there, where the original Kremlin had once stood--before the U.S. Queen Dido self-guiding missile of World War Three had abolished it down to the last particle of old red brick--lay Marshal Harenzany's villa, the second largest demesne on Earth.

Brose's demesne, in Geneva, of course was by far the larger. Yet still this vast park with its mighty and palacelike, look-on-my-works-ye-mighty-and-despair central buildings was impressive. And Harenzany's demesne did not have that black, befouled quality of Brose's, the sense of some evil thing hanging upside down with ragged, aged wings. Like his counterpart in Wes-Dem the marshal was underneath it all a soldier, not a pol-com _ex mero motu_ sybarite. Just the ordinary stag-party extraordinary sybaritic type. A man who liked to live.

But also, like General Holt, he remained, despite his nominal control of an army of veteran leadies, under the yoke of Brose.

As his flapple landed, Foote asked himself the question, _How really does an eighty-two-year-old semisenile but still cunning colossal abnormality, weighing god knows how many pounds, manage to keep his power? Is it the fact that at Geneva he maintains--owns and operates--an electronic contraption, a fail-safe gimcrack which, in a crisis, pre-empts Holt and Harenzany in their management of the totality of the world's leadies? Or is there something deeper and less crude?_

It may be, he decided, what the Christian sect calls "apostolic succession." The process of reasoning would be this: before World War Three the military establishments of Pac-Peop and Wes-Dem held ultimate power; all the civilian governmental bodies were so many league-of-nations relics. And those twin, competing establishments ruled through a demigod, the fakes-factory of Gottlieb Fischer; they ruled through their cynical and professional manipulation of all media of information, including the sides of country barns, but it was not they, the military, who knew precisely _how_ to manipulate these media; it was Fischer. And then the war came, the two establishments struck a deal. And by then Fischer was dead anyhow, but leaving one pupil. Stanton Brose.

But even below that there seemed something more. Charisma, perhaps? That magic aura that great leaders in history such as Gandhi, Caesar, Innocent III, Wallenstein, Luther, F.D.R. have had? Or maybe it's simply that _Brose is Brose_. He has ruled since the termination of the war; the demigod this time made it, usurped ultimate authority. And even before that he was powerful; he inherited--literally, in the courts--the studios and instruments that had been Fischer's. The fakes-factory _sine qua non_.

Odd, Fischer's death, so sudden and tragic, out in deep space.

_I wish_, Foote wished, _I had that time scoop gadget that Brose, by means of the advanced weapons archives, has access to. I'd send back a packet of tracers, detection meters to make aud and vid tracks... I'd have electronic tails pinned onto the posteriors of both B rose and Fischer in those days, from 1982 on; especially I'd have a monitor following Gottlieb Fischer up to the moment of his death, just to see what really happened there when that ship, landing on Venus, tried to fire its retrojets--fired them and exploded._

As he disemflappled, the vidset of the ship said _pinnngggg_. A call for him from the corporation's London GHQ; probably Cencio, who was in charge during his absence.

Stepping back into the flapple, Foote turned on the vidset. "Yes, my boy."

Cencio, face appearing in miniature, said, "I've got an animation of the sector from which that destruct beam emanated."

"What destruct beam?"

"That destroyed those two leadies of Yance-man David Lantano. You don't remember."

"Now I do. Go ahead. Who or what fired the destruct beam? A Yance-man, but which one of them?"

Cencio said, "Our shot, of course, is from directly above. So we can scarcely make out the figure. But--" He was silent.

"Go ahead, darn it," Foote said. "I'm just about to go into Marshal Harenzany's office and--"

"The man who fired the destruct beam," Cencio blurted, "according to the film our satellite took, is Talbot Yancy." He waited, Foote said nothing. "I mean," Cencio said, "it _looks_ like Yancy."

"How much like him?"

"Exactly. We've enlarged it to life size. It's exactly what you, I mean _they_, see on their TV screens. No mistake,"

_And I've got to go into Harenzany's office_, Foote thought, _with that piece of news in my mind_. "All right, my boy," he said. "Thank you. And by the way; god bless you for very fine psychological timing in giving me that piece of news just now. When I need it most." He broke the vid connection, hesitated, then went on away from his parked flapple, leaving his two inert leadies aboard.

Yancy did it, he said to himself. Killed Arlene Davidson, then Bob Hig, then Verne Lindblom, and next he'll kill Joseph Adams and after that probably Brose himself and possibly, as a chaser, me as well.

A dummy, bolted to an oak desk, programmed by Megavac 6-V. Stood behind a boulder in the Cheyenne hot-spot and fired a destruct beam at two veteran leadies. To save the life of what was undoubtedly just another poor tanker who had bored his way to the surface for a breath of fresh air and a glimpse again, briefly, of the sun. An ex-tanker, now, squatting in the ruins of Cheyenne with the rest of them, living for, waiting for, god only knows what. And then this dummy, this simulacrum called Talbot Yancy, without anyone at the Agency noticing, returned to its oak desk, rebolted itself back in place, resumed its computer-programmed speech-delivering existence.

Resigned--accepting the insanity of it all--Webster Foote continued on to the down-ramp of the roof field, to Marshal Harenzany's office.

Half an hour later, with a large legal document granting permission to use the computer, supplied by one of Harenzany's clerks, he stood before the big Soviet computer BB-7, and, with the help of the friendly, correct Russian technicians, fed in the seven spurious data elements which his team of leadies had uncovered, the trail of cover clues laid down by the Gestalt-macher.

BB-7, looming ceiling-high before him, began to process, to sort through its human catalog. And presently, as Foote had anticipated, one single punched elongated card slithered from the slot and came to rest in the wire basket.

He picked up the card, read the name typed on it.

He precog hunch had been correct; he thanked the helpful Russian technicians, found an up-ramp, ascended to his parked flapple.

The card had read, BROSE STANTON.

Exactly as he had anticipated.

Had the machine, the Gestalt-macher, which now rested beside him in its cammed form of portable TV set, managed to get away--had Lindblom not possessed a death-rattle--the evidence would legally speaking be pure and absolute in the direction to which it pointed. It would appear beyond a reasonable doubt that Stanton Brose, the man who had hired Foote to look into this felony was the killer. But of course Brose was not; the object beside Foote proved it.

Unless he was wrong. Suppose this was _not_ a Gestalt-macher. He would not know for certain--could not _prove_ it--until he got the machine open, actually saw its works.

And meanwhile, as he and his shopmen struggled to open the machine, and what a good, hard, long struggle it would be, Brose would be on the vidphone relentlessly, demanding to know what the clues, picked up at Lindblom's villa, indicated. Whom did they point to?

I can see myself saying, "To thyself, Mr. Brose," Foote thought to himself archly. "Thou art the murderer and hence I abominate thee and I now put thee under arrest and will see that thou art arraigned before the Recon Dis-In Council."

Hilarious thought.

However, he felt no mirth. Neither by that nor by the recognition of the fight he had on his hands to get open the object beside him. There were plastics so tough, so beyond the power of ordinary drills and thermo fields...

And all the time in the back of his mind he was thinking, Is there a Talbot Yancy? And if so, _how?_

He did not understand it at all.

And yet his job demanded that he, of all people, make sense out of this. If _he_ couldn't who could?

Meanwhile, Foote decided, I will tell Brose nothing. Or rather, as little as I can get away with.

His intuition, his Psionic hunch, remained; it was not to anyone's benefit--including his own--to tell Stanton Brose the facts at this point ascertained.

Because Brose--and this was what made him so personally uneasy-- might know what they meant _and might know what to do with them_.