The Penultimate Truth

3

When the I-am-larger-than-you image of Talbot Yancy's leather and iron face had left the screen and the lackluster gray had returned, Commissioner Dale Nunes hopped to his feet and said to the assembly, "And now, folks. Questions."

The audience remained inert. As inert as it could manage--and get away with it.

Required to by his elected status, Nicholas rose and stood by Dale. "It must be a colloquy between us and the Estes Park Government," he said.

From the back of Wheeling Hall a sharp voice--it could have been male or female--said, "President St. James, did Maury Souza die? I see Dr. Tigh here."

Nicholas said, "Yes. But he's in quick-freeze so there's still hope. Now, people, you've listened to the Protector. Before that you saw the infiltration and demolition of Detroit. You know we're already behind in our quota; we must supply twenty-five leadies this month, and next--"

"What next month?" a voice from the multitude, bitter and dispirited, said. "We won't be here next month."

"Oh yes," Nicholas answered. "We can survive an audit. Let me remind you. The initial penalty is only a cut in food supply of five percent. Only after that can draft notices be served on any of us, and even then it would halt at a decimation--one man from each group of ten. Only if we fail three months running do we face possible--I say _possible_--closure. But we always have legal remedy; we can send our attorney before the High Court at Estes Park, and I assure you we will, before we surrender to a closure."

A voice called, "Have you again asked for a replacement chief mechanic?"

"Yes," Nicholas said. But there are no more Maury Souzas in the world, he thought. Except in other tanks. And out of--what is the number last given?--out of one hundred and sixty thousand ant tanks in the Western Hemisphere none is going to negotiate a release of a really adequate chief mechanic, even if we could somehow make contact with a few of those other tanks. Any more than five years ago when that tank to the north, the Judy Garland, bored that horizontal shaft through to us and pleaded--literally pleaded--just for a loan of Souza. For one month. And we said no.

"All right," Commissioner Nunes said briskly, since no voluntary questions had arisen. "I'll make a spotcheck to see if the Protector's message got across." He pointed to a young married couple. "What was the cause of the failure of our defensive screen around Detroit? Rise and give your names, please."

The young couple reluctantly rose; the husband said, "Jack and Myra Frankis. Our failure was due to the introduction of the new Pac-Peop Type Three Galatea spatter-missile that infiltrated in submolecular particles. I guess. Something like that." He hopefully reseated himself, drawing his wife down beside him.

"All right," Nunes said; that was acceptable. "And why has Pac-Peop technology forged ahead of ours temporarily?" He glanced around, spied a victim to be interrogated. "Is it a failure of our leadership?"

The middle-aged, spinsterish lady rose. "Miss Gertrude Prout. No, it is not due to a failure of our leadership." She instantly sat down again.

"What then," Nunes said, still addressing her, "is it due to? Would you please rise, madam, in giving your response? Thank you." Miss Prout had again risen, "Did _we_ fail?" Nunes prompted her. "Not this tank but we tankers, producers of war material, in general."

"Yes," Miss Prout said in her frail, obedient voice. "We failed to provide--" She faltered; she could not recall what they had failed to provide. There was a strained, unhappy silence.

Nicholas took charge. "People, we produce the basic instrument by which the war is conducted; it's because leadies can live on a radioactive surface among a multiform culture of bacteria and chlinesterasedestroying nerve gas--"

"Cholinesterase," Nunes corrected.

"--that we're alive. We owe our lives to these constructs built down in our shops. That's all Commissioner Nunes means. It's vital to understand why we must--"

"I'll handle this," Nunes said quietly.

Nicholas said, "No, Dale. I will."

"You already made one unpatriotic statement. The cholinesterase-destroying nerve gas was a U.S. invention. Now, I can _order_ you to take your seat."

"However," Nicholas said, "I won't. These people are tired; this is not the time to badger them. Souza's death--"

"This is _exactly_ the time to badger them," Nunes said, "because, and I am trained, Nick, from the Berlin Psychiatric Waffen-Institute, by Mrs. Morgen's own clinicians, to know." He raised his voice, addressing the audience. "As you all realize, our chief mechanic was--"

A hostile, jeering voice sounded from the rows. "Tell you what: we'll give you a bag of turnips, Commissioner. Pol-Com Nunes, _sir_. And let's see the bottle of blood you can squeeze out. Okay?" People, here and there, murmured in agreement, in approval.

"I told you," Nicholas said to the commissioner, who had flushed and was strangling his notes with his spasmodically clenching fingers. "Now will you let them go back to bed?"

Aloud, Nunes said, "There is a disagreement between your elected president and I. As a compromise, I will ask only one more question." He paused, surveyed them all; in weary fear they waited. The sole hostile, articulated vocal entity was silent, now; Nunes had them because Nunes, alone in the tank, was not a citizen but an official of Wes-Dem itself and could, if he ordered, have living, human police slide down the chute from above or, if Brose's agents weren't immediately in the vicinity, then a commando team of General Holt's veteran armed leadies.

"The Commissioner," Nicholas announced, "will ask one question. And then, thank god, let's go to bed." He seated himself.

Nunes, reflecting, said in a slow, cold voice, "How can we make up to Mr. Yancy for our failure?"

To himself Nicholas moaned. But no one, not even Nicholas, had the legal power or any kind of power to halt the man whom the hostile, earlier voice from the audience had correctly called their pol-com. And yet under the Law this was not altogether bad. Because through Commissioner Nunes a direct human link existed between their tank and the Estes Park Government; theoretically by way of Nunes they could answer back and the colloquy, even now, within the heart of the worldwide war, could exist between the tanks and the government.

But it was hard on the tankers to be subjected to Dale Nunes' rah-rah tactics whenever Dale--or rather his superiors above ground--saw fit, such as now, at bedtime. But look at the alternative.

It had been suggested to him (and he had promptly, at great and deliberate effort, forgotten forever the names of those who had come to him) that their pol-com be quietly dispatched some night. No, Nicholas had said. It won't work. Because they'll send another. And--Dale Nunes is a man. Not a force. And would you prefer to deal with Estes Park as a _force_, on your TV screen, which you could see and hear... but not talk back to?

So as sore as Commissioner Nunes made him, Nicholas accepted the necessity of his presence in the Tom Mix. The radicals who had come slipping up, late one night, with their idea of instant, easy solution to the pol-com problem, had been thoroughly, firmly dissuaded. Or at least so Nicholas hoped.

Anyhow Nunes was still alive. So apparently his argument to the radicals had been convincing... and this was three years ago, when Nunes had first put in his eager-beaver appearance.

He wondered if Dale Nunes had ever guessed. Imagined how close he had come to assassination, and that it had been Nicholas who had talked them out of it.

How interesting it would be to know what Nunes' reaction would be. Gratitude?

Or--contempt.

At this moment, Carol was motioning to him, beckoning in sight of the assembled community here at Wheeling Hall. While Dale Nunes looked up and down the rows for someone to answer his question, Carol--incredibly--was indicating to Nicholas that she and he leave together, now.

Beside him his wife Rita saw the gesture, the summons; woodenfaced, she stared straight ahead, then, as if she had seen nothing. And, as he found his target, Dale Nunes saw, too, and frowned.

However, Nicholas obediently accompanied Carol up the aisle and out of Wheeling Hall, into the deserted corridor and seclusion.

"What in god's name," he said to her as he and she stood together, "do you want?" The way Nunes had looked at them as they departed... he would be hearing in due time from the commissioner.

"I want you to certify the death papers," Carol said, walking toward the elevator. "For poor old Maury--"

"But why now?" There was more; he knew it.

She said nothing; both of them were silent on the trip down to the clinic, to the freeze locker in which the rigid body lay--he glanced under the wrapper briefly, then emerged from the locker to sign the forms which Carol had laid out, five copies in all, neatly typed and ready to be sent up by vidline to the bureaucrats on the surface.

Then, from the buttoned front of her white smock, Carol brought forth a tiny electronic instrument which he recognized as a you-don'tknow-I-have-it aud-recorder. She extracted the spool of tape, unlocked the steel drawer of a cabinet of what appeared to be medical supplies-- and exposed to his sight, briefly, other spools of tape and other electronic instruments, none of them related as far as he could see to her medical work.

"What's going on?" he said, this time more controlledly. Obviously she wanted him to witness this, the aud-recorder, the reservoir of tape which she kept locked away from anyone else's sight. He knew her as well, as intimately, as did anyone in the Tom Mix, and yet this was news to him.

Carol said, "I made an aud tape of Yancy's speech. The part I was there for, anyhow."

"Those other spools of aud tape in that cabinet?"

"All of Yancy. Former speeches. Dating back over the past year."

"Is that legal to do?"

Carol said, as she gathered the five copies of Maury Souza's death-forms together and inserted them into the slot of the Xeroxtransmitter which would put them on the wire to the Estes Park archives, "As a matter of fact it _is_ legal. I looked it up."

Relieved, he said, "Sometimes I think you're nuts." Her mind was always off in some odd direction, flashing and echoing in its fullness, and baffling him eternally; he could never keep up with her, and so his awe of her continually grew. "Explain," he said.

"Have you noticed," Carol said, "that Yancy, in his speeches in late February, when he used the phrase _coup de grace_, he pronounced it _gras_. And in March he pronounced it--" From the steel-doored cabinet she brought forth a chart with entries, which she now consulted. "March twelfth. Pronounced _coo de grah_. Then, in April, on the fifteenth, it was _gras_ again." She glanced up alertly, eyed Nicholas.

He shrugged wearily, irritably. "Let me get to bed; let's talk about this some other--"

"Then," Carol said, inflexibly, "on May third in a speech, he once more used the term. That memorable speech in which he informed us that our destruct of Leningrad completely--" She glanced up from her chart. "It could well be the _coo de grah_. No _s_. Back to his earlier pronunciation." She restored the chart to the cabinet, then, and relocked the cabinet. He noted that it took not only a metal insert key but the pressure of her fingerprints; even with a duplicate key--or her key-- the cabinet would remain closed. It would open only for her.

"So?"

Carol said, "I don't know. But it means something. Who fights the surface war?"

"Leadies."

"And where are the humans?"

"What is this, Commissioner Nunes all over again, interrogating people at bedtime when they ought to be--"

"They're in ant tanks," Carol said. "Below surface. Like us. Now, when you apply for an artiforg you are told they're available only to military hospitals, presumably on the surface."

"I don't know," he said, "or care, where the military hospitals are. All I know is that they have the priority and we don't."

Carol said, "If leadies are fighting the war, what are in the military hospitals? Leadies? No. Because they send damaged leadies down to shops, our shop for instance. And a leady is a metal construct and it has no pancreas. There are a _few_ humans on the surface, of course; the Estes Park Government. And in Pac-Peop, the Soviet. Are the pancreases for them?"

He was silent; she had him completely.

"Something," she said, "is wrong. There can't be military hospitals because there aren't civilians or soldiers who've been maimed in the fighting and who need artiforgs. Yet--they won't release the artiforgs to us. To me, for instance, for Souza; even though they know we can't survive without Souza. Think about it, Nick."

"Hmm," he said.

Carol said quietly. "You're going to have to come up with something better than 'Hmm,' Nick. And soon."