"Yes sir." The Footeman nodded.

"Fifty thousand people," Runcible said.

"Yes, it'll be large."

"Who will be living where they ought to be, under the sun. Not down in a septic tank. Like a salamander at the bottom of a dried-up well."

Still shuffling his documents, trying to come up with something of use, trying and unhappily failing, the abstract-carrier Footeman said, "I wish you good luck. Maybe next time..." And he wondered if, for Runcible, there would _be_ a further report. This inadequate-- admittedly so--one today might well be the last, if his employer Webster Foote's extrasensory intimation were at all correct.

And generally they proved to be.

From the mangled, badly distributed chunks that once had been high buildings, streets, the intricate, strong structures of a major city, four men rose to intercept Nicholas St. James. "How come," the first of them said, and all were bearded, ragged, but evidently healthy, "no leadies detected you?"

Utterly weary, Nicholas stood for a time and then he seated himself on a broken stone, fished futilely in his coat pocket for a cigarette-- the pack had been ripped away by the leady--and then said, "Two did. When I broke through. They must have picked up the vibrations of the scoop."

"They're very sensitive to that," the leader of the group agreed. "To any machinery. And any radio signals, if you for instance--"

"I was. An intercom to below. They recorded the whole thing."

"Why'd they let you go?"

"They were destroyed," Nicholas said.

"Your fellow tankers came up after you and got them. That's what we did: there were five of us originally, and they got the first one up. They weren't killing him; they were going to drag him off to one of those--you wouldn't know. Runcible's conapts. Those prisons." He eyed Nicholas. "But we got them from behind. Only, they killed that first man, or actually what happened was he got killed when we fired on the leadies. I guess it was our fault." The man paused. "My name's Jack Blair."

One of the other bearded men said, "What tank are you from?"

"The Tom Mix," Nicholas said.

"And that's near here?"

"Four hours' walk." He was silent. They, too, seemed not to know what to say; it was awkward, and all of them stared at the ground and then at last Nicholas said, "The two leadies who had me were destroyed by Talbot Yancy."

The bearded men stared at him fixedly. Unwinkingly.

"It's god's truth," Nicholas said. "I know it's hard to believe, but I saw him. He hadn't intended to come out; he didn't want to, but I got him to. I got a good close look at him. There was no doubt." Around him the four bearded men continued to stare. "How could I not recognize him?" Nicholas said, then. "I've seen him on TV for fifteen years, three or four and even five nights a week."

After a time Jack Blair said, "But--the thing is, there is no Talbot Yancy."

One of the other men spoke up, explaining. "See, what it is, is that it's a fake; you know?"

"What is?" Nicholas said, and yet he did know; he sensed the enormity of it in a flash: a fake so vast that it could not even be described. It truly beggared description; it was hopeless for these men to try and he was going to have to see, to experience it, for himself.

Jack Blair said, "What you're looking at on your TV screen every night, down there in--what'd you say? The Tom Mix?--down in your tank, what you call 'Yancy,' the Protector, that's a robot."

"Not even a robot," one of the other bearded men corrected. "Not even independent, or what they call intrinsic or homeo; it's just a dummy that sits there at that desk."

"But it talks," Nicholas said, reasonably. "It says heroic things. I mean, I'm not arguing with you. I just don't understand."

"It talks," Jack Blair said, "because a big computer called Megavac 6-V or something like that programs it."

"Who programs the computer?" Nicholas asked presently. The whole conversation had a slow, dreamlike, heavy quality to it, as if they were trying to talk under water; as if a great weight filled them all. "Someone," he said, "would have to feed those speeches to it; the computer didn't--"

"They have a lot of trained guys," Jack Blair said. "Yance-men, they're called. The Yance-men who are idea men, they write the speeches and feed them to Megavac 6-V and it does something to the words, adds the right intonations and gestures for the dummy to do. So it looks authentic. And it all goes on tape, and it's reviewed in Geneva by the top Yance-man who runs it all, a jerk named Brose. And when he approves the tape then it's put over the coaxial cable and transmitted to all the ant tanks in Wes-Dem."

One of the other men added, "There's one in Russia, too."

Nicholas said, "But the war."

"It's been over for years," Jack Blair said.

Nodding, Nicholas said, "I see."

"They share film studios in Moscow," Blair said. "Just like they share the New York Agency. Some talented Commie producer named Eisenbludt; he stages all the scenes of destruct you see on your TV screen. Usually it's in mm--done in scale. Sometimes, though, it's life-size. Like when they show leadies fighting. He does a good job. I mean, its convincing; I remember and sometimes, when the TV set we have up here is working, we manage to catch it. We were fooled, too, when we were below. He, that Eisenbludt, and all the Yancemen; they've fooled everybody almost, except sometimes tankers do come up anyhow. Like you did."

Nicholas said, "But I didn't come up because I guessed." Carol began to, he said to himself; Carol was right. She's smarter than I am; _she knew_. "Is all the world like this?" He gestured at the ruins of Cheyenne around them. "Radioactive? Just rubble?"

"Oh hell no," Blair said agitatedly. "This is a hot-spot; there now aren't very many left. The rest is a park. They've made the world into a great park and it's split up into their demesnes, their estates; they, the Yance-men--they each have entourages of leadies. Like Medieval kings. It's sort of interesting." His voice died away. "But I mean, it's not fair. At least I don't think so."

The other bearded men nodded vigorously; they agreed. It was not fair. No doubt of that.

Nicholas said, "How do you people live?" He pointed at the four of them. "Where do you get food?" And then he thought of something else. "Are there more of you?"

"In our bunch there's two hundred ex-tankers," Blair said. "Living here in the ruins of Cheyenne. We're all supposed to be in prisons, in huge condominium apartment buildings that this guy I mentioned named Runcible builds; they're not bad, not like the tanks--I mean, you don't feel like a rat trapped in a tin box. But we want--" He gestured. "I can't explain it."

"We want to be able to come and go," one of the other bearded men explained. "But actually we can't, living this way. We can't risk leaving the Cheyenne area, because then leadies would catch us."

"Why don't they come here?" Nicholas said.

"They do," Blair said, "but they sort of don't--try very hard; you know what I mean? They just go through the motions. Because see, this is part of a new demesne that's being formed; the villa, the building, isn't finished yet or anything, and it's still hot. But a Yance-man has moved in here, taking a chance. Trying to live, and if he does, if the r.a. fails to kill him, then this is his; it becomes his demesne and he's the dominus."

Nicholas said, "David Lantano."

"Right." Blair stared at him oddly. "How'd you know?"

"It was two of his leadies," Nicholas said, "that hooked me."

"And they were going to _kill_ you?"

He nodded.

The four bearded men exchanged apprehensive, disconcerted glances. "Was Lantano at his villa? Did he okay it?"