The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick

the cameras--at the precise second--shut down, he turned to the man beside him, the author, and said:
     
         "I take off my hat to you. You're good." He had almost been captured himself, as he had stood watching the simulacrum of the Protector Talbot Yancy deliver with absolutely the proper intonation, in the exact and correct manner, the text modified and augmented-- meddled with--by Megavac 6-V from what it had received--even though he could see Megavac 6-V and although this was not visible could sense the emanation of the reading matter directed by the 'vac toward the simulacrum. Could in fact witness the true source which animated the purely artificial construct seated at the oak desk with the American flag behind it. Eerie, he thought.
     
         But a good speech is a good speech. Whoever delivers it. A kid in high school, reciting Tom Paine . . . the material is still great, and this reciter doesn't falter or stumble or get the words wrong. The 'vac and all these main-men standing around see to that. _And_, he thought, _so do we. We know what we're doing_.
     
         "Who are you?" he asked this strangely capable young Yance-man.
     
         "Dave something. I forget," the man said, almost mystically absorbed, even now that the sim had become inoperative once more.
     
         "You forget your _name?_" Puzzled, he waited, and then he realized that this was merely an elliptical way by which the dark young man was telling him something: that he was a relatively new Yance-man, not yet fully established in the hierarchy. "Lantano," Adams said. "You're David Lantano, living in the hotspot near Cheyenne."
     
         "That's right."
     
         "No wonder you're black." Radiation-burned, Adams realized. The youth, eager to acquire land for a demesne, had gone in too soon; all the rumors, passed back and forth in the idle hours of evening by the worldwide elite, appeared true: it had been far too soon, and physically young David Lantano was suffering.
     
         Philosophically, Lantano said, "I'm alive."
     
         "But look at you. What about your bone marrow?"
     
         "Tests show there's not too much impairment of red-cell production. I expect to recuperate. And it's cooling daily. I've gotten over the worst part." Wryly, Lantano said, "You should come and visit me, Adams; I've had my leadies working night and day; the villa itself is almost complete."
     
         Adams said, "I wouldn't go into the Cheyenne hot-spot for a pile of poscreds ten miles high. That speech of yours shows how very much you can contribute; why risk your health, your _life?_ You could stay here in New York City, live in a conapt of the Agency, until--"
     
         "Until," Lantano said, "the Cheyenne hot-spot cooled down enough in ten years, fifteen years . . . and then someone grabbed it ahead of me." My only chance, he was saying in other words, was deliberately to go in prematurely. As has been attempted in the past by Yance-men in the exact same position, before me. And--so often those premature investments, those hasty, anxious entries into still-hot areas, meant-- death. And not a mercifully quick death but a gruesome slow deterioration over a period of years.
     
         Viewing the dark--in truth severely scorched--youth, Adams realized how fortunate he himself was. To be fully established; his villa was long-built, his grounds were fully planted, green throughout. And he had entered the West Coast hot-spot south of San Francisco at a safe time; he had relied on Footemen reports, brought at great cost, and look how it had all worked out. In contrast to this.
     
         Lantano would have his fine villa, his vast stone building made out of the rubble, the concrete that had been the city of Cheyenne. But Lantano would be dead.
     
         And that, according to the Recon Dis-In Council's ruling, put the area up for grabs once again; it would be a rush by eager Yance-men to get in and