The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick Page B

his deepest proclivities to this young stranger. Normally, one took care as to what one revealed about oneself to a fellow Yance-man; any personal info could be used against one, in the incessant competition to be the speech writer for Yancy; in effect, _the Yancy itself_.
     
         "Here at the Agency," Dave Lantano said somberly, "in New York, we may compete against each other, but underneath we're a group. A corporate body. What the Christians used to call a congregation . . . a very meaningful special term. But then each of us, at six p.m., goes off in his flapple. Crosses an empty countryside to a castle inhabited by mental constructs that move and talk but are--" He gestured. "Cold, Adams; the leadies, even the advanced types who dominate the Council; _they are cold_. Get a couple of your retinue, all the leadies of your household staff that you can cram into your flapple with you, and go visit. Every night."
     
         "I know that the smart Yance-men do that," Adams said. "Are never at home. I've tried; I've arrived at my demesne, eaten dinner and then gone right out again." He thought of Colleen, and then, when he had lived, his neighbor Lane. "I have a girl," he said deftly. "A Yance-man or I suppose one would have to say a Yance-woman; we visit and talk. But the big front window of the library of my demesne--"
     
         "Don't look out over that fog and coastline of rocks," David Lantano said. "That stretches south of San Francisco a hundred miles; one of the most bleak on Earth."
     
         Blinking, Adams wondered how Lantano had known so exactly what he meant, his fear of the fog; it was as if Lantano had read his deepest mind.
     
         "I'd like to see your speech, now," Lantano said. "Since you've given mine about as thorough a study as possible--and, for you, Adams, that's rather thorough." He glanced toward Adams' briefcase, especially alert, now.
     
         Adams said, "No." He couldn't show his speech, not after the strong, fresh declaration he had just now seen and heard.
     
         The reading matter concocted by David Lantano which had emerged from the Yancy-simulacrum so effectively, dealt with deprivation. Hit at the heart of the tankers' main problem-area . . . at least as he understood it from the reports of the pol-coms in the tanks which the Estes Park Government, the apparatus there, received--received and made accessible as a feedback to all Yance-men, in particular the speech writers. Their sole source of knowledge as to how well they were getting their reading matter through.
     
         Reports from the pol-coms on this speech of Lantano's, when it had been coaxed, would be interesting. It would take at least a month, but Adams made a note of it, noted the official code-designation of the speech, and promised himself to be alert for the feedback responses as they emerged from the ant tanks all over the world . . . Wes-Dem, anyhow, and possibly, if the response was good enough, the Soviet authorities would take the top-copy of the spooi from Megavac 6-V which contained the speech, give it to their own 'vac in Moscow to program their own sim . . . and, in addition, Brose in Geneva, if he wished, could sequester the spool, the original, not the top-copy, and decree it officially and formally to be primary source-material from which Yance-men the world over were mandatorily to draw on for later reading matter. Lantano's speech, if it were as good as Adams thought it to be, might become one of those few rare "eternal" declarations, incorporated in permanent policy. What an honor. And the guy was so damn young.
     
         "How can you face it," Adams asked the dark young new Yanceman, who did not even have a demesne, yet, who lived in a lethal hot-spot by night, dying, being scorched, suffering, but still doing this superb job, "how can you openly discuss the fact that those tankers down there are _systematically deprived of what they're entitled to?_ You