We closed in on him; 'Clement, the artist you broke down,' I said. 'He's killed himself.'
'He would have in any case. He had a death-wish.'
'I don't think so,' I said.
'It was in his work and I read it in him. He destroyed what he couldn't bear. Truth does that to some people, I'm afraid.'
When I arrived home thronetime had just started, and I sat in my throne and murdered Mounth.
And next morning I was entering my office when Thaw caught up with me. 'Someone murdered Mounth last night,' he said. 'At least, they did until he felt them doing it. It's all recorded. Come and see.'
* * *
I followed him, not caring. I thought he was being unnecessarily oblique in breaking the news to me, but perhaps he hoped to convert me to his view of Mounth. If so he hardly needed bother; Mounth would have me dismissed in no time. I sat on a stool in the playback room, beneath the first words of IF YOU VISITED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE YESTERDAY DON'T YOU THINK YOU SHOULD SEE HOW YOU LOOKED, and Mounth opened from a bud of light in mid-air before me, melting a little at the edges until the recording stabilized.
Long before the murder I was watching numbly, knowing Mounth had won against the lawyers.
'If you murder someone and a clone is immediately produced with the identical personality of your victim and total continuity, you're still guilty of murder, not attempted murder,' he said. 'That's not a hypothesis, it's a preventive legal precedent which was established to anticipate the event. If you killed the clone you would be guilty of murder in that instance too, that was also established. But this means that in law if you kill something indistinguishable from a human victim you are guilty of murder. And the whole point about the throne experience is to make it indistinguishable from reality. If that's the case it must be so in law as well. I suppose it's too late to ask the government to switch off all the thrones and repossess them. But the least they must do is retain the social telepaths to be sensitive enough to anticipate these murders.'
'Where's he getting all this?' I said.
'Look at his face, look at the strain,' Thaw said, poking his stick at Mounth's nose. 'He was using us on the panel as a pool. There was nothing we could have done about it short of getting up and leaving, because if we'd challenged him to quote the references he'd been reading he would simply have picked them out from behind the question. Now look, here it comes, the murder.'
Mounth was staring directly at me, smiling with a triumph so confident it hardly bothered to smile. 'Excuse me a moment. There's someone out there getting ready to murder me,' he said. 'A young man called, now let me find his name, Harri Sams. Why is he doing that, I wonder? Ah, because his mother watches Truthlight and because he's heard me saying he won't be able to do exactly what he likes. I don't think he's going to succeed. No, he's off the throne. Thank you, Mrs. Sams, that's right, you keep him away from it. Sorry I had to bring you the news, but I'm sure you can handle it.'
Thaw was watching me. 'Nothing occurs to you about all that?' he said.
'No, nothing.'
'Good. Then do me just one favour. Don't think about it. Wait and see.'
I didn't intend to think about it; I was too busy thinking of anything my mind could grab that didn't relate to Mounth and the possibility that he'd felt me murdering him. I had a grim suspicion that he might make that revelation and my dismissal one of the high points of tonight's show. Or maybe he'd been too preoccupied with Sams. Taking the hint from that hope, I preoccupied myself with explaining to last night's trainee that the secret of directing Truthlight was to be unobtrusive, even static; he'd been so drawn to Mounth's enthusiasm that toward the end of the show Mounth's head had swelled and sat decapitated in millions of homes, addressing an invisible panel. Then I filled myself with setting up tonight's show and with the fact that since last night's had been more successful than even Mounth had expected, this one would be merely a rerun for the less intelligent and for those who'd been crowned during last night's. Mounth rested in his office and read the response of his supporters. I'd heard that the simplest preoccupations were the best proof against telepaths.
Tell me that day lasted less than a year, the clock told me so but I didn't believe it. Every so often I felt rising to the surface of my mind like the threat of a deafening belch the growing desire to go and tell Mounth I knew he knew I'd killed him, and I would chatter faster and louder to the technicians until it went away. We set up the holocameras so as to contain Mounth and the panel, and placed another pair on standby in case we should need to cut to an emergency setup (always disconcerting in a live holocast: a sudden blurring into a cube of light, then behind the walls of light the figures have shifted). Then the panel began to arrive, and we waited for Mounth.
* * *
Mounth strode onto the stage as the Truthlight theme rang out, a two-bar determinedly rising theme on baritone steel drums, and we knew what sort of show it wasn't going to be. As the lawyers had taken their places I'd hoped they might have produced some answers overnight, but their expressions were those of a cast repeating a dismal rehearsal. Only Thaw had his keep-hoping look, and I felt this had more to do with his philosophy than with the situation. Everyone in Holoshows was watching the show, but they'd already accepted there would be no surprises. This was just a recapitulation before the lawyers were called in to talk by the government, then Truthlight would abandon the theme unless Mounth's arguments were denied. The audience which had been persuaded by last night's Truthlight switched this one off after the first few minutes.
'Even within your own walls you mustn't do harm,' Mounth was saying when I began to hear the Truthlight theme. Bom bom, bom bam. At first I thought it had crept into my head uninvited, then as it grew a little less faint I realized it was somewhere in the building. Perhaps someone was playing back last night's Truthlight to catch Mounth in a contradiction.
'They try to tell us there are fewer murders with the thrones,' Mounth said. 'But we can see that exactly the opposite is true.' He was ignoring the Truthlight theme, which was repeating like a cramped recording loop and growing louder, loud enough to be picked up by the holocast. One of the off-duty audience moved toward the studio door.
'On the contrary, people who would never have thought of murder are now being encouraged to try it and take it for granted,' Mounth said, and I suddenly realized that the theme wasn't only growing louder, it was actually approaching. More than that, an aggressive rather desperate quality was gaining on it, betraying that it was the sound of a human voice. As I realized that, the studio doors were thrown open and in he came, singing.
He was a young man, fashionably-bald head shining, his eyes gazing at Mounth and brighter still. He strode up the studio aisle, roaring the Truthlight theme. An oddmind, I thought, struggling to squeeze my face shut against laughter. Let someone else throw him out, I'm the director. I signalled the cameramen not to cut. As I did so Mounth shouted 'Sams!' and grabbed Thaw's stick and hurled it at the young man.
The heavy end of the stick whipped round and struck Sams between the eyes. He fell. And I'd turned to call cut when I saw Thaw's face as he leapt.
He'd levered himself painfully but swiftly to his feet behind Mounth. And as if his face were a frame three expressions fell into place just separate enough not to be simultaneous: astonishment, comprehension, decision. Sams had fallen just within the transmitted holostage, but only his back as far down as his hips would be visible to the audience unless they were morbid enough to crawl round for a closer look. Thaw launched himself from his stool and fell short of Sams. He dragged himself rapidly across the stage on hands and knees—I'd never seen him move so fast—and slipped his hand beneath Sams' chest. 'He's dead,' he said, and his hand came out displaying a knife.