Front matter (continued 2)

If only he could somehow contact Overman, McLeod thought. How much time did he have? He wasn't sure but thought it could be measured in minutes.

"I'd like to call my City Editor," McLeod said.

Wainwright chuckled. "A good reporter to the last. But I see Crippens and Miss Kent here."

"It's my right."

"The Star-Times will get its story. Won't you see to that, Mr. Crippens?"

McLeod stared mutely at Cripp, who finally said, "How do you know I didn't attack the woman?"

The stripper pouted and pointed a manicured finger at McLeod. "It was that man."

"You see?" Wainwright demanded.

"No," Cripp told him. "It was dark. She couldn't tell. If McLeod is arrested, they'll have to take me, too."

A muscle twitched in Wainwright's face, tugging the long nose down and to the left. "Very well. But Miss Kent still represents the Star-Times."

Cripp shook his head. "A co-respondent?"

"She's capable."

"Too damned capable," McLeod said. "I have positive proof that Tracy Kent is employed as a spy by the World." He turned on Wainwright with what he hoped would pass for righteous indignation. "Is that the kind of fair break you try to give the opposition?"

The encircling crowd stirred, trembling with whispers. McLeod pressed his advantage by jabbing a finger at the captain of police. "I demand the right to call my newspaper."

"Well, I don't know." The man looked to Wainwright for help.

"Never mind him," McLeod said. "You tell me. I'm within my rights as a newspaperman, or wouldn't you know about that?"

Someone brought out a portable phone and thrust it at McLeod. The captain of police looked at Wainwright, who shook his head quickly from side to side. It was all right. Sure it was all right. McLeod could make no accusations in public, the law said. If he started, he would forfeit his right to complete the call. He could tell Overman that Tracy and Cripp had him, instead, but he doubted if the City Editor would act on that basis.

Wainwright grinned. "There's your phone, McLeod. We're waiting for you to call."

"Thanks a lot," McLeod told him, and hurled the instrument at his face.

He heard a thud and a startled oath and didn't wait to see the results. He whirled and struck out with the edge of his hand, slicing it expertly at the police captain's Adam's Apple. McLeod vaulted over the gagging man as he went down and plunged, head tucked against his chest and knees kicking high, into the first rank of the crowd. He fought elbows, fists, shoulders, legs, warm human breaths, reaching the front of the room and sprinting past the weaponcheck arsenal and out into the green, summery glade that surrounded the anachronism of stone and glass that was the Fourth Estate.

Protected by a force field, the grounds around the Estate knew nothing but summer. But elsewhere, McLeod thought as he plunged on toward the copter field, man's control over the elements vied for headlines.

McLeod saw the figure of a man up ahead as he rounded the final turn in the path, still sprinting. The man stood squarely in front of him, blocking his way with a drawn parabeam.

"Did he come this way?" McLeod cried. "Talk, man! Did McLeod come this way?"

"No, sir. He, wait a minute...."

But McLeod was upon him, using the same judo-cut that had floored the captain of police. McLeod wrenched the parabeam from the man's fingers as he fell, then found his copter and was airborne by the time the vanguard of his pursuers appeared as tiny dots on the field below.

Less than an hour later, McLeod landed on the roof of the Star-Times building, where a slowly circling plow was scooping up the snow, digesting it and spitting out great jets of steam. McLeod doubled the speed of the escalator with his own flying feet and was soon striding across the City Room, nodding briefly to the sychophantic waves and smiles which greeted him as the Star-Times' ace reporter.

"Chief," he said, entering Overman's glass-walled office without bothering to knock, "the wolves are after your fair-haired boy—but good!"

"Wainwright?" Overman guessed, drumming nervous fingers on his desk.

"Wainwright. Something about attacking the female member of a combo tease. If his police ever had a chance to take me, I'd have been killed trying to get away."

"So, what happened?"

"What happened, the man says. They're probably on their way here right now. In order for me to get away, Cripp had to claim he attacked the girl too."

"That's wonderful. Doesn't that take care of Mr. Crippens for us? Well, doesn't it? Incidentally, that was a stroke of genius on your part, telling Tracy Kent you had a change of heart before anything happened. Paving the way, eh?"

"Something like that," McLeod mumbled. Then Overman had monitored his call to Tracy's apartment, but had misinterpreted what he heard—

"Sit down, Darius. There. Are you armed?"

"Yes, but you don't think they'd try to take me right here, do you? That would be an open declaration of war." McLeod took out the parabeam and placed it on the edge of Overman's desk.

"It would be war—unless I surrendered you to them." Overman scooped up the parabeam and thumbled it to high intensity. "At first I thought that was a stroke of genius on your part, but I wasn't sure. So I had you followed. Your conversation with Crippens and Tracy Kent was ingenius, all right. But it puts us on opposite sides now, doesn't it?"

McLeod had never seen Overman so calm. His fingers no longer drummed their incessant rhythm on the desk, his legs were still. He sat motionless, like a tri-di picture of himself. McLeod said, "Not at all. I only wanted to gain their confidence."

"The one thing that bothers me is this: it looks like I'm going to give Weaver Wainwright his story after all, although there's a chance I can save something for the Star-Times. I suspect he'll take you off somewhere and have you killed, but the moment he leaves this office with you, you'll be denounced in the Star-Times. Wainwright won't be killing a top reporter. He'll be killing a member of the Anti-Newspaper League."

"You're crazy," McLeod said. "It might have sounded bad, but it was all part of the same thing. I wanted to gain their confidence and—"

"And offer me in your place to Wainwright's hatchetmen? That's interesting."

"I was lying to them."

"No. You're lying to me. I'll tell you this, Darius. It comes as a great disappointment. Suddenly, all at once, a man finds his organization is riddled with subversives. That's bad enough, but at least he has one man he can trust. He thinks. He thinks, Darius. But he's wrong there, too. Now he can trust no one. Perhaps he'll have to fire his entire staff and start from the beginning again. But it's the one man, the Judas, who hurts most. Even if Wainwright gets you and gets his story—and I get mine—I'll never be able to trust anyone again. Don't you see the position you've put me in? I'm a lonely man, Darius."

McLeod stood up and leaned across the desk. "We've both been playing God all our lives. What do you think happens when a God loses his worshippers?"

"I haven't lost them. Just the acolytes. There are others."

"There are the people," McLeod said. "Waiting for the medical cures we promise them but never give. The farmers, praying to their own God while we ruin their crops capriciously to scoop the World. The dead citizens of a dozen bombed out cities in a dozen unnecessary wars. The people who haven't read Ortega y Gasset and maybe never even heard of him and can't be convinced they're too stupid to seek their own destinies."

"Ortega was right. Mass man can't discriminate. He's incapable of logical, creative thought. He blunders from catastrophe to catastrophe and grovels at the feet of demagogues."

"He can't be herded and led to slaughter."

"He can't be the master of his own fate, you fool!"

"Perhaps not. But there are people who can create, who can lead. People who pave the way and let the masses follow where they lead."

"What do you think we do? We pave the way. We make the future."

"There's a difference."

"I can't see it."

"You don't want to. The truly creative man merely does his work. The masses will follow of their own free will. Maybe they'll follow the wrong leader as often as not, but we've still come a long way in a few thousand years. It's wrong if they're led, or pushed, or tricked or—"

"Sit down, Darius. Don't move. The trouble with you anti-news people is you're too romantic. You think because God or Nature created man at the top of the evolutionary ladder, man is good, man can do nothing but move forward in the long run. You think it's a mistake for one man—or a group of men, or an institution—to channel that movement.

"But of all the institutions in man's civilization, the newspaper is the most logical one for the job. We inform, Darius. We are the essence of life. Life perceives and, after perceiving transmits information. Or builds machines to do the job. Sensation, perception, information—the same thing. We're at the top. We belong here."

"Perception should be objective, un-colored. But there's no sense talking to you."

"Perception is never objective, my dear Darius. An individual perceives. Some men are tone-deaf, others color-blind. We all taste the same foods, liking some and disliking others. I say the newspaper belongs on the top like this. I say our creation of news is no different from the hundred varied opinions of a hundred members of the rabble. Unless it's better. We're a cohesive force, Darius. We simplify. We unite."

"You hamper and destroy."

"We don't rule by force. Have they ever tried to overthrow us? Have they? You see, they don't dislike us. They have faith in us. They can grow roots and feel secure. They don't have a myriad of possibilities confronting them. They have only two on any given subject, except in purely local situations which we don't consider important. Either the Star-Times is right, or the World is."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"It's very important to me. I believed in you, Darius. I still think you've made a mistake. While it's too late now—you see, we can't really control all events, can we?—I would like to hear you admit your mistake. I can never trust anyone again."

"If I admit it?"

"I'll thank you...."

"And hand me over to Weaver Wainwright?"

"And hand you over to Weaver Wainwright."

There was a disturbance outside, the sound of running feet in the City Room, of many voices. Overman cocked his head to one side, listening to the tiny receiver in his ear then picking up his microphone hose and saying, "In a moment. That's right, I said let them in. But give me five minutes." He dropped the hose. "They're here for you, Darius."

"I gathered."

"Would you make a man who once was your friend happy before you go? Just tell me you were wrong. Tell me if you had your way over again you would remain loyal to me even if you were confronted with the same faulty philosophical notions."

"At the point of a parabeam? What good would it do?"

"Forget the parabeam. I'm two people now. I'm guarding you and I'll kill you if you come any closer to me, but I'm also pleading with you. I'm asking you to give me my salvation."

"I wonder which one is stronger," McLeod said, standing again and leaning across the desk. "Why does it mean so much to you, chief? Let me tell you. Is it because you have doubts yourself and want me to resolve them for you?"

"Keep back, I'm warning you. That isn't it at all. You've made me lose my faith in people."

"I thought you didn't have any."

"In a few people. Please, Darius. Don't come any closer. A man has to trust someone."

"You can't do anything about your doubts. You're hoping I can."

"I'm going to kill you if you come any closer." Overman was still standing like a statue, the parabeam an extension of his right hand. It was as if he would never move again unless McLeod freed him with a word. It was as if the heart too had stopped its beating and only the lips were alive, the pleading lips, begging for a reprieve.

McLeod leaped across the desk, his middle slamming down on the hard surface, his diaphragm squeezing all the air from his lungs. His fingers closed on Overman's wrist and forced it back as the parabeam hissed from his cheek.

Now the lips were still. Now the muscles which had remained so inert for many moments were writhing with activity, each individual cell adding its strength to the whole, to the wiry arms, the thin legs, the twisting, heaving torso. The only sound was the harsh rasping of Overman's breath as they grappled, tumbling over and over, rolling across the floor.

The parabeam was between them, separating their chests. Overman butted with his head, bit, gouged, used his knees and elbows while he held the weapon. The lungs filled with air—McLeod could feel the torso lifting, the rib-cage expanding. The mouth opened to scream for help....

McLeod got a hand over it, felt teeth clamp on his fingers, very white, very sharp. The mouth opened again as McLeod rolled suddenly clear to avoid an up-thrusting knee.

Knee hit elbow and hand tightened convulsively. The parabeam hissed against Overman's chest and up, bathing his chin and face and the lips which, instead of screaming, formed the words "tell me" and then closed slowly. Afterwards, McLeod always thought Overman's ears must have retained their sentience longest as the man died, waiting for an answer which would never come.

The door opened. People stood around, looking down at them. Wainwright. The phony police. Tracy and Cripp. Some Star-Times security agents.

McLeod stood up slowly, his own muscles twitching. He looked at Wainwright, then pointed to Overman's body on the floor and said, "There's your story. You were modest in your prediction. Not a reporter, but the City Editor. Dead. And listen to me, Wainwright. It's the only story you'll ever get. Try anything else and there'll be open war between our papers. You understand?"

Wainwright considered, head down, arms folded in front of him, long nose hiding lips from that angle. "They'll probably make you City Editor," he mused. "I'll take the story. You're in the clear, McLeod."

"I want to be exonerated from that false charge."

But Wainwright shook his head. "Do it yourself. You have a newspaper, too. Incidentally, how did Overman die?"

"Say he was looking for something, something important—so important that when he couldn't find it he killed himself."

"That's no story."

"It's a story," said McLeod, "We can make it a story."

"There are hundreds of us," Tracy said later. "All over the country. All over the world. We're badly organized. We need organization. You're in a position to give it to us."

"Not overtly," Cripp warned. "But under cover at the beginning, until we build up strength. We'll have to re-indoctrinate young reporters and then forget about indoctrination when we can. We'll be fighting a war all our lives."

"Men like Overman and Wainwright are the alternatives," McLeod said. "I think even Overman knew, at the end, that he was wrong. But it went against everything he ever thought or believed. I almost could have been another Overman."

"You're not," Tracy said. "You just had to be goosed."

"It's going to be interesting," McLeod told them. "We'll still predict. To stay in business, we'll have to predict, at least to start with. But we'll give our scientists and social workers a free hand, and our predictions will all be practical. Do you realize there hasn't been a substantial scientific discovery put to use in the last fifty years?"

Cripp seemed worried. "Their approach is more sensational. They'll draw the readers. But we have to—to stay in business."

"That was your trouble all along," McLeod said. "You were a bunch of snipers. I think you're wrong. What's not sensational about a trip to the moon or a cure for cancer or controlled weather that actually helps the farmers or campaigning for the better man in an election because he truly has something to offer? We're liable to put the World right out of business."

"We can try," said Tracy, smiling.

"Not you, young lady. No more co-respondents. How would you like to be a bonafide social worker?"

But Tracy squeezed Cripp's hand and said, "No, thank you. I'd rather be a housewife."

McLeod thought he'd have to settle for loving both of them like a brother—then realized he'd be too busy to do anything of the sort.