Stephen Marlowe

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Overman was saying, "but don't tell anyone. I can trust you. If the conspiracy is as big as I think, the good people at the World, the sensible ones, can probably trust a man like Weaver Wainwright. The rest must be suspect."
McLeod grinned. "Why trust me, chief?" he said easily, "I've never been a bug for ideology either way."
"That's precisely why. Newspapering is a job with you, but a good one. You're our highest-paid reporter. You have a reputation to maintain. A man gets muddle-headed if he starts delving too deeply into ideologies. ”

“ That's what the Anti-Newspaper League is after. They don't want us to look forward. They don't want us to predict the future and then make it happen. They make inane pronouncements about the essential dignity of man and the necessity for him to work out his own destiny. They sneer at Ortega y Gasset and deify Tom Paine. They shun authoritarianism in any form and blandly forget that Mr. Average Citizen has always yearned for his little niche in a totalitarian system because he actually wants decisions rained down on him like manna. ”

“ He started to turn and got three quarters of the way around when the parabeam hit him.
After that, it was almost like watching a melodrama on television. He could watch the action unfold. His sympathies might be directed first one way, then another, but he had no part in the play. He was a statue, standing upright as the snow drifted down and coated him with white. His body-heat didn't escape the insulined jumper to melt it and in a few moments he was an incredibly manlike snowman with a human face. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The expression of the first two faces said: we're gunmen—whatever you are, we're better. The third face said: we'd as soon kill you as spit, but we don't kill except for hire or when provoked in the line of duty.
"I'm from the paper," McLeod told them, whispering. "Here to cover the story."
The three faces stared back at him through the snow, crystalizing what he had felt all day but had not been able to explain. Those faces.
They had nothing against Mayor Spurgess. Perhaps they had never even seen him. If they didn't like him and had a reason and wanted to kill him, that wouldn't be so bad. ”

“ You don't kill them, either. Darius, did you ever stop to think how—how awfully evil this whole setup is? I don't mean just about you and how the World wants to make a story out of killing off the opposition. I mean everything. I mean Weaver Wainwright starting a war in Europe so his paper can get the inside story on it. I mean the President of Yugoslavia being blackmailed by a garden variety newspaperman. I mean Cripp getting chewed out because he went to cover a suicide and the man didn't jump. We ought to celebrate, don't you see? A human life was saved. ”

“ You've got to take the good with the bad, that's all. See what I mean?" All the while they had spoken, Overman had not moved from where he had perched his small frame on his desk, but his nervous legs had walked miles, his scrawny, sleeve-rolled arms had waved, flapped and gesticulated, his wide, bulging eyes had darted about the frenzied confusion of the great room where news was created and missed nothing. ”

“ He was tall and gaunt but well-tanned, the whites of his eyes very bright against the skin of his face. He had a long, sad nose which drooped mournfully almost to his upper lip, mitigating the effect of his smile.
He was Weaver Wainwright, ace reporter of the World.
"We're just a couple of subversives, Mr. Wainwright," Tracy said.
"So that's why the Star-Times is filling its pages with wrongos these days. How do you do, McLeod?"
"Never felt better. Ought to live to be a hundred, at least. Can we get you something?" ”

“ Having the power of life and death over nameless, faceless people was one thing, but playing the role of the Greek hag who snipped the thread of life with a pair of indifferent scissors for Crippens was quite another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ McLeod found Overman, the City Editor, perched on a corner of his desk and barking orders into a microphone. "What do you mean, he won't jump? We said he'd jump. Coax him. Push him if you can get away with it, I don't care. Don't make it obvious." Overman cocked his gaunt head to one side, listening to the receiver imbedded in his ear. He looked like a walking ad for hyper-thyroid treatment, with bulging eyes, hollow cheeks and fidgety limbs. ”

“ Are you trying to make me a hatchetman?"
"A reporter, Darius. You've always been a good one."
"But Crippens is my friend."
"I wish we had another way out. Crippens has his place on the Star-Times, but we thought too much of him. We don't want to lose you, Darius. You can take that as an objective compliment and sleep easy. Your job's secure."
"Thank you very much."
"Don't be bitter. A man in the newspaper business is top-dog these days, see? I don't have to tell you. We're not passive receptors. We control things. We make things happen. We play God, but we've got competition. ”

“ Tracy told the World reporter. "As of now, there isn't."
"Give it some time," Wainwright promised. "You see, the President of Yugoslavia was indiscreet in his youth, most indiscreet. With elections approaching there, he had the alternative of—well, you know what a newspaper can do to a man of position who's been indiscreet. Drink to it?"
They did. In spite of everything, McLeod had to admire Wainwright. In the old days, nations went to war for economic reasons, over diametrically opposed political philosophies, because of religion. ”

“ I mean me getting myself caught with important men so their wives sue for divorce and we get the story. I mean disease that doesn't have to happen and medical cures held back until one paper or another can scoop them. I mean scientific discoveries which aren't made because research scientists and development engineers are on newspaper payrolls and perform their basic research and experiments, then wait for the newspaper stories to be released at an editor's leisure. I mean ... oh, what's the use? You're laughing at me."
McLeod was trying not to smile but meeting with little success. ”

“ McLeod wiped blood from his face and said, "That's crazy." These were more than combo-strippers, he knew. They might be in Wainwright's pay or Overman's. Either way, he was in for it. "They're a couple of gunmen," he said.
The male dancer was covering Tracy and Cripp with his parabeam, which had been hidden under the flapping right sleeve. "See?" McLeod said to the circle of people around them. "He's armed."
The crowd parted to admit the weaponcheck girl to its center. With a quick, deft movement she found McLeod's second parabeam, withdrew it and told him, "So are you." ”

“ 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." ”

“ McLeod exhaled a long plume of smoke and watched it get sucked into the unseen currents of the climatizer. "They don't let themselves get seen," he said easily. "They wouldn't be good Security men if they did, would they?"
"But what are you going to do, Darius? Can't you take some kind of positive action? It's not like you, just sitting around and waiting."
McLeod wanted to change the subject, for Tracy had a way of ferreting out the truth even if she suspected nothing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Democratic governments try to make those decisions and fail because the people play too large a role and mess things up. Totalitarian governments fail because they're too obvious, especially when the guy next door happens to live in a democracy.
"The answer is the obvious evolution of the newspaper to policy-making journalism. People don't associate us with policy-making any more than they think short story writers or television script writers develop schools of psychology. We're both before the fact and after the fact, but they wouldn't believe that if we ran it in banner headlines. ”

“ The voice behind McLeod's back seemed bodiless and as cold as the falling snow. "What's wrong with that?"
"You wouldn't understand," McLeod said without turning. "He would." He would win his life the moment he won over the shorter man. His two companions did not matter. "Look. The Gunman Editor on the World is near retirement, isn't he? You look like you've been around, but you won't be considered for the job if Wainwright bears a grudge."
"He's pretty smooth," the young gunman with the parabeam said. ”

“ Cripp finished for him enthusiastically, "you'll probably be made City Editor in Overman's place. You're the obvious man for the job, and if you could see your way clear to joining us, there's no telling what we might accomplish. Don't you see it, Tracy?"
"All I can see is the combo-tease. They'll be dancing on our table if they come any closer." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”