Roger Zelazny - Donnerjack

Someone threw his weight against the door. It creaked…

Directories in this drawer, one of them labeled “Personal.” He removed it, rolled it, stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Probably worthless. Still…

Another blow upon the door, a cracking sound from its Irame. He also appropriated something labeled “Organizational.”

He closed the drawer, opened the bottom one. Personnel files of some sort. Two more cabinets, not enough time. Damn! He’d anticipated having hours in which to work the place over.

He killed his light, slipped it into his other pocket as he crossed the room to the window. He was out it, down among shrubs, and out again before he heard the door give way within. When the lights came on he was already sprinting across the lawn toward the high metal fence.

Into the shrubs along the fence then, he moved to the section he had carefully cut through several days before, by means of which he had entered earlier. It faced upon a quiet side street. It stood easily, its mobility unnoticeable save upon close scrutiny, leaned against a spread of branches. He began working his way back to it.

Suddenly, a figure rose up at his back.

“Hold it right there!” came a voice from behind him, punctuated by the small safety release and priming click familiar to every virtventure participant in the world, only this was real—really real, that is.

Link raised his hands immediately.

“Turn around!”

He began to do so, hampered more than a little by the surrounding shrubbery.

Before he had turned halfway the man fell against him, knocking him off balance. The fence was still out of reach and the foliage at which he clutched gave way. A hand caught him by the right biceps, however, before he toppled. He began to struggle as soon as he recovered his balance, tried to pull away.

“Easy, kid,” came a sharp whisper. “It’s okay.”

Link finished turning toward the man who had spoken, realizing as he did that the guard lay on the ground between them. In the faint light from the street he could make out the rough features and thick sandy brows and hair of the big, pale-eyed individual who had hold of him. The man released his arm and smiled.

“Drum,” he said. “Desmond Drum. And you’re Lyle Crain.”

“Lincoln Crain.”

“Oh? I thought it was Lyle…”

“It was, once. I changed it.”

“Well, Lincoln—”

“Call me Link.”

“Okay, Link. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Drum glanced toward the doctored section of fence.

“What about this guy?”

“He’ll be okay. Let’s go.”

Link turned and moved back to the fence. Drum stepped over the prostrate guard and followed him. In a moment, they had removed the loose section of fencing and stepped through the opening onto the sidewalk.

They replaced it with some small rattling, and Drum jerked his head to the right.

“This way,” he said.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Link responded. “Where are we going?”

“My car. A couple of blocks from here. Get us out of the area.”

“Then what?”

“I’d like to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“Well, we can begin as we walk along. But let’s start moving before the cops show. Somebody might have called in. Or there may be another guard coming…”

Link fell into step beside him.

“I’m a private investigator,” Drum began.

“Really? I thought you guys did all your work in Virtu, hustling through records.”

“Most of us do, these days,” Drum replied. “But a lot of really important things stay here in Verite—on paper or in someone’s head—and don’t leave any tracks in Virtu. Somebody’s got to work this side of the street.”

Link smiled.

“I know,” he said. “There’s a lot of good stuff in old-fashioned file cabinets.”

Drum nodded.

“A good reporter would know that,” he said, “though most of them do all of their work in Virtu, hustling through records and getting by on handouts.”

Link laughed.

“Touche,” he said. “All right. You’re all right. So how do you know I’m a reporter?”

“How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Hm. According to what I’ve got you’re sixteen—just barely.”

“What the hell have you got, and where’d you get it?”

Drum crossed the street.

“I got it all. Hunted through public records in Virtu. Cheap and easy.”

“So why ask, if you already know?”

“You run the simple ones by first, make it easy to cooperate, maybe set up a pattern. Easy to check on.”

Link shrugged.

“Thanks for your help, but I didn’t ask for it. I don’t owe you any truth.”

“The truth is such a precious thing that you keep it to yourself, eh?”

“If by that you mean truth costs, yes, you’re right.”

“You got any that might be worth something—specifically, on the Elshies?”

“Maybe. You buying?”

“No. But I know someone who might be. I’d like to take you to see him now. That’s my car.” He gestured toward a small blue Spinner sedan across the street. “Interested?”

Link nodded. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.

Drum palmed the lock open and they got in. A moment later he had started the engine and the vehicle had risen above the roadbed, vibrating.

“So why Lincoln?” Drum asked, as they drifted to the side then took a course forward. “You a Civil War buff?”

Link shook his head.

“I read The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens ,” he said. “It’s what made me decide to be a journalist. Times change, but a story’s still a story.”

“Wasn’t he one of those early reporters for whom the term ‘muckraker’ was invented?”

“Yeah,” Link said. “But a lot of people make it sound the way you did—like the tabloid segments. Gossip and all. The muckrakers, like Steffens and Tarbell, were investigative reporters. They did exposes of business abuses—like in the oil industry—and crooked politics. They were all hell on finding conflicts of interest, payoffs—”

“How about religions? They ever cover shady religions?”

“I don’t think so,” Link said, glancing out the window at the Elishite office he had visited.

“So this was your own idea?”

“That’s right. Got the idea reading about the late twentieth-century television evangelists. Thought there might be something juicy here, too.”

“Did you find it?”

“If I did it’ll be a major newspiece soon.”

“You saying you wouldn’t work for a private customer?”

“I don’t know. You giving me a problem in journalism ethics, testing my principles?”

“I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said that the best thing about principles is that they can always be sacrificed to expediency.”

Link chuckled with him.

“If I had a story and you’re asking me whether I could be paid to kill it, I don’t know. Like anything else, I’d have to have real facts before 1 could decide. When I said that things cost, I wasn’t talking about killing a story, though. I was talking about maybe selling some information. That’s different than promising never to use it.”

“Agreed. I was just sounding you out.”

“You haven’t really asked me yet whether I have anything worth selling.”

“Do you?”

“Well, I might have an interesting item, if we live,” Link replied, still looking out the window.

“What do you mean?” Drum asked.

Link jerked his thumb in the direction he was staring.

“It’d be a better story, though,” he went on, “if I could learn how the Elshies make those Virtu powers work in Verite.”

Drum turned his head in the direction of the gesture.

“Holy shit!” he said, and the car leaped forward. “How long’s that thing been up there?”