"Maybe he's schizo," Remo offered. "What I want to know is why are they interviewing each other. Shouldn't they be talking to the man in the street?"
"Why should they waste their time speaking with peasants?" Chiun wanted to know.
"Maybe because the story affected maybe sixty million people, and only a few dozen TV employees, that's why. These news guys all think they are the news."
"They are obviously very important," said Chiun.
"What makes you say that?"
"They all look very much like the President of Vice, who is an important person as well."
"Come to think of it, the Vice President does kinda look like he should be reading the news, not making it. And he's just like the network anchors. They're practically all airheads. They get paid a ton of money to just sit there and read."
Out of the corner of his eyes, Remo noticed Chiun's wispy beard tremble. And he knew he had made a mistake.
"They are paid how much to simply sit and read?"
"Uh, I forget," Remo said evasively.
"I will settle for a rough estimate."
"Oh, I heard Cooder gets oh, four or five."
"Thousands?"
"Millions."
"Millions! To simply read!"
"Cheeta isn't exactly paid in seashells, either, you know."
"That is different. She does not read mere news, but recites poetry in her lilting voice. She is a fountain of culture in a barbarian land. No amount of money can be too much for her."
"And she's just the weekend anchor."
Chiun's eyes narrowed. "Why are they called anchors?"
"Good question. Ask Smith next time we see him. He knows all kinds of useless stuff."
The taped interview with Don Cooder ended and the live Don Cooder returned to do a live interview with the national anchor who had just interviewed him. Then, Don Cooder interviewed the producer, the news director, and up on to the president of the news division, who vowed that this would never happen again, but if it did, BCN would be there to cover it. Round the clock, if need be.
How BCN could cover a disruption that would prevent them from broadcasting was not explained, and no one thought to point out the lapse in logic. Everyone spoke in crisp, authoritative sentences, wore expensive suits, and boasted perfect helmets of hair that could decorate storefront manikins. Some possibly had.
At the end of the broadcast, the camera closed in to frame Don Cooder's face and he said, "BCN Evening News pledges to keep you up to date on this developing story. Until next time," he added, giving the peace sign, "Rock on."
Immediately, a local anchor came on with a teaser for the eleven o'clock news.
"TV blacked out nationwide. The story at 11."
"Why do they do that?" Remo complained.
"Do what?"
"We just watched a half hour of national coverage and the local station immediately jumps in trying to get us to watch it all over again at eleven."
"I do not understand these American customs," Chiun sniffed. "I only know that I will have to wait until the weekend before beholding the sight of Cheeta the Beauteous."
"You'll make it."
The Master of Sinanju arose like a pale column of smoke. He had changed to evening white. "I will retire now," he said.
"Kinda early, isn't it?"
"Awake, I will only feel sadness. Perhaps in sleep I will dream of Cheeta the Fair."
"Does that mean I gotta resume boom box patrol?"
The Master of Sinanju paused at the door. He turned, his face stern.
"If I am dreaming of Cheeta, and rude voices awaken me, there will be heads adorning the gates by dawn."
"Trust me," said Remo. "You'll sleep peacefully if I have to sleep outside."
"I would not mind," said Chiun, padding off to his bedroom.
And hearing those chilly words, Remo's spirits fell.
Chapter 5
The office of Harold W. Smith was a Spartan cube that looked as if it had been furnished in 1963 from a municipal auction of sixty-year-old surplus school equipment.
The desk was a scarred slab of oak; the leather executive chair in which Smith sat was cracked with age and the corrosive action of human perspiration. Smith had sweated out countless crises in the chair.
There was a faded green divan that might once have sat outside a school principal's office for discipline-problem students. The file cabinets were a mixture of dark green metal and oak. Intelligence analysts could have pored over the contents of those cabinets for a hundred years and would have been forced to conclude that Folcroft was no more than a stodgy private hospital.
Behind him, Long Island Sound was a crinkling expanse of moonlit India ink visible through a picture window of one-way glass so prying eyes could not read Harold Smith's lips or peer over his shoulder at the computer terminal that occupied one corner of Smith's pathologically neat desk.
The illumination was fluorescent-as an aid to Smith's nagging eyestrain. One filament shook nervously. When the day came that it finally burnt out, Smith would replace it, not before.
As he worked the keyboard, Harold Smith was not even aware of the annoying problem.
From this terminal, Smith could reach out with invisible fingers and touch virtually every computer net accessible by phone line. Right now, he was monitoring the internal computer systems of the three major networks and Vox TV.
On his screen appeared, in rotation, news stories being written in distant terminals by network newswriters, internal office memos, and electronic mail.
All four networks were busy. According to their computer activities, there was a great deal of gossip and speculation going on, but no hard facts. Doggedly Smith logged off one network and switched to another. It sometimes seemed to him that it had been easier in the early days of CURE, before computers revolutionized American business. In fact, it had been more difficult. It was just that the proliferation of computers meant that much more raw data was accessible to Smith-and hiring a staff to keep track of it all was out of the question.
As Smith secretly prowled the Multinational Broadcast Corporation database, unknown fingers were typing a fragment of electronic mail.
"This weird fax just came in," the fingers wrote. "And the brass all went into a huddle."
Smith dropped out of the MBC net and accessed the AT that processed telephone calls. He brought up the MBC headquarters active billing file and backtracked the most recent incoming calls. There was no way to differentiate between voice and fax transmission calls, except that the latter were usually brief. In the last five minutes, Smith found, MBC had received six incoming calls. Only one was long-distance. It was from Atlanta, Georgia.
Smith dropped out of the file and brought up the American Networking Conglomerate billing file. ANC, too, had received a long-distance call from Atlanta. The number was the same. Ferociously, Smith accessed the BCN file.
There had been no call from Atlanta. Then, as Smith watched, one appeared.
Like a demented concert pianist, Harold Smith dropped out of AT ed up the BCN database. Most faxphones, he knew, were tied into computer software so that on-screen text could be faxed by the simple press of a hot key, without bothering to generate a hard copy. Smith raced from screen to screen, breathing like a jogger in motion, looking to see if an incoming fax was appearing anywhere in the system.
Then he found it. Line by line, it began manifesting itself on his own terminal.
"My God," he croaked. "It is worse that I imagined."
Without taking his eyes off the screen, Smith reached for one of the many telephones on his desk. From memory, he called the Atlanta number that was the source of the fax. The other telephone rang six times. Then there was the click of a backup line cutting in, followed by more ringing.
As the fax completed itself in ghostly green letters, a telephone voice was speaking in Harold Smith's ear.