"What did he want?" Tracy asked.
"The usual," McLeod told her, realizing a near-truth was often the best lie. "That I join up with the World and get protected."
"You wouldn't last a month and you know it. So why did you tell him you'd think about it?"
"To let him think I was playing both ends against dead center, I guess. I don't know. I just want to come out of this thing alive, Tracy."
"I was thinking. There must be something we could dig up about Weaver Wainwright, something we could hold over his head so he'd rather be guilty of a wrongo than see it revealed."
"I doubt it. Anyway, you don't blackmail newspapermen."
"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. 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. "I just never heard you talk like that before, that's all. Tracy, you're like a little girl in a lot of ways—idealistic, romantic, building castles on air and not accepting the real world, but—"
"Real!" Tracy cried. "It's phony from the word go. We're making it—to suit headlines."
"Stop shouting," McLeod said in alarm. "People are staring at you."