Diablo swallowed hard. “Yes,” he said in a defiant tone. “I think you’re conning me. You got that in the Federal package, didn’t you? It was part of the price you paid for agreeing to slot me in.”
“Cross my heart it wasn’t,” Flamen said with a thin smile. “But I assume it’s the truth, hm?”
“Well. Oh, all right. I believe you. And it is right. Clear down to the atmospheric condensation plant We were going to break that info around the weekend sometime. I guess I don’t have to explain the slant.”
“Once again the knees get even with the blanks for terming a nasty antisocial act ‘blackmail’?”
“We call ’em ‘petards,’ ” Diablo said at length. “You know-“hoist with his own.’ Sorry, I didn’t mean to hold you up when you’re short of time. But what I don’t get is this.” He fingered his beard, staring at the computer screen. “When you have analytical equipment like this, which can dig the background out of something as well masked as the Lenigo blackmail deal, why’s there any need for a specialized spoolpigeon show? You’d think the regular news coverage would be full-depth anyway.”
“I’ve made my living for years out of the fact that it isn’t,” Flamen said curtly. Then, relenting: “It’s differhere on the outside, Diablo. It’s a big psychological thing. We look at what you can see, and we stop there. I guess we got into the habit some time in the last censame as we-well-same as we might look at you and think ‘kneeblank,’ full stop. We think of news as the detached record of what took place, regardless of why: there was an earthquake yesterday, there’s a riot today, there’s going to be a tornado tomorrow. You catch me?”
“It fits,” Diablo said, nodding. “So go ahead.”
“All right. Where was I? Oh yes. Well, I’ll just have all the stories comped out which I left to simmer overand check the monitor back to see what’s come in since.” The screen flashed and darkened and flashed again, factors in each successive story being evaluated and presented. “Ah, that’s fine. Today we have several usable items.”
“How do you decide which are the usable ones?”
“My usual baseline is eighty-plus in favor of it being true. That works. Once I used something comped at seventy-eight and I had to apologize and pay damages, but I never got caught on anything with a rating over eighty on this equipment. Though being cautious was what cost me a beat on the Lenigo story yesterday; it was five points below the likeliest alternative.”
“Which was?”
“That the Gottschalks were spreading alarm and deagain. Something there wasn’t much point in using, of course. Everyone’s known for years that that’s how they jack their sales levels up: they’re ghouls, growfat on people’s hates and fears, and the human spebeing what it is they’re apt to go on growing fat until they collapse under their own weight.”
“That’s something we don’t get in the enclaves,” Diasaid. “Gottschalk sales campaigns, I mean. We’re an automatic market-islands in a sea of hostility.”
“Mm-hm.” Flamen’s eyes were on the screen as he brought up subject after subject for intensive analysis. “I have something on the Gottschalks, by the way. Here it is. I don’t think that’ll mean too much to you at the moment, though.”
Diablo stared at the screen. “IBM $375,000, Honey$233,000, Elliot- No, it doesn’t.”
“They’ve been buying high-order data-processing equipment. Lots of it. That was yesterday’s record of bills met.”
“One day’s record?” Diablo said incredulously.
“It says here. Care to-ah-suggest an explanation?”
Diablo’s beard-clawing evolved into a series of tugs that threatened to haul out the roots. “Hmm! I never paid much attention to the Gottschalks, I’m afraid. Bad policy in a place like Blackbury to risk offending people who prop us up the way they do. But I thought they used one of the Iron Mountain banks.”
“They do.” Flamen hesitated. Then, at long last conthat he had overnight been frightened of this encounter with a man whose reputation exceeded his own in spite of all the drawbacks-lack of funds, lack of resources, lack of made-to-order support from wealthy blanks at the top of the planetary totem-pole-he gave way to the impulse to impress him again with casual inside knowledge. “But apparently one of the security codes is up for sale with a price not much over a million. If they’re at that stage, they’re obviously ready to pull out of Iron Mountain altogether, aren’t they?”