"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. But he's wrong there, too. Now he can trust no one. Perhaps he'll have to fire his entire staff and start from the beginning again. But it's the one man, the Judas, who hurts most. 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_. The dead citizens of a dozen bombed out cities in a dozen unnecessary wars. The people who haven't read Ortega y Gasset and maybe never even heard of him and can't be convinced they're too stupid to seek their own destinies." "Ortega was right. Mass man can't discriminate. He's incapable of logical, creative thought. 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." "What do you think we do? We pave the way. We make the future." "There's a difference." "I can't see it." "You don't want to. The truly creative man merely does his work. The masses will follow of their own free will. Maybe they'll follow the wrong leader as often as not, but we've still come a long way in a few thousand years. It's wrong if they're led, or pushed, or tricked or--" "Sit down, Darius. Don't move. 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. Sensation, perception, information--the same thing. We're at the top. We belong here." "Perception should be objective, un-colored. But there's no sense talking to you."