Hard News

squinted. It was Morrie Weinberg, the chief engineer of the show. He wore engineer clothes—blue jeans and a black shirt and a tweed jacket.
    “Morrie,” she said. He was frowning—the first time she’d ever seen him do this. Engineers are usually Rolaids-poppers but Morrie didn’t understand the concept of stress. She had an image of him as a lumbering bear and that made her want to laugh out loud.
    “What’s up?”
    “Your segment.”
    She giggled. “Uh-huh.”
    “What happened?” His voice fluttered.
    The humor was leaving quickly. “Happened?”
    “Jesus, how come you didn’t get your segment in? ‘Easy Justice.’ It should’ve gone into the computer by three. It was already a day late. We
had
to have it there by three. You know that.”
    Her eyes swept around the studio. Was he saying what she was hearing? “I did. I gave it to Charlie around four. But he said that was all right.”
    Morrie looked at a clipboard. “This is a problem. It ain’t in there now. We got eleven minutes of blank airtime starting at eight-oh-four-thirty-six.”
    “Check again.” Her voice was edged with panic.
    “I just did check. Five minutes ago.”
    “Check again, check again!” No laughing, no lumbering bears, no amoebae. Adrenaline had wakened her completely.
    Morrie shrugged and made a call. He held his hand over the mouthpiece and said to her, “Zip.”
    “How did it happen?”
    “The way it usually happens is the producer doesn’t get the tape in on time.”
    “But I
got
it in.” She ran through her vague memory. She didn’t think she’d screwed up. It was too major a mistake even for her. It was like the pilot forgetting to lower the airplane’s wheels before landing.
    Anyway, there were other tapes. She had a dupe of the final cut. This was an inconvenience, not a tragedy.
    Her hands were shaking. Morrie listened into the phone again. He looked up and said to her, “All right, your butt is safe so far. Charlie says he remembers you delivering it. He put it in the computer but somehow it’s vanished. You have a dupe?”
    “Sure.”
    He said into the phone, “We’ll get another one up to you in five minutes.” He hung up. “This’s never happened before. Thank you, dear Lord, for dupes.”
    The gratitude was premature. The dupe was missing too. Rune’s voice was shrill in panic. “I put it there. On my desk.” She pointed frantically to an empty corner.
    “Oh, man.”
    “I put it right
there.”
    He stared skeptically at the bald spot.
    She said, “I’m not making this up.”
    “Rough cuts?” Morrie was looking at his watch. “Shit, we don’t have time. But we maybe—”
    She opened a drawer. “Oh, no,” she muttered breathlessly.
    He said, “They’re gone too?”
    Rune was nodding. She couldn’t speak.
    “Oh, boy. Oh, shit. Eleven minutes of blank air. This’s never happened before. This’s never happened.”
    Then she thought of something else and ripped open her credenza.
    The
original
tape she’d done of Bennett Frost, the new witness, and the dupe of
that
were also gone. All that remained of the story about Randy Boggs were scripts and notes and background interview tapes.
    “We’ve been robbed,” Rune whispered. She looked around in panic, feeling a terrible sense of violation. “Who was it?” She looked at Morrie. “Who’d you see on the set today?”
    “Who’d I see?” he echoed shrilly. “A dozen reporters, a hundred staffers. That intern kid with the blond hair who was helping you with the story. Piper was here, Jim Eustice, Dan Semple…. I mean, half the Network walked through here today.” Morrie’s eyes strayed uneasily toward the phone and she knew what he was thinking: Somebody had to call Piper Sutton. The large quartz wall clock—timed, for all Rune knew, to the pulse of the universe—showed that they had forty-four minutes until
Current Events
was going to air. Forty-four minutes until it became the first prime-time television program in history to air eleven minutes and fourteen seconds of blank space.
    THE ONLY THING THAT KEPT PIPER SUTTON FROM EX ploding through the double doors into the newsroom was the live broadcast of
Nighttime News With Jim Eustice
, the Network’s flagship world news show, now on-air thirty feet behind Rune.
    But still she stormed ferociously toward Rune’s desk. During the broadcast the veteran anchorman was so damn reassuring and smooth that even the crew enjoyed watching him. Tonight, though, only the