Vulcan's Forge by Jack Du Brul Read Free Book Online Page B

forty-five minutes to air.” Only her producer would disturb her in the editing room.
    “You’ve got five.”
    “What in the hell are you talking about, Hank? We don’t air for an hour.”
    “You know the rules, Jill. Every piece that chronicles the violence must be cleared by Hiroshi.” Hiroshi Kyato was the station’s news director.
    “That’s bullshit and you know it. You can shove your five-minute deadline. I’m not some second-class citizen.”
    “Wait, I didn’t mean anything by it, I mean I don’t mean any disrespect for who you are. It’s just, well, you know . . .” His voice trailed off.
    The producer backpedaled so fast that it truly stunned Jill. Race was polarizing the station, too. Jill was half-Japanese, and Hank was a caucasian from New Jersey, and he was now deadly afraid that he’d offended her.
    “Hold on, Hank,” Jill said quickly. “What I mean to say is that I’m not a cub reporter on her first assignment. I know what the boundaries are. I don’t need Hiro and his thought police telling me what to say on the air.”
    “I’m sorry, Jill,” Hank said tiredly. “I’ve been on edge ever since Hiro agreed to help Mayor Takamora reduce tensions in the city by running tamer pieces on the situation. So far you are about the only reporter who hasn’t called me a graduate of the Josef Goebbels School of Broadcast Journalism.”
    “Haven’t you talked to Hiro about this?”
    “Sure did. He told me to hand over every segment about the violence or hand in my resignation.”
    “All right, listen, my piece isn’t done yet, or, well, it is, but I’m not going to let that son of a bitch cut it up. I’m going to take it home tonight, tone it some. If anyone is going to censor my work, it’ll be me. I won’t be the person to cost you your job.”
    “Jill, you can’t do that. Your story belongs to the station. It’s not your private property.”
    “Try and stop me, Hank.”
    Jill set the phone back in the cradle and popped the tape from the editing machine, slipping it in her handbag slung across the back of her chair. She stood.
    “What are you going to do?” Ken asked from behind his thick glasses.
    “I don’t know yet.” She left the darkened room.
     
    THE subtle chirping of cicadas was a rhythmic accompaniment to the moon-drenched night. The air was warm, but charged with the humidity of a recently passed thunderstorm. Jill sat on the lanai of her condo, her bare feet propped against a patio table and a glass of zinfandel idly twirling between her long fingers.
    She’d been home for a couple of hours, but the long bath and half bottle of wine had done little to calm her frayed nerves. Three months she’d been working on the Ohnishi piece, three fucking months, and it would be chopped up into tiny pieces on the cutting room floor and run as a human interest story, no doubt. If she’d ever questioned the connection between Ohnishi and Takamora, she had her proof now—and the links ran even deeper, to her own news director. Was no one immune to this racial factionalism other than her?
    She was really wondering if it was all worth it. All the sacrifices she’d made in her life, all the thought she’d put into her career, and here she was, about to have her accomplishments hacked apart because they cut too close to the truth.
    “Son of a bitch.” Despite herself, she was almost in tears.
    Everything in her life had been built around journalism. She’d let almost everything else go in order to reach the upper echelons of her profession. Few boyfriends lasted more than a month or so of her eighty-hour work weeks. She’d spent her last vacation working as a temporary secretary at a sewage treatment plant, tracking down allegations of groundwater contamination.
    Her infrequent talks with her mother invariably turned to Jill’s lack of a husband and children. Every time Jill bragged about a breaking story, her mother would ask where her grandbabies were. Jill would always