Spiderman 1 (41 page)

Osborn lurched toward his favorite chair, leaned on its
back. "I
. . .
suppose the damage has been done, right?"

"Yeah."

"Can we
...
do it alone?"

"There's only one who could stop us."

Osborn drew himself up, struck by a better thought.
"Or
...
be our greatest ally."

"Exactly! We need to have a little chat with you-know-
who."

"But . . . how do we find him?"

The Goblin didn't have to answer out loud. The answer
was already in his head, and without any further prompting

Osborn picked up the newspaper from where he'd dropped
it. He stared at the front page with the picture of Spider-Man
and the Green Goblin.

He gave a low, pleased laugh that sounded vaguely like a
cackle . . .

XX.

THE REAL TRUTH

J. Jonah Jameson was having a very good day so far, and
all the nattering from Peter Parker wasn't going to ruin it.

Parker was stomping around Jameson's office as if the lit
tle twerp owned the place. Jameson made a mental note to slap Parker down; he'd been getting entirely too big for his
britches lately. "Spider-Man wasn't terrorizing the city!" he
told Jameson. "He was trying to save it! It's slander!"

"I resent that!" Jameson snapped at him, not even both
ering to look in his direction. He was too busy admiring the
front page of the
Bugle.
He wondered if perhaps he
shouldn't have made the type even bigger. "Slander is spo
ken. In print it's libel." His cigar had burned down to the
nub, so he flicked it out the window.

"You don't trust anybody," Parker said, stabbing an accu
satory finger at him. "That's your problem, Mr. Jameson."

Whereupon he turned and strode angrily out of Jameson's
office, which was just fine by Jonah. "I trust my barber!" Jameson called after him. Then, pointing at the picture of
Spider-Man, he shouted, "What are you, his lawyer? Let him
sue me and get rich like a normal person! That's what makes

this country—"

The cigar that he had just thrown out the window flew
back in. Jameson looked down at it, puzzled, and then turned
to see if somehow there might have been a passing pigeon with a highly overdeveloped retrieval instinct.

That was when the Green Goblin, as if leaping off the

front page of the paper, smashed through the window frame.
Jameson let out a yell of terror as the Goblin grabbed him by
the throat with one hand and scooped him off his feet, his glider hovering over the floor of the office.

Outside Jameson's office, pandemonium erupted. People
dashed about like so many headless chickens, shouting for
security. Photographers were madly grabbing up their cameras.
How wonderful,
Jameson thought.
Front page coverage
of his death.
Bleakly, Jameson hoped they'd snap his good
side.

"Who's the photographer who takes the pictures of
Spider-Man? I need to talk to him about his favorite subject.
Where is he?"

Parker! He wants Parker . . . !

Jameson's first instinct was to shout the name, shout it as
loudly as he could. But then something else kicked in: the oldest commandment in the world. Protect your source.
Jameson had, on two separate occasions, gone to jail rather
than violate that fundamental principle.

He looked hard into his soul at that moment, as the Gob
lin's face leered at him, and recognized himself for
the money-seeking, headline-manufacturing, truth-bending
leech that he was, but by God, he was just trying to keep his
newspaper afloat, and at least his newsman's soul was still
unblemished. That wasn't going to change.

Not even in the face of death.

Besides, if he blurted out the name, the Goblin might just kill him anyway. The longer he stalled, the more chance he
had that security would get their slow, wrinkled butts in gear
and take care of this nut.

"He's a freelancer," Jameson said. "I
. . .
I don't know
who he is! His stuff comes in the mail!"

That sounded horrendously lame, and the Goblin obvi
ously saw through it.

"You're lying ...!"

"I swear!" Jameson choked out.

"This is your last chance—!" His voice was high-pitched,
he was practically giggling the entire time, a green-armored
demoniac.

"Please
. . .
air . . ." The world was starting to haze out.
". . . Stop . . ."

"Hey!"

It was another voice, from somewhere outside Jameson's
fading field of vision. And then he saw the source.

Spider-Man was hanging, upside down, just outside the
window.

"I wear the tights in this town," he said mockingly.

"Speak of the devil," the Goblin growled. He let go of
Jameson, and the newspaper owner slumped to the floor,
gasping.

But even as his lungs fought for air, he managed to get
out, "I knew it! You and Spider-Man are in this together! I
knew that creep was—"

There was a
thwipp
noise and suddenly Jameson couldn't move his mouth. A glob of Spider-Man's webbing was cov
ering it.

"Hey, kiddo, let Mom and Dad talk for a minute, will

you?"

The Green Goblin pointed at Spider-Man, as if about to challenge him ... and suddenly gas billowed from his fin
gertip, spurting directly into the wallcrawler's face.

Caught completely unawares, Spider-Man gasped, tried
to choke out the gas, failed ... and toppled backward out the
window. Instantly the Goblin was gone, as well.

My God . . . he killed him . . .
Jameson thought wildly as
he staggered to his feet, using the edge of his desk to haul himself up. He heard the sound of running feet coming up
behind him, the useless security guards. He made a mental
note to fire them as he stumbled over to the window and

looked out, expecting to see Spider-Man's dead body splat
tered all over the sidewalk below.

Instead he saw the Green Goblin, arcing up and away into
the sky ... with Spider-Man's body slung over his shoulder.

I knew it! The Goblin saved him! He wouldn't have saved
him if they were enemies! Damn! I need photos. Where's
Parker when you need him!
Jameson thought furiously as he
pulled in futility at the webbing on his mouth.

He'd seemed. . . bigger, somehow.

That was the Goblin's thought as he hovered above the unconscious Spider-Man, who was lying on a rooftop just below him. When he'd been battling the wallcrawler the
previous day, the bug man had seemed bigger. More power
ful. Everywhere at once. But lying there as he was, moan
ing softly, rubbing his head ... well, he looked pretty
pathetic, actually. Maybe he wasn't really worthy of being
an ally.

Still . . . when his fist had connected, especially that first
time, the Goblin had felt it right through his armor. And
hell . . . even Hitler had probably looked harmless—maybe
even adorable—when he'd been sleeping.

Spider-Man was beginning to move, but he looked as if
he couldn't coordinate his limbs. The Goblin knew why, of course. "Relax," he said.

The webslinger struggled to drag himself to a sitting po
sition. He couldn't have moved any slower if he'd weighed a thousand pounds, and it probably felt as if he did. "My hal
lucinogen gas has slowed your central nervous system to a
crawl," the Goblin said conversationally. "Just for a few min
utes. Long enough for us to have a talk." He saw Spider-Man
instinctively reach for his face, and he chortled. "Don't
worry, I didn't remove your mask. I'll respect your pri
vacy
...
for the moment, anyway. Because I respect
you."

Spider-Man didn't seem to take it as a compliment. That
annoyed the Goblin slightly, but he let it pass.

"Who are you?" Spider-Man demanded, sounding as if he
had marbles in his mouth.

"A kindred spirit," the Goblin answered blithely. "A fel
low traveler. You've changed, and now you want someone to tell you what to do, what to be. And there's no one who could
possibly understand . .." He leaned in toward Spider-Man.
"... except me."

How cute. Spider-Man was trying to make a fist. All he
managed was to move a couple of fingers. Perhaps he was
trying for an obscene gesture. "They call us freaks," the
Goblin continued. "But we're not less than human ... we're
more
than human."

"I'm not like you. You're
...
a murderer...."
"Well
. . .
to each his own," the Goblin said with a shrug.
"I chose my path. You choose the way of the hero. And
they'll find you amusing for a while, the people of this
city...." His glider rose and he hovered, making a sweeping
gesture, taking in the entirety of the city with it. "But the one
thing they love more than a hero is to see the hero fail
. . .
fall
. . .
die trying.

"The truth is, people don't
like
heroes. Who wants an ex
ample you can never live up to? Take my word for it, in spite
of all you've done for them, eventually
they will hate you. Read the headlines!"

He was listening. Spider-Man was listening to him, he
could tell. And why not? Spider-Man read the headlines; he
knew what the media was trying to do. He had to be aware
of it. So why not milk that for all it was worth?