Rex Wolfe was walking his dog along Riverside Drive, pooper-scooper dutifully clutched in one hand, the leash attached to the toy terrier in his other. They made an incongruous pair, the fleshily ponderous yet utterly dignified old man and the nervously twitchy little dog. Wolfe was impeccably garbed in the old style: a hand-tailored pinstripe suit with vest, off-white classic shirt with a real collar, and a rep tie that he had knotted flawlessly himself.
Traffic along the drive was its usual hopeless snarl, taxis and trucks and buses honking impatiently, drivers screaming filthy admonitions at one another. Wolfe sighed an immense sigh. In all his long years he could not remember it otherwise. When the city had finally prohibited private automobiles from entering Manhattan, it had been hailed as the solution to the traffic problem. It was not. It simply made room for more trucks. And buses. The number of taxis remained constant, thanks to the political clout of the cabbies, but their fares skyrocketed.
The dog yapped scrappily at the traffic zooming by as Wolfe waited patiently for the traffic light to change. "Quiet, Archie," said Wolfe as a middle-aged matron stared distastefully at the dog.
But secretly Wolfe felt the dog was right: the drivers needed someone to set them straight.
He crossed the drive, with the little dog tugging at its leash. They looked like a tiny scooter towing an immense dirigible.
Once inside Riverside Park, Wolfe allowed the dog to run loose. But he kept an eye on the animal as he ambled slowly northward, toward the ancient graffiti-covered edifice of Grant's Tomb. The dog, for its part, never wandered too far from its master as it scurried from lamppost to bench to wall to bush, sniffing out who had been around the old haunts lately.
"Ulysses S. Grant," Wolfe muttered to himself as he approached the pile of Victorian stonework. One of the great examples of the old Peter Principle. A hard-drinking farm boy who rose to command in the U.S. Army during the Civil War and literally saved the Union, only to be elected president, a task that was clearly beyond his powers. Promoted one step too far, elevated to the level of his incompetence. It was an old story, but a sad one still the same.
And now the final indignity. A tomb forgotten by everyone except the graffitists who regularly spattered it with their semi-literate proclamations of self: Gavilan 103; Shifty; The Bronx Avengers. What could possibly be worth avenging in the Bronx? Wolfe asked himself.
The only reply he got was a tremendous blow to the back of his head. Wolfe felt himself lifted off his feet, then hitting the concrete walk facedown with the crunching thud of breaking bones. There was no pain, only stunned surprise. Another enormous blow to his ribs rolled him over partially onto one side. Standing above him, silhouetted against the late afternoon sunlight, was a figure in some sort of a trenchcoat with a baseball bat raised above his head in both hands.
The ultimate fate of the native New Yorker, Wolfe thought. Mugged and murdered.
The bat crashed down again and everything went black.
Carl Lewis sat broodingly hunched over his second beer in the noisy dark bar at the street level of the Synthoil Tower. Lori Tashkajian sat next to him in the cramped little booth, nursing a glass of white wine; the bench on the other side of the table held Carl's two bags. The bar was crowded with men and women at the end of the working day, starting to unwind from their tensions, the young ones looking for friends and possible mates for the evening; the older ones fortifying themselves before the rush to the homeward-bound trains and their more-or-less permanent mates.
"I just don't understand how it could have malfunctioned," Carl mumbled for approximately the seventy-fourth time in the past hour.
He had spent the afternoon in Lori's office, desperately examining his failed electro-optic book reader.
"It was fried," he repeated to Lori. "Darned near melted. Like somebody had put it in a microwave oven, or an X-ray machine."
"Maybe the airport security . . ."
"I came in by train, remember?" Carl said.
"Oh, yeah, that's right." Lori sipped at her wine, then suggested, "Maybe they have a security X-ray on the train?"
Carl shook his head. "If they did they wouldn't keep it a secret. And even if they did, it wouldn't be powerful enough to fry electro-optical circuitry."
"Can you fix it?" Lori asked.
"Sure."
"How quickly?"
He shrugged. "A day, two days. I'll have to replace most of the components, but that shouldn't be too tough."
"Can you do it overnight?"
"Overnight? Why?"
Lori grasped Carl's arm in both her hands. "We've got to get this across to the Boss before she comes to the conclusion that the idea's a dud."
Frowning unhappily, Carl said, "She's already come to that conclusion."
"No! While you were poking into your little machine in my office, I spent the afternoon in her office, pleading with her to give you another chance."
"You did?"
"She's willing to listen," said Lori, "but she certainly isn't enthusiastic."
"Can you blame her?" Carl felt seething anger in his guts, and something worse: self-disgust. How could I let this happen? My one big chance . . .
Yet Lori's face, in the dimness of the shadowy bar, was bright and eager. "We've got to get her before she cools off altogether. A lot of people are always bringing her ideas; there's a lot of pressure on her constantly. We've got to strike right away."
"Okay, but overnight—I don't know if I can do it that quick. I have to go back to my lab . . . ."
"Can't you do it here?"
"I need the components. And the tools."
"Gee," said Lori, "we're right next to NYU. Don't you think they'd have the stuff you need?"
"Maybe. But how do I get it? I don't know anybody there."
Lori pressed her lips together and turned to scan the crowded bar. "I hope he's still . . . yes! There he is."
Without another word she slid out of the booth, wormed her way through the crowd at the "meat market" of unattached singles jammed around the bar, and came out towing a wiry-looking man of about thirty-five or forty. He had a slightly puzzled grin on his face.
Sliding onto the booth's other bench, he pushed Carl's bags into a squashed mess. He had a thick mop of reddish hair that looked like a rusty Brillo pad, long lean arms that ended in oversized hands with long fingers that looked almost like talons. He held big mugs brimming with beer, one in each clawlike hand.
"Saves time going for refills," he said in answer to Carl's questioning gaze.
"Carl, this is Ralph Malzone; Ralph, Carl Lewis."
"I heard about your fiasco." Malzone said it jovially, as if he had heard and seen plenty of other fiascos, and even participated in a few of his own.
He released the beer mugs and reached across the table to shake Carl's hand. His grip was strong. And wet. He had a long, lopsided, lantern-jawed grinning face that seemed honest and intelligent. Carl immediately liked him, despite his opening line.
"Ralph is our director of sales," Lori said. "And our resident electronics whiz. Whenever a computer or anything else complicated breaks down, Ralph can fix it for us."
The wiry guy seemed to blush. "Yeah, but from what I hear, your gadget is way out of my league."
"Do you know where I might find a good electronics lab at NYU?" Carl asked.
"Nope. But maybe I could get you into one at my old alma mater, Columbia."
"I didn't know you were a Columbia graduate," Lori said, sounding surprised.
"Electrical engineering, '91," Malzone said amiably. "Then I went back three years ago and got the mandatory MBA. Only way to get promoted."
"How did you get into the publishing business?" Carl wondered aloud. "And sales, at that."
"Long story. You really don't want to hear it." He raised one of the mugs to his lips and drained half of it in a gulp.
"Can you really get Carl into a lab where he can fix his . . . his . . ."
"It's an electro-optical reader," said Carl.
Malzone knocked off the rest of the beer in mug number one and thunked it down on the table. "You're going to have to get a sexier name for the thing, pal. And, yeah, I can get you into the lab. I think. Lemme make a phone call."
He slid out of the booth with the graceful agility of a trained athlete.
Lori glanced at her wristwatch. "I'll have to be going in a few minutes," she said.
"Going? You're not coming along with me?"
"I'd love to, but I can't. I've got my other job to get to."
"Other job?" Carl felt stupid, hearing himself echo her words.
With a sad little smile Lori explained, "You don't think an editor's salary pays for living in New York, do you?"
"I . . ." Carl shrugged and waved his hands feebly.
"All the editors who live in the city have second jobs. It's either that or live in Yonkers or out on the Island someplace. Or New Jersey." She shuddered. "And then you have to get up before dawn and spend half the day travelling to and from your office."
Carl held himself back from replying. But he thought, I'm going to change all that. The electronic book is just the beginning. I'm going to revolutionize the whole business world, all of it. I'm going to put an end to senseless commuting and make the world safe for trees.
"Maryann Quigly weaves baskets and sells them to anybody she sink her hooks into," Lori was explaining. "Didn't you notice them all over the offices upstairs? And Mr. Perkins, the editor-in-chief—uh, the former editor-in-chief—he writes book reviews under several noms de plume and teaches literary criticism at the Old New School."
"What's going to happen to him now that he's lost his position at Bunker Books?" Carl wondered.
"Who? Perkins?" asked Malzone, pushing himself into the other side of the booth, two fresh beer mugs in his hands.
Both Carl and Lori nodded.
"That's all taken care of," Malzone said jovially. "He's landed a job at S&M as head of their juvenile line."
Lori gasped. "I thought Susan Mangrove . . ."
"She's out. They bounced her yesterday. Found out she had a four-year-old niece in Schenectady."
"No!"
"What's wrong with that?" Carl asked.
"She was a children's book editor," answered Ralph with glee. "One of the requirements of a children's book editor is that he, she, or it has never seen or dealt with a child. Ironclad rule."
"Don't listen to him," Lori snapped. Then, to Ralph, she asked, "So what's Susan going to do?"
"She's moving over to take Alex Knox's place at Ballantrye."
"Knox is gone?"
"Yep. He starts Monday as head of Webb's romance and inspirational line."
"Replacing Scarlet Dean."
"Who's taking Max's job, that's right," said Malzone.
Carl's head was spinning, and not from the beer. "It sounds like musical chairs."
"It is," Malzone said. "The average lifetime of an editor in this business is about two years. Some last longer than that, but a lot of 'em don't even hang in that long."
"Two years? Is that all?"
Malzone laughed. "Long enough. It takes roughly two years for the accounting department to figure out that the books the editor is putting out don't sell. Accounting sends word to management, and the poor dufo gets tossed out."
"That's not exactly true," Lori said.
"Close enough. Meanwhile, over at the competition's office across the street, they've just found out that one of their editors has been putting out books for the past two years that don't sell. So they deep-six him. The two unemployed editors switch places. Each one goes to work at the other's old office, where they'll be safe for another two years. And the two publicity departments put out media releases praising their new hire as the genius who's going to lead them out of the wilderness."
"You mean they'll keep on publishing books that don't sell?" asked Carl.
"Not exactly," Lori said.
"Exactly!" Malzone said with some fervor.
"But why does the publishing house keep on putting out books that don't sell?"
"Simple," replied Malzone, almost jovially. "The books are picked by the editors."
Lori started to protest. "Now wait . . ."
Halting her with a lopsided grin, Malzone went on, "The publishing community is like a small town. We all work in the same neighborhood, pretty much. Eat in the same restaurants. Editors move back and forth from one company to another. They all share pretty much the same values, have the same outlook on life." With sudden intensity, he added, "And the editors all publish the same sorts of books, the books that interest them."
Lori frowned slightly but said nothing.
"The editors all live in the New York area," Malzone continued. "They all work in a small neighborhood of Manhattan. They think that New York is America. And they publish books that look good in New York, but sink like lead turds once they cross the Hudson."
"They don't sell well?" Carl asked.
"Most books don't sell at all," said Malzone. "Ask the man who's stuck with the job of selling them."
Lori said, "Only a small percentage of the books published earn back the money originally invested in them. Most of them lose money."
"But how can an industry stay in business that way?" Carl asked. He felt genuinely perplexed.
Malzone laughed and quaffed down a huge gulp of beer. "Damned if I know, pal. Damned if I know."
Lori looked at her wristwatch again. "I've really got to go. See you tomorrow, Carl. In my office. Early as you can make it."
Carl got up to let her out of the booth. She reached up and bussed his cheek. He felt confused; did not know how to react, what to do.
"Uh . . . you didn't tell me what your second job is," he mumbled.
Lori smiled sweetly. "Same as it was when we met."
"Belly dancing?" Carl blurted.
Lifting one hand before her face in imitation of a veil, Lori said, "I am Yasmin, the Armenian Dervish. But only from nine to midnight, three nights a week."
Purchase Requisition 98021
Title of Work: The Terror from Beyond Hell
Author: Sheldon Stoker
Agent: Murray Swift
Editor: Scarlet Dean (upon arrival)
Contract terms: To be negotiated; offering will be same terms as Stoker's last book
Advance: To be negotiated; offering $1,000,000.00
Purchase Requisition 98022
Title of Work: Midway Diary
Author: Ron Clanker (Capt., U.S.N., [Ret.])
Agent: none
Editor: L. Tashkajian
Contract terms: Standard, all rights retained by Bunker Books
Advance: Minimum, $5,000, returnable
Long after the end of the business day, P. Curtis Hawks remained in his office, sitting glumly at his desk, staring out the wide windows as Manhattan turned on its lights to greet the encroaching night.
Bugged my office, he kept repeating to himself as he chewed ceaselessly on his plastic cigar butt. The Old Man has bugged my office. My office. Bugged.
There were wheels within wheels here, he realized. The Old Man, up there in the dotty jungle he had turned his office into, was playing crazy, senile games. Hawks remembered from history when other great tyrants had gone mad: Ivan the Terrible, Hitler, Stalin—they had all gone on paranoid sprees of suspicion and wholesale murder. Even within the publishing industry right here in New York, Kordman and Dyson and even Wanly had all gone nuts toward the end; each one of them pulled their own houses down on top of them.
Weldon was clearly cracking up. One minute he wants to buy out Bunker, the next he doesn't. Then he wants this kid Lewis's invention copied, or stolen, or the guy himself snatched away from Bunker. It's crazy.
Why is the Old Man behaving this way? Hawks asked himself for the thousandth time that evening. Some electronic gadget that shows books on its screen can't be that important. Something else is going on; something he hasn't told me about.
Then it hit him, with the clarity and bone-chilling certainty of absolute truth. He knows about the warehouse! Hawks blanched with terror. He knows about the warehouse! There was no other explanation for it. The Old Man was toying with him, like a grinning Cheshire cat playing with a very tiny, very terrified mouse.
With a shaking hand, Hawks reached for the telephone. But as soon as his fingers touched the instrument he yanked them away as if they had been scorched by molten lava.
He's bugging my office. Damnation! He's probably tracing all my phone and computer traffic, too.
Pull yourself together, he commanded himself fiercely. You can't let yourself go to pieces. This is life or death, man! It's him against me! Hawks shifted the plastic cigar butt from one side of his mouth to the other.
He's out to get me. Just because of that goddamned warehouse the old bastard is after my ass. Hawks grunted with the realization of it. Despite years of the Old Man's calling him "son" and grooming him to take over the top slot at Tarantula, Hawks could not escape the conclusion that the only thing he was at the very top of was Weldon W. Weldon's personal hit list. One little mistake. That's all it takes in this business.
Well, two can play at that game, by god. If the senile old bastard wants to do away with me, I've got to do away with him first.
But how? he asked himself. There's nobody in the whole corporation that you can trust. Anybody might be a spy for the Old Man. You'll have to get outside help.
Which meant going to New Jersey and having a talk with the Beast from the East.
" . . . so I'm sitting there, just a skinny kid right out of the navy, it's my first job . . ."
Ralph Malzone was talking while Carl bent over the exposed innards of his electro-optical reader. They sat side by side at a laboratory bench strewn with tools, wires, and flea-sized electronic components. Both men wore disposable white lab coats and silly-looking hats made of paper. This was a clean-room facility, and they even had to put paper booties over their shoes before Malzone's friend would reluctantly allow them in.
Carl had a surgeon's magnifiers clamped over his eyes and a pair of ultrasensitive micromanipulators in his white-gloved hands as he operated on his failed machine, trying to bring the dead back to life.
Malzone was passing the time by recounting his early adventures as a route salesman for a magazine distribution company.
"So I'm sitting there in what passes for a waiting room, a crummy hallway piled high with old magazines waiting for the shredder. Just this one rickety bench; I think he stole it from a kids' playground. All of a sudden, from inside the guy's office I hear him holler, 'Nobody's gonna give me a fuckin' ultimatum!' And then a pistol shot!"
"Jeez," muttered Carl.
"Yeah. And this salesman comes whizzing out of the office like his pants are on fire. The owner walks out after him with a smoking Smith & Wesson in his hand!"
Carl grunted. He had just dropped an electro-optical chip out of the micromanipulator's tiny fingers. Malzone took it as a comment on his unfolding story.
"Now remember, I had been sent there to give him an ultimatum, too. The sonofabitch hadn't been paying any of his bills for months. So there he is, the smoking gun in his hand and fire in his eyes. And he sees me sitting there, just about to crap in my pants."
"Uh-huh." Carl picked up the chip and deftly inserted it where it belonged, at last.
"'Whaddaya you want?' he asks me, waving the gun in my general direction. Before I can answer, he says, 'You're the new kid from General, ain'tcha?' I sort of nod, and he tucks the gun in his pants and says, 'Come on, kid, I'll show you what this business is all about.' He takes me to the bar next door and we spend the rest of the afternoon drinking beer."
Without looking up at him, Carl asked, "Did he ever pay you what he owed?"
"Oh sure, eventually. He got to be one of the best customers on my route."
"That's good," said Carl.
Malzone's lanky face frowned slightly, but from behind his magnifiers Carl could no more see the expression on his face than a myopic dolphin could see the carvings of Mt. Rushmore. Malzone sank into silence. The two men were alone in the electronics lab. It was well after midnight. Silent and dim in the corridors beyond the lab's long windows. Silent and dim inside the clean room, too, except for the pool of intense light Carl had focused onto his work area from a swing-neck lamp.
The older man studied Carl intently as he worked. His stories about his youthful adventures in the sales end of the publishing business had been a way to pass the time, and to hide the terrible smoldering jealousy he felt burning in his guts. For wiry, grinning, gregarious Ralph Malzone was secretly, totally, hopelessly in love with Lori. He had never told her how he felt. He had never even worked up the courage to ask her for a date. But as he watched Carl working on electronic circuitry that was far beyond his own knowledge, Ralph realized that this guy was Lori's own age and they had known each other in Boston, before Lori had come to New York, before he had met her and fallen so hard for her. He heard someone sigh like a moonstruck moose. Himself.
"Maybe I should go out and get us a coupla beers," Malzone suggested.
"Not for me. Anyway, I think it's just about finished."
"Yeah?" The older man brightened.
Carl held his breath as he inserted the final filament lead. "Yeah," he said in a shaky whisper. "Yeah, I think that's it."
He straightened up painfully, his spine suddenly telling him that he had spent too many hours bent over his labor. Taking off the magnifiers, Carl blinked several times, then rubbed his eyes.
"Will it work now?" Malzone asked.
"It should."
Still, Carl's hands trembled slightly as he snapped the cover shut on the oblong case and turned it over so that its screen glinted in the lamp's powerful light.
He touched the first keypad with his index finger. The screen sprang to life instantly, glowing with color to reveal the title page of Rain Makes Applesauce.
Carl let out the breath he had not realized he'd been holding in. It worked. It worked!
He picked up the glowing box and offered it to Malzone, grinning. It looked much smaller in the sales manager's long-fingered, big-knuckled hands.
"What do I do?" Malzone asked.
"Just touch the green button to move ahead a page. Hold it down and it will riffle through the pages for you until you take your finger off. Then it'll stop. If you want a specific page, tap in the number on the little keyboard on the right."
Malzone spent several minutes paging back and forth. Looking over his shoulder, Carl saw that the screen was working fine: everything in clear focus. The illustrations looked beautifully sharp.
"Nice gadget," Malzone said at last, handing it back to Carl.
"Is that all you can say?"
Malzone hunched his shoulders. "It's an electronic way of looking at a book. Like a pocket TV, only you can see books with it instead of TV programs. Might make a nice fad gift for the Christmas season."
"But it's a lot more than that!" Carl said fervently. "This is going to replace books printed on paper! This is the biggest breakthrough since the printing press!"
"Nahhh." Malzone shook his head, his russet brows knitted. "It's a nice idea, but it's not going to replace books. Who'd buy a machine that's got to cost at least a hundred bucks when you can buy a hardcover book for fifty? And a paperback for less than ten?"
"Who would buy a hardcover or a paperback," Carl retorted, "when an electronic book will cost pennies?"
Malzone grunted, just as if someone had whacked him in the gut with a pool cue.
"Pennies?"
"Sure, the reader—this device, here—is going to cost more than a half-dozen books. But once you own one you can get your books electronically. Over the phone, if you like. The most expensive books there are will cost less than a dollar!"
"Now wait a minute. You mean . . ."
"No paper!" Carl exulted. "You don't have to chop down trees and make paper and haul tons of the stuff to the printing presses and then haul the printed books to the stores. You move electrons and photons instead of paper! It's cheap and efficient."
For a long moment Malzone said nothing. Then he sighed a very heavy sigh. "You're saying that a publisher won't need printers, paper, ink, wholesalers, route salesmen, district managers, truck drivers—not even bookstores?"
"The whole thing can be done electronically," Carl enthused. "Shop for books by TV. Buy them over the phone. Transmit them anywhere on Earth almost instantaneously, straight to the customer."
Malzone glanced around the shadows of the clean room uneasily. In a near whisper he told Carl, "Jesus Christ, kid, you're going to get both of us killed."
And deep within his innermost primitive self he thought, Maybe I ought to knock you off myself and save us both a lot of misery.
Typical Editor's Day
(Scheduled)
9:00 A.M.: Arrive in office.
9:05 A.M.: Read mail. Answer memos.
10:30 A.M.: Production meeting.
11:30 A.M.: Editorial board meeting.
12:30-1:30 P.M.: Lunch.
1:35 P.M.: Review readers' reports.
4:00 P.M.: Answer mail, phone calls.
5:00 P.M.: Leave for home, bringing manuscripts to read.
(Actual)
9:00 A.M.: Gobble breakfast.
9:05 A.M.: Catch train to office.
10:30 A.M.: Arrive office (tell them train was late).
10:35 A.M. Production meeting (argue with managing editor and art director).
11:15 A.M.: Coffee break.
11:30 A.M.: Editorial board meeting.
2:00 P.M.: Go to lunch (editorial board meeting ran late).
4:24 P.M.: Back from lunch with author and agent (cocktails, two bottles of wine plus brandy afterwards).
4:30-5:00 P.M.: Aspirin and Maalox.
5:00-6:30 P.M.: Catch up on office gossip.
6:30-7:30 P.M.: Drinks with the gang (why try to fight the rush hour?).
7:40 P.M.: Take train home (the Battle of Lexington Ave.).
8:45 P.M.: Fall asleep over TV dinner.
11:30 P.M.-12:30 A.M.: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson II.
The following morning, a bleary-eyed Carl Lewis sat before Mrs. Alba Blanca Bunker, the publisher of Bunker Books. Her husband, of course, was sole owner of the company—almost. A few shares of stock were scattered here and there, but the controlling interest was firmly in the hands of Pandro T. Bunker, his wife, and his only son, P.T. Jr.
The Boss sat behind her petite desk, with Junior at his mother's side, a crafty little smile on his narrow-eyed face. Mrs. Bunker was, as usual, dressed entirely in white. Her office was all in white as well: the dainty Louis-Something-or-Other furniture was bleached white, the carpeting looked like softly tufted white angora wool, the walls and ceiling were white cream. Carl had once been trapped in a sudden blizzard in the (where else?) White Mountains years earlier, and the effect of the Boss's office was much the same. Whiteout. Almost snowblind.
But warmer. Much warmer. Golden sunlight streamed through the windows of the corner office. And Mrs. Bunker was smiling pleasantly as she tapped away at Carl's invention, happily reading Rain Makes Applesauce from beginning to end.
Absolute silence reigned. Not even the crackle of a page being turned, of course. Carl watched the almost childlike expression on Mrs. Bunker's face as she read through the delightful book and studied its fascinating illustrations. Junior peered over her shoulder now and then, but mostly he seemed to be staring at Carl as if trying to size him up. Carl felt that uncomfortable sensation a man gets when he's confronted by a determined haberdashery salesman.
Lori sat beside him, close enough almost to touch. Their chairs were delicate, graceful, yet surprisingly comfortable.
The suit Mrs. Bunker was wearing seemed identical to the one she wore the previous day, to Carl. Her jewelry was different, however, although still all gold. Junior wore jeans and a ragged biker's T-shirt, complete with artificial sweat and grease stains. Its front bore a Bunker Books logo. Lori was in a simple wide-yoked light tan dress that showed her smooth shoulders to advantage.
Carl felt distinctly grubby. He had grabbed a few hours' sleep in the hotel room that Bunker had provided, and then climbed back into the same slacks and tweed jacket he had worn the day before. Except for one change of underwear and shirt, that was all the clothes he had brought with him.
Mrs. Bunker finished Rain Makes Applesauce at last, and put Carl's reader down on the immaculate surface of her little desk.
"It's a beautiful book," she said. "I noticed from the copyright date that it's almost fifty years old. Is it in the public domain yet? Can we reprint it?"
Surprised by her question, Carl stammered, "Gosh, I . . . it never occurred to me that you would want . . ."
"That's not really why we're here, Mrs. Bee," said Lori with equal amounts of politeness and firmness in her voice.
"Oh. Of course. I just thought that if the book is in the public domain we could publish it without the expense of paying the author."
"Or the illustrator," Junior chimed in.
Mother turned a pleased smile upon son.
"But how did you like the electro-optical reader?" Carl blurted, unable to stand the suspense any further.
Mrs. Bunker smiled again, but differently. "It's wonderful. It's everything you said it would be. The pages are crisp and clear, and the illustrations come out beautifully. I've never seen such brilliant colors in print. Well—let's say seldom, instead of never."
Reaching into his jacket pocket, Carl pulled out a half dozen more wafers and spread them out on the Boss's desk.
"Here we have War and Peace, Asimov's Guide to Everything, this year's World Almanac"—he pointed each one out with his index finger—"and these three contain the complete novels of James Michener."
"Really? All in those little disks?" Mrs. Bunker asked.
"All in these six wafers," Carl agreed. "I could provide you with the complete Encyclopedia Britannica in a pocketful more. Or two of Victor Hugo's novels in a single wafer."
"Hugo? Who publishes him?" asked Mrs. Bunker.
"Hey, Mom," Junior replied, "he does plays. He was big on Broadway the year I was born. Don't you remember, Dad almost named me John Val John." He pronounced the name like a New Yorker, and favored his mother with a condescending smile that pitied her lack of literary lore.
Carl glanced at Lori, who kept a perfectly straight face.
"It's a wonderful invention," Mrs. Bunker said again, "and I think you're right—this can transform the publishing industry. I believe that Bunker Books can become the nation's number-one publisher if we move ahead swiftly with this."
Carl felt a surge of—what? Satisfaction. Relief. Joy. Justification for all the months he had spent half starving and working twenty hours a day to create the electro-optical marvel that rested modestly on the desk of this woman in white. He felt gratitude, too. For deep within him, buried in the innermost convolutions of his mind, there lurked a stubborn fear that his invention was worthless, that any half-trained TV repair man could have figured it out, that it was nothing but a toy without any real value whatsoever.
But she thinks it's great, Carl told himself. She thinks it's going to transform the publishing industry, he rejoiced triumphantly to that inner voice of fear.
And the voice answered, Maybe so. She also thinks Victor Hugo is a Broadway playwright.
Carl found that he had to swallow a lump in his throat before he could say, "I'm very pleased, Mrs. Bunker. How do you want to proceed from here?"
"Proceed?" Her face suddenly looked blank.
"Do we sign a consulting agreement, or do you want me to become a contractor to Bunker Books? What kind of payments will Bunker Books make for the invention? What rights do you want to purchase? That sort of thing."
With a glance toward her son, Mrs. Bunker answered, "I'm not empowered to make any commitments of that sort. Only Mr. Bunker himself can do that."
"Then I suppose I'll have to demonstrate the device to him," Carl said, reaching for the reader.
Mrs. Bunker put on a smile that showed some teeth. "Couldn't you let me borrow it overnight? I'll show it to my husband this evening."
With alarm bells tingling in every nerve, Carl slowly slid the reader to the edge of the desk and gripped it in both his hands. "This is the only prototype in existence. I'm afraid I can't let it out of my sight. I'd be glad to show it to Mr. Bunker myself . . . ."
Mrs. Bee bit her lower lip. "That may be difficult. He's such a busy man . . . ."
Holding the reader firmly in his lap, Carl gestured with his other hand to the six wafers still resting on the desk top. "I can let you show the wafers to him. To give him an idea of how small and cheap books can be made."
"But he won't be able to read them without your device, will he?"
"I'm afraid not."
"What's the matter, don't you trust us?" Junior asked. His tone was light enough, almost bantering. But there was no levity in his face.
Carl replied, "This isn't personal. I decided before I left Boston that I would not let the prototype out of my sight."
A cloud of silence dimmed the all-white office.
"I'd be glad to show it to Mr. Bunker personally," Carl repeated.
"I suppose that's what we'll have to do, then," said Mrs. Bunker. "I'll see what I can arrange."
Feeling vastly relieved, Carl shot to his feet. "Thank you! You won't regret it."
He put out his hand to her, still staunchly grasping the prototype in his left hand. She made a sweet smile without getting up from her chair and touched his hand briefly, like a queen dispensing a blessing. Junior's eyes never left the device until Carl tucked it back into his black courier case.
Lori and Carl got as far as the door. Mrs. Bunker called, "Oh, Lori, dear. Could you stay a moment longer? There's something I want to discuss with you."
Carl stepped outside into the busy corridor where editors and other unidentified frenzied objects were dashing about. Mrs. Bunker had no secretary, no outer office. Bunker Books was a tightly run ship where computers and communications were used in place of salaried employees, Carl realized. It's criminal to use human beings in lackey jobs like secretarial work, he told himself. Nothing but ostentatious show for the people who hire them and degrading drudgery for the people who take such jobs. Electrons work more efficiently. And cheaper. Any job that can be done twice the same way ought to be done by a machine.
Then why do they have editors? he asked himself. Computers can check a manuscript's spelling and grammar much more thoroughly than any human being can. What do editors do that computers can't?
His ruminations were interrupted by Lori's stepping through the Boss's office door and out into the corridor. A grim-faced gray-haired man clutching a long trailing sweep of narrow white sheets of paper fluttering behind him like the tail of a kite bolted past them like an underweight halfback being pursued by the first-string defense. He brushed so close to Lori that she jumped into Carl's arms.
"Who was that?" he asked, releasing her as the gray flash disappeared down the hall.
"Grenouille, the assistant managing editor," Lori said without moving from his side. "He's always in a rush."
Carl shook his head. "This is an odd place."
"Isn't it, though?" Lori laughed.
As they headed back toward her office, Lori said, "How's your hotel room?"
He shrugged. "It's a hotel room. Okay, I guess. It's walking distance to the office."
"My apartment's down in the Village. How about letting me cook you dinner tonight?"
"Fine!"
"And then you can come and watch me dance."
Carl tried to stop his face from reddening, but he could feel his cheeks turning hot. "Uh, okay, sure."
Lori grinned up at him.
Alba Blanca Bunker sat on the edge of the enormous round waterbed waiting for her husband. She was tired. It had been a hectic, exhausting day. The new line of historic novels was not selling well. It had seemed so right: a line of novels based on true history, the actual deeds and romantic exploits of some of history's greatest figures—Cary Grant, Lynn Redgrave, Willie Nelson, Barbara Walters. But despite a six-million-dollar publicity campaign, the books were moldering in the warehouses. Nobody seemed to want them.
She sighed deeply and lay back on the waterbed, allowing her filmy white peignoir to drape itself dramatically across the tiger-striped sheets. She studied the effect in the overhead mirror. This bedroom had been their fantasy place when they had first built this home out of a converted warehouse next to the Disneydome, years earlier. With voice command either she or her husband could convert the holographic decor from jungle to desert, from underwater to outer space. With a sad little smile she remembered how the circuitry had blown itself out in a shower of sparks during one particularly vocal bout of lovemaking.
Nothing like that had happened for many years now. The room was a cool forest green, the scent of pine in the whispering breeze, the bint of a full moon silvering the drawn draperies of the window.
She knew where her husband was. In his office talking to Beijing, trying desperately to nail down the deal that would open up the Chinese market. A billion potential customers! It could mean the salvation of Bunker Books.
Or could this MIT whiz kid be their salvation? His invention worked, there was no denying it. How much would he want for it? How much would it cost to start a whole new line of operations, electronic books instead of paper ones? That's why we need the China deal, she told herself, to provide the capital for developing the electronic book. Otherwise . . .
There was still the tender offer from Tarantula Enterprises. Pandro would never sell his company. Never. He had built it practically from scratch, with nothing but the ten million his father had loaned him. Bunker Books was his creation, and he would go to hell and burn eternally before he would sell the company or any part of it.
Still—if she could get him to pretend to consider the Tarantula offer, they might be able to raise some capital from a few insiders down on Wall Street. No, that wouldn't work. Pandro wouldn't stoop to such chicanery. He would plug ahead stubbornly trying to close the China deal with those elusive, wily orientals. She did not trust men who spoke so politely, yet never quite seemed to do what they said they would.
The electronic book. We've got to have it. And somehow find the money to develop it. Nothing else matters. It's either that or bankruptcy.
She lay perfectly still on the beautiful bed in the beautiful room, waiting for her husband to come to her while her mind searched out a way to avoid the yawning black abyss that was ready to swallow Bunker Books. No path appeared safe; there was no way out of the financial chasm awaiting them. Except perhaps the electronic book. Perhaps.
She fell asleep waiting for her husband to leave his work and come to bed. She dreamed of electronic books and showers of golden coins pattering gently over the two of them as they lay coiled in a passionate embrace.