The Writer eagerly pawed through the mail box hanging at a precarious tilt from the door of his rusted, dilapidated mobile home. It was not a very mobile home; so far as he knew, it had not moved an inch off the cinderblocks on which it rested since years before he had bought it, and that had been almost a decade ago.
Automatically ducking his head to get through the low doorway, he let the screen door slam as he riffled through the day's mail. Four bills that he could not pay, six catalogues advertising goods he could not afford, and a franked envelope bearing the signature of his congress woman, who was being opposed in the upcoming primaries by the owner of a chain of hardware stores.
Nothing from Bunker Books! Exasperated, the Writer tossed all the envelopes and catalogues onto his narrow bunk, which was still a mess of twisted sheets from his thrashing, tossing sleeplessness the night before.
Six months! They've had the manuscript for six months now. He had checked off the days on the greasy calendar hanging above the sink. The pile of dirty dishes nearly obscured it, but the red x's on the calendar showed how the days had marched, one after another, without a word from Bunker Books.
All the magazine articles he had studiously read in the town library said that the longer a publishing house held on to a manuscript, the more likely they were to eventually buy it. It meant that the manuscript had been liked by the first reader and passed on to the more important editors. They, of course, were so busy that you couldn't expect them to sit right down and read your manuscript. They were flooded with hundreds of manuscripts; thousands, more likely. It took time to get to the one that you had sent in.
But six months? The Writer had sent follow-up letters, servilely addressed to "First Reader" and "Editor for New Manuscripts." No response whatsoever. On one daring night, emboldened by several beers at Jumping Joe's Bar, he sent an urgent, demanding telegram to the Editor-in-Chief. It was never answered, either.
As he sat in the only unbroken chair in the cramped living room area and turned on the noontime news, the Writer felt close to despair. For all he knew, the manuscript had never even gotten to Bunker Books. Some wiseguy in the post office might have dumped it in a sewer, figuring it was too heavy to carry. He'd heard plenty of stories like that, especially around Christmastime.
On the TV screen the solemn yet bravely smiling face of the network anchorman was replaced by a scene somewhere in the Middle East. The U.S. secretary of state was back there, trying to get the Arabs and Jews to stop shooting at each other. Fat chance, thought the Writer.
But something the secretary of state said to the reporters caught his attention. "We must do everything we can do to bring about a satisfactory solution to the problem. No matter how slim the chances, we must not shrink from doing everything we can do."
It was as if the TV screen had gone blank after that. The Writer saw no more, heard no more. He stared off into a distant, personal infinity. He must do everything he can do, no matter how slim the chances.
Absolutely right! Instead of going to the fridge and pulling out a frozen dinner, the Writer stalked out the front door of the mobile home and got into his battered old GMota hatchback. He gunned the engine and drove out to the throughway heading north. Toward New York. They would probably fire him, back at the garbage recycling plant, when he didn't show up for work that night. The bill collectors would probably grab his mobile home and all its contents. So what? He was heading for New York, for Bunker Books, for his rendezvous with destiny.
He was already more than a hundred miles north when the tornado ripped through town. Suddenly his ex-home became very mobile and wound up in the bottom of the bay, seven miles from its original site. Police dredged the bay for three days without finding his body.
As he sat in the stuffy conference room, Carl thought he had somehow fallen down a rabbit hole or plunged into another dimension. Here he was with the greatest invention to hit the publishing world since Gutenberg, and the people around the conference table were ignoring him completely. The table looked cheap, hard-used. Carl ran a fingertip across its top: wood-grained Formica.
As one of the female editors droned on endlessly, Carl leaned toward Lori, sitting next to him. "They're talking about books," he whispered.
With a small grin she whispered back, "Of course, silly. This is the editorial board meeting."
"But what about my presentation?"
Lori's eyes flicked to the empty chair at the head of the table. "Not until the Boss comes in."
"The boss isn't here?"
"Not yet."
Carl sank back in his chair. It creaked. Or is it my spine? he wondered. The chair was old and stiff and uncomfortable. He was sitting at the foot of the table, farthest from the conference room's only door, squeezed in beside Lori. The Formica table top was scratched and chipped, he noticed. The walls of the windowless conference room bore faded color prints from the covers of old Bunker books.
Eight other editors sat slumped in various attitudes of boredom and frustration. Four men, four women, plus the male editor-in-chief, a pudgy little fellow with a dirty white T-shirt showing beneath his unzippered leather jacket, a fashionable two-day growth of beard on his round little chinny-chin-chin, pop eyes, and thick oily lips. He reminded Carl of a scaly fish. The editors all were dressed in ultramodish biker's black leathers with chains and studs, except for Lori in her simple golden-yellow sweater and midcalf denim skirt. A burst of sunshine in the midst of all the black gloom.
Editorial bored meeting, Carl said to himself. Then, with a mental shrug of his cerebral shoulders, he decided to pay attention to what the editors were saying. Maybe he could learn something about how the publishing business worked. It beat chewing his fingernails waiting for his moment to speak.
The editor sitting next to the chief, an enormous mountain of flesh, was droning like a Tibetan lama in a semitrance about Sheldon Stoker's latest horror novel. Her name was Maryann Quigly, and she gave every appearance of loathing her job.
"It's the same old tripe," she said in a voice that sounded totally exhausted, as if just the effort of getting up in the morning and dragging her bloated body to this meeting had almost overwhelmed her. "Blood, devil-worship, blood, supernatural doings, blood, and more blood. It's awful."
"But it sells," said Ashley Elton, the bone-thin, nasal-voiced editor sitting across the table from the lugubrious Ms. Quigly. Ashley Elton was not her real name: she had been born Rebecca Simkowitz, but felt that her parents should have given her a name that sounded more literary. Hence Ashley Elton. She was an intense, beady-eyed toothache of a woman with the pale pinched face and smudged black eye makeup of a Hollywood vampire. The living dead, Carl thought.
"Sure it sells," Maryann Quigly agreed, barely squeezing the words past her heavy-eyed torpor.
The editor-in-chief shook his wattles. "Stoker writes crap, all right, but it's commercial crap. It keeps this company afloat. If we ever lose him we all go pounding the pavements looking for new jobs."
Quigly sighed a long, pained, wheezing sigh.
"What'd we give him as an advance for his last book?" asked the editor-in-chief.
"One million dollars." Quigly drew out the words to such length that it took almost a full minute to say it.
"Offer him the same for this one."
"His agent will want more," snapped Ashley Elton (nee Simkowitz).
"Murray Swift," muttered the editor-in-chief. "Yep, he'll hold us up for a million two, at least." Turning back to Quigly, he instructed, "Offer a million even. Give us more room for negotiating."
One by one, the editors presented books that they thought the company should publish. Each presentation was made exactly the same way. The editor would give the book's title and author, and then a brief description of the category it fit into. Thus:
Jack Drain, the young ball of fire who sported a small Van Dyke on his receding chin, proposed Taurus XII: The Return of the Bull. "It's by Billy Bee Bozo, same as the other eleven in the series. Fantasy adventure, set in a distant age when men battled evil with swords and courage."
"And all the weemen have beeg breasts," said Concetta Las Vagas, the company's Affirmative Action "two-fer," being both Hispanic and female. There were those in Bunker Books who claimed she should be a "three-fer," since her skin was quite dark as well. There were also those who claimed that Concetta's idea of Affirmative Action was to say "Si, si," to any postpubertal male. The standard line among the office gossips was that a man could get lucky in Las Vagas.
"Look who's talking about beeg breasts," mimicked Mark Martin, who wore a pale lemon silk T-shirt beneath his biker's leather jacket, and a tastefully tiny diamond on his left nostril.
Drain frowned across the table at Las Vagas. "There are women warriors in this one. Bozo's not as much of a male chauvinist as he used to be."
"There go his sales," somebody mumbled.
Ted Gunn, sitting next to Drain, perked up on his chair. Although he wore leathers and metal studs just like the rest of the editors, he gave off an aura of restless energy that announced he was a Young Man Headed for the Top. He was the only one in the conference room who smoked; his place at the table was fenced in by a massive stainless-steel ashtray smudged with a layer of gray ash and six crushed butts, and a pair of electronic air purifiers that sucked the smoke out of the air so efficiently that they could snatch up notepaper and even loose change.
"What have sales been like for the Taurus series lately?" Gunn asked.
Drain said, "Good. Damned good." But it sounded weak, defensive.
"Haven't his sales been dropping with every new book?"
"Not much."
"But if a series is effective," Gunn said, suddenly the sharp young MBA on the prowl, "his sales should be going up, not down."
That started a long, wrangling argument about the marketing department, the art director's choice of cover artists, the hard winter in the Midwest, and several other subjects that mystified Carl. What could all that have to do with the sales of books? Why didn't they all have pocket computers, so they could punch up the sales figures and have them in hard numbers right before their eyes?
Carl shook his head in bewilderment.
With great reluctance, P. Curtis Hawks entered the private elevator that ran from his spacious office to the penthouse suite of the Synthoil Tower. Lapin had been ushered away in the grip of two burly security men to learn the lessons of failure. Now Hawks had to report that failure to the Old Man.
Once he had enjoyed talking with the Old Man, gleaning the secret techniques of power and persuasion that had built Tarantula Enterprises into one of the world's largest multinational corporations. But ever since the takeover battle had started, the Old Man had seemed to recede from reality, to slide into a private world that was almost childlike. Senility, thought Hawks. Just when we need him most, his mind turns to Silly Putty.
He whacked the only button on the elevator's control board four times before the doors could close, like a true New Yorker, impatient, urgent, demanding. The doors swished shut and he felt the heavy acceleration of upward thrust. Years ago, when he had first become president of Tarantula's publishing subsidiary, whenever Hawks entered this elevator he had pictured himself as an astronaut blasting off to orbit. I could have been an astronaut, he told himself. If only I could have passed algebra in high school.
The ride was all too swift. Hawks felt a moment of lightness as the elevator slowed to a stop. ("Zero gravity," he used to say to himself. "We have achieved orbit.") The doors slid smoothly open. The office of Weldon W. Weldon, president and chief executive officer of Tarantula Enterprises (Ltd.) lay before him.
It was a jungle. The office had been turned into a tropical greenhouse. Or maybe a zoo. All sorts of lushly flowering shrubs were growing out of huge ceramic pots dotting the vast expanse of the Old Man's office. Palm trees brushed their fronds against the ceiling. Raucous birds jeered from perches in the greenery, and Hawks heard a new sound—a hooting kind of howl that must have been a monkey or baboon or some equally noisome animal. Vines trailed along the incredibly expensive Persian carpeting. Hawks wrinkled his nose at the clashing, cloying scents of the jungle. For god's sake, look at the stains on the carpeting! Those goddamn birds!
There were snakes in those bushes, too, he knew. Poisonous snakes. The Old Man said he needed them for protection. Ever since the takeover struggle had started, he had become more and more paranoid. Said he was training them to guard him and attack strangers.
Wishing he had brought a machete, Hawks made his perilous way slowly through the Old Man's personal jungle. The heat and humidity were intolerable. Hawks's expensive silk suit was already soaked with perspiration. It dripped off the end of his pudgy nose and trickled along his belly and legs. His skull steamed under his toupee. He felt as if he were melting.
The old bastard changes the layout every day, he fumed to himself. One of these days I'm going to need a native guide to find his goddamned desk.
After nearly ten minutes of stalking around potted orchids and stepping over twisted vines (and hoping they were not snakes lying in wait), Hawks ducked under a low palm bole, turned a corner, and there in a clearing was the Old Man. Watering a row of Venus flytraps with a seltzer bottle.
Weldon W. Weldon sat in his powered chair, in his usual undertaker's black suit, a heavy plaid blanket tucked over his lap, blissfully spritzing the Venus flytraps. His back was to the approaching Hawks. A line from Shakespeare sprang into Hawks's mind: "Now might I do it, Pat."
Hawks had never understood who Pat was, and why he had no lines to speak in the scene. But he understood opportunity when he saw it. I could come up behind him, whisk the blanket off his lap, and smother him with it. Nobody would know, and I would be elected to replace him, Hawks told himself.
Then he saw the jaguar lying indolently in the corner by the picture windows. Its burning eyes were fastened on Hawks, and there was no chain attached to its emerald-studded collar. Hawks was not certain that anyone could train a snake to attack on command, but he had no doubts whatsoever about the jaguar. He swallowed his ambition. It tasted like bile. The sleek cat purred like the rumble of a heavy truck.
The president and chief executive officer of Tarantula Enterprises (Ltd.) spun his powered chair around to face Hawks. Weldon was old, stooped, wrinkled, totally bald, and confined to his powered chair since his massive coronary more than a year earlier. The coronary, of course, had come in the midst of Tarantula's battle to avoid an unfriendly takeover by Etna Industries, a multinational corporation headquartered in Sicily and reputed to be a wholly owned Mafia subsidiary. A decidedly unfriendly takeover bid. The struggle was still going on, the battlefields were the stock exchanges of New York, London, and Rome, the law courts of Washington and Palermo. This war had already cost Weldon his health. Maybe his sanity.
And there was no end in sight. The swarthy little men from Sicily had great persistence. And long memories. Hawks could feel the brooding Sicilians hovering over them, like dark angels of death, waiting for the chance to grab Tarantula in their rapacious claws.
"You didn't get it," the Old Man snapped. His voice was as sharp and scratchy as an icepick scraping along a chalk board.
"Not exactly," said Hawks from around his pacifier. His tone was meekly servile. He hated himself for it, but somehow in the face of the Old Man he always felt like a naughty little kid. Worse: an incompetent little kid.
"And what do you mean by that?" Weldon laid his seltzer bottle on the blanket across his lap and drove the chair over to his desk. Its electric motor barely buzzed, it was so quiet. The once immaculate expanse of Philippine mahogany was now a miniature forest of unidentifiable potted plants. Hawks had to sit at just the right angle to see his boss through a clearing in the greenery.
"The man we hired to copy the device used too strong an X-ray dose," Hawks confessed, feeling sheepish.
"And? And?"
"The hologram contains a complete three-dimensional picture of the device, but it's a very weak image. Blurred. Very difficult to make out any details."
Weldon snorted. His wizened old face frowned at Hawks. "I see," he sneered. "If I want a perfect three-D image of a taxicab's rear axle, you can get it for me. But not the device we're after."
Hawks felt a shudder of fright burn through him. He's bugged my office! He's been listening to everything that I do!
Pointing a crooked, shaking finger at Hawks, the old man commanded, "You get the best people in NASA, or the air force, or wherever to work on that fudged hologram. I want to see that device!"
Hawks swallowed again. Hard. "Yessir."
"And get somebody who knows what he's doing to make another copy of it. Steal the damned thing if you have to!"
"Right away, sir."
Weldon's frown relaxed slightly. He almost smiled, a ghastly sight. "Now listen, son," he said, suddenly amiable. "Don't you understand how important this device is? It's going to revolutionize the publishing industry."
"But publishing is such a small part of Tarantula," Hawks heard himself object. "Why bother . . ."
He stopped himself because the old man's smile faded into a grimace.
"How many times do I have to tell you," Weldon said sharply, "that publishing is the keystone to all of Tarantula's business lines? Control publishing and you control people's minds, their attitudes. Books and magazines and newspapers tell people what to think, how to vote, where to spend their money. How many idiots do you know who let the Times book reviews decide for them what's good reading and what isn't?"
"But what about TV?" Hawks asked, unfazed by the non sequitur. "And even radio . . ."
The old man snarled at him, making the jaguar's ears perk up. "Television? Are you serious?" He cackled. "Those Twinkies and egomaniacs get their ideas and their information from books and magazines and newspapers! Don't you understand that yet? Why do you think I put you in charge of our publishing subsidiary? Because I thought you were incompetent?"
That was exactly why Hawks thought he had been made president of Webb Press. But he remained silent as Weldon continued:
"Sure, Webb runs in the red every year. It's a good tax shelter for us; the more money Webb loses, the less taxes we pay. But the books Webb publishes are important to the rest of Tarantula. The magazines and newspapers even more so."
Hawks nodded to show he understood. He did not agree, of course, but if the Old Man thought publishing was that important, he was not going to argue.
"This device," Weldon went on, "this electronic book doohickey . . . it's the wave of the future. We've got to have it!"
"But—"
"Don't you understand?" Weldon's eyes began to shine, he seemed to vibrate with inner energy. "With electronic books we can undercut all the other publishers. We can corner the entire publishing industry!"
"Do you really think so?" Hawks felt entirely dubious. Clearly the Old Man's trolley was derailed.
Weldon's eyes were glowing now. His arms stretched out to encompass the world. Hawks almost thought he was going to rise out of his chair and walk.
"First we take over publishing here in the States," he said, his voice deep, powerful. "But that's just the spring freshet that precedes the flood. From the States we go to Japan. From Japan to Europe. Soon all the world will be ours! One publishing house, telling the whole world what to think!"
The Old Man sank back in his chair, panting with the exertion of his dynamic vision.
"I . . . I think I understand," Hawks murmured. And he almost did.
"This young engineer—what's his name?"
"Carl Lewis, sir."
"We've got to have his invention. One way or the other, we've got to have it!"
"I've already taken steps in that direction, sir."
Weldon scowled at him. "Such as?"
Feeling pleased as a puppy laying his master's slippers before the great man's feet, Hawks said, "I have arranged for one of our editors to be hired away from us by Bunker Books."
The Old Man's scowl melted into a crooked grin. "A spy in their camp, eh?"
"A Mata Hari, in fact."
"Ms. Dean, isn't it? Very attractive woman. Very formidable."
Again Hawks shuddered inwardly. He has bugged my office. He knows everything I'm doing.
"Well, if you don't have anything else to tell me, get on with your work. Get me that electronic book." Weldon made a shooing motion with his long-fingered, liver-spotted hands.
Hawks got up from his chair, dreading the trek through the Old Man's jungle. There were a lot of snakes between him and the elevator.
"Oh, one little thing more," the Old Man said, with a slight cackling that might have been laughter. "There's going to be a few changes at Webb. I've hired a new assistant for you."
Hawks turned back to face Weldon. He had to stand on tiptoe to see over the plants on his desk. "An assistant?" His voice nearly cracked with anxiety.
"Yes. A corporate systems engineer. What we used to call an efficiency expert in the old days."
"Corporate . . ." Hawks knew what the title meant: hatchet man.
"Gunther Axhelm." Weldon's wrinkled face was grinning evilly. "You may have heard of him."
Hawks's knees turned to water. Heard of him? Who hadn't heard of Axhelm the Axe, the man who single-handedly reduced General Motors to a museum with a staff of six, the man who fired four thousand management employees of AT&T in a single afternoon and drove Du Pont out of business altogether. He was coming to Webb! Might as well get in line for unemployment compensation now, before the rush.
"Don't get scared," the Old Man said, almost kindly.
"Scared? Me?"
"You're white as an albino in shock, son."
Hawks tried to control the fluttering of his heart. "Well, Axhelm's got quite a reputation . . . ."
"Nothing for you to worry about, son. I promise you. Just give him a free hand. It'll all work out for the best."
"Yessir."
"And get that electronic book for me! I want it in our hands. I want this brilliant young inventor on our team—or out of the picture altogether. Do you understand me?"
"Certainly, sir." Hawks saw the diamond-hard glint in the Old Man's eyes and decided that he would rather face the snakes.
Weldon W. Weldon watched his protégé slink away through the jungle foliage. "Brain the size of a walnut," he muttered to himself. "But he follows orders, like a good Nazi."
With a sigh, Weldon poked a bony finger at the floral design on one of the ceramic pots atop his desk. The plants were all plastic, beautiful fakes. The pot's curved surface turned milky, then steadied into a three-dimensional image of Tarantula's corporate organization chart.
Tapping a few more places here and there among the flower pots, Weldon got the display to show the distribution of stockholders in Tarantula. Although he himself was the largest individual stockholder, he only owned twelve percent of the company. There were others out there, selling out to the Sicilians.
It was a complicated situation. Tarantula was supposedly an independent corporation. But Synthoil Inc. owned a majority of the stock, and Tarantula was in fact controlled by that Houston-based corporation. Yet sizable chunks of stock were owned by other companies, too, such as Mozarella Bank & Trust—an obvious Mafia front.
The old man shook his head tiredly. The stockholders meeting coming up this November will determine the fate of the corporation, and I'm not even sure who the hell owns the company!
Reader's Report
Title: Midway Diary
Author: Ron Clanker (Capt., U.S.N., [Ret.])
Category: WWII historical fiction
Reader: Elizabeth Jane Rose
Synopsis: Tells the story of the Battle of Midway from the point of view of a young navy officer serving aboard a U.S. ship. He is in love with a Japanese-American woman who lives in Hawaii, which causes no end of troubles because we are at war with Japan at the time. I don't know much about WWII (I was an English major, of course), but his writing is vivid and there's not too much blood and machismo. The novel is really very romantic and sensitive in spite of all the war stuff.
Recommendation: Should be considered seriously by the editorial board.
After two hours, Carl finally began to understand the way the editorial board worked, although it didn't seem to make any sense.
He had thought, from the little Lori had told him, that the purpose of the meeting was to decide which books Bunker would publish, out of all the manuscripts the editors had received since the last meeting. One by one, each editor seated around the conference table described a book manuscript that he or she believed should be published. The editor usually started with the author's name and a brief listing of the author's previous books. Then the editor spoke glowingly of the book's subject matter: "This one is hot!" was a typical remark. "A diet that allows you to eat all the chocolate you want!"
Not a word was said about the quality of the writing, nor of the ideas or philosophies the writers were writing about. The editors talked about each manuscript's category (whatever that was) and the author's track record. Are they talking about writers or racehorses? Carl wondered. After the first hour he decided that the editors viewed their writers as horses. Or worse.
That much he understood. But what followed confused Carl, at first. For no matter how enthusiastically a book was described by the editor presenting it, the rest of the editors seemed to go right to work to destroy it.
"His last two novels were duds," one of the other editors would say.
Or, "I can just picture the sales force trying to sell that in the Middle West."
"He's out of his category; he doesn't have a track record with mysteries."
"It's just another diet book. Even if it does work it'll get lost on the shelves."
Slowly it dawned on Carl that the real purpose of the editorial board meeting was not to decide which books Bunker would publish. It was to decide which they would not publish. He felt like a child watching a great aerial battle in which every plane in the sky would inevitably, inexorably, be shot down.
Except for the Sheldon Stoker horror novel, which everyone agreed was so terrible that it would sell millions of copies. Carl began to wonder how Thackeray or Graves or Hawthorne would get through an editorial board meeting. Not to mention Hesse or Hugo or Tolstoy. Not that he had read the works of those masters, of course; but he had seen dramatizations of their novels on public television.
As the second hour dragged on into the third, and Carl's stomach began to make anticipatory noises about lunch, the Moment of Truth moved down the table and finally arrived at Lori's chair.
"Well, Ms. Tashkajian," asked the editor-in-chief, "what priceless work of art do you have for us today?" Carl thought the mouth-breathing bastard was being awfully sarcastic.
Lori forced a smile, though, from her seat at the foot of the table and began to speak glowingly about a novel titled Midway Diary.
"But it's a first novel!" gasped Ted Gunn, once he realized that the author had written nothing earlier. "The guy's got no track record at all! How's the sales force going to tell how many copies he ought to sell if he's never had a book out there before?"
"It's a good novel," said Lori.
"Goods we get at a fabric store," giggled Gina Lucasta, who sat just to Lori's left. She was one notch above Lori in seniority, and she was not about to let the lowliest member of the editorial board move past her. She had started with the company as a receptionist, but her surly way with visitors, her propensity to cut off telephone calls at the switchboard, and her apparent inability to get even the simplest message to its intended recipient resulted in her being promoted to the editorial staff, where, it was felt by management, she could not do so much damage to the company.
Lori answered softly, "This novel has romance for the women and war action for men. Properly promoted, it could become a best-seller."
"By a first-timer?" Ted Gunn scoffed. "Do you know the last time a totally unknown writer made it to the best-seller list?"
"That was when the publishing house recognized that the book had terrific potential and backed it to the hilt," Lori said sweetly.
"It's a historical novel?" asked the editor-in-chief.
"World War Two."
"What page does the rape scene come on?"
Lori shook her head. "There isn't any rape scene. It's more romantic than a bodice ripper."
"A historical novel without a rape scene in it? Who'd buy it?"
Lori bit her lips and did not reply. Ashley Elton started to say, "Most women are offended by that kind of violence. Just because—"
But at that moment the door swung open and the Boss stepped into the room.
All the editors stood up. Kee-ripes, thought Carl as he reluctantly got to his feet, this is worse than kindergarten. But he realized that his buttocks had gone numb from sitting so long on the uncomfortable chair. It felt good to be off his backside.
The relief lasted only a moment. The Boss nodded a tight-lipped hello to the editorial board, cast a slightly raised eyebrow at Carl, and took the chair at the head of the table. The editor-in-chief held the chair for her as she daintily sat down.
The Boss was a slim blond woman of an age that Carl was hopelessly unable to fathom. More than thirty, less than sixty; that was all he could estimate. Her skin was glowing and flawless, like the finest porcelain. Her hair was cut short, almost boyish, but as impeccably coiffed as a TV ad. Although she obeyed the dictates of current fashion and wore a biker-type suit, it was all of pure white leather, both jacket and slacks, with a slightly frilly white blouse beneath. Where the others wore metal chains or studs, the Boss wore gold. Gold necklaces, several chains, and heavy gold bracelets on both wrists. Carl could not see (and probably would not have noticed, even if he had been close enough to see) the cold, hard glint of her eyes. They were the tawny fierce eyes of an eagle; they missed nothing, especially opportunities for making money.
The editor-in-chief, whose appearance looked even grubbier next to this saintly vision of white and gold, said to the Boss, "We're almost finished, Mrs. Bunker, but if you want us to review everything for you . . ."
"That won't be necessary," said Mrs. Bunker in a tiny china doll's voice that everyone strained to hear. "I have a few announcements to make."
Carl sensed tension crackle across the conference table. Several of the editors actually drew back in their chairs, as if trying to avoid some invisible sniper's bullet that was heading their way.
"First, the rumors that our company will be bought out by some multinational corporation are strictly rumors. Mr. Bunker has no intention of selling his company to anyone."
They relaxed so hard that Carl could feel the breeze of their sighs gusting past him at close to Mach 1.
"Second, our son P.T. Junior has graduated with honors from the Wharton School of Business—"
A round of "Ahhs" and clapping interrupted her. When it died down, Mrs. Bunker continued. "And will join the company as a special assistant to the publisher. You can expect him to attend the next editorial board meeting."
The congratulatory vibrations in the air vanished like the smoke from a birthday cake's candles.
"Third, we have been fortunate enough to obtain the services of one of the top editors in the business, Scarlet Dean. She has accepted our offer and will start here on Monday." The Boss allowed a satisfied smile to bend her lips slightly.
"She's leaving Webb Press?" asked one of the editors.
"But she was the head of their romance and inspirational lines!"
"I invited her to lunch a few weeks ago," said Mrs. Bunker, "and"—her smile broadened—"made her an offer she couldn't refuse."
"Wonderful!"
"Just what we needed!"
"A real coup!"
The congratulations buzzed around the table; everyone seemed anxious to get their word in. All except the editor-in-chief, who looked slightly puzzled.
Once the acclamations died down, Mrs. Bunker turned to the man and said softly, "I'm afraid we can't have two editors-in-chief, Max."
The man's stubbly jaw flapped several times, like a flounder gasping on the hard planks of a dock, but no sounds came out.
"I'd appreciate it if you'd clear out your office by the end of the day," said the Boss with the sweetness of a Borgia princess.
The man slumped back in his chair, his face white and lifeless, his eyes round and vacant. The rest of the editors looked away, as if fearing to be touched by his hollow-eyed stare. Carl felt hollow himself; he had never seen a public execution before.
Mrs. Bunker looked down the table, toward Carl. "Now then, Lori. Is this the young genius who's going to transform the publishing industry?"
With a visible swallow to clear her throat, Lori nodded and said, "This is Carl Lewis, assistant professor of software design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He's brought us the prototype of the device that will become as important to the world as the printing press was."
"Let's see it," said the Boss with a slight smile. It looked to Carl as if she was amused by Lori's grandiose claim.
Carl got to his feet once again. As he unzipped his courier case he began to explain, "The concept of the electronic book is nothing new; people have been predicting it for years. What is new is that"—he pulled his invention out and held it up for them all to see—"here it is!"
Total disinterest. The editors did not react at all. It was if he had pulled out a bologna sandwich or a copy of the postal service's zip code guide. Nothing. Carl could not see Lori's beaming face, of course, because she was sitting beside him. And he did not know Mrs. Bunker well enough to detect the gold-seeking glitter in her eyes and the tiny, furtive dart of her tongue across her lower lip. The just fired editor-in-chief, of course, simply sat there like a dead fish, his mouth gaping open, his eyes staring at nothing.
Somewhat grimly, Carl went on with his prepared presentation. "More than ninety percent of a publisher's costs stem from moving megatonnages of paper across the country, from the paper mills to the printers, from the printers to the warehouses, from the warehouses to the wholesalers, from the wholesalers to the retail outlets."
Mrs. Bunker nodded slightly.
"I contend that publishers are in the information business, not the wood pulp and chemical industry. What you want to get into the hands of your readers is information—which does not necessarily have to be in the form of ink marks on paper."
Holding his device up for them all to see, Carl said, "This is an electronic book. It does away with the need for paper and ink."
"How does it work?" Lori prompted brightly in the silence of the rest of the editors.
Placing his device on the scarred top of the conference table, Carl explained, "Instead of printing books on paper, you 'print' them on miniature electro-optic wafers, like the diskettes used in computers, only smaller. This device in my hand allows you to read the book. The screen here shows you a full page. It can show illustrations as well as printed material; in fact, the quality of the pictures can be made better than anything you can achieve with the printed page."
"Can you show us?" Mrs. Bunker asked.
"Sure," replied Carl. "I've programmed one of my favorite children's books onto a wafer. It's called Rain Makes Applesauce . . . ."
Carl reached into his bag again and pulled out the tiny electro-optic wafer. It was barely the size of a postage stamp. "A wafer this size, incidentally, can hold more than a thousand pages of text."
Still no response whatsoever from the assembled editors. A few of them, however, glanced sideways toward the Boss, waiting to see her reaction and then follow suit.
Carl slid the electro-optic wafer into his device with the tap of a forefinger. "These touchpads work just about the same as a videocassette recorder's controls: start, stop, fast forward, reverse. You can also punch in a specific page number and the screen will go right to that page."
Holding the slim oblong box up so that they all could see its screen, Carl tapped the "start" button. Nothing happened.
"Shouldn't do that," he muttered, frowning. Carl touched it again. Still nothing appeared on the screen.
Suddenly perspiring, Carl pressed frantically on each of the touchpads in turn. The screen remained stubbornly blank.
Now the editors reacted. They laughed uproariously. They guffawed. All except the former editor-in-chief, who still sat there with his mouth hanging open and his eyes staring as sightlessly as a flounder on ice in a fish store display.