Cyberbooks (26 page)
ROOM AT THE TOP
P. Curtis Hawks sat at the broad desk in the spacious office on the next-to-the-top floor of the Synthoil Tower. Chairman of the board of Tarantula Enterprises (Ltd.). At last!
He wore a magnificent military uniform of his own special design, heavy with braid and medals. The emergency meeting of the board of directors the previous week had gone extremely well: he had been elected chairman unanimously. Weldon W. Weldon was safely tucked away in a well-guarded private sanitarium far upstate, pretending to be a cripple once again. The Old Man was hopelessly insane and would spend the rest of his days in his powered chair making imaginary deals with phantom associates and tiptoeing around his funny farm at night to slaughter hallucinatory rivals.
It had taken the better part of two weeks to clear away the jungle that the Old Man had created. Just cleaning the rugs had been a Herculean task. But now the office was back the way it should be: sparkling, grand, imposing, even humbling to the lower-caste visitor.
Hawks inhaled deeply and smelled the new leather and high-gloss aroma of power. He sat in his magnificent elevated chair. It's mine, he congratulated himself. All mine!
The desk phone chirped.
"Answer answer," Hawks said crisply.
"Mr. Hawks, sir"—the phone computer's voice was that of a groveling
bhisti's
singsong—"a certain Mr. MacDonald McDougall requests the honor of your presence in the boardroom of the Synthoil Corporation at eleven o'clock this morning sharply, sir."
Hawks exhaled. The Synthoil board wanted to meet him. The computer was merely reminding him of the appointment in the groveling way it had been programmed.
Hawks took the private elevator up the one flight to the Synthoil offices. While Tarantula was on the next-to-the-top floor of the mighty tower, Synthoil was at the very top.
A slim, dark, curly-haired young man dressed in a jet-black Italian silk suit was waiting for Hawks at the elevator doors. Without a word, he ushered Hawks into the plush and paneled conference room of the Synthoil Corporation.
MacDonald McDougall smiled genially at Hawks, Even though Hawks had never before met the CEO of Synthoil, the Scotsman's bushy red beard and handsome mustache were unmistakable. He wore a bulky tweed business suit, with a plaid sash of the distinctive McDougall tartan slanting beneath his jacket.
"Sit yerself doon, Mr. Hawks," said McDougall, waving his huge hand toward the only empty chair at the long, gleaming conference table.
The chair was at the very foot of the table. All the men on one side of the table were stocky, frozen-faced Orientals, dressed in gray business suits. And every man sitting on the other side was dark of hair, wide of girth, and dressed in jet-black suits of Italian silk. And sunglasses.
Hawks's heart sank as he was introduced to his new masters.
WINTER,
BOOK IV
RETIRED NAVY OFFICER DIES
Chelsea, MA.
Capt. Ronald Reginald Clanker, USN (Ret ), died yesterday in the Army/Navy nursing home where he had spent his final ten years.
Capt. Clanker, last remaining veteran of the Battle of Midway in 1942, was 93. He was the author of
Passion in the Pacific,
a novel published three weeks before his death. According to a spokesperson for the nursing home, Capt. Clanker suffered a fatal heart attack shortly after being informed that his book was no longer available for sale, and all unsold copies had been pulped by the publisher.
There are no survivors.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Two things surprised Carl that cold February afternoon.
First had been the telephone call from P. T. Bunker, Junior. Out of the blue, Junior had invited Carl for drinks at the Parker House in downtown Boston.
Second was the snow. The day had dawned frostily clear, and the sky had still been crystalline when Carl had entered his lab building at MIT. He had scooted along the basement tunnels to get to his 2:00 p.m. class, as he usually did. It was quicker and warmer; he didn't need a winter coat. After the class he had returned to his windowless laboratory through the same tunnels.
So when he stepped outside for the first time since early morning, he was surprised that nearly a foot of snow lay on the ground, with more gently sifting down out of a darkened sky.
It took a little longer for the transit train to make the short run from MIT station to Beacon Hill, but Carl reached the cozy bar of the Parker House only a few minutes after four.
Junior was already there, at a little table in the corner, chatting amiably with the cocktail waitress.
They shook hands, Carl took off his snow-wet coat, and settled down onto one of the comfortable easy chairs. He ordered a light beer. Junior was drinking something big and bulbous and frothy, exotic and lethal looking.
Junior looked somehow more mature, more relaxed with himself, than he had a scant few months earlier, the last time Carl had seen him. Maybe it's his clothes, Carl thought. Junior was wearing a conservative beige business suit with an executive's turtleneck shirt of sky blue.
"How've you been?" they asked in unison. Then they laughed.
"You first," Junior insisted.
Carl shrugged. "Doing okay, I guess. Got some bright kids in my classes. Tinkering with some new ideas for electro-optical computers that will link directly to the nerve system. Working with a couple of biologists from Harvard on that one."
Junior nodded. "And the Cyberbooks idea?"
The pang that sliced through him made Carl wince visibly. "That's dead. No publisher wants to touch it."
"Too bad," said Junior.
Carl nodded, thinking more of Lori than his invention.
The waitress brought Carl's beer and smiled prettily at Junior. He grinned back at her. Then, turning to Carl, he said, "I've gotten out of the publishing business, too. With Mom and Dad off sailing around the world and Ralph doing such a good job of running the company, I went out and looked for new worlds to conquer."
"Really?" Carl felt no real curiosity, no interest at all.
"Yup. I'm in the toy business now." Some of the old craftiness seemed to creep back into his expression.
Carl sipped at his beer because he did not know quite what to reply.
Junior went ahead anyway. "Y'know, I've been thinking. The toy industry is a lot different from book publishing. The accent is on innovation, new ideas, new gadgets." He laughed. "You've got to run damned fast to stay ahead of the five-year-olds!"
Carl thought of the nephews and nieces he saw at Christmastime. "Yes," he agreed. "They can be pretty sharp."
Junior licked his lips and leaned closer to Carl. Lowering his voice, he said, "I was wondering if you could make a Cyberbooks kind of thing for kids. You know, something to help them learn to read. And then they could keep it and go on to
real
books as they get older."
The only sound that Carl could get past his utter surprise was, "Huh?"
Junior explained the idea to him again. And then once more.
"But it's the same device, the exact same thing," Carl blurted, once he was certain he understood what Junior was saying. "The only thing that changes is the content of the books we put on the chips. We'd be doing children's books instead of adult books."
Junior's smile widened. "Right, except that there's one other thing that changes."
"What's that?"
"The distribution system. We distribute Cyberbooks through toy stores, not bookstores. We won't have any trouble with guys like Woody Baloney."
"Won't the toy salesmen . . ."
"They already spend most of their time pushing electronic gadgets for the kids. Cyberbooks will be just another toy, as far as they're concerned."
Sinking back in his soft chair under the realization of what Junior was suggesting, Carl said, "You could create a whole new kind of book publishing industry this way."
"That's right," Junior agreed, looking as if he had just swallowed the most delicious canary in the history of the world. "We start in the toy industry, but we end up taking over the entire publishing industry. It'll be Cyberbooks, just the way you wanted it!"
"Through the back door."
"Right."
Carl thought it over. "It could hurt a lot of people. People we know, like Ralph and the others."
"They can come to work for us, when the time comes."
"I don't know. . . ."
Leaning even closer, Junior said, "We'll have to start out on a shoestring. You and I will be equal partners, we'll share everything right down the middle, fifty-fifty. And, of course, you'll have to spend a lot of time in New York. Probably have to come down to the city every week or so."
"Every week?"
A small shrug. "Every week, ten days. Give you a chance to see old friends, huh?"
Lori's phone number flashed through Carl's mind. He thought he had forgotten it, but every digit shone in his thoughts. He stuck his hand out and Junior grabbed it and pumped it hard.
"You've got a deal," Carl said.
EPILOGUE
Fifty Years Later
News Release
WASHINGTON, D.C. The Library of Congress put on display today the last book to be printed on paper in the United States. Carefully protected in a shatterproof glass airtight casing, the book—the fortieth edition of the classic novel,
Mobile, USA
—will remain on public display until the end of the year.
Carl Lewis, Jr., son of the inventor of Cyberbooks, said at the opening ceremony, "My father would have been proud, I'm sure, to see his invention of the electro-optical publishing system totally replace paper books. He was a dedicated ecologist, and he loved both literature and trees."
Mrs. Lori Tashkajian Lewis, the inventor's widow and managing director of Cyberbooks Inc., added, "Back in the old days, when my late husband first invented Cyberbooks, there were fears that electronic publishing would destroy the book industry. History has shown that those fears were groundless."
With tears in her eyes, Mrs. Lewis continued, "I'm proud to have played a small role in bringing inexpensive literature to
the huge masses of poor people all around the world."
Cyberbooks' latest publication, she revealed, is
Blood of the Virgin
, by Sheldon Stoker Beta, one of the clones of the late best-selling author.