Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  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.

  Four

  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.”