Cyberbooks

by Ben Bova

  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.

  FIVE

  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.
r />   "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 traveling 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

  SIX

  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!"