Cyberbooks

by Ben Bova

The gunman jerked as if a spasm had struck him and grabbed the Uzi submachine gun from the collection spread out before him.

  "Sit down!" he screeched.

  The lawyer took a small white oblong from his pocket and held it above his head. "I just wanna give y'all my card. You're gonna need a lawyer. . . ."

  "And you're going to need a mortician if you don't sit down!"

  The lawyer sat.

  "And shut up! Keep your lying goddamned mouth shut!"

  Far in the back of the courtroom, Lieutenant Moriarty sat in frustrated silence. He was unarmed, since the hospital personnel had routinely taken his gun, badge, and other possessions from him and stashed them in the hospital's storage center. His unauthorized leavetaking had prevented him from claiming his stuff.

  Patience, he told himself. Patience, Jack old boy. This nutcake can't stay awake forever. Sooner or later he'll doze off, and that's when you grab him.

  Provided you don't fall asleep yourself, first.

  Moriarty studied the lean, lank, scruffy gunman. He can't be the Retiree Murderer. This isn't the same style at all, and therefore not the same man. But the murderer is in this courtroom, I know it. I can feel it. And so is his next intended victim.

  He easily identified P. T. Bunker, Jr., up front with his mother and father. But try as he might, he could not find anyone who looked like the man who had tried to kill him. The harsh glow from the reflected searchlights cast strange shadows across faces, making it difficult to see people's eyes.

  The murderer sat across the courtroom from Moriarty. He had recognized the police lieutenant shortly after the gunman had taken over, and wondered why Moriarty had not simply shot the maniac between the eyes and gotten this whole ordeal over with. He trusted that his disguise would keep him safe enough; after all, Moriarty hardly got even a moment's glance at him when he had attacked the lieutenant with the poisonous orchid's thorn.

  But what was Moriarty doing here, in this courtroom? And why didn't the poison kill him, as it should have? The murderer had taken off his trenchcoat and folded it into a neat little cushion that he now sat on, fairly comfortably. He fingered the slim plastic box in his right jacket pocket. Inside it was another poisonous thorn from the deadly Rita Hayworth orchid.

  Should I knock off young Bunker while that police detective is so close? he asked himself. Probably not. Although—if the cops try to break in and grab the idiot up there who's taken us hostage, there's bound to be a lot of shooting. Perhaps I could get to Bunker Junior then and do the job, in all the confusion.

  Wait and see, the murderer told himself. Wait and see.

  One other man was counseling himself to be patient: Justice Hanson Hapgood Fish. He sat slumped on the witness chair, unwilling to move any farther from his rightful seat of authority. He glowered up at the man who had taken over his chair. The blue veins in his forehead throbbed with unconcealed fury. This mangy bum, this crazed idiot, has taken over my courtroom. My courtroom! He's allowing all sorts of people to use my private toilet. Who knows what kinds of sickies and perverts are pissing in my bowl?

  Judge Fish tried to force himself to be calm, without much success. He closed his eyes and imagined himself as the Grand Inquisitor of the good old days in Spain, with this filthy disgusting derelict stretched on the rack. "Boil the oil," Justice Fish muttered to himself. "Heat the branding irons."

  He smiled cruelly.

  "You people all think I'm crazy, don't you?"

  All eyes shifted to the man up at the banc.

  "You think I'm just some wild-eyed fruitcake who's gone berserk. I know what you're thinking. I can see it in your faces. Well, I'm not crazy. And even if I am, it's you people who drove me to it." He waved a heavy Colt pistol at the staring audience.

  The Writer enjoyed the attention. "You think you're so damned high and mighty. Well, I'm here to tell you that you ain't. I'm here to show you that I'm just as good as you are. Maybe better."

  He rambled on for hours, as the night grew colder but not darker, thanks to the spotlights flooding through the windows. People curled up on the hard wooden benches and tried to sleep. Eventually the Writer stopped speaking to them. But he dared not close his eyes.

  From time to time the telephone back in Judge Fish's chambers rang, but the Writer would not let anyone answer it.

  "I'm not ready to talk to them yet. I still got plenty I want to tell you people."

  But he lapsed into a grudging silence, and the thirty-eight hostages drifted into little knots of twos and threes.

  "Do you think we'll get out of this alive?" Scarlet Dean asked in a small, frightened voice.

  "Sure we will," said Ralph Malzone with a certainty that he did not feel. He put his arm around Scarlet protectively, and felt her trembling. "We'll be okay, Red. We'll be fine, you'll see."

  "As long as you're with me," Scarlet said, fighting back tears of terror. "I can stand anything if you're with me, Ralph."

  "I'm right beside you, baby. All the way."

  Pandro T. Bunker was also comforting his wife as the chill of November began to seep into the unheated courtroom.

  "It's all my fault," Alba Bunker was saying softly. "If I hadn't pushed you into this Cyberbooks project . . ."

  "No, no," said P. T. "It's my fault. I've hidden myself away from the world for too long, left all the burden of running the business on your shoulders."

  Junior discreetly got up from his chair beside them and started wandering aimlessly down the central aisle of the courtroom. He knew his mother and father wanted to say things to each other that should be said only when they were alone. Briefly he thought about the five lawyers huddled beneath their table. So they hear Mom and Pop coo at each other; they won't understand a word of it. They're lawyers, not human beings.

  "That cruise we took this past summer," P. T. was saying. "I've been thinking . . ."

  "It was a wonderful cruise," she murmured.

  "Wouldn't it be great if we could cruise the seas all the time? Live on a boat. A sailboat. Just sail to anyplace that strikes our fancy—Tahiti, New Zealand, Copenhagen, Greece, Buffalo."

  "Buffalo?"

  "I've never been to Buffalo. I've never seen Niagara Falls. I've never been anyplace. I've always been too damned busy with the company."

  "You've had all the responsibilities of business. . . ."

  "We've had all the responsibilities. For too long a time, dearest. We're not getting any younger."

  Alba smiled up into his handsome face. "Oh, I don't know. That cruise took ten years off your age, or more."

  Smiling back at her tenderly, P. T. answered, "What I mean, darling, is that we've worked hard all our lives and now we should start to enjoy what we've made."

  "Enjoy?"

  He nodded. Glancing up at the mumbling, half-drowsing gunman, P. T. said, "If . . . I mean, when we get out of this, you and I are going to buy a yacht and sail it around the world."

  "But the business!"

  "Let somebody else worry about the business. Why should we kill ourselves over it? Let's enjoy our lives while we can."

  Alba blinked with surprise. Let someone else take over Bunker Books? Leave it all and go sailing around the world? A voice in her head warned against it. But in less than a moment it was drowned out by a surge of joy and wonder and gratitude at the marvelous, wise insight that her loving husband had just shared with her.

  "Pandro, you're right," Alba heard herself say. "Leave the business to Woody or whoever wants to slave over it. We deserve to enjoy the rest of our lives!"

  Carl was half-stupefied with the need to sleep. But he refused to let his eyes close. Sooner or later that lunatic up there was going to nod off, and when he did Carl was determined to race up to the banc and disarm the madman.

  Beside him, Lori stirred and pulled herself up to a sitting position. "What time is it?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  Glancing at the glowing digits on his wristwatch/calculator, Carl replied, "Almost midnight."

  "Th
e police haven't done anything?"

  "Guess they're afraid of starting a bloodbath."

  Lori shivered. "It's cold!"

  Carl put his jacket over her shoulders and then wrapped his arm around her. She snuggled so close to him that he could feel her body warmth even through the jacket.

  "When will it end?" Lori asked.

  Carl shrugged, and kept his bleary eyes on the gunman.

  The Writer kept on talking because he knew that once he stopped, the temptation to sleep would overwhelm him. He was babbling about his life, spinning out his autobiography for his captive audience.

  ". . . and I couldn't afford to go to college. Couldn't get a scholarship, even though I had good marks in high school. I wasn't a member of any recognized minority. I thought about changing my religion, or dyeing my skin, or even a sex-change operation. I wondered how come a group of people who make up fifty-one percent of the population could be classified as a minority. But there wasn't a college in the land that would let me in. Not one. . . ."

  I ought to ease on up toward the front of the courtroom, thought Lieutenant Moriarty. This boob can't keep droning on like that forever. He's putting everybody to sleep, and sooner or later he's going to doze off himself.

  As he got up slowly from the rearmost bench, a stray thought wafted through his mind, about how blind people seem to compensate for their disability by increasing the sensitivity of their other senses.

  Now why would I think of that? he asked himself. Good detective that he was, Moriarty knew from experience that the subconscious mind often comes to realizations and understandings long before they are recognized by the conscious mind. What's my subconscious trying to tell me?

  A faint whiff of something strange, a cloying pungent odor, like something from a tropical jungle, some strange hybrid flower that was beautiful but deadly—the Rita Hayworth orchid! The doctor at the hospital had told him that the flower produced a strange, powerful scent. Moriarty turned in the eerily lit courtroom and began to follow his nose, like a true bloodhound.

  P. Curtis Hawks sat with the news reporters at their table along the far wall of the courtroom. The shambles of their laptops lay strewn across the long table and scattered on the floor around them. Whenever anyone shifted a foot, it crunched on the remains of silicon chips.

  The afternoon and evening had been a revelation to Hawks. He realized, with deep shame, that he was a physical coward. When that psycho had started shooting, Hawks's heart had gone into palpitations and his bowels had let loose. Now, smelly and sticky and thoroughly ashamed of himself, he sat with the reporters. To the others, it looked as if he were doing something brave, deliberately sitting with the group that had come closest to death. Actually, Hawks figured that lightning would not strike twice at the same place. The reporters had been cowed into abject silence. One of them was still comatose, stretched out on the floor with his hands folded funereally over his chest.

  All he needs is a goddamned lily, Hawks grumbled to himself.

  He had worried, when he had drifted over toward the reporters, that they would object to his awful smell. But they never noticed it. Either that, or they were extending him their professional courtesy.

  "You think you're so high and mighty," the Writer was rambling from his perch up at the judge's seat. "Well, I'll tell you something. Without the writers you're nothing. Your whole damned industry, all of you—editors, publishers, salesmen, every one of you—you'd be noplace without vour writers. The writers are your gold mine, your oil field, your natural resource. And how do you treat them? Like a dog, that's how. Like a horse or a mule or worse."

  Lori was nodding as she listened to the gunman's increasingly passionate tirade. He must be a writer, she realized. And she found herself agreeing with what he was saying.

  "I wrote a book," he went on. "Might not be a very good book, but I wrote it as honest and real as I could. And I sent it to your company. More than a year ago, now. And you never answered me. No letter. Not even a rejection form. You never sent my manuscript back! It was the only copy I had! Now it's lost and it's all your fault and you're going to pay for destroying Mobile, USA."

  Carl, groggy and sleepy, shook his head. "Did I hear him right? He just accused you of destroying Mobile, Alabama?"

  But Lori was suddenly wide-eyed. She gasped. She clutched at Carl's arm. "Mobile, USA! That's the novel I want to publish! He's the writer I've been trying to contact!"

  She shot to her feet, breathless with excitement. But before she could say a word there was a sudden scuffle off to one side of the courtroom and the writer, screaming with fearful rage, grabbed the Uzi submachine gun from his desk.

  REJECTION SLIPS

  The Usual

  Dear Sir or Madam:

  Thank you for submitting your manuscript for our consideration. Unfortunately, we find that it does not suit our needs at the present time. Naturally, we cannot give individual comments on each of the many manuscripts we receive.

  Sincerely,

  The Editors

  The Cruel

  Dear Sir or Madam:

  Who are you trying to fool?

  Disgustedly,

  The Editors

  The Japanese

  Most respected author:

  We have read your work with inexpressible pleasure. Never in our lives have we seen writing of such sheer genius. We are certain that if we published it, your book would be brought to the attention of the Emperor, who would insist that it serve as a model for all future writings. Since no one could possibly hope to equal your sublime masterpiece, this would put us out of business. Therefore we must return your manuscript to you and lay it at your feet, trembling at the harsh judgment that future generations will have of us.

  Most humbly and sincerely,

  The Editors

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  P. T. Bunker, Junior, was standing off to one side of the courtroom, by the empty jury box, wondering if he should get in line for the toilet in the judge's chambers or just whiz out the window. He made his way through the shadowy courtroom to one of the long windows and stood on tiptoes to see outside. Squinting against the powerful glare of the police searchlights, Junior saw that the street below was still jammed with TV news crews, cops, soldiers, and hundreds of onlookers.

  No whizzing out the window, Junior said to himself. Not unless you want it shown on Good Morning, America.

  Junior utterly failed to notice the rather tall, bearded man sidling up behind him with one hand in the side pocket of his suit jacket. The bearded man failed to notice the stocky form of Lieutenant Jack Moriarty stealthily stalking him.

  It all happened in a flash. Junior turned away from the window and was suddenly confronted by the bearded man, who whipped his hand from his pocket and started to poke at Junior. But Moriarty grabbed the man's arm and yelled, "Get out of the way, kid! He's a killer!"

  A strangled scream came from the judge's banc, where the gunman leaped to his feet and cocked the submachine gun he had grabbed. Then a woman's voice pierced the courtroom:

  "Don't shoot! I want to publish Mobile, USA!"

  Moriarty wrestled the bearded man to the floor and twisted the thorned stalk of the Rita Hayworth orchid from his hand. The false beard slipped off the man's chin. Even in the shadowy light, Moriarty recognized him from the photographs he had studied in his hospital bed.

  "Weldon W. Weldon, you're under arrest for five murders and one attempted murder," he said.

  Weldon cackled insanely. "You can't arrest me!" he screamed. "I'm the chairman of the board of Tarantula Enterprises! I can buy and sell your whole police force!"

  Across the courtroom, P. Curtis Hawks heard the old man's shrieking voice. "My god!" he gasped. Forgetting the condition of his clothes, he dashed across to where his erstwhile boss was writhing in the grip of the long arm of the law.

  "You can walk!" Hawks cried, astonished at the sight of Weldon out of his wheelchair, even though he was stretched on the floor with the solid weight of
Lt. Moriarty on his chest.

  Weldon glared up at his employee with insane fury flashing in his eyes.

  The Writer, meanwhile, stood frozen up at the judge's banc, the Uzi in his hands, cocked and ready to fire.

  "You want to publish my novel?" he asked into the midnight air. "Did somebody say they wanted to publish my novel?"

  "I do," said Lori, rushing to the foot of the banc. Carl came up beside her, protectively.

  "Who're you?" the Writer asked.

  "I'm an editor at Bunker Books. I've been trying to contact you for more than six months. I've written half a dozen letters to the address you put on your manuscript, but they were all returned by the post office with a stamp that says you've moved and left no forwarding address."

  The Writer put the Uzi down on the desk top. "Uh, yeah, I did move," he mumbled, feeling sheepish.

  "I want to publish Mobile, USA," Lori said. "I think it's a great work of art."

  The Writer sagged back onto the judge's chair, his mouth hanging open, his arms dangling by his sides. He felt suddenly dizzy, weightless. The room swam before his eyes. Slowly his head came forward and clunked on the desk top. He had passed out.

  *

  It took nearly a week to straighten out everything. A week of surprise after surprise.

  The following Sunday, however, was one of those brilliant Indian summer days that Washington Irving admired so much. The sun was bright and warm, while the air sparkled with the crisp bite of autumn.

  Carl, Lori, Ralph Malzone, and Scarlet Dean were having brunch together at the penthouse restaurant atop the recently re-re-renovated Chrysler Building. The restaurant was small and elegantly decorated in art deco style with bold angular motifs that matched the spire's high, slanting windows.