“That’s what I think, too,” she said. Her speech was just a little blurred, her tinted auburn hair just a bit frazzled. This was her third Bloody Mary and they had not ordered lunch yet.

“I love to curl up with a book. It’s cozy,” said Sub Rights.

“Books are supposed to be made of paper,” Editorial agreed. “With pages that you can turn.”

Sub Rights nodded unhappily. “I said that to Production, and do you know what he said?”

“No. What?”

“He said I was wrong, and that books were supposed to be made of clay tablets with cuneiform marks pressed into them.”

Editorial’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s the end of an era. The next thing you know, they’ll replace us with robots.”

The chief engineer paced back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, as the two technicians worked feverishly on the robot. The entire assembly area of the factory was absolutely still; not a machine moved, all across the wide floor. Both technicians’ white coveralls were stained with sweat and oil, a considerable loss of face for men who prided themselves on keeping their machines in perfect working order.

The chief engineer, in his golden-tan coveralls and plastic hard hat, alternately glared at the technicians and gazed up at the huge digital clock dominating the far wall of the assembly area. Up in the glass-panelled gallery above the clock, he could see Mitsui Minimata’s young, eager face peering intently at them.

A shout of triumph from one of the technicians made the chief engineer spin around. The technician held a tiny silicon chip delicately between his thumb and forefinger, took two steps forward and offered the offending electronic unit to the chief engineer. The chief took it, looked down at the thumbnail-sized chip, so small and insignificant-seeming in the palm of his hand. Hard to believe that this tiny grain of sand caused the robot to malfunction and ruined an entire day’s work. He sighed to himself, and thought that this evening, as he relaxed in a hot bath, he would try to compose a haiku on the subject of how small things can cause great troubles.

The junior of the two technicians, in the meantime, had dashed to the automated supply dispenser across the big assembly room, dialed up a replacement chip, and come running back with the new unit pressed between his palms. The senior technicians installed it quickly, buttoned up the robot’s access panel, turned and bowed to the chief engineer.

The chief grunted a grudging approval. The junior technician bowed to the chief and asked permission to activate the robot. The chief nodded. The robot stirred to life, and it too bowed to the chief engineer. Only then did production resume.

The Sales Manager for Hubris Books stroked his chin thoughtfully as he sat behind his desk conversing with his western district sales director.

“But if they ever start selling these electronic doohickeys,” the western district man was saying, “they’ll bypass the wholesalers, the distributors, even the retail stores, for cryin’ out loud! They’ll sell those little computer disks direct to the customer! They’ll sell ‘em through the mail!”

“And over the phone,” the Sales Manager added wearily. “They’re talking about doing the whole thing electronically.”

“Where’s that leave us?”

“Out in the cold, buddy. Right out in the cold.”

The Decision

Robert Emmett Lipton was not often nervous. His position in life was to make other people nervous, not to get the jitters himself. But he was not often summoned to the office of the CEO of Moribundic Industries. Lipton found himself perspiring as the secretary escorted him through the cool, quiet, elegantly-carpeted corridors toward the CEO’s private suite.

It wasn’t as if he had been asked to report to the bejewelled jackass who headed WPA Entertainment, out in Los Angeles. Lipton could deal with him. But the CEO was different; he had the real power to make or break a man.

The secretary was a tall, lissome, devastatingly beautiful woman: the kind who could marry a millionaire and then ruin him. In the deeper recesses of his mind, Lipton thought it would be great fun to be ruined by such a creature.

She opened the door marked Alexander Hamilton Stark, Chief Executive Officer and smiled at Lipton. He thought there was a trace of sadness in her smile, as if she never expected to see him again—alive.

“Thank you,” Lipton managed, as he stepped into the CEO’s private office.

He had seen smaller airport terminals. The room was vast, richly carpeted; furnished with treasures from the Orient in teak and ebony, copper, silver, and gold. Far, far across the room, the CEO sat behind his broad, massive desk of rosewood and chrome. Its gleaming surface was uncluttered.

Feeling small and helpless, like a pudgy little gnome suddenly summoned to the throne of power, Lipton made his way across the vast office, plowing through the thick carpeting with leaden steps.

The CEO was an ancient, hairless, wrinkled, death’s head of a figure, sitting hunched and aged in a high-backed leather chair that dwarfed him. For a ridiculous instant, Lipton was reminded of a turtle sitting there, staring at him out of dull reptilian eyes. With something of a shock, he suddenly realized that there was a third man in the room: a younger man, swarthy, dark of hair and jaw, dressed in a European-cut silk suit, sitting to one side of the massive desk.

Lipton came to a halt before the desk. There was no chair there, so he remained standing.

“Mr. Stark,” he said. “I’m so happy that you’ve given me this opportunity to report directly to you about the electronic book project.”

“You’ll have to speak louder,” the younger man said. “His batteries are running down.”

Lipton turned slightly toward him. “And you are?”

“I’m Mr. Stark’s personal secretary and bodyguard,” the young man said.

“Oh.”

“We hear that Hubris Books is in hock up to its elbows on this electronic book thing,” the bodyguard said.

“I wouldn’t. . .” Lipton stopped himself, turned toward the CEO and said, louder, “I wouldn’t put it that way. We’re pushing ahead on a very difficult project.”

“Don’t give up the ship,” the CEO muttered.

“We don’t intend to, sir,” said Lipton. “It’s quite true that we’ve encountered some difficulties in the electronic book project, but we are moving right ahead.”

“I have not yet begun to fight!” said the CEO.

Lipton felt himself frown slightly, puzzled.

The bodyguard said, “Our sources of information say that morale at Hubris is very low. And so are sales.”

“We’re going through a period of adjustment, that’s true. . .”

“Millions for defense,” the CEO’s quavering voice piped, “but not one cent for tribute.”

“Sir?” Lipton felt confused. What was the CEO driving at?

“Your costs are shooting through the roof,” the bodyguard accused.

Lipton felt perspiration beading his upper lip. “We’re involved in a very difficult project. We’re working with one of the nation’s top electronics firms to produce a revolutionary new concept, a product that will totally change the book business. It’s true that we’ve had problems— technical as well as human problems. But. . .”

“We have met the enemy,” croaked the CEO, “and they are ours.”

“I don’t want to be overly critical,” said the bodyguard-cum-secretary, with a smirk on his face that belied his words, “but you seem to have gotten Hubris to a point where sales are down, costs are up, and profits will be a long time coming.”