“But, listen,” Lipton replied, trying to keep his voice from sounding as if he were begging, “this concept of electronic books is going to sweep the publishing industry! We’ll be able to publish books for a fraction of what they cost now, and sell them directly to the readers! Our sales volume is projected to triple, the first year we’re on the market, and our profit margin. . .”
“Fifty-four forty or fight!” cackled the CEO.
“What?” Lipton blurted.
The bodyguard’s smile seemed knowing, cynical. “We’ve seen your projections. But they’re all based on the assumption that you’ll have the electronic books on the market next year. We don’t believe you can do that, not at the rate you’re going now.”
“As I said, we’ve had some problems here and there.” Lipton was starting to feel desperate. “We contracted with Moribundic’s electronics division, at first, to make the damned things, but they flubbed the job completely. They produced a monstrosity that weighed seventeen pounds and didn’t work half the time.”
The CEO shook his wizened head. “My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.”
Suppressing an urge to run screaming out of the room, Lipton slogged forward. “The company we’re working with now is based in Silicon Valley, in California. At least they’ve got the electronics right. But they’ve got problems with their supply of parts. Seems there’s a trucker’s strike in Texas, where the chips are being manufactured. This has caused a delay.”
“And in the meantime, Hubris’ sales are sinking out of sight.”
“The whole book industry is in a bad way. . .”
The bodyguard raised his dark eyebrows half an inch, as if acknowledging the point. “But we’re hearing complaints about poor morale in the office. Not just down in the pits, but among your own executive board.”
Lipton growled, “Those dimwitted idiots can’t see any farther than their own paychecks! They’re afraid that the electronic book is going to take away their jobs.”
“Your profit-and-loss projections are based, in part, on eliminating most of their jobs, aren’t they?”
“Well, yes, of course. We won’t need them anymore.” The CEO’s frail voice became mournful. “It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work. . .” His voice sank to an unintelligible mumble, then rose again to conclude, “that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
As if the CEO were not in the room with them, or at least not in the same plane of reality, the bodyguard launched into a detailed analysis of Lipton’s electronic books project. He referred to it specifically as Lipton’s project. Hubris Books’ president felt sweat trickling down his ribs. His hands shook and his feet hurt as he stood there defending every dollar he had spent on the idea.
Finally, the bodyguard turned to the CEO, who had sat unmoving and silent for the past hour.
“Well, sir,” he said, “that brings us up to date on the project. The potential for great profits is there, but at the rate we’re going, the cost will drag the entire corporation’s P-and-L statement down into the red ink.”
The CEO said nothing; he merely sat hunched in his oversized chair, watery eyes blinking slowly.
“On the other hand,” the bodyguard went on, “our tax situation should be vastly improved by all these losses. If we continue with the electronic book project, we won’t have to worry about the IRS for the next three years, at least.”
Lipton wanted to protest, to shout to them that the electronic book was more than a tax dodge. But his voice was frozen in his throat.
“What’s your decision, sir?” the bodyguard asked.
The CEO lifted one frail hand from his desktop and slowly clenched it into a fist. “Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!”
The Result
Mitsui Minimata held his breath. Never in his happiest dreams had he entertained the idea that he would someday meet the Emperor face to face, in the Imperial Palace. Yet here he was, kneeling on a silken carpet, close enough to the Divine Presence to touch him.
Arrayed around Mitsui, also kneeling with eyes respectfully lowered, were the head of Kanagawa Industries, the vice president for innovation, and the chief engineer of the Numazu plant. All were dressed in ceremonial kimonos more gorgeous than Mitsui would have thought it was possible for human hands to create.
The Emperor was flanked by serving robots, of course. It was fitting that the Divine personage not be touched by human hands. Besides, his decision to have robots serve him presented the Japanese people with an example of how these new devices should be accepted into every part of life.
With trembling hands Mitsui placed the first production unit of the electronic book in the metal fingers of the robot that stood between him and the Emperor. The robot pivoted, making hardly more noise than the heel of a boot would on a polished floor, and extended its arm to the Emperor.
The Emperor peered through his glasses at the little electronic package, then picked it up. He had been instructed, of course, on how to use the book. But for an instant Mitsui was frightened that somehow the instructions had not been sufficient, and the Emperor would be embarrassed by being unable to make the book work. Suicide would be the only way out, in that case.
After what seemed like several years of examining the book, the Emperor touched the green pressure pad at its base. Mitsui knew what would come up on the screen: a listing of all the books and papers that the Emperor himself had written in the field of marine biology.
The Divine face broke into a pleased smile. The smile broadened as the Emperor pecked away at the book’s controls, bringing one after another of his own writings to the book’s page-sized screen. He laughed with delight, and Mitsui realized that mortal life offered no higher reward than this.
Mark Moskowitz paced angrily back and forth across his one-room apartment as he argued with the image of his attorney on the phone screen.
“But they’re screwing me out of my own invention!” he yelled.
The attorney, a sad-eyed man with an expression of utter world-weariness, replied, “Mark, when you accepted their money you sold them the rights to the invention.”
“But they’re lousing it up! Three years now and they still haven’t produced a working model that weighs less than ten pounds!”
“There’s nothing you can do about it,” said the attorney. “It’s their ball.”
“But it’s my idea! My invention!”
The attorney shrugged.
“You know what I think?” Mark growled, pacing back to the phone and bending toward the screen until his nose almost touched it. “I think Hubris Books doesn’t want to make the project succeed! I think they’re screwing around with it just to give the whole idea a bad name and make certain that no other publisher will touch it, by the time they’re finished.”
“That’s silly,” said the attorney. “Why would they. . .”
“Silly?” Mark snapped. “How about last year, when they tried to make the picture screen feel like paper? How about that scheme they came up with to have a hundred separate screens that you could turn like the pages of a book? Silly? They’re crazy!”
They argued fruitlessly for nearly half an hour, and finally Mark punched the phone’s OFF button in a fury of frustration and despair. He sat in glowering, smoldering anger in the one-room apartment as the afternoon sun slowly faded into the shadows of dusk.
Only then did he remember why he had placed the call to his attorney. The package from Tokyo. From Mitsui. When it had arrived, Mark had gone straight to the phone to see what progress his suit against Hubris Books was making. The answer, of course, had been: zero.
With the dejected air of a defeated soldier, Mark trudged to the table by his hotplate where he had left the package. Terribly afraid that he knew what was inside the heavy wrappings, he nonetheless opened the package as delicately, as tenderly, as if it contained newborn kittens.
It contained a newborn, all right. An electronic book, just as Mark had feared. No message, no card. Nothing but the book itself.
Mark held it in the palm of his left hand. It weighed a little more than a pound, he judged. Three pads were set below the screen, marked with Arabic numerals and Japanese characters. He touched the green one, which was marked “1.”
A still picture of Mitsui appeared on the screen, grinning—no, beaming—at him. The amber pressure pad, marked “2,” began to blink. Mark touched it.
A neatly typed letter appeared on the screen:
