The Astral Mirror Read Online Free

tie. Or maybe because of them; the clothes did not seem to be his, they barely fit him, and he looked very uncomfortable in them.
    For several minutes Rockmore chatted about the weather, the awful cross-town traffic, and the dangers of being mugged on Manhattan’s streets. He received nothing back from his visitor except a few grunts and uneasy wriggles.
    Why me? Rockmore asked himself silently. Why do I have to get all the crazies who come in off the street? After all, I’m a vice president now. I ought to be involved in making deals with agents, and taking famous writers out to lunch. At least Charlene’s father ought to let me get into the advertising and promotion end of the business. I could be a smash on the Johnny Carson show, plugging our company’s books. Instead, I have to sit here and deal with inarticulate ape-men.
    Rockmore, who looked like (and was) a former chorus boy in a Broadway musical, slicked back his thinning blond hair with one hand and finally asked, “Well, eh, just what is it you wanted to talk to me about, Mr. Mos... I mean, Dr. Moskowitz?”
    “Electronic books,” said Mark.
    “Electronic books?” Rockmore asked.
    “Uh-huh.” And for the next three hours, Mark did all the talking.
     
    Mitsui hardly spoke at all, and when he did, it was in Japanese, a language both simple and supple. Most of the time, as he sat side-by-side with the vice president for innovation at Kanagawa Electronics and Shipbuilding, Inc., Mitsui tapped out numbers on his pocket computer. The v.p. grinned and nodded and hissed happily at the glowing digits on the tiny readout screen.

The Reception
     
    Robert Emmett Upton, president of Hubris Books, a division of WPA Entertainment, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Moribundic Industries, Inc., which in turn is owned by Empire State Bank (and, it is rumored, the Mafia), could scarcely believe his ears.
    “Electronic books? What on earth are electronic books?”
    Lipton smiled gently at his son-in-law. It didn’t do to get tough with Rockmore. He simply broke down and cried and went home to Charlene, who would then phone to tell her mother what a heel her father was to pick on such a sensitive boy as Gene.
    So the president of Hubris Books rocked slowly in his big leather chair and tried to look interested as his son-in-law explained his latest hare-brained scheme. Lipton sighed inwardly, thinking about the time Rockmore suggested to the editorial board that they stop printing books that failed to sell well, and stuck only to best sellers. That was when Rockmore had just graduated from the summer course in management at Harvard. Ten years later, and he still didn’t know a thing about the publishing business. But he kept Charlene happy, and that kept Charlene’s mother happy, and that was the only reason Lipton allowed Rockmore to play at being an executive.
    “So it’s possible,” Rockmore was saying, “to make the thing about the size of a paperback book. Its screen would be the size of a book page, and it could display a page of printed text or full-color illustrations...”
    “Do you realize how much color separations cost?” Upton snapped. Instantly he regretted his harshness. He started to reach for the Kleenex box on the shelf behind his chair.
    But Rockmore did not burst into tears, as he usually did. Instead he smirked. “No color separations, Papa. It’s all done electronically.”
    “No color separations?” Lipton found that hard to believe. “No color separations. No printing at all. No paper. It’s like having a hand-sized TV set in your... er, hand. But the screen can be any page of any book we publish.”
    “No printing?” Lipton heard his voice echoing, weakly. “No paper?”
    “It’s all done by electronics. Computers.”
    Lipton’s mind was in a whirl. He conjured up last month’s cost figures. The exact numbers were a blur in his memory, but they were huge—and most of them came from the need to transport vast tonnages of