The Astral Mirror Read Online Free Page B

are still at sea.”
    “Then get rid of them,” Lipton snapped. “We can’t stand in the way of progress. Technology is the future. I’m sure of it.”
    An almost audible sigh of relief went around the table. Now they knew where the boss stood; they knew what they were supposed to say.
    “Well, of course technology is important,” Editorial backtracked, “but I just don’t see how an electronic thingamajig can replace a book. I mean, it’s cold... metallic. It’s a machine. A book is... well, it’s comforting, it’s warm and friendly, it’s the feel of paper...”
    “Which costs too damned much,” Lipton said. Accounting took up the theme with the speed of an electronic calculator. “Do you have any idea of what paper costs this company each month?”
    “Well, I...” Editorial saw that she was going to be the sacrificial lamb. She blushed and lapsed into silence.
    “How much would an electronic book sell for?” Marketing asked.
    Lipton shrugged. “One dollar? Two?”
    Rockmore, from the far end of the table, spoke up. “According to the technical people I’ve spoken to, the price of a book could be less than one dollar.”
    “Instead of fifteen to twenty,” Lipton said, “which is what our hardcovers are priced at now.”
    “One dollar?” Marketing looked stunned. “We could sell zillions of books at a dollar apiece!”
    “We could wipe out the paperback market,” Lipton agreed, happily.
    “But that would cut off a major source of income for us,” cried Sub Rights.
    “There would still be foreign sales,” said Lipton. “And film and TV rights.”
    “I don’t know about TV,” Legal chimed in. “After all, by displaying a book on what is essentially a television screen, we may be construed as utilizing the broadcast TV rights...”
    The discussion continued right through the morning. Lipton had sandwiches and coffee brought in, and the executive board stayed in conference well past quitting time.
     
    In the port city of Numazu, not far from the blissful snow-covered cone of divine Fujiyama, Kanagawa Industries began the urgent task of converting one of its electronics plants to building the first production run of Mitsui Minimata’s electronic book. Mitsui was given the position of advisor to the chief production engineer, who ran the plant with rigid military discipline. His staff of six hundred (five hundred eighty-eight of them robots) worked happily and efficiently, converting the plant from building navigation computers to the new product.
The Resistance
     
    Editorial sipped her Bloody Mary while Sub Rights stared out the restaurant window at the snarling Manhattan midtown traffic. The restaurant was only half-filled, even though this was the height of the lunch hour rush; the publishing business had been in the doldrums for some time. Suave waiters with slicked-back hair and European accents hovered over each table, anxious to generate tips through quality of service, when it was obvious that quantity of customers was lacking.
    Sub Rights was a pale, ash-blonde woman in her late thirties. She had worked for Hubris Books since graduating from Barnard with stars in her eyes and dreams of a romantic career in the world of literature. Her most romantic moment had come when a French publisher’s representative had seduced her, at the height of the Frankfurt Book Fair, and thus obtained a very favorable deal on Hubris’s entire line of “How To” books for that year.
    “I think you’ve hit it on the head,” Sub Rights said, idly stirring her Campari-and-soda with its plastic straw. “Books should be made of paper, not this electric machine thing.”
    Editorial had worked for six publishers in the twelve years since she had arrived in New York from Kansas. Somehow, whenever the final sales figures for the books she had bought became known to management, she was invited to look for work elsewhere. Still, there were plenty of publishing houses in midtown Manhattan which operated