Cyberbooks Read Free Page B

he looked like a giant wading through a sea of paper.
    But he said, "Wow, you've got an office all to yourself!"
    "It's a little on the small side," she replied.
    "I'm still sharing that telephone booth with Thompson and two freshmen."
    Lori had not the slightest doubt that Carl was being sincere. There was not a dissembling bone in his body, she knew. That was his strength. And his weakness. She would have to protect him from the sharks and snakes, she knew.
    "You can hang your garment bag on the back of the door," Lori told him as she picked a double armload of manuscripts off the only other chair in the office and plopped them onto the window ledge, atop the six dozen already there. What the hell, she thought. I can't see much out of the window now anyway.
    "We don't have much time before the meeting starts," she said as she slid behind her desk and sat down.
    "Meeting?" Carl felt alarmed. "What meeting? I thought—"
    "The editorial board meeting. It's mandatory for all the editors. Every Tuesday and Thursday. Be there on time, or else. One of the silly rules around here."
    Carl muttered, "I'm going to have to show this to your entire board of editors?"
    Lori moved her shoulders in a semishrug that somehow stirred Carl's blood. He had not seen her in nearly two years; until just now he had not realized how much he had missed her.
    "I wanted you to show it to me first," she was saying, "and then we'd go in and show the Boss. But now it's time for the drippy meeting, and I have to attend."
    "It's my own fault," said Carl. "The train was late, and it took me longer to get a cab than I thought it would. I should have taken an earlier train."
    "Can you show me how it works? Real quick, before the meeting starts?"
    "Sure." Carl took the emptied chair and unzipped his courier case. From it he pulled a gray oblong box, about five inches by nine and less than an inch thick. Its front was almost entirely a dark display screen. There was a row of fingertip-sized touchpads beneath the screen.
    "This is just the prototype," Carl said almost apologetically. "The production model will be slightly smaller, around four by seven, just about the size of a regular paperback book."
    Lori nodded and reached out her hands to take the electronic book from its inventor.
    The phone chimed. "Editorial board meeting starts in one minute," said the snappish computer voice. "All editors are required to attend."
    With a sigh, Lori said, "Come on, you can show the whole editorial board."
    "This'll only take a few seconds."
    "I can't be late for the meeting. They count it against you when your next salary review comes up."
    "They take attendance and mark you tardy?"
    "You bet!"
    Stuffing his invention back in the black case and getting to his feet, Carl said, "Sounds like kindergarten."
    With a rueful smile, Lori agreed, "What do you mean, 'sounds like'?"
    *
    Twenty floors higher in the Synthoil Tower sprawled the offices of Webb Press, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tarantula Enterprises (Ltd.). The reception area was larger than the entire set of grubby editorial cubicles down at Bunker Books. Sweeping picture windows looked out on the majestic panorama of lower Manhattan: the financial district, the twin Trade Towers, the magnificent new Disneydome that covered most of what had once been the slums and tenements of the Lower East Side. Farther away stood the Statue of Liberty and the sparkling harbor.
    Harold D. Lapin sat patiently on one of the many deep soft leather chairs arranged tastefully across the richly soft silk carpeting of the reception area. His blue trenchcoat lay neatly folded across the chair's gleaming chrome arm. Being the man he was, Lapin's interest was focused not on the stunningly beautiful red-haired receptionist sitting behind her glass desk, microskirted legs demurely crossed, nor even on the splendid view to be seen through the picture windows. Rather, he studied the intricate floral pattern of the heavy drapes that framed the