Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  But his mind was on Lori and the others. He mumbled a “Pardon me,” as he pushed past the man and headed for his friends. He did not even notice Harold D. Lapin sitting on the aisle in the next-to-last row. Lapin sported a dashing little mustache and wore a yachting outfit of white turtleneck, double-breasted navy-blue blazer, and gray flannel slacks. Hidden in plain sight.

  P.T. Junior entered the courtroom right behind Carl. He was followed by P. Curtis Hawks, dressed in a fairly conservative business suit. Neither of them recognized the other.

  “All rise.”

  Carl had not yet sat down. The courtroom buzz quieted as Justice Fish made his slow, dramatic, utterly dignified way to his high-backed padded swivel chair. His completely bald skull and malevolently glittering eyes made Carl think once again of a death’s head.

  There was more of a crowd this morning. The news of the western lawyer’s tirade had drawn dozens of onlookers and news reporters, the way a spoor of blood draws hyenas. Just as Judge Fish rapped his gavel to open the morning’s proceedings, two more men slipped through the double doors and took seats on opposite sides of the central aisle, in the very last row. One of them was Detective Lieutenant Jack Moriarty, freshly escaped from St. Vincent’s Hospital. Just behind him came a rather tall, slim figure in a blue trenchcoat. Neither man paid the slightest notice to the other; their attention was concentrated on the drama at the front of the courtroom.

  Judge Fish leaned forward slightly in his chair and smiled a vicious smile at the western lawyer.

  “Is the plaintiff ready to continue?”

  The man was dressed in a tan suede suit cut to suggest an old frontiersman’s buckskins. “We are, Your Honor.”

  “Are you ready to call your first witness?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then proceed.”

  “I call Mr. Ralph Malzone to the witness stand.”

  Carl felt a moment of stunned surprise. The courtroom fell absolutely silent for the span of a couple of heartbeats, then buzzed with whispered chatter. The judge banged his gavel and called for silence.

  Ralph looked more surprised than anyone as he slowly got to his feet and made his way to the witness box. He ran a nervous hand through his wiry red hair, glanced at Woody Balogna sitting at the plaintiff’s table, then at Mrs. Bunker, at the defense table with her five interchangeable lawyers.

  The bailiff administered the oath and Ralph sat down. Uneasily.

  The western lawyer strolled slowly over to the witness box, asking Ralph to state his name and occupation. Ralph complied.

  “Sales manager,” drawled the lawyer. “Would y’all mind explaining to us just exactly what that means?”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Ralph explained what a sales manager does. The lawyer asked more questions, and over the next quarter of an hour Ralph laid out the basics of the book distribution system: how books go from printer to wholesalers and jobbers, then from those distributors to the retail stores.

  “There’s a lot of different steps involved in getting the books from the publisher’s warehouse to the ultimate customer, the reader, wouldn’t you say?” the lawyer prompted.

  Nodding, Ralph replied, “Yes, that’s right.”

  No one noticed P. Curtis Hawks, sitting in the audience, wincing at the word “warehouse.”

  “A lot of jobs involved in each of those steps?” asked the lawyer.

  “Yes.”

  “Now, if Bunker Books went into this Cyberbooks scheme, how would your distribution system change?”

  Ralph hesitated a moment, then replied, “We would market the books electronically. We could send the books by telephone directly from our office to the bookstores.”

  “Eliminating all those steps you just outlined?”

  “All but the final one.”

  “Isn’t it true that you could also sell your books directly to the ultimate customer, the reader? Transmit books directly to readers over the phone?”

  “Yeah, I guess we could, sooner or later.”

  “Thereby eliminating even the bookstores?”

  “I don’t think we’d—”

  “Thereby eliminating”—the lawyer’s voice rose dramatically—”all the jobs of all the people you deal with today: the printers, the wholesalers, the jobbers, the truck drivers, the store clerks—and even your own sales force!”

  “We have no plans to eliminate our sales force,” Ralph snapped back with some heat.

  “Not today.”

  “Not ever. Books don’t sell themselves. You need sales people.”

  The lawyer strolled away from the witness box a few steps, then whirled back toward Ralph. “But you admit, don’t you, that all the jobs in the middle—all the jobs involved with book distribution—will be wiped out by this devilish new invention.”

  “The distribution system will be totally different, that’s right,”

  With a triumphant gleam in his eye, the lawyer strode to his table and pulled a batch of papers from his slim leather saddle bag.

  “Your Honor,” he said, approaching the bench, “I have here affidavits from each of the nation’s major book distribution companies, and both of the national bookstore chains. They all ask that their interests be considered in this trial. Therefore, I ask you to consider enlarging the venue of this trial. I ask that this trial be considered a class action by the thousands—nay, tens of thousands—of warehouse personnel, truck drivers, bookstore clerks, wholesalers, jobbers, distributors, and their associated office personnel, against Bunker Books!”

  The courtroom broke into excited babbling. Judge Fish whacked away with his gavel until everyone quieted down, then said, “I will consider the motion.”

  The news reporters sitting at the media bench along the side wall of the courtroom tapped frantically at their computer keyboards.

  With a satisfied grin, the western lawyer handed his papers to the bailiff, who passed them up to the judge. Then he smirked at the quintet of defense attorneys and made a little bow.

  “Your witness,” he said.

  “No questions,” squeaked five mousey voices in unison.

  “Court will recess to examine these papers,” said Justice Fish. Glancing at the clock on the rear wall of the courtroom, he added, “We might as well break for lunch while we’re at it.”

  The Accountant

  Gregory Wo Fat squinted at the printout on his computer screen through old-fashioned eyeglass lenses thick enough to stop bullets.

  As chief accountant for Webb Press (and one of the few employees still on Webb’s payroll after the company’s pruning by the Axe), Wo Fat’s duties included supervising the royalty statements sent out to the authors of Webb’s books.

  The computer screen displayed the new layout for next year’s royalty statements, a tangled skein of numbers designed to be as confusing as possible.

  Wo Fat’s grandfather, the esteemed accountant for the Honolulu branch of the Chinese Mafia, had drilled into his bright young grandson’s mind since babyhood one all-important concept: “More money is stolen, my grandson, with a computer than with a gun.”

  Wo Fat had eschewed a life of crime. Almost. Instead of carrying on in the family tradition in Honolulu, he had come to New York and accepted a position as a lowly accountant with the publishing firm known as Webb Press.

  “Your job is a simple one,” said his first boss, an elderly gentleman named Kline. “No matter how many books an author sells, we should never have to pay royalties over and above the advance that the dumb editors gave the author in the first place. Got it?”

  Wo Fat grasped the concept immediately. Of course, it did not apply to the firm’s most prestigious authors. If they did not receive royalty checks every six months they would undoubtedly move to another publishing house. So they were paid—not as much as they actually earned, of course, but enough to keep them and their agents reasonably satisfied.

  It was the other authors, the “midlist” authors who made up the great bulk of any publisher’s ti
tles and the new writers who had no experience, those were the ones whom Wo Fat slaved over. He regarded it as a personal failure if they received one penny in royalties over and above the advance they got before each book went on sale.

  Wo Fat glowered at the computer screen. This new design was seriously lacking! What fool is responsible for this? This column here, if subtracted from the figures in the third column and multiplied by the square root of the figures in the first column, would actually tell the author how many books had been sold during the six months that the statement reported on!

  Unacceptable! Someone’s head would roll for this. Why, if he let this new design go through, Wo Fat would be besieged by authors demanding to know why they had not been paid for each and every book sold. That would never do.

  Twenty-Four

  Claude Le Forêt had been born in a logging camp in Manitoba. He had grown up in logging camps, where his father was nothing more than an average cutter of trees and his mother a cook. But Claude had gone far beyond his humble beginnings.

  Thanks to two lifetimes of hard work and sacrifice by his parents, Claude had gone to university. He had obtained a degree in management, and when he returned to the logging camp where his parents still slaved away over their tele-operated cutting machines and microwave cookers, he wore a business suit and carried a portable computer rather than a chain saw.

  Yet he was still true to his upbringing. Beneath his gray flannel suit jacket he still wore a plaid lumberjack’s shirt.

  For many years Claude worked his way up the tree trunk of success. He had the brains and the inherited conservative instincts of his parents: he never went out on a limb, never barked at either a superior or an underling, never made a sap of himself. He stayed on the main trunk and rose quietly, unspectacularly, steadily to the very crown of Canada’s largest lumber and paper-pulp combine.

  Now he sat wedged into a tiny booth in the coffee shop on the ground floor of the courthouse, facing the suede-suited westerner who was representing what seemed to be the entire U.S. book distribution industry. The coffee shop was filled with lunchtime customers. It buzzed with gleaming-eyed lawyers and glumly downcast clients, all of them hunched head to head over tiny tables in cramped little booths, whispering secrets to one another over croissant sandwiches and Perrier.

  “Your telegram said the affair was urgent,” said Claude with a hint of Quebecois in his accent.

  “Shore is urgent,” smiled the lawyer.

  Claude studied the weather-seamed face of this outlandish-looking lawyer. He himself was a handsome man, his face a bit fleshy from too much rich food, his eyes a bit baggy and bloodshot from the wine he drank with each meal, but otherwise he looked almost dashing with a touch of gray at his temples and a splendid mustache that curled up toward his slightly rouged cheeks. He wore a conservative two-button maroon suit, with his trademark lumberjack’s plaid shirt and a tiny little bow tie of forest green. It took no great detective to deduce that he was totally color blind.

  “You wish my corporation to join with you in this suit against the book électronique, is that it?”

  “Yup,” said the lawyer in his best Gary Cooper style.

  “This would be a serious commitment by my corporation. Not only that, it would create an international incident. Canada would become heavily engaged in this lawsuit. The Canadian government would certainly take an interest. Ottawa and Washington would send observers to the trial, at the very least.”

  With a nod and a grin, the lawyer said, “Listen, Mr. Le Forêt.” He pronounced the final “t,” but failed to notice the shudder it sent along Le Forêt’s spine. “If we let Bunker bring out Cyberbooks, what do you think it will do to the lumber business in Canada? To the paper and pulp industry?”

  Le Forêt shrugged gallicly.

  “I’ll tell you what it’ll do, friend. The more books they publish electronically, the less paper they’ll need. Paper mills will shut down. Men will be thrown out of work. Whole cities will become ghost towns. The demand for lumber will be cut in half, then cut in half again. Thousands of lumberjacks will be unemployed. All those fancy tree-cutting machines of yours will be sitting out there in the forest, turning into rust. It’ll be a disaster for you. And for Canada.”

  If there was one thing Le Forêt had learned in a long and successful career, it was to examine carefully the enemy’s side of the matter. He sat pensively for a long moment, then steepled his fingers and played devil’s advocate.

  “If I do as you wish,” he said slowly, “do you not think that the movement of environmentalists will come out on the side of Bunker and his Cyberbooks?”

  “The environmentalists?”

  ”Oui. After all, they have been scheming for generations to close down the paper mills. They, with their silly nonsense about pollution. How can you make paper without sulfur and smoke? They even demand that we purify the water once we are finished using it!”

  The lawyer smiled a thin, superior, knowing, nasty, lawyer’s smile. “The environmentalists won’t bother us,” he said.

  “Pah!”

  “I have their word on it.”

  Le Forêt put on his pensive look again. “Their word? How so?”

  “It’s simple. I pointed out to them that if the paper and pulp industry goes under, the economy of Canada goes down with it.”

  “That has never bothered them in the past.”

  “Well, I also pointed out that if the paper mills close down, they lose one of their best targets for raising money. Everybody will think that they’ve won their battle against you, and stop contributing to the environmental movement. They’ll go out of business, too!”

  ”Diable!” Le Forêt broke into a grin that pushed the tips of his mustache almost into his eyes. “And they believed you?”

  “Sure they did. They know I’m right. They can’t exist without you.”

  With a thoughtful rub of his chin, Le Forêt murmured, “I must remember this after the trial is finished. It is an interesting new light on a problem that has plagued me all my life.”

  The lawyer grinned back at him. “Then you’ll join our suit?”

  Sticking out a huge hand that was made to chop down trees, yet bore nary a callus, Le Forêt said, “I am with you. Moi, and the entire Canadian lumber and paper-pulp industries!”

  When the trial resumed that afternoon, the lawyer grandly announced that the Canadian lumber and paper-pulp combine had joined in the class action suit against the rapacious forces of evil known as Bunker Books. Woody and the sales personnel attending the trial whooped loudly. Mrs. Bunker went pale, while Carl and the others on that side of the courtroom sagged visibly.

  Judge Fish glowered at the cowboy lawyer as he accepted the papers filed by the Canadians.

  “Will there be anyone else joining this suit?” he asked in a sharp, almost sneering tone. “Outer Mongolia, perhaps? Or maybe little green men from Mars?”

  The lawyer bowed his head slightly, as if embarrassed. “Your Honor, I know this has been a somewhat unusual procedure, but in the interests of justice I beg you to overlook the slightly unorthodox course that this trial has taken so far.”

  The judge snorted at him.

  “I assure you there will be no further enlargement of the plaintiff’s co-complainants.”

  Turning to the clone group of defense attorneys, Justice Fish asked acidly, “Does the defense have any objection to this motion?”

  The lawyer closest to Mrs. Bunker got to his feet, looking perplexed. “May we have five minutes to review our position on this, Your Honor? This motion has come as a complete surprise to the defense.”

  “Yes, I imagine it has,” the judge retorted. “Five minutes recess.” He banged his gavel and stalked out of the courtroom.

  Carl Lewis felt his temperature rising. “This trial is turning into a circus,” he whispered to Lori.

  “More like a Roman gladiatorial contest,” she whispered back. “We’re the Christians and they’re the lions.”
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br />   Staring at the defense attorneys, all five of whom were frantically tapping at their briefcase computers, desperately searching for a precedent that would block the entry of the Canadians, Carl pleaded, “Isn’t there some group that we could call in to back our side? I mean, how come we’re all alone here and they’ve got so many people to back them up?”

  Lori’s eyes suddenly sparkled. “You’re right! I’ve got an idea!”

  She jumped up from her seat and pushed past Ralph and Scarlet to get to the aisle. Carl came right behind her.

  “What is it?” he asked as he followed her to the courtroom doors. “What?”

  But Lori said nothing as she half ran to the row of public telephones down the marble corridor.

  Picking up the nearest handset, she said to the voice-activated telephone computer, “The Author’s League of America.”

  Carl smiled with sudden understanding.

  Raymond Marñna had never been a practical man. The fact that he had now served slightly more than seven years as president of the Author’s League of America proved that fact.

  Never very tall, Raymond had allowed years of poor eating habits and lack of exercise to round out what had once been a spare body into a globule about the size of a modest weather balloon. His glistening pate was bald, but his chin was covered with a dirty-gray beard of patriarchal length. His once keen vision had fallen victim to endless hours of peering at word processor screens, so he now sported heavy trifocal contact lenses that made his eyes seem slightly bugged out, like a frog’s.

  But despite these physical failings, Raymond had the heart of a lion. He had practically surrendered a mediocre career writing potboiler novels to accept the onerous and thankless responsibilities of the presidency of the Author’s League. He was deeply immersed in reading the latest round of inflammatory letters sent in to the ALA Bulletin when the phone unit on his computer chimed out the first few bars of “Brush up Your Shakespeare,” the ALA’s official song.