Cyberbooks

by Ben Bova

  The November evening was nippy. Carl wore an old tennis sweater under his inevitable tweed jacket; Lori had a black imitation leather midcalf coat over her dress. A chilly breeze drove brittle leaves rattling across the grass and walkways. Only a few diehard musicians and panhandlers sat on the park benches in the gathering darkness, under the watchful optics of squat blue police robots.

  "I just can't believe it," Carl repeated. "That lawyer made Cyberbooks sound like something Ebenezer Scrooge would invent just to throw people out of work and make them starve."

  "And the judge let him get away with it," Lori said.

  "This isn't a trial. It's an inquisition."

  With a deep sigh, Lori asked, "What will you do if the Bunkers lose? If the judge actually issues an injunction against Cyberbooks?"

  Carl shrugged. "Go find another publishing house, I guess, and sell the idea to them."

  "But don't you understand? If the judge issues an injunction against Cyberbooks, it will be a precedent that covers the whole industry!"

  Carl looked at her, puzzled.

  "If Bunker is enjoined from developing Cyberbooks," Lori explained, "it sets a legal precedent for the entire publishing industry."

  "That doesn't mean . . ."

  "If any other publishing house decided to develop Cyberbooks with you, what's to stop their sales force—or their editorial department, or anybody else—from doing just what Woody's doing? And they'll have the legal precedent of the Bunker case."

  Carl stopped in his tracks, his face awful.

  Lori felt just as bad. "No other publishing house will go anywhere near Cyberbooks if we lose this case."

  "Cyberbooks will be dead," he muttered.

  "That's right. And I'll never get to publish Mobile, USA."

  "Huh? What's that?"

  "The novel I told you about."

  "Oh, that great work of literature." Carl's tone was not sarcastic, merely unbelieving, defeated.

  "I'll have to spend the rest of my life working on idiot books and dancing nights to make ends meet."

  "You could leave Bunker Books."

  "It would be just the same at another publishing house."

  "You could leave the publishing business altogether," Carl said.

  "And go where? Do what?"

  Before he realized what he was saying, Carl answered, "Come back to Boston. I'll take care of you."

  And before she knew what she was saying, Lori snapped, "On an assistant professor's salary?"

  "But I'll have Cyber—" His words choked off in midsentence.

  Lori fought back tears. "No, Carl, you won't have Cyberbooks. You'll be back to teaching undergraduate software design and I'll be belly dancing on Ninth Avenue and we'll never see each other again."

  His face became grim. He pulled himself to his full height and squared his shoulders. "Then we damned well had better win this trial," he said firmly.

  "How?" Lori begged. "Even the judge is against us."

  "I don't know how," said Carl. "But we've just got to, that's all."

  PW Forecasts

  The Terror from Beyond Hell

  Sheldon Stoker.

  Bunker Books

  $37.50. ISBN 9-666-8822-5

  Sheldon Stoker's readers are legion, and they will not be disappointed in this latest gory terror by the Master. Terror, devil worship, hideous murders and dismemberments, and—the Stoker trademark—an endangered little child, fill the pages of this page-turner. The plot makes no sense, and the characters are as wooden as usual (except for the child), but Stoker's faithful readers will pop this novel to the top of the best-seller charts the instant it hits the stores. (January 15. Author tour. Major advertising/promotion campaign. First printing of 250,000 copies.)

  Passion in the Pacific

  Capt. Ron Clanker, USN (Ret.)

  Bunker Books.

  $24.95. ISBN 6-646-1924-0

  A better-than-average first novel by the last living survivor of the epic Battle of Midway (World War II). Tells the tale of a bittersweet romance in the midst of stirring naval action, with the convincing authenticity of a sensitive man capable of great wartime deeds. The characters are alive, and the human drama matches and even surpasses the derring-do of battle. (January 15. No author tour. No advertising/promotion campaign. First printing of 3,500 copies.)

  TWENTY-THREE

  As a bullet seeks its target, dozens of men and women from all parts of greater New York converged on the single oak-paneled courtroom in which the Bunker vs. Bunker drama was to be played out.

  Lori Tashkajian, foreseeing a lifetime of dreary editorial offices and smoky Greek nightclubs ahead of her, rode the Third Avenue bus to the courthouse.

  Carl Lewis, after a sleepless night trying to think of some way to turn the tide that was so obviously flowing against Cyberbooks, decided that he could use the exercise and so walked the forty blocks to the courthouse, through the crisp November sunshine.

  Scarlet Dean and Ralph Malzone took a taxi together, each of them wrapped in their own gloomy thoughts.

  The Writer rode the crowded subway downtown, his heavily laden topcoat clanking loudly every time the train swayed.

  P. Curtis Hawks, glowing with his new title of CEO, directed his chauffeur to whisk down the FDR Drive for a firsthand look at the trial that was going to break Bunker Books. Even though his limousine was soon snarled in the usual morning traffic jam (which often lasted until the late afternoon traffic jam overtook it), Hawks smiled happily to himself at the thought of Bunker going down the drain.

  P. T. Bunker, Jr., rode with his mother in her white limo the few blocks that separated their Lower East Side mansion from the courthouse. Junior hummed a pop tune to himself, grinning, as he contemplated how the computer in his room at home was busily buying up every spare share of Tarantula stock it could find.

  Alba Bunker did not notice her son's self-satisfied delight. She dreaded another day in court and longed to be in the powerful arms of her oversexed husband.

  Dozens of curious and idle people with nothing better to do headed for the courtroom, after learning from their TV and newspapers of the fireworks the cowboy attorney had lit off the day before.

  Lt. Jack Moriarty had the most difficult course. Upon awakening from the sedatives administered to him the previous evening, he realized with the absolute certainty of the true hunch-player that the Retiree Murderer was going to be in that courtroom. Half an hour with his laptop computer convinced him that P. T. Bunker, Jr., was grabbing Tarantula stock like a drunken sailor reaching for booze, and the murderer was going to strike again that very morning.

  Knowing it was hopeless to try to gain release from the hospital through normal channels (which meant waiting for Dr. Kildaire, who had just signed out at the end of his midnight-to-eight shift), Moriarty slowly, carefully detached the sensors monitoring his body functions and, clutching the array of them in his hands so that they would not set off their shrill alarms, he tiptoed to the bed next to his and attached them to the sleeping hemorrhoid case there. The spindly wires stretched almost to the breaking point, but the alarms did not go off.

  With barely a satisfied nod, Moriarty raced to the closet and pulled on his clothes. Years of shadowing suspects had taught him how to seem invisible even in plain daylight, so he slithered his way out of the ward, along the corridor, down the elevator, and out the hospital's front entrance in a matter of minutes.

  Using his pocket two-way he summoned a patrol car to take him to the courthouse. When the dispatcher asked what authority he had to request the transportation, Moriarty replied quite honestly, "It's a matter of life and death, fuckhead!"

  *

  Justice Hanson Hapgood Fish allowed his clerk to help him into his voluminous black robes, then dismissed the young man for his morning pretrial meditation. He sank onto his deep leather desk chair and closed his eyes. The vision of all the lovely women in his courtroom immediately sprang to his mind. Mrs. Bunker, looking so vulnerable and hurt in v
irginal white. The one in red: stunning. The dark-haired one with the great boobs. This was going to be an enjoyable trial. Justice Fish determined that he would drag it out as long as possible.

  Let the goddamnable lawyers talk all they want to, he said to himself. Let them jabber away for weeks. I'll give them all the latitude they want. They'll love it! After all, they bill their clients by the minute. The longer the trial, the more money they squeeze out of their clients. And the longer I can sit up there and gaze at those three beauties. He smiled benignly: a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette. Too bad they're all on the losing side of this case.

  *

  One other person was thinking about the Bunker trial, even though he was not heading toward the courtroom.

  P. T. Bunker sat alone in his half-unfinished mansion, at the old pine desk he had used since childhood, reviewing the videotape of the previous day's session in court. Thanks to freedom of information laws and instant electronic communications, it was possible for any informed citizen to witness any open trial.

  He wore an old Rambo XXV T-shirt, from an ancient promotional drive to tie in the novelization with the movie. It was spattered with bloody bullet holes, and showed a crude cartoon of the elderly Rambo shooting up a horde of Haitian zombies from his wheelchair. Below the shirt Bunker was clad only in snug bikini briefs, his legs and feet bare. He no longer needed padding to look impressive.

  His handsome face grimaced as he watched the plaintiffs attorney attacking Bunker Book's management—himself! his wife!—in his relentless western invective.

  A low animal growl issued from P. T. Bunker's lips as he watched the videotape. After nearly an hour, he glanced once at the Mickey Mouse clock on his desk top, then rose and headed for his clothes closet.

  *

  Carl Lewis arrived in the courtroom precisely at one minute before ten. Half a dozen other people were filing in through the double doors and finding seats on the hard wooden pews. Carl saw Lori up in the front row, talking earnestly with Scarlet Dean and Ralph Malzone. As he started toward them, a scruffy man of indeterminate age, wearing a long shapeless gray topcoat and a day's growth of beard, accidentally bumped against him. Carl felt something hard and metallic beneath the man's coat, heard a muffled clank.

  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 bailif
f, 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.