The Astral Mirror Read Online Free PDF Page A

on the same principle: fire the editor when sales don’t pan out, and then hire an editor fired by one of your competitors for the same reason.
    “That’s what I think, too,” she said. Her speech was just a little blurred, her tinted auburn hair just a bit frazzled. This was her third Bloody Mary and they had not ordered lunch yet.
    “I love to curl up with a book. It’s cozy,” said Sub Rights.
    “Books are supposed to be made of paper,” Editorial agreed. “With pages that you can turn.”
    Sub Rights nodded unhappily. “I said that to Production, and do you know what he said?”
    “No. What?”
    “He said I was wrong, and that books were supposed to be made of clay tablets with cuneiform marks pressed into them.”
    Editorial’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s the end of an era. The next thing you know, they’ll replace us with robots.”
     
    The chief engineer paced back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, as the two technicians worked feverishly on the robot. The entire assembly area of the factory was absolutely still; not a machine moved, all across the wide floor. Both technicians’ white coveralls were stained with sweat and oil, a considerable loss of face for men who prided themselves on keeping their machines in perfect working order.
    The chief engineer, in his golden-tan coveralls and plastic hard hat, alternately glared at the technicians and gazed up at the huge digital clock dominating the far wall of the assembly area. Up in the glass-panelled gallery above the clock, he could see Mitsui Minimata’s young, eager face peering intently at them.
    A shout of triumph from one of the technicians made the chief engineer spin around. The technician held a tiny silicon chip delicately between his thumb and forefinger, took two steps forward and offered the offending electronic unit to the chief engineer. The chief took it, looked down at the thumbnail-sized chip, so small and insignificant-seeming in the palm of his hand. Hard to believe that this tiny grain of sand caused the robot to malfunction and ruined an entire day’s work. He sighed to himself, and thought that this evening, as he relaxed in a hot bath, he would try to compose a haiku on the subject of how small things can cause great troubles.
    The junior of the two technicians, in the meantime, had dashed to the automated supply dispenser across the big assembly room, dialed up a replacement chip, and come running back with the new unit pressed between his palms. The senior technicians installed it quickly, buttoned up the robot’s access panel, turned and bowed to the chief engineer.
    The chief grunted a grudging approval. The junior technician bowed to the chief and asked permission to activate the robot. The chief nodded. The robot stirred to life, and it too bowed to the chief engineer. Only then did production resume.
     
    The Sales Manager for Hubris Books stroked his chin thoughtfully as he sat behind his desk conversing with his western district sales director.
    “But if they ever start selling these electronic doohickeys,” the western district man was saying, “they’ll bypass the wholesalers, the distributors, even the retail stores, for cryin’ out loud! They’ll sell those little computer disks direct to the customer! They’ll sell ‘em through the mail!”
    “And over the phone,” the Sales Manager added wearily. “They’re talking about doing the whole thing electronically.”
    “Where’s that leave us?”
    “Out in the cold, buddy. Right out in the cold.”
The Decision
     
    Robert Emmett Lipton was not often nervous. His position in life was to make other people nervous, not to get the jitters himself. But he was not often summoned to the office of the CEO of Moribundic Industries. Lipton found himself perspiring as the secretary escorted him through the cool, quiet, elegantly-carpeted corridors toward the CEO’s private suite.
    It wasn’t as if he had been asked to report to the bejewelled