Arrayed around Mitsui, also kneeling with eyes respectfully lowered, were the head of Kanagawa Industries, the vice president for innovation, and the chief engineer of the Numazu plant. All were dressed in ceremonial kimonos more gorgeous than Mitsui would have thought it was possible for human hands to create.
The Emperor was flanked by serving robots, of course. It was fitting that the Divine personage not be touched by human hands. Besides, his decision to have robots serve him presented the Japanese people with an example of how these new devices should be accepted into every part of life.
With trembling hands Mitsui placed the first production unit of the electronic book in the metal fingers of the robot that stood between him and the Emperor. The robot pivoted, making hardly more noise than the heel of a boot would on a polished floor, and extended its arm to the Emperor.
The Emperor peered through his glasses at the little electronic package, then picked it up. He had been instructed, of course, on how to use the book. But for an instant Mitsui was frightened that somehow the instructions had not been sufficient, and the Emperor would be embarrassed by being unable to make the book work. Suicide would be the only way out, in that case.
After what seemed like several years of examining the book, the Emperor touched the green pressure pad at its base. Mitsui knew what would come up on the screen: a listing of all the books and papers that the Emperor himself had written in the field of marine biology.
The Divine face broke into a pleased smile. The smile broadened as the Emperor pecked away at the book’s controls, bringing one after another of his own writings to the book’s page-sized screen. He laughed with delight, and Mitsui realized that mortal life offered no higher reward than this.
Mark Moskowitz paced angrily back and forth across his one-room apartment as he argued with the image of his attorney on the phone screen.
«But they’re screwing me out of my own invention!» he yelled.
The attorney, a sad-eyed man with an expression of utter world-weariness, replied, «Mark, when you accepted their money you sold them the rights to the invention.»
«But they’re lousing it up! Three years now and they still haven’t produced a working model that weighs less than ten pounds!»
«There’s nothing you can do about it,» said the attorney. «It’s their ball.»
«But it’s my idea! My invention!»
The attorney shrugged.
«You know what I think?» Mark growled, pacing back to the phone and bending toward the screen until his nose almost touched it. «I think Hubris Books doesn’t want to make the project succeed! I think they’re screwing around with it just to give the whole idea a bad name and make certain that no other publisher will touch it, by the time they’re finished.»
«That’s silly,» said the attorney. «Why would they…»
«Silly?» Mark snapped. «How about last year, when they tried to make the picture screen feel like paper? How about that scheme they came up with to have a hundred separate screens that you could turn like the pages of a book? Silly? They’re crazy!»
They argued fruitlessly for nearly half an hour, and finally Mark punched the phone’s OFF button in a fury of frustration and despair. He sat in glowering, smoldering anger in the one-room apartment as the afternoon sun slowly faded into the shadows of dusk.
Only then did he remember why he had placed the call to his attorney. The package from Tokyo. From Mitsui. When it had arrived, Mark had gone straight to the phone to see what progress his suit against Hubris Books was making. The answer, of course, had been: zero.
With the dejected air of a defeated soldier, Mark trudged to the table by his hotplate where he had left the package. Terribly afraid that he knew what was inside the heavy wrappings, he nonetheless opened the package as delicately, as tenderly, as if it contained newborn kittens.
It contained a newborn, all right. An electronic book, just as Mark had feared. No message, no card. Nothing but the book itself.
Mark held it in the palm of his left hand. It weighed a little more than a pound, he judged. Three pads were set below the screen, marked with Arabic numerals and Japanese characters. He touched the green one, which was marked «1.»
A still picture of Mitsui appeared on the screen, grinning—no, beaming—at him. The amber pressure pad, marked «2,» began to blink. Mark touched it.
A neatly typed letter appeared on the screen:
Dear Friend Mark:
Please accept this small token of my deep friendship for you. In a few days your news media will be filled with stories about Kanagawa Industries’ revolutionary new electronic book. I will tell every reporter I speak to that the idea is just as much yours as mine, which is nothing more than the truth.
As you may know, trade agreements between your government and mine will make it impossible for Japan to sell electronic books in the U.S.A. However, it should be permissible for us to form an American subsidiary of Kanagawa in the United States. Would you consider accepting the position of chief scientist, or a post of similar rank, with this new company? In that way, you can help to produce electronic books for the American market.
Please phone me at your earliest convenience…
Mark read no further. He ran to the phone. He did not even bother to check what time it was in Tokyo. As it happened, he interrupted Mitsui’s lunch, but the two exroommates had a happy, laughing talk together, and Mark agreed to become vice president for innovation of the planned Kanagawa-USA subsidiary.
Moral
Victor Hugo was right when he said that no army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come. But if you’re narrow-minded enough, both the time and the idea can pass you by.
VISION
We can talk about the practical benefits of going into space, the fortunes to be made in zero-gravity manufacturing, the benefits of new medicines and materials produced in orbit. But there is the human aspect to consider, also. Don Arnold is a Promethean of a slightly different stripe, a reluctant leader who pioneers into a new domain almost in spite of himself. Philosophers have long argued over whether human history is molded by the daring actions of extraordinary men and women, or whether history responds to implacable, inevitable natural forces which individual human actions can do little to bend or shape. Vision might help you to decide which side of that argument you are on; then again, it might just add a little weight to both sides of the argument.
Vision, by the way, was originally published in Analog magazine’s 50th anniversary issue, and marked my return to that venerable magazine’s pages as a writer. My first sale to Analog was in May 1962, a short story titled The Next Logical Step (see Escape Plus Ten, published by Tor Books in 1983). When John W. Campbell, Jr. died in 1971 and I was tapped to become Analog’s editor, I decided not to write for the science fiction magazines as long as I was an editor of one of them; it would have been too much of a conflict of interest, I felt. Although I continued to write science fiction novels, I also withdrew them from consideration for the Hugo and Nebula awards, for the same reason. Once I left Analog, however, I was pleased to submit stories and articles to the science fiction magazines once again, and was very happy when Stanley Schmidt picked it for Analog’s 50th anniversary.