Book lovers the world over have spent countless hours caressing covers, fingering dust-jackets, and repeatedly running their hands up and down fabric spines. Homes everywhere house collections of the hard back and paperback covers of worn and dog-eared novels that bibliophiles have been amassing for years, moving them in near-bursting boxes from place to place over the span of their adult lives.

Because of this level of devotion, and the fact that the people who love books love them in the way that patriotic people feel about flags or musicians feel about their instruments, how can books ever be replaced, let alone disappear? And is a computer screen really going to substitute for books in the hearts or minds of, well, anybody?

Peter Lake climbed down into paradise. Walking through that place, he felt like Mohammed in Bismillah. Everything was shiny, sparkling, alert, and familiar. The machines seemed to greet him with the same ingenuous affection as a class of kindergarten children receiving the mayor. And as they puffed and revolved and did their mad angular dances, Peter Lake realized that he was a mechanic. In each section of the half-acre of machinery, years of knowledge charged out from the interior darkness and stood at attention like brigades and brigades of soldiers on parade. The realization was locked in place as if with strikes and bolts.