"Thank you."
Simple as that.
He walked into the library a few minutes later.
"May I help you?"
He looked at the librarian. May I help you, may I help you. What a
world of helpful people! "I'd like to 'have' Edgar Allan Poe." His
verb was carefully chosen. He didn't say 'read'. He was too afraid
that books were passé, that printing itself was a lost art. Maybe all
'books' today were in the form of fully delineated three-dimensional
motion pictures. How in hell could you make a motion picture out of
Socrates, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud?
"What was that name again?"
"Edgar Allan Poe."
"There is no such author listed in our files."
"Will you please check?"
She checked. "Oh, yes. There's a red mark on the file card. He was one
of the authors in the Great Burning of 2265."
"How ignorant of me."
"That's all right," she said. "Have you heard much of him?"
"He had some interesting barbarian ideas on death," said Lantry.
"Horrible ones," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Ghastly."
"Yes. Ghastly. Abominable, in fact. Good thing he was burned. Unclean.
By the way, do you have any of Lovecraft?"
"Is that a sex book?"