"Understood," said Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw. "I'll wrap 
it up myself, right now. Compiled some nice wrapping paper this morning." He 
opened a desk drawer
and took out a roll of thick, glossy mediatronic paper bearing animated 
Christmas scenes: Santa sliding down the chimney, the ballistic reindeer, the 
three Zoroastrian sovereigns dismounting from their dromedaries in front of the 
stable. There was a lull while Hackworth and Finkle-McGraw watched the little 
scenes; one of the hazards of living in a world filled with mediatrons was that 
conversations were always being interrupted in this way, and that explained why 
Atlantans tried to keep mediatronic commodities to a minimum. Go into a thete's 
house, and every object had moving pictures on it, everyone sat around 
slackjawed, eyes jumping from the bawdy figures cavorting on the mediatronic 
toilet paper to the big-eyed elves playing tag in the bathroom mirror to ...