Ajax Penumbra 1969 Read online

  Claude Novak graduates in just three years. On a cool summer morning, you walk with him to Galvanic’s little train station, each of you gripping one end of his trunk, weighed down with science fiction. He is bound for California, where he will join Stanford’s graduate program in computer science—one of the country’s first. Before the train arrives, he plucks a book out of the trunk and presents it to you. The cover shows a pale, swirling galaxy. It is Isaac Asimov’s Foundation; Claude has spoken of this one often.

  You confirm: “Scientists predict the future?”

  “Psychohistorians,” he says lightly. “And this one’s not science fiction, buddy. Not anymore. It’s going to be real.”

  When the train arrives, you shake Claude’s hand, and then you grow solemn. “I am grateful to the computerized process that matched us,” you tell your erstwhile roommate. “I hope you will write algorithms of your own that produce such happy results.”

  Claude laughs. “Me, too, buddy. Me, too. Good luck in the library.”

  Books of silver; books of bone; and yet the strangest thing you see in all your years at Galvanic is a boy in a ski mask, sitting in a basement, using a computer.

  A year later, when you are preparing to graduate, Langston Armitage invites you into his aerie on the top floor of the library. His single narrow window is covered with a strip of paisley wallpaper, but the sunlight still presses through, giving everything in the office a greenish cast. Including Armitage.

  “I would like to invite you to join the library staff,” he croaks.

  You have worked at the library for three summers, shelving and reshelving books, auditing and updating the card catalog, and although you love the place, this does not sound like an exciting next step. It must show on your face, because Armitage elaborates:

  “No, my boy. I mean the acquisitions staff.”

  Four years of Occult Lit classes have served as more-or-less continuous propaganda for the Galvanic College Library acquisitions staff. They are the long arm of the library, and the wellspring of its bibliographic wealth. You see them sometimes on the library’s upper floors, consulting with one another in the shadows, speaking quietly in strange languages, rubbing thoughtfully at strange scars.

  That summer, you become an Apprentice Acquisitions Officer, and begin what is a graduate program in all but degree. You are paid to read the classics, and also books that would be classics if any library other than Galvanic’s possessed them. You are paid to learn languages: Greek and Latin, certainly, but older ones, too—Aramaic and Sanskrit and Proto-Phoenician, which might have been the language of Atlantis.

  Up in Galesburg, your mother retires, and the marching band plays a farewell concert on your old front lawn. Your father gets sick, spends a month in the hospital, gets better—though his voice is always different after that. Softer. He founds a new journal, Interrupciones.

  Things go more slowly than you had, perhaps, expected. Years pass before Langston Armitage judges you ready for your first assignment. On that day, he calls you into his office, promotes you to the post of Junior Acquisitions Officer, and gives you your assignment: a book known as the Techne Tycheon.

  You translate from Greek: “The art, or craft, of fortune.”

  “Very good. It has a long history—here.” He pulls an overstuffed folder out of its place midway down the tower on his desk; several others slide out with it and scatter their contents across the floor. “This”—he taps the folder—“is the work of another acquisitions officer, Jack Brindle. You will find that the trail runs cold circa 1657.”

  “What happened to Brindle?”

  “Died in Macau. Very mysterious. In any case—1657. You’ll pick it up from there.”

  You learn that the Tycheon—as it is more casually known to the approximately three people alive who care about its existence—did not enjoy a large print run, but the few copies that ever existed made quite an impression. It is, apparently, a book of prophecy, and Brindle’s file is full of suggestive scraps. In 1511, a merchant in Liverpool extolls its virtues. Almost a century later, in 1601, a fortune-teller in London cannot work without it. The fortune-teller’s apprentice praises the Tycheon just as effusively, but apparently misses an important prediction; he is murdered in 1657. The trail goes red, and cold.

  Your quest begins. You ride the train to Urbana, Chicago, East Lansing, and Ann Arbor. In university libraries and antiquarian bookstores, you collect fragments, grasp at footnotes, and, over time, assemble an overstuffed file of your own. It is not any more useful than Brindle’s. You fling letters of inquiry far and wide, but when the replies come, they carry only regrets.

  You begin to suspect that the Tycheon might simply be lost. You confess as much to Langston Armitage, and he reminds you that your colleague Carol Janssen recently recovered the six-hundred-year-old Incan Book of Dreams. “It was composed entirely from knotted string, my boy,” he croaks, “and they had taken it apart to make sweaters.” He says it again, for emphasis: “It was in … the villagers’ … sweaters.”

  You keep at it. You trace receipts and track manifests. And then: a breakthrough.

  In the papers of a New York surgeon and bibliophile named Floyd Deckle, there is a letter from a friend, Dr. Victor Potente, sent from San Francisco, dated September 1861. Potente writes:

  And here, no bookseller is so well stocked as the great William Gray, boasting first editions of Galen and Vesalius, as well as another volume less scientific, but no less noteworthy: a book of prophecy! Rest assured, Floyd, I pressed the clerk to reveal its contents, but he refused, claiming that special training is required to interpret its fell omens. I offered, as substitute, my surgical education—surely, I said, I have learned to read certain dark signs—but the clerk, a Mr. Fang, only shook his head, and to its place of safekeeping he returned the volume, which bore the title—

  The craft of fortune.

  Your eyes widen. You copy the name. William Gray. Copy it twice. You sprint through the stacks, clamber up the stairs, trip on your own feet, fall on your hands. On the top floor, you pound on Langston Armitage’s door—lungs heaving, palms stinging—and wait for his croaked command: “Enter!”

  Armitage listens intently as you reveal your discovery: a new reference, the most contemporaneous by two centuries! The name of the bookseller: William Gray of San Francisco! The missing link!

  Armitage’s lips pull into a tight line. “San Francisco,” he croaks. You nod. Armitage nods back. Then he lifts one stubby arm into an operatic curve, and in a vibrating baritone he sings: “If you’re gooo-ing … to Saaan Fraaan-cisco …” He breaks off. Casts a glance up at your buzz cut. Stabs a finger. “Not much to hold the flowers up there, Ajax.”

  You exhale. Gather yourself. “So I should go West?”

  “My boy! You should already be gone.”

  Friedrich & Fang

  Penumbra does not tell the clerk all of this, but he does tell him more than is strictly necessary to describe the object of his quest. The clerk listens intently, his eyebrows lowered in concentration, the broad field of his forehead furrowed. More longhairs approach the desk to inquire about the bathroom key. The clerk surrenders it silently, without protest. Almost without looking.

  Penumbra finishes his tale with the name of the San Francisco bookseller. The clerk is quiet, thinking.

  “Well,” he says at last. “I don’t know about any William Gray.”

  “I have grown accustomed to that reply. It is not—”

  The clerk holds up a hand. “Wait. We’ll ask Mo.”

  “Mo?”

  The front door crashes open and the bell above clatters harshly. Penumbra turns to watch as an unseen presence charges through the crowd, its passage marked by a ripple of greetings:

  “Hey, Mo.”

  “Mo!”

  “How’s it hanging, Mo?”

  “Mo, my main man!”

  The sea of longhairs parts, and there, standing barely five feet tall, gleamingly bald, is a man who ca
n only be Mohammed Al-Asmari. Round-rimmed glasses rest on the sharp hook of his nose. He wears a snug jacket, dark and shiny, with a neat Nehru collar. He turns to address the store:

  “Out! All of you!” He waves his hands in a shooing motion. “Go home! Go to sleep!”

  There is no reaction whatsoever. The song plays on; the crowd laughs and flirts unimpeded. When the store’s proprietor turns to face the wide desk again, he is smiling, lighting up the network of deep creases across his face. “A healthy crowd tonight, Mr. Corvina.”

  The clerk—Corvina—frowns. “They’ve bought two books between them, Mo.”

  “Oh, that’s fine,” Mo says, waving a hand. “This business is all about relationships. We wait for the right moment. Observe.”

  He turns, raises his voice again: “You there! Felix, isn’t it? You’ve been reading that book for three nights straight—buy it already!” His target shouts a good-natured protest, mimes empty pockets. Mo calls back: “Nonsense! Pass a hat around. You can raise three dollars from this band of hooligans.”

  There is a light chorus of jeers. Mo turns back, still smiling. “And here?” He peers up at Penumbra. “A new face?”

  “A more serious customer,” Corvina says approvingly. “Mohammed Al-Asmari, meet Ajax Penumbra.”

  “Ajax!” Mo repeats. He looks him up and down. “Your parents must have had high expectations.”

  “They—well. My father is a poet.” Penumbra extends a hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Al-Asmari.”

  “Please! I beg you. Call me Mo.” He clasps Penumbra’s hand with both of his together. “Welcome, welcome to the twenty-four-hour bookstore. I don’t suppose you read about us in Rolling Stone? …”

  “Ah—no. I do not—”

  Corvina interjects: “He’s looking for a very particular book, Mo.”

  “As are we all, Mr. Corvina, as are we all. Most don’t realize it yet. So on that count, our friend Ajax Penumbra is ahead.”

  “It is a very old book,” Penumbra says. “I have traced the most contemporaneous reference to this city, to a bookstore that no longer exists. I came here with the hope that some rumor of the volume’s passage might persist among booksellers such as yourself.”

  Mo trots around to the back of the desk, shoos Corvina from the stool, hoists himself up to take his place. “I see the ‘Howl’ in your back pocket, Mr. Penumbra”—he jabs a finger down from his perch—“so I know you visited our upstart competitor before venturing here. But they could not assist you, could they? No, of course not. Here, we have a longer memory. But tell me, tell me—what do you seek?”

  Penumbra repeats his story. Midway through, a fuzzy-chinned young man approaches the desk with a battered copy of Dune and a motley handful of coins. Mo waves him away. “Oh, just take it, Felix. Spend the money on a haircut.”

  Penumbra finishes. He and Corvina both watch Mo expectantly, waiting for some reaction.

  “William Gray.” Mo says it slowly. “Well. This is very interesting indeed.”

  Penumbra brightens. “You have heard of him?”

  “I know the name,” Mo says. Four simple words, but they send a thrill down Penumbra’s spine. “And I’ll tell you how,” Mo continues. He turns to his clerk. “Listen closely, Mr. Corvina. This will be of some interest to you, as well.”

  The store has grown quieter; the woman with the portable radio has departed. Mo laces his fingers together and rests his chin there. “To begin, Mr. Penumbra—you have it half right.”

  Penumbra raises an eyebrow at that. “Which half, precisely?”

  Mo is silent. Drawing it out. Then he says: “William Gray wasn’t a man. The William Gray was a ship.”

  “That is not possible,” Penumbra says, shaking his head. “I have a specific reference to a bookstore.”

  Mo regards him from behind the curl of his knuckles. “How much do you know about the ground upon which you stand?”

  “About this city? I admit that I am no native, but I have found the works of Herb Caen most—”

  Mo snorts. “Come with me. Both of you.” He hops down from the stool and trots toward the front door. To the fuzzy-chinned Dune reader, he calls: “Felix! Watch the store!”

  Outside, thin whips of fog are snapping across the street. Mo shivers and straightens his collar, tugs it up higher. “Come along,” he says, trotting down the sidewalk, following the slope toward the bay. His shadow spins under the streetlamps. Penumbra and Corvina obey, and they all walk in silence for several blocks. The fog closes in; the bookstore behind them is just a ghostly glimmer.

  “Here.” Mo stops suddenly. “This is San Francisco.”

  Penumbra gives him a puzzled look.

  “And this—” Mo hops one step forward. “—is the bay. Or it was, before they filled it in. I stand upon the new San Francisco. Landfill.”

  Corvina bends down close to the ground, as if he might detect some difference. The concrete is cold and smooth.

  “Mainly, it’s rubble from 1906, the great earthquake and fire,” Mo says. “But there are other things down there, too. There are ships.”

  “Ships,” Penumbra repeats.

  “It was 1849. Ships were sailing into this city every day, every one of them loaded with would-be prospectors. They disembarked—some of them leaping into the water for a head start—and they ran for the goldfields. Well, now. These ships’ crews had just spent the whole passage listening to those lunatics rave, and now they didn’t want to be left behind. They thought their fortunes were waiting in those fields, too! So they abandoned ship, every one of them. Even the captains.”

  Corvina frowns. “They abandoned them entirely?”

  “Entirely and without hesitation, Mr. Corvina. There were globs of gold waiting to be gathered up like so many fallen apples!—or so they thought. In any case, without captain or crew, the ships went to the highest bidder. They stayed put, mostly, and they were repurposed—truly, put to every purpose. They had street addresses! They became storehouses. Boardinghouses. Brothels. Prisons.”

  Realization dawns across Penumbra’s face. “Bookstores.”

  “Just one. That was the William Gray.”

  “I had it all wrong,” Penumbra moans. He claps his palm to his forehead, digs his fingers into his hair. “I was looking for the wrong thing entirely.”

  Mo is thoughtful, gazing out toward the water. “Yes, the William Gray became a bookstore, the first this city ever had. It was established by two men, a Mr. Friedrich and a Mr. Fang.” Corvina perks up at the name, and seems ready to say something, but Mo continues: “They were fast friends. Friedrich came from Germany. Fang was born here, in San Francisco. Oh, yes, Mr. Corvina—” Here, he looks pointedly at his clerk. “—Mr. Fang had a partner. But only for a time.”

  Penumbra glances at Corvina, puzzled. The clerk looks confused, as well. Mo continues:

  “For a decade, their joint venture bobbed in the bay, a beacon of erudition in an otherwise fairly depraved environment. But, I am sorry to report that Mr. Friedrich’s interest … waned. The market for real estate in San Francisco was no saner in his day than ours, and an innovation was sweeping the city. Speculators would acquire so-called water plots—little bits of the bay, you see?—and fill them in. It was alchemy! Instant waterfront property. And one method—oh, it would be funny, if it weren’t so sad—one particularly expeditious method was … to simply sink a ship.”

  “No!” Penumbra bleats. “Surely, not the William Gray? …”

  “One morning— Ah, I can hardly imagine it. It was a singular betrayal, not just of Mr. Fang, but of all those … ah.” Mo shakes his head. The streetlamp above him shines down harshly, casting fine shadows, making webs of his wrinkled cheeks. “One morning, Mr. Fang arrived at his great floating bookstore on Beale Street, only to find that it no longer floated. Friedrich had scuttled the ship. Only the tip of the mast poked up out of the water.”

  Penumbra gapes. “What did Fang do?”

  “Why, he did what a
ny self-respecting bookseller would do, Mr. Penumbra.” There is a dark twinkle in Mo’s eye. “He dived!”

  Penumbra barks a single great laugh. “Ha! He did not.”

  “He did!” Mo insisted. “He dived, and dived, and dived again. He retrieved what he could. In the end, only a few volumes could be dried and recopied. And those—” Again, he looks at Corvina. “—form the core of our collection even today.”

  “I didn’t know Fang was the first,” Corvina says.

  “Oh, yes. He reestablished the store in our present location. We have him to blame for the odd dimensions, Mr. Corvina, and him to thank for the bell above the door.”

  “Did he save the Techne Tycheon?” Penumbra asks, almost frantic. His assignment is flashing before his eyes. “Do you still possess a book with that title?”

  “That would be … the ‘craft of fortune’—do I have it right?”

  Penumbra nods. San Francisco is, apparently, a good town for Greek.

  Mo pauses, consulting his mental inventory. “I’m sorry, Mr. Penumbra—but I am quite sure that we do not.”

  “It was aboard the William Gray,” Penumbra insists. “I have proof.”

  “Then it is gone. That ship was lost. And now—” Mo lifts his hands to encompass the sidewalk, the street, the storefronts—the whole dark tableau, sliding down toward the bay. “And now, a great city has risen over it.”

  Psychohistorian

  He walks the city, dispirited. It is something, he tells himself, to have determined the fate of the William Gray and the book he sought there. But it is still a failure. His first assignment as a Junior Acquisitions Officer, and it came to nothing.

  Carol Janssen found the Book of Dreams in a remote Peruvian village. Another acquisitions officer, Julian Lemire, pulled the diary of Nebuchadnezzar II out of an active volcano. Langston Armitage himself has traveled to Antarctica twice. Now, Penumbra has come so close to his own prize, and yet it is beyond his reach. A whole city blocks his way.