Ajax Penumbra 1969 (Kindle Single) (2 page)

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.”

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 can 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 any 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.”

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.

He turns now to another task, one that he will not leave without attempting. At the library, in a thick Palo Alto phone book, he finds
NOVAK, CLAUDE CASIMIR
. His old roommate went to Stanford and he never left.

The Peninsula Commute train takes him chugging through a loose necklace of towns: San Mateo, Hillsdale, San Carlos, Redwood City, Menlo Park, and finally, Palo Alto.

Traveling up and down the peninsula, Penumbra has come to the conclusion that San Francisco is not actually part of California. The city is pale and windswept; Palo Alto is green and still, with the scent of eucalyptus strong in the air. The sky here is pearlescent blue, not platinum gray. Penumbra lifts his face to the generous sun and wonders: Why did I wait so long to visit my old roommate here?

Claude Novak’s house is a small stucco box with a red-tile roof, the lawn dry and brown beneath a tree that rises to dwarf the house utterly. It is, Penumbra realizes, a redwood. Claude lives beneath a redwood tree.

Inside, there is no furniture. Everything sits on the floor, on the green shag carpet. Thick pads of graph paper are stacked in squat towers; pencils and pens are collected in coffee cups, or poking out of the carpet. There are piles of books with intimidating titles:
Finite State Machines
,
Modern Matrix Algebra
,
Detours in Hilbert Space
. Claude’s other library has grown, too. It is gathered in a long block, forming a sort of low wall around the brown-tiled kitchen. Creased paperback spines show the authors’ names in bold capitals:
ASIMOV BRADBURY CLARKE DEL REY
… A fuzzy gray cat skulks behind the science fiction and mewls at the intruder.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Claude says. He plops down on the floor, where there is also a pizza box, a
San Jose Mercury News
, a single wilted plant, and, in the center of the room, roughly where a dining table should sit, rising between two precarious heaps of books and binders …

“Claude, is that a computer?”

He nods. “I built it myself.” If the machine at Galvanic was sleek and stylish, this one is rough-hewn and functional—a plywood box with a loose, soapbox-derby look. It is much smaller, too: a piece of luggage, not a kitchen appliance. The top panel has been pulled back, and the computer’s guts poke out from inside: long boards studded with electronic components that glint like tiny stones and shells.

“To put this in perspective,” Claude says, “it’s about one-fourth the size of that old IBM, but twice as powerful.”

The computer is running; lights flutter and flow across the front panel. There is a keyboard and a boxy green and black monitor showing fuzzy characters. Penumbra gazes at it, mesmerized. Claude built this himself.

Building a computer is just not a thing that a person does.

“How are you?” Claude asks. “I mean—how’s
life
?”

Penumbra sits, and he tells him everything. He tells him about his job at the library, the
Techne Tycheon
, his odyssey in San Francisco, the
William Gray
.

“That’s fantastic,” Claude says. “It suits you, buddy. You’ve found your calling. Cigarette?”

Penumbra demurs and watches his old roommate light one on his own.

“A ship buried beneath the city,” Claude says. “Heavy.” He exhales slowly and taps his cigarette into an ashtray that says
STAR TREK
across the side.

“It is an unfortunate conclusion,” Penumbra admits, “but it is, at least, a conclusion. Better to know the truth, I think, than—”

“Wait,” Claude says suddenly. He taps his finger on the ashtray.
Tap, tap tap tap
. “BART. Yes. I worked on the projections. Ridership, regional uptake, route scenarios, et cetera. I have the … hold on …” He is up on his feet, bent over, rummaging through one of his piles. Folders are sliding tectonically down onto the carpet. The cat yowls. “It’s in here somewhere … system map, timetables, et cetera … aha!” He lifts a sheaf of paper triumphantly. “BART!”

“Who is … Bart?”

“BART, buddy.
B-A-R-T
, Bay Area Rapid Transit. The train system, you know? They’re building it now. You must have seen it … the whole city is torn to hell.”

“Of course. BART.”

“Now … look at this.” Claude unfolds the sheaf, showing a geometric approximation of the Bay Area. There’s the long peninsula, the blocky knob of the city, and across the bay, the crenellated curve of Oakland and Berkeley. The contours are drawn in plain black and white, but laid across the landscape there is a bundle of colored lines: red, yellow, blue, and green. Claude points to the bundle where it cuts through San Francisco. “They’re digging this right now. I mean,
right
now.”

“And you worked on this? Planning it?”

“Like I said, ridership projections. Different scenarios. High gas prices, low gas prices, thermonuclear war, et cetera.”

“Claude.” Penumbra beams. “You are a psychohistorian after all.”

“Ha! You read
Foundation
. I wish the people I work with appreciated that…. Not too many Asimov fans in my department. Anyway, the point is, I hear plenty about the excavation. They’re finding things. Old underground speakeasies … basements people didn’t know they had.”

Penumbra’s eyes go wide. “And ships?”

“Maybe, maybe not. All I can tell you is that this tunnel—” He points to the rainbow bundle where it crosses a point labeled
EMBARCADERO
. “—runs straight through landfill. They have to go slow there … dig carefully.”

Penumbra’s brain is buzzing. “How would I determine if the wreck of the
William Gray
lies in their path?”

“I can’t help you there. I can tell you that two hundred fifty-eight thousand people are going to be riding this thing on January 1, 1975. But—ha—my model has nothing to say about sunken ships.” He drags on his cigarette. “I thought the old stuff was your specialty, buddy.”

Penumbra thinks of their rickety bookcase: his classics on one shelf, Claude’s science fiction on the other. It is, he realizes, an image that would fit the cover of one of his old roommate’s books: a ghostly shipwreck rising from below a futuristic city….

He smiles. “You are right. I can manage this on my own.”

The San Francisco Public Library is a pale marble fortress facing City Hall across a bleak promenade lined with palm trees. Inside, a grand central stairway is flanked by pale murals showing swaths of empty ocean, with wispy clouds floating at the upper edges. The effect is, Penumbra thinks, quite depressing.

He has been here once before, and he left in a foul mood after a full day of fruitless searching. Then, he was looking at birth certificates, deeds of sale, court records—the sources you consult when you are searching for a man with a business. This morning, he is looking for a ship with a street address.

He makes for the map room. It is narrow and crowded, dominated by tall brown filing cabinets with wide, flat drawers. The librarian, a woman in a flower-print dress, is bent over reading
Portnoy’s Complaint
.

“I wish to see every map of San Francisco produced between 1849 and 1861,” Penumbra declares.

She looks up, startled. “You want … all of them?”

He wants all of them.

He has not yet purchased a train ticket home.