Ajax Penumbra 1969 (Kindle Single) (5 page)

This time, Mo really does chase them out. The longhairs mutter and moan, but he insists: “There is a lovely bookstore just up the street. The lights might be doused, but don’t let that fool you … keep knocking. Ask for Lawrence.”

Penumbra clears the wide desk, and Corvina deposits their haul, the contents of the chest: seven volumes, each dry and intact, each wrapped in a swaddling of calfskin. Mo is agog. They are all agog. One by one, they unwrap the treasures.

“Madrigal!” Mo exclaims. Then, even louder: “Brito! He was one of the first generation!”

One of the books is bound in leather, twin to the book on the desk, but where that one has a Roman numeral five on the spine, this volume is numbered one. Mo turns it over in his hands. “The first logbook,” he breathes. “This is the record of our earliest customers. It’s rumored that Mark Twain was among them. Now we’ll know for sure.”

Corvina unwraps one of the last remaining volumes, and wordlessly, he passes it to Penumbra. It is dull gray, discolored in spots, like a caterpillar evicted from its chrysalis. The cover, in unadorned caps, says
TECHNE TYCHEON
. Penumbra opens the book to show its first page.

It is a jumble of phrases lined up in rows and columns. Each one seems to be just a fragment:
THE GREAT RIVER, BRANCHING AND MERGING; ROAR OF A
TYRANT LION; THERE ARE NO WALLS WITHOUT BRICKS; YOUR DEAD GRANDFATHER’S LAUGHING SKULL
…

He flips to the next page—more of the same.
THE PRINCE WAS A LIZARD ALL ALONG.
Picks a random page in the middle of the book—even more.
YOUR TEETH FALLING OUT, ONE BY ONE.
Each page is a rough grid, and each space in the grid contains some fragment, some image.

It is incomprehensible.

This book of prophecy, Penumbra realizes, is elaborately encrypted. His heart sinks. He has seen volumes like this before; Occult Lit 337 was devoted to
Codes and Ciphers
. Now, looking at the
Tycheon
, he sees homework. He sees years of painstaking labor.

Mo smiles encouragingly. “If there is a code, it can be cracked, Mr. Penumbra. Perhaps I can interest Mr. Fedorov in the task….”

Penumbra’s head snaps up. “Wait—what do you mean?”

“He is our most skilled code-breaker,” Mo explains. “He has made quick work of previous volumes, and with luck—”

“But I intend to take this book back to Galvanic.” Penumbra’s words hang in the air. Corvina extends a hand, settles it firmly on the
Tycheon
’s cover.

“Mr. Penumbra, this book belongs to us,” Mo says. “It belonged to us on the day the
William Gray
sank. This small matter of a century-long entombment does not change that fact.”

Penumbra shakes his head. “You are welcome to the others, but I was able to fund this undertaking only because of my employer’s interest in this book. It
belongs in our library, where scholars will make sense of it. It cannot stay here. This—” He gestures in a wide circle. “—this is just a bookstore.”

Mo’s face flashes at that, but before he can reply, and to Penumbra’s surprise, Corvina interjects. “Mo. Ajax is right. He paid for this. If we’d been able to fund it ourselves—well, we couldn’t.” He pulls his hand back, and Penumbra snatches up the
Tycheon
.

Mo’s eyes flash. “Look around, Mr. Penumbra. This is not
just
a bookstore.” He turns and retreats into the tall shelves. Penumbra hears the door—the one marked
MO
—open and shut.

He takes the Peninsula Commute again and makes his way through Palo Alto to Claude’s redwood-shadowed home. Inside, on the green carpet, where one pizza box once lay, three are now stacked. Penumbra is beginning to get a sense for the rhythm of his former roommate’s life.

“I have come to say good-bye,” he says, sitting cross-legged. The gray cat nuzzles his knee.

Claude frowns. “Already? Well. I’m glad you visited, buddy. What happened with that ship?”

From inside a fat manila envelope, Penumbra produces the
Tycheon
. “Our quest to find the
William Gray
was successful.”

“You found it! Holy shit!”

Penumbra allows a smile. “We did, thanks in part to your guidance. And we found this book within. But now I must decide what to do with it.”

“You’re not taking it back to Galvanic?”

“I may, or—ah.” Penumbra sighs, long and loud. “I just do not know, Claude.”

“Is it valuable? What’s it about, anyway? Demons?”

“It is most certainly valuable, but as to its contents … let us just say that if there are demons, they were well hidden. Look for yourself.” He flips it open, shows Claude the pages of disconnected phrases. “It is encrypted. Inscrutable.”

Claude’s eyes flick across the fragments in quick saccades. “This is a code?”

Penumbra nods. “Very clearly so. I have seen books like this before, at Galvanic. I took a course—”

“Have you considered that it might just be random?”

“I do not think it is a book of nonsense, Claude. It would not have survived this long if there were not some sense to it—some value.”

“Oh! You think something has to have
sense
to have
value
? Buddy … did I ever show you the RAND book?”

“You did not.”

Claude hops up and walks to one of the far piles. He digs deep, casting thick volumes aside, throwing them across the carpet. Penumbra sees an
SDS-940 Technical Operating Manual
. He sees a slim pamphlet titled
RFC 1: Host Software
.

“Here!” Claude unearths a fat book with a dark cover and plops it down on the carpet between them. The title is set in a calm serif.

“This used to be the most valuable book in this room,” Claude declares. “RAND—the think tank, you know?—they published it in, let’s see—” He heaves the book open, finds its copyright page. “—1946. New computers can generate their own random numbers … well, pseudo-random, technically … but back at Galvanic, when I needed random numbers, I copied them out of this.” He flops the book open to an interior page, which is nothing but numbers in a grid, like bricks in a wall. He flips to another page. It is just the same—and also, apparently, completely different.

Penumbra traces a finger down the page. “But why? What requires this much randomness?”

“The Monte Carlo method,” Claude explains. “One of the linchpins of modern science. It’s the cosmic casino, buddy. How to explain it … let’s see. Sometimes, you’re stuck with a system too complicated to model completely. I mean, this guy—” He pats his home-brew computer on the side. “—is powerful, but not
that
powerful. So, instead of calculating the whole system, top to bottom, you pick some random points … you place some bets. And it’s just like a casino: if you place
enough
bets, the randomness evens out. You see the shape of the system underneath.”

“For what might this method be used?”

“Everything!” Claude exclaims. “Climate models … economic projections … nuclear physics.” He pauses, and his face goes hard. “Buddy. They used this book to make the bomb.”

Penumbra chews on that. “And you believe the
Tycheon
might have similar applications.”

“I don’t know. If you think of the brain as a kind of system—no way can you model the whole thing. So maybe your book provides the random points. Instead of point
X, Y, Z
inside a uranium core, it’s—” He glances down at the book, reads one of the fragments there. “—‘the Crown of the False King’ inside a human brain.” He pauses. “Ha. That makes me think of my boss. See? Randomness can be productive.” Claude pauses, struck by a thought. Suddenly, his eyes are merry. “I never told you this, but I found the matching algorithm.”

Penumbra frowns, confused. “Which—?”

“The algorithm that matched us at Galvanic—the great
computerized process
, remember? I was digging around in the basement, and I found the cards with the source code. You want to know how it worked?”

“How?”

“It was random.”

“Random,” Penumbra repeats.

“Completely random.”

“The computer did not know we both had so many books?”

Claude shakes his head. “I think the math department got lazy. I’m pretty sure the president never had a clue. I mean, it was
completely
random.”

Penumbra laughs at that—a single great, barking guffaw. Claude smiles, and then he laughs, too, and soon they are laughing together on the green shag carpet, with the fuzzy gray cat yowling along.

He stands before Langston Armitage on the top floor of the library and delivers the
Techne Tycheon
. The old frog unwraps his treasure slowly, eyes wide and devouring. Penumbra narrates the book’s recovery. He explains its probable use, as a kind of random prompt for fortune-telling, like tarot cards or the
I Ching
.

“Well done, my boy, well done,” Armitage croaks, effusive. “Books of randomness … this might necessitate a new course offering. The number would have to be random, of course … different each year. Say, English 389. Is that random? No, I don’t think so. In any case.” He sets the book to one side. “Did you hear that Lemire died? It was his old wound, the one that never healed. From the Mongolian expedition. It finally killed him. My point is, his post is open. He was a Senior Acquisitions Officer, my boy.”

Bright sunlight presses in through the strip of green wallpaper. Outside, Penumbra knows, it is nothing but cornfields for miles and miles.

“I am grateful for the offer, sir,” he says, “but I have decided to return to San Francisco.”

Armitage’s lips pull into a tight line. “San Francisco,” he repeats. This time, he does not break into song.

The bell above the door tinkles. Penumbra finds Corvina and Mo huddled across the wide desk, deep in deliberation. They turn, and the surprise is plain on their faces. He says nothing; instead, he makes his way slowly through the tables,
wandering and browsing. Corvina and Mo are silent as they watch him meander from
POETRY
to
PSYCHEDELIA
to
MO’S PICKS
. When he reaches them, he takes a breath and announces: “I have delivered the
Tycheon
to my former employer at Galvanic.”

Corvina nods slowly. Mo does, too, and says: “It was your right, Mr. Penumbra. I should never have suggested otherwise. Well. I can only say that it was a rare pleasure to—”

“I would like to purchase this,” Penumbra interrupts, sliding a book across the desk. It is a new paperback edition of
Through the Looking-Glass
with a mildly hallucinogenic cover. Corvina raises an eyebrow. Mo cocks his head; waiting.

Penumbra continues: “And I would like to inquire about … membership.”

Mo’s face splits into a grin. “Of course, of course. Ring him up, Mr. Corvina!” He pauses. “Did I hear you correctly? Did you say your
former
employer, Mr. Penumbra?”

“I did, Mr. Al-Asmari. I have relocated. I am staying with a friend in Palo Alto until I find a place of my own. In the city.”

Mo circles around to join Penumbra at the front of the desk. “Then perhaps we should entertain … a rather absurd idea. Perhaps we should entertain the idea of
employment
.” Mo peers up at the younger man, his round glasses glinting. “Tell me, how do you feel about those ladders?”

Thanksgiving. It’s cold again, but the morning is bright and clear. Penumbra is alone in the bookstore; Corvina is away in New York, on what Mo dubs a research trip.

The bell above the door tinkles. Penumbra looks up from his labors at the logbook to see Claude Novak stepping into the store.

“Nice digs, buddy.”

“It is a comfortable place. At night, it becomes quite lively.”

Claude wanders through the store, pausing to peruse the table marked
SCIENCE FICTION
. He finds a book there and brings it to the desk.
Stand on Zanzibar
.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Claude says. He taps the book’s cover:
tap, tap tap tap
. “It’s good to have you around.”

“It is good to be here,” Penumbra replies. “In fact, I feel almost indignant that you did not sing this city’s praises more stridently. Claude, you have been hoarding California to yourself.”

He laughs at that, and nods agreeably. Then he tells Penumbra that his colleagues, only days ago, established a cross-country computer link. “Not just a network,” he says, “but an
inter
-network.”

“What did they transmit?”

“Just a few characters—barely anything. Then it crashed. But it was pretty neat. It was—huh.” He stops in midthought, really noticing, for the first time, the tall shelves rising in the back of the store. “What
are
those?”

Claude takes a step forward, magnetized, inter-networks forgotten. He stares up into the shadows, the books in rows and columns extending into what looks like infinity. He cannot see the ceiling; cannot see the dark mural commissioned by Mr. Fang himself. It is visible only to those who climb the ladders to the very top, and if Ajax Penumbra, in later years, climbs them less, he never forgets for a moment what is painted there.

Climbers in cloaks on a steep rocky trail, arms outstretched, clasping hands. Climbers pulling each other along.

Books on display in Al-Asmari’s 24-Hour Bookstore in September 1969, on the low table labeled
MO’S PICKS
: