Interzone 244 Jan - Feb 2013 (3 page)

Were they all like this?

Of course, there had never been a ‘Jeff
McNamara’. Ringo was a series of Hebrew-language Westerns, all
written pseudonymously by starving young writers in a bygone Tel
Aviv, who contributed besides it similar tales of space adventures,
sexual titillation or soppy romance, as the occasion (and the
publisher’s cheque book) had called for. Achimwene rifled carefully
through the rest of the books. All paperbacks, printed on cheap,
thin pulp paper centuries before. How had they been preserved? Some
of these he had only ever seen mentioned in auction catalogues;
their existence, here, now, was nothing short of a miracle. There
was a nurse romance; a murder mystery; a World War Two adventure;
an erotic tale whose lurid cover made Achimwene blush. They were
impossible, they could not possibly exist. “Where did you
find
them?” he said.

Ibrahim shrugged. “An opened Century Vault,”
he said.

Achimwene exhaled a sigh. He had heard of
such things – subterranean safe-rooms, built in some long-ago war
of the Jews, pockets of reinforced concrete shelters caught like
bubbles all under the city surface. But he had never expected…

“
Are there…many of them?”
he said.

Ibrahim smiled. “Many,” he said. Then,
taking pity on Achimwene, said, “Many vaults, but most are
inaccessible. Every now and then, construction work uncovers one…
The owners called me, for they viewed much of it as rubbish. What,
after all, would a modern person want with one of these?” and he
gestured at the box, saying, “I saved them for you. The rest of the
stuff is back in the Junkyard, but this was the only box of
books.”

“
I can pay,” Achimwene
said. “I mean, I will work something out, I will borrow – ” the
thought stuck like a bone in his throat (as they said in those
books) “ – I will borrow from my sister.”

But Ibrahim, to Achimwene’s delight and
incomprehension, waved him aside with a laugh. “Pay me the usual,”
he said. “After all, it is only a box, and this is mere paper. It
cost me nothing, and I have made my profit already. What extra
value you place on it surely is a value of your own.”

“
But they are precious!”
Achimwene said, shocked. “Collectors would pay…” Imagination failed
him. Ibrahim smiled, and his smile was gentle. “You are the only
collector I know,” he said. “Can you afford what you think they’re
worth?”

“
No,” Achimwene said –
whispered.

“
Then pay only what I ask,”
Ibrahim said and, with a shake of his head, as at the folly of his
fellow man, steered the horse into action. The patient beast beat
its flank with its tail, shooing away flies, and ambled onwards.
The boy, Ismail, remained there a moment longer, staring at the
books. “Lots of old junk in the Vaults!” he said. He spread his
arms wide to describe them. “I was there, I saw it! These…books?”
He shot an uncertain look at Achimwene, then ploughed on: “And big
flat square things called televisions, that we took for plastic
scrap, and old guns, lots of old guns! But the Jews took those –
why do you think they buried those things?” The boy’s eyes,
vat-grown haunting greens, stared at Achimwene. “So much
junk
,” the boy said, at last, with a note of finality, and
then, laughing, ran after the cart, jumping up on it with youthful
ease.

Achimwene stared at the cart until it
disappeared around the bend. Then, with the tenderness of a father
picking up a new-born infant, he picked up the box of books and
carried them the short way to his alcove.

* *

Achimwene’s life was about to change, but he
did not yet know it. He spent the rest of the morning happily
cataloguing, preserving and shelving the ancient books. Each lurid
cover delighted him. He handled the books with only the tips of his
fingers, turning the pages carefully, reverently. There were many
faiths in Central Station, from Elronism to St Cohen to followers
of Ogko, mixed amidst the larger populations – Jews to the north,
Muslims to the south, a hundred offshoots of Christianity dotted
all about like potted plants – but only Achimwene’s faith called
for this. The worship of old, obsolete books. The worship, he liked
to think, of history itself.

He spent the morning quite happily,
therefore, with only one customer. For Achimwene was not alone in
his – obsession? Fervour?

Others were like him. Mostly men, and
mostly, like himself, broken in some fundamental fashion. They came
from all over, pilgrims taking hesitant steps through the
unfamiliar streets of the old neighbourhood, reaching at last
Achimwene’s alcove, a shop which had no name. They needed no sign.
They simply knew.

There was an Armenian priest from Jerusalem
who came once a month, a devotee of Hebrew pulps so obscure even
Achimwene struggled with the conversation – romance chapbooks
printed in twenty or thirty stapled pages at a time, filled with
Zionist fervour and lovers’ longings, so rare and fragile few
remained in the world. There was a rare woman, whose name was Nur,
who came from Damascus once a year, and whose speciality was the
works of obscure poet and science fiction writer Lior Tirosh. There
was a man from Haifa who collected erotica, and a man from the
Galilee collecting mysteries.

“
Achimwene?
Shalom!”

Achimwene straightened in his chair. He had
sat at his desk for some half an hour, typing, on what was his
pride and joy, a rare collectors’ item: a genuine, Hebrew
typewriter. It was his peace and his escape, in the quiet times, to
sit at his desk and pen, in the words of those old, vanished pulp
writers, similarly exciting narratives of derring-do, rescues, and
escapes.

“
Shalom, Gideon,” he said,
sighing a little. The man, who hovered at the door, now came fully
inside. He was a stooped figure, with long white hair, twinkling
eyes, and a bottle of cheap arak held, like an offering, in one
hand.

“
Got glasses?”

“
Sure…”

Achimwene brought out two glasses, neither
too clean, and put them on the desk. The man, Gideon, motioned with
his head at the typewriter. “Writing again?” he said.

“
You know,” Achimwene
said.

Hebrew was the language of his birth. The
Joneses were once Nigerian immigrants. Some said they had come over
on work visas, and stayed. Others that they had escaped some
long-forgotten civil war, had crossed the border illegally from
Egypt, and stayed. One way or the other, the Joneses, like the
Chongs, had lived in Central Station for generations.

Gideon opened the bottle, poured them both a
drink. “Water?” Achimwene said.

Gideon shook his head. Achimwene sighed
again and Gideon raised the glass, the liquid clear. “L’chaim,” he
said.

They clinked glasses. Achimwene drank, the
arak burning his throat, the anis flavour tickling his nose. Made
him think of his sister’s shebeen. Said, “So, nu? What’s new with
you, Gideon?”

He’d decided, suddenly and with aching
clarity, that he wouldn’t share the new haul with Gideon. Would
keep them to himself, a private secret, for just a little while
longer. Later, perhaps, he’d sell one or two. But not yet. For the
moment, they were his, and his alone.

They chatted, whiling away an hour or two.
Two men old before their time, in a dark alcove, sipping arak,
reminiscing of books found and lost, of bargains struck and the
ones that got away. At last Gideon left, having purchased a minor
Western, in what is termed, in those circles, Good Condition – that
is, it was falling apart. Achimwene breathed out a sigh of relief,
his head swimming from the arak, and returned to his typewriter. He
punched an experimental heh, then a nun. He began to type.

* *

The g.

The girl.

The girl was in trouble.

A crowd surrounded her. Excitable, their
faces twisted in the light of their torches. They held stones,
blades. They shouted a word, a name, like a curse. The girl looked
at them, her delicate face frightened.

“
Won’t someone save me?”
she cried. “A hero, a – ”

* *

Achimwene frowned in irritation for, from
the outside, a commotion was rising, the noise disturbing his
concentration. He listened, but the noise only grew louder and,
with a sigh of irritation, he pulled himself upwards and went to
the door.

Perhaps this is how lives change. A
momentary decision, the toss of a coin. He could have returned to
his desk, completed his sentence, or chosen to tidy up the shelves,
or make a cup of coffee. He chose to open the door instead.

They are dangerous things, doors, Ogko had
once said. You never knew what you’d find on the other side of
one.

Achimwene opened the door and stepped
outside.

* *

The g.

The girl.

The girl was in trouble.

This much Achimwene saw, though for the
moment, the
why
of it escaped him.

This is what he saw:

The crowd was composed of people Achimwene
knew. Neighbours, cousins, acquaintances. He thought he saw young
Yan there, and his fiancé, Youssou (who was Achimwene’s second
cousin); the greengrocer from around the corner; some adaptoplant
dwellers he knew by sight if not name; and others. They were just
people. They were of Central Station.

The girl wasn’t.

Achimwene had never seen her before. She was
slight of frame. She walked with a strange gait, as though
unaccustomed to the gravity. Her face was narrow, indeed delicate.
Her hair had been done in some otherworldly fashion, it was woven
into dreadlocks that moved slowly, even sluggishly, above her head,
and an ancient name rose in Achimwene’s mind.

Medusa.

The girl’s panicked eyes turned, looking.
For just a moment, they found his. But her look did not (as
Medusa’s was said to) turn him to stone.

She turned away.

The crowd surrounded her in a semi-circle.
Her back was to Achimwene. The crowd – the word
mob
flashed
through Achimwene’s mind uneasily – was excited, restless. Some
held stones in their hands, but uncertainly, as though they were
not sure why, or what they were meant to do with them. A mood of
ugly energy animated them. And now Achimwene could hear a shouted
word, a name, rising and falling in different intonations as the
girl turned, and turned, helplessly seeking escape.

“
Shambleau!”

The word sent a shiver down Achimwene’s back
(a sensation he had often read about in the pulps, yet seldom if
ever experienced in real life). It have rise to vague, menacing
images, desolate Martian landscapes, isolated kibbutzim on the
Martian tundra, red sunsets, the colour of blood.

“
Strigoi!”

And there it was, that other word, a word
conjuring, as though from thin air, images of brooding mountains,
dark castles, bat-shaped shadows fleeting on the winds against a
blood-red, setting sun… Images of an ageless Count, of teeth
elongating in a hungry skull, sinking to touch skin, to drain
blood…

“
Shambleau!”

“
Get back! Get back to
where you came from!”

“
Leave her
alone!”

The cry pierced the night. The mob milled,
confused. The voice like a blade had cut through the day and the
girl, startled and surprised, turned this way and that, searching
for the source of that voice.

Who said it?

Who dared the wrath of the mob?

With a sense of reality cleaving in half,
Achimwene, almost with a slight
frisson
, a delicious shiver
of recognition, realised that it was he, himself, who had
spoken.

Had, indeed, stepped forward from his door,
a little hunched figure facing this mob of relatives and
acquaintances and, even, perhaps, a few friends. “Leave her alone,”
he said again, savouring the words, and for once, perhaps for the
first time in his life, people listened to him. A silence had
descended. The girl, caught between her tormentors and this
mysterious new figure, seemed uncertain.

“
Oh, it’s Achimwene,”
someone said, and somebody else suddenly, crudely laughed, breaking
the silence.

“
She’s Shambleau,” someone
else said, and the first speaker (he couldn’t quite see who it was)
said, “Well, she’d be no harm to
him
.”

That crude laughter again and then, as if by
some unspoken agreement, or command, the crowd began, slowly, to
disperse.

Achimwene found that his heart was beating
fast; that his palms sweated; that his eyes developed a sudden
itch. He felt like sneezing. The girl, slowly, floated over to him.
They were of the same height. She looked into his eyes. Her eyes
were a deep clear blue, vat-grown. They regarded each other as the
rest of the mob dispersed. Soon they were left alone, in that quiet
street, with Achimwene’s back to the door of his shop.

She regarded him quizzically; her lips moved
without sound, her eyes flicked up and down, scanning him. She
looked confused, then shocked. She took a step back.

“
No, wait!” he
said.

“
You are…you are
not…”

He realised she had been trying to
communicate with him. His silence had baffled her. Repelled her,
most likely. He was a cripple. He said, “I have no node.”

“
How is
that…possible?”

He laughed, though there was no humour in
it. “It is not that unusual, here, on Earth,” he said.

“
You know I am not – ” she
said, and hesitated, and he said, “From here? I guessed. You are
from Mars?”

A smile twisted her lips, for just a moment.
“The asteroids,” she admitted.