Ajax Penumbra 1969 (Kindle Single) (4 page)

Penumbra arrives early, in time to watch the last remnants of the overnight crowd rouse themselves, stretch languidly, and drift out in search of various sustenances. By midday, the store has emptied, and Corvina has put him to work, rearranging a short span of books midway up the tall shelves. They climb two ladders side by side and hand heavy volumes back and forth according to some system that Penumbra does not understand.

As they work, they talk. Penumbra tells the clerk about Galvanic, and the library there. He learns that Corvina was, in fact, a sailor of sorts: a radar technician aboard an aircraft carrier. He spent four years at sea.

“I read a lot,” Corvina says. “That’s how I got interested in all of this.”

“What sort of things did you read?”

“What
didn’t
I read? I read everything. We had the best library in the whole navy. The officer who oversaw it—I only learned this later—he’s part of the same … organization as Mo. He taught me to read Greek.”

“Wait. You are saying that your
aircraft carrier
was related to this store somehow?”

“Absolutely. Midshipman Taylor’s Fourth-Deck Book Depository. There’s a whole network of these places … it’s a tradition, Ajax. It goes back a long way.”

“So, that makes two floating bookstores, then.”

Corvina laughs. “Ha. Yes. The
William Gray
and the
Coral Sea
. Although, I have to tell you … mine was bigger.” He smiles. Number three.

After an hour, Penumbra’s back aches; his calves tremble; his hands feel like claws. He is about to beg for a break when the bell tinkles below, and a rough voice calls out: “Anybody home?” Louder: “Anybody named Mark here?”

Corvina’s face goes sharp. He hisses: “It’s him!” Penumbra begins to descend, but Corvina hisses again. “No. I told his accountant I would be alone. You stay here.”

Before Penumbra can protest, Corvina curls his ankles around the sides of the ladder, let his hands go slack, and—Penumbra gasps—slides straight down, falling into a liquid crouch on the floor. He rises smoothly and strides through the shelves toward the front of the store, passing out of Penumbra’s view, into the sunlight.

“Welcome,” Penumbra hears Corvina say.

“Heya, Mark.” The visitor’s voice is rough and jocular.

“Marcus,” Corvina corrects him. “You’re Alvin’s client? The construction worker?”

“Construction worker? Please! I’m a sandhog. The few, the proud. Good to meet you. I’m Frankie. Or maybe you prefer Franklin.”

If there is a note of mockery there, Corvina either does not detect it or chooses to ignore it. “Franklin. It’s good to meet you, too. Alvin told you about the nature of my undertaking?”

Penumbra slows his breathing, stretches his ears to listen. Frankie must be wearing work boots; whenever he moves, they clomp heavily on the floorboards.

“He did, and—I gotta ask this, I’m sorry. For my own peace of mind. You’re not a bank robber, are you?”

“I assure you,” Corvina replies smoothly, “I am merely a local historian.”

“Okay. I’m gonna trust you. But only because Alvin’s a good guy, and because he vouches for you. Got that?”

“Of course. Now … how should we proceed?”

“Welp, first of all, Mark—you pay me. The amount you, ah, suggested to Alvin will be just fine.”

Penumbra hears the scrape of a drawer, the whisper of paper—the fat envelope he retrieved from Wells Fargo yesterday. He feels a thrill down his spine. This is what it means to be a Junior Acquisitions Officer.

“Here,” Corvina says. “Just as we discussed.”

“Let me just give that a look-see.” There’s a rip, a riffle. The counting of cash. “Very generous. Okay, Mark, I got good news and I got bad news.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“The good news is, your spot’s all clear. We dug through there ages ago. Market and Beale, right? Yeah, I went back and checked it out myself. There’s something there. Doesn’t look too great, but considering the circumstances, it doesn’t look too terrible either.”

“And the bad news?”

“The bad news, Mark … is I don’t manage the Embarcadero worksite. That’s a whole different outfit, and it’s locked up tight.”

Penumbra can almost hear Corvina’s nostrils flare. His own heart sinks. They are so close, and yet, once again, the path is blocked. This is what it means to be a Junior Acquisitions Officer.

Corvina presses ahead. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have a solution,” he says. “Am I right?”

“You’re very perceptive, Mark. I’ve got you covered. We finished the tube—did you know that?”

“The tube under the bay?”

The visitor makes a satisfied
mm-hmm
. “Sealed it up tight. No track yet, but we’re driving trucks through every day. And the worksite on the
other
side of the tube—that one’s mine. I can square things away with the night watchman, no problem.”

“The worksite … on the other side.”

“Yeah. West Oakland.”

Corvina chuckles. “You’re suggesting we go the long way.”

Frankie laughs, too. “Why not? Get a little exercise, right?”

“Is it safe?”

“Sure. The muckety-mucks are organizing a big walk next month—open to the public. Little kids, old folks, everybody. Right through the tube. The way I see it, you’re just getting early access.”

“Well, I’m glad you see it that way. I assume that this donation ensures your … discretion.”

“Of course, Mark, of course.” Frankie clomps toward the door, then pauses. Penumbra hears him turn. “What’s in there, anyway? Gold doubloons?”

“Would you care?”

“I don’t know…. I might want a cut.”

“I hate to disappoint you, Franklin, but it’s just books.”

“Well, this seems like a lot to pay for some old books, but I can see you have, ah, quite a collection here. To each his own, I always say. You all set?”

“West Oakland. Through the tube. What do I say to the night watchman?”

“His name’s Hector. He’ll keep an eye out for you. We can use a password—”

“Festina lente.”

“Say again now?”

“
Festina lente
. That will be our password.” It is possible, Penumbra realizes, that this is not Corvina’s first time organizing an illicit expedition.

“Fes-teen-uh lenty. Okay. If you say so.” Frankie clomps toward the door again, and this time he pulls it open. The bell tinkles brightly. “Go anytime after midnight. Fes-teen-uh lenty. Okay. Good luck down there, Mark.”

They cross the bay on the last ferry of the night under a half moon flickering spookily through low clouds. The boat passes smoothly beneath the dark bulk of the Bay Bridge, sterner and more serious-looking than its tourist-friendly cousin.

The ferry lands near the Port of Oakland, among the warehouses. They have bicycles, purchased from a man who called himself Russian Mike on the corner of Turk and Leavenworth. Corvina claims the sleek green Schwinn; Penumbra gets the blue beach cruiser with a banana seat. They pedal to the West Oakland worksite, which is not difficult to identify: there are smooth concrete pillars rising to support nothing; hills of rust-red rebar waiting to be woven into stone; multiple slumbering backhoes.

They spot Hector shuffling lazily around the chain-link perimeter, wearing an approximation of a police uniform. They signal from a distance; approach cautiously; say
festina lente
in the shadows. He grunts, waves them through, and continues around the fence, all without ever quite looking them in the face.

The mouth of the Transbay Tube gapes hugely. Loose dirt hangs ragged around its metal lip; it looks less like a public works project and more like an ancient tomb. There is no train track yet. Instead, a wide, weedy path descends from the worksite, marked with treads where trucks have passed.

There are no lights. They are prepared for this. Corvina lifts a camping lantern and hangs it from his handlebars. “Ready?”

Penumbra steadies himself. “I suppose so.”

The tube swallows them. Corvina zips out ahead, pedaling with long sure strokes, his gearshift clucking and crackling as he moves swiftly to the most efficient ratio. Penumbra glances back, watching the view through the tube’s entrance—a dusty oval of Oakland sky—shrink and fade until it is no brighter than the blotches of color that his retinas produce in the absence of light.

It is darkness of a kind and quality that he has never experienced. The floor of the tube is smooth under his tires; it feels like he is racing indoors, across a basketball court or a bank lobby. There is, every few seconds, a dull
whump
as he crosses one of the tube’s seams: the places where the huge metal segments have been joined together and sealed against the bay.

The bay is out there. Up there. How deep is it? Penumbra has no idea. It might be ten feet; it might be a hundred. The air has changed. It is cold and damp, thick with the smell of trapped exhaust. He wonders if there is enough oxygen down here, really? What if the work crews have not yet prepared it for human traffic? What if he and Corvina swoon halfway through? What if no one finds them until morning?

Corvina is racing ahead. The lantern’s spark bobs and dips on his handlebars and casts a crazy shadow behind him, a dark avatar that dances and leaps across the floor of the tube.

Penumbra cries out: “Slow down!”—but Corvina doesn’t hear him, or he can’t understand, or he won’t listen. Penumbra sucks in a lungful of heavy air and cries again: “
Could you please
—ah.” He gives up. Corvina’s shadow recedes; the spark grows smaller. The darkness clamps down.

Penumbra comes to a halt, his chest heaving. He rests on the handlebars, which he can feel but not see. Corvina’s lantern shrinks to nothing.

He is a man unaccustomed to anger but he feels it now. Corvina! He is, Penumbra realizes, not the man to follow into a terrifying subterranean tunnel. He is capable, yes, and commanding—but he has no patience for anyone who cannot keep up.

Well.

He cannot stand here forever.

Penumbra pedals slowly forward, testing. It is all darkness ahead, a pure blank void—but, of course, there are no obstacles. Nothing stands in his way. He feels the bicycle’s front wheel rise, realizes he is climbing the curve of the tube; he jerks the handlebars, allows gravity pull him back down. This can work. He simply has to go by feel, let the curves do their work. He simply has to keep pedaling. He can close his eyes. There is nothing that can hurt him here.

He loses track of time. The whole universe contracts into the almost philosophical darkness of the tube, the curve of its space-time that he tracks with his legs, not with his eyes. Perhaps he will emerge and find that ten years have passed. Fifty. He smiles at that, and does the math, counting the years in time with the pedals: 2017 … 2018 … 2019. How will this city look in the twenty-first century? Maybe those Yerba Buena Gardens will finally have a plant or—

Corvina cries out. “Ajax! Is that you?”

Penumbra comes to a skidding stop. “Where are you?”

“Here, here.” His voice cries bleakly out of the darkness nearby; Penumbra can almost see him, a dark outline against the deeper darkness of the tube. Corvina appears to be sitting on the ground. “I need help, I need … it’s too dark, Ajax. I lost the lantern.”

Penumbra lays his bicycle gently on the floor of the tube and shuffles toward the sound of Corvina’s voice. “I am coming,” he says. “Hold out your hands.”

His fingers brush something in the darkness, and a hand clamps tight around his wrist—strong, shaking, slippery with sweat.

“You are fine, Marcus.” He hoists him up, or tries to; Corvina nearly tips him over. The sheer mass of him! Penumbra grunts and heaves, and the clerk rises. “You are just fine.”

They walk together for a long time, Penumbra leading Corvina by the hand. The clerk says nothing, just follows, his breath slowing down, evening out. His fingers are thick and meaty but very soft.

Finally:
fiat lux
. There is a fuzzy suggestion of light that becomes a pinprick, then a dot. The faster they walk, the faster it grows, so they walk very fast indeed, until they are running, and somewhere in the process Corvina drops Penumbra’s hand and charges ahead.

At the end, the tube rises again, and when they emerge into the light of the Embarcadero worksite, Corvina is himself again. He betrays no sign of his ordeal in the darkness.

“The ship will be nearby,” he says crisply. Taking command again.

The tube opens into a cavernous space lit with bulbs in cages, a festive string of them hanging from the rough-hewn ceiling. The space is supported by a frame of dark girders, and in places, a concrete perimeter is rising. Water pools on the ground in puddles too wide to leap across, so they walk straight through. It fills Penumbra’s shoes.

There are signs of life and work: cast-off gloves, paper cups, a rogue safety helmet. The helmet is white plastic, with the BART logo printed in blue across the brow. Penumbra picks it up, gives it a shake, sets it on his head. “What do you think?”

Corvina snorts. “You’re the skinniest sandhog in the city.”

More than a hundred years ago, the
William Gray
was scuttled and buried under a pile of rubble. Drowned and crushed. The mast snapped long ago; the sails and rigging decomposed. All that remained was the ship’s hull, and that only barely, like a soda can crumpled in a trash heap.

Then the BART crew came tunneling through the heap. Penumbra has seen fossils preserved in stone, great slabs split apart to show an ancient beast in cross section; this is precisely how the
William Gray
looks now. Its shape is dark but distinct in the wall of the tunnel. Here in the city’s second subbasement, a shadow of the ship still remains.

It is, once again, a moment of triumph that fades quickly into defeat. Penumbra had imagined something like a shipwreck, the kind he has seen in a
Jacques Cousteau film. He had imagined some sort of space they could penetrate and explore, but that seems foolish now. Their quarry is not archaeological but geological. It is a fossil, through and through.

“Here,” Corvina calls. Penumbra snaps out of his gloomy reverie. The clerk has found two shovels elsewhere in the worksite. He tosses one lightly to Penumbra, who slips and drops it.

“Marcus, it is not—”

“I see a ship,” Corvina declares. “I see this city’s first bookstore. Surely, Ajax, there is something to discover here.”

“You share my gift, Marcus,” Penumbra says dryly.

“What gift?”

“Mr. Al-Asmari called it that. ‘The willingness to entertain absurd ideas.’ ”

Corvina snorts. “I don’t
entertain
ideas,” he says. “I work for them.” He slides his shovel’s blade into the tunnel’s wall and begins to dig.

An hour passes. Maybe more. They dig deeper into the remains of the ship, throwing shovelfuls of dirt and silt and decomposed wood over their heads, making a dank pile behind them. Penumbra’s shovel slices through clots of soft matter that are, he suspects, the sad remains of books. They are dark and sodden, rotted and ruined, but he can see the suggestions of spines.

Black muck spatters and soaks his shirt and pants. The deeper they go, the worse the smell—a century of rot, finally released. Penumbra’s arms are burning, his feet are soaked, and he can tell that even Corvina is tiring, when—

TONK
.

His shovel hits something that is not soft and ruined. He pulls it back, swings again.

TONK
.

“Marcus, I think perhaps …,” he begins to say, but the clerk is already there, swinging with his own shovel. They trace the edge of the hard,
TONK
ing shape, then excavate around it, until Corvina is able to use his shovel as a lever. He gives a sharp grunt; a small metal trunk pops out of the hole, lands on the bottom of the tunnel with a wet
thud
, balances on its end, and falls over.

Penumbra and Corvina stare at each other, wide-eyed.

The trunk is heavily corroded, its surface boiling with rusty warts and green-brown streaks, but it seems to be intact. There is a supremely fat padlock holding the lid tight.

“Stand back,” Corvina says. He lifts his shovel high and brings it down like a wrathful bolt. The fat old padlock does not so much break as crumble, with what seems, to Penumbra, something like relief.

Later, they hike up through the worksite, Corvina carrying the chest. The Embarcadero night watchman spots them from the other side of the giant hole in the ground. He shouts: “You! Hey! What are you doing there?”

“Don’t stop,” Corvina whispers. There is a line of orange cones just ahead, and beyond them, the sidewalk, where couples in coats and scarves hustle past, none sparing a glance for the gulch to their side. Behind them, the dark wall of the Embarcadero freeway blots out the sky, and on both of its decks, cars whiz through the night, honking and squealing. The light and noise is like a balm after the tunnel below.

Penumbra turns toward the watchman and taps his helmet. “Just finishing some work! You know how it is.
Festina lente!
” With that, they are past the cones, onto the sidewalk, and free.

The craft of fortune is theirs.