Asimov's SF, December 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Ascher paused mid-rummage. “Why would it be distracting?”

  “It—it just would.” Daniel gestured toward the library images. “This isn't decoration. It's a virtual library. I can retrieve the volumes and open them and read them directly from the wall at any size, or I can transfer them to the desktop and read them there. I value the physical books, but look at the library I've collected here—and I can add pretty much anything I want to it.”

  Ascher stared at the wall with his brilliantly rheumy eyes. “I'm aware of the technology—it's like the standard reader only a lot bigger, fancier, and much more costly, I imagine. A woman at the mall gave me one of those school-issue readers a few years ago. Still works—I use it to read things I don't really care about, but I would hardly call it a book.”

  “Then what would you call it?”

  Ascher shrugged distractedly, as if he'd already lost interest.

  “Let me show you what it can do.” Daniel raised his chin and spoke into the air. “Library, Twain, Life on the Mississippi.” Each shelf shifted rapidly, and then a book near the center floated out as if under ghostly control. “Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain” appeared on the spine and the book opened on the title page. “Library, maximum enlarge.” The image of the open book filled the wall space, making it easily readable even from across the room. Daniel made a brushing movement in the air and the book's pages turned.

  “Is that some kind of generic edition?” Ascher asked. “I'm not seeing anything particularly distinctive about it.”

  “I can get any edition you want.” Daniel couldn't keep the annoyance out of his voice. “Library, Heritage Press edition, 1940s.”

  The image of the book transformed. The light green cloth cover displayed a riverboat emblem.

  “That's the 1944 edition,” Ascher said.

  “Library, interior illustrations,” Daniel continued. The pages turned again, showing a series of drawings and watercolor images.

  “That's Thomas Hart Benton,” Ascher said. “See how the drawings flow—the riverboat, the trees, the towns along the shore, even that man up on deck—all the forms have that sense of water in them. Can you bring up the first edition?”

  “You mean like the one you sold me?”

  “No, that one was second state. I've never had the first state. Bring up the first edition, first state.”

  “Okay, sure. Library, first edition, first state.” The cover was brown cloth with a gilt image of a man on a bale of cotton. “Hmmm . . . looks like mine.”

  “Can I see page 441?” Ascher stared at the image intently.

  “Library, page 441,” Daniel demanded. The last page of the book displayed. “There's a tailpiece. Mine doesn't have that, I don't think. Library, magnify tailpiece.” The ornament at the end of the text expanded a thousandfold.

  “That's the head of Mark Twain in flames from the urn,” Ascher said. “That's how you know it's the first state. His wife thought that was just too morbid and tasteless. She insisted that it be removed, and so it was for the second state. Like the copy I sold you. Fairly impressive, actually. I take it these are scanned from library collections?”

  “That, and from private collectors. But hey, there's more. Library, collection setups, cycle.” Several rows of ornate bookcases appeared, a stained glass window at the back.

  “So it can emulate actual libraries,” Ascher said. “I don't believe I recognize this one.”

  “It's the Merton College library, Oxford.” This scene was suddenly replaced by a stone-walled room with few bookcases, but with chandeliers, a tapestry, and display cases on ornate red Persian rugs.

  “Oh, I was there in my younger days,” Ascher said. “The main Reading Room at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.”

  “Right you are. I can call up around a hundred private and institutional libraries both past and present. I even have a few custom layouts—there's one with shelving built into the walls of a gigantic, enclosed spiral staircase. Breathtaking.”

  The book dealer nodded, the glow from the display illuminating the cracks, tics, and moles in his face. Daniel wondered how old Ascher actually was. In an age when even the urban poor managed to maintain a well-scrubbed, “clean” look, Ascher couldn't be more out of place. “During my teaching years it would have been useful to have had something like this, if nothing more than to show my students what a real book collection used to look like.”

  “You taught?”

  “Twenty years. Cultural Studies, ‘what makes us human,’ they called it. Did you study your ‘culture’ with a living teacher, by any chance?”

  “It was all computer-based by the time I started.”

  “What makes us human, indeed.”

  “I see your point. But that same technology has given us what you're seeing now—which I believe honors those printed volumes.”

  “But it's all just light, correct? Bits of information fronted by a recognizable image. The books aren't there anymore—they've been killed, and these are just the ghosts we have to remember them by.”

  “Well, some would argue that they're just in a different form, that the words are all that matter.”

  “But to call them a collection of words is to see them just as so much information. Putting them into physical books is how we used to honor them, to say that these were cultural artifacts that commanded respect, that attention should be paid. You've been very kind to me, Daniel. But sometimes I feel like one of those old out-of-print volumes not selected for this ‘honor’ of digitization, no one knowing what I might have to say, or caring much what I might have to offer. No one knowing that I even exist at all. But you've been a good friend.”

  At the end of his visit Ascher appeared anxious to leave, and when Daniel opened the door he rushed out, colliding with Lex. Ascher was knocked sprawling on the floor, the contents of his satchel spilt and scattered through the hall.

  “Oh wow, I'm sorry.” Lex looked pale with embarrassment. He stooped to help Ascher up, his hands recoiling almost immediately when they made contact with Ascher's clothes. But Daniel was proud to see his son start over, grasping Ascher's hand in his and supporting the man's shoulder with the other as they both struggled to stand.

  Then his son went down on the floor again to pick up the scattered books and papers. Daniel went to help, and together they gathered what appeared to be a sheaf of Ascher's hen-scratched notes, several antique pieces of printed paper (ads, an old restaurant menu, ancient theater tickets, a yellowed train timetable), a couple of old books, and assorted old-fashioned pens and pencils. Daniel watched his son handle each item with almost an archaeologist's care, periodically wiping his hands on his pants as if he'd gotten something foul on them.

  All that remained was a plastic bag containing a very old city newspaper. The bag had split open, and tiny bits of brown-yellow newsprint had drifted out onto the carpet. Lex stood over it, staring. “What is that, Dad? What's wrong with it?”

  “That was the very last edition of a newspaper published in this city. Thirty years ago,” Ascher said. “I forgot to give it to you, Daniel. I've got dozens of copies—thought you might like one.”

  “Oh, yes, thank you. I've never actually seen one up close.”

  Ascher looked at Lex. “Go ahead and take a peek, son. It's not a collector's item in that shape. Before all the news sites, a newspaper was how a lot of people got most of their daily news. Television eventually took over much of the load, but it was the news sites that finally killed the newspapers off. They didn't make sense economically anymore.”

  But Lex didn't move. Daniel bent and retrieved the paper, scraping the disintegrating bits back into the bag. He looked at Ascher. “I don't believe my son has ever seen newsprint before. I'll show it to him later—thanks again.”

  A while after Ascher left Lex came to see his father. “Dad, where do you know that man from?”

  “He's a book dealer, works out of the People's Mall. I bought most of my collection from
him.”

  “You spend a lot of time there. I've heard Mom talk about it.”

  “Yes, I do. I should take you sometime—I think you'll find the mall pretty fascinating.”

  Lex looked doubtful. “Well, maybe. I don't want to be rude, but why is he so dirty?”

  Daniel laughed. “His hygiene definitely could be improved.”

  “Isn't he afraid of getting some terrible disease? All these precautions they're always talking about—I bet he doesn't do any of them.”

  “He's of a different generation, Lex. Your generation, and mine to some extent, we think about those issues all the time. But for fellows his age—sometimes they act like the world hasn't changed at all. Some of these more scholarly types, especially, they can become so involved in intellectual pursuits they forget all about physical appearance. They spend their money on books instead of new clothes and haircuts. I understand that—sometimes I get so wrapped up in my work I forget—”

  “You'd never forget to bathe! Or to sanitize yourself thoroughly.”

  “Well, probably not. But I had a new baby at a time when a lot of other parents—an appallingly huge number of parents—had children who were dying.”

  Lex winced. “Some of the guys at school, I guess they joke about it. They say ‘there's just more for us now,’ that kind of thing. But Dad, this guy looks like those old guys who live down by the bridges.”

  “He has a home, I believe, although I've never seen it. He's a collector, and old-fashioned. Eccentric. He's really very well-educated. A person could learn a lot just listening to him. I'll take you next time I go. I really think you might like it.”

  Lex looked uneasy, as if he had more to say, but whatever it was he kept it to himself.

  * * * *

  Over the next few months Daniel had little time for reading, or “book gazing,” as Trish sometimes called it. A random series of financial crises and resource shortages created both new opportunities and precarious dealings for his various clients. He spent long hours developing hierarchical lists of time sensitive recommendations balancing economic gains, job loss, and cultural change, losing sleep and weight in the process, seeing his family infrequently. Now and then Lex would message him the worst joke he could find, or a scan of some new, particularly intricate drawing in compressed color stick. (No mess on the hands, and the pigments were guaranteed non-toxic. His son stayed away from all paints.) The anxiety in these drawings was evident. Daniel tried to reassure his son with light-hearted return messages, but there was really very little he could do.

  They'd first moved down into the core of the city for Lex's sake. After the last pandemic it was considered the cleanest part of the city, with everything that had been there for centuries razed and the ground purified to a depth of several hundred feet. The first residential and nonresidential dwelling frames went up to meet the challenges of rapidly changing functional need. When the planning teams began filling in the frames it had looked like a gigantic toy construction set with pieces missing, the random spaces between units providing views of distant vistas. He and Trish had been lucky to get one of the first spaces in the sprawling residential frame.

  The disadvantage of the frames as far as Daniel was concerned lay in their convenience—a family could get anything they required there. Lex had no interest in exploring other parts of the city.

  The entertainment complex underneath the frames was a nod to the history of the area. When Lex was small Trish and Daniel would take him down there to dine in corporate chain eateries tricked out to look like old-fashioned diners, pizza parlors, and funky ethnic restaurants.

  When he was about seven, Lex found a fly on a rail only a few feet from where they were eating. He kept getting up from the table and going over and touching the fly, which was hard to the touch and never moved.

  When Daniel found a free day he talked a very reluctant Lex into going with him out to the People's Mall, promising he would take him into parts of the city he had never seen before. Lex did seem to enjoy the dangling rail train that ran high over the ring of low neighborhoods and beyond to the edge of the city center and down again into the sprawling People's Mall.

  The real history of the city was keptinplaces like this, albeit cut into pieces and packaged for easy resale. They followed a hard walkway that ran like a highway between rows of temp-huts of press sheet and plasi-can. Many had been mounted on thick black pads with some bounce to them. Others were sunk into beds of a rough and tumbly stone that seemed to pull at your shoes when you walked in it.

  Each booth or shop specialized in a different type of product: obsolete electronics, old culinary devices, medical equipment, videos in formats current and extinct, antique knobs and switches, locks that no longer locked, lights that no longer lit, meaningless signs and both structural and nonstructural architectural artifacts, and of course a sampling of old paper—odd sheets and instructional manuals, general nonfiction, and a variety of fictions by authors long dead. In one of these overstuffed booths in the paper aisle Daniel had first encountered Antonio Ascher, finder and dealer and caretaker and possessor of books and miscellaneous reading material.

  “Dad, where did all this stuff come from?”

  Daniel looked around. “Good question. A lot of places, I suppose. A lot of it from the old downtown. Before the frames went up, it was the busiest place you could imagine. It was in constant change—buildings torn down and rebuilt into something else, new roads and sidewalks appearing almost overnight. Nothing seemed finished, much less permanent—people were forced to move every couple of years. The average lifespan of a building was no more than six or seven years.”

  “But that's crazy.”

  “It wasn't because of inferior materials—it was because what they needed the buildings for was always changing. Transport, residential, shopping, everything was in flux. Some buildings were obsolete the moment they were finished. The frames are permanent, but their configuration is fluid.”

  “But all these things—what are they?”

  “They came out of the old structures, every time one of them was torn down—things people used, and parts from the buildings themselves. Imagine everything you can see dismantled, hauled away. Something new is put up in its place. I imagine that if you could only buy enough of these pieces you could reassemble that time.”

  Lex laughed. “That's strange, Dad.”

  “Very.”

  Lex passed by a number of booths without much apparent interest in the goods they displayed, then for some reason became fascinated by a shop specializing in flatware, thousands of different styles and patterns. He knew what they were, and had his own personal set of basic self-cleansing eating utensils, which like many in his generation he rarely used. Daniel was amused by his son standing there examining antique eating tools while eating a snack from a carton emblazoned “Untouched By Human Hands” with its built-in mouth-delivery device slicing the portions to a size Lex had specified on its dial.

  “Maybe I'll turn these into an art project,” he explained, leaving with a heavy sack of several dozen clanking pieces.

  Structure #764 was in the location Daniel remembered, but it was now occupied by a seller of old timepieces. “I haven't seen old Antonio in weeks. He cleaned out his space and I was the next on the list. I hear he was having troubles at his residence. He left with several customers owing him money. Are you one of them?”

  Daniel considered. “He had some newspapers I was interested in.” A half-truth, but not a complete lie.

  “Then I guess it's okay. He left a card with an address—I know he could use the money. He spent more getting old books and papers than he did on clothes and food.”

  To his surprise, Daniel wasn't familiar with the street name, even though the district code should have placed it not that far from their own section.

  As the city grew, even with the focus on adaptable spaces, there were always gaps, vague borders, and fuzzy zoning due to conflicting authorities or ill-fitting inte
rests, which kept the pieces from matching perfectly. Sometimes it was just a dead space where utility access lanes overlapped, or because neighboring property lines were historically in error a few yards one way or the other. This left stray structures that fit into no one's idea of a plan. Daniel was not surprised to discover that Antonio had managed to make such a building his home.

  Trying to find the house of one Antonio Ascher via Daniel's usual electronic resources proved fruitless. No such house number as “382” anywhere in the city center. And no “Greene Street,” although there had been one over a hundred years ago. He would have to try to find the house on foot, and was both surprised and pleased that Lex wanted to go with him.

  They printed out the last city diagram that still featured a Greene Street, and using the most current map, Lex drew in the present building placements as best he could. They spent the morning wandering that section, climbing over fences and taking narrow paths between buildings, pulling back bushes to reveal old signs, finding faded boundary lines and street markings, apologizing regularly and profusely when questioned by often-annoyed tenants and private security patrols, charming them into answering questions about the neighborhood when told of Lex's mythical school history project.

  Finally, only a few blocks from the very heart of city center, where two conflicting drainage levels had arranged an uneasy compromise by means of a series of cleverly engineered retaining walls and improbable terracing, a small rectangular patch of clay rose a few feet above the surrounding land. Much of the lot was fenced, marked “Property of Waste Water Management.” But planted stubbornly into a small unfenced corner of that clay rise was a two story brick-and-concrete patch Victorian sporting a meaningless “382” in six-inch numerals of green-tarnished brass. There was no sign for a “Greene Street” anymore. There wasn't even a street, just a well-worn path through weeds and clay.