“A great lot. I tried to have those replaced, back when we put in the wire mesh on the corridor inside. I told them the library was an open invitation. But would they listen to me, the mere curator? No, silly, of course not.”
“Did they take the telescope?” Johnny asked.
“No, that’s worthless, very nearly. They nicked the books.”
“Then I can still look through the telescope?”
“What books?” Renfrew could not imagine that academic references were of much value now.
“The collector’s items, of course,” Frost said with the proper pride of a curator. “Took a second edition Kepler, a second Copernicus, the original of the seventeenth-century astrometrical atlas—the lot, really. They were specialists, they were. Skipped the newer tomes. They also knew the fifth editions from the third, without taking them out of their protective sleeves. Not so easily done, when you’re working in a dead hurry and with a pocket torch.”
Renfrew was impressed, not the least because this was the first time he had ever heard anyone use the word “tomes” in conversation. “Why were they in a hurry?”
“Because they knew I would return. I had gone out at dusk for my evening constitutional, to the war cemetery and back.”
“You live here?”
“When the Institute closed I had nowhere to go.” Frost drew himself up primly. “There are several of us. Old astronomers, mostly, turned out by their colleges. They live down the other building—it’s warmer in winter. These bricks hold the chill. I tell you, there was a time when the colleges cared for their old Fellows. When Boyle founded the Institute we had everything. Now it’s into the dustbin with the lot, never mind the past, it’s the current crisis that matters and—”
“I say, that’s the constable coming there.” Renfrew pointed, seizing on the distant figure on a bicycle to cut off the stream of academic lament. He had heard much the same lines so often over the last few years that they had ceased to have any effect aside from boredom. The arrival of the constable, puffing and drawn, led Frost to produce the one volume the thieves hadn’t made off with, a late edition Kepler. Renfrew studied the book for a moment while Frost went on to the constable, demanding a general alert to catch the thieves on the roads if possible. The pages were dry and brittle, crackling as Renfrew turned them. From long exposure to the new methods of making books he had forgotten how a line of type could raise an impression on the other side of the page, as if the press of history was behind each word. The heavily leaded letters were broad and the ink a deep black. The ample margins, the precise celestial drawings, the heft of the volume in his hands, all seemed to speak of a time when the making of books was a signpost in an assumed march forward, a pressure on the future.
• • •
The crowd of fathers had a holiday air, chattering and laughing. A few kicked a soccer ball on the gray cobblestones. This was a lark, an event to raise money for the hobbling city government of Cambridge. An official had read about such a search in American cities, and last month London had staged one.
Into the sewers they descended, bright electric torches spiking through the murk. Beneath the scientific laboratories and industrial sites of town the stonework passages were large enough for a man to walk upright. Renfrew tugged the airmask tight against his face, smiling at Johnny through the transparent molded cup. Spring rains had swept clean; there was little stench. Their fellow hunters spilled past, buzzing with excitement.
Mercury was now exceedingly rare, commanding a thousand New Pounds per kilogram. In the gaudy mid-century times, commercial grade mercury had been poured down sinks and drains. It was cheaper then to throw out dirtied mercury and buy a fresh supply. The heaviest metal, it sought the lowest spots in the sewer system and pooled there. Even a liter recovered would justify the trouble.
They soon worked their way into the more narrow pipes, slipping away from the crowd. Their torches cast sparkling reflections from the wrinkled skin of the water caught in pools. “Hey, this way, Dad,” Johnny called. The acoustics of the tunnels gave each word a hollow center. Renfrew turned and abruptly slipped. He spilled into the scum of a standing pond, cursing. Johnny bent down. The torch’s cone caught a seam of tarnished quicksilver. Renfrew’s boot had snagged at