Tom raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
“You ought to do it,” I urged him. “You’d be perfect for it, all those stories you’ve got about the old time.”
“Ah, a storyteller?” said Wentworth. “Then indeed you should. My feeling is, the more accounts we have of that period, the better.”
“No thank you,” Tom said, looking uncomfortable.
I shook my head, perplexed once again that such a talky old man would so stubbornly refuse to discuss his own life story—which is all some people can be gotten to talk about.
“Consider it further,” Wentworth said. “I think I could guarantee the readership of most of the San Diego residents. The literate residents, I mean to say. And since the Salton Sea people have contacted us—”
“They contacted you?” Tom interrupted.
“Yes. Two years ago a party arrived, and since then your guides Lee and Jennings, very industrious men, have supervised the reconstruction of a rail line out there. We’ve shipped books to them, and they tell us they’ve sent them even farther east. So distribution of your work, though uncertain, could very well span the continent.”
“You agree that communication extends that far?”
Wentworth shrugged. “We see through a glass darkly, as you know. I have in my possession a book printed in Boston, rather well done. Beyond that, I cannot say. I have no reason to disbelieve their claims. In any case, a book by you might just as easily reach Boston as that book reached me.”
“I’ll think about it,” Tom said, but in a tone that I knew meant he was just killing the subject.
“Do it, Tom,” I objected.
He just looked at the big press.
“Come see what we have printed so far,” Wentworth added by way of encouragement, and led us out of the printing room to a corner room, again a chamber bright with sun, its windows overlooking the point break below. This was the library: tall bookcases alternated with tall windows, and held books old and new.
“Our library,” said Wentworth. “Not a lending library, unfortunately,” he added, interpreting perfectly the greedy smacking of Tom’s lips. “This case contains the works printed here.” Tom began to examine the shelves of the bookcase Wentworth indicated. Most of the books on them were big folders, filled with mimeographed pages; one shelf held leather-bound books the size of the old ones.
Wentworth and I watched Tom pull out book after book. “Practical Uses of the Timing Device From Westinghouse Washer-Dryers, by Bill Dangerfield,” Tom read aloud, and laughed.
“It looks like your friend might take a while,” Wentworth said to me. “Would you like to see our gallery of illustrations?”
What I really wanted to do was look at the books along with Tom, but I saw Wentworth was being polite so I said yes sir. We went back into the hall. Before a long window made of several large panes of glass the hall widened, and against the wall opposite the window were pictures of all sorts of animals, drawn in bold strokes of black ink.
“These are the originals of illustrations for a book describing all the animals seen in the back country of San Diego.” I must have looked surprised, for the pictures included some animals I had seen only in Tom’s tatty encyclopedia: monkeys, antelopes, elephants… “There were very extensive zoos in San Diego before the war. We assume that all the animals in the main zoo were killed in the downtown blast, but there was an annex to the zoo in the hills, and those animals escaped, or were freed. Those who survived the subsequent climatic changes have prospered. I myself have seen bears and wildebeest, baboons and reindeer.”
“I like the tiger here,” I said.
“I did that one myself, thanks. That was quite an encounter. Shall I tell you about it?”
“Sure.”
We sat down in wicker chairs placed before the windows.
“We were on a trek beyond Mount Laguna. Do you know Mount Laguna? It is a considerable peak twenty miles inland, and the snowpack lies heavy on it nearly all the year round. In the spring the streams in the surrounding hills gush with the melt, and in their steeper sections they can be quite impassable.
“Our expedition to Julian was dogged by bad luck every step of the way. The radio equipment we had been told of was demolished. The library of Western literature I had hoped to relocate was nowhere to be found. One of the members of our expedition broke an ankle in the ruins of the town. Lastly, worst of all, on our return we were discovered by the Cuyamuca Indians. These Indians are exceedingly jealous of their territory, and parties traveling in the area have reported fierce attacks at night, when the Indians are least afraid of firearms. All in all, it was a bad day’s march, our injured friend between us in a sling, and Cuyamucans on horseback observing us from every open hilltop.
“As nightfall approached I struck out ahead of my party, to scout possible camps, for our slow progress meant we would be spending the night in Indian territory. I found nothing very suitable for night defense, and as it was getting near sundown I retraced my path. When I got to the small clearing where I had left my friends, however, they were not there. Their tracks were confusing, but seemed to lead north, and over the sounds of the rushing streams in the area I imagined I heard gunfire in that direction as well.
“While I was pursuing my friends the sun went down, and as you know the forest begins immediately upon that departure to get very dark. I came to a steep creek; I had no idea where my party had gotten to; I looked at the creek, momentarily at a loss. Staring through the dusk at the tumbling water I became aware of the presence of another pair of eyes, across the creek from me. They were huge eyes, the color of topazes.”
“What are topazes?” I asked.
“Yellow diamonds, I should have said. As I met the gaze of those unblinking eyes, the tiger who owned them stalked out of a clump of torrey pine to the bank of the stream directly across from me.”
“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed.
“No. He was a fully grown Bengal tiger, at least eight feet long, and four feet high at the shoulders. In the dim light of that glade his winter fur seemed green to me, a dull green banded by dark stripes.
“He appeared from the clump so suddenly that at first I was merely appalled at the catastrophic proportions my bad luck had reached. I was sure I was living out the last moments of my existence, and yet I could not move, or even take my eyes from the unblinking gaze of that beautiful but most deadly beast. I have no notion of exactly how long we stood there staring at each other. I know it was one of the central minutes of my life.
“Then the tiger stepped over the creek with a fluid little jump, as easy as you would step over that crack in the floor. I braced myself as he approached—he lifted a paw as wide as my thigh, and pressed it down on my left shoulder—right here. He sniffed me, so close I could see the crystalline coloring of his irises, and smell blood on his muzzle. Then he took his paw from me and with a nudge of his massive head pushed me to my right, upstream. I stumbled, caught my balance. The tiger padded past me, turned to look, as if to see if I were following. I heard a rasp from its chest—if it was a purr, it was to a cat’s purr as thunder is to a doorslam. I followed it. My astonishment had gone outside itself, and prevented all other thought. I kept my hand on the tiger’s shoulder, where I could feel the big muscles bunch and give as it walked, and I stayed at its side as it wound between trees on a path of its own. Every minute or two it would turn its head to look into my eyes, and each time I was mesmerized anew by its calm gaze.