The Cartographers(20)

But then why did he have Ramona’s business card tucked away? And in his special portfolio, no less?

“Folding . . . gas station . . . highway . . . map,” Felix mumbled. He had pulled out his phone and was typing the words into the HabSearch browser open on his screen. The device’s sleekness bordered on obscene, like some kind of a sci-fi gadget. “You didn’t happen to already Hab this, did you?”

Nell rolled her eyes. “No, Felix, I haven’t Habbed it yet. I’ve been a little busy with my father dying and the library getting robbed and worrying about Swann. Besides, if the map really was that significant, don’t you think we already would have heard about it somewhere? It’s not like we did this for a living or anything.”

He held up a hand in surrender before they spiraled into another argument, then went back to typing. “I was just asking because Haberson is testing a new search algorithm. Still in the beta phase, but it’s way better than the general HabSearch, because it can cloak to trawl the dark web at the same time.”

“I thought you were in navigation,” Nell said.

“I am, but it’s all related.” He shrugged. “I was thinking, if a black-market dealer like Ramona Wu is involved, then maybe . . .”

His thumb punctuated the search with a lazy poke.

“I’m sure there’s no demand for these old gas station maps,” Nell continued. “Now, or back then. They were a dime a dozen. They literally gave them away for free next to the cash registers for decades when we were kids, until GPS and smartphones came along. Now they’re even more worthless.”

Nell finally realized that Felix was still staring at his phone. He hadn’t said anything for a long time.

“What?” she asked.

Finally, Felix turned the screen toward her. “They don’t seem so worthless.”

Nell gaped.

He’d skipped the first few pages of the search results. Once casual browsers would have gotten bored—or perhaps this was the dark web?—the results were a list of incomprehensible figures.

Felix chose a link at random, an old forum post, and handed the phone to her.





Seeking vintage gas station highway map ($100,000)


By GRB2477, Dec 14, 2011 in ART/BOOKS



Joined: Dec 14, 2011



That’s a real offer. I’m looking for a foldable gas station highway map of New York State from 1930. Has to be from the mapmaker General Drafting Corporation. Will pay for overnight shipping. Serious sellers only. Please send photographs.





At the end of the post, the comments exploded into an endless web, some attacking GRB2477 directly, some looping back on themselves, others in their own conversations with previous replies.

First came the baffled ones:

Why the [redacted, explicit] would someone pay this much for a piece of [redacted, explicit] mass-produced map? Anyone can be a “collector” these days.



This is a rare and antique editions forum, OP. Your time might be better spent on Craigslist, or perhaps scouting local garage sales.





The sarcastic ones:

Photographs of the map or of me?

| I want photographs of you.

|| No you don’t.



| Are you a serious seller?

|| VERY SERIOUS





And finally, hidden among the rest, the ones who seemed to know why GRB2477 was after the map:

@GRB2477 you’re going to need a lot more money than that. I saw one go years ago for over ten times your offer. My suggestion? Find a new hobby.



wrong place to post this, check your private messages



Hoping you’re just a rich old idiot who doesn’t understand how the internet works rather than a casual hobbyist. You’re going to get the Cartographers on your tail.



Friendly advice: beware, dude.





“The Cartographers?” Nell murmured. “Who is that?”

“I don’t know. A collector’s group, maybe?” Felix guessed.

Nell followed the next link. It was a listing for a rumored copy at a charity raffle that had sold for a figure that could have been a mortgage for a New York condominium. The next was another desperate forum post asking for help identifying if any of the pictures contained therein were of the right map or a near miss. And there was an old Christie’s auction log, with a listing for another possible copy of the same map. Their eyes both bugged at the winning bid: $5,000,000.

More than double what the NYPL’s most prized map, the Buell, was worth.

Just what exactly could make a gas station driving map sell for five million dollars?

“How on earth is this possible?” Nell whispered.

And in over half of the cases where the map came up, whether it was a sale, a collector trying to track down a possible copy, or a warning, so too did that same name—the Cartographers.

“Okay, there’s something really weird going on,” Felix said, sounding just as stunned as she felt. “I think you should show this to the police.”

“No!” Nell cried. “I can’t!”

“You definitely can,” he said. “The portfolio is a personal item. You can just say you didn’t realize anything from the library was inside at first. You won’t be in trouble.”