Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore (16 page)

“How many members are we talking about here?” Neel asks.

“Not so many,” Penumbra says, scooting his chair back and lifting himself up, “that they cannot still fit in a single chamber. Come, my friends. The Reading Room awaits.”

CODEX VITAE

W
E WALK THROUGH THE RAIN
, all sharing a broad black umbrella borrowed from the Dolphin and Anchor. Neel holds it up above us—the warrior always holds the umbrella—with Penumbra in the middle and Kat and I hugging in close on either side of him. Penumbra doesn’t take up much space.

We come to the dark doorway. This place could not possibly be more different from the bookstore in San Francisco: where Penumbra’s has a wall of windows and warm light spilling out from inside, this place has blank stone and two dim lamps. Penumbra’s invites you inside. This place says:
Nah, you’re probably better off out there.

Kat pulls the door open. I’m the last one through, and I give her wrist a squeeze as I step inside.

I am unprepared for the banality that confronts us. I was expecting gargoyles. Instead, two low couches and a square glass table form a small waiting area. Gossip magazines fan out across the table. Directly ahead, there’s a narrow front desk, and behind it sits the young man with the shaved head who I saw on the sidewalk this morning. He’s wearing a blue cardigan. Above him, on the wall, square sans-serif capitals announce:

F L C

“We are back to see Mr. Deckle,” Penumbra says to the receptionist, who barely looks up. There’s a door of frosted glass and Penumbra leads us through it. I’m still holding my breath for gargoyles, but no: it’s a gray-green still life, a cool savanna of wide monitors and low dividers and curving black desk chairs. It’s an office. It looks just like NewBagel.

Fluorescent lights buzz behind ceiling panels. Desks are set up in clusters, and they are manned by the people I saw through the Stormtrooper binoculars this morning. Most of them are wearing headphones; none of them look up from their monitors. Over slumped shoulders, I see a spreadsheet and an inbox and a Facebook page.

I’m confused. This place seems to have plenty of computers.

We weave a path through the pods. All the totems of office ennui have been erected here: the instant coffee machine, the humming half-sized refrigerator, the huge multipurpose laser printer flashing
PAPER JAM
in red. There’s a whiteboard showing faded generations of brainstorms. Right now, in bright blue strokes, it says:

OUTSTANDING LAWSUITS: 7!!

I keep expecting someone to look up and notice our little procession, but they all seem intent on their work. The quiet clatter of keys sounds just like the rain outside. There’s a chuckle from the far corner; I look over, and it’s the man in the green sweater, smirking into his screen. He’s eating yogurt out of a plastic cup. I think he’s watching a video.

There are private offices and conference rooms around the perimeter, all with frosted glass doors and tiny nameplates. The one we’re vectoring for is at the farthest end of the room and the nameplate reads:

EDGAR DECKLE / SPECIAL PROJECTS

Penumbra clasps a thin hand around the knob, raps once on the glass, and pushes the door open.

*   *   *

The office is tiny, but totally different from the space outside. My eyes stretch to adjust to the new color balance: here, the walls are dark and rich, papered in whirls of gold on green. Here, the floor is made of wood; it springs and whines under my shoes, and Penumbra’s heels make light clicks as he moves to close the door behind us. Here, the light is different, because it comes from warm lamps, not overhead fluorescents. And when the door closes, the ambient buzz is banished, replaced by a sweet, heavy silence.

There’s a heavy desk here—perfect twin to the one in Penumbra’s store—and behind it sits the very first man I spotted on the sidewalk this morning: Round Nose. Here, he’s wearing a black robe over his street clothes. It gathers loosely in the front, where it’s clasped with a silver pin—two hands, open like a book.

Now we’re on to something.

Here, the air smells different. It smells like books. Behind the desk, behind Round Nose, they’re packed into shelves set up against the wall, reaching up to the ceiling. But this office isn’t that big. The secret library of the Unbroken Spine appears to have approximately the capacity of a regional airport bookstore.

Round Nose is smiling.

“Sir! Welcome back,” he says, standing. Penumbra raises his hands, motioning him to sit. Round Nose turns his attention to me and Kat and Neel: “Who are your friends?”

“They are unbound, Edgar,” Penumbra says quickly. He turns to us: “My students, this is Edgar Deckle. He has guarded the door to the Reading Room for—what, Edgar? Eleven years now?”

“Eleven exactly,” Deckle says, smiling. We’re all smiling, too, I realize. He and his chamber are a warm tonic after the cold sidewalk and the colder cubicles.

Penumbra looks at me, his eyes crinkling: “Edgar was a clerk in San Francisco just like you, my boy.”

I feel a little whirl of dislocation—the trademark sensation of the world being more closely knit together than you expected. Have I read Deckle’s slanty handwriting in the logbook? Did he work the late shift?

Deckle brightens, too, then goes mock-serious: “Piece of advice. One night, you’re going to get curious and wonder if maybe you should check out the club next door.” He pauses. “Don’t do it.”

Yes, he definitely worked the late shift.

There’s a chair set up opposite the desk—high-backed, made of polished wood—and Deckle motions for Penumbra to sit.

Neel leans in conspiratorially and jerks a thumb over his shoulder, back toward the office: “So is that all just a front?”

“Oh, no, no,” Deckle says. “The Festina Lente Company is a real business. Very real. They license the typeface Gerritszoon”—Kat, Neel, and I all nod sagely, like novices in the know—“and many more. They do other things, too. Like the new e-book project.”

“What’s that?” I ask. This operation seems a lot more savvy than Penumbra made it out to be.

“I don’t understand it completely,” Deckle says, “but somehow we identify e-book piracy for publishers.” My nostrils flare at that; I’ve heard the stories of college students sued for millions of dollars. Deckle explains: “It’s a new business. Corvina’s baby. Apparently it’s very lucrative.”

Penumbra nods. “It is thanks to the labors of those people out there that our store exists.”

Well, that’s just great. My salary is paid by font licensing fees and copyright infringement cases.

“Edgar, these three have solved the Founder’s Puzzle,” Penumbra says—Kat and Neel both raise their eyebrows at that—“and the time has come for them to see the Reading Room.” The way he says it, I can hear the capital letters.

Deckle grins. “That’s terrific. Congratulations and welcome.” He nods to a line of hooks on the wall, half of them holding regular jackets and sweaters, the other half hung with dark robes just like his. “So, change into those, for starters.”

We shrug out of our wet jackets. As we’re pulling on the robes, Deckle explains: “We need to keep things clean down below. I know they look goofy, but they’re actually very well designed. They’re cut at the sides here so you can move freely”—Deckle swings his arms back and forth—“and they have pockets inside for paper, pencil, ruler, and compass.” He pulls his robe wide to show us. “We have writing supplies down below, but you’ll have to bring your own tools.”

That’s almost cute:
Don’t forget your ruler on your first day of cult!
But where is “down below”?

“One last thing,” Deckle says. “Your phones.”

Penumbra holds up empty palms and wiggles his fingers, but the rest of us all surrender our dark trembling companions. Deckle drops them into a shallow wooden bin on the desk. There are three iPhones in there already, along with a black Neo and a battered beige Nokia.

Deckle stands, straightens his robe, braces himself, and gives the shelves behind the desk a sharp shove. They swivel smoothly and silently—it’s as if they’re weightless, drifting in space—and as they draw apart, they reveal a shadowed space beyond, where wide steps curl down into darkness. Deckle stretches an arm to invite us forward. “
Festina lente
,” he says matter-of-factly.

Neel takes a sharp breath and I know exactly what it means. It means:
I have waited my whole life to walk through a secret passage built into a bookshelf.
Penumbra hoists himself up and we follow him forward.

“Sir,” Deckle says to Penumbra, standing to one side of the parted shelves, “if you’re free later, I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee. There’s a lot to talk about.”

“So it shall be,” Penumbra says with a smile. He claps Deckle on the shoulder as we pass. “Thank you, Edgar.”

*   *   *

Penumbra leads us down onto the steps. He goes carefully, clutching the railing, a wide ribbon of wood on heavy metal brackets. Neel hovers close, ready to catch him if he stumbles. The steps are wide and made of pale stone; they curve sharply, a spiral leading us down into the earth, the way barely lit by arc lamps in old wall sconces set at wide intervals.

As we go step-by-step, I begin to hear sounds. Low murmurs; then a louder rumble; then echoing voices. The steps flatten out and there’s a frame of light up ahead. We step through. Kat gasps, and her breath comes out in a little cloud.

This is no library. This is the Batcave.

The Reading Room stretches out before us, long and low. The ceiling is crisscrossed with heavy wooden beams. Above and between them, mottled bedrock shows through, all slanted seams and jagged planes, all sparkling with some inner crystal. The beams run the whole length of the chamber, showing sharp perspective like a Cartesian grid. Where they cross, bright lamps hang down and light the space below.

The floor is also bedrock, but polished smooth like glass. Square wooden tables are set up in orderly rows, two of them side by side, all the way back to the end of the chamber. They are simple but sturdy, and each one bears a single massive book. All of the books are black, and all of them are tethered to the tables with thick chains, also black.

There are people around the tables, sitting and standing, men and women in black robes just like Deckle’s, talking, jabbering, arguing. There must be a dozen of them down here, and they make it feel like the floor of a very small stock exchange. The sounds all merge and overlap: the hiss of whispers, the scuffle of feet. The scratch of pen on paper, the squeak of chalk on slate. Coughs and sniffles. It feels more than anything else like a classroom, except the students are all adults, and I have no idea what they’re studying.

Shelves line the chamber’s long perimeter. They are made from the same wood as the beams and the tables, and they are packed with books. Those books, unlike the tomes on the tables, are colorful: red and blue and gold, cloth and leather, some ragged, some neat. They are a ward against claustrophobia; without them, it would feel like a catacomb down here, but because they line the shelves and lend the chamber color and texture, it actually feels cosseted and comfortable.

Neel makes an appreciative murmur.

“What is this place?” Kat says, rubbing her arms, shivering. The colors might be warm but the air is freezing.

“Follow me,” Penumbra says. He makes his way out onto the floor, weaving between squads of black-robes clustered around tables. I hear a snatch of conversation: “… Brito is the problem here,” a tall man with a blond beard is saying, poking down at the thick black book on the table. “He insisted all operations had to be reversible, when in fact…” I lose his voice, but pick up another one: “… too preoccupied with the page as a unit of analysis. Think of this book in a different way—it is a string of characters, correct? It has not two dimensions, but one. Therefore…” That’s the owl-faced man from the sidewalk this morning, the one with the wiry eyebrows. He’s still stooped over, still wearing his furry hat; along with his robe, it makes him look 100 percent like a warlock. He’s making sharp strokes with chalk on a small slate.

A loop of chain catches Penumbra’s foot and makes a bright clink as he shakes it off. He grimaces and mutters, “Ridiculous.”

We follow quietly behind him, a short line of black sheep. The shelves are broken in just a few places: twice by doors on either side of the long chamber, and once at the chamber’s terminus, where they give way to smooth bare rock and a wooden dais set up under a bright lamp. It’s tall and severe-looking. That must be where they do the ritual sacrifices.

As we pass, a few of the black-robes glance up and stop short; their eyes widen. “Penumbra,” they exclaim, smiling, reaching out hands. Penumbra nods and smiles back and takes each hand in turn.

He leads us to an uninhabited table close to the dais, in a soft-shadowed spot between two lamps.

“You have come to a very special place,” he says, lowering himself into a chair. We sit, too, negotiating the folds of our new robes. His voice is very quiet, barely audible above the din: “You must never speak of it, or reveal its location, to anyone.”

We all nod together. Neel whispers, “This is amazing.”

“Oh, it is not the room that is special,” Penumbra says. “It is old, certainly. But any vault is the same: a sturdy chamber, built belowground, cold and dry. Unremarkable.” He pauses. “It is the room’s contents that are remarkable indeed.”

We’ve only been in this book-lined cellar for three minutes and I’ve already forgotten that the rest of the world exists. I’ll bet this place is designed to survive a nuclear war. One of those doors must lead to the stockpile of canned beans.

“There are two treasures here,” Penumbra continues. “One is a collection of many books and the other is a single volume.” He lifts a bony hand to rest on the black-bound volume chained to our table, identical to all the others. On the cover it says, in tall silver letters:
MANVTIVS
.

“This is the volume,” Penumbra says. “It is the
codex vitae
of Aldus Manutius. It does not exist anywhere outside of this library.”