Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

by Robin Sloan

Later, after an hour of late-night isolation and lignin inhalation have sobered me up, I do two things.

This is an interesting girl. Kat’s utter directness suggests homeschooling, yet she is also completely charming.

Bright, even light. Do you know what I mean when I say bright, even light?” “No shadows?” “No shadows,” he agrees, “which is, of course, going to be impossible in that place. It’s basically a twenty-four-hour shadow store.”

“Oh, I’m working as fast as I can,” she says, and smiles a sweet smile of her own that makes her cheeks puff out like pale plums. “Festina lente.”

Old knowledge in general. We call it OK. Old knowledge, OK. Did you know that ninety-five percent of the internet was only created in the last five years? But we know that when it comes to all human knowledge, the ratio is just the opposite—in fact, OK accounts for most things that most people know, and have ever known.”

“He said it was a prototype.” The anonymous e-reader is amazing: thin and light, with a skin that’s not plastic but cloth, like a hardcover book.

“Besides,” I say, “I’m the rogue in this scenario.” Kat raises an eyebrow and I explain quietly, “He’s the warrior, you’re the wizard, I’m the rogue. This conversation never happened.”

There are narrow beds, too, but those are clearly a reluctant concession to the frailties of wetware.

“Ve must also cempensate for de optical eigenvectors,” he repeats, as if stating the obvious. The Googlers look across to Greg. He’s staring blankly, too. Igor raises a skinny hand and says neatly, “I tink ve could make a tree-dimensional metrix of ink-saturation values?”

They are making a sushi search engine—here she pokes a chopstick down at our dinner—to help people find fish that is sustainable and mercury-free. They are building a time machine. They are developing a form of renewable energy that runs on hubris.

eigenvalue

inveigled.

Another acquisitions officer, Julian Lemire, pulled the diary of Nebuchadnezzar II out of an active volcano.

“The measure of a bookstore is not its receipts, but its friends,” he says, “and here, we are rich indeed.” Penumbra sees Corvina clench his jaw just slightly; he gets the sense that Mo’s clerk wishes they had some receipts, too.

“Well, you know our saying: ‘It’s not over until you hold the book’s ashes in your hands, weeping at the years you’ve lost.’” “I did not know we had that saying, sir.”

“What gift?” “Mr. Al-Asmari called it that. ‘The willingness to entertain absurd ideas.’” Corvina snorts. “I don’t entertain ideas,” he says. “I work for them.”

They trace the edge of the hard, TONKing shape, then excavate around it, until Corvina is able to use his shovel as a lever. He gives a sharp grunt; a small metal trunk pops out of the hole, lands on the bottom of the tunnel with a wet thud, balances on its end, and falls over. Penumbra and Corvina stare at each other, wide-eyed. The trunk is heavily corroded, its surface boiling with rusty warts and green-brown streaks, but it seems to be intact. There is a supremely fat padlock holding the lid tight. “Stand back,” Corvina says. He lifts his shovel high and brings it down, a wrathful bolt of lightning. The fat old padlock does not so much break as crumble, with what seems, to Penumbra, something like relief.