“Sir, this is not how the fellowship works.” So it was Edgar Deckle who built the bookstore’s database. I feel a surge of clerkly affection. We’ve both laid our fingers on the same short, clackety keyboard. Penumbra shakes his head. “It only seems strange because we are stuck, my boy,” he says. “Corvina has held us frozen. The First Reader has not been true to the spirit of Manutius.” His eyes are like blue laser beams and he jabs a long finger down into the magnetic-tape table. “He was an entrepreneur, Edgar!”
