Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan Read Free Book Online Page B

smile. “But I suspect Corvina would agree wholeheartedly with your characterization.”
    I explain what Eric said about the books on the short shelves—about Penumbra’s disobedience.
    “Yes, yes,” he says with a sigh. “I have been through this before. It is foolishness. The genius of the libraries is that they are all different. Koster in Berlin with his music, Griboyedov in Saint Petersburg with his great samovar. And here in San Francisco, the most striking difference of all.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Why, we have books that people might actually want to read!” Penumbra guffaws at this, and shows a toothy grin. I laugh, too.
    “So it’s no big deal?”
    Penumbra shrugs. “That depends,” he says. “It depends how seriously one takes a rigid old taskmaster who believes that everything must be exactly the same everywhere and always.” He pauses. “As it happens, I do not take him very seriously at all.”
    “Does he ever visit?”
    “Never,” Penumbra says sharply, shaking his head. “He has not been to San Francisco in many years … more than a decade. No, he is busy with his other duties. And thank goodness for that.”
    Penumbra lifts his hands and waves them at me, shooing me away from the desk. “Go home now. You have witnessed something rare, and more meaningful than you know. Be grateful for it. And drink your scotch, my boy! Drink!”
    I swing my bag up onto my shoulder and empty my cup in two stiff gulps.
    “That,” Penumbra says, “is a toast to Evelyn Erdos.” He holds the sparkling gray book aloft, and speaks as though addressing her: “Welcome, my friend, and well done. Well done!”

 
    THE PROTOTYPE
    T HE NEXT NIGHT , I enter as usual and wave hello to Oliver Grone. I want to ask him about Eric, but I don’t quite have the language for it. Oliver and I have never talked directly about the weirdness of the store. So I start like this:
    “Oliver, I have a question. You know how there are normal customers?”
    “Not many.”
    “Right. And there are members who borrow books.”
    “Like Maurice Tyndall.”
    “Right.” I didn’t know his name was Maurice. “Have you ever seen somebody deliver a new book?”
    He pauses and thinks. Then he says simply: “Nope.”
    *   *   *
    As soon as he leaves I am a mess of new theories. Maybe Oliver’s in on it, too. Maybe he’s a spy for Corvina. The quiet watcher. Perfect. Or maybe he’s part of some deeper conspiracy. Maybe I’ve only scratched the surface. I know there are more bookstores—libraries?—like this, but I still don’t know what “like this” means. I don’t know what the Waybacklist is for .
    I flip through the logbook from front to back, looking for something, anything. A message from the past, maybe: Beware, good clerk, the wrath of Corvina. But no. My predecessors played it just as straight as I have.
    The words they wrote are plain and factual, just descriptions of the members as they come and go. Some of them I recognize: Tyndall, Lapin, and the rest. Others are mysteries to me—members who visit only during the day, or members who stopped visiting long ago. Judging by the dates sprinkled through the pages, the book covers a little over five years. It’s only half-full. Am I going to fill it for another five? Am I going to write dutifully for years with no idea what I’m writing about ?
    My brain is going to melt into a puddle if I keep this up all night. I need a distraction—a big, challenging distraction. So I lift my laptop’s lid and resume work on the 3-D bookstore.
    Every few minutes I glance up at the front windows, out into the street beyond. I’m watching for shadows, the flash of a gray suit or the glint of a dark eye. But there’s nothing. The work smooths away the strangeness, and finally I’m in the zone.
    If a 3-D model of this store is actually going to be useful, it probably needs to show you not only where the books are located but also which are currently loaned out, and to