THE REBEL ALLIANCE
IT’S RAINING HARD in Manhattan now — a dark, noisy deluge. We have taken refuge in the hyper-boutique hotel owned by Neel’s friend Andrei, another startup CEO. It is called the Northbridge, and it’s the ultimate hacker hideout: power outlets every three feet, air so thick with Wi-Fi you can almost see it, and in the basement, a direct connection to the internet trunk line that runs beneath Wall Street. If the Dolphin and Anchor was Penumbra’s place, this is Neel’s. The concierge knows him. The valet gives him a high five.
The Northbridge lobby is the hub of the New York startup scene: anywhere two or more people are sitting together, Neel says, it’s probably a new company proofreading its articles of incorporation. Huddled together around a low table made from old magnetic-tape canisters, I guess we might qualify — not as a company, but at least as something newly incorporated. We’re a little Rebel Alliance, and Penumbra is our Obi-Wan. We all know who Corvina is.
Neel hasn’t let up on the First Reader since we emerged:
“And I don’t know what’s going on with that mustache,” he continues.
“He has worn it since the day I met him,” Penumbra says, mustering a smile. “But he was not so rigid then.”
“What was he like?” I ask.
“Like the rest of us — like me. He was curious. Uncertain. Why, I am still uncertain! — about a great many things.”
“Well, now he seems pretty … self-confident.”
Penumbra frowns. “And why not? He is the First Reader, and he likes our fellowship exactly as it is.” He bats a thin fist into the soft mass of the couch. “He will not bend. He will not experiment. He will not even let us try.”
“But they had computers at the Festina Lente Company,” I point out. In fact, they were running a whole digital counterinsurgency.
Kat nods. “Yeah, they actually sound pretty sophisticated.”
“Ah, but only above,” Penumbra says, wagging a finger. “Computers are fine for the worldly work of the Festina Lente Company — but not for the Unbroken Spine. No, never.”
“No phones,” Kat says.
“No phones. No computers. Nothing,” Penumbra says, shaking his head, “that Aldus Manutius himself would not have used. The electric lights — you would not believe the arguments we had over those lights. It took twenty years.” He harrumphs. “I am quite sure Manutius would have been delighted to possess a lightbulb or two.”
Everyone is silent.
Finally, Neel speaks: “Mr. P, you don’t have to give up. I could fund your store.”
“Let us be done with the store,” Penumbra says, waving a hand. “I love our customers, but there is a better way to serve them. I will not cling to familiar things as Corvina does. If we can carry Manutius back to California … if you, dear girl, can do what you promise … none of us will need that place.”
We sit and we scheme. In a perfect world, we agree, we would take the codex vitae to Google’s scanner and let those spider-legs walk all over it. But we can’t get the book out of the Reading Room.
“Bolt cutters,” Neel says. “We need bolt cutters.”
Penumbra shakes his head. “We must do this in secrecy. If Corvina becomes aware of it, he will pursue us, and the Festina Lente Company has tremendous resources.”
They know a lot of lawyers, too. Besides, to put Manutius at Google’s mercy, we don’t need the book in our hands. We need it on a disk. So I ask, “What if we took the scanner to the book instead?”
“It’s not portable,” Kat says, shaking her head. “I mean, you can move it around, but it’s a whole process. It took them a week to get it up and running at the Library of Congress.”
So we need something or someone else. We need a scanner custom-built for stealth. We need James Bond with a library science degree. We need— Wait. I know exactly who we need.
I grab Kat’s laptop and click over to Grumble’s book-hacking hub. I dig back through the archives — back, back, back — back to his earliest projects, the ones that kicked it all off … There it is.
I swivel the screen around for everyone to see. It shows a sharp photo of the GrumbleGear 3000: a book scanner made out of cardboard. Its pieces can be harvested from old boxes; you run them through a laser cutter to carve slots and tabs at all the right angles. You lock the pieces together to make a frame, then break them down flat when you’re done. There are two slots for cameras. It all fits into a messenger bag.
The cameras are just crappy tourist point-and-shoots, the kind you can get anywhere. It’s the frame that makes the scanner special. With one camera alone, you’d be stretching to hold the book at the right angle, fumbling with every page-turn. It would take days. But with two cameras mounted side by side on the GrumbleGear 3000, controlled by Grumble’s software, you get a two-page spread in one snap, perfectly focused, perfectly aligned. It’s high-speed but low-profile.
“It’s made from paper,” I explain, “so you can get it through a metal detector.”
“What, so you can sneak it onto a plane?” Kat asks.
“No, so you can sneak it into a library,” I say. Penumbra’s eyes widen. “Anyway, he posted the schematics. We can download them. We just need to round up the materials and find a laser cutter.”
Neel nods and waves a finger in a circle, circumscribing the lobby. “This is the nerdiest place in New York. I think we can get our hands on a laser cutter.”
Assuming we can get a GrumbleGear 3000 assembled and working, we’ll need time undisturbed in the Reading Room. Manutius’s codex vitae is huge, and scanning it will take hours.
Who will do the deed? Penumbra is too wobbly for stealth. Kat and Neel are credible accomplices, but I have other plans. As soon as the possibility of a book-scanning mission arose, I made a decision: I would do it alone.
“I want to come with you,” Neel insists. “This is the exciting part!”
“Don’t make me use your Rockets & Warlocks name,” I say, holding up a finger, “not with a girl in the room.” I make my face serious. “Neel, you have a company, with employees and customers. You have responsibilities. If you get caught, or jeez, I don’t know, arrested, that’s a problem.”
“And you don’t think getting arrested is a problem for you, Claymore Red—”
“Ah!” I cut him off. “First: I have no actual responsibilities. Second: I’m basically already a novice of the Unbroken Spine.”
“You did solve the Founder’s Puzzle.” Penumbra nods. “Edgar would vouch for you.”
“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.”
Neel nods once, slowly. His face is scrunched up but he’s no longer protesting. Good. I’ll go in alone, and I’ll leave not with one book, but two.
There’s a whip of cold wind from the Northbridge’s front doors and Edgar Deckle comes bounding in out of the rain, his round face framed by the hood of a plasticky purple jacket pulled tight. Penumbra waves him over. Kat’s gaze meets mine; she looks nervous. This will be a crucial meeting. If we want access to the Reading Room and to MANVTIVS, Deckle is the key, because Deckle has the key.
“Sir, I heard about the store,” he says, panting and setting himself down on the couch next to Kat. He gingerly peels back his hood. “I don’t know what to say. It’s terrible. I’ll talk to Corvina. I can convince him—”
Penumbra holds up a hand, and then he tells Deckle everything. He tells him about my logbook, about Google and the Founder’s Puzzle. He tells him about his pitch to Corvina, about the First Reader’s rejection.