I flip to where I left off.
The heroes, a scholarly dwarf and a dethroned prince, are making their way through a deadly swamp to the Citadel of the First Wizard. I know what’s going to happen next, of course, because I’ve read this book three times before: the First Wizard is going to betray them and hand them over to the Wyrm Queen.
I always know it’s coming, and I know it needs to happen (because how else are they going to get into the Wyrm Queen’s tower and ultimately defeat her?) but it always kills me to read this part. Why can’t things just work out? Why can’t the First Wizard just give them a mug of coffee and a safe place to stay for a while?
Even with all my new knowledge, the story seems about the same as before. Moffat’s prose is fine: clear and steady, with just enough sweeping statements about destiny and dragons to keep things well inflated. The characters are appealing archetypes: Fernwen the scholarly dwarf is the everynerd, doing his best to live through the adventure. Telemach Half-Blood is the hero you wish you could be. He always has a plan, always has a solution, always has secret allies that he can call upon — pirates and sorcerers whose allegiance he earned with long-ago sacrifices. In fact, I’m just getting to the part where Telemach is going to blow the Golden Horn of Griffo to raise the dead elves of the Pinake Forest, who are all bound to him because he liberated their—
The Golden Horn of Griffo.
Huh.
Griffo, like Griffo Gerritszoon.
I open my laptop and start taking notes. The passage continues:
“The Golden Horn of Griffo is finely wrought,” Zenodotus said, tracing his finger along the curve of Telemach’s treasure. “And the magic is in its making alone. Do you understand? There is no sorcery here — none that I can detect.”
Fernwen’s eyes widened at that. Hadn’t they just braved a swamp of horrors to reclaim this enchanted trumpet? And now the First Wizard claimed it carried no real power at all?
“Magic is not the only power in this world,” the old mage said gently, handing the horn back to its royal owner. “Griffo made an instrument so perfect that even the dead must rise to hear its call. He made it with his hands, without spells or dragon-songs. I wish that I could do the same.”
I don’t know what that means — but I think it means something.
From there, the plot is familiar: while Fernwen and Telemach slumber (at last) in richly furnished chambers, the First Wizard steals the horn. Then he lights a red lantern and sends it dancing aloft, a signal to the Wyrm Queen’s dark marauders in the Pinake Forest. They are busy there among the trees — hunting down old elf graves, digging up bones, grinding them to dust — but they know what that signal means. They descend on the citadel, and when Telemach Half-Blood startles awake in his chamber, he is surrounded by tall shadows. They howl and strike.
And that’s where the second book ends.
“It was amazing,” Kat says. We’re sharing a gluten-free waffle in the Gourmet Grotto and she’s telling me about the inaugural gathering of the new Product Management. She’s wearing a cream-colored blouse with a daggerlike collar; underneath, her T-shirt winks red at her throat.
“Totally amazing,” she continues. “Best meeting ever. Completely … structured. You know exactly what’s happening all the time. Everybody brings a laptop—”
“Do people even look at one another?”
“Not really. Everything that matters is on your screen. There’s an agenda that rearranges itself. There’s a back-channel chat. And there’s fact-checking! If you get up to speak, there are people cross-referencing your claims, supporting and refuting you—”
It sounds like an engineer’s Athens.
“—and the meeting is really long, like six hours, but it feels like no time, because you’re thinking so hard. You get totally wrung out. There’s so much information to absorb and it comes so fast. And they — we — make decisions really fast, too. After somebody calls for a vote, it happens live, and you have to cast yours right away, or delegate it to someone else…”
Now it sounds more like a reality show. This waffle is terrible.
“There’s an engineer named Alex, he’s a big deal, he built most of Google Maps, and I think he likes me — he delegated his vote to me once already, which is pretty crazy, I’m brand-new—”
I think I’d like to delegate my fist to Alex’s face.
“—and there are tons of designers, more designers than usual. Somebody said they tweaked the selection algorithm. I think maybe that’s why I got in, because I’m a designer and a programmer. It’s an optimal combination. Anyway.” She finally takes a breath. “I made a presentation. Which, I guess, you’re not really supposed to do at your first PM. But I asked Raj and he said it might be okay. Maybe even a good idea. Make an impression. Whatever.” Another breath. “I told them about Manutius.”
She did it.
“How it’s this amazing ancient book, totally a historical treasure, totally old knowledge, OK—”
She actually did it.
“—and then I explained how there’s this nonprofit that’s trying to break the code—”
“Nonprofit?”
“It sounds better than, like, secret society. Anyway, I said they’re trying to break the code, and of course people perked up at that, because everybody at Google likes codes—”
Books: boring. Codes: awesome. These are the people who are running the internet.
“—and I said, maybe we should spend some time on this, because it could be the start of a whole new thing, like some sort of public service code-breaking thing—”
This is a girl who knows her audience.
“—and everybody thought that sounded like a great idea. We voted on it.”
Amazing. No more sneaking around. Thanks to Kat, we now have Google’s official backing. It’s surreal. I wonder when the code-breaking will commence.
“Well, I’m supposed to organize it.” She ticks through the tasks on her fingers: “I’ll round up some volunteers. Then we’ll get the systems configured, and make sure the text all looks okay — Jad can help with that. We need to talk to Mr. Penumbra, for sure. Maybe he can come to Mountain View? Anyway. I think we can be ready in, like … two weeks. Say, two weeks from today.” She nods sharply.
A fellowship of secret scholars spent five hundred years on this task. Now we’re penciling it in for a Friday morning.
THE ULTIMATE OK
PENUMBRA AGREES to keep the bookstore open until the bank account runs dry, so I go back to work, and I go back with a mission. I order a book distributor’s catalog. I run another Google ad campaign, a bigger one. I email the organizer of San Francisco’s big literary festival, which runs for a whole week and draws free-spending readers from as far away as Fresno. It’s a long shot, but I think we can do it. I think we can get some real customers. Maybe we don’t need the Festina Lente Company. Maybe we can turn this place into a real business.
Twenty-four hours after the start of the ad campaign, eleven lonely souls have wandered in, which is pretty exciting, because before, there was only one lonely soul — me. These new customers nod when I ask about the ads, and then four of them actually buy something. Three of those four pick up a copy of the new Murakami, which I’ve set up in a neat little stack next to a card that explains how awesome it is. The card is signed Mr. Penumbra in a simulation of his spidery script because I think that’s probably what people want to see.