And so, in a final desperate flash, I opened the scanned pages of PENVMBRA. Google couldn’t crack MANVTIVS, but these latter-day codex vitae were not so cunningly encrypted, and besides (I was fairly sure), there was actually something in this book to be decoded. I sent Kat an inquiring text message, and her response was short and definitive: No. Thirteen seconds later: Absolutely not. Seven more: That project is done.
Kat had been deeply disappointed when the Great Decoding failed. She had really believed there would be something profound waiting for us in that text; she had wanted there to be something profound. Now she was throwing herself into the PM and mostly ignoring me. Except, of course, to say Absolutely not.
But that was probably for the best. The two-page spreads on my laptop screen — heavy Gerritszoon glyphs lit harshly by the GrumbleGear camera flashes — still made me feel strange. Penumbra’s expectation was that his codex vitae wouldn’t be read until after he was gone. I decided I wouldn’t crack open a man’s book of life just to find his home address.
Finally, genius depleted, I checked with Tyndall and Lapin and Fedorov. None of them had heard from Penumbra, either. They were all preparing to move east, to take refuge with the Unbroken Spine in New York and join Corvina’s chain gang there. If you ask me, it’s futile: we took Manutius’s codex vitae and bent it until it broke. At best, the fellowship is founded on a false hope, and at worst, it’s founded on a lie. Tyndall and the rest haven’t faced up to this, but at some point they’ll have to.
If all of this seems grim: it is. And I feel terrible because, if you trace it back step-by-step, you cannot avoid the fact that all of it is my fault.
My mind is wandering. It’s taken me many nights to get this far again, but Moffat is finally wrapping up Volume II. I’ve never listened to an audiobook before, and I have to say, it’s a totally different experience. When you read a book, the story definitely happens inside your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes:
“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.”
Moffat’s Zenodotus voice is not what I expected. Instead of a rich, dramatic wizard’s rumble, it’s clipped and clinical. It’s the voice of a corporate magic consultant.
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.”
With Moffat reading, I can hear the sinister intent in the First Wizard’s voice. It’s so obvious what’s coming:
“Even Aldrag the Wyrm-Father would envy such a thing.”
Wait, what?
So far, every line out of Moffat’s mouth has been pleasant repetition. His voice has been a needle bobbing comfortably through a deep groove in my brain. But that line — I have never read that line.
That line is new.
My finger twitches over the Walkman’s pause button, but I don’t want to mess up Neel’s recording. Instead, I pad quickly to my room and pull Volume II from the shelf. I flip to the end, and yes, I’m right: there’s no mention of Aldrag the Wyrm-Father here. He was the first dragon to sing, and he used the power of his dragon-song to forge the first dwarves out of molten rock, but that’s not the point — the point is, that line is not in the book.
So what else isn’t in the book? What else is different? Why is Moffat freestyling?
These audiobooks were produced in 1987, just after Volume III had been published. Therefore, it was also just after Clark Moffat’s entanglement with the Unbroken Spine. My spider-sense is tingling: this is connected.
But I can think of only three people in the world who might possess clues to Moffat’s intent. The first is the dark lord of the Unbroken Spine, but I have absolutely no desire to communicate with Corvina or any of his henchmen at the Festina Lente Company, above- or belowground. Besides, I’m still afraid my IP address might be listed on one of their pirate rosters.
The second is my erstwhile employer, and I have a deep desire to communicate with Penumbra, but I don’t know how. Lying here on the floor, listening to the hiss of empty tape, I realize something very sad: this skinny, blue-eyed man bent my life into a crazy curlicue … and all I know about him is what it says on the front of his store.
There is a third possibility. Edgar Deckle is technically part of Corvina’s crew, but he has a few things going for him:
1. He’s an established coconspirator.
2. He guards the door to the Reading Room, so he must be pretty high up in the fellowship, and therefore have access to many secrets.
3. He knew Moffat. And, most important of alclass="underline"
4. He’s in the phone book. Brooklyn.
It feels appropriately weighty and Unbroken Spine-ish to send him a letter. This is something I haven’t done in more than a decade. The last letter I wrote in ink on paper was a mushy missive to my long-distance pseudo-girlfriend in the gold-tinted week after science camp. I was thirteen. Leslie Murdoch never wrote back.
For this new epistle, I select heavy archival-grade paper. I purchase a sharp-tipped rollerball pen. I carefully compose my message, first explaining all that transpired up on Google’s bright screens and then asking Edgar Deckle what he knows, if anything, about Clark Moffat’s audiobook editions. I crumple six sheets of the archival-grade paper in the process because I keep misspelling words or smashing them together. My handwriting is still terrible.
Finally, I drop the letter into a bright blue mailbox and hope for the best.
Three days later, an email appears. It’s from Edgar Deckle. He proposes that we video chat.
Well, fine.
It’s just past noon on a Sunday when I click the green camera icon. The feed comes to life and there is Deckle, peering down into his computer, his round nose slightly foreshortened. He’s sitting in a narrow, light-filled room with yellow walls; I think there’s a skylight somewhere up above him. Behind his fuzzy crown of hair, I can see copper cooking pots hanging from hooks, and the front of a gleaming black refrigerator festooned with bright magnets and faint drawings.
“I liked your letter,” Deckle says, smiling, holding up the archival-grade paper folded into neat thirds.
“Right, well. I figured. Anyway.”
“I already knew what happened in California,” he says. “Word travels fast in the Unbroken Spine. You shook things up.”
I expected him to be angry about all that, but he’s smiling. “Corvina took some heat. People were angry.”
“Don’t worry, he did his best to stop it.”