Teldin nodded. "Let's give this a try." Carefully, he used his finger to print the word Spelljammer. He hesitated, then also printed the word Juna. Why not? he told himself. Who knows? Maybe Estriss's guesses about the ancient race were right. Then, for good measure, he added ultimate helm. He glanced over at Fazin. "And now?"
Wordlessly the gnome pointed at the leather-handled lever. Teldin grasped it and pulled it down. With a grinding, clattering sound, the lever slid to the bottom of the slot. When he released it, it rose slowly back to its original position.
"And… ?"
"And now we wait," the librarian answered.
Teldin removed his finger from the digitizing tablet's ring and leaned back in the chair. "How long?"
Fazin shrugged, puffing out his cheeks. "It varies," he said-a little abashedly, Teldin thought.
"By how much?"
"It varies by how much it varies. Sometimes it takes just a few seconds. Other times… longer."
"How much longer?" Teldin pressed. "Minutes?"
"Sometimes."
"Hours?"
"Sometimes."
"Days?"
"No!" Fazin said emphatically. "Never days." Then he added, almost under his breath, "The mechanism always breaks before then." He looked up at Teldin and added firmly, "But that'll all be different when we install-"
"The new indexing and retrieval system, I know." Teldin looked over at the black maw of the output slot. Nothing was being output. For all he could tell, the mechanism in the basement had already broken. But what could he do except wait? "Tell me about the new system," he suggested, more to pass the time than from any real interest.
The gnome's eyes flashed with enthusiasm. "It's wonderful, marvelous," he gushed, "a breakthrough, even if I do say so myself as one of the participants in its design. It'll be a hundred times more efficient, a thousand times, and it'll never, ever, ever-hardly-break." He paused, then asked diffidently, "Would you like to see it?"
Teldin blinked with surprise. "There's something to see?"
"The whole thing," Fazin shot back, "or at least the important part."
The Cloakmaster hesitated. He cast another glance at the output slot-still empty-and sighed. "Why not?" He rose to his feet. "Where is it'"
"Right there." The gnome pointed to Teldin's left.
He looked where Fazin was indicating and saw nothing but a wall. "On the other side of the wall?" he asked.
The gnome shook his head forcefully. "No, no, of course not. On the wall."
Teldin looked again, suddenly feeling a premonition of what the gnome was getting at. Yes, sure enough, there was a square of parchment tacked up on the wall, a parchment bearing about twenty lines of finely scribed words and symbols. "And that's it?" he asked tiredly.
"That's the heart of it," Fazin corrected him. "That's a description of the central search and retrieval algorithm. Of course, we still have to deal with implementation, testing, installation, more testing, and system cut-over. But that's it in a nutshell."
Teldin shook his head slowly. He remembered the "secret weapon" that the gnome Dyffedionizer had brought aboard the experimental warship Perilous Halibut-actually a sheet of parchment with a single line written on it. "Eee mik two," he murmured absently.
"What? What? What?" Fazin sputtered. "What did you say?"
The Cloakmaster looked over, puzzled. The gnome's complexion was gray, as if the blood had drained from his face. "Nothing," Teldin said.
"But where-?"
The gnome's panicked question was cut off by a loud, raucous buzz from the general direction of the output slot. Teldin glanced over. It couldn't actually have worked, could it?
Sure enough, a strip of paper about as wide as his hand and twice as long protruded from the slot. Teldin took the end and pulled. For a moment he felt resistance, then it was gone-as if somebody on the other side of the wall had been holding the paper and had released it the moment he'd taken it. Just how mechanical is this mechanical wonder? he wondered.
Fazin snatched the paper out of his hand, stared in amazement at the half dozen lines of tightly formed text. "By the ineffable mind of Marrak, that was fast," the gnome muttered. Then he shot Teldin a sharp look. "You've used this before," he accused.
Teldin didn't dignify the charge with an answer. "And now… ?"
"And now I go get the books the indexing system specified," Fazin explained, indicating the slip of paper.
The Cloakmaster nodded. "While you do, I'll just run a few more searches."
Fazin sighed. "I have the feeling it's going to be a long afternoon."
*****
Teldin sat back in the large chair, stretched his arms high over his head and heard the cracks and pops as his muscles and joints complained. His right forefinger was sore from using the digitizing tablet, his eyes ached from reading, and his brain felt as if it were full of carded wool. How long have I been here? he wondered. He took in the pile of books on the desktop next to the digitizing tablet, another two on the floor by the chair. His gaze drifted over to Fazin, who sat in an exhausted heap in the corner. I almost wore his legs off, the Cloakmaster thought with a wry smile: ten, or maybe more, trips to and from the stacks, each carrying a couple of heavy books.
It had been nowhere as daunting a process as he'd expected. When Fazin had appeared with the first couple of books-huge, bulky things of several hundred pages, each covered with closely scribed text-he'd felt himself totally out of his depth. While he wasn't illiterate, by no means could he classify himself a confident, practiced reader. As he'd stared at the first page of the first book, and struggled to make out the first sentence, he'd begun to despair.
But then he'd felt the calming influence of the cloak, felt its power insinuate itself into his mind like fine, ice-cool tendrils. The words on the page before him didn't change their appearance in any way; they remained the same dense, cramped hand. Yet now, suddenly, Teldin knew the meaning of every word simply by glancing at it, without having to pick out each letter individually, sound out each syllable. This must be what it's like to be able to read fluently, he told himself. But the power the cloak was bestowing on him was even greater than that. Just as he didn't have to analyze each word, so too he didn't have to attend individually to each sentence, or each paragraph. Simply by passing his eyes over a page, he knew what the text was saying. It wasn't as if he could hear the words in his mind; the effect was much subtler than that. From scanning a page from top to bottom-a process that took a couple of heartbeats, no more-he knew the contents of the text, and the intentions of the author, as well as if he'd been familiar with the material since childhood. With a speed that left Fazin gaping in abject awe, he was able to fly through the first two books… and the three after that, and each subsequent load, absorbing their contents almost faster than the gnome could fetch the books.
He rubbed his tired eyes. The process hadn't been without its cost. By the time he'd finished with all the books the indexing system could list, he felt as tired as if he'd plowed a field without the benefit of a horse. As he let the power of the cloak fade away, he cringed at the onset of a headache that felt like an ice pick driving into his skull over his right eye.
It was worth it, he reminded himself. He had more information on the Spelljammer than he'd been able to get from anywhere else. Even though a handful of the books he'd wanted were missing, he was confident he'd filled in the gaps they'd left from other sources.