Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

“Sir,” Deckle says to Penumbra, standing to one side of the parted shelves, “if you’re free later, I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee. There’s a lot to talk about.”

“So it shall be,” Penumbra says with a smile. He claps Deckle on the shoulder as we pass. “Thank you, Edgar.”

*   *   *

Penumbra leads us down onto the steps. He goes carefully, clutching the railing, a wide ribbon of wood on heavy metal brackets. Neel hovers close, ready to catch him if he stumbles. The steps are wide and made of pale stone; they curve sharply, a spiral leading us down into the earth, the way barely lit by arc lamps in old wall sconces set at wide intervals.

As we go step-by-step, I begin to hear sounds. Low murmurs; then a louder rumble; then echoing voices. The steps flatten out and there’s a frame of light up ahead. We step through. Kat gasps, and her breath comes out in a little cloud.

This is no library. This is the Batcave.

The Reading Room stretches out before us, long and low. The ceiling is crisscrossed with heavy wooden beams. Above and between them, mottled bedrock shows through, all slanted seams and jagged planes, all sparkling with some inner crystal. The beams run the whole length of the chamber, showing sharp perspective like a Cartesian grid. Where they cross, bright lamps hang down and light the space below.

The floor is also bedrock, but polished smooth like glass. Square wooden tables are set up in orderly rows, two of them side by side, all the way back to the end of the chamber. They are simple but sturdy, and each one bears a single massive book. All of the books are black, and all of them are tethered to the tables with thick chains, also black.

There are people around the tables, sitting and standing, men and women in black robes just like Deckle’s, talking, jabbering, arguing. There must be a dozen of them down here, and they make it feel like the floor of a very small stock exchange. The sounds all merge and overlap: the hiss of whispers, the scuffle of feet. The scratch of pen on paper, the squeak of chalk on slate. Coughs and sniffles. It feels more than anything else like a classroom, except the students are all adults, and I have no idea what they’re studying.

Shelves line the chamber’s long perimeter. They are made from the same wood as the beams and the tables, and they are packed with books. Those books, unlike the tomes on the tables, are colorful: red and blue and gold, cloth and leather, some ragged, some neat. They are a ward against claustrophobia; without them, it would feel like a catacomb down here, but because they line the shelves and lend the chamber color and texture, it actually feels cosseted and comfortable.

Neel makes an appreciative murmur.

“What is this place?” Kat says, rubbing her arms, shivering. The colors might be warm but the air is freezing.

“Follow me,” Penumbra says. He makes his way out onto the floor, weaving between squads of black-robes clustered around tables. I hear a snatch of conversation: “… Brito is the problem here,” a tall man with a blond beard is saying, poking down at the thick black book on the table. “He insisted all operations had to be reversible, when in fact…” I lose his voice, but pick up another one: “… too preoccupied with the page as a unit of analysis. Think of this book in a different way—it is a string of characters, correct? It has not two dimensions, but one. Therefore…” That’s the owl-faced man from the sidewalk this morning, the one with the wiry eyebrows. He’s still stooped over, still wearing his furry hat; along with his robe, it makes him look 100 percent like a warlock. He’s making sharp strokes with chalk on a small slate.

A loop of chain catches Penumbra’s foot and makes a bright clink as he shakes it off. He grimaces and mutters, “Ridiculous.”

We follow quietly behind him, a short line of black sheep. The shelves are broken in just a few places: twice by doors on either side of the long chamber, and once at the chamber’s terminus, where they give way to smooth bare rock and a wooden dais set up under a bright lamp. It’s tall and severe-looking. That must be where they do the ritual sacrifices.

As we pass, a few of the black-robes glance up and stop short; their eyes widen. “Penumbra,” they exclaim, smiling, reaching out hands. Penumbra nods and smiles back and takes each hand in turn.

He leads us to an uninhabited table close to the dais, in a soft-shadowed spot between two lamps.

“You have come to a very special place,” he says, lowering himself into a chair. We sit, too, negotiating the folds of our new robes. His voice is very quiet, barely audible above the din: “You must never speak of it, or reveal its location, to anyone.”

We all nod together. Neel whispers, “This is amazing.”

“Oh, it is not the room that is special,” Penumbra says. “It is old, certainly. But any vault is the same: a sturdy chamber, built belowground, cold and dry. Unremarkable.” He pauses. “It is the room’s contents that are remarkable indeed.”