The Library Machine (The Extraordinary Journeys of Clockwork Charlie)

by Dave Butler

  “Right, then.” Charlie turned back to Ollie. “Tell us what you’re thinking.”

  “Simple.” Ollie pointed at the right-hand column. “There were numbers under every shelf, remember?”

  “You think those are shelf numbers?”

  “Bob’s your uncle.”

  “Am not.”

  “How do we tell where the shelves are?” Charlie looked up, feeling the enormity of the library weighing on him.

  “We’ll just have to look, won’t we?” Ollie cleared his throat. “I expect we’ll find the MTPH section quickly enough, and then we can narrow down the search.”

  Charlie looked up again. “So I guess we just ride the lift up one level at a time and see what’s shelved each time we get out?”

  Bob slapped Charlie on the back. “No, mate, there’s a much faster way than that. We ride the lift all the way to the top.”

  “Why is that faster?” Charlie asked.

  Ollie laughed. “Because if I ain’t mistaken, Charlie, my mate Bob intends us to slide down.”

  They rode the lift to the top of the library and slid down the banister. Charlie and the sweeps passed each other in leapfrog fashion, and Charlie stopped to look at the shelves when he was ahead and then slid when he was behind until he came out first again.

  They never found an MTPH shelf. Every shelf’s label was a string of numbers only, and the numbers repeated themselves.

  The sliding was fun, though. Charlie felt giddy as the air rushed past his face and ruffled his hair. A quarter turn was just barely enough distance on the banister to really pick up speed, and then he dropped to his feet on the carpet to examine the shelves.

  He didn’t look down while sliding. Especially at the top, where a fall might have meant death even for Charlie. Ollie and Bob didn’t seem to think twice about the heights. Was it their experience as chimney sweeps? Or with Bob’s flyer, now destroyed and lying somewhere on the side of the Welsh mountain Cader Idris?

  In addition to the shelf numbers, Charlie learned that each quarter turn had a number. Between the lift at each level and the next reading alcove downhill of it, the number 1 appeared woven into the carpet every few feet. From that alcove to the next was 2, and then 3, and then the section preceding the lift’s return was 4.

  Stopping and looking at shelves randomly, Charlie found only two books on shape-changing: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and a thick dusty tome the Babel Card identified as A Brief History of the Influence of Hussite Werewolves on the Reformation in Bohemia. Charlie took one look inside that and sneezed from the dust. The books next to it on the shelf had no obvious connection with shape-changing either, being all about sixteenth-century eastern Continental history. It also had woodcut illustrations, most of which seemed to show people being impaled.

  Halfway down the library shaft, when he was in the lead, Charlie waited. Rather than rushing to look at the shelves where he stood, he waved to Ollie and Bob to join him. Ollie grinned as he dropped to the carpet. Bob’s bomber cap was in her hand and her long hair snapped out behind her as she rode the banister; stopping, she staggered a few steps as if tipsy and then pulled the cap onto her head without tucking her hair underneath.

  She looked very much like a girl.

  Ollie didn’t seem to notice. He lay on his back on the carpet and took deep breaths.

  “Bob,” Charlie said, “I’m pretty sure you do not owe Ollie a certificate of librariology.”

  “That was obvious after the first floor, mate.” Bob laughed. “But I might owe him a certificate of unspeakable fun instead.”

  “Hush!” A hulder in a student gown stalked by, holding a big finger to his bull-like lips and blowing spittle past it.

  Bob giggled, and the hulder moved on.

  Something about what Bob said stuck in Charlie’s head. First floor, Bob had said. That was right. They had entered on the library’s level 4, but its floors went from 1 to 12. Each floor had four sections, numbered 1 to 4. That meant that each quarter section could be identified with a unique number that combined the floor number with the quarter number.

  So 1-1 would indicate the very highest quarter section of the library’s ramp. And 12-4 would indicate the very lowest.

  And within each section, shelves were numbered in order, from uphill to downhill, top to bottom. So that meant that every shelf would have a unique three-part number, 1-1-1 being the top shelf on the very first bookcase at the very top of the ramp.

  He explained this to the chimney sweeps, who stopped giggling and listened. Bob tucked her hair into her cap as Charlie talked, and looked her usual boyish self by the time Charlie had finished.

  “Okay. So we’re on the sixth floor, and the carpet says we’re in quarter section two.” Ollie inspected the nearest bookcase. “And this shelf here is number two seventy-one. So what?”

  Charlie stared at the shelf. It was three-quarters full and contained books on domestic economy, including at the far left a German translation of Mrs. Beeton. Something tickled at the back of Charlie’s mind.

  “You know,” he eventually said. “It’s possible these books have to be shelved not only on the right shelf, but in a consistent order.”

  “It’s certainly possible,” Ollie agreed.

  “Let’s assume that’s true.”

  “Oh, good,” Bob said. “An ’ypothesis.”

  Charlie and Ollie both stared at her.

  Bob shrugged. “Can’t a bloke try?”

  Charlie returned to his thought. “If our hypothesis is true, then not only does every shelf have a unique number, but every book has a unique number.”

  Bob pointed at Frau Beeton. “So you’re saying that book there would ’ave the number six…two…two seventy-one…one. Yeah?”

  Charlie checked the floor, section, and shelf coordinates to be sure he and Bob had the same ones. “Yes.”

  “Fine,” Ollie said. “So how do we find out if that’s true?”

  Charlie shrugged and took Frau Beeton off the shelf. He saw nothing on the book’s cover to suggest his guesses were right, so he opened the book.

  There, inside the front cover, neatly inked onto the flyleaf, were the numbers 6:2:271:1.

  “Charlie,” Bob said, “I knew you were a man of action. Now I’ve got to start thinking of you as a man of science.”

  “Or a detective,” Ollie added. “Blimey.”

  Charlie laid the strip of paper from the THEMA machine against the flyleaf. “Only now we just have more questions.”

  Ollie nodded. “Such as why the letters and numbers on this strip don’t look anything like the number inked into this book.”

  Bob frowned and started counting off on her fingertips.

  “The letters and numbers in the column must not identify books, right?” Charlie concluded. But then what did they identify?

  “Ha!” Bob snapped her fingers. “Charlie, am I right to remember that when you entered the word into the machine, you ’ad ten wheels?”

  Charlie thought carefully. “Yes. So I could only enter ten letters. That’s why I wrote Metamorpho instead of Metamorphose.”

  “Right.” Bob plunked her finger down hard on the paper strip, nearly knocking Frau Beeton from Charlie’s hand. “An’ those wheels you turned to select letters would ’ave let you select numbers instead, am I right?”

  “Yes. But what are you…?” Charlie looked down at the paper strip.

  “Ten!” Ollie gasped. “Ten letters and numbers, all of them.”

  “These numbers don’t point to books or to shelves—they point to more specific searches!” Charlie almost smacked himself in the forehead, he felt so stupid.

  “To the lift!” Ollie raced to press the button.

  “Clock that!” Charlie shoved Frau Beeton back into her spot on the shelf and threw himself on the banister.


  The chimney sweeps rushed after him. Ollie quickly disappeared, which probably meant he had transformed into a snake and curled up in one of Bob’s pockets or around her head. Bob raced after Charlie with reckless abandon.

  But Charlie was ahead, and he had weight and gravity on his side. He whipped around the remaining curves on the library’s banister with insane abandon, and by the time he reached the bottom he had so much momentum he tumbled nearly all the way across the floor, among the Library Machine’s control panels and the gaslights, and through the knot of student researchers, coming to a halt just before bumping into the wall on the far side.

  Charlie lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, trying not to laugh.

  “Shhh!” Every single student using the machine put a finger to his or her lips.

  Bob landed off-balance but with more natural grace than Charlie. She stumbled, pirouetted, and eventually caught herself against the side of a SCHREIBER control panel.

  They met back at THEMA.

  “Okay,” Charlie said. “Cross all your fingers and toes.”

  He dialed in MTPH730031, the number indicated by the slip for yokai, and pulled the lever.

  Whirrrr.

  Another slip of paper was ejected from the machine. Charlie tore the paper off and looked at the first entry at the top of the slip.

  Shinto Legends of Japan

  M. Musashi

  7:2:103:14

  “That’s a book, innit?” Bob asked.

  “It looks like one,” Charlie said.

  “Only one way to find out.” Ollie strolled cheerfully over to the glass doors against the wall and hit the button to summon the lift.

  They found M. Musashi’s book on the seventh floor, right where the slip indicated it should be. It was written in English. Standing huddled over the leather-bound volume, they leafed through its thick pages, taking in the full-color inked illustrations and reading the captions and sidebars.

  “You figured out the library.” Ollie doffed his hat to Charlie in a show of respect.

  Charlie frowned. “Yeah, but all I’ve learned is that the thing that attacked us isn’t a yokai. Or it’s probably not a yokai, if this book is correct.”

  “That ain’t a little thing, mate.” Bob bounced with excitement. “That’s ’ow science works, you know. You eliminate possible answers.”

  “Yeah,” Ollie agreed. “So all we got to do is look at the books on every kind of shape-changer listed on that first list you’ve got, to try and eliminate each one.”

  “And if we eliminate them all?”

  “Then what attacked you wasn’t a shape-changer, was it? Could ’ave been something else, right?”

  “An Italian illusionist,” Ollie suggested.

  “A demon,” Bob added.

  “I suppose another thing we could try is reading some of the books about shape-changers generally. Maybe they’ll have indexes or chapter headings that will help. We can split up the list.” Charlie gripped the slip to tear it into segments.

  “Whoa, mate, you’re forgetting something.” Ollie grabbed Charlie’s hand to stop him.

  “It’s getting late, isn’t it? Do we need to get some food?”

  Bob snorted. “You might not realize this about us, my china, but Ollie ’ere an’ I ’ave skipped many a meal. There were times before you knew us, we might go three ’ole days without eating. We’ve got stamens, we ’ave.”

  “Stamina, Bob,” Ollie said.

  “Ah. An’ there I was on a lucky streak.”

  “It’s all right. I’m glad to have my mate Bob back.”

  “What am I forgetting?” Charlie asked.

  “German, Charlie. That list’s in German. We can’t read it.”

  Charlie squinted down at the list. If he consciously thought about it, he could tell that most of the words in the first list he’d printed, the list of more narrow subjects, were German. The book titles, as he examined them, were in various languages.

  “Okay,” he said. “I will have to operate the Library Machine. I’ll find specific books we want to look at and I’ll give you those slips. You bring the books down, and if the book is in English, maybe you can do some of the reading too.”

  “Think of the possibilities,” Bob mused. “The footnotes alone!”

  “How do you mean?” Charlie asked.

  “Well, if your writer was to say ‘Loups-garou are notorious for their eating ’abits’—”

  “Hey!” Ollie snapped.

  “Ollie, you ain’t a loup-garou. You’re English, mate.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “So if ’e says eating ’abits an’ there’s a footnote, you look at the footnote. An’ the footnote might give you more detail, an’ it might give you the name of another book.”

  “Bob, how do you know so much about libraries and research?” Charlie had never given footnotes any thought.

  “ ’Ow d’you think I learned all my science?” Bob shot back. “I never went to school, but I snuck into a few libraries in my time. An’ ’ere’s another tip: if you find a good book on the subject you’re investigating, take a look at what else is on the same shelf.”

  “This is quite a bit more exciting than I ever thought a library would be,” Ollie admitted. “It’s an adventure, ain’t it?”

  “Too right, Ollie. We get back to London, you an’ I will go poke about in all the best libraries.”

  “All the best libraries might not let you and me in, Bob.”

  “Then we’ll just let ourselves in, won’t we?” Bob winked at Ollie. “Right, Charlie. What’s the first book I should go get?”

  Charlie quickly sent Bob for a book called Hoyt on Spriggans, and Ollie after the sensationally titled Skinwalkers in the Old World: Myth or Fact? Then he settled down to grind his way through more searches.

  The Library Machine was clever, but it didn’t seem all that mysterious. The way Rachel Rosenbaum had talked about it, Charlie had imagined something more exotic. Something that had to be protected from outsiders.

  Didn’t there just have to be something more?

  Charlie quickly eliminated spriggans, whose only shape-changing ability seemed to be getting bigger and smaller. Skinwalkers remained a possibility, mostly because Charlie couldn’t find a book that described their physical appearance, and also because the writers generally agreed skinwalkers were dangerous and probably evil. On the other hand, not only were they American, but they were associated with the Navajo, a folk who lived in the American West, in places with ludicrous names like Utah.

  If a skinwalker had attacked Thomas and Charlie, it had come an awfully long way to do so.

  Apparently, and to the surprise of all three of them, there were many tales of Welsh dewins changing shape. But after Bob skimmed through a medieval collection of stories from Wales called The Mabinogion, they agreed to eliminate dewins from the list, since the dewins always took the forms of animals, and in fact animals found in Wales: salmon, deer, falcons, mice, and so on.

  “Old Lloyd Shankin will be relieved we don’t think it was ’im. Though now I fancy I’d like to see ’im turn ’imself into a salmon.” Bob took her next scrap of paper, for a book called Werewolf Brotherhoods Among the Wends and Old Saxons, and headed back to the lift.

  Charlie pulled the lever of the THEMA machine to get another strip of books. Tearing it off, he was struck by an idea.

  Charlie reset the machine’s dials to spell Bibliothek, which was “library” in German. The resulting strip had many subjects relating to libraries, but none of them said Bibliothekmaschine, as he’d hoped.

  He almost picked up his strips again to get back to finding books, but a thought stopped him. He’d been right about the library so far; he should have confidence that he was right about this: that there was more to the library than he’d yet learne
d.

  And he should be like Bob. Bob’s approach to research didn’t depend on finding obvious answers in the Library Machine. She dug through footnotes. She looked on shelves.

  Where else might Charlie look for answers?

  He reset the dials to spell Grimm. Hadn’t Jan Wijmoor said something that connected Jacob Grimm with the Library Machine?

  The resulting list of subjects included biographies, bibliographies of published works, books about the stories edited by the Grimms, and even collections of political speeches made by them. Nothing directly mentioned the Library Machine.

  He switched to the author machine, SCHREIBER.

  Why did he care about this? Was this really worth his time, in the same way it was worth his time to figure out who was trying to kill him and his brother Thomas?

  But it was a puzzle, and Charlie couldn’t walk away from a puzzle. Why would an engineer whose work was with the Library Machine also be willing to repair Thomas? Might the Library Machine have something to do with Thomas…and therefore with Charlie?

  What was the Library Machine, if not this book-cataloging system?

  Charlie set the dials on SCHREIBER to Grimm. The slip that emerged gave him separate ten-digit codes for each brother, Jacob and Wilhelm, and a third code for books written by the brothers together. When he ran those codes, the list of books he came up with was innocuous. Nothing that suggested the Library Machine.

  There were fewer and fewer students in the library. Did the library have a closing time?

  Charlie stepped to one of the TITEL panels and tried Bibliothek. This time, the machine spat out a long list of books with Bibliothek in their titles. For good luck, he ran the English words library and machine, too. Then he spent ten minutes reading the very long strip of paper he’d accumulated.

  Nothing.

  Charlie felt stumped.

  He heard the hum of the lift as it rose to get Ollie, and he decided he’d try one last search.

  He stepped back to the SCHREIBER machine and entered, as the author, the word Bibliothek. It was a nonsense search, but it was like looking on the shelf next to relevant books. Maybe he’d find a book that had been entered incorrectly in the catalog.