The Gravity Escapement (TWS)

HISTORY is your goal for today. If Newton's Principia is here, that's where it'll be, or maybe it might be under PHYSICS. Alternatively, you could ask the librarian, when they get back, if there's a section for rare books and the like. It begins to dawn on you that this search, for an original, annotated edition of the Principia Mathematica, might be a little more involved than walking into one of the largest libraries in the world and picking it up off the first shelf you see.

You wish, at this point, that you could say that you did exactly that. But reality is, as it so often is, unforgiving on this point. In the story of your life, perhaps a neat autobiography published a decade from now, once you're rich and famous from the spoils of this expedition and off the reflected fame of being associated with Daniel McCloud, you'll probably leave this whole bit out.

It's a lot of searching - an hour of ultimately fruitless searching, up and down the history aisles. There are a lot of tomes about the Empire and its Glorious Manifest Destiny Quest and how it's gone so far. The more recent volumes are practically encrusted in gold foil and delicate scrollwork, as if compensating for the increasingly dull, and in places dire, history within. Aside from these, precious few of the books are about anything before the rise of Momentum, as if some aristocrat up top had decreed such happenings beneath notice, interest or public access.

Speaking of public access, you sneak another glance at the reception desk. You've not seen any evidence of a restricted area, but every library, in your experience, has a rare book section. You would ask for directions, or even a pass, but there is still no sign of the librarian. For that matter, you haven't seen anyone else in the archives at all - though judging by the history aisle's contents you were probably in the most disused section out of all of them. It just sort of seems as if this is not a particularly frequented area.

Passing by the hydraulic chemistry aisle, you nearly trip over a midsized automaton. It skitters away from your feet on four multi-articulated, spidery legs, its burnished grey carapace glowing in the light from the Geissler tubes above. You suddenly realize why no one ever comes here: the automaton clambers up a shelf, plucks out a book with a beak in its center, and carries it away.

Damn it all to the nameless place. You approach the front desk, which remains tantalizingly deserted. No eyes are on you, save perhaps the ones(?) on the tichman at the front entrance, but it doesn't look like it's equipped to do anything other than stop unauthorized books going out the door. Just to be sure, you duck behind the counter: no response. You seem safe so far. A quick scan of the desk reveals an "out to lunch" notice, sitting faceup behind the counter. It looks as if it fell off the countertop at some point. Another calculating machine, like the one you saw at Tremont House, sits above a massive ledger for, it seems, recording late fees. McCloud has a lot of red ink in there, you see at a glance, though a lot of these entries seem to have been crossed out, aggressively, without record of payment. Being Daniel McCloud seems to have its perks, though the librarian doesn't look to have been all that happy about it.

You have a closer look, and hit pay dirt. A drawer sits slightly ajar, and the glint of brass catches your eye. You pull it open and reveal a sawtooth-shaped slab of black velveteen, the kind used for clockmaking, and a bounty of keys in key-shaped depressions. Labels, neatly handwritten, are tied onto the keys with string and laid in more appointed places on the velvet, perfectly aligned. It almost feels like a crime to remove the 'Rare Books' key from its position, leaving a hole in the brass ranks that screams like a missing tooth.

The Rare Books door, it turns out, is around the corner from the front desk. It's an imposing edifice, built from black ironwood and inlaid Eglin steel. The key slides in with an oiled click, and the door slides open soundlessly. The room within is dusty, though tracks on the marble floor betray a semi-frequent and recent splurge of visits.

The Principia Mathematica is missing from its labeled shelf.