Day of the Djinn Warriors (16 page)

“So what?” said John.

But Nimrod was nodding with enthusiasm. “Excellent, Philippa,” he said. “And?”

She shrugged. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“Not to me,” said Finlay.

“Me, neither,” admitted John. “I’m still trying to remember who was alive in 1320.”

“Eighteen times thirty-seven is six hundred and sixty-six,” said Philippa. She grinned, pleased at her discovery. “Hey, no wonder they call this the magic square.” Philippa picked up what looked like a leg bone — the femur — and handed it to Finlay. “There’s a number from one to thirty-six on each one,” she said. “This one is number twenty-seven.”

Finlay laid the bone so that the end rested in the center of the bottom left-hand square.

About halfway through their placing the bones on the magic square, Nimrod said, “I hope this works. Sister Cristina said there are only two hundred and five bones in this box. But a complete human skeleton should have two hundred and six.”

“I guess it all depends on which bone is missing,” said John.

Philippa handed Nimrod the skull, which he placed carefully on box number one, next to a handful of vertebrae.

“This is like some weird kind of game show,” said John. “We have to guess who it is before the skeleton reassembles.”

“Even if it does reassemble,” said Finlay, “I don’t see how it’s going to talk without muscles and a tongue and all the rest of it.”

“Fortunately for us this is a magic square,” said Nimrod, “and not the
Times
crossword puzzle.”

Philippa emptied a little numbered silk bag of tiny bones, each of them smaller than her fingernail, into the palm of her hand. “Are these chips off one of the bigger ones?” she asked.

“Those will be the bones from the inner ear,” said Nimrod. “There are three in each ear: the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup.” He laid them carefully in box number one, as directed by Philippa, who glanced inside the brass chest and declared that the box was now empty.

“That’s the last of them,” she declared. “Two hundred and five. Just as Sister Cristina said there were.”

They stood up and stepped back from the magic square.

“Now what?” said Philippa.

“I don’t know,” said Nimrod. “We’re missing something. Perhaps that missing bone.”

“Like I said,” said Finlay. “It doesn’t look very magical.”

“Actually, I think I said that,” said John.

“Yes, you did,” admitted Finlay. “But you were using my mouth.”

“I’ll be glad to get back into my own body,” said John. “Right now I feel like a square peg in a round hole.”

“What’s that you said?” Nimrod asked John.

“I said I’m a square peg in a round hole.”

“Yes, of course,” said Nimrod. He knelt down by the brass box and, bringing a magnifying glass out of his pocket, examined the design on the lid more closely. A minute passed; he shook his head and sighed. “Nothing,” he said. “I don’t understand. I was sure that must be it.”

“What?” said Philippa.

“Squaring the circle,” said Nimrod. “A problem posed by ancient geometers.”

“Here,” said John. “Let me take a look.”

He looked and, like Nimrod, saw nothing. But just then the Venetian sun appeared directly in front of the reliquary window, throwing a strong beam of light into the room, which reflected brightly on the brass box that had contained the bones. And, momentarily bored, John and Finlay amused themselves by focusing the sunbeam on the lid of the box using Nimrod’s magnifying glass. Gradually, a smell of burning filled the air. A cloud of smoke appeared on top of the box and a thin rivulet of melted wax ran down the metal lid, and onto the floor.

“Hey, look at this,” said John. “There’s something else on the lid of this chest.”

“Well done, John,” said Nimrod, and wiped away the remains of the melted wax with his handkerchief. “Not all the wax was chased off when this was engraved,” he said, and lifted the brass lid a little so that it caught more of the light. “Look. It’s exactly as I thought. There’s a circle all around the square except the four corners. Our design on the floor here is not yet complete.”

He picked up his chalk and stood over the square. “The question is, how accurate does this circle have to be? Strictly speaking, the area of the circle that lies outside the square would have to be exactly equal to the area of the square that lies outside the circle. Normally, I wouldn’t attempt this without a set of compasses and a pocket calculator.” He started to draw. “However, time is of the essence.”

Nimrod continued drawing his circle. “In this way people like Leonardo da Vinci attempted to depict two things: the
material or worldly existence in the square, and the spiritual existence inside the circle.” Closing the circle, he stood up. “There, that should do it. Better stand back, children.”

Almost as soon as he had finished drawing the circle around the square, several remarkable things happened. First, the numbers all disappeared; then it was as if the squares retreated into the floor, one by one, as if pressed down like the keys on a typewriter by some unseen giant finger. The bones remained immobile for a moment and then began to smoke as if heated, until the smoke partially concealed the fact that the bones were reassembling themselves. But gradually, the smoke cleared to reveal a man lying on the floor, with his arms and legs outstretched in a spread-eagle position. Philippa remembered the famous Leonardo da Vinci drawing, which she supposed Nimrod had been talking about: It was the same drawing on the front of her school biology textbook. Except that this man was wearing the clothes of an early fourteenth-century Italian, and quite a rich one if his silks and the fur collar on his coat were anything to go by. He sat up and tried to get up off the floor but he was old and, seeing that he was having some difficulties in standing, John went to help him.

“No,” said the man sharply. “Don’t touch me. For I am not yet quite myself.” Moderating his tone a little, and standing finally, he added with a groan, “It’s best you don’t touch me, my boy. My present condition might cause you some injury.” He straightened, stretched a bit, let out a breath, and nodded with some satisfaction as he looked
around the room. He was not a ghost, but a real, living man, although there was something in his face that could best be described as supernatural. Aged about seventy years old, he had a thick beard and a kind face. He smiled uncertainly at Finlay/John, and then at Nimrod and Philippa. Sniffing the air, he nodded again. “We are in Venice, yes?”

“Yes,” said Nimrod.

“That smell,” said the man. “It’s quite unmistakable. There’s nowhere quite like Venice.”

“I quite agree,” said Nimrod. “Permit me to introduce myself, esteemed sir. My name is Nimrod. This is my niece, Philippa, and her friend, Finlay. Finlay’s body is also a temporary home to my nephew, John.”

The man bowed gravely.

“Children, it’s my honor and my pleasure to introduce you to the most famous explorer of all time,” he continued. “Philippa, Finlay, John. This is the great Marco Polo.”

H
ave you seen these audience numbers?” Adam Apollonius was waving a sheet of paper as he walked into Jonathan Tarot’s rooftop suite at the Cimento dell’ Armonia Hotel in New York. “They’re just amazing.”

It was eleven o’clock in the morning but Jonathan was still in bed. The great thing about his new life was that no one ever told him to get up in the morning or to have a shower or to wear a clean T-shirt or how much he should eat at breakfast. He went to bed late, watched TV in his room, and ordered whatever he wanted from room service. He even had his own limousine and driver parked outside. Not that he really went anywhere these days. He was much too famous to walk around the streets of New York. For one thing, he was nearly always on TV. And for another, posters bearing his picture were everywhere. So instead he had a personal assistant named Julian whose job it was to go and buy whatever he wanted from a store: CDs, magazines, candy, DVDs,
clothes, sneakers. Most of the stuff he got he wore just once and then threw away. His mother would have been appalled at the waste of it. Which was one of the reasons why he did it, of course.

“What’s an audience number?” asked Jonathan.

“A rating,” said Apollonius. “That’s the number of people who watched your last TV show. There are about a hundred and ten million TV homes in the USA. You got a forty-one percent audience share. One hundred and forty-three million fans. It’s incredible. Every kid in America must have watched that show. The advertisers are deliriously happy. You’re the biggest thing since Elvis. They want another special, ASAP.”

Jonathan yawned. When people started talking percentages, it reminded him of school and usually that made him want to reach for a bagel, pizza, or a muffin — something to throw at them, anyway. Sometimes he did throw things at people. Since becoming a big TV star, Jonathan had become much less tolerant of mundanes and their stupid, boring conversation. He threw a lot of pizza at the people who worked for him. But Adam Apollonius was different. Jonathan always treated him with courtesy and never threw pizza at him. Not even when he was being boring, like now. There was something about the man that commanded Jonathan’s respect. Of course, he remained blissfully ignorant of his new friend and mentor’s true identity; but, perhaps, there was some small subconscious part of Dybbuk that recognized his own kind, not to mention his natural father, Iblis.

“Now we can start making some serious money,” said Apollonius. “And I mean serious. Like millions of dollars.”

Money didn’t interest Jonathan very much and he tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle another yawn. Money mattered a great deal to mundanes, of course, and so he was hardly surprised that Apollonius talked about it all the time. In this respect at least he seemed just the same as any other mundane.

“Like it or not, kid, money’s what this racket is all about,” said Apollonius. “Like the song says, it’s what makes the world go around.”

Of course, Iblis didn’t believe that for a moment, and he wasn’t interested in money any more than Jonathan/Dybbuk. But for the purposes of his plan, and the manipulation of Dybbuk that lay at the heart of this plan, it was still necessary to pretend that he was.

“Now then. For the next TV special, I was thinking maybe we could go for some kind of mass audience participation. Like everyone bending a spoon using mind over matter.”

“Spoon bending?” Jonathan sneered. “Everyone’s seen it before. And it sucks.”

“Something else then,” Apollonius said, cleverly letting Jonathan think he was going to have to come up with the idea.

“Like what?”

“I dunno. You’re the genius here, not me. But it ought to be something that kids have to pay money for, of course.”

“Like what?” asked Jonathan, mildly intrigued.

“I was thinking that, maybe, we could get them to buy a simple Chinese magic square,” said Apollonius. “A simple sheet of plastic with some numbers on it. At a dollar a time, that would make maybe seventy or eighty million dollars. It would only cost us a few cents to manufacture. They lay it on the floor and then sit in one of the squares, inside number four — that’s an important number — and then they all focus their minds to help you perform the most amazing feat of magic ever seen. How does that sound?”

“Better than bending a spoon,” said Jonathan.

“I just said spoon bending as an example,” said Apollonius. “But your idea is much better.”

“My idea?”

“Mass mind over matter.”

Jonathan nodded. “How about this? I could disappear,” he said. “Live. On TV. Without any props.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

“Great. I love it. Could you do that?”

“Sure. No problemo.”

“But let’s try to do it with more drama than just …” Apollonius snapped his fingers. “… like that.”

“Whatever,” said Jonathan. He got up and wandered into the enormous marble bathroom, thought about taking a shower, and then thought better of it. He put on a thick terry cloth robe, and called room service on the bathroom telephone to order some breakfast. When the waiter asked what he’d like to eat he told the guy just to bring everything. Which seemed simpler than having to make a decision about
something so ordinary. “And like, hurry it up, okay? I’m hungry.”

He came out of the bathroom, switched on the TV, and threw himself down on the sofa.

“What do you mean that I should try to disappear with more drama?” he asked Apollonius.

“I mean, let’s make your actual disappearance last longer than a few seconds.”

“A disappearance is a disappearance,” said Jonathan. “One minute you’re there, and the next you’re not. What else is there?”

“This isn’t the hush-hush or the keep-it-a-secret business that we’re in, kid,” said Apollonius. “It’s called show business, and for a good reason. No, if you are going to disappear just like that, we want to take our time to enjoy the moment. Maybe you could whirl around a bit first. Make a show.”

Jonathan thought about that, figured he could whip up a whirlwind, stand on top of it, and then disappear in a puff of smoke.

“Sure,” he said, flicking from one channel to another until he found one of his own TV shows. “I could do that. No problemo.”

“Ever hear of the whirling dervishes?” Apollonius asked him.

“Sort of.” Jonathan shrugged. “I think maybe I saw something in
National Geographic
. Maybe.”

Apollonius grinned. He was sure of it. He’d left a copy of
National Geographic
with an article about the whirling dervishes of Mevlevi in Jonathan’s bathroom for just that reason.

“Aren’t they some Middle Eastern dudes who sort of dance around in a circle?” asked Jonathan.

“You make it sound like they bop around their handbags on a disco dance floor in Cocoa Beach. No, these guys really go for it. The dervishes are mystics who believe that the quicker they whirl around, the more hypnotic the effect of their dancing, and the more open to the next world they will be. ‘Dervish’ means ‘doorway.’ A doorway into the next world.”

“Really?”

“Turning quickly becomes the empty place where the human and the divine can meet,” said Apollonius. “When the gravitational pull of the dance gets stronger, the turn becomes molecular and galactic and a spiritual remembering of the power at the heart of the universe. Maybe even altering the power at the heart of the universe.”

Jonathan yawned again. This time it had been the word “molecular” that did it. “Molecular” was a word that reminded him of chemistry, which, next to math, was his least favorite subject at school. All those stupid little symbols for what stuff meant. That was the worst thing about school, period. Having to learn lots of stupid little symbols for all kinds of stuff that was of no use to anyone. Least of all someone with djinn power.

Apollonius could see he’d gone too far with his explanation. It was best to keep it simple where Jonathan was concerned. It wasn’t that the young djinn was stupid. Far from it. Merely that he was easily bored.

“You know, this is a brilliant idea of yours,” he told Jonathan.

“You think?”

“Sure. Kids love to spin around in a circle. Didn’t you do that when you were a kid? Spin around like a dervish until you were dizzy and fell over?”

“I guess so,” said Jonathan, who was bored by all memories of when he was a child.

“Let me take this ingenious idea of yours one stage further,” said Apollonius. “Do you mind?”

“Go right ahead.”

“We combine the dervish angle with the magic square angle. They can get the instructions on how to dance like a real dervish when they buy the magic square. Let’s make it two dollars a pop. Then, while the show is on, we get all the kids watching to sit in the number four square and concentrate the collective power of their minds to make you whirl faster and faster until you disappear.”

Jonathan was nodding.

“Then, how about this? When they’ve seen you disappear after whirling around like a dervish, we get the kids to do the same.” Apollonius chuckled. “Who knows? Maybe we can suggest that there’s so much mathematical power in that simple magic square to multiply your magical power enough to
make all those kids disappear as well. I mean, did you know that the numbers in each one of the columns in the magic square add up to one hundred and eleven? And that the columns add up to six-six-six? And that if you multiply six-six-six by the number of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal columns, you get one hundred and forty-four thousand, which is the number of the chosen few who are supposed to go to heaven?” He shrugged innocently. “Or something like that.”

Jonathan winced at the mention of mathematics and felt his eyes glaze over at the long multiplication performed by Adam Apollonius. He wasn’t sure if 666 times 6 times 6 times 6 did equal 144,000. But he was sure he didn’t want to let down or disappoint his fans.

“What’s the point of that?” asked Jonathan. “I mean, the kids won’t actually disappear. So what’s the point?”

“There is no point,” said Apollonius. “No point at all. It’s just a bit of fun. Call it hype. Call it good TV. Call it show business.”

“Won’t they be kind of disappointed when they don’t actually disappear?”

“Naw,” said Apollonius. “We’ll just say on the Web site that they just didn’t believe hard enough. Or that maybe they just didn’t whirl around fast enough. Something like that.” He shook his head. “Either way, they won’t blame you, kid. They’ll blame themselves. It’ll be their fault. Not yours.” He shrugged again. “Besides, who’s going to complain after you disappear? I mean, they’re going to see something they’ve
never seen before, right? A disappearing trick that won’t look like a trick. How about that?”

Jonathan nodded. “Right,” he said, warming to his idea. “With no props. No capes to hide underneath. No trapdoors in the floor for someone to drop through. No trick photography. We can make a thing about me doing it on a hard concrete floor somewhere. We’ll get some road worker to use a jackhammer to drill the floor just to underline that. With some guy from the FBI watching to make sure there are no trick cameras or mirrors.”

“I love this idea of yours,” said Apollonius. “It’s so audacious. So without precedent. Houdini? Who’s Houdini? Next to you, kid, he looks like an amateur.”

There was a knock at the door of the suite. It was room service with several trolleys that were weighed down by Jonathan Tarot’s breakfast.

“How do you do it, kid?”

Jonathan helped himself to a half dozen sausages, six strips of bacon, four buttermilk pancakes, some maple syrup, three fried eggs, and some orange juice, and grinned at Adam Apollonius.

“Practice,” he said. “Just practice.”