Napier's Bones (17 page)

“So you don’t
need to eat, or if I do eat, you don’t get any satisfaction out of it?”

His head shook.
“I know when you need to eat, sleep, piss, whatever. If I hadn’t, I never would
have got you through the blackout period down in Utah. But it doesn’t affect me
in any fashion. I can feel numbers, and the need to find a way to life.
Sometimes that means that I have to leave a dying body and move on to a living
one, and so I do.”

Dom laughed
quietly. “You make it sound like you’re some kind of virus.”

Billy was silent
for a few seconds. “I never thought of it that way before, but you know, it
makes a strange sort of sense.”

“How so?”

“Well, think
about how numerates go about discovering what’s out there for them to use.
Sometimes, obviously, numbers will speak to a numerate in a way that leads them
down a path of curiosity.”

“One that
usually serves to fuck up any private lives they may have,” added Dom. Jenna had
slid all the way down, and her head was now in his lap. He absentmindedly
stroked her hair as they talked.

“Point taken.
But then the numbers can only take the innocent newcomer so far, right?”

Dom nodded,
watched as a flight attendant walked by to answer a call from somewhere behind
him. The crappy movie was still playing.

“So think about
it, Dom. How do you find out about mojo and artefacts that are out there?”

Dom frowned.
“Read about them. Find clues in places. Sometimes I just know they’re going to
be there, like the two McGwire home run balls.”

“Two?”

“Yeah. Never
told you, but that’s the other one I grabbed in Edmonton. It’s not as powerful
as the first, but that one got fried in the backlash in Utah.”

“Right. Well,
back to artefacts. In lots of cases, you read about these things. Find them in
libraries, antiquarian bookstores, places like that.”

“I do,” said
Dom, nodding.

“So my question,
then, is where do these clues come from? What causes them to show up in these
books, in whatever sources they appear?”

Dom thought for
a few seconds, but could only find the answer he’d always had. “People put them
there. Numerates from the past, writing for future generations to see, proud of
their discoveries, or maybe so that their own shadows can track them down
decades or centuries later. Or non-numerates, just fascinated by a little piece
of history that they don’t realize has other significance.”

Billy smiled,
shook his head. “All answers that occurred to me, but every one of those is too
simple an answer, Dom!” He sounded excited now, like a college professor
lecturing on an especially salient point of logic that the class kept missing.
“Think about it. When we were down in the desert, searching for an artefact
that we knew was there, we had no idea what it looked like or exactly what it
did. We were there because of numbers and shadows. If I understand correctly,
the artefact we were seeking had numbers that were set to put out a call, do
something to advertise its presence down there. And not only to let us know it
was there, but to make up at least two different stories about how the artefact
got there.” He paused and scratched Dom’s chin. “Or, to take it even a step
further, the numbers that held the shadows of Napier and Archimedes somehow
kept those shadows self-aware, even without a shell—a body—to carry them, and
it was the shadows that sent out the call.”

Dom
shook his head. “Jesus, Billy. I’ll accept that we’re in the middle of numeracy
like we’ve never experienced before, much less read about, but I can’t buy
where you’re going with this. I mean, are the shadows in control? Hell, are the
numbers
in control? Don’t even bother with a warm body now, just let a
bunch of magic integers ’n’ shit do the job.” He paused to watch a flight
attendant walk by. “I’ll grant that what we saw was far beyond what we’ve come
to expect from artefacts, but I still think any sufficiently strong numerate
would be able to place the numbers to make it all happen.”

Billy shrugged
Dom’s shoulders. “I don’t know, Dom. I’ve been around a whole lot longer than
you and never before witnessed a numerate that capable. I suppose if anyone
could, though, it would have been Napier.” He paused, and Dom let the silence
hang, feeling that Billy was just searching for more words. “I’m willing to bet
that in most cases adjuncts dropped clues while with a host, but I’m just as
sure that there were times when they didn’t, when they needed to place hints
and were without corporeal assistance.”

“Then I’ll
repeat my question: who’s in control, the shadows or the numbers?”

“That, my friend
and host, is a very good question. It’s going to take a lot more thought, and
we’re going to have to find some way to empirically test this. Provided it’s
something we really want an answer for.”

An idea occurred
to Dom. “So if the numbers are in control, is that maybe an explanation why I
keep finding myself looking at the world from Jenna’s eyes?”

Billy shrugged
Dom’s shoulders. “I still have no idea why that’s happening, assuming that it
really is and you haven’t imagined it.”

“I haven’t—” Dom
stopped himself before he caught the attention of everyone around them and
before he woke up Jenna. Voice quieter and more in control, he tried again. “I
haven’t imagined any of it, dammit.”

“What I don’t
understand, then, is how this can happen without me being a part of the
process, or at the very least without me seeing some telltale numbers that show
what’s happened. But there’s been nothing of the sort.”

Dom closed his
eyes. “I don’t have any answers. All I know is it’s for real.” He leaned back
in his seat, felt sleep sneaking up on him. “Don’t want to talk about it right
now,” he managed to mutter, and soon his surroundings faded away. His visions
as he drifted off alternated between Jenna naked and numbers in books, beckoning
to him, pages flipping so fast that they eventually turned into whirling
vortices of numbers like the ones that had sought them out just the other day
in southern Alberta.

The disadvantage
of having been tucked away for so many years and centuries was that he had no
idea how things in this world worked. Yes, with only a little effort and time
he could convince the numbers to show him the mechanisms involved, but that
didn’t allow for the required cultural mores that might be needed; there were
certain behaviours that numbers were likely incapable of demonstrating, were
perhaps completely unaware of. And with all of his focus on the search, he
couldn’t spend the necessary time and resources deflecting unwanted attention,
from ordinary people or from the gaze of some passing numerate.

The other
problem was that he had no idea if he was complete. The shadow he had created
was, to the best of his knowledge, the same now as it had been centuries before
when he had hidden it away, and he knew who he was and had shown that he had
all the power he remembered having, but that didn’t preclude something having
gone wrong with the transfer, with the source material, or just having faded away
over time. There was less he could do about that, though. Instead, he resolved
that once he was done he would track down all other adjunct formulae he had
placed, take them all in and create the whole from the portions.

It took some
effort to admit that help was needed, but eventually he dug down and allowed
Ruth to come back up. As he expected, she immediately tried to wrest back
control of her body and mind, but any move she attempted was easily parried,
and after a few moments of bemusedly casting aside her efforts, he finally
clamped down. Ruth was still up front with him, but only enough of her to allow
for the basic needs, including using her voice to speak for them, albeit with
his words.

“We’ll work
together now, shall we?”

She was quiet
for a moment before finally nodding her head. “All right.”

He grinned.
“Better. Stay on my good side and the rewards are many, once we’ve accomplished
our goal.”

He could sense
her confusion at this. “Your goal? I would have thought that bringing your
adjunct back was the goal. You have something else you plan to do?”

He nodded. “I
do. Two things, as a matter of fact. The first step is to retrieve an artefact
that is of special import to me, which, sensing what I do among the numbers
today, means we will soon be taking a trip. The second goal arises from the
first, and for the moment I shall leave it at that.”

“A trip,” Ruth
said. “To where?”

He rubbed Ruth’s
jaw with her hand, searching for the beard he’d kept for most of his adult
life. “Scotland, dear lady.” He smiled. “After all these centuries buried in
the deepest of slumbers, a return home is once again in the numbers for me.”

They awoke on an
announcement from the First Officer that food was about to be served. Dinner
was mediocre chicken breast with limp green beans and a hard buttered bun,
complete with plastic knife and fork, eaten in silence. And then Jenna opened
the blind so they could watch the Atlantic Ocean drift by below. Dom wanted to
reach out and stroke her hair again, or hold her hand. Once she turned to him
with a smile, but before he could take that the wrong way she reminded him
she’d never been on a plane before, and this was very exciting for her. He kept
his hands at his sides.

Finally, after
an excruciatingly long time, the announcement that they were soon to land in
Glasgow came. Trays were collected and tables and seats put upright, the
armrest between them went back down, and now Jenna did reach over and take his
hand. “First landing,” she said, looking at him for a second before turning to
watch out the window again.

The landing was
smooth, and the papers that Father Thomas had provided for them did their job
as well on this end as they had on the other; both Dom and Jenna were waved
through without any difficulty. More importantly, it meant that the
Napier-Archimedes adjunct still had no idea where they were.

They collected
their luggage and then went to rent a car. If it had been Dom’s own money, he
might have opted to hitchhike; he’d heard that things were expensive in the
U.K., but what he was paying was robbery. Or, again, would have been robbery if
it hadn’t been someone else’s money, in this case a Visa card that Father
Thomas had supplied with his papers, to make sure that the names matched. As it
was, he still decided to take the smallest vehicle, not wanting to blow his wad
all in one shot.

“You’ve driven a
standard before?” asked the girl at the desk, although it took him a second to
interpret what she was saying, her accent was so thick.

He blinked. “Um.
Yeah, I have. Not with my left hand, though. Or on the wrong side of the road.”

She smiled and
handed him the keys and his copy of the contract. “By the time you get to the
motorway you’ll be fine. Enjoy your stay.”

His first
roundabout was less than one minute after leaving the rental lot, and within
seconds he, Jenna and Billy were all yelling at each other and the suddenly
unfathomable street signs, Dom trying to navigate his way around the circle
without hitting any other vehicles, twice remembering at the last possible second
that he and every other car and truck and van out there were now driving on the
left hand side of the road.

He got out of
the roundabout, not quite sure he’d taken the right exit, and made his way to
the first pullout he could find, parked the car, put it in neutral, pulled up
the parking brake, and sat back, eyes closed. After a few seconds of silence,
he whispered, “Holy crap.”

Jenna snorted.
He opened his left eye and looked over at her. She was trying to keep from
laughing. He smiled and she completely lost it, laughing hysterically. A second
later he was laughing with her, soon hard enough that tears were coming to his
eyes.

When she was
finally able to settle down, Jenna said, “We should have had a video camera
going right then.” She giggled again. “I picture all sorts of fast, frantic
edits, sometimes the camera flipping on its side, even upside down, and the
whole time the three of us yelling at each other, nothing but babble and lots
of ‘Omigods’!”

Dom wiped away
some more tears. “It’s like an insane movie comedy.” He looked out to the road,
watched the traffic go by, looking for flow, for numbers that would be able to
help him handle this new way of driving. He imagined that if he hadn’t just
gotten off a seven-hour-plus transatlantic flight he might be more capable of
handling this, but there was no getting around the exhaustion, and they had to
get out on the road to wherever they were going, so he’d have to deal with it.

“Let me help,”
came a voice from the back seat.

“Jesus!” Dom
jumped, opened his door, tried to climb out of the car, got tangled up in his
still-buckled seatbelt, undid it and practically fell out onto the pavement. He
stood, saw that Jenna had jumped out of her side and was looking at him and at
the car with concern and fear.

Dom squinted
through the back window, but at first couldn’t make out anything other than the
luggage that they had stored there. Then, very slowly, a figure formed, dark
and indistinct. He could make out no features, but somehow Dom could tell that
it was looking at him.

“We fear for
your safety,” said the voice, somewhat muffled from inside the car and
competing against the traffic on the road at Dom’s back. “Please go to the
other side of your vehicle and we will come out and explain.”

“We?” whispered
Billy, but Dom just shut the door and walked to the passenger side of the car,
stood beside a nervous-looking Jenna.

The back door
didn’t open, but instead gave way to a thin stream of numbers that behaved like
nothing Dom had ever seen. They slid out of cracks and through the glass and
fell to the ground, piled upon themselves and took on a dark visage, a swarm of
gnats reinventing itself as a quasi-human shape. “Holy crap,” said Dom, voice
barely audible even to himself. “What the hell is this?”