Napier's Bones (18 page)

Billy shook
Dom’s head. “I think it’s a
who
, not a
what
.” His voice was
full of awe.

The numbers
shifted, flowed together and apart, finally settled into a form that resembled
the upper third of a mannequin. And then it seemed to nod. “
Who
is
correct. And possibly in the plural sense.” It floated around them, casting
streams of numbers down to the ground, two or three flailing legs at a time
sprouting from an amorphous chest to make contact with the road and curb and
grass, then disappearing as others took their place.

“What do we call
you?” asked Jenna.

“We have no
name,” replied the thing. It had become more solid, enough so that Dom figured
if he kicked a rock it would bounce off rather than just sail through. “But to
make everything easier, call us Arithmos.”

“You’re
numbers,” said Billy.

“That we are,”
said Arithmos, lurching momentarily close to Dom in order to avoid a puddle
near the car.

“The package we
brought over,” said Dom. Now that he looked closely he could see that these
were the same as the numbers that had kept him from opening the wrapping paper.

The sound of
tires on gravel caught Dom’s attention, and he turned to see that a police car
had pulled up behind the rental. “How can I help you?” asked the officer after
he got out of the car.

Jenna smiled,
although Dom flinched as the cop walked right through the mass of numbers in
front of them, but the man didn’t notice them and the numbers just flowed
around and reconstituted themselves. “No problems, officer, thank you. We were
just a little messed up with our first time driving on the other side of the
road.”

The cop smiled
in return. “Americans, are you?”

“She is,” said
Dom. “I’m Canadian.” And then he almost winced, remembering that he right now
carried a U.S. passport.

The cop’s smile
didn’t disappear, but when he turned his attention to Dom it certainly didn’t
seem as bright. “Well, then, I’d suggest that you find a less busy road to
practise on, and when you need to pull off you do so in a safer location.”

Dom nodded. “We
will, officer. Thank you.”

The cop turned
and started back to his car, but before he had taken four steps a sudden wind
blew in, carrying with it a splash of almost horizontal rain as well as numbers
that hit the ground at the cop’s feet and then bounced into the air; they
swirled around him for several seconds, and then settled down, an overlay of
numbers on his body like he’d been dipped in honey and then rolled in an
anthill, the numbers seething and boiling and jumping but not leaving him.

Dom looked for
other numbers, something to grab a hold of to protect himself, but the only
other ones he could see were the agglomeration that called itself Arithmos.
Before he could even think of how to utilize them, though, the cop turned and
spoke again, jerkily, like a puppet.

“Napier will soon
set foot on the island,” he said, only now his voice was thick, slurred, and
almost too quiet to hear over the highway traffic. “The celebration has already
started in anticipation, and will soon be here.”

“Celebration?”
Jenna’s voice was tight and quiet. “What’s happening?”

The cop, still
covered by the sheen of numbers, stumbled back to his car, unwilling or unable
to answer. Arithmos moved to their own car, throwing up something like an arm
to beckon them. “We need to go now,” said the numbers. “If you’re found and not
ready for it here, in Napier’s homeland, you won’t get away again.”

Dom
didn’t need to be told twice. He ran around and climbed in at the same time
Jenna got in the other side. Arithmos was already in the back seat, and with a
quick glance back at the cop—who was now leaning against the hood of his car,
gazing blankly at his windshield—Dom pulled back onto the road with only a
minimal shudder and grinding of gears. “Where to?”

“Left,” said
Arithmos after a pause. “We go north, out of the city.”

“And what was
that about a celebration?” asked Billy.

“Concentrate on
getting out of the city, first,” answered the numbers. “We’re safe for now.”

As much as that
statement lacked any ability to reassure Dom, he soon fell into the rhythm of
driving, something that was easier to do with Arithmos riding shotgun. It was
morning rush hour in Glasgow, so there was a lot of stopping and brief starting
again, several lanes of vehicles kicking out exhaust, other drivers showing
looks of moderate frustration, the sort of attitude taken with traffic they
might live with every day, that they disliked but would have become accustomed
to. Twice they passed accidents on the side of the road, once just a fender
bender, the second time serious enough to require an ambulance, one of three
emergency vehicles that had squeezed past them along the shoulder a half hour
or so before.

But then,
finally, they were free of the city, coasting north on a highway surrounded by
trees. There were still lots of automobiles, but it was no longer bumper to
bumper, and Dom’s hand, sore from gripping the stick shift, could finally
relax, as could his shoulder; he hadn’t realized how tense he’d been while he’d
been tied up back in Glasgow. The surrounding countryside wouldn’t have looked
out of place in British Columbia or Washington: lots of conifers and, now that
the traffic was thinning out, the sky had clouded over and rain was beginning
to fall. Dom turned on the wipers.

“Wherever we’re
going, will we make it there today?” asked Billy.

Dom looked at
the number creature in his rearview mirror, knew that its attention was focused
on him even though he could see no eyes. “We could, if we wanted to. And we
still might. But the lot of you will be slapped around by jet lag pretty soon,
I think. We have one stop to make first, and then when we get to Oban, if we’re
safe to stop there, we will, and give you a chance to sleep on a real bed.”

“How long a
drive do we have?”

“Less than two
hours.” Jenna turned on the radio and fiddled with the tuning until she found a
pop station. Madonna, almost as far from numerate as a singer could get, was
playing, and when she was done a thickly accented Scottish announcer came on
and babbled incomprehensibly—at least to Dom’s ear—for several seconds before turning
them over to commercials for local businesses, unfamiliar names all. The
country had been looking so familiar, and already Dom was getting used to
seeing other cars driving with him on the left-hand side of the road, and then
hearing Madonna had just added to the sensation of nothing having changed, but
to hear the DJ and the ads, to look at the mass of numbers huddled in the back
seat, he felt an even stronger sense of disconnect than he had when he’d woken
up in Utah, riding a bus he’d been brought to by a previously unknown adjunct.

The rain was
suddenly heavier now, a dense sheet of wet that wasn’t so much falling as it
was skidding from somewhere over the horizon, scribing a line that was almost
exactly parallel with the ground. Alongside the road, trees whipped and flapped
in the furious wind, and Dom needed two hands to keep the car from bucking its
way over to the ditch or into the path of another vehicle. He flipped the
wipers to high speed, but they barely made a dent in the rippling waves that
smeared across the windshield. Outside, other cars on his side of the road were
marked only by wavering orange or red dots that seemed to be floating freely in
a newly formed ocean.

“Jesus,” said
Dom. “This is fucking ridiculous. The wipers aren’t doing jack shit.” Keeping
one hand tight on the wheel, he leaned forward to smear some numbers across the
inside of the windshield, intending them to help keep the rain off, keep his
vision clear.

Before he could
call up even one number, though, there was a shimmer of darkness in the back
and then Arithmos rose up on the armrest beside him, shouting “No!” Its voice
now was deep and grating, rock being dragged across iron, and loud enough to
send stabbing pains shooting through Dom’s ears. He winced, managed to keep the
one hand on the wheel while the other pulled back to cover one ear.

The numbers
looked like a shadow cocking its head. “He’s here.”

Dom blinked.
“Oh, shit. Here? Now?”

Arithmos shook
its head. “No, he hasn’t found us yet. But this is the celebration you had
asked about. This weather we’re seeing is a welcome for Napier. Certain
elements of the numerate ecology of Scotland are, to put it bluntly, allies of
John Napier. But right now, in this car, you’re safe from detection, as long as
you don’t perform any numeracy on or in the car.”

Dom glanced
over, saw that Jenna was watching the road ahead of them, a bleak look on her
face. “How do we stand a chance if even the weather is on his side—
her
side?” she asked. Outside, he saw that vicious-looking numbers now slapped up
against the car, blown there by the wind or caught as they sped along the
highway, but any that touched the windshield or the side windows slid right
off, unable to find purchase. Arithmos seemed to be right about them staying
safe.

“For every
friend, Napier had an enemy,” said the numbers. “For all his power some four
hundred years ago, there was much that John Napier couldn’t do, because of all
the forces that were aligned against him.”

“So what’s
different now?” asked Dom.

Arithmos
disappeared, rose up again in the back seat. “Many of those enemies are no
longer alive, and the vast majority of those don’t exist even as adjuncts. The
numbers that took his side, meanwhile, have had all the ensuing centuries to
build and multiply, to push aside the numbers that had fought his existence.”
Their strange passenger leaned back and seemed to look out the window.

“The numbers
really are intelligent,” whispered Billy.

The
sound that came from Arithmos was hoarse and scratchy; Dom chose to interpret
it as a chuckle. “Facts sometimes take a long time to sink in with humans.”

“Wait a minute,”
said Jenna. “Did you have anything to do with the help we got when we were in
the States?”

“If by ‘you’ you
mean numbers, then the answer is yes,” replied Arithmos. “When it became
apparent you would need passports to take you across the border, we created
them.”

“How did you
know we would end up in Edmonton, where the package was?”

“We didn’t. The
package followed you.”

Dom shook his
head. “Jesus. If I’m that easy to track, no wonder Napier hasn’t had any
trouble keeping on my tail.”

“That’s not
strictly the case, Dom,” said Arithmos. “Any time you use numbers you’re
involving us. We’re with you every step of the way. Therefore, it’s no problem
to move things into place so that you find them.” The car was buffeted by one
more blast of wind and then things calmed down. “Ah,” said the numbers. “It’s
breaking up. The cheering is over, and now the hunt truly begins anew.”

Sure enough, the
rain was less heavy, and off towards the horizon Dom could see that blue sky
was peeking through in several places. The numbers that had been slapping up
against the invisible shield that surrounded the car had all but disappeared, a
few straggling formulae flapping like tattered flags from the antenna and the
windshield wipers, but that was it, and less than a minute after the change in
weather they had snapped loose and been flung away into the distance.

The first
numbers from his homeland found their way to him two hours out. Many miles
above the Atlantic, flying at immense speed, Napier had spent the first hour or
two of this new style of voyage shut away from the outside, allowing the woman
to put on the front, giving her enough autonomy to keep her body and his mind
from dissolving into a weeping, helpless ball at the very thought of where he
was and what he was doing.

But eventually
he was able to shake off the paralyzing fear. Before climbing into the
airplane, Ruth, his host, had reassured him that this mode of travel was very
common these days, and much safer statistically than many other modes. Talk of
statistics had intrigued him, of course, and a thorough examination of the
numbers involved in the operation of this airplane had offered some
reassurance, but all of that had lasted only as long as they had been on the
ground. As soon as the thunder had started and Ruth’s body had been shoved back
in their seat Napier had cut himself off and hid, too terrified to experience
what was happening, too terrified to admit it out loud, even though both his
hostess and the other shadow he carried with him would have no doubt.

But now,
smoothly sailing through the upper reaches of the atmosphere, surely higher
than the Greeks had ever imagined Icarus to have flown (True, came the thought
from the other shadow, himself also terrified at the thought of where they were
and the speed at which they travelled), Napier had come out of the shell where
he had hid himself, and quietly had begun to seek out any numbers he might
recognize. At first there was nothing, and he knew he shouldn’t be surprised.
This high up must be something of a desert for the numbers, he guessed, with
only cast-offs from these flights through the sky and the odd lost number
unable to find its way home being the only fragments of a population.

But eventually,
a small set of integers had slapped against the window where Napier sat and had
hung on, parts of it flapping uncontrollably in the freezing hurricane from
which he was separated by only a thin layer of metal and glass. He put his hand
against the window and, after a moment or two in which the numbers seemed
unsure about what to do, they jumped the barrier and became a part of him.

Almost
instantaneously they jumped from him again and raced up and down the aisle, two
times each from back to front, and then disappeared from his view, storming
back towards Scotland at a pace that made the airplane seem no faster and no
more powerful than a simple horse and carriage. A piece of Napier went with
those numbers, and very shortly he and they had made contact with other
numbers, and almost before he knew it there was a firestorm of activity and
celebration in the ecology. Everywhere around him in and outside the airplane
there were suddenly numbers of all types, sounding the trumpets as it were,
almost gleeful that he, John Napier of Merchistoun and rightful heir to all
that the numbers could give him, was soon to be back on his rightful soil.