Napier's Bones (27 page)

“Consecrated
doesn’t mean impossible, I guess,” he said, once he was far enough away to be
sure the skeleton was no longer moving.

Billy nodded, but
before he could say anything a hand had taken Dom by the elbow and pulled him
into a quiet corner. Dom spun around, hand going to the puck and ready to throw
some numbers at whatever or whoever this was. But he quickly backed down—even
though it was just a shadow flat against the wall with nobody to cast it, and
with a different shape since the last time, he knew that it was Arithmos.

“I thought you
couldn’t exist on consecrated ground,” said Billy.

“It’s painful,
almost incapacitating, and leaves me with little ability to do much besides
appear to you,” answered Arithmos. “But it’s important enough for me to be here
to put up with it.”

Dom set aside
the thought of numbers being able to feel pain and asked, “What’s happening
now?”

“Word has gotten
around,” said the numbers. “You won’t remain safe in here for too much longer.
Remember, if I can come in, so can others. The protections here can only hold
so long”

“We also won’t
be safe if we leave,” replied Dom. He looked at the numbers. “And I thought
Napier had turned you.”

The shadow on
the wall tilted its head in agreement. “Fair enough. So we have to find a safe
way to get you out of here. And it was a different set of numbers turned by
Napier, even though the ecology shares its memories.”

Dom held up the
box. “Doesn’t help that the damn Bones are still spinning.”

“Agreed. They’re
slowing down, as I’m sure you’ve seen, but they still haven’t stopped. It’s a
feedback loop that keeps them going. It is the nearest thing to a perpetual
motion machine you’ll ever see, I would imagine. Numbers all across Britain are
worked up about the pending event, and their reaction helped spin the Bones
into a frenzy.”

“‘Event’? Jesus,
what the hell sort of word is that? I don’t know what the hell will happen if
the Napier adjunct gets his hands on this box, but I’ve been universally
guaranteed that it’ll be a Bad Thing.”

“So say many of
us,” said Arithmos. “But not all; you know that. The spinning Bones at first
helped you by moving you to new safe locations as your previous setting was
compromised, but those numbers that are not on your side have managed to grab
hold of them and keep them spinning.”

“So what do we
do to get out of this?” asked Billy.

Arithmos seemed
to shrug. “Your only option may be to dump the Bones and run.”

Dom shook his
head. “Napier wouldn’t leave me alone when I didn’t have the Bones, so he sure
as hell isn’t going to just wave goodbye when I leave them behind. He doesn’t
even have to worry about me getting a head start this time, since any direction
I choose will have something standing guard.”

“So what do you
suggest?” asked Arithmos. “We’re keen to help, but the numbers that can serve
you will be limited.”

“Can you follow
me?” asked Dom. “I got a whiff of something when I came in, and I wanna check
it out.”

“Put your hand
on the wall,” said the numbers. Dom did so, and they crawled up along his arm
and in under his clothes. The numbers tickled and scratched as they settled
into place, and he winced, resisting the urge to reach under his shirt and rub
at them.

“Where to now?”
asked Billy.

“I don’t know,
exactly. But I saw a flash of something when we came in. Did you see it?”

Billy nodded. “I
thought it was just a light.”

Dom grinned.
“You were too busy worrying that we were being followed. It was numbers, and at
first I put it down to something responding to the Bones. But since we saw that
skeleton take its time even moving its toes, it had to be something else.”

Dom felt a
stirring under the collar of his shirt, and the numbers crawled up his neck and
into his ear. “There are other numbers in here,” said Arithmos, a whisper in
his ear. “But none are of any consequence. They’re old, fossils that left the
ecology and chose to stay with whatever remained of their sources.”

“What if one of
those sources was in the Abbey now?”

“That’s
nonsense, Dom,” said Billy. “Of course the sources are in the Abbey. There are
plenty of dead bodies around, so their sources have always been here.”

Dom nodded.
“Right. I knew that.” He took a step and then stopped, noticing suddenly that
the people around him had suddenly slowed down. “What the hell?”

The crowds of
tourists were still moving along, not just slowly but in slow motion, their
speed reeled back like a gunplay scene in a John Woo movie. Standing in the
middle of it all, Dom was still capable of normal speed, but for the moment he
just stood there, open-mouthed and astonished. All was quiet now as well, the
only sound Dom’s breathing. The tourists slowed even more, until they were
almost, but not quite, at a complete standstill.

Dom looked down
to the Bones for a sign of anything different, but while they had been
gradually losing their momentum since he’d first arrived in London, the
difference didn’t seem to be enough to explain this strange event. The numbers
themselves still spilled off from the Bones at their usual speed, although as
they reached out from where he stood they also slowed down, until by the time
they met up with the almost frozen people grouped around him the numbers too
had also come to a near stop.

In the distance,
in a more open part of the old church, there was movement, normal speed. Dom
watched as a number of priests or monks walked a procession towards the altar,
each carrying a candle. As each got to his destination he bowed and then disappeared,
snuffed out like the flame on his candle.

“I remember
this,” said Billy, his voice an awed whisper.

“You do?” asked
Dom, immediately followed by Billy, voice this time quite different, asking,
“What is it? Let me think for a moment.”

“Your shadow has
found himself again,” said Arithmos.

“I’ve seen this
very event before,” said Billy, back to the first voice. “My God, I remember my
name.”

“What is it?”
asked Dom.

“It’s Blake. I’m
William Blake.”

“Jesus,” said
Dom. “The poet? Even
I’ve
heard of you.”

Billy nodded his
head.

“Are you
shitting me, or are you for real?”

“He speaks the
truth, Dom,” replied Arithmos. “His memories have returned. Those numbers you
saw when you arrived were the spark to remind the Shadow of who it was. This
event we’re witnessing with the priests is an echo, something he saw here when
he was a man such as you. And now that he has returned, things must move on
again.”

With that, the
box began to shake in Dom’s hands, and with a jolt Westminster Abbey fell away
from them.

Slick with sweat
and rain and ocean spray, shivering from exhaustion and cold and yet also
fearful she was about to overheat from the strain of the descent, Jenna finally
sat down on the first stable rock she’d come across in over an hour. In front
of her stood a cat, and as she watched, the animal reached out and laid a paw
on a large rock that sat directly across from her and, like a stop-motion film
taken over eons instead of years, the rock eroded, just peeled away layer after
layer and stripped it bare to the elements of the numbers, until eventually the
only thing that remained was a small pile of stones, pebbles now, and beneath
that pile rested a weathered wooden box. And with that, the numbers were once
again gone.

Jenna brushed
aside the stones and picked up the box, looking at it closely, feeling the
grain with her fingertips, admiring the beautiful and delicate scrollwork along
the edges and the fine filigreed brass clasp that held it shut. She wanted to
open it but the fear she felt for the safety of Dom and Billy was suddenly
replaced by a deeper fear about what she was about to find. When she lifted the
lid, what would happen? Was this piece of mojo really something that she would
be able to work, as opposed to watching the numbers do their level best to keep
away from her? And if so, what did that mean for her life? After these short
few days of radical change there would likely be an even more extreme
transformation, a change she wouldn’t be able to undo.

As much as
Arithmos had warned her, she knew that no matter what was said or shown to her
she wouldn’t be ready for what might happen when she used this artefact. But
she also knew that she couldn’t let that stop her, not with Dom and Billy in
danger and not with her mother somehow a part of all of this.

She opened the
box.

Inside was a
simple coil-bound notebook, tattered at the edges and with faded printing on
the worn leather cover, barely legible but apparently not in English.
Zweiter
Band—Anmerkungen
, it read.

“What is it?”
she asked, hoping beyond hope that Arithmos would be there to answer her
question, but when she looked up the numerical being was still nowhere in
sight. She couldn’t imagine that it was affected by the presence of Napier, who
she was sure had gone off after Dom and Billy, but did wonder if perhaps it was
scared that she would now be able to do something new with the numbers,
something that it wouldn’t be able to handle.

Jenna peered
closely at the notebook, searching for any numbers that might give her a clue
as to what she would be able to do with it, but those few numbers she could see
were almost unrecognizable, and, now that she was paying attention, acting in
ways that completely flummoxed her. One moment a group of them would spew from
within the confines of the book and immediately align themselves together in
some strange fashion, and the next, those same numbers might disappear and then
reappear just at the edge of her field of view, grouped now with other odd
numbers but somehow unmistakably the same. And then that group of numbers would
form into a cloud, each individual constituent bouncing about in the numerical
equivalent of Brownian motion, but leaving bright glowing trails behind and
then, once again, disappearing from view.

Disappearing
from view but not, she found, from all of her senses. Something else about the
coil-bound volume had triggered a new ability in Jenna, and suddenly she found
herself able to keep track not just of actualities, but of probabilities. This
was nothing she’d ever heard Dom or Billy talk about, and realized with a
growing sense of wonder that her relationship to the numbers was really quite
different than what her numerate friends experienced.

Numbers that
disappeared had an infinite selection of points where they could materialize,
and in the blink of an eye Jenna knew that she was now capable of tracking and
processing an insanely large portion of this never-ending series, and also of
narrowing down the possibilities—which, with any luck, would keep her from becoming
completely overwhelmed.

Riffling through
the pages, more and more numerical possibilities leapt out at her, and very
soon Jenna realized that not only could she keep track of almost all of the
boundless possibilities, she could now control them. She turned more pages,
flipping back and forth through the notebook, and when she found her way to the
inside of the front cover she saw a name that she recognized from something
she’d once read: Heisenberg.

And with that,
Jenna suddenly knew what she would do.

Darkness again.
No weight, no feeling, nothing to sense, outside of his own feeling of being
lost.

I don’t know
how all this spinning is going to help us get away for real,
thought Dom.

There seems
to be as much working with us as against us, replied Billy. Eventually someone
or something has to be able to stop Napier and Archimedes.

Dom tried to
laugh, but of course no sound came out. Inside his head he felt a mild chuckle
instead.
Napier can get past two giants and he can turn numbers against us
that had deliberately set out to work with us. I can’t imagine anything can
stop him right now.

You still
have the Bones,
said Arithmos.
He can follow you, but so far he can’t
catch you. Besides, he currently resides years from now.

Weight and light
began to return.
Hold on a minute!
Dom tried to call out.
What do
you mean?
“What the hell do you mean by ‘years from now’?” His voice,
returned to the physical realm, echoed back sharply to his ears.

They were in a
small room, sitting on an uncomfortable wooden chair. A table sat beside the
chair, a tall unlit candle in an ornate candlestick atop the table. Across the
room, faded light blue curtains covered a window; the light behind the window
shifted back and forth, fell briefly then returned to brilliance, like clouds
were scudding across the sky at an unreal pace. Beside the window there was a
plain wooden door with an old-fashioned brass knob.

Dom stood and
walked to the window, pulled aside the curtain. “Sonofabitch!” he yelled, and stumbled
back a few feet before finding himself sitting down hard on the same chair.

Outside, peering
in through the window, was a giant eye, bigger by far than that even of the
Soutar, unblinking. It didn’t shift its position to follow Dom’s progress from standing
to chair and back to standing, this time behind the chair, but he was sure that
at least a small part of whatever possessed the eye was aware of his presence.

“I remember
this, too,” said Billy. “This is another memory from when I was still alive, in
my own body.” His voice was a mixture of thrilled and awed, and Dom could feel
it too, like the layers were more quickly being lifted away from the hiding
places of time.

The eye slowly
blinked. Massive folds of wrinkled, timeworn flesh dropped over it, followed by
a swath of grey and white hair. The eyelid and brow.