The Five Fakirs of Faizabad (4 page)

“It sounds complicated,” said Cornelius. “But, yes, I think I can remember all that.”

John floated back upstairs and collected his body. Groanin was already downstairs waiting for his supper. John got up from the bed and ran downstairs which, in the old guesthouse, sounded like a small earthquake.

Mrs. Bottomley came out of her kitchen with a frying pan in her hand and stared fiercely upstairs. “Do you have to make that racket?” she demanded.

“I’m sorry,” said John.

“Boys,” said Mrs. Bottomley. “You’re all the same. Rude and noisy. A disaster area. If you’re not clattering down them stairs, you’re sprinting up them, or singing in the bath, or laughing like a drain, or slamming that front door, or shifting around in bed like a bear with insomnia.”

John apologized again, only this time more profusely.

“It’s all very well apologizing,” moaned Mrs. Bottomley, who was ill suited to working in Yorkshire’s tourist industry.

“But I’d rather not have the noise than have the apology. I wish I didn’t have to listen to your racket, that’s all.”

For a moment John considered granting Mrs. Bottom-ley’s wish and making her deaf for a day or two, or even transporting her to a desert island. But he was not a cruel boy and quickly thought better of it. Besides, a cloud of black smoke, like something from the crater of a volcano, was now billowing out of the kitchen door. Whatever was cooking on the stove was burning.

“The sausages!” screamed Mrs. Bottomley.

John ran outside before Mrs. Bottomley could blame him for that, too.

Straightaway he noticed that a mail truck had somehow managed to reverse across the flower beds in Mr. Bottomley’s front garden and, even now, in his desperate effort to escape from the scene of the accident before someone saw him, the driver was revving the engine hard — so hard that the tires were gouging huge holes in the immaculate lawn.

But this was not the only disaster that had suddenly befallen the Oasis Guesthouse. A herd of goats from a farmer’s field behind the house had managed to leap the fence and were now eating the bedsheets on Mrs. Bottomley’s laundry line. Then the television — there was only one — exploded, which caused a large picture of Winston Churchill that was hanging on a wall above the staircase to fall on top of Mrs. Bottomley’s cat and render it unconscious.

Meanwhile, the fire in the kitchen had spread to the so-called Sun Terrace, and as the mailman finally managed to
speed away from the front garden, his van clipped a telegraph pole that fell over and flattened the greenhouse where Mr. Bottomley had been growing the largest marrow in Yorkshire.

John hardly hesitated. “ABECEDARIAN!” he said loudly, for this was his focus word. And almost immediately he managed to put a stop to any more disasters at the Oasis Guesthouse. Most important of all, the fire went out.

But the real damage was already done.

For a moment John worried that his earlier irritation with Mrs. Bottomley following her comments about him being a disaster area had somehow resulted in a case of him wishing a real disaster into existence so she might appreciate the difference. But since he had felt no power go out of him he was certain that he could not be held responsible for what had happened. Groanin would try to blame him, he was already certain of that much, but that couldn’t be helped.

Worry that he had unleashed some kind of retribution on the Oasis quickly gave way to an instinctive realization that these disastrous events might just be connected with Cornelius.

John ran into the garage to find the beautifully polished motorcycle lying on the floor, with a large dent in the gas tank. He glanced around and, seeing no sign of the white ape, he shook his head and said, “Nope. Can’t see you. But knock three times if you’re ready for your three wishes.”

Three taps on the tailpipe of the motorcycle confirmed the presence of Cornelius in the garage and that he was ready.

John felt something close to his ear, and then heard a small voice he recognized as that of Cornelius, speaking to him out of thin air.

“I wish I could remember my real name,” said the voice. “I wish I knew exactly what I am; and I wish I knew where I come from and why I’m here.”

“ABECEDARIAN,” John said, again.

He felt the power go out of him a second time, and then slowly, like a light growing in brightness, Cornelius started to become visible until he seemed quite solid. But he was still totally white, so that, just as there are white leopards called snow leopards, he now looked like a species of white ape or chimpanzee that might have been called a snow chimpanzee.

“Did it work?” John asked anxiously, for he was keen to be out of the garage before someone could accuse him of knocking over the motorcycle. “Hey, Cornelius? Did it work?”

“First of all, my name is not Cornelius, it’s Zagreus, and I’m from Greece. I’m here because some bad men captured me and then brought me here. I’m not exactly sure why, but I assume it’s something to do with the fact that I’m a Jinx. Yes, it worked. Thank you.”

“You’re a what?”

“A Jinx.”

“Er, what’s a Jinx?”

“It’s like this, John,” said Zagreus. “I used to be something or someone else. I think it must have been a someone because I can still talk. Anyway, when I died I got myself
reincarnated as an ape. Only the reincarnation didn’t quite take. A Jinx is someone, like me, who doesn’t make a proper reincarnation. I’m in a sort of halfway state between my old life and my new incarnation, which is supposed to be an ape. Which is why I’m white and sometimes invisible and why I can still talk. I’m neither one thing nor the other.”

“Did you do something wrong in your previous life?” John asked Zagreus. “Is that why you’ve come back as an ape?”

“Actually I think an ape is considered pretty good,” explained Zagreus. “It’s something like a cockroach or a rat that you don’t want to be. Reincarnation doesn’t happen to everyone, of course. You have to believe in it, I think. And not everyone it happens to likes the idea of reincarnation. Some people try very hard to remember who or what they used to be and not everyone can remember. And that’s one of the reasons the reincarnation doesn’t take and how one becomes a Jinx. You see, Jinxes get very frustrated with things and cause all sorts of bad luck and accidents to happen as we try to remember who and what we used to be. My name, Zagreus, and the fact that I come from Greece is as much as I’ve been able to remember.”

“So you’re the one who’s caused all this mayhem,” said John. “Not just in this lousy guesthouse, but in this crummy town, too.”

“Yes, but I didn’t do it on purpose,” explained Zagreus. “This kind of thing just sort of happens around me. I’d like to make it stop, but I don’t know how.”

“I think you’d better speak to my uncle Nimrod,” said John. “He’s a very powerful djinn. Very powerful and very wise.”

“He sounds frightening,” said Zagreus.

“Yes, he does, only he’s not,” said John. “He’s English. But not English like they are here in Bumby. He’s clever and kind and you can understand almost everything of what he’s saying. I’m sure he’ll be able to help you.”

“That would be wonderful,” said Zagreus.

“Now if we can just think of a way of getting you back to London and my uncle’s house without causing a train crash or some other kind of disaster.” John thought for a moment. “Hmm. Let’s see now. Ah, yes, I have it. Do you know what a djinn binding is?”

“Something that holds someone under a djinn’s power?”

“That’s right. The binding I’m thinking of is called a diminuendo. It’ll make you smaller and totally immobilize you until we’re in a place of safety.”

“It won’t hurt or anything, will it?” asked Zagreus.

“No,” said John. “You’ll just feel and look like a sort of doll, or toy.”

“All right. Let’s do it. And then let’s leave. I don’t want to stay here a minute longer than I have to.”

John had never carried out a diminuendo binding on anyone before, but he’d read about how to do it in the
Shorter Baghdad Rules.
This wasn’t quite the same thing as actually doing it, but he couldn’t think of any other way to transport the Jinx safely back to London.

“What’s your favorite food?” he asked Zagreus. “Bananas, I suppose.”

Zagreus shook his head. “I can’t stand bananas,” he said. “You forget, I only look like an ape. Inside, I’m Greek.” “What sort of food do Greeks like?” “I don’t know.”

John thought of the sausages Mrs. Bottomley had been cooking. “How about sausages?” he suggested.

Zagreus nodded. “I think I like them.”

“All right.” John muttered his focus word again and produced a large plate of delicious-looking hot sausages.

Seeing it, Zagreus reached for one immediately.

“Wait,” said John. “I haven’t finished yet.”

Frowning furiously, John concentrated all of his djinn thoughts on one particular sausage. He thought about small, shrinking things mostly, and focused all of his power on the idea that whoever ate the sausage would shrink and stiffen until they were the size of a doll.

Almost as soon as John had finished thinking very hard, the garage door opened. It was Groanin and he was looking rather grumpy.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” said the butler. “I said, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Supper’s finished. It was sausages. At least it would have been, only Mrs. Bottomley burnt them. Which is a great pity as sausages are my favorite. Anyway, I came to tell you that if we want anything to eat tonight we’ll have to send out, or go somewhere else because the kitchen is out of action. And … wait
a minute.
You’ve got sausages.”
Groanin licked his lips greedily. “Well done, lad. Well done. I don’t mind if I do have one.”

He reached for the plate with his fat fingers.

“No,” said John. “You can’t. Not that one, anyway.”

“Why?” Groanin laughed. “Has it got your name on it?”

“No!” yelled John. “You mustn’t.”

But it was too late. Groanin had already taken and eaten the sausage containing the diminuendo binding.

“Delicious,” he said. “I’ll say one thing for you, lad, you know how to conjure up a good sausage.”

“You’re an idiot,” said John.

Groanin laughed. “Another? I don’t mind if I do.”

A few seconds later the butler started to shrink.

I
n London, two hundred and forty miles south of Bumby, the weather was very different. It was a warm, sunny day and the curved black snakewood door of Nimrod’s large white stucco house was creaking loudly in the heat. The hood of Nimrod’s large black Rolls-Royce, parked immediately in front of the house in Kensington Gardens, was so hot you could have fried a whole carton of eggs on it. Sunny-side up, of course.

Not that anyone in possession of a carton of eggs would have dared to try and do such a thing. Nimrod’s Rolls-Royce already enjoyed a reputation among London’s criminal classes and general riffraff as something to be left alone, equipped, as it was, with some very surprising security precautions of the kind that only a powerful djinn could have taken. Because even in London a Rolls-Royce is not a very
common car and can, upon occasion, excite a degree of envy and resentment among the more scrofulous members of the London nefarious. And while it is certain that one Rolls-Royce can make a street seem fortunate, two Rolls-Royces can make it seem downright prosperous. Which is how it might have appeared on that particular day as a second Rolls-Royce — equally large and almost identical but for the fact that this one was light blue — attempted to park next to Nimrod’s.

This Rolls was driven — none too carefully, and almost invisibly, she was so small behind the wheel — by an old lady who was about seventy years old. She was wearing a large flowery hat with a net on it and a pair of glasses that were so large and horn-rimmed she could have gone head-to-head with a decent-sized moose and probably won. She was wearing elbow-length lilac gloves, an elegant lilac-colored dress, several strings of pearls, and, when she got out of the car, she was carrying a saddle-leather briefcase. Her face wore an expression of cold command, as if she was used to being obeyed, like Ozymandias.

She paid no apparent attention to the man wearing a striped pullover who dismounted a motorcycle a short distance away — or so it seemed to the man himself, who leaned on a wall and started to read a newspaper. But the old lady was watching him carefully and no sooner had she locked the door of the blue Rolls than she had marched over to him and confronted him crossly:

“Are you following me, you wretched little man?”

“Me, lady? Whatever gives you that idea?” He grinned unpleasantly. “You’re a bit old for my taste, know what I mean?”

“And you are a bit too suspicious for mine,” said the old lady. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the police were interested in you, my man.”

Panicking a little, the man hesitated and then tried to snatch the old lady’s briefcase, only to find that it was securely handcuffed to her wrist.

The old lady did not scream, however, as might have been expected. Nor did she cry out for help or fall to the ground when her attacker tugged with all his might at the briefcase. The man now discovered to his cost that the immediate result of his offense was a surprisingly disproportionate degree of defense. For this was no ordinary old lady. She was no djinn, but she was someone who was an expert in the ancient art of
Kuttu Varisai,
which is a variety of Indian self-defense.

In a matter of seconds the old lady had tossed the man through the air as if he were a large pillow. The man hit a set of railings and lay stunned on the ground for several seconds; then he picked himself up, jumped back onto his motorcycle, and drove quickly away before the old lady could do him some more permanent damage.

There were no people around to witness the incident unless you counted Nimrod, who had watched the entire scene from his drawing room window. And he wasn’t in the least surprised at the sight of this elderly lady throwing a mugger through the air. The old lady might have looked like
someone’s aged grandmother, but he knew that she was none other than μ — a Greek letter that means “mu,” pronounced Moo — and that she was in charge of an important section in MI6, which is what Britain’s secret intelligence service is called.

Or at least it used to be.

If you ever go onto the website for MI6 (http://www.mi6.gov.uk), you will learn that the name MI6 fell into official disuse many years ago and that the proper name for the agency that secretly goes about protecting the security and well-being of Great Britain is the Secret Intelligence Service, or SIS for short.

Taking the virtual tour on the SIS website, you will discover that there are a wide range of clubs and sporting associations that exist underneath the SIS umbrella. One of these SIS associations is the King’s Gambling Board (KGB), which was set up in 1938 during the reign of King George VI, who was himself a keen gambler. The KGB trains SIS agents to become expert in all forms of gambling, especially hard-to-understand games played in French casinos where lots of money can be won or lost on the turn of a single card. This is considered essential for British spies, as making a bit of easy money on the side often prevents them from accepting outside employment with the Russian secret service.

The KGB was headed up by Moo, although for many years she had been rather better known as Lady Silvia Stone and as the headmistress of a girls’ school in India, before a chance meeting with Mr. Rakshasas, then the representative
in India of the British Security Service, had resulted in her joining MI5 and, later on, MI6.

Moo walked up the steps and, taking hold of the fist-shaped knocker, rapped loudly on the door.

After a longish interval the door was opened by Nimrod himself.

“Moo,” he exclaimed. “What a lovely surprise.” He glanced up the street. “Which is more than that poor fellow you just tossed through the air can say.”

“Thank goodness I was wearing gloves,” said Moo. “Filthy man. Let us hope the fall knocked some sense into his addled head.”

“Yes, let’s,” said Nimrod.

“He was following me for several miles,” said Moo. “Doubtless with the intention of mugging me. That’s one of the hazards of being an old woman who drives a Rolls-Royce.”

“Perhaps you should drive something else,” said Nimrod.

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. It’s such a good car. Oh, no.”

“What can I do for you?” asked Nimrod.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Nimrod. I dislike calling on people unannounced, especially when I find that they are answering their own doors. I deduce you are without your butler.”

“Clever of you,” said Nimrod.

“Elementary,” said Moo. “I do hope Mr. Groanin is not unwell.”

“Groanin is on holiday,” explained Nimrod, and showed her inside without further delay. “And I’m having to look after myself.”

“That ought not to be too difficult, given who and what you are,” observed Moo.

Moo was an old friend of Nimrod’s. She was one of the few mundanes in the world who knew that he was a djinn. He knew that Moo would have contacted him at his home only if the country — perhaps the world — had been facing some sort of crisis.

Nimrod led Moo into his drawing room and offered her a seat.

“Do you wish for tea?” he asked her.

“Yes, please,” said Moo without a thought.

“QWERTYUIOP!” said Nimrod, and a tea table with a stiff white tablecloth and a silver teapot and beautiful china and cakes and scones and cucumber sandwiches appeared, all in the blink of an eye.

“Goodness gracious,” said Moo. “How clever of you.”

Nimrod poured Moo a cup of tea. “I hope this is all right. Tea is not the same when you have to make it yourself. I’ll be glad when Groanin gets back. He is the most curmudgeonly fellow, but he can make a spectacularly good cup of tea.”

Moo sipped her tea politely, with a pinkie extended, the way she had been taught as a little girl in India.

“Delicious,” she said. “Only do warn me next time if you’re going to do anything like that again. At my age, surprises can seem a little too surprising.”

“Of course,” said Nimrod. “It was rude of me not to mention it before. And may I say, you’re looking very smart. The hat is most becoming.”

Moo smiled. “It’s my Ascot hat,” she said. “I am on my way to the races, where I have a horse running in the three thirty. It’s been my greatest wish, for over twenty years, to have a horse that wins the Ascot Gold Cup.”

“Good luck,” said Nimrod.

“That’s what I came to see you about,” said Moo. “Good luck seems to be in rather short supply at the moment.”

“Are you speaking personally, Moo, or in general?”

“In general,” said Moo. “Reports have reached my department that there seems to be rather more bad luck around than is normal.”

“I haven’t noticed anything unusual,” said Nimrod.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m certain of it.”

Moo sighed.

“Look, Nimrod, I’m sorry to press you on this, but it was my understanding that the djinn are the self-appointed guardians of luck in the universe. That there are three good tribes who try to influence luck for the good and that there are three bad ones who try to do the reverse. And that there exists a balance of power that you call the Homeostasis, wherein there is neither too much good luck nor too much bad. Also, that there is a machine, a kind of clock called the tuchemeter, that constantly indicates the state of the Homeostasis. Am I correct?”

Nimrod nodded. “You state the matter perfectly, dear lady.”

“Then might I also inquire when you last looked at this tuchemeter?”

“In point of fact, there is not one, but several. I have one here in London, and I glanced at it this morning. I have another one at my other house in Cairo. If the one here in London were ever to stop working, then I could rely upon the one in Cairo to give a true indication of the current state of luck.”

Moo took off her glasses and began to clean them with her handkerchief. “And if the one here wasn’t working, then how would you know what the one in Cairo was saying?”

“Supposing that there appeared to be an excess of bad luck around,” said Nimrod, “then my servant Creemy would raise the alarm. Also, there is a larger, more sensitive tuchemeter in Berlin, but I’m afraid security forbids me to tell you more about that.”

“I quite understand,” said Moo. “And yet, at the same time, I don’t. Understand. You say you’ve noticed nothing unusual on the tuchemeter. Perhaps. But is it possible you cannot have noticed that the newspapers are full of so much doom and gloom?”

“That’s true,” said Nimrod. “However, just because something is in the newspapers doesn’t make it true. I tend to believe what’s on the tuchemeter rather more than what I see in the newspapers or on TV.”

Moo nodded. “Very wise.”

“Equally,” added Nimrod, “just because there is an excess of doom and gloom here in Britain and America does not mean that there is doom and gloom in Patagonia or Timbuktu. The world is a large place, Moo. Luck has a way of evening itself out. One man’s cloud is another’s silver lining.”

“Might it be possible to see this tuchemeter of yours?” asked Moo.

“Of course.”

Nimrod led Moo through to the back of the house. For a moment he remembered his young nephew and why he had gone to Bumby. Was it possible that what was happening in Bumby was connected with Moo’s visit?

He opened a door and showed her into a room where there were only two objects: a large, round clocklike instrument that was hanging on the wall, and facing it, an ornate-looking chair. The tuchemeter was made of gold and was about six feet in diameter. Three words were painted in large letters on the tuchemeter’s silver face:
GOOD, BAD
, and
HOMEOSTASIS
. The single hand, shaped like a muscular human arm with a human index finger, was pointing slightly to the
BAD
side of the word
HOMEOSTASIS
.

“It’s an exact replica of the larger one in Berlin,” explained Nimrod. “That one records the official amount of luck around the globe and gives the so-called BML: Berlin Meridian Luck.”

“Fascinating,” said Moo. “How does it work?”

“It may not look like it,” said Nimrod, “but it’s actually very scientific. Every day people all over the world get up and go through their day in one of two ways: They either smile or they don’t. If they’re feeling lucky they smile, and if they’re feeling unlucky they don’t. Their smiles, or frowns create tiny changes in the earth’s atmosphere that lead to larger-scale alterations of events, for good or bad. If someone smiles it affects the trajectory of the system
one way, and if they frown it affects the system in another way. Luck isn’t quite as random as most people think.”

“How are those changes in atmosphere measured, and where?” asked Moo.

“There are several dozen locations all over the world where that happens,” said Nimrod. “Even I don’t know where they are. The measurements are taken by a special djinn binding called an animadverto, which brings the results to the tuchemeter every fifteen minutes. It’s the animadverto that decides where to go for its observations. Like a sort of telepathic opinion poll.”

“And how do you know if it’s working all right?”

Nimrod tapped the face of the tuchemeter with his fingernail, as if he had been correcting a barometer.

“Well, if this one wasn’t,” said Nimrod, “if it was giving a false reading, one of the other ones would show up the difference and —”

“Yes, I understand that,” said Moo. “I meant, suppose it was the measurements that were wrong, or the animadverto that was at fault. How would you know?”

“Quite simple,” said Nimrod. “To give a reading on this tuchemeter any animadverto has to travel through the atmosphere of this room. I should ask a mundane to simply throw a die a hundred times and see how many sixes he or she obtained. So close to the tuchemeter itself, I might expect to see any manifestation of good or bad luck — no matter how small — have an effect on the tuchemeter.”

“Do it,” said Moo.

“Dear lady, I can assure you that —”

“Please,” said Moo. “Indulge me, Nimrod.”

“Very well,” said Nimrod. He went to a special drawer under the seat of the chair and removed a cigar box containing just one die, and, handing Moo the die, he added, “I keep a die here for just this purpose, although I must confess it’s some time since I thought to measure the tuchemeter’s accuracy.”