Napier's Bones

by Derryl Murphy

  She nodded.

  “Anyhow, it took two days, but once I managed to get out of the city I drove north, and while on the road I spotted numbers on the horizon. Not really strong, but weird enough to get my attention. I followed them and they led me to Randall’s place. And then they faded away. I think that the events around then had flipped a switch somewhere in Randall’s brain; he was panicked enough about the terrorist attacks and about his own life right then that he subconsciously cast out numbers as a call for help, and I happened to be the numerate in the right place and the right time, probably the only one not paying attention to the attacks.”

  Dom started up the car and pulled out. “Need to get to the bank,” he explained, before continuing. “Randall lived on the second floor, and the doors just popped open for me as I approached, both the front entrance and then the one to his apartment. I didn’t have to do anything with my own numbers.” He signalled left and, instead of racing to beat a light just turning yellow, waved his fingers and mumbled a string of numbers instead. The light reverted to green. “When I walked into his apartment, Randall had no idea who the hell I was, and I didn’t know squat about him, either. But neither one of us was terribly surprised, either.”

  “He was expecting you,” said Jenna.

  “He was expecting someone,” replied Billy. “Dom just happened to be that someone.”

  Dom nodded his head. “Right. He was lying there in bed, enormous, like a fucking hippo, covered with a sheet. His TV was blaring away, a cable news channel, talking heads alternating with pictures of the towers collapsing over and over and over again, and beside him, on a small wooden chair, was a full and rather smelly bedpan.”

  “Ew.” Jenna wrinkled her nose. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Tell me about it.” Dom pulled out into oncoming traffic to pass an especially slow driver, dipped back into his lane just in time to avoid a dump truck that was about to swerve out of the way. “It’s funny,” continued Dom, “but I didn’t even pay attention to those things. Didn’t even know they were there until after I’d left. Then the pictures of everything in the apartment dropped into my brain like a slide popping into a projector and shining on the screen.”

  “Why not?” asked Billy.

  “Because when I walked into that apartment I almost collapsed. My knees just about buckled, I could barely lift my feet to walk or my hands to lift my suddenly weighty hair out of my eyes. Hell, I could barely catch a breath. Turns out old Randall’s weight thing was being passed on to everything in his localized area. He couldn’t control his own numbers, but they sure could control him, and his own little world. Any visitors to his apartment felt the sudden weight gain, but also all of his crap. It was all fucking heavy, from the bedpan that could probably only be lifted with a forklift—”

  “To the stamps sitting in a drawer somewhere,” finished Jenna.

  “Well, not in a drawer. Sitting on the kitchen table. But yeah, that’s right. Heavy as shit. And probably worse at that time because he was so freaked out.”

  “So you stole them? Is this how you get all of your mojo?”

  Dom rolled his eyes. “Let me finish the story, Jenna. Think of this as one of your lessons.”

  She nodded, lips pursed.

  “So Randall looked me in the eye, the end of the fucking world playing and replaying on his TV, and he asks me, ‘Am I going to be all right?’ His voice was high and whiny like a scared little kid. I pause for a second, then realize what it is he’s asking, and I nod and say, ‘Yeah, you’re going to be fine.’ He stares at me for a couple of seconds more, looks back to the news, and then this huge blast of sequences comes storming out of his chest and hits me full on, an immense gigantic pressure wave that combines with the extra weight in the room to finally knock me to the floor, like I imagine it feels being caught in the blowback of some huge explosion. I’m lying there gasping for breath, side of my face pressed into the floor, and it’s all I can do to pull myself back up onto my knees.”

  “What happened?” asked Jenna.

  “Heart attack. He got his reassurance and then he died. All of the numbers he’d accumulated in his short and bizarre life were rushing out of his body, out of pores and orifices and combining over the bed in this huge vortex, some of them bleeding off and adding even more weight to everything in the apartment—me included—and the rest pounding through the ceiling above and snaking off into the atmosphere, looking to fall I don’t know where. I staggered over to the door, still on my knees, got the door open and rolled out into the hallway, where my weight returned to normal. Once out there that picture of the apartment wormed its way into my memory, and I remembered seeing the stamps sitting on the table; since they had numbers right on them they were the only things in there I could immediately picture how to use, so I decided to grab them. I worked up some numbers that kept the weight from affecting me too much and crawled back in, grabbed them, then left the building and called an ambulance from a phone down the street. Then I went and got a burger and sat in the car and watched the cops and firefighters and paramedics do their little dance, trying to get big Randall’s body out of his apartment. It was probably tougher since I’m betting the events from the other day had taken a lot of them down to New York City. Later on I put the stamps on envelopes, sealing in some numbers I’d woven into the thread of the envelopes so that not only would they sink to the bottom of the mailboxes and stay there, they’d be invisible to anyone who wasn’t looking for them. Instant emergency ID in eighty-three cities across the continent.”

  “Then why even bother with stamps?” asked Jenna. “If you can make stuff go invisible with a few simple numbers, then why not just do it all without having to rob a dead fat guy of eighty-three cents worth of stamps? Even more curious, why not just create these driver’s licenses and passports as you need them?”

  “I’ll answer that if I might,” replied Billy. Dom nodded his head. “There is an interconnectedness to the numerate world, Jenna, and while Dom likely could do what you asked, it would shine like a spotlight at a Hollywood movie premiere; any envelopes he left behind with nothing but his own numbers would be a beacon that would attract every other numerate from hundreds of miles around. Then they get their hands on stuff that he’s created and it’s suddenly powerful mojo for them, sometimes mojo that can be used against him. Also, using your own numbers takes a lot out of you. Anytime you can find numbers that have been created by someone else, on purpose or, more often, via happenstance, you use them. The personal cost is almost nil, and if the benefits aren’t immediate, I think we’ve seen today that there might come a time when they are felt.”

  “It’s sorta the same reason I don’t just go to Vegas and try to make an easy buck,” continued Dom. “The place is crawling with numbers, but it’s also crawling with numerates who don’t know any better, and the casinos wised up to that long ago and hired pretty strong numerates of their own. If I went there wanting to use any of those numbers, it would be way more effort than it was worth, with every two-bit hick who thinks he has a lick of number sense crawling around looking for the angles and guys I don’t want to tangle with watching for the slightest sign that I’m using the numbers to my advantage. And, I’ve heard rumours they don’t just escort numerates to the edge of town, but that sometimes numerates are known to disappear.”

  “They kill them?”

  Dom tilted his head as he rounded another corner. “Dunno. With that much money involved, maybe so. All I know is, I’m not interested in finding out.”

  7

  Traffic was still light, and they arrived fifteen minutes before the bank was to open. Dom drove around the block twice, looking for signs and numbers, anything to tell him that they were being watched or hunted. Nothing showed itself, though, so he parked on the street and they got out. He gave the car’s license plates another swipe with his hand, smearing the numbers enough to keep any long-distance snooping from getting a fix on them, in case the bank was now being watched.
“Why didn’t you do that at the Denny’s?” asked Jenna.

  “Because I wouldn’t have stored any mojo there,” said Dom. “If this gal’s still looking for us, and it seems pretty obvious she is, it’s gotta be taking a lot out of her to do it from such a distance and to so many places. But she’ll naturally think that banks are smart places to be looking, so even if my numbers work better here than they did at the library, I’m still not going to take chances right now.”

  They sat on the hood of the car and watched the workers in the bank go about their business behind locked doors, counting down the minutes until opening time. “So why do you think the numbers will work better here than they did at the library?”

  “I can answer that one,” said Billy. “Or rather, I think I can make a good guess.”

  “Go ahead,” replied Dom.

  “The human factor,” said the shadow. “Here at the bank, all anyone knows is that Dom has a box, likely not under his own name. At the university, I gathered that the librarian he was dealing with not only knew who he was, but had dealt with him in the past. Correct?”

  Dom nodded his head. “Sy’s an old friend of mine. Absolutely no numerate abilities at all, which is the best type of friend. You know they’re never gonna try to step on you on the way to get something, and you’re never second-guessing yourself, wondering when you’re gonna try the same on them. He’d sent me a message a couple of months ago telling me that the library had acquired some new manuscripts in special collections, and I was hopeful they would have something for me to use. No good if I’m expected, though. They think I’m a book thief.”

  “Another good lesson to learn,” said Billy. “A librarian, especially one who works in special collections in a reputable university, can be an excellent friend to have.”

  “Oh, yeah,” agreed Dom. “There’s a lot of mojo out there we may never see, because it’s stored away in private collections, owned by rich fucks who have no idea what it is they’re sitting on. But every once in awhile something hot and new shows up, and if you have the right connections, you can often get the jump on whatever competition is floating around in the neighbourhood.”

  “How much competition is there?” asked Jenna.

  Dom shrugged. “Don’t know. I’ve only run into about twenty people in the time I’ve been numerate, and not all of them were in person. Some online, some with just the scent of their numbers showing that they’d been in a place a few days before me, and of course the person who’s making this trip so necessary.” He pushed himself off the hood of the car and walked to the bank doors, which were just being opened by an older woman in a dark blue business suit. “Your name is Lisbeth while we’re here,” he said over his shoulder to Jenna, then he turned to greet the woman at the door. “Sandra, good to see you again.”

  The woman blinked, obviously trying to remember his face, then smiled. “Mr. Wood. What a pleasant surprise! Back from your business trip so soon?” Her voice sounded of a lifetime of cigarettes, her face was weathered and filled with deep lines, and her teeth when she smiled flashed yellow and brown. Dom had never thought about it before, having always been in Bozeman alone, but both people he knew well here—Sy and Sandra—were heavy smokers. He wondered if there was a numerical reason for it.

  Dom shook the hand she offered, nodding his head. “Yup. And off on another one right away. Sandra, this is my . . . trainee, Lisbeth.”

  For a second Jenna stood there, staring blankly at the two of them, but she quickly recovered and also shook the banker’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Why don’t you have a seat, Lisbeth. This shouldn’t take too long.” He turned back to the banker. “Sandra, I need to get into my safe deposit box.” He pulled out his wallet and handed her his license as they walked to the back of the bank. “Proof that I’m still me,” he said, grinning.

  They exchanged a little more small talk on the way to the back room, and then Sandra excused herself and went to get the box. After she delivered it to Dom she thanked him for remaining such a good customer and then left the room. Dom fished the key out of his pocket.

  “Quite chatty,” said Billy, keeping his voice low.

  “Small town born and raised,” replied Dom. “It’s why I chose this branch; she keeps on top of things for her customers, and watches out for them as well.”

  As he inserted the key into the box’s lock and twisted it there was a hollow whooshing sound and a flash of light from inside the box. “Shit shit shit shit shit!” said Dom, lifting the lid and waving at the smoke that was rising up from inside.

  “What happened?” asked Billy. “Did they get us again?”

  Dom stood on the chair and wove some numbers around the smoke alarm so that it wouldn’t go off, then pulled some more numbers and formulae into a ball and raced it around the room, chasing the remaining fragments of smoke and scooping them up like a Pac-Man trying to get a cheap high. That done, he compressed the ball into a hard little marble and tossed it to the corner, where it landed with a soft click against the baseboard; it was temporary, would probably last only ten minutes at best before it evaporated and released the smoke again, but it would have to do. And there was no way he wanted to carry anything on his person that could track back to the numbers being used by their pursuer. “Last thing I want is for the alarm to go off and have to stick around and explain why to the fire department and the cops, especially if word about me is starting to spread.” He turned his attention back to the box, reached inside but quickly pulled his hand out again. “Guess I’ll give it a minute to cool down.”

  “This was Them again,” said Billy, and this time Dom could both feel and hear the capitalization. “I can smell the numbers, more acrid than the smoke.”

  “Yeah, but this time they didn’t do the damage they were hoping to,” replied Dom, deciding that even though they didn’t know any names, he wasn’t going to give them the benefit of a special capital letter.

  He reached inside and picked up the wire, blowing fast and loud puffs of air on it in a futile attempt to keep it from burning his fingertips. Then he dropped it in his palm and flipped it back and forth from one hand to the next, trying to cool it without scorching his skin. Numbers drifted up from it, red hot and angry at first, but quickly cooling as they made their way to the ceiling. “Seems this time didn’t work out for the bitch,” said Dom. “I think this baby still has all of its mojo. Didn’t hurt that it had already been in a fire.” Finally it was cool enough, and he dropped it back on the table and with a couple of hard twists tore it in half. One half went into his pocket, while the other went on his left wrist, wrapped into a makeshift bracelet. With one frayed end he poked at his skin and drew blood, felt the rush of protection as the numbers entered his body. “Yow. Is that ever a relief.”

  “You sound like a junkie. May I ask what it is?” inquired Billy. Dom shut and locked the box again. “Wait until we’re in the car and Jenna has the other half of this.” He patted his pocket. “She may as well hear it, too.”

  Billy nodded, and then Dom stood up and walked to the door. “Thank you, Sandra,” he said as he walked to where Jenna was sitting. “I’ll see you next time.” The banker stood and waved and then headed for the room where the safe deposit box still sat, while Jenna stood and followed Dom out the door. “We’ll get in the car and drive a little bit first,” he said, throwing her the keys. “Any direction, as long as we get away before she starts to make a fuss about the smell, or the smoke that’s soon gonna follow.”

  “Smoke?” Jenna climbed in and started the car, pulled out in a pause in the traffic.

  “Our friend, still trying to make life difficult for me,” said Dom. “Give me your hand.” One hand still on the wheel, Jenna reached her right arm across. Dom took the second piece of wire from his pocket, wrapped it around her wrist, then poked her with its end. “Ow!” A tiny droplet of blood rose up, dark red bead intermingling with the wire. “That smarts,” said Jenna, briefly looking down before returnin
g her eyes to the road. “Oh! I can see the numbers that surround it. But why are they jumping away from me?”

  “Son of a bitch! That’s not supposed to happen.” Dom reached over and stroked the wire, whispered to the numbers and convinced them to return. After a pause, they fell back to Jenna’s arm, surrounded the wire and burrowed in under her skin, pushing their way—reluctantly, it looked to Dom—into the tiny wound, little bubbles of black and grey and orange moving aside minute pieces of skin. As they did so, he experienced another momentary flash—as if he was looking at the world, at the road they were driving on and down to the numbers burrowing into her skin—through Jenna’s eyes. And then, just as suddenly, Dom was back in his own body. He shook his head to clear it, worried but not wanting Jenna to see it. Voice deliberately calm, he said, “That’s better. It’s okay. Just watch the road and let it happen.”

  “What is it?” Jenna’s voice rose in panic, and Dom had to grab the wheel and steer the car over to the side of the road, where she at least had the presence of mind to put on the brakes.

  Dom shifted the car into Park and shut it off, taking the keys out. “Sorry,” he said, “I should’ve thought about this before I let you drive.”

  Now the numbers had entered Jenna’s bloodstream, were flowing throughout her body, following the rhythm of her heart. It was like watching an X-ray movie of the human circulatory system, but with numbers instead of blood, and Dom knew Jenna could see it as well. And already they were finding their way into her nervous system, where they would do the most good. “It’s mojo,” he said. “Should go a long way to protecting us from disaster until we can get our hands on more.”

  “Where did it come from?” asked Billy.

  “Well, until I tore it in half so that Jenna could use it as well, it was a necklace I’d made out of wires salvaged from Apollo 13. That’s why the numbers have to find their way inside. The wires were the nervous system of the spacecraft, and connected to the craft’s circulatory system, so this is mojo that works best from the inside-out.”