Napier's Bones

by Derryl Murphy

  Dom didn’t have time to answer. A sharp pain exploded in his skull, and everything was black.

  Part two

  . . . unskilfull and slothfull men have always purued [Mathematickes] with mot cruell hatred . . . you hall (even in this regard onely) encourage me that am now almot pent with icknee, hortly to attempt other mattters, perhaps greater than thee, and more worthy o great a Prince.

  —John Napier, 1616.

  14

  He awoke to the smell of tobacco, the somewhat less pungent aroma of Canadian cigarettes. “Dom?” It took a few seconds of painful searching to recognize the voice as Jenna’s. He managed to squint his eyes open, saw her looking down at him, concern written on her face.

  “What the fuck happened?” His voice was a croak, harsh and distant.

  “My apologies, Dom,” came another voice. “My helpers got a little carried away bringing you to meet with me.”

  “Take this,” said Jenna, holding out a plastic cup of water and two Tylenols.

  Dom grabbed and swallowed the pills and tossed back the water. Then he turned to see who had spoken.

  The man was small, balding, with black-rimmed glasses and a greying moustache and goatee. He wore a brown leather jacket zipped up high to his throat, and faded jeans. A pack of Du Maurier cigarettes sat on the small wooden table beside him, as well as the mysterious package and Dom’s puck and ball.

  “Who the hell is this? Someone else after us that you didn’t tell me about?” asked Dom.

  Billy shook his head, which sent a sharp pain radiating out in all directions from the base of his skull. “No. Never seen him before,” he croaked, sounding as bad as Dom felt, which was of course no surprise.

  “You’re talking about your adversary,” said the little man, stubbing out his smoke and smiling. “I’m pleased to be able to tell you that I am not a confederate of that person. Big lump on the back of your head to the contrary, Dom, I’m actually a friend.”

  “Some way of showing it.”

  The man pursed his lips. “As I noted, my helpers got a bit carried away, but they were only trying to be careful. You were walking out of that bank with a rather big prize for the wrong sort of person, and we wanted to make sure you were chosen for the right reasons. And they didn’t want you hauling off and throwing numbers at them, since neither one is numerate.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask?”

  Jenna sat down on the cot beside Dom and took his hand. “Because we’re being chased, Dom, and because even if we weren’t, you don’t much trust other people.” She looked over at the man. “Father Thomas has explained quite a bit to me while you were unconscious.”

  “Father Thomas? You a priest?”

  “I was.” He lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply and then blew several smoke rings. “Had a little trouble and ended up being defrocked. But the Church keeps me around, on call you might say, in case my special skills are needed.”

  “You’re numerate.”

  Father Thomas nodded. “And still a believer, even after all the trouble. And so I get to have you here for a little chat.”

  “Chat?” Dom winced. The pain wasn’t going away, which made him worry he’d had a concussion.

  Numbers flew from Father Thomas and swarmed around Dom’s head, piling into him without warning. Dom tried to react, but the sudden sense of well-being he felt held him back.

  “That’s right,” said the former priest. “Stay still. It looks like my boys smacked you harder than I’d first thought.”

  “What are you doing?” asked Dom, feeling a goofy smile creep up on his face. “Drugging me?”

  “Of course not. You don’t learn about healing the soul without learning something about healing the body as well,” replied Father Thomas. “Since I can’t have you wandering around in a haze from a possible concussion, I’m just putting your head right again.”

  The numbers dissipated, too quickly for Dom to get a hold of what forms and sequences they had taken. He rubbed the back of his head, felt the still tender lump there, but was certainly much better. “Quite the trick. Thanks.”

  “Just call it a laying of the hands. Well, except without the hands,” said the former priest, taking another puff of his cigarette. He chuckled at his own joke.

  “Now that we’re all friends, perhaps you can say why you dragged us here in such an undignified fashion,” said Billy, sounding a bit put out.

  Father Thomas smiled and stood, walked over to Dom and knelt down in front of him. “Ah, the adjunct,” he said, taking another drag of his cigarette. “What’s your name?”

  Billy grimaced. “Billy.”

  “Billy. Billy what?”

  Dom’s shoulders shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

  The former priest stood again and paced around the room, stubbing out his smoke before sitting back down and facing them. “I thought as much.” He leaned forward and peered at Dom. “The shadow is a little confused; I’d guess that some of your memory fractioned away at one time, Billy.”

  Father Thomas finished his latest smoke, stubbed it out in an overflowing ashtray on the table, then grinned and clapped his hands together once. “Well. Now that we all know each other, let’s get down to work. What do you say?”

  Dom felt at the receding lump on the back of his head. “What sort of work?”

  “Let’s start with who’s chasing you,” said Father Thomas. “Been causing you trouble, I imagine.”

  “How the hell do you know all this?”

  He grinned again. The smile was beginning to make Dom feel like he was in the sights of a predator. “There isn’t much I don’t know,” he replied, “especially when it comes to the two special adjuncts that are involved with the other side of this.”

  “You used a plural there,” said Billy. “This woman is carrying more than one shadow?”

  “Two. The two most famous that are out there, I suspect.”

  “Jesus.” Dom blinked his eyes in shock. “Napier and Archimedes? Together? For real?”

  “Together for real.” Father Thomas lit yet another cigarette, took a deep drag and then coughed violently for a few seconds. He waved the cigarette at them. “Penitence,” he said. “Smoke myself to death to make up for everything I’ve done. Or haven’t done.” He half smiled now, but Dom could see the haunted look in his eyes. “Can’t really stand cigarettes, but suicide is not an option for a Catholic, even an excommunicated one. Luckily, the amount I smoke really cuts down on my appetite, which helps since I spend so much on these cancer sticks.” He took another puff.

  Appalled though he was, Dom shook the images of no longer innocent children that sprang unwanted to his mind and pushed forward with the conversation he imagined they were supposed to be having. “You said that Napier and Archimedes were adjuncts with this woman. How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I had them taken away for safekeeping in the first place. Rather, it wasn’t me, but it was someone I thought I trusted.” He paused for another deep drag. “You’ll understand me when I tell you that I couldn’t place the artefact there myself.”

  Dom nodded, but Jenna shook her head. “I don’t. Why couldn’t you? You told me something about Napier before, but I still don’t think I understand.”

  “You’re still new at this, aren’t you?” He grinned again, and this time Dom saw her shudder, but she nodded her head. “John Napier was probably the most powerful numerate who ever lived, and during his time many also considered him to be involved in black magic. He was a Scottish laird, a mathematician, an inventor, and more. The reason he and Archimedes are so closely connected is that many of his inventions originally came from the mind of Archimedes, and the fact that their shadows are together tells us that he lifted them directly from Archimedes’ mind. He’s also the man who invented logarithms, which possibly you’ll remember back from your days in school.” He stubbed out his latest cigarette and lit up another; Dom had never seen anyone smoke so much. “The man created more mojo than anyone
else, ever, items that are still being discovered today, and he probably managed to place his shadow in, at the very least, a dozen artefacts.”

  “Most of which have vanished into myth,” said Billy.

  Father Thomas shook his head. “Most of which are in a safe facility on the other side of the Atlantic. But this one made it across the ocean, chasing after a very special artefact, and no matter what we tried, we couldn’t get it back across the ocean, nor could we get the other artefact across.”

  “So why in the desert?”

  “I wish I knew,” he replied. He wasn’t smiling now. “The artefact couldn’t be destroyed, we knew that much, but the person I sent out to do the job was supposed to take it to a place where it would not be found.” He looked at Jenna, shook his head again, then carried on. “Whatever happened, the artefact wasn’t about to sit around quietly. It was able to send out discreet signals that Dom picked up.”

  “Three people,” said Dom. “I picked up Billy as backlash from a duel between his original host and the new host for Napier and Archimedes.”

  Father Thomas raised his eyebrows. “Really. Well, that might explain the damage that resulted in the lost memory.”

  Billy shook Dom’s head. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t have that memory when I was with my last host.”

  “And yet if you did, perhaps you wouldn’t remember. Correct?”

  Reluctantly, Billy nodded. Dom could tell that the shadow didn’t like the idea that maybe he had only just lost who he was in the past few days.

  “But the signal still only went to two, not three. The numerate who took the artefact to the desert for me disappeared for a long time, fell right off my radar, and when she came back she had gone to the desert to retrieve the artefact.”

  Jenna fidgeted in her chair, looking impatient. “You were going to tell me why you couldn’t take the artefact yourself.”

  Father Thomas raised his eyebrows. “Relax, young lady. As long as you’re with me, the Napier adjunct is not going to track you down.” He smiled one more time, then said, “Okay. I couldn’t get involved because I’m Catholic.”

  Jenna leaned back in her chair, looking sceptical now. “Is this a moral thing? Because I have an idea as to why you were defrocked, and I have to say that besides creeping me out, it seems to me that morals or spiritual beliefs are not anything you should be able to fall back on as an excuse right now.”

  Father Thomas snorted with laughter, a laugh that quickly descended into more hacking and coughing. When he finally got it under control he had tears in his eyes, which he swiped away with a sleeve. “Alas, dear Jenna, it isn’t any moral stance, which as you so aptly note, I am truly unqualified to take.” He inhaled, held the smoke for a few seconds before releasing it as more rings. “No, it is well and truly just because I am a Catholic. The same would hold true for any person who is baptized into the Holy Roman Church, whether or not they still officially belong.”

  “To say that John Napier was rabidly anti-papist would be something of an understatement,” said Billy.

  “Indeed. His virulent hatred of everything Roman imbued everything he created, most especially those items of numerate nature. If I so much as touched an item of his design, it would, at the very least, severely physically injure me.”

  “At the least?” asked Jenna.

  He nodded. “More than likely, though, it would do damage that would cut right to my very soul. And if I actually tried to use the artefact and its numerate latency, then I suspect that death would be quick.”

  A thought occurred to Dom, and he groaned inwardly at the idea that it hadn’t come to mind before. “We’re not here just because we’re being chased, are we?”

  Father Thomas didn’t smile again. Instead, the look on his face was a sober one. He picked up the box in its paper wrapper and handed it over to Dom. “This item found you,” he said. “I’d like to say it was me, but it wasn’t. It was the numbers on the wrapping paper, which then called me.”

  Dom turned the box around in his hands, looking at it more closely than before. There were subtleties, the likes of which he’d never seen before, written there, a grasp of numeracy that almost made him feel like a rank amateur.

  He made to hand it back, but Father Thomas shook his head. “You have to keep it. As I said, it chose you.”

  “Chose me?” asked Dom. “To do what?”

  “It knew that Napier’s shadow has been after you. I imagine it could smell it on you, could taste it in the numbers that try to follow you. There is a particular taint to those numbers, if you know what it is you’re looking for.” Once again he stubbed out a smoke, lit up another.

  “That still doesn’t answer the question, though. Why me?”

  Father Thomas pointed at the wrapped box. “Inside that paper is an artefact that needs to be moved, now that Napier’s adjunct is on the loose. The numbers written into the wrapping have always protected it, but those same numbers have apparently decided that you’re the people to take it to safety.”

  “Where is this safe place?” asked Jenna.

  “Scotland,” replied Father Thomas, and he grinned again.

  “Scotland? Why do we need to take this back to Napier’s seat? And what the hell is in this, anyhow?” He tried to tear at the paper, and although it didn’t shock him this time, the numbers written there congealed under his fingernails, rebuffed any attempt to rip it open. “Damn it, I’ve never seen numbers like these.”

  “You won’t open it,” said Father Thomas. “Not unless the numbers let you.”

  “You make it sound like the numbers are alive,” said Jenna.

  Before the former priest could answer, Dom said, “So we take this to Scotland because the Napier artefact from the desert can’t cross the ocean.”

  Father Thomas shook his head. “No, I said that we couldn’t take it across the ocean. I suspect now that there is a new host, they won’t have any trouble crossing over.”

  “Then why should we be the ones?” asked Billy. “And you still haven’t told us why it needs to go to Scotland.”

  “Because Napier is pissed off with you, and he is going to hunt you down no matter where you go. Because no matter how strong you are, and I can see that you are quite the talent, there’s no way you’ll be able to handle an already strong numerate coupled with the two of the strongest numerates in history.” He chewed on his lower lip for a few seconds. “As to why Scotland, well, now that Napier is loose, there’s no way that package you’re carrying will be able to go anywhere else. The numbers won’t allow it.”

  Billy turned and looked at Jenna. “There he goes again, talking like the numbers are intelligent.”

  Father Thomas shrugged, but didn’t say anything.

  But Dom pressed on with the other concern. “And so she and her adjuncts kill us there instead of here.” He was feeling angry now, partly at what he was being told, partly at the fatalism he could feel sinking into his heart. “What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is that when you’re in Scotland there’s an artefact you can use to help yourself. And who knows, if you keep getting away at the last possible second like you’ve apparently been doing since this trio started to chase you, even they may start to believe that it wasn’t meant to be.” He glanced at Jenna as he said this, then looked back to Dom.

  “So what do we need to do?”

  “When you leave this room, I’ll have two tickets to Glasgow. I’ve redone the numbers on your passports, removed your numerical smell to keep your pursuer off your tail for awhile. Rent a car when you get there.”

  “And then?”

  “And then wait for the numbers to talk to you.” He took another drag, blew his smoke to the side, and leaned forward, getting his face as close to Dom’s as he could. He reeked of both stale and fresh tobacco, with a background tinge of alcohol.

  “What the hell do you mean, wait for the numbers to talk to me?” asked Dom, breathing through his mouth to keep the smell down.
>
  Father Thomas smiled. “You’ll have to wait and see.” He took another puff and waved his hand. “I don’t mean to be stupidly mysterious.”

  “Where do we take this thing once we’re there?”

  “In a perfect world, you’d land at the airport and meet a priest I sometimes work with, and then he’d take you on to a place where it can be hidden away. If we were lucky, you could even get it all the way to the Vatican where we have a secure storage facility, although you would have to keep it on your person the entire time.” He exhaled two thick streams of smoke out through his nostrils. “But here is where we have the Catch-22 of this operation: you can’t do that because the Napier adjunct is on your tail, but you couldn’t access the artefact before now precisely because Napier wasn’t on the loose. And, with all of that in the mix, the artefact wants to be nowhere other than Scotland.”

  Dom leaned forward, head in hands. “Jesus. This is sounding like a nasty little maze.”

  “So will we ever get this thing to this priest?” asked Jenna.

  “I doubt it. In fact, I probably won’t even tell him you’re coming. Not because of the whole death-to-papists thing, but because of what might happen to the secure facility he runs if word got out to some who don’t know about or don’t believe in numeracy. The last thing we would want is for these artefacts to be unleashed on the world, or for some sap with an undetected numerate capability trying to exorcize the so-called demons.”

  He opened the envelope, shook the contents out onto his lap. “Here are your airline tickets. The names match your passports. I’ve taken the liberty of reconstituting all of the numbers on your ID, although it’s all been changed to help keep Napier off your tail.”

  “What if I don’t want to go?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t make you, but I hope that the chance to escape what looks like someone trying to kill you would give you pause about anything so foolish.” He squinted, looking pained by some thought. “I suppose there is something else I should tell you, even though it may make you want to stay here.”