Napier's Bones

by Derryl Murphy

  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 w
ith 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.

  Subset

  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.

  The seat of his power, the place where he could not fail in his search.

  16

  Slow down,” said Arithmos. “Coming up soon there should be a sign for Seil Island. Take that turn and follow the road.”

  About two minutes later Dom passed the sign. He flicked on his left-turn signal and turned in, then followed a small road that was surrounded by trees and farms. Soon they were at a bridge, a stone structure that crossed a small body of water no wider than eighty feet, the bridge a single high arch. Underneath the bridge was a small green patchy-looking motorboat, heading south, one person on board using one hand to steer the motor and the other to bail out the boat, regular sweeping motions casting a fair amount of water over the edge, enough to make Dom wonder how the craft stayed afloat.

  “The Bridge Over the Atlantic, the locals call it,” said the numbers in the back seat. “It’s been a problem ever since it was built, back at the end of the eighteenth century.”

  “Problem?”

  “Made it too easy to come across,” answered Arithmos. “Things stay hidden easier when fewer people can stumble across them. Cross the bridge and follow the road south. We’re almost there.”

  “Right.” Dom put the car back in gear, waited for another car to come his way across the single track lane on the bridge, then did as he was told. More trees, more farms, a few other buildings.

  Parked in a small lot on the island side of the bridge were two large tour buses, several dozen soggy seniors milling about in a parking lot, checking out two small buildings that were likely tourist traps of some sort. As the rain began to let up, others spilled from their buses and walked as quickly as they could to the bridge, looking anxious to cross it on foot before the rain returned.

  A couple more terse directions from Arithmos, and then he had Dom park the car on the side of the road, directly below an old grey stone church that was perched high on a bluff. They climbed out, the numbers sliding through the rear window and standing beside Dom. “Right,” said Arithmos. “Follow the road below, leading to that farm in the distance.”

  “We’re going to a farm?” asked Jenna.

  “Deeper. The road to the farm is only to lead you in, and to fend off the mildly curious.”

  Dom and Jenna followed the road down, passed one driveway into one farm, kept going until they were near to another. “We turn right here,” said Arithmos.

  Dom looked. To their right was a barbed wire fence, several cows standing on the other side, watching them with the usual mild disinterest of domestic farm animals.

  He turned around and looked to their approach. The car sat below the bluff, the three stained glass windows of the church sparkling, the sun finally having broken through completely. Sheep sat further up the hill, behind a fence towards the car, most of them calmly grazing, but one big ram, with immense curled horns and testicles hanging down practically to the ground, stood on a rock and watched them, keen eyes seeming to study every move Dom made. “I don’t like the way he’s watching me,” said Dom, staring back.

  “It’s not you,” said Arithmos. “It’s me. That old fellow isn’t like what most folk expect of domestic sheep; he can sense my presence, and wants to protect his harem. Let’s move on before he gets so anxious he keels over from a heart attack.”

  Dom and Jenna walked over to the fence. There were small wooden steps built into a fence post to make passage over the wire easier. “Aren’t we trespassing?”

  As soon as they’d crossed into the pasture the cows had spooked and run to the most distant point they could find. “Private property is a little different here than you might be used to, Dom. And we have had an agreement with the landholders for centuries, now. I also understand that this place has become somethin
g like a park, although the amount of visitors is kept down, numbers that stay and help make it a little less visible. Even if you have a map, those that are laid out here mean it’s an easy place to get lost in.”

  “Numbers have an agreement with the people who live here?” asked Jenna.

  The mass of numbers shifted, a shrug. “We work through others when needed.”

  They crossed the pasture, then climbed over another fence to a path, the road still in view to the right. It wasn’t too hardscrabble, but there were a few rocks and holes to avoid. By now the clouds had been banished from horizon to horizon, and Dom paused for a moment, took off his jacket and tied it around his waist. Jenna did the same.

  “No traffic,” said Jenna, as she pulled the knot tight. She was right; the road had been without a single car since they had gotten past the bridge.

  “There are other reasons tourists come here besides the bridge,” said Arithmos. “But that’s the main one. Perhaps today the storm and the numbers that accompanied it convinced many to do other things. Here,” it said, thrusting an appendage to the left. “Follow the path into these trees.”

  The change was almost immediate. Where they had been in a farmer’s field that could have passed for one almost anywhere in North America, now they were in a wood that looked like every magical forest from a fairy tale. It was old, so very old, and it seemed to breathe on its own. The numbers here were flat and low to the ground, dwellers of the forest floor that somehow couldn’t reach up and escape from the branches of the trees that bent over to look down on them.

  “Welcome to the Ballachuan Hazelwood,” said Arithmos, voice barely a whisper.

  The trees were low, stunted, and gnarled, branches spreading out like slender fingers of an arthritic, many-handed giant. Branches and trunks alike were covered by mosses and lichens, and it seemed to Dom’s eye to be a different species not only for each tree but even for each branch. Like elderly spinsters at a society ball, each tree wore its jacket of lichen proudly, unashamed of the tattered look of their coats, each fiercely proud of the latest fashion it could muster and acutely aware that its glory days had long since passed.