Napier's Bones

by Derryl Murphy

  Jenna turned her head to look at him, tears in her eyes. He rubbed gently at her chin with his sleeve, managed to get the puke off, but the blood just smeared. “Fine,” she mumbled. “Not too much pain.” She turned her attention back to walking, and a few seconds later they were at the car.

  Arithmos was already in the back seat. “Let’s move,” hissed the numbers as Dom helped Jenna into her seat. “We need to get off this island now.”

  Dom yawned as he raced down the road. He was exhausted, and not even the coffee and the recent fracas had managed to shake the cobwebs from his head. He looked over to Jenna, saw that she had leaned her head back and had closed her eyes. The bleeding seemed to have slowed, maybe even stopped.

  “Who the hell was Ewan?” asked Dom.

  “Nobody but a pathetic little treasure hunter,” replied Arithmos. “He’d sell his grandmother for a good artefact, and apparently he knew that one was there.” Here Jenna opened her eyes and looked over at Dom, but he did his best to ignore her. “We think he knew that Napier’s shadow is back on native soil, and wanted in on the action. What we hadn’t expected was that he would lay a trap for anyone coming into the kirk looking for the artefact.”

  “Why didn’t you stop him?” asked Billy.

  “He’s a numerate. He controls numbers.”

  Dom nodded and turned his attention back to the road. Ahead were a set of headlights, seemingly coming straight towards him. “Lights,” he said. “Looks like someone doesn’t want us to get off the island.”

  Jenna opened her eyes and said, very quietly, “You’re driving on the wrong side of the road.”

  “Jesus!” Dom swung the car back to the left and needlessly waved his hand as the oncoming car flashed its lights and rushed past. He lifted one hand from the wheel and rubbed at his eyes. “Wake up wake up wake up wake up,” he muttered. His heart was pounding, a loud and rolling rhythm that threatened to jump out of his chest.

  “I’m sure you’re not the first tourist to forget what side of the road he was driving on,” said Jenna. Her eyes were closed again.

  “Tourist or not,” said Arithmos from the back seat, “I think it would be best if you don’t die in something as common as a car accident while carrying those artefacts in your pocket.”

  “Right,” answered Dom. “Sorry. It won’t happen again.” They rode in silence for awhile, crossing the bridge without having to stop for any oncoming traffic, and soon enough Dom brought the car to a stop by the highway. “Which way again?”

  “North,” replied Arithmos. “Left.”

  He waited for two cars to go by and then followed them, quickly gearing up to the speed limit. Wouldn’t do to be caught by the cops breaking the speed limit, not with blood all over Jenna like it was.

  “Speaking of cops . . .” he whispered. Three sets of flashing lights were approaching from ahead. Two police cars and an ambulance whipped by, sirens wailing. “On their way to the island?”

  Arithmos grunted. “Yes. Someone’s found the body by now. We can only hope that nobody identified your car while it was parked there.”

  Dom frowned. “What are the chances of that?”

  The numbers were silent for a moment. “Twenty-seven vehicles drove past while you were in the kirk. Chances are good at least one paid attention to your presence.”

  Dom signalled, then carefully drove into a pullout set beside the road, stopped and yanked up the emergency brake, but left the car running. “I know your mom has been able to follow us by zeroing in on any numbers we use, but there was no sign of her or Napier after the numbers I used back in the church.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Jenna, eyes still closed.

  Dom looked over at her, worried about just how badly this had all hit her. She sounded almost like a zombie right now, voice flat and barren. “I’m going to change the numbers on the plates, just enough to keep us safe.”

  There was silence for a moment, and then Arithmos said, “We don’t disagree.” He climbed out and stepped around to the front, crouched down and traced his index finger along the edges of the numbers on the plate. Above him was nothing but the night sky and overhanging trees; before he started, though, he sent up a few tentative numbers, quiet sequences that could passively search for active numbers that carried the smell of the Napier-Archimedes adjunct. After a few minutes they all fell back to earth and crawled to him to tell him the same thing, that there was nothing untoward to be found.

  There were only two numbers on the front plate, along with five letters, which meant he couldn’t make as big a change as he had hoped. Still, he had to do something. But when he tried to smear the 53 into a 63, the 5 resisted. 58 wouldn’t work, either, so after some messing around he finally settled on 52, which looked a whole lot more amateurish, but seemed to be the only number that would take. To help it along he ran some other numbers over top, intended to redirect attention of anyone looking their way. Then he walked to the back and did the same thing with the plate there.

  “Wouldn’t let me change the numbers the way I would’ve liked,” he said as he climbed back into the car.

  “The plates are issued based on when they were issued,” replied Arithmos. “There are few options for the numbers, so they tend to hold fast.”

  Dom signalled and pulled back out onto the road. Traffic was increasing, but it still didn’t amount to much, and so far there were no flashing lights in his rearview mirror. “If that’s all, then that’s a relief. I was worried that maybe I’d lost my skills, or worse, that Napier and friends were close by and taking a hand in it again.”

  “You can believe that we would have given you notice if such a visit were imminent.”

  The rest of the drive was uneventful. Jenna kept her eyes closed, and was still enough that several times Dom got worried and reached over to touch her shoulder. Each time she just reached up with her hand to brush him off without looking at him. The cuts on her face and arms looked more like scratches now, and only once did he see blood leaking from the corner of her mouth, but she reached up and wiped it away before he could say anything, smeared it on her pants and otherwise didn’t move.

  Just before they reached Oban, Arithmos said, “It’s a big town. Very busy, popular with the tourists. There are at least two numerates we know of who live there, and of course it is also very possible that one or more are visiting right now.”

  Billy turned Dom around and looked into the back seat. “So what are you saying?”

  “We have ways of keeping our presence a secret, but close proximity can nullify that. So we’ll leave you here, and find you again on the other side of town. Stay cautious.” And with that, the numbers vanished.

  Oban was a busy town. There were tour buses everywhere, and signs advertising ferry trips to a variety of islands showed one of the reasons why the town was so central for tourists. There also seemed to be plenty of shopping, and all of it looked like it was along the main drag through town, so progress was very slow, on a road only two lanes wide, with plenty of pedestrians dashing across in front of vehicles to see a store or a friend on the other side of the road, or else a car up ahead stopping and waiting for a perceived parking opportunity. Dom did his best to stay patient, drumming a quiet tattoo on the steering wheel with his fingers and watching numbers float by, looking for anything special. And there was; yes, he could see the usual numerical ecology one saw in busy towns everywhere, but there were some signs to be seen that this place was different than most he’d visited before.

  The numbers took on a different layering here, the way rational and irrational numbers behaved with each other and with the formulae that they sometimes created before his eyes, little bits of evolution that sometimes took, sometimes didn’t, numbers finding themselves in an untenable situation and fraying and untwisting almost immediately after combining, drifting off to find other numbers that matched better, or perhaps to just remain lone integers, destined for who knew what part of the world.

  Dom
imagined that the differences he saw were due to the age of the town itself. He had been in some small old towns in New England in the States and the Maritimes in Canada, and it had indeed seemed that the houses there carried a different sense of numerical history than the more recent communities that he was used to. Here, the buildings were older than anything he normally saw, and not just one, but pretty much all of them, marching along the street, squeezed tight against each other, stone and brick and wood, every one of them covered in a sheen of numbers that looked to have been there since the day they’d been built, content to stay in place, it seemed, rather than venturing off and joining the rest of their kind in the world at large.

  Dom smiled to himself, and from beside him, Jenna said, “What?”

  He turned and looked at her in surprise. Her eyes were open, and she was sitting up again. There was still a hint of blood on her chin, but it looked to have dried, so Dom fought the urge to wipe it away; it was something she could take care of later. “You’re awake,” he said.

  “Why were you smiling?”

  Dom shook his head, looked back to the traffic in time to tap his brakes and keep from denting the bumper in front. “Just realizing once again that the numbers around us really do seem to be living things.”

  “You’d think that the presence of Arithmos would have settled that for you some time ago,” responded Billy. “But I have to say we’ve certainly seen numbers behave in ways I’ve never seen before. Centuries around them, and until I tied myself to you, Dom, I’d never seen numbers act with a semblance of free will.” Dom raised an eyebrow and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. “Never?”

  Billy shook Dom’s head in response. “Never. At best, any autonomy given to numbers was laid in by the numerate who had given them their goal, their marching orders. The better the numerate, the more the numbers could bend to the situation and continue their work.”

  “Like the numbers back in America and Canada, the ones that kept chasing us,” said Jenna.

  Billy nodded. “Exactly. Most numerates keep the numbers close at hand, do their little magic tricks with something that is right there. These ones, though, Napier was able to create sequences and formulae that jumped through a whole series of difficult hoops from a very long distance away.”

  “But even then, they didn’t seem to operate as intelligent beings,” replied Dom. “Maybe as smart as hounds on the trail of an escaped convict, but nothing like we’ve seen with Arithmos.” The conversation petered off as each of them retreated into their own thoughts. They finally drove past the last part of downtown, and although they were still in Oban, the traffic opened up now, and within minutes they were on the other side of town and moving along at a reasonable pace once again. Dom felt himself relax, happy that no cops had gotten to them while they were stuck in a position that would have been impossible to wriggle out of.

  “I’m back,” said Arithmos.

  Jenna turned around and faced the numerical being. “I’ve been wondering, where did your name come from?” she asked. “What does it mean?”

  “It’s Greek,” answered Billy. “Same root as arithmetic.”

  “The built-in properties of numbers and their ratios, and how they relate to the universe around us. But it means more than that. It’s the word that your kind once used when referring to the life that numbers had taken on.”

  “Alive like you’re alive?” asked Dom. “Sentient?”

  “More so the ecology of numbers, the idea that the surrounding world of numbers was alive in a way very similar to the biodiversity of this world. Although we know that there are humans who have entertained the idea that numbers have become alive because of how we’ve been used by numerates.”

  “So we’ve helped you evolve?” asked Jenna.

  “Perhaps,” said Arithmos. “If so, though, it seems to be very restricted in time and place. We show some autonomy in other lands, but the properties of the British Isles, as well as a few other select locations on the planet, allow us to come together and think on our own, such as you see me now.” The numerical creature paused for a moment, as if to roll around some thoughts, then carried on. “Think about search numbers. There was a time when numerates would send out such things, but they were always brute force, simple. Somewhere along the way, though, the number patterns became not only more sophisticated, but able to make adjustments in midstream. Not the way we were originally designed, but this elegance allowed us to show at least a modicum of intelligence and adaptability.”

  “Intelligence and adaptability are not the same,” said Billy. “Animals adapt, right down to insects and lower. That doesn’t mean they’re smart.”

  “In the end, you’ll have to take our presence as the best argument available. But think about what you just said. We are numbers, things that should, by all rights in your logical world, be figments, metaphors. And yet not only are people like you able to make us perform for you, we numbers show traits that, at the very least—the very least, let us stress—equate us with living things. Numbers who know when to congregate, when to separate, can make decisions based on contingencies that our creator likely could not foresee.”

  Dom thought about the search numbers in Utah, behaving like a flock of crows, finding new places to circle, and about the numbers in Drumheller, climbing out from the drain, losing whatever had helped them stay coherent, and yet still struggling to find their way up and out. And these numbers in a place that Arithmos argued was not conducive to numbers behaving independently and intelligently. He’d not ever seen numbers so adaptable before.

  “It’s quite the moral quandary,” said Billy, interrupting the silence.

  “How so?” asked Dom, but before Billy could reply, the numbers in the back seat said, “Ah, someone is beginning to understand.”

  “Jesus.” Dom drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, feeling impatient. “Understand what, exactly?”

  “I think I get it,” said Jenna, nodding her head.

  But before Dom could explode with the frustration of being the only one left out of the loop, what was being said crystallized in his head. “Oh. Wait. If the numbers are self-aware, and we’re controlling them, then . . .” He let the thought fall away, unwilling to vocalize it.

  “It’s just another form of slavery, maybe,” said Jenna. She didn’t look happy.

  “Not the word I was going to use.” Dom signalled, pulled out into the opposing lane to pass a small, slow RV from Belgium. He gunned the motor to swing back into the proper lane before a car coming at speed around the bend did them all in, then tried to find the words to finish his thought. “Look. We don’t, or at least most of us don’t, talk about chickens and cows and pigs and other farm animals as slaves, do we? So even if I grant that the numbers I use are sentient, that doesn’t mean that I’m enslaving them, especially since I cut them loose after I finish using them.”

  “Chickens and cows and pigs aren’t self-aware like humans, Dom,” replied Jenna. “They’re alive, but their concept of self is very different from our own, if they have one at all. And numbers trying to crawl out of a sewer in the Alberta Badlands says nothing to me about self-awareness. Arithmos here seems the exception, not the rule. There have been numbers all over the landscape here, and none but this conglomeration sitting behind me and lecturing me have shown any hint of self-awareness.”

  “I would suggest to you that there is no way anyone, no matter how powerful, could predict that the numbers would need to attempt to do such a thing to continue the task that was put to them,” said Billy. “What a person of such power might be able to do, though, is cajole, maybe even frighten, those numbers into continuing their task well after it would have been a reasonable decision to back off.”

  “As much as we appreciate being compared to livestock,” said Arithmos, “it seems obvious that this small controversy will not be solved any time soon, at least by the people who are in this vehicle.”

  Dom grunted and looked in the mirror, but didn
’t answer, and Jenna just turned her attention to the landscape going by. “How much longer?” asked Billy, after a few moments of silence.

  “We’ll have another few towns to pass through before we get to Ullapool. Another town where I will have to step away, even though it is nowhere near as busy as Oban.”

  “I would have thought, judging by the amount of automobiles that Dom has had to deal with over the past however many miles of road, that worrying about someone seeing anything is not much of a concern,” said Billy. “How can such a dead road lead to a busy town?”

  “We’ll take no chances,” responded Arithmos.

  It was true. The further north they travelled, the thinner the traffic became. They were still on a highway, and there were still some cars and trucks to deal with, as well as the odd RV, most of those last seeming to come from continental Europe, but it was by no stretch of the imagination a busy road, and there were now long sections where they and the paved road were the only indication that civilization still existed.

  The sky was the colour of slate now, an unbroken layer of cloud that showed no differentiation anywhere that Dom looked. Gusts of wind pushed at the car at regular intervals, trying hard to lift it off the road, but no unnatural numbers were involved; it was just nature doing what nature did.

  And then overhead a roar pounded across the sky from left to right. Dom pulled over to the side of the road, but could see nothing through the clouds, no numbers, nothing to tell him what it had been. He opened the door and climbed out, as did Jenna. The wind fought her for possession of the door for a second, and she struggled to close it, her hair blowing across her face. Just as she shut the door another screaming roar rushed out of the sky towards them. Dom and Jenna both flinched, then watched overhead as a British fighter jet broke out of the clouds, dark green streaking in and out of the wisps overhead like a reflection of an especially slick and speedy rock skipping across the surface of an enormous, unsettled pond. It was very quickly out of sight and earshot, and everything was quiet again for a moment. Then Arithmos was standing beside Dom. “This will do,” said the numbers. “You’ll find yourself safely to town from here.” They looked to Dom. “You want to go to the Point of Stoer, north of Ullapool. It’s late enough that you should spend the night in Ullapool, though. When you come out on the other side of town tomorrow we will be there again.”