Napier's Bones

by Derryl Murphy

  27

  Now Jenna found herself fighting her way through the crowd of numbers towards the doorway, the time she’d spent learning and gathering her resources gone in the blink of an eye, and her journey from the hillside at the Point of Stoer to here at the Globe had even shifted her backwards in time, if only by a fraction of a moment. The numbers above and around her, those that didn’t seem committed to the coming battle, seemed to confirm that backwards slide in time for her newly tuned senses. It was like a universal clock that all this time had surrounded her, before this moment always invisible.

  Napier, Archimedes, and her mother were approaching, but she couldn’t yet get a handle on the direction. For this the numbers were too scrambled, too many siding with them, whether or not it was voluntary.

  She entered the theatre, and all the strange mystical creatures she had seen as the new type of numbers had dropped her back into this world, this small sliver of space and time, stopped moving, frozen into unfamiliar positions. In response, the numbers that had been spilling from the Bones in Dom’s hand gathered themselves back up into a tight ball and flung themselves towards her, a tight angry tornado of numerical hornets looking to sting Jenna to death.

  She didn’t even blink. The new numbers that accompanied her smeared reality, and the numbers forced into action by Napier’s Bones were suddenly everywhere and everything else.

  But in that moment a woman—her mother, she was sure, even though it had been so long since she’d seen her—appeared out of nowhere, dropped onto the stage and, before Jenna could warn him, cracked Dom on the back of the head with a large club shaped from numbers.

  28

  Dom rolled over to look at the woman. She definitely resembled Jenna, but the shadows that overlapped her body seethed and skittered, played harshly on her face. She held the Bones in her left hand.

  “It’s about time I caught up to you,” she, or rather, Napier said. She reached up and pulled some numbers from the air, flung them down in a pattern that pinned Dom to the stage and left him gasping for breath, the weight on his chest almost unbearable.

  “And you!” she called, looking now across the theatre at Jenna, while Dom struggled to free his hands, looking for any mojo he could use to get them out of this. “Family or no, you’ll have to be punished for helping them.” She sent more numbers Jenna’s way, a horrendous torrent of them, but every single one of them crashed to the ground between them, numerical shards of glass that had run into an invisible barrier.

  She frowned, then shook her head and spun the Bones. Instantly the creatures that surrounded the stage came back to life. “Deal with her,” she said, pointing a finger in Jenna’s direction.

  Dom and Billy found some numbers embedded in the stage, numbers that were still not under Napier’s control. They used them to get out from under the crushing weight of the numbers that held them down, and, still with some difficulty, stood.

  29

  Dom was back with Jenna again. He tried to look to see what was happening on the stage, but he had no control over what she did.

  Every creature called up again by Napier attacked Jenna, but a simple wave of her hand was enough to halt their progress. Every single stone and metal creature stopped in mid-step, and the numbers that accompanied them continued to disappear or to become something else as they attacked Jenna, spinning off into uncertainties and fluctuations as the numbers found new universal laws to observe.

  She reached the stage and pulled herself up, in time to see Billy, in Dom’s body, rush her mother. She closed her eyes and put her hands back down onto the stage, felt the flow of numbers, looking for the right sequence.

  30

  The numbers in the stage were still unwilling to go to work for Napier, that much was obvious. The wood under Napier’s feet buckled and twisted now, although the host, Jenna’s mother, was doing well keeping her—their—balance.

  Back in his own body again, Dom was thrown off balance as he, as Billy, ran after Jenna’s mother. More numbers came after him, trying their best to pin him back to the stage, but with Billy’s help he was able to find sequences he could use to fend them off. Although Napier’s numbers were tough, they had the advantage in that already Napier’s mind seemed to be on other things, and the numbers could do no more than try to hold their own; they were not set forth to behave autonomously, and so each one could be batted away.

  Napier was concentrating on the Bones now. Dom knew that the body was Jenna’s mom and that Archimedes was in there as well, but it suddenly seemed obvious to him this was all Napier. Instead of spinning them into random numbers and equations, which had only kicked Dom and Billy randomly across the Britain, the adjunct was cautiously turning one Bone, and then another. As he did so, numbers hovered overhead, waiting their turn to interact with the Bones and create whatever it was Napier was after.

  Dom sat up, fingered the copper wire still around his wrist, then sought out other numbers in the frantic ecology that surrounded them. Ignoring the momentary pang of guilt, he pulled down a rain of formulae, and bolstered the attack with a small wave of imaginary numbers that had found their way to the theatre.

  The first attack buffeted Napier, and the second hit him hard enough to almost make him drop the box of Bones. Jenna’s mother looked up, rage written across her face, but before she—Napier—could counterattack, Dom grabbed hold of Barylko’s puck and skated across the newly frozen surface of the stage, knocking the Bones from her hands.

  The box went flying through the air, and Napier and Jenna’s mother fell to the stage, the ice having caught them by surprise. Dom spun around and moved to catch it, but a new series of numbers dropped in his path at shoulder level, and he had to fall to his knees as he slid to avoid being shredded by the razor sharp edges that Napier had given them. The box dropped to the ice and skidded to the far corner of the stage, the Bones all of a sudden spinning again. Once more, Dom found himself in blackness, off to yet another random location.

  31

  They were on a small hill overlooking the ocean. Jenna’s mother stood on the beach down below them, the Bones at her feet. Numbers rose from her head and body in a twisting, raging storm and fell hard towards Jenna, only ten feet away. Jenna’s response was almost negligible; some strange numbers rushed from her fingertips and her forehead and kept her mother from reaching down for the Bones, but she did nothing that Dom could see to fight off the numbers attacking her head on. Instead, the attacking numbers just dissipated, motes of dust in a powerful wind, before they got to her. The roar of the numbers overpowered any sounds of wind and waves, and made it difficult for Dom to think about what he could do to help.

  For a brief moment again he found himself in Jenna’s head, but this time she whispered, seemingly right in his ear, “Not now, Dom. Go back to your own body, and I’ll explain later.”

  Back and looking through his own eyes again, he jumped forward to help, but before he could get close sand and gravel exploded around Jenna’s mom, a tall curtain of earth that surrounded her and would not return to the ground. An identical wall of sand jumped up to surround Jenna, and then, slowly, each curtain leaned in towards the other, until the two were almost parallel with the ground, enormous, ferocious sandblasters. Jenna stepped out from the midst of her own curtain, smiled at Dom, then lifted a hand and stepped back into the midst of the dry conflagration, towards her mother. Rocks and sand curled around and over her, none touching her, the most damage being a slight ruffling of her hair.

  “Jesus,” said Dom, coming to a halt.

  “No doubt,” replied Billy. “I’ve seen much in my life, but never such as this.”

  Both curtains of sand dropped down to nothing, and Jenna’s mother frowned, and then took the opportunity of the silence to reach down and grab the Bones. New numbers were conjured, and Dom made to call up his own numbers to try and stop them, but Jenna held up her hand and shook her head. He stopped, aware of something in her eyes that he hadn’t seen before.


  Napier had the last Bone in place. For a moment that seemed to Dom to stretch on forever, everything seemed to stop: birds out over the water hung in mid-air; waves reached out and waited for gravity to return; the few clouds that had been rushing across the sky came to a halt. Silence hung ominously over everything.

  And then with a crash of renewed sound the world sprang back to the present, and the sudden onslaught of numbers turning back towards Napier was both awe-inspiring and hideously frightening. Dom watched as the shadows within began to split off from Jenna’s mother, as both Napier and Archimedes coalesced into solid masses of numbers, then smoothed out and filled themselves in, becoming real bodies. Now both Napier and Archimedes seemed real, living people again, no longer shadows inhabiting an unwilling hostess.

  Instantly, the blue sky turned pitch black, even though the sun still shone overhead. Static charges flashed and noisily crashed and broke up overhead, fuzzy motes of brilliant whiteness like temporary splashes of white pollen on black felt.

  Jenna’s mother and the Archimedes shadow both stumbled back, and Napier reached up and called more numbers down onto Jenna, but everything he threw at her went astray, many of the numbers just seeming to give up interest as they approached her, others finding themselves in places that they hadn’t intended to be.

  “I’ll kill you if I have to twist your neck with my bare hands!” yelled Napier over the angry buzzing and crashing, his accent thicker than before, his voice shaking with rage and exhaustion; the storm of numbers he was controlling would have wiped out Dom by now, and likely, any other numerate. Napier had very short hair and a thick, long goatee, and he wore a black robe with a slightly soiled white ruff around his neck. His face was contorted with rage, and his prominent ears were flushed bright red.

  Jenna spread her arms and tilted her head to one side. “You’re welcome to try,” she answered, also yelling to be heard over the noise of the crashing numbers. “But it won’t do any good.” She flicked her eyes to the ocean, sad smile on her lips. “We have visitors.”

  Everyone turned to look, saw that a large pod of dolphins had come ashore, all of them eerily calm, and even from here, Dom could tell that they all had their eyes focused on Napier. The shadow—no, now a man, no longer an adjunct—seemed to count them all, then grunted in surprise and dismay. He attempted several attacks on them, but all of the numbers again just petered out.

  “Cetacean math and our math are not the same things,” said Jenna’s mom, now standing so close behind Dom that he jumped in surprise. He turned, prepared to fight her, but she put a gentle hand on his arm and shook her head. “They’ve come for you, Napier.”

  “You control us no longer, John Napier,” called Archimedes in thickly accented English, standing not far behind Napier. He smiled nervously, a short, dark-haired and somewhat plump man in a loose-fitting yellow robe and sandals, fretful numbers dancing around his head, anxious to protect him.

  Napier himself made to conjure up a new attack, but Jenna silently stepped forward and laid her hands on the Bones. A shadow eased out from inside of her, and replicated itself over and over and over again. And suddenly the numbers that surrounded them were not only doing things that Dom had never before seen, but things he never even would have thought possible. They were disappearing and reappearing in random fashion, some of them copying themselves before his eyes and others changing from one form to another and back again as he watched them.

  The sky changed then, no longer black, but suddenly a spectrum of colours, and Dom got the idea that it wasn’t changing from one to the other but rather was all of them at once, as if he could see each and every possible colour at the same time. He turned to look back at Jenna and saw that the same was happening with her, that he could see two, a dozen, a hundred, even a million different Jennas, all at the same time, shifting and sliding in through and around each other, all of them with one hand on the Bones and the other reaching for Napier himself.

  The former shadow winced and ducked, but if one hand missed, even if twenty of them did, others found their mark. Suddenly Napier was himself an impossible number of alternates, each one grimacing in agony as the numbers that had helped maintain his existence abandoned their positions.

  Napier, all of the Napiers, screamed with rage, with fear, and fought back with everything he—they—had, an explosion of numbers rising from the ground, falling from the sky, spilling from the sea, all collapsing in on him as he sought their help. He waved his arms and built up impossible-seeming torrents of formulae, a last-ditch attempt to save himself and defeat Jenna, and Dom was momentarily thrown to his knees by the rampaging winds and shaking earth, but every Jenna still stood, now implacable. With one last flurry of motion, an angry swarm of numbers jumped from the top of Napier’s head and skittered across the beach to the dolphins, and each dying animal opened itself to accept the numbers.

  Napier collapsed and at the same time Dom felt a wrenching sensation inside his body, but behind where Napier had stood Archimedes stayed in one piece, the final numbers that Dom only just now noticed had tied him to Napier shedding away from his body and dropping to the beach. “Thank you,” he whispered, and several Jennas turned their attentions from the dolphins long enough to nod in response.

  “By God,” said Billy, his own accent stronger now. Dom turned, alarmed to hear his voice come from somewhere else and saw that the poet was standing beside him, now in his real body as well, slightly dumpy, with receding grey hair and thin lips. He was smiling.

  “What the hell just happened?” Dom looked to Jenna, to as many of the Jennas as he could focus on, and saw that many of them were now walking across the beach to join the dolphins. He felt inside, looking for the numbers he had carried as his shadow, but felt nothing; they were gone, and Blake really was an ordinary person standing beside him instead of nesting inside his head. Dom looked around now, and realized that, aside from those that accompanied the Jennas, he couldn’t see any numbers. It was like he’d spent all of his life in the jungle and suddenly found himself in the deserts of Mars, the world around him airless and lifeless. Not really paying attention to what he was doing, he reached out and took Jenna’s mother’s hand, then staggered along after her as she walked to join her daughter—daughters, since there were still uncountable versions of Jenna on the beach—followed closely by Blake and Archimedes.

  One Jenna stepped ahead of the others, and by the time they’d reached her, the one he was now thinking of as Jenna Prime was on her knees, stroking one dolphin’s snout and whispering to it. The animal seemed to lean into her, and a string of indeterminate numbers leapt from her to it and then to all the other dolphins, a lacework of numerical electricity, and then all of the dolphins, sixty-seven of them, were dead.

  She stood, tears in her eyes, and first hugged Dom, and then her mother. As Dom watched Jenna with her mom, the light around her seemed to shift and crack into crazed patterns, bending around her like a refraction through water, making her look like a living Hockney collage. “What the hell is happening?”

  “It’s all the same,” said Jenna.

  “Different,” she said, standing a few feet away from herself.

  “Changing,” said another version.

  “Infinite.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Probable.”

  “Continuous.”

  “And more, as I reach back and forth across time.” She closed her eyes. “I can’t collapse the wave front,” she grunted. “Can’t get out of here.” Behind her, the dead dolphins came to life, swam back out to the ocean, at the same time festered and rotted where they lay. The sun blinked and wavered, and new stars poked through the bright sky. Clouds scudded in all directions at once, and in the distance strange and marvellous beasts strolled along the horizon, seeming to walk on the very ocean, impossibly tall and thin, stretched like a monster child’s rubber playthings.

  Jenna’s mother stepped forward. “I don’t pretend to understand this new world of numbers
you’ve called forth, but you brought down Napier when Archimedes and I and many others could never resist him.” She gently took her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Jenna, you’re my daughter. I’m so very proud of you for what you’ve accomplished, and every bit as sorry for what I’ve done to you. But you’ve shown great strength in dealing with everything I threw at you. You can deal with this as well.” She leaned forward and kissed Jenna Prime on the cheek.

  Sweat broke out on Jenna’s forehead, the strain pushing hard at her. “I can,” she finally whispered. All around, the seemingly infinite versions of Jenna folded in on Jenna Prime, and then she stood alone on the beach, the sun now out and shining behind her head like a halo. She smiled and held out her hand to Dom, who, with a modicum of hesitation, reached out and took it.

  “What the hell just happened?” he asked.

  “All these years after the birth of quantum mathematics,” said Jenna’s mother, “there has been no one who could control those numbers like a numerate could control the standard numerical ecology.”

  “No one until me, it seems,” said Jenna. She squeezed his hand. “All I needed was an artefact to give me the final key. Whatever I had that made the numbers avoid me unless I concentrated on getting them, it was something I was born with.”

  Dom looked around, trying hard to see numbers. But he was like a blind man now. “So what happened? Where did the numbers go?”

  “Nowhere and everywhere. The artefact I have came from a physicist named Werner Heisenberg. It helps me control the numbers like I was never able to before, but now that I’ve activated it, the ecology will never be the same. His Uncertainty Principle and other aspects of the quantum universe are going to rule parts of our world on a macro scale now, and I’m afraid that it won’t be just numeracy that sees the change.”