by P. B. Kerr
Mr. Burton was exactly where they had left him except that the sun in the sky had been replaced by an equally bright moon — so bright that it was almost like the middle of the day. John steered the carpet closer to the fakir and, getting up, bowed gravely to the holy man.
“Mr. Burton,” said John. “I apologize for disturbing you. This is going to sound weird, I know, only I have questions that need answers. I hate to sound like a hippie but you might even say that I seek enlightenment.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Burton. “Earlier on, I heard the voice in your heart that commands you to seek answers, which is why I said I would help you. And I shall, if I can.”
“My sister is cleverer than me,” said John.
“It could seem that way. But you are not your sister. You are yourself. So why does such a thing matter?”
“I just wish I was a bit cleverer, that’s all,” admitted John.
“Perhaps you have other strengths,” observed Mr. Burton.
“Yes, but what?”
“That is for you to find out,” said Mr. Burton. “The finding out is one of life’s pleasures. And as my former master, Mr. Rakshasas, used to say, even castles are built one brick at a time.”
“I miss him,” said John. “I was kind of fond of that guy. I often wish I knew exactly what happened to him.”
“If you look for him, then perhaps you will find him,” said Mr. Burton.
“If he’s dead, how can I look for him?”
“You only have to know the best place to look,” said Mr. Burton. “Fortunately, I can help you there.”
Mr. Burton took out his fountain pen — the one he had used earlier in the second riddle — and squeezed a little drop of black ink into a white saucer.
“Perhaps,” he said mysteriously, “you will find an answer in this little drop of ink.”
“How can anyone find something in a drop of ink?” objected John.
“Shakespeare did,” said Mr. Burton. “And many others since. But have you ever actually looked inside a spot of ink?”
“No,” admitted John. “I can’t say that I have.”
“Then it may be that you will find more in it than you might expect.”
“Don’t know unless you try it, huh?” John nodded, took the white saucer from the fakir’s bony fingers, and stared at the little shiny concave black dot.
At first he could see nothing at all. But then as his eyes steadied on the ink spot, John saw the full moon reflected there and next his own face.
“I can see myself,” he whispered.
“That’s a start,” said Mr. Burton. “Believe me, it’s not everyone who can see himself. Already there is enlightenment where none existed before. What do you see?”
“I see someone strong,” said John. “A seeker after truth. An explorer. Someone who is not afraid to act. Someone who would do things. But what? The answers are hidden. Perhaps lost forever.”
“Then you must look deeper to find that which was lost,” said Mr. Burton. “You must look beyond yourself to that which lies beneath. You have to search the very depths of the ink spot to find what you seek, my son. Oh, and try not to blink. You have a much better chance of seeing something if you don’t close your eyes.”
“All right.”
John could not have said how long he sat there and stared into the ink spot. And for a long while it was like staring down the wrong end of a telescope. As if he was trying to look at something that was a very long way away from him. But then, after a while it seemed as though the length of the telescope shortened and what he was looking at grew nearer, and he had the idea that it was not the inside of a telescope he was looking at so much as the depths of an enormously deep well. No ordinary well, either, but a well that seemed to have been bored into time itself. And as he looked, he started to see places and people he recognized.
“Why, it’s incredible,” he whispered. “I can see everything.”
John saw his house in Manhattan, and his mother and father, and Alan and Neil — the two dogs who were really his uncles. He saw his uncle Nimrod, and his sister, Philippa, Mrs. Trump, Dybbuk, Virgil McCreeby and his son Finlay, Iblis the Ifrit, and almost everyone he had ever met or known. None of them paid him any attention or perhaps even noticed him. It was like looking out of a window set into the sky and staring down at a selection of human miniatures. He could even hear voices he recognized and smell things.
And finally, he saw his old friend, Mr. Rakshasas.
“I see him,” he said delightedly. “He’s quite real. It seems to me I could almost reach out and touch him.”
“You must not,” said Mr. Burton.
“He’s at the Metropolitan Museum in New York,” said John. “And he’s been absorbed by one of those horrible terracotta warriors. And … ah! So that’s what happened to him. That’s where he went. But no, that’s impossible, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“That he should have … died,” said John. “And started a new life without telling me about it.”
“Did he?”
“Yes. And yet, he can’t have, can he? Reincarnation? Surely not.”
“Don’t you believe in reincarnation?”
“I didn’t,” said John. “Until I met Zagreus.”
“And now?”
“Well, yes. I do.”
“Then perhaps that is why you and Zagreus were brought together in the first place.”
“Perhaps,” said John. “But surely someone as important as Mr. Rakshasas wouldn’t come back as a dog, would he?”
“We don’t choose who or what we come back as,” said Mr. Burton. “If we come back at all. Not everyone does. And a dog is not so bad.”
“Why do people come back at all?” asked John.
“Perhaps they have something left to do or say?” said Mr. Burton.
“Then it’s not much use coming back as a dog,” observed John. “They can’t say anything.”
“Tell that to another dog,” said Mr. Burton. “It’s my impression that dogs can say a lot. Even to us, upon occasion.”
John shook his head. “No. It’s not a dog. He’s a wolf. Mr. Rakshasas has come back as a wolf. A young wolf. He’s black and gray, with bright blue eyes. And I can actually hear him howling. He’s living somewhere cold, too. It looks like Yellowstone National Park. Yes, it’s Yellowstone National Park. Gee, I thought I’d seen everything. Well, a lot, anyway. But that’s incredible.”
John shook his head and found himself staring at a simple ink spot. “What I was looking at,” he said. “How long ago was that?”
“The past is the past,” said Mr. Burton. “It could be anything from a few seconds to several years. The longer you look, the further into the past you can see.”
“And the future?” said John. “Is it possible to see the future in the same way?”
“The ink spot you were looking at was concave,” said Mr. Burton. “To see the future you must look into an ink spot that is convex.”
“You mean like a lens?”
Mr. Burton nodded. “But to know the past is one thing. To know the future is quite another. It is not without danger.”
“What kind of danger?”
“Knowledge of the future is the most dangerous thing in the universe,” said Mr. Burton. “That is why I remain here. Because once, many years ago, I looked into the future and what I saw made me think that it would be safer for everyone if I came here where I could not put that knowledge into action.”
“Can I look for something in particular?” asked John.
“Yes, but why would you wish to look into the future in the first place?”
“I want to make sure I’ll amount to something, I guess.”
“You can look but there is no guarantee that you will see anything,” said Mr. Burton. “Visions of the future tend to be rare and rather unpredictable.” He winced.
“What?” asked John.
“To be given a vision of the future is a rare thing. Upon seeing s
uch a thing, however, it is difficult not to act on it. And yet you must also be aware that what you might see would only be a fragment and not the whole picture, therefore understanding might be similarly incomplete. Are you sure that you wish to do this, boy djinn?”
“Yes,” said John.
Mr. Burton wiped the spot of ink off the saucer with the edge of his robe and, taking his fountain pen, dropped another spot of black ink into the saucer’s center. “Then look again,” he said.
John leaned forward and stared hard. First of all, he noticed that this time the spot of ink was convex and it impressed him that Mr. Burton could do this with ink spots.
“How do you make one spot concave and the other convex?” he asked.
“Practice,” said Mr. Burton. “But it’s best to look in silence. The future is like a great movie star. It does not like to have its picture taken, unawares.”
John stared a while and saw nothing. Or so he thought. But just as he was about to blink and rub his eyes, he saw himself leaning over a body. A dead body. John was pretty sure it was a dead body because there was blood on John’s hands. He couldn’t see the dead man’s face but there was no mistaking the red fox fur coat. It was his uncle Nimrod. And Nimrod was dead — by John’s bloody hand, or so it seemed.
John blinked and, turning abruptly to one side, vomited over the edge of his flying carpet.
“No,” he said. “It can’t be. Say it isn’t true.”
CHAPTER 16
THE TEN FAKIRS OF FAIZABAD
Groanin spent a miserable night on the mountaintop.
First of all, he burped so much fire that his eyebrows and all of his clothes — including his coat and his favorite bowler hat — caught alight and were completely destroyed, and then his sleeping bag, too. That would have been bad enough. And Groanin was just thinking that there was nothing else the night could throw at him when someone vomited on his head from a great height.
“Well, that’s just marvelous,” said Groanin, and sat down to await the dawn.
The butler presented a sorry spectacle when Nimrod went to look for him in the morning to ask where his tea was.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the butler, standing uncomfortably behind a bush. “But due to my absence of clothes, not to mention this horrible mess on my head, you’ll have to fetch your own tea this morning.”
“Always got an excuse for not doing your job,” said Nimrod. “Very well. I suppose you would like me to make you some new clothes.”
“A hot shower wouldn’t go amiss, either,” said Groanin.
“Yes, you do seem to smell a bit strongly. Difficult night, eh?”
“You could say that, sir, yes.”
“Still breathing fire?”
“No longer, sir. Them fiery eructations would seem to have stopped. I said, them fiery eructations would seem to have terminated. At least I can hiccup without setting fire to something, anyway.”
“Well, let this be a lesson to you, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “Don’t ever mix water with Falernian wine again.”
“No, sir, I shall endeavor not to.” He shook his head and added, “I’ve never been lucky with food and drink. And people wonder why I stick to baby food when I’m abroad. Because you can’t go wrong with baby food. That’s why they give it to babies, see?”
Nimrod muttered his focus word — QWERTYUIOP — and soon Groanin was looking like a proper butler again, which is to say he was wearing a dark jacket, matching vest, pin-striped trousers, black shoes, black tie, white shirt, and a black bowler hat. And looking like a butler again meant that Groanin was soon acting like one, too — fetching tea for Nimrod and Moo and generally tidying up the camp. It wasn’t long before he started to whistle, but only because he knew it annoyed Nimrod when he seemed cheerful.
“Anyone seen John?” asked Philippa.
“No,” said Groanin. “Perhaps he’s gone off exploring somewhere. His flying carpet is gone.”
“So is Zagreus,” observed Moo.
Philippa shook her head. Being John’s twin, she sometimes sensed things about her brother that only a twin could feel — something that even human twins are capable of. “I dunno,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like he’s anywhere close. Plus” — she kept on shaking her head — “he seems disturbed by something. But exactly what, I don’t know.”
“I expect he and Zagreus will turn up in due course,” said Nimrod. “Boys will be boys. Even when they’re djinn.”
After breakfast, Nimrod steered the flying carpet back up the rope to see Mr. Burton. It was even colder ascending the rope than it had been the day before and Groanin’s teeth were soon chattering noisily.
“What happened to your fur coat?” Nimrod asked him.
“Went up in smoke last night,” said Groanin. “Like the rest of me clothes.”
“Here,” said Nimrod, taking off his fur coat. “Have mine. After all that Falernian wine last night I don’t really need it now. I feel as warm as hot, buttered toast.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Groanin to whom hot, buttered toast seemed like the nicest thing in the world and certainly nicer than Falernian wine.
As soon as they saw Mr. Burton again, the fakir surprised them all by standing up. Then, leaving his precarious little platform, he stepped barefoot onto the flying carpet.
“I’ve been thinking about your problem,” he said. “And I’ve come to the conclusion that you have urgent need of my help. Perhaps more urgently than you might have thought. But first I must tell you a story by way of an explanation.”
Mr. Burton sat down in front of Nimrod, tugged his beard thoughtfully for a moment, and then started to speak:
“Ayodhya is an ancient city of India in the Faizabad district. Not a bad place. I spent six months there on a bed of nails after leaving the service of Mr. Rakshasas. It is one of the six holiest cities in India, and a city made by gods. Or so the people believe. Many centuries ago, there lived in the city a great Tirthankar, which is a kind of holy man. This holy man was so enlightened and full of wisdom that he had achieved perfect knowledge. Which is to say that he knew absolutely everything.”
“How is that possible?” asked Philippa.
“It was easier then than perhaps it is today,” admitted Mr. Burton. “After all, there used to be so much less to know than there is nowadays. But even so, it is certain that the Tirthankar had learned the five great secrets of the universe.”
“Five?” Groanin looked doubtful. “Only five? Somehow I thought there’d be more.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Burton. “Five. Five great secrets. About the meaning of everything. Anyway, sensing that he would soon die, for the Tirthankar was very old, which is how great wisdom is achieved, and in order that these great secrets should not be lost to mankind forever, he summoned ten very adept fakirs to his presence. Proper fakirs, not fakirs like me, nor these mendicant fakirs whom you spoke of earlier. These were proper Indian holy men, who were known for their extraordinary powers of self-denial and endurance. The Tirthankar entrusted each fakir with one of the five secrets of the universe. In other words, each secret was entrusted twice, for the sake of safety.
“All ten fakirs volunteered to go to the four corners of the earth and be buried alive, so that one day, when the world might have need of true enlightenment, the fakirs might come forth from the ground at an auspicious moment and provide the answer to one of these great mysteries.”
“Buried alive?” exclaimed Moo. “But surely a man would die.”
“And surely it would have been easier to write the secrets down on a piece of paper,” objected Groanin.
“Paper can be stolen and read by anyone,” said Mr. Burton. “Better to have men who could be trusted. Special men. This is precisely why the Tirthankar enlisted the help of the fakirs. For only fakirs have sufficient control over their bodies so as to be able to do without air, food, and water for many years. And, in this case, for many centuries.”
“Well, I’ve heard of such men,” admi
tted Moo. “But I always thought these stories were nothing more than fairy stories and exaggerations.”
“They are, if you ask me,” said Groanin. “No man can do without food and water, let alone air, for centuries. I certainly couldn’t.”
Ignoring the butler — which was easy for Mr. Burton, for he had once been a butler himself — Mr. Burton continued his tale: “Each fakir was accompanied by a dasa — a servant. The servant and his descendants were supposed to guard the secret of the fakir’s burial place and be there to serve him whenever the fakir judged that the time was right for him to return. He would somehow respond to vibrations in the atmosphere, to a feeling of general bad luck or peril. Whereupon he would conclude that the earth had need of one of the answers to one of the great mysteries and then come up from his secret burial place, whereupon the dasa would help him apply the secret to the benefit of humankind.”
“These mysteries of the universe,” said Nimrod. “What sort of mysteries are we talking about? And how many remain to be revealed?”
“I’m very glad you asked me that,” said Mr. Burton. “As far as I know four of the original ten fakirs have been resurrected over the centuries. But no one knows how many of the great mysteries have yet to be discovered. The mathematics of it would indicate at least one. But I am certain that the most recent revelation was at the beginning of the twentieth century, when one of these fakirs was accidentally uncovered by the Lahore earthquake. The next month Einstein came up with his theory of special relativity.”
“Einstein?” said Philippa. “What’s he got to do with this?”
“What happened was this,” said Mr. Burton. “The dasa in Lahore and his descendants had long died out, which left the fakir of Lahore with something of a dilemma. He had a great secret to reveal but no one who could understand it. So he went to Europe. To Switzerland. And sensing he did not have long to live, because he was several hundred years old, he thought he might record his secret as a patent.”