Day of the Djinn Warriors

by P. B. Kerr

  “You mean the person whose bones these are?” said Philippa.

  “Exactly so,” said Nimrod.

  “You’re kidding,” said Finlay. “A few lousy numbers can do all that?”

  “On the contrary,” said Nimrod. “Numbers are the basis of all matter. And therefore the basis of all mind over matter, too.”

  “It would certainly explain why the Jade Book mentioned Mark’s bones specifically,” said John.

  “Indeed, it would,” agreed Nimrod.

  “But who is this Mark if it’s not St. Mark?” asked Philippa.

  “1320, Venice, China,” said Nimrod. “Can’t you guess? Goodness, what do they teach you in schools these days?”

  Sister Cristina was winding up her telephone call.

  “The question is,” said Nimrod, “by what subterfuge are we to listen to the messenger without dear old Sister Cristina seeing him, too? It could prove to be a bit of a shock for her. She might even be frightened. It’s not every day you get a message delivered by someone who’s been dead for almost seven hundred years.”

  “Why not just zap her somewhere else?” said Finlay. “You’re a djinn, after all.”

  “At her age?” said Nimrod. “I think not.”

  “How about one of us takes your cell phone outside,” said John. “And then telephones her in here to say there’s an urgent package for her at the front door. It takes fifteen minutes to get up here. There and back. She could be gone for as long as thirty minutes. More than enough time.”

  Nimrod bit his lip. “I dislike putting an old lady to the kind of effort you describe, John,” he said. “However, I can see no practical alternative that does not involve the use of djinn power.”

  “She does seem to be very fit,” added Philippa, by way of an excuse for what they were contemplating.

  “I suppose it had better be me that makes the call,” said Nimrod, “since I speak Italian.”

  Sister Cristina finished her call. “Now then,” she said. “Where was I?”

  Nimrod smiled at her politely. “Would you excuse me for one minute?”

  He left the room and a minute later the telephone rang in the reliquary. Sister Cristina answered it, listened, made a loud tutting noise, spoke crossly in Italian, and then put the phone down. Nimrod came back into the room looking more than a little guilty, but Sister Cristina did not suspect that he was behind the telephone call; and, having excused herself “for as long as it takes me to go all the way down there and come back up again,” she went out of the room, leaving Nimrod, Philippa, and Finlay/John alone with the brass chest of bones.

  “Anyone got a stick of chalk?” asked Nimrod.

  No one did, and so Nimrod used djinn power to make a piece appear in his hand. With this, he got down on his hands and knees and set about drawing the magic square of China on the stone floor of St. Mark’s reliquary.

  First, Nimrod drew a grid of thirty-six squares, which left Philippa feeling very impressed that her uncle was so good at drawing perfect straight lines. “Actually, it’s a gift that all djinn are born with,” murmured Nimrod. “The ability to draw perfectly straight lines and perfect circles. Much more difficult than you’d think. It’s something humans can’t do at all.”

  “Very useful, I imagine,” said Finlay, and made a face.

  “I suppose I had better make this quite a large square,” said Nimrod, “given that each square is going to have five or six bones in it.”

  When the grid was completed, he started to fill in the numbers, from one to thirty-six, starting with twenty-seven in the bottom left-hand corner, and ending with ten in the top right-hand corner. “Of course, from a mathematical point of view, the interesting thing about the magic square,” said Nimrod, “is that no matter what direction you go in — horizontal, vertical, diagonal — each line of numbers adds up to exactly one hundred and eleven.” He stood up, wiped the chalk dust from his hands, and stood back to admire his handiwork. “There, I’ve finished.”

  “It doesn’t look very magical to me,” observed John.

  “That’s because you look but you don’t you see,” said Nimrod.

  “I’ve noticed something,” said Philippa. “With each line equalling exactly one hundred and eleven, that means all of the numbers in the square add up to six hundred and sixty-six.”

  “That’s right,” said Nimrod. “Well done, Philippa.”

  “Whoaa,” said Finlay. “Isn’t that the number of the beast? Something evil, anyway?”

  “True, but there’s nothing necessarily evil about a number, Finlay,” said Nimrod. “Or good, for that matter. The Chinese consider the number six-six-six to be one of the luckiest of all numbers. It’s how you use the number that matters. Six-six-six is what mathematicians call an abundant number. It’s a triangular number. It’s also a cardinal number. And an ordinal number. Six hundred and sixty-six is also the sum of the squares of the first seven prime numbers.”

  “Fascinating,” said Finlay. He wasn’t sure exactly what a prime number was, only that they had studied it at school.

  “A prime number is a number that’s only divisible by itself and one,” John told him.

  “I know what a prime number is,” insisted Finlay.

  “No, you didn’t,” said John. “Not until I told you just now.”

  “Listen,” said Finlay, “if you’re going to remain as a guest in my body, I think you ought to stop reading my mind, don’t you?”

  “I’d like to,” said John. “Only it’s not so easy, as you know only too well.”

  “Yeah, all right,” admitted Finlay. “Sorry.”

  Nimrod was still talking about the number 666 and how if you wrote it out as the Roman numeral DCLXVI, it would use all of the Roman numeral symbols under one thousand and in reverse order of their respective values: D = 500, C = 100, L=50, X=10, V=5, and I=1.

  “There’s something else I’ve noticed,” said Philippa. “There are exactly eighteen pairs of numbers that add up to the number thirty-seven.”

  “So what?” said John.

  But Nimrod was nodding with enthusiasm. “Excellent, Philippa,” he said. “And?”

  She shrugged. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Not to me,” said Finlay.

  “Me, neither,” admitted John. “I’m still trying to remember who was alive in 1320.”

  “Eighteen times thirty-seven is six hundred and sixty-six,” said Philippa. She grinned, pleased at her discovery. “Hey, no wonder they call this the magic square.” Philippa picked up what looked like a leg bone — the femur — and handed it to Finlay. “There’s a number from one to thirty-six on each one,” she said. “This one is number twenty-seven.”

  Finlay laid the bone so that the end rested in the center of the bottom left-hand square.

  About halfway through their placing the bones on the magic square, Nimrod said, “I hope this works. Sister Cristina said there are only two hundred and five bones in this box. But a complete human skeleton should have two hundred and six.”

  “I guess it all depends on which bone is missing,” said John.

  Philippa handed Nimrod the skull, which he placed carefully on box number one, next to a handful of vertebrae.

  “This is like some weird kind of game show,” said John. “We have to guess who it is before the skeleton reassembles.”

  “Even if it does reassemble,” said Finlay, “I don’t see how it’s going to talk without muscles and a tongue and all the rest of it.”

  “Fortunately for us this is a magic square,” said Nimrod, “and not the Times crossword puzzle.”

  Philippa emptied a little numbered silk bag of tiny bones, each of them smaller than her fingernail, into the palm of her hand. “Are these chips off one of the bigger ones?” she asked.

  “Those will be the bones from the inner ear,” said Nimrod. “There are three in each ear: the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup.” He laid them carefully in box number one, as directed by Philippa, who g
lanced inside the brass chest and declared that the box was now empty.

  “That’s the last of them,” she declared. “Two hundred and five. Just as Sister Cristina said there were.”

  They stood up and stepped back from the magic square.

  “Now what?” said Philippa.

  “I don’t know,” said Nimrod. “We’re missing something. Perhaps that missing bone.”

  “Like I said,” said Finlay. “It doesn’t look very magical.”

  “Actually, I think I said that,” said John.

  “Yes, you did,” admitted Finlay. “But you were using my mouth.”

  “I’ll be glad to get back into my own body,” said John. “Right now I feel like a square peg in a round hole.”

  “What’s that you said?” Nimrod asked John.

  “I said I’m a square peg in a round hole.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Nimrod. He knelt down by the brass box and, bringing a magnifying glass out of his pocket, examined the design on the lid more closely. A minute passed; he shook his head and sighed. “Nothing,” he said. “I don’t understand. I was sure that must be it.”

  “What?” said Philippa.

  “Squaring the circle,” said Nimrod. “A problem posed by ancient geometers.”

  “Here,” said John. “Let me take a look.”

  He looked and, like Nimrod, saw nothing. But just then the Venetian sun appeared directly in front of the reliquary window, throwing a strong beam of light into the room, which reflected brightly on the brass box that had contained the bones. And, momentarily bored, John and Finlay amused themselves by focusing the sunbeam on the lid of the box using Nimrod’s magnifying glass. Gradually, a smell of burning filled the air. A cloud of smoke appeared on top of the box and a thin rivulet of melted wax ran down the metal lid, and onto the floor.

  “Hey, look at this,” said John. “There’s something else on the lid of this chest.”

  “Well done, John,” said Nimrod, and wiped away the remains of the melted wax with his handkerchief. “Not all the wax was chased off when this was engraved,” he said, and lifted the brass lid a little so that it caught more of the light. “Look. It’s exactly as I thought. There’s a circle all around the square except the four corners. Our design on the floor here is not yet complete.”

  He picked up his chalk and stood over the square. “The question is, how accurate does this circle have to be? Strictly speaking, the area of the circle that lies outside the square would have to be exactly equal to the area of the square that lies outside the circle. Normally, I wouldn’t attempt this without a set of compasses and a pocket calculator.” He started to draw. “However, time is of the essence.”

  Nimrod continued drawing his circle. “In this way people like Leonardo da Vinci attempted to depict two things: the material or worldly existence in the square, and the spiritual existence inside the circle.” Closing the circle, he stood up. “There, that should do it. Better stand back, children.”

  Almost as soon as he had finished drawing the circle around the square, several remarkable things happened. First, the numbers all disappeared; then it was as if the squares retreated into the floor, one by one, as if pressed down like the keys on a typewriter by some unseen giant finger. The bones remained immobile for a moment and then began to smoke as if heated, until the smoke partially concealed the fact that the bones were reassembling themselves. But gradually, the smoke cleared to reveal a man lying on the floor, with his arms and legs outstretched in a spread-eagle position. Philippa remembered the famous Leonardo da Vinci drawing, which she supposed Nimrod had been talking about: It was the same drawing on the front of her school biology textbook. Except that this man was wearing the clothes of an early fourteenth-century Italian, and quite a rich one if his silks and the fur collar on his coat were anything to go by. He sat up and tried to get up off the floor but he was old and, seeing that he was having some difficulties in standing, John went to help him.

  “No,” said the man sharply. “Don’t touch me. For I am not yet quite myself.” Moderating his tone a little, and standing finally, he added with a groan, “It’s best you don’t touch me, my boy. My present condition might cause you some injury.” He straightened, stretched a bit, let out a breath, and nodded with some satisfaction as he looked around the room. He was not a ghost, but a real, living man, although there was something in his face that could best be described as supernatural. Aged about seventy years old, he had a thick beard and a kind face. He smiled uncertainly at Finlay/John, and then at Nimrod and Philippa. Sniffing the air, he nodded again. “We are in Venice, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Nimrod.

  “That smell,” said the man. “It’s quite unmistakable. There’s nowhere quite like Venice.”

  “I quite agree,” said Nimrod. “Permit me to introduce myself, esteemed sir. My name is Nimrod. This is my niece, Philippa, and her friend, Finlay. Finlay’s body is also a temporary home to my nephew, John.”

  The man bowed gravely.

  “Children, it’s my honor and my pleasure to introduce you to the most famous explorer of all time,” he continued. “Philippa, Finlay, John. This is the great Marco Polo.”

  CHAPTER 20

  THE NUMBERS

  Have you seen these audience numbers?” Adam Apollonius was waving a sheet of paper as he walked into Jonathan Tarot’s rooftop suite at the Cimento dell’ Armonia Hotel in New York. “They’re just amazing.”

  It was eleven o’clock in the morning but Jonathan was still in bed. The great thing about his new life was that no one ever told him to get up in the morning or to have a shower or to wear a clean T-shirt or how much he should eat at breakfast. He went to bed late, watched TV in his room, and ordered whatever he wanted from room service. He even had his own limousine and driver parked outside. Not that he really went anywhere these days. He was much too famous to walk around the streets of New York. For one thing, he was nearly always on TV. And for another, posters bearing his picture were everywhere. So instead he had a personal assistant named Julian whose job it was to go and buy whatever he wanted from a store: CDs, magazines, candy, DVDs, clothes, sneakers. Most of the stuff he got he wore just once and then threw away. His mother would have been appalled at the waste of it. Which was one of the reasons why he did it, of course.

  “What’s an audience number?” asked Jonathan.

  “A rating,” said Apollonius. “That’s the number of people who watched your last TV show. There are about a hundred and ten million TV homes in the USA. You got a forty-one percent audience share. One hundred and forty-three million fans. It’s incredible. Every kid in America must have watched that show. The advertisers are deliriously happy. You’re the biggest thing since Elvis. They want another special, ASAP.”

  Jonathan yawned. When people started talking percentages, it reminded him of school and usually that made him want to reach for a bagel, pizza, or a muffin — something to throw at them, anyway. Sometimes he did throw things at people. Since becoming a big TV star, Jonathan had become much less tolerant of mundanes and their stupid, boring conversation. He threw a lot of pizza at the people who worked for him. But Adam Apollonius was different. Jonathan always treated him with courtesy and never threw pizza at him. Not even when he was being boring, like now. There was something about the man that commanded Jonathan’s respect. Of course, he remained blissfully ignorant of his new friend and mentor’s true identity; but, perhaps, there was some small subconscious part of Dybbuk that recognized his own kind, not to mention his natural father, Iblis.

  “Now we can start making some serious money,” said Apollonius. “And I mean serious. Like millions of dollars.”

  Money didn’t interest Jonathan very much and he tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle another yawn. Money mattered a great deal to mundanes, of course, and so he was hardly surprised that Apollonius talked about it all the time. In this respect at least he seemed just the same as any other mundane.

  “Like it or not, kid, mo
ney’s what this racket is all about,” said Apollonius. “Like the song says, it’s what makes the world go around.”

  Of course, Iblis didn’t believe that for a moment, and he wasn’t interested in money any more than Jonathan/Dybbuk. But for the purposes of his plan, and the manipulation of Dybbuk that lay at the heart of this plan, it was still necessary to pretend that he was.

  “Now then. For the next TV special, I was thinking maybe we could go for some kind of mass audience participation. Like everyone bending a spoon using mind over matter.”

  “Spoon bending?” Jonathan sneered. “Everyone’s seen it before. And it sucks.”

  “Something else then,” Apollonius said, cleverly letting Jonathan think he was going to have to come up with the idea.

  “Like what?”

  “I dunno. You’re the genius here, not me. But it ought to be something that kids have to pay money for, of course.”

  “Like what?” asked Jonathan, mildly intrigued.

  “I was thinking that, maybe, we could get them to buy a simple Chinese magic square,” said Apollonius. “A simple sheet of plastic with some numbers on it. At a dollar a time, that would make maybe seventy or eighty million dollars. It would only cost us a few cents to manufacture. They lay it on the floor and then sit in one of the squares, inside number four — that’s an important number — and then they all focus their minds to help you perform the most amazing feat of magic ever seen. How does that sound?”

  “Better than bending a spoon,” said Jonathan.

  “I just said spoon bending as an example,” said Apollonius. “But your idea is much better.”

  “My idea?”

  “Mass mind over matter.”

  Jonathan nodded. “How about this? I could disappear,” he said. “Live. On TV. Without any props.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”