Jenna backed out, waited for two trucks to go by, then pulled back out onto the highway. “Is my first lesson knowing when to run away?”
“Damn straight it is.” Dom turned his head and looked back, one last check for stray numbers. “I still don’t know the name of that woman, but I do know that I don’t want to take her on face-to-face, especially not right now.”
“That would be your second lesson,” said Billy, sounding dry. “Never attack a problem straight on when you can sneak around the back way.”
Jenna did a slight double-take, looking at Dom for a few seconds before the road twisted and forced her attention back to driving. “Right. You told me your name is Billy, shadow guy. Let’s make that my third lesson. Exactly who or what are you?”
Dom felt his shoulders shrug. It was a gesture he didn’t often make, but it seemed that his new adjunct liked to use it quite regularly. “My name’s Billy. I don’t know much else about myself, except that I’ve probably been dead for at least a hundred years, probably more.”
Jenna gasped, but kept her attention on the road. “I’d say you were feeding me a line, but maybe those screaming numbers have opened my mind a bit.”
“Dead is a relative term,” continued Billy. “This form of immortality takes an odd shape, I know, and is tenuous at best; I thus partake in a search for the means to make this a permanent state, one that would also return to me a corporeal form.” He grinned. “I’m also constantly searching, with the aid of whoever is my current host, to find clues to my lost past.”
“Corporeal form would mean your own body, right?” asked Jenna. “Would this be like something out of a horror movie, where you take over someone else’s body?” She looked pointedly over at Dom.
“Not at all. Dom is only my most recent host. My experience can be useful to him, as his body is to me. But our goal is essentially a common one.”
“You both want to live forever?”
Dom shook his head. “Later on in the learning curve, Jenna. As it is right now, everything Billy says about his history is as new to me as it is to you. Okay?”
Jenna nodded. “Not like I really have a choice.”
“Shall I continue then?” asked Billy. “Or is my storytelling ability not so captivating?”
Jenna slowed down and inched over towards the shoulder to make sure that an oncoming tractor-trailer would go by without sideswiping the car. “Sorry. Go on.”
“Secrets for the numerate have been handed down, often somewhat begrudgingly, over the centuries, perhaps even over millennia. Numeracy is the life-blood of power for a lucky few, and the ability to find the items—what numerates like Dom these days call the mojo—that help contain and build that power, is one of the biggest factors in how successful you are.
“An even greater power, and one that most numerates are never able to develop, is the ability to fashion mojo that can hold your numerical shadow.”
“Shadow?”
“Essence, if you like.”
“What, like a soul?” Jenna made a rather sour face. “I had to put up with enough of that crap when I was little and forced to go to church.”
Dom shrugged and said, “I know, it all sounds like goofy metaphysical shit. Don’t think of it as a soul, though. From what I’ve read, template might be a better word. Or avatar. But ‘shadow’ is what most of us use, or else ‘adjunct.’ Sometimes ‘co-opt,’ as well, but that isn’t as common a term.”
Now Billy nodded. “This much I know: a long time ago, when I was still alive, I set my life’s essence into something of numerical significance. But somehow something went wrong with what I laid out, or perhaps something happened later on, during a transfer from one host to another. I remember enough to know some of my name, and I still retain my numerate abilities, even though those of my host will always supersede them.” He rolled down the window and leaned back, let the mountain air, cooler by far than the heat in Logan, wash over his face.
“The numbers that I put in place did their duty, although it still took a long time for my first host to find it and to unlock the secret. So long, in fact, that we wasted some time while I learned to handle new slang and vernacular. I can only imagine the difficulties Napier might have had with Archimedes.”
Dom sat bolt upright, eyes open. “Holy shit! John Napier hosted Archimedes?”
Billy shrugged Dom’s shoulders again. “I think so.” Suddenly he smiled and slapped Dom’s knee. “By damn, a memory! A previous host and I were acquainted with someone who knew someone, if you understand what I mean. From what we gathered, all the evidence seemed to point to his hosting the Greek.” He scratched his chin, thinking for a moment longer. “I wonder if the shock of joining up with you has unearthed any other old memories.”
“I’ve heard of Archimedes,” interrupted Jenna. “But who was John Napier?”
“He was a Scottish mathematician and inventor,” replied Dom. “He’s one of two men who separately invented logarithms. There have always been whispers that he managed to leave his shadow in all sorts of artefacts, although I’ve seen no sign that he’s actually been brought forth. I think the gal who’s after us might have been able to lay her hands on one of the artefacts. I’m pretty sure, even.”
“And so you were, what, trying to steal it from her?”
Dom grinned. “If I’d known she was there, then damn straight. She could either cough it up happily, unlikely in the best of circumstances, or with a fight. She wasn’t the reason I was down there in the first place, but the shit storm that came out of my trip to the desert is why Billy and me are together like this, and why this woman is now on my ass instead.”
They had left the canyon behind some time ago, although the mountains still surrounded them, although at more of a distance. Now they were coming out of trees after having crested the top of the pass. Jenna signalled and pulled into a viewpoint overlooking a big lake, a gorgeous blue that reminded Dom of pictures he’d seen of the Mediterranean. Dozens of sailboats dotted the lake, and cabins were spread across the brown, desiccated hills that led down to the water. “Judging by what happened back in Logan, she was a little too much for you.”
Dom climbed out of the car and pushed hard against its roof, stretched his back and legs. “I was sitting in your hometown without any of my own mojo,” he said to Jenna as she also got out of the car. “I took a bad hit when I was hunting for my quarry, but that’s because I got backlash from a fight between two experienced and powerful numerates, both of whom were hosting pretty powerful shadows. That’s a lot to fend off when you’re caught by surprise.”
Jenna pointed down to the water. “That’s Bear Lake down there. The left side is north. About one-third of it is in Idaho, the rest still in Utah. If we go south around the lake and then over those hills,” she pointed to brown hills on the other side of the water, “we’ll end up in Wyoming. You need to tell me now where we’re going.”
Dom scratched his head, thinking. In the meantime, Billy asked, “Is there anyone you need to tell that you’ve left home?”
“I’ll phone my roommate and tell her she can keep all my stuff. My Dad died a couple of years ago, and I gave up on the church when I was a teen, so I tend not to have contact with any other relatives.” She shook her head. “So the short answer is no, there’s no one out there that really cares.”
“Can we get lunch down the hill?” asked Dom. When Jenna nodded, he said, “Great. We’ll do that first, and then on to Bozeman.” They got back in the car. “The university there has a mathematical sciences department, and when I last visited a couple years ago I found something in the library that no one had cottoned onto yet. As long as the protections I laid out are fine, it should still be where I left it. Plus, I have a little stash there, some mojo safe for pickup in case of emergency.”
Jenna steered them back onto the highway and started down the long twisty path that led to the lake. Dozens of cabins peppered the dry scrub and grass that covered the hills; she slowed down to t
ake a good curve on a steep portion, and six Harleys thundered by from behind, the last one leaning back into their lane just ahead of an approaching SUV.
Dom pulled the baseball from his pocket and looked at it, worried that the backlash may have even travelled as far as Bozeman, maybe further, wiping out any hope he had of protecting himself. Staring out the window, he started to flip the ball in the air, giving it a backhand spin and then catching it with a small downward swipe of his hand.
Anyone with the slightest awareness of the provenance of the ball would have a conniption, seeing him do this with it. It was Mark McGwire’s sixty-first home run ball, hit on the day McGwire’s father had turned sixty-one. Mojo enough, but the fact that Roger Maris had hit his own sixty-one in 1961 added that much more to its power. He hadn’t known for sure that the ball was going to be hit that day, but the numbers available made the time spent well worth it. Harder still was getting it in contact with McGwire and his father that day, while their numerate mojo still raged from the fantastic series of coincidences, but he had managed, fighting through crowds of fans and reporters and security and lawyers and agents, fending them off with previously prepared formulae, holing out a path through everyone and then calling forth their mutual mojos, tied together by virtue of family and proximity, only a few hours shy of their peak.
The ball had been one of his strongest artefacts, a confluence of dates and times and numerical events that so rarely happened. And he had been the one to get it done, had beaten four other numerates that he’d known of, perhaps even frightened off others, smaller players in a big game of numbers.
He’d gone through much the same with number 62, which had the advantage of being hit on 9/8/98. That one, not quite as powerful, was stored in a safe deposit box in Edmonton. But it was better than what he was holding in his hand right now, the backlash having made it completely worthless, just so much seared leather and rubber, all of its mojo lost doing its job. Which was good, he knew, but it still hurt to lose something this powerful.
He leaned out and tossed the ball into the scrub on the side of the road. Maybe some kid from one of these cabins would find it and use it as intended, to toss and catch and hit.
4
Lunch was a burger and fries and an excellent raspberry milkshake at a little joint on the side of the road, sitting on picnic tables in the shade of trees that seemed barely capable of defying the heat. Dom paid for the food as well as gas for the car from his thick roll of bills. Then, after stocking up on junk food and drinks for the long drive, Jenna grabbed some change and ran over to the pay phone.
“Time for lesson two,” said Dom, jogging up behind her. “First off, I’m glad to see you’re not using a mobile phone. Those things are easy for everyone to track, numerates and analogs alike. Second, for the pay phone, something with numbers like this, you should never have to pay. That, plus we don’t want any trail showing where we’ve been, just in case we’re still being hunted. Any change you use will light up like fireworks at night to the right kind of eye.”
She put her hands on her hips. “So what do I do?”
Dom frowned, sticking his tongue slightly out of his mouth while he thought. It was an outside phone, which meant that numbers didn’t stick around long enough for lifting. Not that pay phones were that easy for it these days, with everyone using mobiles instead. Eventually these things were probably bound to go extinct.
“Look here. See this number?” He tapped the phone number on the little label sitting above the keypad.
Jenna leaned forward, squinting. Obviously her glasses weren’t just cosmetic. “946-8668.”
“Right on. So what you need to do now is concentrate real hard, see if a pattern emerges from that.”
“W-e-ll,” she said, drawing out the word, “8668 is a pattern, right?”
Dom nodded. “And one a child could see. Instead, you need to look for the numbers you’ve been seeing since you were a kid, look for how those relate to the entire number that’s on here.”
Frowning, Jenna crossed her arms and stared hard at the numbers. Then her face lit up. “Oh! I see something!”
“And?”
She frowned again. “No, I don’t. I thought I saw a cube root in there, but I was wrong.”
“You’re still thinking along elementary lines,” said Dom. “Don’t look so hard for conventional formulae; rather, just see what the numbers can do for you. Watch them, stroke them, make them come out. Hell, do you think I went to university and studied math and even learned how to write and read a formula of any type?” He shook his head. “And I may be talking out of school here, but it’s a good possibility that Billy here was anything but a mathematician.”
“You’re probably right,” responded Billy.
Jenna looked up, watched a passenger jet cutting across the sky high overhead. “I see circles,” she said. “Triangles, other shapes. Some numbers are squeezing their way in, filling gaps between them.”
“Good,” said Dom. “From what I’ve heard, it works, or at least looks, different for everybody who does it. Does it seem complete?”
She looked back at the phone, waved a finger in the air and whispered to herself. “They don’t want to cooperate,” she said, frowning. She reached out a hand, and Dom watched as a small cloud of numbers tried to break away from her, but with an effort she managed to get them under control. “Okay. Got them. I’ve just added my home phone number. Wow!” She broke into a huge smile. “Everything just fell into place!”
Dom frowned. The numbers were still bouncing in the air around Jenna, but seemed to be doing their level best to keep away from her. But he nodded his head and said, “One more thing to add, then. Pick up the phone and punch in whatever numbers work with the pattern you just made. Then add a series of eleven primes, starting with . . .”
“Seventeen,” said Billy.
“Seventeen. And jump two when you get to the fifth and the seventh.”
Jenna screwed up her face, concentrating. Then she punched in a bunch of numbers, finishing off with the set of primes, the last one seventy-three. This last number Dom seemed to see from her eyes, one blink there and one blink back in his own body. “It’s ringing!” she said.
Dom shook off the momentary shift and smiled at Jenna. “You did good,” he said. “Elegant, actually, for someone who’s just starting.”
She pointed at the phone and whispered, “There’s no one home.” After pausing a few seconds, she started to speak. “Cindy, it’s Jenna. No time to explain, honey, but I’m leaving town. I don’t know how long. You can keep my stuff if you want, or give it to Deseret Industries, or sell it to help with the rent. Sorry to leave you in a lurch like this. I’ll call when I can. Love you. Bye.” She hung up. “Answering machine.”
Almost immediately, the phone rang. Startled, Jenna reached for it.
“Don’t pick it up!” yelled Dom, voice sounding of panic. He reached out and grabbed her hand.
It rang again. Jenna looked at Dom, fear in her eyes. He didn’t feel too good himself.
There was a riff he knew from a Charlie Mingus piece. With phones like they were nowadays, playing music on the keypad was just one note, although if you had a good beat, and remembered where the notes used to be on earlier telephones, then the tune could do the job. He started to play the riff before he picked up the handset, hoping that it would be enough to keep prying eyes from finding him.
“Yeah?” Beep-beep-a-beep-beep.
The voice was quiet, a woman’s voice, hoarse, and the beeping of the Mingus tune did nothing to tune it out of his head. “I don’t know who you are, boy, but believe me, I’ll find you.”
Beep-a-beep-a-beep-beep-a-beep.
“We’ll find you,” said another voice, a male voice—how the hell did that work? His accent was different from Billy’s, but definitely present.
“And after you’re dead, we’ll strip your body of all its mojo and wave an ever-so-sorrowful goodbye as your shadow fractions away.” The wo
man’s voice again, soft and deadly but still hoarse, almost strangled, raising goose bumps on his neck and arms.
“You won’t catch me by surprise again, bitch!” said Dom, showing more grit than he felt. Beep-a-beep-a-beep-a-beep-beep-beep. “In the meantime, wipe away a little tear over the fact that you couldn’t even get me when I was stripped to the bone.” He slammed down the phone, hands shaking, then with a yell pulled the handset from the box, threw it to the ground, where it clattered across the pavement, metal cord and wires dragging behind.
“Fuck!” he yelled. He ran over and kicked the handset across the pavement. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”
Jenna ran over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Dom, hush. There are people watching!”
Dom pushed her hand away and marched back to the car, Jenna in pursuit. “I don’t give a rat’s ass. Let’s get the hell out of this state; I need to be on the open road and well away from that freak.” Before climbing in he leaned over the back and gave the numbers on the license plate a quick swipe, glaring at the strangers watching as he did so. Everyone turned their gazes elsewhere when he was done.
“How did she find us?” asked Jenna, once they were back on the highway headed north.
“She didn’t,” answered Billy. “She must have gotten the scent of you and figured out where you lived, but the best she could do was introduce a formula to dial back; there’s no way it could have told her where we were, though. Not that fast.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
Dom laughed, a short, bitter sound. “So we can hope. In the meantime, we worry about just how strong this person is.”
“But you told her back there,” said Jenna, glancing over at him. “The only reason she almost caught you was because you didn’t have anything with you.”
Eyes closed, Dom leaned his head back against the seat. “It’s looking like this person is capable of shit I can only dream of, Jenna. I’d say we were lucky to get out. Lucky you showed up and had a car.”
“We were hunting the same thing she was,” continued Billy, “Dom by himself and me with my earlier host, and she was faster off the mark, seems to have found what we were all after.” He cocked open his left eye and looked over at her. “And now she’s hunting us.”
Napier's Bones Page 3