“And,” added Dom, “probably the most important one, or at least so I have been led to understand, would be numbers from artefacts.”
“As I was going to say,” said Billy. “When someone finds an artefact, it isn’t just a matter of standing there and hoping it all works out. There are some rather devious numbers to ingest if you want to take advantage of what has been placed inside.”
“Okay, I get the point.” Jenna frowned, staring at the numbers as they spun about in a fidgety ball of Brownian motion. She reached forward and tried to grab them, but the ball broke apart, numbers spilling like black mercury from an invisible force field that surrounded her fingers. As soon as she removed her hand they re-congealed, picked up their orbits as if she had never been there to perturb them.
Feeling bewildered, Jenna pulled at the numbers again, and again they slid away. For more than a minute she worked on them, once even leaning forward and trying to gulp them down like a pelican sliding its lower beak through the water as it gathered up fish for its meal. Nothing worked, and the last move elicited some very strange looks from the waitress and the couple other patrons, as well as a stifled snort of laughter from Dom.
“Look for a way that works for you,” said Billy, obviously trying to avoid laughing as well. “The numbers don’t come to you, but you’ve proven to yourself and to us that you can interact with them.”
“How?” She said this with frustration in her voice, and hoped the look she gave Dom told him that it was partly to do with his laughing at her.
“Good question,” he responded. “How did you make that phone call happen, when we were still down in Utah? You can control the numbers, so just control them into your system. I think you had the right idea when you tried to get a mouthful there . . .” He paused to fend off another chuckle, and then carried on, carefully ignoring the glare she gave him. “You’ve controlled them doing other things for you, so now just ask them to enter your body.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Ask them?”
“Sure. Why not? Invite them on in.”
Jenna concentrated for a few seconds, staring hard at the spinning ball, and then, accepting the situation but irritated that she was having to do something so stupid, she said, “Numbers, please come in.”
Across the table she saw Dom look blank for a brief second, and then shake his head as if he’d blacked out for a second and just come too. But then the ball shimmied back and forth a few times, and broke into a thin stream, soared across the tiny space separating her from them, and melted into her, a brief darkness of numeracy covering her like a robe and hood before dissolving away and into her body.
She jumped and shrieked, her chair tumbling back and slamming into the empty table behind them before falling to the floor. Dom, looking shaken, even frightened, turned and looked briefly to the waitress, already on her way over, and waved her away, then stood and walked around the table, put a shaking hand on Jenna’s arm, and said, “Hold yourself together. Let me settle up, and we can discuss this more after we’ve left.”
She nodded, breathing hard and staring wildly at the spot above the table where the numbers had floated. Dom pulled some bills from his pocket, tossed enough on the table to cover a good thirty percent, then picked up the chair and set it back in place. He had one last swallow of beer and then he led Jenna out and onto the street. Behind them she could feel the eyes of the waitress, the other diners, even the cook, on her back.
“Did you do that?” asked Jenna, after they had walked in silence for a block.
Dom shook his head. “Not me. You, Billy?”
Once again, his head shook, this time controlled by the shadow. “Certainly not. Jenna, that was just your way of controlling the numbers.”
“But I’ve never done that before.”
“Which is why you’re with me. With us,” said Dom, correcting himself. “Remember, everyone has a different way of handling the numbers, just like everyone perceives them in a different fashion.” He rubbed his chin, obviously thinking. “Jenna, did you feel anything funny when you took in the numbers?”
She looked at him, right eyebrow raised. “Of course I did. That’s why I freaked out.”
Dom shook his head, and Billy asked, “Did it happen again, Dom?”
He nodded. “Just for a second or two.”
“Did what happen?” asked Jenna.
Dom stopped walking and looked at her. “You really didn’t feel anything?”
She gave him an exasperated look. “Of course, I felt something, I just told you. But the way you’re sounding, maybe I didn’t feel what you think I should have. So no, nothing beyond the weirdness of taking in the numbers like that. Tell me what you’re talking about.”
“A few times now, I’ve found myself looking at things from your eyes.”
“What, like a shadow, like Billy?”
“I don’t know, since I’ve never been one. All I know is I’ve been inside your body, and I don’t know how it happened.” He frowned, and they started walking again. “To be honest, at first I thought I was just hallucinating.”
“Each time it happened, Jenna was using, or trying to use, numbers,” said Billy. He spoke slowly, like he was thinking it out. But after a few seconds of silence he shrugged and said, “I see no answers. Not yet, anyhow.” They walked on in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.
12
The sidewalks were more crowded now, people off work and out on the town for the night. Many looked like university kids, numbers of exhaustion from papers and exams and too many late nights spilling from them as they sought solace and short-term energy from an even later night boozing it up in one of the many bars here. But there were also families, older people and couples, more buskers, and a fair number of bums, staggering from person to person, Pachinko ball-like action taking each one further down the sidewalk as they looked for a jackpot, most people brushing them off with a curt “No” or, even more likely, just ignoring them.
Except one. Jenna looked like she was about to say something, but Dom held up his hand for silence, watched as this man ricocheted from person to person, and each one he approached reached into a pocket and pulled out money to drop into his open hand, although it looked to Dom like none of those people were even paying attention to the fact that they were giving him money.
“What are you thinking?” asked Billy.
“Shh. Keep watching for a sec.”
By now the streetlights had flickered to life, doing nothing to add to the light already spilling onto the street from storefronts, but prepared nonetheless for when twilight finally faded enough to blacken the sky overhead.
The bum limped over to another person who was standing directly beneath one light, but instead of watching the interaction between the two of them Dom turned his gaze upwards, watched as the light flickered again, then went dark.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Billy.
“No shit,” said Dom. “He’s got something all right. Should we find out what it is?”
Billy nodded his head for him, and he turned to Jenna. “See that bum over there?” He pointed across the street. She nodded. “He’s numerate, but probably doesn’t know it. He’s also really fucked up, so we’ll have to be careful when we approach him.”
“Approach him?” He heard Jenna running to catch up, since he’d already headed off to the corner. The street was too busy to jaywalk; he could use numbers to help, but there was no trusting that drunken frat boys might be out and a little slower to react to numeracy, and he also didn’t think it was a good idea to advertise his presence to the person who was likely still on his tail, at least not until he knew he was prepared, and certainly not for something as minor as crossing the street.
The light changed and they crossed with the crowd, Dom keeping his chin up and watching for stray numbers from the bum. He could see by the guy’s wake that he’d gone further up the street away from them; another light had flickered out. This was a huge leak, and if he didn’t take
advantage of it now, someone else would be there to try and beat him to it.
Jenna stepped in front and turned to face him, walking backwards but making him slow his pace. “What are we doing?” Dom put his hand on her shoulder and spun her around, pointed up to the light directly above them. “See that?”
She looked up and nodded. “It’s burned out.”
“Not necessarily. There are some people who will make streetlights go out whenever they get close to them. They have a pretty strong in-built numeracy, but usually they don’t know it.” He took her hand and kept them walking, watching the bum’s progress; they were catching up, but slowly.
“That’s happened to me before,” said Jenna. “Maybe five, six times a year, I’ll be driving by a light and watch it as it goes out. Always the same light, on the way to my apartment from work.”
Dom nodded. “There’s a lot to figure out about you, like how the numbers don’t come into your body, but how you’re still able to have spillage like that.”
“Dom, you’re leaving me dry here. What the heck is spillage?”
They were closer now. The bum seemed to have decided he wanted nothing else to do with crowds, and had headed down an alley. Dom picked up his pace, dragging Jenna along with him. “Spillage is just that, a big leak of numbers. If someone is numerate but doesn’t know it, they lose their more powerful numbers, sometimes in a steady flow, sometimes in big splashes that happen in cycles. The big splashes will sometimes affect electrical things. Streetlights are prone to splashes, and usually it’s the same light, like it’s the one in the chain that is no longer immune, a sacrifice so that the others can continue to function.”
“This fellow,” said Billy, “seems to have shut down three lights just while we were watching him.” He pointed to a third that had gone out just at the entrance to the alley. “That’s an enormous spillage.”
They reached the alley, and Dom stopped, looked for any numbers floating around that were waiting as traps, but there was nothing. He could get the sense of the big splashes that had come from the bum, but they’d raced up and away faster than he would have expected, and strangely enough he was left with almost no numerical residue from the bum himself. It was almost as if he could cover himself up and hold it all inside, but then would have to let go frequent bursts of numbers. “Jesus,” he said. “Do you think it’s something he’s eaten? It’s like he’s farting, for God’s sake!”
“Swallowed the mojo?” Billy sounded sceptical. “It’s big enough to think it’s something he’s carrying, not just his latent ability, but I don’t know.”
Dom shrugged his shoulders. “Sounds stupid, yeah. But how the hell is he shutting down every light like that? No one leaks like that.”
They entered the alleyway, the only light spillover coming from shops and traffic out on the street. There were no more street lights now that they were here, so they couldn’t track his path that way, and there was still no numerical trail otherwise; Dom had never seen anything like this before.
Jenna clenched his arm now, pulled herself close to him. It was Billy who reached across and patted her hand, but neither of them said anything to her, or even looked in her direction. All of Dom’s concentration was going outwards, trying to figure out where this guy and his mojo had gone, since he sure as hell didn’t want a repeat of Utah.
“Hey!” The voice came from practically right beside Dom’s ear, and at the same time cold air blew up Dom’s pants legs. Jenna screeched and dug her nails into Dom’s arm, and between his own fright and Billy’s reaction, Dom was sure his heart was about to stop. He spun around, prepared to throw numbers in the guy’s face and run like hell.
There was no one there.
Someone shoved his back, hard enough to snap his head back, and again he turned, slipping on what felt like ice instead of stumbling on what should have been pavement. Still nobody there, and where the hell was this ice coming from? “What the fuck is happening?” He yelled this, scared and exasperated in equal measure. Jenna still clung to his arm, and when he yelled she hissed and squeezed even tighter.
“You have a ghost following you,” said the voice. Again he was hit from behind, this time dropping to his knees. “Hold still so I can check it away!” He was slammed again, his face pushed down and what really did feel like ice.
Right, though Dom. No fucking mojo on me, but I’m not taking this shit anymore. He stood back up, as quickly as possible reaching up into the sky with his mind, and pulled down an avalanche of numbers. It didn’t matter what the numbers were, where they’d come from, or how much attention they brought to him. He just knew he had to stop this now.
Incomplete sets, broken-down theorems, strings and individual numbers, primes and wholes and even some imaginary numbers, all crashed into the alley with a clatter and banging loud enough to wake the numerate dead, although it wouldn’t be more that a whisper of a breeze to the non-numerates out on the sidewalks and streets.
The numbers continued to pile up, some of them hitting with enough force to push him and Jenna around, others hopefully doing the same to his invisible attacker.
He wasn’t being harassed anymore, so he waved a hand and stopped the flow, let the numbers begin their journey back up and into the numerical ecology. Some sprang into the air with great energy, others were more sluggish, skittering or even just crawling along the pavement of the alley before finally finding enough juice to push themselves back into the air. There was a small cloud developing overhead, about roof height, where the weaker numbers congealed together as they searched for strength from each other.
But some numbers remained on the ground, and many of these danced and bounced in a ball around a huddled figure that was scrunched up close to a rusted out Toyota pickup. Dom pulled Jenna over to a wall well clear of the guy—he could see through the numbers that this was the bum—then half-slid, half-walked across the ice and pushed the remaining numbers away.
The guy looked up into Dom’s eyes, and he was shocked to note that the bum wasn’t much older than him. “What the fuck was that all about?” yelled Dom.
The bum squinted up at Dom, then raised a shaking hand and pointed to him. “There’s a ghost following you. I was trying to check it out of you.”
“Check it out of me? What the hell does that mean?”
The bum reached into a pocket and slowly pulled out a greasy, slightly torn and heavily wrinkled paper bag. Dom’s breath caught. Whatever was in the bag, as soon as it had come out of the bum’s pocket he could see the strength of the numbers spilling out of as well as back into it. Around them the ice melted away, fading from a solid to a vapour without bothering to make its normal middle stop as water. This was some serious mojo.
Dom crouched down, held up both hands and smiled, hoping to show that he was friendly. “The ghost is a friend of mine,” he said. “His name is Billy. Say hi, Billy.”
“Hello,” said Billy. Dom felt his smile stretch even wider. “What’s your name?”
The bum’s eyes were as big as saucers. “Martin,” he said, voice barely a whisper.
“I’m a friend, Martin,” said Billy. “I’m not the bad type of ghost that makes trouble for people. Dom here,” Dom smiled and raised his eyebrows, “is my friend, and I try to help him.”
“Who’s that?” Martin gestured over to the wall across the alley.
“That’s Jenna,” replied Dom. He turned and waved her over. She crossed to them cautiously, looking up to the numbers that still circled overhead, most of them a little higher and flying a bit stronger now.
“Jenna, this is Martin,” said Dom.
“Um. Hi, Martin.” She gave Dom a funny look, then turned back to the bum. “Martin, can we buy you supper some place?”
Martin was on his feet in a second, right hand still clenched around the paper bag and whatever it held. “I’m sorry about trying to check you away, Billy,” he said. “Where are we going to eat?”
Dom scratched his chin, smiling. “Well, we�
�ve already eaten, Martin, so we’ll just follow along. Your choice.”
“Big Mac, fries, large Coke.” He headed down the alley, Dom and Billy and Jenna hurrying to keep up.
More lights shut down as they walked, but whenever he turned to look back Dom could see them all slowly flickering back to life. Now that he could watch more closely, he saw that the spillage was indeed coming from Martin, and that whatever was in the bag was somehow focusing it; numbers would leak from the bum’s body, swirl around the paper bag like they were caught in a whirlpool, then get sucked into its folds. Then, every dozen paces or so, a congealed mass of them would streak up and out of the bag, ricochet off the light post overhead, enough scraping off from the impact to temporarily darken the light.
“You ever seen anything like that?” he whispered to Billy.
Billy shook Dom’s head. “Never. One likes to imagine that one has heard of all the mojo that has been out there, even if only in rumours, but of course that would involve a splash of hubris, would it not?”
“Are you being a wiseass with me?” asked Dom.
Now his head shook. “If so, then it was also directed at me,” said Billy. “I, too, have carried the belief that I knew everything I could possibly need to know, even if I didn’t know how to find it.”
They entered the McDonald’s, and Jenna took a table while Dom and Martin went to the counter to order. When the food came they joined Jenna, and for several minutes they just let Martin eat, the mojo in the bag sitting on the bench beside him.
Finally, Dom said, “I want to ask you again, Martin, what you meant when you said you wanted to check Billy out of me.”
Martin wiped some ketchup from his chin with his sleeve, then dipped another handful of fries in the ketchup and plunged it into his mouth. He chewed for a few seconds, swallowed, then said, “Push it out. Away.”
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