He grinned. “Yeah?” A day or two ago he would’ve been unable to follow through with where he thought this conversation was going, unwilling to deal with having Billy in his head and listening in. But having held Jenna in his arms for this past little while, he suddenly found that any concern had evaporated. She extricated herself, sat up and looked him in the eye. “I really like you,” she said. “Even though what you do and what you are seem to equate with being a thief, you seem to be a good guy. And you’ve been there for me.But . . .”
Dom felt his grin fall from his mouth. He didn’t want to hear the rest of this, he was pretty sure.
“I’m pretty freaked out by Billy being inside you,” she continued, after a brief pause, looking like she was collecting her thoughts. “I thought maybe I could get over it, but right now there are too many other things happening for me to even consider it.”
Realization struck Dom like an ice cold hammer and he could feel his face turn into a mask of distant acceptance, whether his own or Billy’s, he wasn’t sure. “I see.” Where the hell could he slink away and hide when he was stuck here on this goddamn flight with her?
She made a face. “I’m sorry. ‘Just friends’ is a lousy line to hear. But right now, friends is all I can do, all right? Even more now with the news about my mother.”
Dom scared up a smile, but his heart was pounding. And yet all his extremities were numb, as was his brain. “All right. Better than just sensei and grasshopper after everything we’ve been through, I guess.” She looked confused. “Teacher and student,” he clarified.
Jenna nodded, then leaned into him again. “I’m glad that’s taken care of,” she said, snuggling in close. “Now I can sleep.”
Dom stroked her hair, head leaned back, looking at the ceiling. On the screen on the seat rest in front of him a particularly bad movie played out in silence, punctuated by the occasional chuckles of those who were still awake and willing to be amused by such things. When her breathing turned to the steady rhythm of sleep, Billy said, “Not exactly what you were hoping for.”
Dom grunted. He’d been feeling sleep coming on as well, but obviously his physical state did not necessarily equate with the adjunct’s. “Does that mean you weren’t hoping?”
His shoulders shrugged, a movement which caused Jenna to stir and mumble. They waited, but she remained asleep. “I guess the best answer is that you have to remember that I’m a shadow, not the real thing. Yes, I—we—exist, partaking of the things that your body does, but that’s only because we are a part of you. Not a whole. An adjunct’s single goal is to find the artefact that will enable it, me, us, to return to a physical state. Back to life, where we can enjoy the discomfort of an erection that must go unattended.” Dom definitely heard a note of dry humour there.
“So you don’t need to eat, or if I do eat, you don’t get any satisfaction out of it?”
His head shook. “I know when you need to eat, sleep, piss, whatever. If I hadn’t, I never would have got you through the blackout period down in Utah. But it doesn’t affect me in any fashion. I can feel numbers, and the need to find a way to life. Sometimes that means that I have to leave a dying body and move on to a living one, and so I do.”
Dom laughed quietly. “You make it sound like you’re some kind of virus.”
Billy was silent for a few seconds. “I never thought of it that way before, but you know, it makes a strange sort of sense.”
“How so?”
“Well, think about how numerates go about discovering what’s out there for them to use. Sometimes, obviously, numbers will speak to a numerate in a way that leads them down a path of curiosity.”
“One that usually serves to fuck up any private lives they may have,” added Dom. Jenna had slid all the way down, and her head was now in his lap. He absentmindedly stroked her hair as they talked.
“Point taken. But then the numbers can only take the innocent newcomer so far, right?”
Dom nodded, watched as a flight attendant walked by to answer a call from somewhere behind him. The crappy movie was still playing.
“So think about it, Dom. How do you find out about mojo and artefacts that are out there?”
Dom frowned. “Read about them. Find clues in places. Sometimes I just know they’re going to be there, like the two McGwire home run balls.”
“Two?”
“Yeah. Never told you, but that’s the other one I grabbed in Edmonton. It’s not as powerful as the first, but that one got fried in the backlash in Utah.”
“Right. Well, back to artefacts. In lots of cases, you read about these things. Find them in libraries, antiquarian bookstores, places like that.”
“I do,” said Dom, nodding.
“So my question, then, is where do these clues come from? What causes them to show up in these books, in whatever sources they appear?”
Dom thought for a few seconds, but could only find the answer he’d always had. “People put them there. Numerates from the past, writing for future generations to see, proud of their discoveries, or maybe so that their own shadows can track them down decades or centuries later. Or non-numerates, just fascinated by a little piece of history that they don’t realize has other significance.”
Billy smiled, shook his head. “All answers that occurred to me, but every one of those is too simple an answer, Dom!” He sounded excited now, like a college professor lecturing on an especially salient point of logic that the class kept missing. “Think about it. When we were down in the desert, searching for an artefact that we knew was there, we had no idea what it looked like or exactly what it did. We were there because of numbers and shadows. If I understand correctly, the artefact we were seeking had numbers that were set to put out a call, do something to advertise its presence down there. And not only to let us know it was there, but to make up at least two different stories about how the artefact got there.” He paused and scratched Dom’s chin. “Or, to take it even a step further, the numbers that held the shadows of Napier and Archimedes somehow kept those shadows self-aware, even without a shell—a body—to carry them, and it was the shadows that sent out the call.”
Dom shook his head. “Jesus, Billy. I’ll accept that we’re in the middle of numeracy like we’ve never experienced before, much less read about, but I can’t buy where you’re going with this. I mean, are the shadows in control? Hell, are the numbers in control? Don’t even bother with a warm body now, just let a bunch of magic integers ’n’ shit do the job.” He paused to watch a flight attendant walk by. “I’ll grant that what we saw was far beyond what we’ve come to expect from artefacts, but I still think any sufficiently strong numerate would be able to place the numbers to make it all happen.”
Billy shrugged Dom’s shoulders. “I don’t know, Dom. I’ve been around a whole lot longer than you and never before witnessed a numerate that capable. I suppose if anyone could, though, it would have been Napier.” He paused, and Dom let the silence hang, feeling that Billy was just searching for more words. “I’m willing to bet that in most cases adjuncts dropped clues while with a host, but I’m just as sure that there were times when they didn’t, when they needed to place hints and were without corporeal assistance.”
“Then I’ll repeat my question: who’s in control, the shadows or the numbers?”
“That, my friend and host, is a very good question. It’s going to take a lot more thought, and we’re going to have to find some way to empirically test this. Provided it’s something we really want an answer for.”
An idea occurred to Dom. “So if the numbers are in control, is that maybe an explanation why I keep finding myself looking at the world from Jenna’s eyes?”
Billy shrugged Dom’s shoulders. “I still have no idea why that’s happening, assuming that it really is and you haven’t imagined it.”
“I haven’t—” Dom stopped himself before he caught the attention of everyone around them and before he woke up Jenna. Voice quieter and more in control, he tried again.
“I haven’t imagined any of it, dammit.”
“What I don’t understand, then, is how this can happen without me being a part of the process, or at the very least without me seeing some telltale numbers that show what’s happened. But there’s been nothing of the sort.”
Dom closed his eyes. “I don’t have any answers. All I know is it’s for real.” He leaned back in his seat, felt sleep sneaking up on him. “Don’t want to talk about it right now,” he managed to mutter, and soon his surroundings faded away. His visions as he drifted off alternated between Jenna naked and numbers in books, beckoning to him, pages flipping so fast that they eventually turned into whirling vortices of numbers like the ones that had sought them out just the other day in southern Alberta.
Subset
The disadvantage of having been tucked away for so many years and centuries was that he had no idea how things in this world worked. Yes, with only a little effort and time he could convince the numbers to show him the mechanisms involved, but that didn’t allow for the required cultural mores that might be needed; there were certain behaviours that numbers were likely incapable of demonstrating, were perhaps completely unaware of. And with all of his focus on the search, he couldn’t spend the necessary time and resources deflecting unwanted attention, from ordinary people or from the gaze of some passing numerate.
The other problem was that he had no idea if he was complete. The shadow he had created was, to the best of his knowledge, the same now as it had been centuries before when he had hidden it away, and he knew who he was and had shown that he had all the power he remembered having, but that didn’t preclude something having gone wrong with the transfer, with the source material, or just having faded away over time. There was less he could do about that, though. Instead, he resolved that once he was done he would track down all other adjunct formulae he had placed, take them all in and create the whole from the portions.
It took some effort to admit that help was needed, but eventually he dug down and allowed Ruth to come back up. As he expected, she immediately tried to wrest back control of her body and mind, but any move she attempted was easily parried, and after a few moments of bemusedly casting aside her efforts, he finally clamped down. Ruth was still up front with him, but only enough of her to allow for the basic needs, including using her voice to speak for them, albeit with his words.
“We’ll work together now, shall we?”
She was quiet for a moment before finally nodding her head. “All right.”
He grinned. “Better. Stay on my good side and the rewards are many, once we’ve accomplished our goal.”
He could sense her confusion at this. “Your goal? I would have thought that bringing your adjunct back was the goal. You have something else you plan to do?”
He nodded. “I do. Two things, as a matter of fact. The first step is to retrieve an artefact that is of special import to me, which, sensing what I do among the numbers today, means we will soon be taking a trip. The second goal arises from the first, and for the moment I shall leave it at that.”
“A trip,” Ruth said. “To where?”
He rubbed Ruth’s jaw with her hand, searching for the beard he’d kept for most of his adult life. “Scotland, dear lady.” He smiled. “After all these centuries buried in the deepest of slumbers, a return home is once again in the numbers for me.”
15
They awoke on an announcement from the First Officer that food was about to be served. Dinner was mediocre chicken breast with limp green beans and a hard buttered bun, complete with plastic knife and fork, eaten in silence. And then Jenna opened the blind so they could watch the Atlantic Ocean drift by below. Dom wanted to reach out and stroke her hair again, or hold her hand. Once she turned to him with a smile, but before he could take that the wrong way she reminded him she’d never been on a plane before, and this was very exciting for her. He kept his hands at his sides.
Finally, after an excruciatingly long time, the announcement that they were soon to land in Glasgow came. Trays were collected and tables and seats put upright, the armrest between them went back down, and now Jenna did reach over and take his hand. “First landing,” she said, looking at him for a second before turning to watch out the window again.
The landing was smooth, and the papers that Father Thomas had provided for them did their job as well on this end as they had on the other; both Dom and Jenna were waved through without any difficulty. More importantly, it meant that the Napier-Archimedes adjunct still had no idea where they were.
They collected their luggage and then went to rent a car. If it had been Dom’s own money, he might have opted to hitchhike; he’d heard that things were expensive in the U.K., but what he was paying was robbery. Or, again, would have been robbery if it hadn’t been someone else’s money, in this case a Visa card that Father Thomas had supplied with his papers, to make sure that the names matched. As it was, he still decided to take the smallest vehicle, not wanting to blow his wad all in one shot.
“You’ve driven a standard before?” asked the girl at the desk, although it took him a second to interpret what she was saying, her accent was so thick.
He blinked. “Um. Yeah, I have. Not with my left hand, though. Or on the wrong side of the road.”
She smiled and handed him the keys and his copy of the contract. “By the time you get to the motorway you’ll be fine. Enjoy your stay.”
His first roundabout was less than one minute after leaving the rental lot, and within seconds he, Jenna and Billy were all yelling at each other and the suddenly unfathomable street signs, Dom trying to navigate his way around the circle without hitting any other vehicles, twice remembering at the last possible second that he and every other car and truck and van out there were now driving on the left hand side of the road.
He got out of the roundabout, not quite sure he’d taken the right exit, and made his way to the first pullout he could find, parked the car, put it in neutral, pulled up the parking brake, and sat back, eyes closed. After a few seconds of silence, he whispered, “Holy crap.”
Jenna snorted. He opened his left eye and looked over at her. She was trying to keep from laughing. He smiled and she completely lost it, laughing hysterically. A second later he was laughing with her, soon hard enough that tears were coming to his eyes.
When she was finally able to settle down, Jenna said, “We should have had a video camera going right then.” She giggled again. “I picture all sorts of fast, frantic edits, sometimes the camera flipping on its side, even upside down, and the whole time the three of us yelling at each other, nothing but babble and lots of ‘Omigods’!”
Dom wiped away some more tears. “It’s like an insane movie comedy.” He looked out to the road, watched the traffic go by, looking for flow, for numbers that would be able to help him handle this new way of driving. He imagined that if he hadn’t just gotten off a seven-hour-plus transatlantic flight he might be more capable of handling this, but there was no getting around the exhaustion, and they had to get out on the road to wherever they were going, so he’d have to deal with it.
“Let me help,” came a voice from the back seat.
“Jesus!” Dom jumped, opened his door, tried to climb out of the car, got tangled up in his still-buckled seatbelt, undid it and practically fell out onto the pavement. He stood, saw that Jenna had jumped out of her side and was looking at him and at the car with concern and fear.
Dom squinted through the back window, but at first couldn’t make out anything other than the luggage that they had stored there. Then, very slowly, a figure formed, dark and indistinct. He could make out no features, but somehow Dom could tell that it was looking at him.
“We fear for your safety,” said the voice, somewhat muffled from inside the car and competing against the traffic on the road at Dom’s back. “Please go to the other side of your vehicle and we will come out and explain.”
“We?” whispered Billy, but Dom just shut the door and walked to the passen
ger side of the car, stood beside a nervous-looking Jenna.
The back door didn’t open, but instead gave way to a thin stream of numbers that behaved like nothing Dom had ever seen. They slid out of cracks and through the glass and fell to the ground, piled upon themselves and took on a dark visage, a swarm of gnats reinventing itself as a quasi-human shape. “Holy crap,” said Dom, voice barely audible even to himself. “What the hell is this?”
Billy shook Dom’s head. “I think it’s a who, not a what.” His voice was full of awe.
The numbers shifted, flowed together and apart, finally settled into a form that resembled the upper third of a mannequin. And then it seemed to nod. “Who is correct. And possibly in the plural sense.” It floated around them, casting streams of numbers down to the ground, two or three flailing legs at a time sprouting from an amorphous chest to make contact with the road and curb and grass, then disappearing as others took their place.
“What do we call you?” asked Jenna.
“We have no name,” replied the thing. It had become more solid, enough so that Dom figured if he kicked a rock it would bounce off rather than just sail through. “But to make everything easier, call us Arithmos.”
“You’re numbers,” said Billy.
“That we are,” said Arithmos, lurching momentarily close to Dom in order to avoid a puddle near the car.
“The package we brought over,” said Dom. Now that he looked closely he could see that these were the same as the numbers that had kept him from opening the wrapping paper.
The sound of tires on gravel caught Dom’s attention, and he turned to see that a police car had pulled up behind the rental. “How can I help you?” asked the officer after he got out of the car.
Jenna smiled, although Dom flinched as the cop walked right through the mass of numbers in front of them, but the man didn’t notice them and the numbers just flowed around and reconstituted themselves. “No problems, officer, thank you. We were just a little messed up with our first time driving on the other side of the road.”
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