Napier's Bones (21 page)

“What are you
going to do?” asked Jenna, eyes still closed.

Dom looked over
at her, worried about just how badly this had all hit her. She sounded almost
like a zombie right now, voice flat and barren. “I’m going to change the
numbers on the plates, just enough to keep us safe.”

There was
silence for a moment, and then Arithmos said, “We don’t disagree.” He climbed
out and stepped around to the front, crouched down and traced his index finger
along the edges of the numbers on the plate. Above him was nothing but the
night sky and overhanging trees; before he started, though, he sent up a few
tentative numbers, quiet sequences that could passively search for active
numbers that carried the smell of the Napier-Archimedes adjunct. After a few
minutes they all fell back to earth and crawled to him to tell him the same
thing, that there was nothing untoward to be found.

There were only
two numbers on the front plate, along with five letters, which meant he
couldn’t make as big a change as he had hoped. Still, he had to do something.
But when he tried to smear the 53 into a 63, the 5 resisted. 58 wouldn’t work,
either, so after some messing around he finally settled on 52, which looked a
whole lot more amateurish, but seemed to be the only number that would take. To
help it along he ran some other numbers over top, intended to redirect
attention of anyone looking their way. Then he walked to the back and did the
same thing with the plate there.

“Wouldn’t let me
change the numbers the way I would’ve liked,” he said as he climbed back into
the car.

“The plates are
issued based on when they were issued,” replied Arithmos. “There are few
options for the numbers, so they tend to hold fast.”

Dom signalled
and pulled back out onto the road. Traffic was increasing, but it still didn’t
amount to much, and so far there were no flashing lights in his rearview mirror.
“If that’s all, then that’s a relief. I was worried that maybe I’d lost my
skills, or worse, that Napier and friends were close by and taking a hand in it
again.”

“You can believe
that we would have given you notice if such a visit were imminent.”

The rest of the
drive was uneventful. Jenna kept her eyes closed, and was still enough that
several times Dom got worried and reached over to touch her shoulder. Each time
she just reached up with her hand to brush him off without looking at him. The
cuts on her face and arms looked more like scratches now, and only once did he
see blood leaking from the corner of her mouth, but she reached up and wiped it
away before he could say anything, smeared it on her pants and otherwise didn’t
move.

Just before they
reached Oban, Arithmos said, “It’s a big town. Very busy, popular with the
tourists. There are at least two numerates we know of who live there, and of
course it is also very possible that one or more are visiting right now.”

Billy turned Dom
around and looked into the back seat. “So what are you saying?”

“We have ways of
keeping our presence a secret, but close proximity can nullify that. So we’ll
leave you here, and find you again on the other side of town. Stay cautious.”
And with that, the numbers vanished.

Oban was a busy
town. There were tour buses everywhere, and signs advertising ferry trips to a
variety of islands showed one of the reasons why the town was so central for
tourists. There also seemed to be plenty of shopping, and all of it looked like
it was along the main drag through town, so progress was very slow, on a road
only two lanes wide, with plenty of pedestrians dashing across in front of
vehicles to see a store or a friend on the other side of the road, or else a
car up ahead stopping and waiting for a perceived parking opportunity. Dom did
his best to stay patient, drumming a quiet tattoo on the steering wheel with
his fingers and watching numbers float by, looking for anything special. And
there was; yes, he could see the usual numerical ecology one saw in busy towns
everywhere, but there were some signs to be seen that this place was different
than most he’d visited before.

The
numbers took on a different layering here, the way rational and irrational
numbers behaved with each other and with the formulae that they sometimes
created before his eyes, little bits of evolution that sometimes took,
sometimes didn’t, numbers finding themselves in an untenable situation and
fraying and untwisting almost immediately after combining, drifting off to find
other numbers that matched better, or perhaps to just remain lone integers,
destined for who knew what part of the world.

Dom imagined
that the differences he saw were due to the age of the town itself. He had been
in some small old towns in New England in the States and the Maritimes in
Canada, and it had indeed seemed that the houses there carried a different
sense of numerical history than the more recent communities that he was used
to. Here, the buildings were older than anything he normally saw, and not just
one, but pretty much all of them, marching along the street, squeezed tight
against each other, stone and brick and wood, every one of them covered in a
sheen of numbers that looked to have been there since the day they’d been
built, content to stay in place, it seemed, rather than venturing off and
joining the rest of their kind in the world at large.

Dom smiled to
himself, and from beside him, Jenna said, “What?”

He turned and
looked at her in surprise. Her eyes were open, and she was sitting up again.
There was still a hint of blood on her chin, but it looked to have dried, so
Dom fought the urge to wipe it away; it was something she could take care of
later. “You’re awake,” he said.

“Why were you
smiling?”

Dom shook his
head, looked back to the traffic in time to tap his brakes and keep from
denting the bumper in front. “Just realizing once again that the numbers around
us really do seem to be living things.”

“You’d think
that the presence of Arithmos would have settled that for you some time ago,”
responded Billy. “But I have to say we’ve certainly seen numbers behave in ways
I’ve never seen before. Centuries around them, and until I tied myself to you,
Dom, I’d never seen numbers act with a semblance of free will.” Dom raised an
eyebrow and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. “Never?”

Billy shook
Dom’s head in response. “Never. At best, any autonomy given to numbers was laid
in by the numerate who had given them their goal, their marching orders. The
better the numerate, the more the numbers could bend to the situation and
continue their work.”

“Like the
numbers back in America and Canada, the ones that kept chasing us,” said Jenna.

Billy nodded.
“Exactly. Most numerates keep the numbers close at hand, do their little magic
tricks with something that is right there. These ones, though, Napier was able
to create sequences and formulae that jumped through a whole series of
difficult hoops from a very long distance away.”

“But even then,
they didn’t seem to operate as intelligent beings,” replied Dom. “Maybe as
smart as hounds on the trail of an escaped convict, but nothing like we’ve seen
with Arithmos.” The conversation petered off as each of them retreated into
their own thoughts. They finally drove past the last part of downtown, and although
they were still in Oban, the traffic opened up now, and within minutes they
were on the other side of town and moving along at a reasonable pace once
again. Dom felt himself relax, happy that no cops had gotten to them while they
were stuck in a position that would have been impossible to wriggle out of.

“I’m back,” said
Arithmos.

Jenna turned
around and faced the numerical being. “I’ve been wondering, where did your name
come from?” she asked. “What does it mean?”

“It’s Greek,”
answered Billy. “Same root as arithmetic.”

“The built-in
properties of numbers and their ratios, and how they relate to the universe
around us. But it means more than that. It’s the word that your kind once used
when referring to the life that numbers had taken on.”

“Alive like
you’re alive?” asked Dom. “Sentient?”

“More
so the ecology of numbers, the idea that the surrounding world of numbers was
alive in a way very similar to the biodiversity of this world. Although we know
that there are humans who have entertained the idea that numbers have become
alive because of how we’ve been used by numerates.”

“So
we’ve helped you evolve?” asked Jenna.

“Perhaps,” said
Arithmos. “If so, though, it seems to be very restricted in time and place. We
show some autonomy in other lands, but the properties of the British Isles, as
well as a few other select locations on the planet, allow us to come together
and think on our own, such as you see me now.” The numerical creature paused
for a moment, as if to roll around some thoughts, then carried on. “Think about
search numbers. There was a time when numerates would send out such things, but
they were always brute force, simple. Somewhere along the way, though, the
number patterns became not only more sophisticated, but able to make
adjustments in midstream. Not the way we were originally designed, but this
elegance allowed us to show at least a modicum of intelligence and
adaptability.”

“Intelligence
and adaptability are not the same,” said Billy. “Animals adapt, right down to
insects and lower. That doesn’t mean they’re smart.”

“In
the end, you’ll have to take our presence as the best argument available. But
think about what you just said. We are
numbers
, things that should, by
all rights in your logical world, be figments, metaphors. And yet not only are
people like you able to make us perform for you, we numbers show traits that,
at the very least—the very least, let us stress—equate us with living things.
Numbers who know when to congregate, when to separate, can make decisions based
on contingencies that our creator likely could not foresee.”

Dom thought
about the search numbers in Utah, behaving like a flock of crows, finding new
places to circle, and about the numbers in Drumheller, climbing out from the
drain, losing whatever had helped them stay coherent, and yet still struggling
to find their way up and out. And these numbers in a place that Arithmos argued
was not conducive to numbers behaving independently and intelligently. He’d not
ever seen numbers so adaptable before.

“It’s quite the
moral quandary,” said Billy, interrupting the silence.

“How so?” asked
Dom, but before Billy could reply, the numbers in the back seat said, “Ah,
someone is beginning to understand.”

“Jesus.” Dom
drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, feeling impatient. “Understand what,
exactly?”

“I
think I get it,” said Jenna, nodding her head.

But before Dom
could explode with the frustration of being the only one left out of the loop,
what was being said crystallized in his head. “Oh. Wait. If the numbers are self-aware,
and we’re controlling them, then . . .” He let the thought fall away, unwilling
to vocalize it.

“It’s just
another form of slavery, maybe,” said Jenna. She didn’t look happy.

“Not the word I
was going to use.” Dom signalled, pulled out into the opposing lane to pass a
small, slow RV from Belgium. He gunned the motor to swing back into the proper
lane before a car coming at speed around the bend did them all in, then tried
to find the words to finish his thought. “Look. We don’t, or at least most of
us don’t, talk about chickens and cows and pigs and other farm animals as
slaves, do we? So even if I grant that the numbers I use are sentient, that
doesn’t mean that I’m enslaving them, especially since I cut them loose after I
finish using them.”

“Chickens and
cows and pigs aren’t self-aware like humans, Dom,” replied Jenna. “They’re
alive, but their concept of self is very different from our own, if they have
one at all. And numbers trying to crawl out of a sewer in the Alberta Badlands
says nothing to me about self-awareness. Arithmos here seems the exception, not
the rule. There have been numbers all over the landscape here, and none but
this conglomeration sitting behind me and lecturing me have shown any hint of
self-awareness.”

“I would suggest
to you that there is no way anyone, no matter how powerful, could predict that
the numbers would need to attempt to do such a thing to continue the task that
was put to them,” said Billy. “What a person of such power might be able to do,
though, is cajole, maybe even frighten, those numbers into continuing their
task well after it would have been a reasonable decision to back off.”

“As much as we
appreciate being compared to livestock,” said Arithmos, “it seems obvious that
this small controversy will not be solved any time soon, at least by the people
who are in this vehicle.”

Dom grunted and
looked in the mirror, but didn’t answer, and Jenna just turned her attention to
the landscape going by. “How much longer?” asked Billy, after a few moments of
silence.

“We’ll
have another few towns to pass through before we get to Ullapool. Another town
where I will have to step away, even though it is nowhere near as busy as
Oban.”

“I would have
thought, judging by the amount of automobiles that Dom has had to deal with
over the past however many miles of road, that worrying about someone seeing
anything is not much of a concern,” said Billy. “How can such a dead road lead
to a busy town?”

“We’ll take no
chances,” responded Arithmos.

It was true. The
further north they travelled, the thinner the traffic became. They were still
on a highway, and there were still some cars and trucks to deal with, as well
as the odd RV, most of those last seeming to come from continental Europe, but
it was by no stretch of the imagination a busy road, and there were now long
sections where they and the paved road were the only indication that
civilization still existed.