The Five Fakirs of Faizabad (11 page)

G
roanin spent a miserable night on the mountaintop.

First of all, he burped so much fire that his eyebrows and all of his clothes — including his coat and his favorite bowler hat — caught alight and were completely destroyed, and then his sleeping bag, too. That would have been bad enough. And Groanin was just thinking that there was nothing else the night could throw at him when someone vomited on his head from a great height.

“Well, that’s just marvelous,” said Groanin, and sat down to await the dawn.

The butler presented a sorry spectacle when Nimrod went to look for him in the morning to ask where his tea was.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the butler, standing uncomfortably behind a bush. “But due to my absence of clothes, not to mention this horrible mess on my head, you’ll have to fetch your own tea this morning.”

“Always got an excuse for not doing your job,” said Nimrod. “Very well. I suppose you would like me to make you some new clothes.”

“A hot shower wouldn’t go amiss, either,” said Groanin.

“Yes, you do seem to smell a bit strongly. Difficult night, eh?”

“You could say that, sir, yes.”

“Still breathing fire?”

“No longer, sir. Them fiery eructations would seem to have stopped. I said, them fiery eructations would seem to have terminated. At least I can hiccup without setting fire to something, anyway.”

“Well, let this be a lesson to you, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “Don’t ever mix water with Falernian wine again.”

“No, sir, I shall endeavor not to.” He shook his head and added, “I’ve never been lucky with food and drink. And people wonder why I stick to baby food when I’m abroad. Because you can’t go wrong with baby food. That’s why they give it to babies, see?”

Nimrod muttered his focus word — QWERTYUIOP — and soon Groanin was looking like a proper butler again, which is to say he was wearing a dark jacket, matching vest, pin-striped trousers, black shoes, black tie, white shirt, and a black bowler hat. And looking like a butler again meant that Groanin was soon acting like one, too — fetching tea for Nimrod and Moo and generally tidying up the camp. It wasn’t long before he started to whistle, but only because he knew it annoyed Nimrod when he seemed cheerful.

“Anyone seen John?” asked Philippa.

“No,” said Groanin. “Perhaps he’s gone off exploring somewhere. His flying carpet is gone.”

“So is Zagreus,” observed Moo.

Philippa shook her head. Being John’s twin, she sometimes sensed things about her brother that only a twin could feel — something that even human twins are capable of. “I dunno,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like he’s anywhere close. Plus” — she kept on shaking her head — “he seems disturbed by something. But exactly what, I don’t know.”

“I expect he and Zagreus will turn up in due course,” said Nimrod. “Boys will be boys. Even when they’re djinn.”

After breakfast, Nimrod steered the flying carpet back up the rope to see Mr. Burton. It was even colder ascending the rope than it had been the day before and Groanin’s teeth were soon chattering noisily.

“What happened to your fur coat?” Nimrod asked him.

“Went up in smoke last night,” said Groanin. “Like the rest of me clothes.”

“Here,” said Nimrod, taking off his fur coat. “Have mine. After all that Falernian wine last night I don’t really need it now. I feel as warm as hot, buttered toast.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Groanin to whom hot, buttered toast seemed like the nicest thing in the world and certainly nicer than Falernian wine.

As soon as they saw Mr. Burton again, the fakir surprised them all by standing up. Then, leaving his precarious little platform, he stepped barefoot onto the flying carpet.

“I’ve been thinking about your problem,” he said. “And I’ve come to the conclusion that you have urgent need
of my help. Perhaps more urgently than you might have thought. But first I must tell you a story by way of an explanation.”

Mr. Burton sat down in front of Nimrod, tugged his beard thoughtfully for a moment, and then started to speak:

“Ayodhya is an ancient city of India in the Faizabad district. Not a bad place. I spent six months there on a bed of nails after leaving the service of Mr. Rakshasas. It is one of the six holiest cities in India, and a city made by gods. Or so the people believe. Many centuries ago, there lived in the city a great Tirthankar, which is a kind of holy man. This holy man was so enlightened and full of wisdom that he had achieved perfect knowledge. Which is to say that he knew absolutely everything.”

“How is that possible?” asked Philippa.

“It was easier then than perhaps it is today,” admitted Mr. Burton. “After all, there used to be so much less to know than there is nowadays. But even so, it is certain that the Tirthankar had learned the five great secrets of the universe.”

“Five?” Groanin looked doubtful. “Only five? Somehow I thought there’d be more.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Burton. “Five. Five great secrets. About the meaning of everything. Anyway, sensing that he would soon die, for the Tirthankar was very old, which is how great wisdom is achieved, and in order that these great secrets should not be lost to mankind forever, he summoned ten very adept fakirs to his presence. Proper fakirs, not fakirs like me, nor these mendicant fakirs whom you spoke
of earlier. These were proper Indian holy men, who were known for their extraordinary powers of self-denial and endurance. The Tirthankar entrusted each fakir with one of the five secrets of the universe. In other words, each secret was entrusted twice, for the sake of safety.

“All ten fakirs volunteered to go to the four corners of the earth and be buried alive, so that one day, when the world might have need of true enlightenment, the fakirs might come forth from the ground at an auspicious moment and provide the answer to one of these great mysteries.”

“Buried alive?” exclaimed Moo. “But surely a man would die.”

“And surely it would have been easier to write the secrets down on a piece of paper,” objected Groanin.

“Paper can be stolen and read by anyone,” said Mr. Burton. “Better to have men who could be trusted. Special men. This is precisely why the Tirthankar enlisted the help of the fakirs. For only fakirs have sufficient control over their bodies so as to be able to do without air, food, and water for many years. And, in this case, for many centuries.”

“Well, I’ve heard of such men,” admitted Moo. “But I always thought these stories were nothing more than fairy stories and exaggerations.”

“They are, if you ask me,” said Groanin. “No man can do without food and water, let alone air, for centuries. I certainly couldn’t.”

Ignoring the butler — which was easy for Mr. Burton, for he had once been a butler himself — Mr. Burton continued
his tale: “Each fakir was accompanied by a
dasa
— a servant. The servant and his descendants were supposed to guard the secret of the fakir’s burial place and be there to serve him whenever the fakir judged that the time was right for him to return. He would somehow respond to vibrations in the atmosphere, to a feeling of general bad luck or peril. Whereupon he would conclude that the earth had need of one of the answers to one of the great mysteries and then come up from his secret burial place, whereupon the
dasa
would help him apply the secret to the benefit of humankind.”

“These mysteries of the universe,” said Nimrod. “What sort of mysteries are we talking about? And how many remain to be revealed?”

“I’m very glad you asked me that,” said Mr. Burton. “As far as I know four of the original ten fakirs have been resurrected over the centuries. But no one knows how many of the great mysteries have yet to be discovered. The mathematics of it would indicate at least one. But I am certain that the most recent revelation was at the beginning of the twentieth century, when one of these fakirs was accidentally uncovered by the Lahore earthquake. The next month Einstein came up with his theory of special relativity.”

“Einstein?” said Philippa. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“What happened was this,” said Mr. Burton. “The
dasa
in Lahore and his descendants had long died out, which left the fakir of Lahore with something of a dilemma. He had a great secret to reveal but no one who could understand it. So he went to Europe. To Switzerland. And sensing he did not
have long to live, because he was several hundred years old, he thought he might record his secret as a patent.”

“What’s a patent?” asked Philippa.

“It’s a grant made by a government that confers upon the creator of an invention the right to make, use, and sell that invention for a set period of time,” explained Moo. “But it’s also a means of officially recording the existence of an invention or a theory.”

“The fakir went into the Federal Office for Intellectual Property in Bern,” continued Mr. Burton. “Fortunately for him, it was there he met someone who understood the meaning of his secret immediately. That man was Albert Einstein. It was the holy man’s secret that helped Einstein develop his famous theory of relativity that changed the world.”

“You mean
e
equals
mc
squared?” said Philippa. “That was one of the great mysteries entrusted to the ten fakirs by the Tirthankar of Faizabad?”

“Exactly so,” said Mr. Burton.

“I’m beginning to see why someone might want to get his hands on one of these great mysteries,” admitted Nimrod. “With a secret like that there’s no telling what someone might do.”

“Yes, you are right, Nimrod,” said Mr. Burton. “It is generally supposed that each of the fakirs could reveal a secret that would bring about such an enormous change in the world, and which, if it fell into the wrong hands, might prove disastrous.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” said Moo. “
e
equals
mc
squared was the theory that helped unlock the secrets of the atom.”

“Not to mention the atomic bomb.” Groanin shook his head. “Nasty things that make nasty-looking clouds shaped like mushrooms. I’ve never liked mushrooms. Not even with sausages.”

“My suspicion,” said Mr. Burton, “is that someone must know where one of these
dasas
— the fakir servants — is to be found, and is watching him closely. Probably they are hoping to create a feeling of bad luck around a particular location where it is commonly believed one of the remaining six must be buried alive.”

“Bumby,” muttered Groanin. “There must be one of them fakirs in Bumby. It’s the only possible explanation for why the town’s luck has turned so bad.”

“The
dasa
has no control of the fakir’s revival. It’s even possible the fakir himself may already have arisen, but the
dasa
knows he’s being watched and doesn’t dare contact his risen fakir for fear of the secret falling into the wrong hands,” said Mr. Burton.

“Light my lamp, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “But you could be right. It could be Bumby.”

“It would certainly explain why there were so many odd and sinister-looking characters wandering around the place,” added the butler. “It must have been them fake mendicant fakirs you was talking about, sir.”

“Yes,” said Nimrod. “I think so, too. But who’s behind them? The mendicant fakirs, they’re just a bunch of troublemakers. They wouldn’t know what to do with one of the universe’s great mysteries if they found it inside a
Christmas cracker. No, this is something else. Something more sophisticated.”

“I suppose it’s back to Bumby, then,” said Groanin.

“What, all of us?” exclaimed Nimrod. “I should say not. No, this calls for some subtlety. We must move carefully. Philippa, you must go.”

“Me?” exclaimed Philippa. “On my own? Why me?”

“Because no one there will suspect you, my child. And besides, Groanin and John have been there before and it might draw attention if they went back there so soon. It’s my impression that no one goes back to Bumby unless they are quite mad.”

“I often go to Bumby,” protested Groanin. “On my holidays.”

“Then you make my point for me,” said Nimrod. “You can go there on your flying carpet,” he told Philippa.

“I shall accompany you, child,” said Moo. “I may be of some use. In an official government capacity.”

“Good idea,” said Nimrod.

“What shall I do when I get there?” asked Philippa.

“Watch and observe,” said Nimrod. “See if you can spot the mendicant fakirs and the
dasa.
And the genuine fakir, of course. The one with the secret. And if you can manage it without leading the fake fakirs to the real one, try to make contact.”

“Where are you going to be?” asked Philippa.

“Er, I don’t know,” said Nimrod. “But I’m hoping Mr. Burton here is going to tell me.”

Mr. Burton shrugged. “This is not so easy.”

Nimrod thought for a moment. “I think that somehow we will need to alter the perception of luck in the world and to do it quickly before other fakirs start to come out of the ground and reveal their secrets,” he said. “But for that to happen, something really lucky would have to take place. A quick-fix event of almost mythical good luck. But just how such a thing is brought about, I really have no idea.” He sighed and, throwing up his hands, landed them loudly upon his head as if he hoped the impact might provoke a good idea. But it didn’t.

“When Mr. Rakshasas needed inspiration and enlightenment,” said Nimrod, “he would say that it was time to look for his navel.”

“I can’t see that helping somehow,” observed Groanin. “For a start you’d have to find your navel. That’s not so easy these days. You’re not as thin as you used to be.”

“I was speaking metaphorically,” said Nimrod. “I don’t mean
my
navel. I mean omphalos, which is Greek for ‘navel.’“

“A navel is still a navel,” said Groanin. “Whether it’s a Greek navel or one from the Isle of Skye.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “An omphalos is also an ancient religious stone artifact. According to the ancient Greeks, Zeus sent two eagles to fly across the world and meet at its center, the navel of the world. And several omphalos stones were erected in several areas around the Mediterranean Sea, including one that was at the oracle at Delphi. Omphalos stones were said to allow direct communication with the gods.”