Derryl Murphy - Napiers Bones

Napier'sBones

2011 by Derryl Murphy

This one is for mywife JoAnn. Her patience, her support, and her enduring love are all reasonsyou hold this in your hands. Her belief in me through the few highs and manylows of writing this book is what kept me going.

The good Christianshould beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. Thedanger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with thedevil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.

St. Augustine ofHippo

For as Old Sinnershave all poynts

oth Compass intheir Bones and Joynts

Can by their Pangsand Aches find

All turns andChanges of the wind;

And better than byNapiers Bones

Feel in their own the Age ofMoons

Samuel Butler

Dom paused atthe bottom of the hill, took a swig of warm water and wiped the sweat from hisforehead. Above him the sun blasted down through the hard blue sky, harsh andyellow and hotter than anything hed ever felt. Below him the desert sand andred rock told him nothing he needed to know, so he closed his eyes and rubbedthe baseball in his pocket, muttering multiplication tables under his breath ashe traced the stitching.

Fire streakedacross the darkness inside his eyelids, slowly refining itself to a sequence ofnumbers and formulae. He opened his eyes and watched the direction theypointed, caught the path before they faded away in the angry, greedy light; upthe hill, switching back and forth to handle the steep incline.

He climbed,cursing the heat, cursing his lack of preparedness, cursing the luck that hadled his search to here in the Utah desert. Near the top he stopped and tookanother swallow of water, trying hard to conserve the tiny amount that remainedin the bottle, wondering if he was going to be forced to turn back before hereached his target.

There was arustling sound from overhead, and he looked up to see a series of logarithmsflapping by like wiry bats, dipping and diving through the air before breakingup into their constituent numbers and, with nothing left to hold them together,quickly fading away. There were more sounds now, a distant clicking thatquickly segued into a great ripping and grinding sound, like a giants zipperthat somehow controlled all seismic activity, and then all colour above Dom waswashed away, formulae and numbers and sequences exploding across the dome ofthe sky, sure sign of backlash of some sort. Dom flashed his fingers,frantically counting primes in ascending order, using binary as a shorthand, hopingto hell that it would be enough to keep attention from being fixed on him.

It wasnt. Agrey mass, pulsing with unclear integers, fuzzy and indistinct against thenow-screaming numbers in the sky above, launched itself over the edge of theridge, dropped through the air and pierced his body. Dom was flung backwards,blackness overtaking him, his last awareness of the rumbling and shriekingsuddenly cutting off, and the pure Silence that for one sudden moment ruled theworld around him.

New patterns slowlyfloated into focus, more numbers flying across his vision, except this time hewas sure they were trying to tell him something. Dom made an effort to squintand make it out, but before he could define what they were saying everythingfaded away, the fire in his eyes drifting from red to orange to pale yellowbefore finally disappearing altogether; the blackness fading to grey, andfinally jumping to brown. He stared at the brown, then started as his viewbroadened, saw that it was the hair on the back of someones head. He was on abus.

He gingerlyturned his head and looked out the window, wincing at the now-apparentheadache. He was in a large town or, more likely, a small city, seeing how thisappeared to be a transit bus, not something like a Greyhound. Buildings driftedby, none taller than three or four floors; the streets were wide, and there wasalso that overwhelming sense of easy-going that he could see in all thepedestrians. Not too distant were some small mountains, their foliage mostly dried-upbrown with small green punctuation marks.

So how the helldid he get here?

And where thefuck am I? he murmured to himself, loud enough that the guy in front of himturned around and fixed him with a quick glare.

Dom rang thebell and jumped off the bus at the next stop, crossed the street against thelight and found himself a bench in a small park behind a restaurant, confusedand scared. Where hed been in the desert was a good long distance away fromany city this size, a few hours in a car at least, and yet he had norecollection of making his way here. He felt inside his pocket, found thebaseball still there, and pulled it out to toss it while he thought.

One toss in theair with it, though, and he froze, then stabbed out his hand and caught it atthe last second. The ball was badly scorched along one seam, blackened enoughto be pretty much worthless to him now, to say nothing of any collector. Heflipped it around in his hand, rubbed it and looked for the numbers to shine,but they were few and very weak.

Jesus Christ.

Profanity seemsto be your strong suit.

Dom dropped theball to the ground and stood bolt upright, looking around for the owner of thevoice. There was no one else in the park. Whos there?

Are you sureyou want to know?

Dom grabbed theball and sat back down on the bench, shocked. His own lips had moved, the voicehad issued from his mouth, but it hadnt been his voice, in tone or accent.

Ive read aboutyou, he finally said. Or your type, anyway.

Indeed. We hadsensed you earlier that day, said the voice. You were tracking the sametreasure we were.

You were outthere as well? Dom raised an eyebrow at this news. Hed been sure he was theonly one whod been onto it. But if hed stumbled onto a duel, obviously someoneelse had to have put it all together as well.

For six yearsnow. The voice stopped for a moment as a young woman with four children in towwalked by. Dom smiled politely at her, sure that he looked a wreck. She smiledback, although the effort to override a frown was obvious on her face, and thenhurried her kids along.

Once she was outof range, he continued. You were saying?

You werenumerate, it was obvious to us early on. And even though we could tell you werestill quite raw, you did an admirable job damping down your own numbers. It wasonly because we had the same target that we were able to see you coming.

If you couldsee me coming, how come the guy you went up against couldnt? He didnt knowthis, not for certain, but the fact that he had gone unmolested before the duelmade him feel pretty sure.

We saw youbecause you were using the same search numbers we were. The problem is, yournumbers werent as close to the ground as our own; he would have eventuallybeen able to spot you, but found us first. Bad luck. I guess he must havethought we were the ones kicking up those numbers.

Domrubbed his eyes and then ran his hand through his hair, which was feelingsomewhat greasy despite its short length. You werent able to handle him head-to-head,were you?

I said he, butin fact it was a she. Sort of. We expected to be able to take her by surprise,as you likely did. There was a pause. We didnt. A duel was the last thing wewanted; her numbers and formulae were far beyond anything my host had ever seenbefore.

So whathappened? asked Dom, afraid he already knew the answer.

My host waskilled, while our foe was seemingly incapacitated. My hosts last act, herethe voice broke, was to cut me loose. I had not quite a twenty-three secondwindow before I would have fractioned, and I knew where you were.

So you came tome.

I did. Iveinvested generations of myself in this search, and Im not about to go tofraction when Im so close.