The Five Fakirs of Faizabad (26 page)

“There’s something wrong with Kurt,” he said, turning
to speak to Fritz, and was even more shocked to see that Fritz, too, was aging rapidly. Instead of the tall and blond and handsome man that John had seen leaving the Kailash crater, Fritz was now an infirm and very elderly man.

Farther up the ledge, there was a shout and then a cry, and John looked around just in time to see three of the men leading the way along the traverse slip and fall to their deaths. Except that they looked dead already. Outside of a grave in a horror movie, John had never seen anyone look quite so old.

Rakshasas uttered a whine of fear, and even through his thick fur coat, John could feel the wolf trembling.

“Outside of the crater,” John yelled, “their true age is catching up with them.”

Rakshasas barked once to agree.

One by one, the men ahead of John fell from the traverse. And he realized that it would be only a matter of seconds before Kurt and Fritz, the two frail old men to whom he was still roped, fell, too.

Feebly, Fritz indicated that John should hammer in a piton and tie himself on. John hardly needed telling a second time. He put in a piton and was shocked to find it badly rusted and crumbling in his fingers as if it, too, was old — as old as the SS troop Himmler had sent to Shamba-la. This discovery — that it wasn’t just the Nazis who were rapidly deteriorating but their equipment as well — shocked John almost as much the faces of his two immediate climbing companions. He had no idea if the piton or even the rope would hold his weight if he fell.

He looked back at Fritz and nodded and saw him lay his head wearily against the rock as if he was too tired to go on. By now Fritz’s hair was completely white and his hands were shaking noticeably. He looked at least a hundred years old.

“Now cut the rope,” shouted Fritz. “Cut the rope and save yourself. Before Kurt and I take you down with us.”

John took out the pocketknife and held the blade over the rope still attaching him to Kurt and Fritz. He hesitated to cut the rope, knowing that without it these two frail old men were certain to die.

“I can’t do it,” he shouted.

Farther along the ledge, three more aged Nazis fell, very quietly, to their long overdue deaths.

“You have to,” said Fritz. He pointed a doddery hand behind John. “Look.”

John looked at Kurt and saw that he was already dead. He knew he was dead because the man was aging so rapidly his head was little more than a skull. The next second, Kurt’s skeleton collapsed in a pile of dust and bones that slipped over the edge of the traverse simultaneously removing the need for John to cut that section of the rope.

“Cut the rope, John,” shouted Fritz even as, feeling faint, he swayed on the ledge.

Rakshasas barked urgently and then nipped John on the ear.

John cut the rope and then closed his eyes as Fritz slipped, sat down heavily on the ledge, and then tipped forward into thin air like a man falling asleep for the rest of eternity.

He heard a few more feeble screams farther down the traverse and when he opened his eyes again he found that he was the only one left on the rock face. The SS men were gone, including the flying carpet that might have saved John’s life. And all that was left of them was one skull and a couple of thigh bones silvered with cold that occupied the center of the traverse like an SS man’s cap badge.

Rakshasas whined meaningfully.

“No way am I dropping you down there after them,” said John.

The wolf barked once.

“I don’t care how heavy you are. We’ll either make it together or we won’t make it at all.”

Half frozen with fear, John tried to gather his courage. It wasn’t easy. He didn’t look down. He didn’t dare. The sight of so many men falling thousands of feet to their deaths would, he was sure, remain with him for the rest of his life. And begged too many questions he didn’t even want to think of. There was no point in staying where he was. There was no one to come and rescue him. He took a deep breath and prepared to move.

“Look on the bright side, Rakshasas,” he said, his face pressed close to the wall. “At least now I don’t have to go to Berlin.”

He slipped the rope out of the rusted piton and, reasoning that their best chance was back in the Kailash crater, he started to inch his way back along the traverse. But the wind seemed to have other plans and buffeted John like an invisible cat playing with a mouse. Desperate to keep up his spirits
and hoping that somehow he might wish it true, John began to sing. He didn’t always sing the right words, but the sentiment was utterly true and heartfelt. John had never before wished anything with such sincerity:

John’s hands stayed flat against the wall, for there was nothing to hold on to. There was just a toehold on life and nothing else. Rakshasas closed his eyes against the wind and stayed silent, hardly daring to distract the boy djinn from the important business that was happening beneath his feet.

Ten minutes passed, and then fifteen. John thought it could not be long until he was in the safety of the fissure again. He didn’t dare lift his head away from the wall to check on his progress. But when, after almost half an hour on his toes, he risked a look, he was shocked to find that the fissure was nowhere to be seen.

“That can’t be right,” he said and, looking back along the
way he had come, he was horrified to discover that somehow he had come along a second and lower traverse and that the bottom of the fissure was now ten or fifteen feet immediately above his head.

John swore loudly for almost a minute and then reached up, looking around for any toeholds and handholds.

Breathlessly, he outlined the options for himself and Rakshasas:

“As I see it, we have two choices,” he said loudly in the teeth of the wind. “We can go back along the traverse, straight into the wind, and pick up the right trail again. It’s about fifty or sixty feet. Times two because we’ll have to come back this way again, but on the right ledge this time. I figure that way’s maybe twenty or thirty minutes.”

He sighed and glanced above his head again. “Or we can try to climb this bit of wall above our heads. I think I can do it because there are several hand- and toeholds. I think we can make it up there in less than half the time it would take to make the traverse along the ledge.”

He closed his eyes, wishing that he could sleep and wishing that he might see his family again. So much wishing, it seemed ironic that he was a djinn with the power to grant wishes and yet couldn’t even grant his own least wish, which was simply to stay alive.

“We’ll climb. Because I don’t have the energy to walk back along this traverse.”

Rakshasas whined quietly and glanced over his shoulder. It was not a prospect that inspired him with much confidence.

“Thanks for that,” said John. “It’s nice to know you believe in me.”

Rakshasas barked once to disagree.

John nodded. “Right,” he said, reaching for one of the handholds he’d found above his head. “Let’s get on with it.”

He fixed the back of his heel on a small step, pulled himself up, and found himself halfway up to the ledge already. With hand and foot stretching out to his right, he found another handhold and a crack that was just wide enough for him to squeeze the toe of his boot into, enabling him to move up again; this time his hands were on the wider ledge in front of the fissure and safety.

Rakshasas barked his encouragement as John pulled himself up until he was looking over the edge.

“We made it,” he grunted, scrabbling up the wall. “We made it.”

For the first time in ages, John felt a smile spreading on his face. He reached for another handhold inside the fissure and then winced as something else caught his hand and squeezed it tight.

It was another hand.

Except that it was hardly a hand at all but the thin, bleached bones underneath a human hand — all twenty-seven of them — which was still attached to something that was more corpse than body; something unutterably old and loathsome and decayed and yet still half recognizable as Obersturmbannführer Dr. Heinrich Hynkell of the Waffen-SS. A skull beneath skin as yellow as parchment
grinned horribly and then leered in John’s face, and instinctively the boy drew back and pulled his own hand away from the foul creature’s grip. And John heard himself cry out, not from fear of Dr. Hynkell, for it was certain that this had been the despicable Nazi’s last living act, but from the realization that he was about to fall off the ledge.

Rakshasas yelped loudly and shifted on John’s back, trying to carry the boy a few vital inches forward to safety. But it was to no avail.

With his other hand, John grabbed at the one solid object that still remained in reach, and found himself holding Hynkell’s skull, which immediately snapped off the Nazi’s bony, thin neck. And like Hamlet holding Yorick in an empty theatre, John found himself parting company with the mountain.

With his legs now cycling an invisible bicycle and his arms swimming frantically in a dry sea, John somersaulted backward into thin air like a doomed bungee jumper and began the inexorably long fall to earth and the death he had struggled so very hard to avoid.

And he could not help thinking of the question he had tried not to think of earlier, which was this: Does a person falling thousands of feet to his death remain fully conscious right up until the moment that he hits the ground?

It seemed that John was about to find out.

N
imrod regarded Mr. Swaraswati with something like concern.

The fakir’s eyes were closed and he didn’t appear to have taken a full breath for quite a while. He sat cross-legged in the same position he had been sitting in since leaving Kazakhstan several hours before. Nothing about him appeared to be moving: Not even his hair and beard in the wind and for all Nimrod knew, there was nothing moving inside the man either — not his heart nor his lungs nor the blood in his veins. The djinn couldn’t help but worry that perhaps the old fakir had expired without telling anyone his secret, which seemed a terrible waste in Nimrod’s new, slightly addled way of thinking.

“So come on then, Mr. Swaraswati,” said Nimrod. “What is it? Are you going to tell us? Or should we try and guess?”

They were flying over that part of China that only the Chinese government calls China, but which the rest of
the world calls Tibet. Beneath them were high mountains, capped with snow and wrapped in clouds.

Mr. Swaraswati inhaled a deep breath through his nostrils and, after several seconds, his eyes flickered open.

“What is what?” he asked.

Nimrod grinned. “The secret of the universe that the Tirthankar entrusted to you all those years ago,” he said. “About the meaning of everything. Which one did you get?”

“Really, Uncle Nimrod,” protested Philippa. “I think it’s very unfair of you to ask Mr. Swaraswati that question.”

“He’s got to tell someone, hasn’t he?” insisted Nimrod. “I mean, look at the poor old thing. He’s not exactly in the best of shape, now is he? I’ve seen healthier-looking people in an anatomy class. And I don’t mean the ones standing up wearing the white coats. If he doesn’t tell someone soon, well, who knows?”

No one said anything, least of all Mr. Swaraswati.

Then Philippa said, “I think you have a delayed concussion, Uncle Nimrod. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Rubbish,” said Nimrod. “I mean, what’s the point of being buried alive for a thousand years with one of the secrets of the universe locked away inside your mind if you snuff it before you can tell anyone.” Nimrod shrugged. “That’s a mystery to me, I don’t mind telling you.” He chuckled at his own tasteless joke, and added, “I bet even Mr. Swaraswati would feel like a bit of a chump if he checks out of life’s motel before he can tell anyone what he’s remembered. Always supposing he can remember it, of course. I’m
not actually convinced of that. To be honest with you, he doesn’t look like he can remember if he has milk in his coffee.” He nodded at Mr. Swaraswati and, raising his voice as if the old man were deaf, he smiled a patronizing sort of smile. “All right?”

“I say,” protested Moo. “Speaking as an old person myself, I think you’re being a bit insensitive, Nimrod.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a go at old people,” said Nimrod. “I’ve nothing against them at all.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Mr. Burton, who was no spring chicken.

“I expect to be old myself, one day,” said Nimrod.
“Horribly
old. But there’s old and there’s old, right? There’s old like you, Moo, and there’s an archaeological discovery. Mr. Swaraswati’s off the normal scale of what’s old. He’s like a living fossil. Aren’t you, Mr. Swaraswati?” Nimrod nodded at him again. “And I’m just saying that if he’s going to tell anyone, it ought to be one of us.” Nimrod shrugged. “After all, who else is there? It’s not like he’s got a lot of mates, has he? If he’s going to entrust the Tirthankar’s secret to someone, it ought to be one of us, that’s all I’m saying. In case something happens to the poor old thing. Just think about it. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if that pelican had landed on him instead of me.”

“Exactly,” said Philippa bitterly. She hardly recognized her uncle since the accident. She still hoped his personality change wasn’t permanent. It wasn’t that he was a nastier person since the accident, just a less caring and less courteous one.

“What I mean is that it might easily have killed him,” added Nimrod by way of explanation.

“Well,” said Philippa, “if you ask me, the only way Mr. Swaraswati can be absolutely sure that he can trust us is if we don’t ever ask him to reveal the Tirthankar’s secret.”

“You’re wrong,” said Mr. Swaraswati.

“What?” Philippa frowned.

“Nimrod is right,” said Mr. Swaraswati. “Mr. Burton was asking me about this very thing earlier on, when you were both in Atyrau.”

“Was he, by Jove?” said Nimrod.

“And I’ve been thinking about what he said,” said Mr. Swaraswati. “You know, ever since I stepped upon this flying carpet I have had the constant thought that I might easily be killed. That is why I have been so anxious. The idea that I might fall off this thing before I have had the chance to impart the Tirthankar’s great secret has been most worrying to me. And, as Nimrod says, if I can’t trust you, whom can I trust?”

Nimrod smiled triumphantly at his niece. “There you go,” he said. “Was I right, or what?”

“So I will tell you.”

“Heads up, everyone,” said Nimrod. “This could be important.”

“Centuries ago,” said Mr. Swaraswati, “I made a tryst with destiny. In truth, I had little appreciation of quite what I was committed to and that I would have to wait buried in the dark and loamy earth of Yorkshire for as long as I was. But now the time comes when the pledge must be redeemed.
Not wholly or in full measure but very substantially, for the Tirthankar cannot be here himself and share the true extent of his enlightenment. And it is certain that I have no real understanding of that which I have so long remembered. He told me that before I revealed this, one of the great secrets of the universe, I should say this: That a moment comes but rarely in history when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and a new age begins, when that which was hidden or long suppressed is now revealed, and how it is fitting that at this solemn moment we should all take the pledge of dedication to put this knowledge to the service of humanity and the still larger cause of the world we live in.”

Nimrod shrugged. “Sure,” he said glibly. “Why not? Everyone? We can do that, yeah? Swear that none of us will try to profit from this secret? For the sake of humanity? On a count of three, everyone says ‘we so swear,’ right? One, two, three …”

“We so swear,” said everyone.

There followed a moment’s silence while Mr. Swaraswati looked nervously over the edge of the flying carpet.

Nimrod nodded at Mr. Swaraswati. “In your own time,” he said. “When you’re ready.”

“Does anyone have a pencil?” asked Mr. Swaraswati.

“Here,” said Nimrod. “You can borrow my pen. But I want it back. That’s gold, that is.”

Mr. Swaraswati took the pen. “And something to write on?”

Moo opened her handbag. “You may use my British secret service notebook,” she said.

Mr. Swaraswati thanked her and scrawled something on a sheet of paper. He looked at it for a second, nodded, and then handed it to Nimrod, saying, “Where
e
equals ‘experience.’”

Nimrod read it, tore out the page, read it, and nodded. “Yes,” he said, almost to himself. “That would make sense. If the signum function is the derivative of the absolute value function … hmm. The resultant power of
e
is zero, which is similar to the ordinary power of
e.
The numbers cancel each other out and all we are left with is
e.
My goodness. That’s right. So it does.”

So keen was his concentration that for a moment the flying carpet dipped a little, which was enough to persuade Nimrod to fold away the piece of paper Mr. Swaraswati had given him, and put it in his pocket.

“Well?” said Mr. Burton. “Come on. Aren’t you going to read it out to the rest of us?”

Nimrod shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand it,” he said.

“Really,” said Moo. “I’ll have you know I went to Cambridge University.”

“Course you did,” said Nimrod. “And that’s why you’re a spy. But this is complicated stuff about the nature of the universe. As complicated as
e
equals
mc
squared. Perhaps even a bit more complicated than that. And to be honest, I’m not sure I understand it myself. Yet.”

“All the same,” said Moo. “I think Philippa and I would like to hear it. After all, it was us who found and rescued Mr. Swaraswati.”

“Hear, hear,” said Mr. Burton.

Nimrod shrugged and handed Moo the page torn from her own notebook. “Please yourself. But it’s theoretical physics, and unless you know about that stuff, you’re wasting your time trying to understand it.”

Moo read what was written on the page aloud. “It says:
d [e]
equals
sgn (e) de,”
she said.

“It’s very clever,” said Nimrod. “Elegant. Simple. I’d never have thought of that myself. Well, who would?”

Moo glanced at Mr. Swaraswati. “What does it mean?”

Mr. Swaraswati shrugged. “I am merely the medium,” he said. “I have no understanding of the message.”

“Haven’t you heard?” Nimrod chuckled. “The medium
is
the message.”

“All these years,” said Moo. “You must have some understanding of what it means.”

“Perhaps a little,” said Mr. Swaraswati.

“This I’ve got to hear,” said Nimrod. “Come on then, Professor.”

“Please, Uncle,” said Philippa.

“You see,
e
equals experience,” said Mr. Swaraswati. “And
d
equals a derivative function. In other words, what you can get from
e.
What the equation means is that unless we explain
how
it is that we experience things, we cannot begin to explain the nature of the experiences themselves. In other words, all perception is affected by being. And
only when you explain being can you truly explain perception.”

“Clear enough now?” Nimrod laughed again.

Mr. Burton stood up holding his head in both hands as if suddenly he had understood something. He shook his head as the implications of what Mr. Swaraswati had just said made a profound impact on his thoughts. “That’s it?” he said. “That’s it?”

“Oh, oh, I think he’s got it,” observed Nimrod. “Now watch his skull explode as he realizes the true implications of what this means.”

“Please, Uncle,” said Philippa. “Do try to be serious for a moment. What
does
it mean?”

“What does it mean?” Nimrod looked evasive. “Are you sure you want me to tell you? Sometimes it’s better not knowing these things. Like old Mr. Dishwasher here said. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak.” He shrugged. “When of course you can. We’re the living proof of that statement. But you get the general idea.”

“I want to know what you know,” said Philippa.

Nimrod looked Philippa straight in the eye.

“That’s not so easy,” said Nimrod. “And in a way that’s what is at the bottom of the equation.” He pulled a face and tried to look thoughtful. “You might say that it’s the ultimate truth. You see, however we describe the universe we live in, the fact remains that all the experiments we carry out and theories we elaborate in order to do that are based on our own ability to experience things or not experience things. In other words, we can only start to understand the
physics of the universe that we live in when we have first clarified how it is that we have any experience of a universe at all. And because we can’t ever do that it means that the ultimate truth is —”

Nimrod stopped speaking for a moment; he was no longer looking Philippa in the eye, but over Philippa’s shoulder. Something had distracted him.

“What?” she asked impatiently. “What’s the ultimate truth?”

“It’s John,” said Nimrod.

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

“Everything,” said Nimrod, pointing ahead of them. “Look.”

In the distance, Philippa saw a figure wearing a fur coat falling down the side of an enormous mountain. The figure was upside down and moving at considerable speed and seemed almost resigned to the prospect of landing, fatally, on his head. The apparent calm of the falling figure was unusual enough. But what was particularly strange was that the figure appeared to have a wolf tied onto his back. And it was only now that Philippa realized that the plaintive, sirenlike sound she had ringing in her ears for several seconds was the wolf howling. Philippa wore glasses. But there was nothing wrong with her sight when she was wearing them. And straightaway she saw and felt that Nimrod was right: It
was
John and in just a few seconds he would be dead, unless someone did something. In the same second she realized this, Philippa let out a scream of horror as being John’s twin kicked in and she felt herself at one with her brother,
plummeting through the air, with everything around her a speeding blur of the world upside down. So powerful was this telepathic sensation that her stomach turned over and she almost vomited. The scream emanating from her lungs grew louder and turned into a cry for help.

Nimrod might have suffered a personality change, but there was nothing wrong with his sense of urgency, nor his ability to deal with this crisis. Even before he had finished pointing John out to Philippa, he had changed the flying carpet’s course to intercept his nephew’s fall.

“Sit down,” he yelled at Mr. Burton, who was still taking on board the full implications of what Mr. Swaraswati had been carrying in his head for a thousand years.

The carpet banked steeply in the air like an attack aircraft, and Mr. Burton sat down and rolled perilously close to the edge before Silvio Prezzolini grabbed his hand and kept him on board; no less rigid — with fear — than the surface he was sitting on, Mr. Swaraswati lay down on his stomach and closed his eyes.

“As anyone who has ever used a flying carpet to field … a falling cat … or a falling baby … will tell you,” Nimrod shouted through gritted teeth, “the trick is … to keep your eyes on them all the time… . to line yourself up with their flight … and to
catch
them … rather than … let them just … fall on top of you… .”

Even as he spoke, Nimrod was accelerating down to the ground alongside John, trying to match his velocity.