The Five Fakirs of Faizabad (5 page)

“Can you memorize the results of all my throws?” Moo asked Nimrod.

“Easily,” said Nimrod.

“Now then,” said Moo. “You would expect each number from one to six to come up one time in six, plus or minus √(2n/6). If we throw a die one hundred times and get more than twenty-two sixes, or less than eleven sixes, then you can judge me either lucky or unlucky, yes?”

“That’s about the size of it,” agreed Nimrod. “And I must confess, I’m impressed with your knowledge of mathematics and probability.”

“You forget. I’m head of the King’s Gambling Board,” said Moo. “Gambling, luck, odds, probability all fall within my department’s scrutiny.”

Nimrod held the cigar box open for Moo and watched carefully as she began to throw the die. After a hundred throws it was clear to them both that Moo wasn’t enjoying much in the way of good luck.

“You threw only five sixes,” said Nimrod. “Half as many as the least number that might have been expected. It’s not your lucky day.”

“Oh, dear,” she said. “It’s not looking good for my horse this afternoon if I can only manage five sixes. Why don’t I keep going and see if my luck improves?”

Nimrod, who could remember a thousand different numbers just as easily as a hundred, agreed.

But more than an hour later, after Moo had thrown the die another nine hundred times, it was clear her luck could never have been described as good: In a thousand throws she might have expected between 148 and 185 sixes. Instead, she had managed less than a hundred.

“Such a run of singularly bad luck so close to the tuchemeter,” said Nimrod, “ought to show up here, any moment now.”

He looked closely at the tuchemeter expecting to see some movement of the finger at the end of the arm, but there was nothing, not even a tremor. He waited for several minutes during which time Moo said nothing. Finally, Nimrod said, “That’s odd. There’s nothing at all. Not so much as a flicker.” And then he added, “Excuse me for a moment.”

Nimrod left the room and was gone for several minutes; when he came back he was carrying a hand mirror that was the size of a table-tennis paddle.

“Many people believe that breaking a mirror means seven years’ bad luck,” said Nimrod. “With us djinn, it has to be the right kind of mirror. Each of us has a secret mirror, a synopados, that reflects a portion of our soul. With humans, the belief attaches to mirrors in general.”

Moo nodded. “You’re not asking me to break a mirror deliberately?” she said.

“I’m afraid I am,” said Nimrod.

“You ask a great deal,” said Moo, “of someone as superstitious as me.”

“It’s the only way to know for sure if something is wrong with the results we’re getting on this tuchemeter. Perhaps on all of them.”

“I suppose it was me who started this inquiry,” said Moo. “I suppose it had better be me who answers it.”

She took the mirror and looked at it for several seconds before she shrugged and then dropped the mirror onto the floor, where it shattered into a hundred small pieces. Even as Moo did it she let out a large sigh of self-reproach and told herself that in the light of what she had just done it now seemed so unlikely that her horse stood any chance of winning its race that she was thinking of telephoning her trainer and telling him to leave the animal in its stable.

Nimrod scrutinized the silver face of the tuchemeter for some sign that the almost-palpable bad luck that now seemed to affect the room would show up in some small movement of the finger at the end of the instrument’s arm.

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. Most peculiar. I really thought that you breaking a mirror would do it. But this seems to put it beyond argument. You were right. There is something wrong here.”

“I do wish I wasn’t,” said Moo. “And I wish I hadn’t had to break that mirror.”

“Can’t help you with the first wish,” announced Nimrod. “But I can grant the second. And indeed a third. QWERTYUIOP!”

Immediately after he spoke his focus word, the tiny shards of glass lifted themselves up off the ground and began to reassemble themselves like some celestial jigsaw puzzle. For a moment a little galaxy of glass seemed to rotate in the air like a spiral nebula, and then became a mirror that was in Moo’s hand once more.

Moo was so surprised that she almost dropped the mirror again.

“Oh, I say,” she exclaimed. “How wonderful. Does this mean I won’t have seven years’ bad luck after all?”

“Yes, it does,” said Nimrod. “You might also place an extra-large bet on that horse you’ve entered in the Gold Cup this afternoon. I’ve a very strong feeling it’s going to win. In fact, I can guarantee it.”

“Capital.” Moo chuckled loudly. “Capital.”

“Now then,” said Nimrod. “Let’s go and finish our tea and you can tell me exactly what made you think there was something wrong with the Homeostasis in the first place.”

N
o sooner had Nimrod and Moo returned to the drawing room than there was a loud knock at Nimrod’s front door.

“Who can that be?” said Nimrod.

Opening the door, he was delighted to find his young niece, Philippa, standing on the doorstep and carrying a suitcase. She was looking sunburnt and was wearing a T-shirt that read
WHEN IN ROME
.

“Excellent,” said Nimrod. “You’ve arrived back at a most opportune time. I suspect another adventure is afoot.”

“Afoot,” said Philippa. “Oh. And I was hoping to put my feet up for a little while. I’m kind of tired after my flight.”

“No time for being tired at a time like this, child,” said Nimrod, as he hurried her inside. “I fear that there’s important work to be done.”

“Don’t you want to hear how it went?” she asked him. “My
taranushi?”

“Plenty of time for that later,” said Nimrod. “There’s someone here I want you to come and meet. Someone who has just brought me important news.”

He explained that something seemed to be wrong with the tuchemeter and then introduced Philippa to Moo.

“I think,” said Nimrod, prompting the KGB section head, “that you were about to tell me what made you think that there’s an abnormally large amount of bad luck around at the moment.”

“I don’t just mean the stock market,” said Moo, “although things have been bad there. For business in general. I mean
everything.”

“Everything?” Nimrod sounded surprised.

“I don’t know how much you pay attention to these things, Nimrod,” explained Moo, “but recently it was Friday the thirteenth. It’s not unusual for a few superstitious people to stay at home on a day like that, but this year employers reported a twenty percent increase in the numbers of employees reporting sick on Friday the thirteenth. Not just here in Great Britain, but in America and Canada as well. It wasn’t just individual employees who were reacting to a perception that there is more bad luck around, either. NASA refused to launch a new satellite on Friday the thirteenth. And the president of the United States postponed a visit to Dallas, Texas, that was due to have taken place on Friday the thirteenth.”

“Probably very wise,” said Nimrod. “After all, you never know with Dallas. Fascinating. A certain amount of paraskavedekatriaphobia is not, as you say, unusual. But it seldom manifests itself at such a high level.”

“Para, what?” exclaimed Philippa.

“Paraskavedekatriaphobia,” said Nimrod without so much as a stammer. “An abnormal fear of Friday the thirteenth. A specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, which is a simple fear of the number thirteen. Also sometimes known as friggatriskaidekaphobia.”

“Precisely,” said Moo.

Philippa nodded and decided that if ever she decided to change her focus word,
paraskavedekatriaphobia
might just be the word she would choose.

“Meanwhile,” continued Moo, “the cities of Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno, Macao, and Monte Carlo are reporting that the number of people entering casinos is down by almost thirty percent. And the sales of lottery tickets are in steep decline. In other words, people just don’t feel lucky. Also, the sales of cars that are the color green — traditionally a color that some people find unlucky — have dropped through the floor. People are even missing doctor’s appointments for fear of being told bad news, or canceling flights, worried that the plane might crash.”

“It’s true,” confirmed Philippa. “The flight from Rome to London was half empty. And you’re right. No one was wearing green.”

“For this reason the British government has been monitoring the situation carefully.” Moo opened her briefcase and took out a buff-colored file. “This is top secret.”

“You can speak freely in front of Philippa,” said Nimrod.

“Just last week,” said Moo, “we arrested three men in London. One was in possession of a large quantity of fake
railway timetable books. It’s thought he intended to distribute them throughout the country with the intention of making everyone miss their trains and be late for work. The other two had recently opened a self-improvement center for company employees, to teach people personal growth through fire walking.”

“You mean barefoot?” said Philippa.

“That’s exactly what I mean,” said Moo. “Many people manage it quite successfully, too. Only these two suspects were planning something rather more sinister. They planned on encouraging people to do it without first offering them any kind of psychological preparation on how to do it. We narrowly managed to save about a hundred people from badly burning their feet.”

“Ouch,” said Philippa.

“An idea mundanes got from us, Philippa,” explained Nimrod. “In previous times, your
taranushi
would also have involved walking across live coals.”

“These are the three men we arrested.” Moo opened the file and showed Nimrod the pictures of three miserable-looking men holding numbers underneath their chins. “Mr. Puri, Mr. Parvata, and Mr. Sagara,” she said. “Of course they deny being part of some larger conspiracy. In fact, they refuse to say anything at all. All we know for sure is that they seemed bent on creating mischief.”

“Interesting,” said Nimrod.

“I wondered if you might be able to get anything out of them,” said Moo. “Like what they’re up to. If, as seems quite possible, there exists some kind of plot to affect the country’s
luck for the worse. I was thinking of one of those djinn bindings you use to make people tell the truth.”

“You mean a quaesitor?” Nimrod shook his head. “No, I don’t think that would work at all. Not with these three. You see, those three names. They’re significant. One name I might hardly have noticed. But those three together. Well, it rings a bell, so to speak.”

“You mean you know them?”

“No, I don’t know them. But I know those names.”

“You’re being cryptic, Nimrod,” said Moo. “Like the
Times
crossword.”

“I don’t mean to be,” said Nimrod. “Those names belonged to three of the ten great fakirs. Long dead, of course. Which makes it all the more probable that these men are mendicant fakirs.”

He sprang up off his chair and went over to his bookshelves.

“What, pray, is a mendicant fakir?” asked Moo.

“I was wondering the same thing myself,” admitted Philippa.

“Centuries ago in India,” said Nimrod, “fakirs were religious mystics who sought to imitate the powers of djinn by gaining great control over their own bodies. Walking through fire, lying on a bed of nails, going without food or water for many months were common physical hardships endured by these fakirs in search of true enlightenment. Over the years, however, fakirs became more interested in making money than in a wish to be closer to God. As common street beggars, or
mendicants, they were little more than a nuisance. We might call them frauds or con men today, or even fake fakirs. Anyway, as they grew in number they became more and more lawless. Indeed, they became virtual bandits until, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, they were suppressed by the British.

“Ah, here it is.” Nimrod pulled a thin green volume out of his library.
“Sannyasi and Fakir Raiders in Bengal,
compiled by the Bengal Civil Service in 1930.” He opened the book’s cover and read the inscription written inside. “‘The Kent Walton Prize for Wrestling with the School Puma awarded to Nimrod Plantagenet, Charterhouse, 1949.’“ Nimrod smiled. “Happy days.”

Moo smiled back at him. “Were they?”

“No,” said Nimrod. “Hated the place. But I rather liked the puma.”

“Oh.”

“These mendicant fakirs often joined fraternities, or unions of fakirs, upon which they would be given a new name after the ten great fakirs of Tirthankar. These ten great fakirs were Puri, Parvata, Sagara, Vana, Aranya, Keviin, Tirtha, Asrama, Swaraswati, and Bharati. That is why I believe these three men you arrested, Moo, are mendicant or fake fakirs. And that is why I believe a quaesitor would have no effect on them. Because they will certainly have trained their bodies to withstand a certain amount of physical discomfort. Nevertheless, I should like to see them.”

“They’re being held on HMS
Archer,”
said Moo. “That’s the Tollesbury Marsh Prison Ship. In Essex.”

She opened her bag and took out her cell phone. “I’ll arrange it now,” she said, and went out into the hallway to make the call.

“And then I suppose we’ll be going to India,” said Philippa.

“What on earth makes you say that?” said Nimrod.

“The title of your book. Bengal. That’s in India, isn’t it?”

“Used to be,” said Nimrod. “You’re right. Only these days it’s called Bangladesh.” Nimrod shook his head. “But it doesn’t follow that we’ll be going there at all, Philippa. It all depends on where the animadverto conducting the world’s luck has been trapped or waylaid.”

“Waylaid?” said Philippa.

“Interfered with,” said Nimrod. “It’s the only possible explanation why the tuchemeters are giving false readings. For some reason the animadverto’s gotten stuck somewhere.”

“Is that possible?” asked Philippa. “That someone could interfere with an animadverto?”

“Interfering with this particular animadverto is not something I can see any djinn, good or bad, bothering to do,” said Nimrod. “I can see no possible advantage to any djinn in doing it. And only a mundane who was a skilled djinnfinder would ever attempt such a dangerous thing. It’s a well-rewarded but precarious profession. The last djinnfinder I met, a woman called Montana Retch, is now a cat. Your cat, I believe.”

“Yes, I’d forgotten about her,” said Philippa. “Although
to be quite correct that cat is a him. But how do you know the other tuchemeters are giving false readings, too?”

“Stands to reason,” said Nimrod. “Otherwise I should have heard from Creemy, in Cairo, and Faustina, in Berlin. Blessed be her name. No, I shall only know precisely where we’re going after we have first had a closer look at these three fakirs.”

Moo came back into the drawing room. “It’s all arranged. Only we shall have to leave now if there’s any chance of me getting to Ascot in time to see my horse running.”

“In which case I had better do the driving,” said Nimrod. “The Tollesbury Marshes, you say?”