The Sleeping Sands by Nat Edwards Page B

valley, it’s all chaos and savagery – twisted hills and rocks and blasted desert as far as you like. Here, it’s all different. It is order made manifest.’
    The Bashi Bozuk paused, his face flushed, peering at Layard to see if the European was following him. He seemed to sense that some additional inspiration was required, so took another long swallow of wine.
    ‘Order made manifest,’ he repeated. ‘God isn’t in chaos; he is in order – in numbers.’
    He nodded encouragingly at both Layard and Antonio, expecting some sort of acknowledgment. Antonio had been cowed into bashful silence by the Bashi Bozuk’s bulk and exuberant profanity, while the slightly intoxicated Layard was finding it hard to follow the erratic path of the soldier’s argument. Frustrated by his companions’ uncomprehending response, the Bashi Bozuk swallowed again and drunkenly explained.
    ‘Numbers. Numbers are pure and neither imitate nor mock creation. Each number is incorruptible – a three is always a three; a nine is always a nine,’ he hiccupped.
    ‘Excuse me, where was I? Ah yes, numbers can achieve perfection. Like six.'
    ‘Six?’ asked Layard, politely and half wishing that he had not.
    ‘You Franks!’ laughed the Bashi Bozuk, ‘you have the most amazing engineers and factories, yet you seem to lack so much learning. I suppose it is because you have no tradition of numbers – you even borrow those little numbers you do have from the Arabs.
    ‘Here, in these lands is where it all started, you see – in Babylon, Assyria, Antioch. This is where men started to understand numbers – or perhaps it is where they learned them from the angels. It is where they began to see the perfection in numbers. Six is the first of the perfect numbers after one. The sum of all its factors is its whole – it is the first expression of perfection beyond the divine. It is creation. Six. Six days.’
    ‘And on the seventh he rested,’ murmured Layard, ‘and Augustine said that the number six existed even before the moment of creation.’
    He paused in his reverie.
    ‘What do perfect numbers have to do with Jerash?’ he demanded of the soldier and accepting a draught from the freshly proffered wineskin.
    The fat Egyptian grinned triumphantly.
    ‘You Franks may be ignorant of it, but Jerash was the greatest centre for the study of numbers in the ancient world. It was here that the finest minds and the hungriest ambitions came; men like Pompey, looking for the power that numbers could give him. There is something about this place that brings our chaotic, twisted world closer to the secret order at the heart of things. Surely you must have felt it?’
    ‘I must admit, there is something about the valley. Ever since we arrived, I have felt a little,’ Layard searched for a word, ‘lighter, perhaps.’
    ‘Ha! You have felt it. There are truths locked away here – truths that can be peered at through our broken fragmented myriad world,’ he slurred, ‘many becomes one; one becomes many…’
    ‘Is that why you’re here, looking for some secret?’ asked Layard softly to the now gently nodding bulk of the Bashi Bozuk.
    The cavalryman murmured, his eyelids heavy, ‘no more than you, my friend. They all come here. Even the prophet Isa, your Jesus, he came here too.’
    ‘The land of the Gerasenes,’ remembered Layard, ‘in the Gospel of Mark, if I recall. But that was to cure a man who was possessed by an evil spirit.’
    ‘And Jesus asked him his name,’ whispered Antonio, ‘and the man said, My name is Legion .’
    The soldier’s eyes opened for a moment and he grinned demonically at Layard, before muttering a single obscenity and slumping into a loud, snoring heap.
     
    In the morning, Layard found that he could remember little of the night’s conversation. He awoke with no memory of having retired to bed, with a dry mouth, a rebellious stomach and a resounding headache. Ever attentive, Antonio fetched a jar of sweet fresh