Age of Shiva (The Pantheon Series) (28 page)

The formaldehyde stink made you feel like your nose hairs were being singed.

“Trophies,” said Parashurama softly. “Goddamn.”

“We brought them back here thinking they were going to be hygienically disposed of,” said Kalkin. “Cremated, or incinerated, or whatever. Not this. Not
kept
. The Trinity definitely told us the bodies would be treated like chemical waste. I remember it. They would be properly dealt with.”

“A falsehood,” said Rama. “And where there’s one falsehood, there are likely to be more.”

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the centre of the chamber.

There sat a raised dais, looked down on by the rows of pickled asuras in their glass coffins. It had a kind of display podium on it, a waist-high steel column topped by a clear dome.

We went down for a closer look, and found biohazard symbols plastered all over the column.

The dome itself was no larger than you might find covering a cake stand, although it was hermetically rubber-sealed around its base – and what lay inside was no Black Forest gateau.

It was a piece of rock.

But not just any old chunk of granite or schist or pumice.

It gleamed. It glittered. Tiny flecks of blue crystalline matter reflected the glow from the specimen jars, like chips of sapphire.

And it had a shape.

It was a delicate arrangement of concentric layers. Seven of them. Like petals.

The rock resembled nothing on earth so much as a flower. A lotus, to be precise. Petrified.

“What the fuck?” I said, because someone had to. Someone had to say
something
, and you know Hanuman. Chatty as a chimp.

We all gazed at the rock flower, curious and a little unnerved. None of us knew what to make of it. We were like cavemen studying an iPhone. It was beautiful and strange. Even if we could have touched it, even if the dome and the biohazard symbols hadn’t suggested how unadvisable that would be, I doubt we would have dared. To have touched it would have been to profane it somehow.
¹

The nape of my neck prickled. It didn’t help that we were surrounded by dozens of dead asuras, all adrift in preservative, their skin stippled with millions of tiny bubbles. Monsters with the gashes and the amputations that spoke of how they died. Torn flesh flaring. Sightless eyes peering out between half-closed lids. A mausoleum of curiosities. Creepy much?

“Any of you guys feeling that?” whispered Kalkin.

“Feeling what?” said Rama.

“You know. That buzzing sensation.” Kalkin gestured vaguely in the region of his head. “Inside.”

“Now that you mention it...” I said.

Now that he mentioned it, I was aware of a buzzing sensation to go with the nape hair prickling. I’m not sure what precisely my cerebral cortex is, but that was where it seemed to be coming from. From some core component of my brain. The hypothalamus, the limbic system, the amygdala... Hell, I don’t know. I’m a comicbook artist, Jim, not a doctor. One of those places. A nagging intracranial itch.

It worsened the more I looked at the stone lotus. It seemed as though the flower was sending out signals and something in me was responding to them like a radio picking up a broadcast.

In a spirit of experimentation, I leaned right up close to the dome, so that my nose was almost touching it.

Static squawked inside my head. Mental white noise.

I reared back.

“Shit,” I breathed. “It’s like... This is going to sound nuts, but it’s like it
recognises
us. That piece of stone, it knows who we are. What we are.”

“You’re saying it’s sentient?” said Kalkin.

“I’m not saying anything. I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on. But our presence seems to trigger a reaction in it. Or being in close proximity to it triggers a reaction in us. You try. See for yourself.”

The other three copied what I had done, putting their faces next to the dome’s glass. All three jerked back as though they’d touched an electrified fence.

“
Sacre bleu
,” said Rama. Because sometimes French people do actually say that. “My brain, crackling.”

“Like a Geiger counter,” said Parashurama, “detecting strong rads.”

“There’s an association here,” said Kalkin. “Between it and us. An affinity.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s it. The stone’s speaking to us at some level. Communicating.”

“It is even a stone?” said Parashurama. “Is it naturally that shape, or did someone, you know, make it? Sculpt it? Build it?”

“The lotus. Our Induction Cocoon visions. There’s a connection,” said Rama. “Somehow this thing ties in to how we were transformed. I can’t think how, but I’m sure of it.”

“I know someone who’d know,” I said.

¹
Deflowering a flower, ha ha.

32. CAST ADRIFT

W
E WENT IN
search of Professor Korolev.

He, however, like the Trinity, was nowhere to be found.

We scoured the second ring, interrogating every technician and lab assistant we came across. None of them had seen Korolev since yesterday.

“This is getting all rather Scooby-fucking-Doo,” I said. “Korolev’s abandoned ship as well?”

We widened the scope of our enquiries to take in the third and fourth rings as well. Finally we found someone able to enlighten us. It was one of the security officers, the same guy who had courteously turned me back that time I’d tried to enter the middle ring without a swipe card. He was a freckled ginger Afrikaner whose face reminded me of Gert Frobe as Goldfinger, only a mite more jovial.

“Oh
ja
, the bosses have gone,” he said. “Didn’t you know? Went this morning, man, first thing. Seaplane came for them, took them off the island.”

“Did Korolev go with them?” said Parashurama.

“The Russkie scientist? Yeah. And Mr Bhatnagar’s family. The pretty Indian girl too.”

“Aanandi?” I said.

The security officer nodded. “If that’s her name.” He held a hand level with his shoulder. “This high. Talks American. Very smart. It was kind of unexpected, you know? Us guys in security didn’t get any warning. Normally we’re told whenever the principals are on the move. Then we can arrange for close protection. No one gave us any notification this time, which is kind of strange, I suppose. Maybe there weren’t any spare seats on the plane.”

“Any idea where they went?” said Parashurama.

“Not the faintest. Need-to-know, obviously. Somewhere safer than here would be my guess. Those missiles must have really spooked them. Spooked everybody, to be honest. Me included. But that one that trashed their apartment tower – you can hardly blame the bosses for thinking it’s time to make like cow dung and hit the trail. Hey, aren’t you fine
laanies
supposed to be fighting a war right now?”

“We’re, uh, awaiting further orders.”

“
Ja
,
ja
. It’s a bad business, that. I’m seriously worried, man. I’d be heading back to Jo’burg right now if that was an option. We’re pretty close to the fallout zone here, if the balloon goes up. Another reason why the bosses hightailed it, I reckon. At least if worse comes to worst there’s an emergency evacuation plan. Seaplanes on standby twenty-four seven, ready to shuttle all personnel over to Malé. We can have Meru emptied in under six hours, and charter jets can then take people on to Africa, Australia or even the US. Hopefully we won’t have to implement it, but you’ve got to be prepared for every contingency,
nè
?”

“Good to hear,” said Parashurama. “So there’s absolutely no way of knowing where the Trinity are now? No way of tracking them? No phone number to call them on?”

“Not as far as I know. You’d have to ask someone further up the food chain. Try Tellmann. Chief of security. I can show you to his office.”

Tellmann, though, wasn’t much more useful. The Trinity’s departure had come as a surprise to him too, so much so that he hadn’t known anything about it until he was woken by the racket of the seaplane arriving. He’d run out in his pyjamas in time to see Lombard and the others climbing aboard. The plane had taken off before he reached the docks.

“I have their private cell numbers in my directory,” he said, “and I have tried calling, but no one’s picking up. Straight to voicemail.”

“Screening,” said Parashurama. “Or maybe blocking.”

Tellmann didn’t like the idea; it offended him professionally and perhaps personally too. “It’s important that they keep me in the loop. How am I meant to do my job otherwise?”

“Where do you think they might be?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. They’ve each got about sixteen houses, so maybe one of those?” He shrugged. “It’s not like they left a forwarding address or anything. Mr Lombard keeps a Cessna Citation X at Ibrahim Nasir Airport on Hulhulé. Assuming they’ve transferred to there from Malé, they could easily be halfway across the world by now.”

“Wouldn’t they have had to lodge a flight plan with the airport authorities?”

“I see where you’re going with this, but owners of private aircraft can file a request to have their flight plans kept classified from the public, so you’d have difficulty finding out. Hacking into the database at Ibrahim Nasir is a possibility, as is bribing someone in air traffic control, but even then, destinations can always be changed mid-journey. There’s no guarantee they’d land where they said they were going to land. I know this from my time bodyguarding movie actors and musicians. If they’re told there’s a pack of paparazzi waiting for them at airport A and they’re not feeling like facing them, they divert to nearby airport B at the last minute while still in transit. The paps never find out in time.”

“So basically the Trinity are off the grid and incommunicado until whenever they decide to get back in touch with the rest of us.”

“That’s the long and the short of it,” said Tellmann. “If you don’t mind my saying, it’s kind of curious that you Avatars are as much in the dark about this as the rest of us. I’d have thought if the bosses were going to tell anyone they were relocating, it would be you.”

“Yeah,” I said, “we’re pretty baffled about it ourselves. And then there’s what we found in the –”

Parashurama gave me a sharp nudge in the ribs. Clearly we weren’t discussing the asura mausoleum or the stone lotus with anyone else just yet.

“It must not have crossed their minds,” he said to Tellmann. “Officially we’re under Indian military jurisdiction, so I guess the Trinity don’t consider us their responsibility at the moment. They’ve handed us over.”

“Still, you’d think...”

“Thank you, Mr Tellmann. We appreciate your cooperation.”

“No trouble. Always glad to help Avatars and” – the chief of security glanced at me – “whatever you are, Hanuman.”

“Me? I’m the neurotic but cool one. The wisecracking hipster who makes the rest of the team approachable and relatable. The Spider-Man of this outfit.”

Tellmann could not have given less of a shit. “Yes. Well. Like I said, glad to help.”

We met up again with the rest of the Dashavatara and filled them in on our news.

“So they’ve done a moonlight flit,” said Vamana. “The weaselly bastards. Where does that leave us?”

“More to the point, what is this flower object you describe?” said Kurma. “What is it for? What does it do?”

“I’m darned well not opening the case it’s in to find out,” said Parashurama. “Here’s what I think we should do. Notify Varaha’s next of kin. That’s first and foremost.”

“We’ve commandeered space in one of the kitchen walk-in refrigerators,” said Buddha. “Not best practice in terms of culinary hygiene, but we’ve got to keep the remains cold somehow until Varaha’s family can arrange for their collection.”

“Good. Next, we need to decide whether we’re going to try and work out the Trinity’s whereabouts and go after them. There may well be an innocent explanation for them jetting off unexpectedly, but I’m hard pushed to think of one. I don’t like being cast adrift like this. I don’t even like
feeling
we’ve been cast adrift. Makes me very antsy. As though there’s more to come.”