The SONG of SHIVA (15 page)

So bright and alive
, Nora couldn’t help thinking. The impression was one of a nimbus or
Heiligenschein
, definitely some kind of aura ― burning with an indefinable radiance.

“Ah, I was looking for you girls,” he said familiarly. Neither woman took offense. “I have to leave for London within the hour and wanted to ask for your help with a few minor details. They shouldn’t prove too burdensome.”

“I’m sure they won’t, Atma,” Julie answered immediately. Nora nodded in agreement.

“Vivaldi, Concerto for Strings, Number 17, conversational background,” Pandavas said idly to the empty air. Before the final consonant had faded, a sweet pastoral arrangement of woodwinds and strings began flooding the kitchen with a perfect accompaniment of eighteenth-century morning-in-the-country ambiance. The music came from everywhere and nowhere through hidden speakers so expertly crafted that their exact locations were unidentifiable.

“The main ballroom is being prepared for dinner. A modest ceremony to follow. Jainni informs me a hundred and twelve have confirmed.” Jainni was Cairncrest’s Head of Staff, responsible for the manse’s day-to-day operation. An estate of this size required dozens of servants and round-the-clock attention.

“A hundred and twelve?” Nora echoed with obvious alarm. “Sounds like an invasion.” The quip was intended to sound lighthearted, but barely camouflaged her anxiety.

“Don’t worry, my dear, they’re all on your side,” Pandavas said soothingly, lifting a hand as if to brush away an insignificance. “Under your command you might even say.

“Many of the people you already know: HHS Secretary Wiznecki: she’ll be arriving with the US Ambassador to the Court of Saint James; a small contingent of American senators, most of whom I understand you’ve already met under more stressful circumstances. They’re here for consultations with Peter Henn, the newly elected PM, arriving with members of his staff. He’s already informed us they have commitments on the continent tomorrow so shan’t be staying for more than an hour or so. Just making an appearance, you understand.

“A number of the others we’ve all met before: Innovac and WHO operatives from Thailand, including Jean-George. We’ll be shining the spotlight in his direction as well. His people deserve a good deal of the credit for our success.”

Hearing the all-inclusive ‘
our
success’, Nora relaxed. “Okay, okay, I get the point,” she said with an exaggerated smile. “It’s been a group success and we’re going to make certain everyone gets their deer-in-the-headlights moment, right?”

“By God, I think she’s got it!” Pandavas replied with mock theatrics. “But still, you’ll have to accept that no good deed goes unpunished. And tonight’s main event is sure to focus its spotlight on you as well. Accept your sentence and remember it’ll be back to day labor again soon enough.”

Nora smiled, looked at Prentice and resignedly put the final denouement on her humility. “I suppose you’re right. Tomorrow will finally arrive and everyone’s attention will move on. I just wish it was tomorrow already.”

“No doubt, Nora, no doubt at all.” Pandavas agreed. “Dinner will be at eight. It’s only about twenty-two minutes direct from Gatwick by helicopter. I’ll be back in plenty of time to meet with our guests. Most of them will be arriving after six.

“Still, a few people may get here before then. Cairncrest is difficult to find. No nearby highways. Few road signs. The closest rail stop is Pewsey, thirty-five minutes by car over a succession of ill-marked country roads. So people may strike out early, only to roll up in the drive much sooner than they planned.

“Until my return I was hoping the two of you could entertain our early arrivals... employ your coquettish charms, perhaps with a tour of the grounds ― weather permitting of course.  I’ll relieve you when I return ― allow you both to freshen up before the festivities begin.”

Could anybody refuse this guy
? Nora thought, smiling.
Prentice never had a prayer
.

“I checked Skycast not ten minutes ago,” Pandavas continued. “This front should move on by noon. Behind it, clear skies are forecast. The stables are available for anyone interested ― so long as the streams don’t swell and the game trails become impassable. You’re both resourceful women and shouldn’t have any trouble.”

“So he says,” Julie quipped and it was settled.

Nora felt only slightly disabused for being handed this hostess’s role. There were plenty of other things a girl needed to consider. Out here in the middle of nowhere, without advance notice, it had even been difficult to find apparel suitable for such a politically-charged event.

The minute she had learned what was in the offing she had commandeered Pandavas’s car and driver and rushed off to the closest fashionable shopping district, more than an hour away in the resort town of Bath. Once there, she was able to locate an exclusive couture, Poynts & Trumbell, and they had been kind and gracious enough to let her splurge half a month’s salary on an off-the-rack, off-the-shoulder black clingy number she hoped would satisfy the demands of the evening.

A hundred and twelve still sounded like a standing army ― whether they were the enemy or friendlies ― no matter what Pandavas might claim to the contrary. She had been operating in overdrive for more than a month and seriously doubted that, as the good doctor had promised, life would ever again return to its pre-TAI virus dull roar.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T ’
an Tzu :
Fragment 87

Rain beat against the railcar window, muddling the landscape. Staring distractedly at the blurred countryside, Lyköan struggled to pull a momentarily elusive concept out of the ether. Until nailed, his half-finished memo was stalled in mid-sentence. He winced, trying to avoid the insolent glare of the flickering display screen.

Settling upon a serviceable word, he returned to the butterfly keyboard and began typing.
One thing’s for certain, this beauty is ten times better than my old Ōkiinami
.

No one capable of reading his thoughts would have contradicted them. It had become a modern fact of life: The most innovative electronics these days were coming out of places with unfamiliar names like Quangzhou and Dongquan. Sure, Chinese manufacturing had been world-class for years, but their original designs had never quite measured up. Groundbreaking and elegant invention was irrationally thought to be the sole purview of the Western mind. After years of me-too manufacturing, such hubris no longer held water. The Chinese tiger had finally arrived.

As proof, this Xīn Liming
Pocket Servant
or
Yíge Bāngzhú
, truncated by the geek world into the monosyllabic
yíb
― configured with a revolutionary BT microprocessor ― possessed more functionality and raw computing power than the best GX
laptops
currently being produced anywhere in the West.
BT
or
Bifurcated Threading
permitted multiple signals to pass through critical logic gates simultaneously, producing a logarithmic improvement in processor performance. The occidental world had initially reacted to the BT pre-release hype with derision, dubbing it
Boasting Tiger
technology. But the revolutionary design had lived up to its advance billing in a way only
Sputnik
, six decades before, had ever equaled.

The model Lyköan had chosen to replace the Ōkii
tablet stolen during the apartment break-in utilized proprietary software that permitted conflicting operating systems and applications to run simultaneously ― transparently interweaving formerly incompatible code and architecture via a remarkably simple and intuitive interface. A featherweight neon-argon battery completed the near-perfect product, providing enough energy in a single charge for twelve-hours of uninterrupted operation at full power. Hallelujah! The first electronic device capable of a full eight-hour workday’s wireless operation. Which made it the most sought after personal computer on the planet. For the present, supplies and availability were still limited to Asia.

One of the many blessings of living under the ever-expanding Chinese economic umbrella,
Lyköan thought with only the slightest sarcasm.

Experience being a stern master, Lyköan had made sure this new purchase was equipped with global anti-theft GPS tracking. Hindsight is always perfect.

If I was smart I would have had tracking installed retro on the Ōkiinami. Maybe if I had, those jik goh burglars
―
or whoever the hell they were
―
would be cooling their heels behind bars by now
.

Though Krung Thep’s finest claimed they were still looking for his attackers and the stolen Ōkii, nothing had come of it yet. Their blasé attitude almost assured that nothing ever would.

He had survived the bullet, an unremembered ambulance ride, seven units of blood and four hours of emergency surgery. But everything else had changed. Certainly any ability to relax. He was now constantly jumpy. Even in this innocuous railcar he felt threatened. Maybe it was just something he’d have to learn to live with from now on.

He refocused on the memo. Ruesri Dat Ton Organics was expecting an update. The international herbalist maintained a satellite office in London that he had visited briefly the day before. Of the few dozen businesses tiny Lyköan IE had once represented, only a handful remained. RDT was one of the last. Yesterday’s London visit might have looked like the height of personal service, but it had been pure coincidence. Today’s other business was the real reason he was in England.

Whether it’s Ruesri or Innovac, clients expect added value. If I can’t provide it, I’m history. Smoked. Either contribute to the bottom line, Lyköan, or say sayonara.

Though now that Innovac’s silver is rolling in I could hire somebody to help out
―
or just find RDT another agent…

Maybe it’s fear. Five outfits are all I’ve got if anything goes wrong at Innovac. And the way my luck’s been running lately…

But the stalwarts stuck with me. Out of loyalty? Who knows? Whatever
―
I owe them
.

Above his belt, half ache, half itch, the healing wound pled for attention. Rubbing the stitches with one hand, he finished the communiqué with the other. Proofing what he’d written, he tapped the touchpad and waited for the memo to clear, shifting uncomfortably behind the cramped table of his standard class seat.

When the “transmission successful” message flashed, he returned to Innovac. Arriving aboard Cawling & Preston, probably the UK’s best cargo carrier, Innovac’s first shipment would reach Bangkok about the same time this train rolled into Pewsey. Innovac was sure getting their money’s worth. Sleepless nights. Haggard days. It was catching up with him.

Agony on the long flight from Bangkok had been followed by two nights on a rack-like mattress in London’s St. Gerard Hotel. The Pandavas estate, if nothing else, would be a soft place to crash. The real reason for pushing this far into the English countryside, however, was entirely mercenary. Among the dignitaries headed for the same destination were the final two trade officials whose approvals he’d been seeking for weeks. Finally convinced ― who cared by what diplomatic machinations or transfers of untraceable cash ― the last of the Innovac trade stars had finally aligned in the political heavens.

The oft-altered pact, executed in the finest legalese money could buy, awaited only these signatures. Attested to and witnessed, the three parties of England, Thailand and Innovac would henceforth be legally bound, allowing Lyköan to drop the curtain on this laughable burlesque and move onto the operational phase. Even without signatures, materials transport had already been pushed up a notch, the trade agreement
de facto
implemented, flying for the past week under cover of temporary governmental waivers. The signed document would only make it all official. Nice and legal.

He owed Innovac at least that much. And more. Up to and including his life. They had sure been his guardian angels on the night he had almost died. Coming to investigate after hearing gunshots, his landlady had found him unconscious, lying in a pool of blood where he had fallen. The police were summoned and rushed him to the nearest hospital, Mongnaki General. Had he remained there, the story might have ended quite differently.

In recent years, almost half the patients admitted with open wounds requiring emergency surgery anywhere on earth developed
xanthromyicin resistant staphylococcus aureus
or XRSA. Pronounced “zersa”, the lethal bacillus, now endemic in modern hospitals, was no more than the common
staph
bacillus, which had first surmounted methicillin, then vancomyicin, and most recently, xanthromyicin, the medical profession’s most potent antibacterial. Discovery of XRSA anywhere but in a limb, which could be amputated, was a death sentence. The wound Lyköan had suffered was an open invitation. Admission to even the best hospital in town posed hazards and Mongnaki General was hardly Bangkok’s best.

Whitehall had stopped by the apartment on his way home, hoping, as he later explained, “to smooth the ruffled feathers of our less than amiable parting.” Once he learned what had happened, he had contacted Gordon and Narayan. It was the two Innovac executives who had insisted that Lyköan be transferred immediately to Bumrungrad Hospital, a world-class institution generally regarded as Bangkok’s finest.

The immediacy of that evening’s events would eventually be lost in the clinical chart. The actual experience, Lyköan recollected, had been anything but memorable. Lying on his back as ceilings filled with recessed fluorescents flashing by, but without direction or sense of motion. In the background, muffled voices and colored lights. For a brief instant, in a distracted sort of way he thought:
This is really quite a powerful image; no wonder it makes its way into so many movies
.
He had experienced only the slightest twinge of impending mortality, but it wasn’t at all troubling, more like some third person observation. No fear.
In fact
, he remembered thinking at the time,
not a bad way to go
. He couldn’t remember any pain, only a sort of dull, full body exhaustion.

A more uncomfortable sequence of pointless nightmares followed, absent even unstructured plots ― not a single image of which remained. Then the recovery room, looking down at his feet and realizing he couldn’t move them. He panicked. No matter how much he concentrated, forced or willed it, no sensation, and no control. Blind terror.
Am I dreaming? Please, make this a dream.
He had strained to awaken.

When compared to the pain that emerged in the recovery room after the subdural wore off, however, that initial panicky fear that he might be paralyzed had been a respite in paradise. Pain that even mainlined fentanyl had barely touched. Before being wheeled into a private room, including a balcony he never had a chance to enjoy, he had already received his first dose, which provided tolerable relief for about thirty minutes. When it began to wear off and he asked for another he was politely informed that the next dose could not be administered for another five and a half hours. About then the abject pleading commenced, as the pain grew from intolerable to scream-inducing. He had stared at the clock, time in suspension, convinced survival was unlikely and certainly not preferable to the agony.

Two catheterizations and an equal number of days later he had walked out of the hospital under his own power. Aside from their inability to provide any genuine palliative, the medical staff had been wonderful and annoyingly efficient through the whole ordeal. After insurance, the bill had come to a miniscule 45,330 baht, which Innovac-Primrose had promptly paid in its entirety.

Three weeks later here he was, rocking to the soothing syncopation of Wessex Rail, rolling through the English countryside. He felt himself drifting, audio buds playing softly in his ears.

How incredibly lucky he’d been. To still be alive. Of the half dozen slugs the cops had dug out of his apartment building, only one had found its intended target. His American-trained surgeon had explained that belly wounds were usually bowel-piercing, messy septic affairs. By contrast, his wound had been clean. Miraculously so. In its course through his innards it had failed to sever any major arteries. Although it
had
nicked his large intestine, there had been no perforation or damage to a single organ en route to its final resting place, nestled up cozy against his spine. Even there he’d been incredibly fortunate. The slug had never actually struck bone. Painful as hell, but even though he’d bled like the proverbial stuck pig, the surgery had been uncomplicated by serious damage to internals.

If I hadn’t been bent over trying to pull Blossom into the apartment I’d have made the perfect target and, the first three slugs
―
bam! right through my chest. Of the rest, even if I’d jumped behind the wall upright, I’d still be a bullet-riddled corpse right now. As it turned out, I couldn’t have picked a better angle if I’d chosen it myself.

Idly, he watched as a single shivering rivulet dashed madly across the window, pushed back by the rushing wind and then dragged earthward by gravity, connecting with other random drops, scoring its meaningless route upon the glass, disappearing into the watertight seal at the bottom of the pane. Mesmerized for a frozen eternity by its devious course, he watched in fascination as it made its random run towards oblivion.

The ten-carriage train had left London’s Paddington Station at 10:13 A.M, dragging itself from the city’s bowels through ancient soot-covered tunnels and under rusting viaducts, rolling west, its first stop Reading, passing drab sidings, derelict rail docks and abandoned stations, stark proof that the British Empire’s glory days had passed. Crumbling infrastructure and conspicuous neglect abounded, dredging up imperfect memories of the similarly neglected Erie Lackawanna commuter line Lyköan had patronized, fresh out of college, working in lower Manhattan. Living in the Jersey suburbs, commuting from Hoboken for more than a year via PATH to the World Trade Center ― years before he had met Karen.

Was that the same life? Am I the same me?
Those days certainly
felt
further from today than could possibly be accounted for by the mere passage of years.

Rolling through the urban decay and out into the open country, he had seen the same rabble of scrub and weed, the same dreary web of overhanging wires sagging in a similar leaden sky, sidings filled with long lines of empty coal cars and drab row houses stretching for miles towards a similar low horizon ― graffiti-tagged walls the only splashes of color. London seemed old and forgotten ― behind the times and inconsequential.