The SONG of SHIVA (26 page)

“With the help of clues embedded in the analyzed Fibonacci-refracted DNA, we were able to tap across the vast expanse of infinite realities – all of these uchronia packed closer together than the atoms comprising what science considers the limits of the physical universe. Though, to paraphrase Hamlet, my dear Lyköan, there is much more to the structure of existence than was ever dreamed of in
anyone’s
philosophy.”

This sounded like a universe even more bizarre than the one Dick Bachman popularized in his fiction, that bestseller about a plague that inadvertently brings human history to a final contest between the archetypal metaphysical powers of good and evil. The tale Pandavas was pushing was about as plausible. And though it was still easier to believe Pandavas had tripped over that famously blurred line between genius and madness, the distance between Lyköan’s outright disregard and possible acceptance was shrinking. By definition there was only one universe and it comprised everything, right? Even if this multitude of universes ― what had he called it? ― this
multiverse
, actually existed, what impact could that possibly have on
this
reality?

“In one of those proximate realities,” Pandavas was rambling, “and one not so very far away – your beloved Karen hasn’t died, but you have, my friend. In another, both of you will live on into old age, but estranged.”

“That would never have happened.”

“Hard to believe? Care to take a look?”

“You have it all on video, I suppose.”

“Something even better, my friend. Much better. Proof positive that what I’m saying is true. Why would I go through all this trouble, Lyköan, if I couldn’t produce that much? And with that proof, provide assurance that your deepest desire, one you think utterly impossible, is even now within your grasp.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all of these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.

Bhagavad-Gītā : Text 12

The smell of diesel exhaust, the heat and humidity, the cacophony of urban sounds ― yes, it was definitely a typical midtown Manhattan summer day. Lyköan was sitting on the hard granite steps of the New York Public Library’s Fifth Avenue main entrance, at the paws of one of its great, sculpted Tennessee marble lions. The sun stood high in a cloudless sky, thermal waves shimmering off macadam and concrete.

He was still a bit dazed. In the southern distance the twin glass spires of the World Trade Center gleamed blindingly, reflective geometry piercing the midday sky. It was a dream. It had to be. He’d had similar dreams before. The kind of dreams that could make you lose your bearings. Or wish there was some way to trade places with your dream self. Forever.

Down the crowded sidewalk a compellingly attractive woman, one of the living, breathing throng of lunch-hour revelers, was approaching with an expectant smile beaming on her face. Karen looked stunning; the slight summer breeze blowing wisps of silken amber strands away from her face in picture-perfect, beckoning undulations, exposing that clear, flawless, almost ethereally pale complexion, so vibrant and alive. God, he had forgotten how angelic she had looked, far more beautiful than any indistinct dream display or the fading images from his waking memory ― pulling ever more imperfect details and forming less and less clearly as time had passed.

The scene was playing out in painfully artful slow motion, every arching stride she took turned into an ache as the distance between them dwindled. He felt frozen to the step, paralyzed, and momentarily confused. The noise of the multitude ― electronic music and truck engines, ambient cell phone conversations ― had all disappeared as the woman in the tan summer skirt and white blouse cinematically bounded up the stairs, a breathlessly lilting laughter in her voice.

“I’ve only got about forty minutes, but I just had to come and tell you the good news in person. Oh, Egan, it’s just wonderful!”

Lyköan wondered how many minutes were left. He’d already been sitting on the steps for a few. What had Pandavas warned? No more than twenty minutes for such a ‘slip-stream excursion’ would be permitted. Any longer and certain irreversible conflicts would develop. Before any could occur, he would be snatched away.

With difficulty, he rose on weak and wobbly knees. Karen vaulted the last step and touched him.

“Here, c’mon. Let’s get something to eat ― quick,” she said, grabbing him at the elbow and, leaning close against him, brushed his mouth familiarly with her own warm, deliciously-glossed lips ― as though they had left each other only temporarily, earlier this morning ― rather than forever, five years before. Her familiar fragrance, a mixture of a favored perfume and Karen herself, brought back a flood of memories almost too painful to bear. He tried, but couldn’t speak.

“What’s the matter, silly? Are you alright? Is something wrong?”

“Wrong? No, no, nothing’s wrong.” He didn’t know what to say ― how to deal appropriately with this ghost come back to life in the few minutes that remained. There had been little time to plan for this encounter ―

“I’m certain we can place you in a
very
appealing uchronion,” Pandavas had guaranteed.

“You keep using that word, what does it mean?”

“An ‘alternate history’ ― where you and your wife are alive at this very moment ― no guarantees for the outcome of the future from there, you understand. There is absolutely no way to
determine
the future. While our capabilities are considerable, time remains an insurmountable limitation.”

“Man’s reach should always exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for, right doc?” Lyköan had returned, convinced this was some kind of elaborate hoax. But that had been before he found himself here. That had been years or miles or ― hell, there was no way to quantify these
dimensions
― some chiasmic distance ago. In any case, before
now
.

And Lyköan was breathing
in
the now, savoring the instant, wishing he could somehow extend, stretch out time itself ― forever exist in this present, immersed in these brief minutes. He put his arm around Karen and drew her close as they walked side-by-side down the steps and onto the crowded sidewalk, heading for a street-corner vendor. Her flesh was warm and soft ― and brutally transient. Tears were welling up in his eyes.

“I’m so glad you could make it down here,” he finally managed to get out.

“Oh, but I just had to see you. The news is fabulous,” she exaggerated, bowing forward in a feigned guffaw. “Scrivener’s has taken an option on my book – movie rights – everything! Egan, I just signed an eight hundred thousand dollar contract. Can you believe it?” She was obviously elated, more ebullient than he could ever remember.

“That’s wonderful,” he announced perhaps a bit too half-heartedly.

She stopped in mid-stride. Passersby swept around and past them on the sidewalk. Looking into his face and seeing the tears, she asked, “There
is
something wrong, isn’t there?”

Can she sense the change in me?
he wondered.

“No, honestly, I’m just so happy for you,” he said, attempting to explain away the tears.

“Don’t give me that. What is it?” she demanded.

“Oh, hard to explain. Something just came over me. Don’t worry about it, just a frightening sense of déjà vu is all. Nothing really. So, tell me all the details,” he said, trying to imbue his words with happy earnestness.

There was no sense in disturbing the idyllic life of this other Egan ― or was it all the
same
Egan? Was it another soul, or the same, connected in some unfathomable fashion to the
him
he thought he was? In any case, there wasn’t time to explain the tumultuous waterfall of events and altered peculiarities to this Karen in the few moments they had remaining to this
them
. It would serve no useful purpose. If he tried to explain any of it she’d probably think, with some justification and perhaps correctly, that he had lost his mind.

Walking to the corner and stepping off the sidewalk, they stopped at a steaming Nathan’s kiosk, the aroma of hot oils and long forgotten American spices filling the air around the cart. Lyköan looked at the short menu scrawled on a hand-lettered sign hanging from the red and white striped umbrella. He ordered two smothered hotdogs with everything, just as they had done so often oh those long years ago.

“It’s really unbelievable. Sid Freeman, the contemporary fiction editor, just loved it. The publishers were absolutely
gah-gah
. They’ve scheduled a first run of half a million copies ― that’s almost unheard of for a first novel. Plus, I receive fifty-percent residuals on subsequent printings. And I can still negotiate paperback rights with anyone, though Scrivener’s retains rights of first refusal on any negotiated price. I never imagined this writing business could be so lucrative! It’s like a dream come true.”

And it was. Before her life had been cut short on the tragic journalism assignment to middle America, Karen had spoken more than once about wanting to write a story, the seeds of which had only then been germinating. So this is how that might have turned out ―
had
turned out ― just somewhere and somewhen else.

“I’m really proud of you, sweetheart. You made it happen,” Lyköan said, happy for this ghost, so full of life that it made him heartsick. “We’ll have to celebrate.” The other Egan would have said something similar, he knew. He was mesmerized; unable to take his eyes off this beautiful Persephone come back from the underworld. He took the wallet out of this other Egan’s back pocket and removed a few bills.

“That’ll be thirteen-fifty, Mac,” the vendor announced in a strangely familiar voice. Startled, Lyköan looked into the man’s face, astonished delirium spiraling in the wake of the last word.

There before him, in all his unexpected glory, was Sun Shi, the wrinkles of his weathered, ancient skin, that impish, cocked smile ― beautiful to behold. And the man was looking back at him with what Lyköan was sure was recognition!

Sun Shi held Lyköan’s wrist for an instant after the bills had been exchanged, glancing quickly first at Karen and then back into Lyköan’s eyes. With a knowing wink, itself reminiscent of the other world’s bodhisattva, he pulled Lyköan forward and whispered in his ear, “Don’t be too intent on holding onto this, pal. Time, like fortune, has a reason for running through our hands, just the way it does. Ultimately, there is really no difference between reality and illusion. Spend both with considered intention.”

Lyköan pulled away. He stepped back, almost stumbling on the curb. Turning abruptly away from the old man, with the bulging lunch bag in one hand, he took Karen’s hand in the other and pulled her towards the greenery of the sunlit southwest corner of Bryant Park.

“What did that guy just say to you?” Karen asked with a deprecating wrinkle of her nose.

“Thought I hadn’t tipped him enough,” Lyköan lied. “Weird.” Looking back over his shoulder he could still see Sun Shi standing at the side of the cart in white shirt, pants and stained checkered apron, now serving another patron.

They walked through the park and sat down on a low cement wall, placing the bag between them. Lyköan pulled out the two bottles of fruit soda, noticing the unfamiliar label and logo. In the place he’d come from that same name was associated with a completely different product. Taking out the greasy hotdogs, he flattened the paper bag and placed them on it.

“So, when will we start seeing the advertisements in bookstores?” he asked.

“Sid claimed there’d be a ‘media blitz’ beginning two months before release.”

“Can’t wait. What a hoot.”

That was all. He tried to say something more, but could not. The colors were fading rapidly from the afternoon. He reached for Karen, feeling faint, everything slipping away from him or he was being dragged away from it.
Too soon, too soon…

Karen looked at him with a worried expression. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Her voice sounded like it was already echoing through the Holland tunnel from miles away.      

* * *

“So, unlike those waves making toward that pebbled shore, your minutes need not hasten to a miserably bitter end, my dear Lyköan,” Pandavas said with a smile. “Not immediately anyway.”

Lyköan was still woozy from the excursion to that other ― what had it been? It took a few seconds to concentrate on what Pandavas was telling him.

“Was it convincing? Everything I promised ― and more?”

“More than enough. Too much.” Somewhere between process and poetry, nightmare and bliss, Lyköan felt a loss as tragic as the original. The experience had been believable alright. There was no doubt that the feel, the smell, even the taste, everything mortal senses latch onto in determining if something
is
real, had all been there ― in spades. But what had Sun Shi been doing in the midst of it? There was certainly something wrong about that.

At first Lyköan suspected that it might have been something like a computer watermark that Pandavas had intentionally inserted into the middle of his fictitious virtual or neural sleight of hand. But why would he have done so? Was Pandavas even aware of his special relationship with the monk? Doubtful. Which made the experience feel all the
more
real.

“Death, where is thy sting, eh Lyköan?”

“My God, she was lovely. I’d forgotten. Memory always alters things in some way; never hits it dead on. Not like that.”

“
Is
lovely, my friend,” Pandavas corrected.

“Huh?” Lyköan grunted as the technicians finished removing the last of the sensors from his shivering body. For some reason, the process required full-body immersion in a coffin-like tank of a mysterious thicker-than-water liquid. It had the look, smell, and slick feel of antifreeze. Rivulets of the super-aqueous substance ran down his naked arms and face, dripping from his fingers and the point of his nose onto the reflective floor.

“She
is
lovely, not
was
lovely. It takes some getting used to, I know. The beginnings and endings of everything have been forever expanded. This also means our former ideas of then and now, past and present, have been forever altered. But forgive me; you probably want to clean up before we continue this conversation.”

Sitting up on the side of the gurney, still shivering, a soaking towel draped across his lap, Lyköan caught himself peering over the edge, that familiar vertigo of complete understanding acting as a stiff breeze threatening to blow him out into black fathomlessness. An echo from his unvoiced call into the void came back:
What is Pandavas really after
?

* * *

“And you’re certain that Egan never arrived in Bangkok?”

“Quite certain, Doctor Carmichael. I doubt he ever left England. Have you been able to confirm his arrival in London?”