The SONG of SHIVA (42 page)

Pulling in another rattling lungful of air, he expelled a racking, ragged cough, spraying a flowering eruption of polished knife blades and mirror shards into the air that shattered the swirling wisps of joss smoke like the collision of two galaxies.

“He may even believe that such a conflagration has the power to heal some flaw in the operation of the universe. Cleanse its wounds. That by summoning this reincarnated elemental ― this
Shiva…
Keep in mind, that this name is but a name. It is not a description. Not a definition. Not even a rational explanation. But in its power, it is as much to be respected and feared as the current arbitrator of our existence ― the one with whom you’ve already become acquainted ― He who sits at the point of singularity.”

Lyköan placed his palm across the old man’s brow. Beneath the transparent flesh, he could feel the raging fever devouring sinew and soul. But he was powerless to quench that fire. Tears were welling up in his eyes. Sun Shi ignored them.

“Pandavas may believe he has hit upon the perfect instrument for accomplishing that end,” the old man continued. “But he is wrong. What he is attempting constitutes a grievous and unforgivable spiritual conceit. The universe, however, cares nothing about such matters ― or the passions that drive them ― and thus Pandavas possesses all the authority he needs to successfully achieve his goal.”

“Isn’t there any way to stop him? Or are you saying we shouldn’t even try?”

“Search for that which gives and sustains life. Only then can you right this wrong.”

“I’d be happy to. Tell me what it is. How do I find it?”

“First of all, you must cast off all this wallowing in the Celtic cringe. You wear it like a mantle, boy. More than anything else, it is that which hinders your progress.”

“My what?”

“Your closed-mindedness to the open-ended curve. That which imprisons you in the bottom cress of the meadow and causes this unnecessary stumbling among the immensities ― above which, thus far, you have not even
attempted
to rise.”

“Without understanding what you’re talking about ― how do you propose I
do
that?”

“Look to the ultimate emancipation of theism.”

“And what is that?”

“That in death all things are equal.”

“That’s no help.”

“You no longer need my help. When you began this journey, my guidance was undoubtedly essential, but you can find your own way now. I have faith in you ― even though there are no guarantees. None exist in the future. The future is but a maze of fickle randomness. None exist in the present either. The present is no more than an ever shifting repository of potentials. And you have learned the hard way ― even the apparently fixed past ― is not what men believe it to be. It is by no means uniform.”

“So? If you’re right, then there’s nothing that can be held ― nothing that can be relied upon. If you know of something that can me, tell me!”

Sun Shi answered with another question. “What is the impact of a rift and subsequent reweaving of the fabric of time and space?”

“You’re asking me?”

“You are already witnessing it, even as you write it. When you can answer my question knowledgeably, you will have gained all that is necessary for hurdling any obstacle that may lie ahead. Return to the
Bhagavad-Gītā
. All that remains hidden from you can be found there. Let that wisdom be your teacher ― provide the tools success demands. But beware the wiles of desire ― of your own will and that of others. Instead, be mindful of opportunity and absorb strength from the seemingly inconsequential manifestations of the duality. And above all else ― always be open to sacrifice.”

“Are you suggesting it’s all up to me? I haven’t got a chance going toe to toe with Pandavas. Not alone. You want to maybe lend a hand? Please, don’t force this cup on me!”

“Don’t sell yourself short, my son,” came the reply. “Nothing’s fair. Existence ― and the brevity that resides within existence that we call life ― is
never
fair. That is the point, dear boy. The ultimate point. It is here only for
grace
― which, when bestowed in abundance ― may cause thanksgiving to overflow for its own result.

“So don’t be so easily discouraged. Although you witness this outer self wasting away,” the old man indicated his frail body, “know that the inner self is being renewed. What you see before you is but a momentary, mild affliction and, in its way, it is creating an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Look not to what is seen, but to what is unseen; for that which is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.”

“More from the
Bhagavad-Gītā
?” Lyköan asked, totally confused.             

“No,” Sun Shi answered with a brittle laugh. “
Second Corinthians
. There are many books ― many chapters ― but they are all one.”

A fey, indecipherable look washed over the old man’s face, followed by a weak cough, eyes fluttering back into his head, followed by a weak, rapid wheezing. Each individual droplet in the blanket of glistening beads of perspiration covering his exposed flesh had captured and was reflecting in stark detail everything that was transpiring in the bedchamber.

“Cling not to this present place nor attempt to retain anything that inhabits it. Listen to my words and learn from my example. Be prepared to leave everything behind as though it were of no consequence. For the trappings of the physical reality ― these artificial posturings our senses perceive and then insist must be firm ― are in truth as ephemeral as joss stick smoke and as easily dissipated. Believe me when I say I entered with innocence
and
experience and yet happily exit as well. I suffer no loss for none exists. Oh how eternity adores devouring the creations of time...”

With a spherical burst of radiant neon, Sun Shi’s golden aura expanded, gaining in brilliance as it grew, passing through Lyköan’s body with a warm, soothing rush and the delicious aroma of baking bread, presenting pure sunlight and starlight in equal measure. Within and surrounded by its glowing elegance for the briefest instant, Lyköan experienced the great power rush through him, expanding as the outer edge of the spiritual sphere stretched into the room’s rafters, through the floor and walls, disappearing into the farthest reaches of forever. For the length of a single breath its lingering essence settled inside Lyköan’s chest, flowed warmly out into his extremities ― and was gone.

Lyköan peered down into Sun Shi’s slack face, saw the dull eyes fixed upon eternity, and understood. The husk now lying motionless upon the pallet was silent and expressionless, its animating source now flown. He doubted that the soul that had once inhabited this vessel was destined ever to return ― having loosed the shackles of this vale of tears finally and forever.

After closing the eyes slowly with his thumbs, he bent down and gathered up the empty shell in his arms. It was small and weighed nothing. Every tear that fell, and there were many, fell not for Sun Shi, but for himself. For what he had lost. He continued rocking back and forth for some minutes, the weightless burden crushed tightly to his chest.

The streets were eerily deserted hours later when, after funerary details had been worked out with one of the temple's still surviving monks, Lyköan finally exited through the wat gate under a waxing pale velvet moon. He took off running, the coughs and cries of the afflicted multitude stalking him for some distance before fading into the shadows. Picking up the pace once they had been left behind, he raced for the Ayutt Haya ― and the only human soul who remained to him in this world. Even at full stride it would take another forty minutes. But no matter how fast he ran, how hard he pressed into the exertion, there was no way to outrun what he had just left behind: one more searing episode to be locked away in the angry vault of his pounding heart. Sun Shi would certainly have seen it differently and admonished him, but at that moment, in that raging solitude, as the tears flowed, flying from his cheeks as he ran, he could not keep himself from thinking that, if it was the last thing he ever did, he would find some way to make those responsible pay ― and pay dearly.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

A man who is in one place cannot (Autoprosopos) at the same time be in any other.

Increase Mather :
Cases of Conscience

“C'mon, you two, you can level with me, how are you doing it?” Fremont asked from across a table cluttered with canned goods, loose batteries, flickering candles and two Heckler & Koch G36C assault rifles.

“Doing what?” Nora replied, deflecting his question with a question of her own.

“You know what I’m talking about, Carmichael,” Fremont shot back with an angry snicker. “All this goddamned energy ― where’s it coming from? Shit. It’s been what ― a couple weeks now?”

“Sixteen days,” Nora corrected, avoiding his eyes.

“Okay, sixteen days then. Only proves my point. I can barely drag this goddamn fork to my mouth, but look at you two ― still fresh as fucking daisies.” Raising both palms in front of his face as if to protect himself, he added, “Just wondering. What is it, something you boosted from the lab?”

“No, Felix, nothing like that,” Lyköan inserted from his chair next to the blind-drawn window. “Just more motivation, that's all.”

“What are you talking about?” Fremont asked with an exaggerated snigger.             

“I’m talking about Pandavas,” Lyköan replied. “We
know
the bastard, we've experienced his hospitality first hand, remember? You haven’t.” He pushed back in the chair. “Our juices are pumping full tilt, Felix. That’s all it amounts to.”

Lyköan appended the weak explanation with a weak grin and a “you agree with me, right?” raised brow. Fremont returned a totally unconvinced stony glare. Without breaking eye contact, Lyköan leaned forward over the can he was holding and shoveled another soggy heap of steaming vegetables into his mouth. Fremont looked away. After standing the chopsticks upright in the can, Lyköan finally risked a quick, worried look in Nora's direction. Tilting back in his chair, he again turned to the window and, spreading two slats of the tightly-drawn blinds, squinted out at the deserted soi below.

The apparent nonchalance with which his flippant explanation had been delivered was, of course, pure canard. He and Nora
did
have more energy ― and knew it. Their bodies were
teeming
with nano-scriptors, tirelessly repairing every debilitative effect of the past sixteen days. Felix didn’t share their advantage. Nevertheless, he obviously sensed that something strange was occurring.

“That’s not it Lyköan,” Fremont grunted out at last. “But nice try.”

Yeah, you’re suspicious as hell,
Lyköan thought.
But you’ve got no idea exactly why, do you? You’ve got every right to be edgy. It's been more than two weeks without power or running water, the entire city stinking to high heaven.
At some point suspicion and innate personality conflicts were bound to supplant even the most steadfast esprit de corps
.
I should have seen it coming
.

Breaking into a new place was never easy. The overpowering stench of decomposing bodies, bloated to horrible distention in the high humidity, slack corpses that had long since lost their post mortem rigor. Five of them this time ― including three little kids. Grotesque, unwieldy creatures, skin sloughing off muscle and bone wherever they were grasped. The three survivors had been forced to throw the windows wide open, then drag the damned, unwieldy things out and stuff them in a nearby apartment. Afterwards, they had spent another wretched stomach-turning hour cleaning up the remnants of disease the bodies had left: the hemorrhagic slop, the dried vomit, the ubiquitous death rattle defecations. Even now, hours later, a lingering background stench still hung in the air. But the windows couldn’t be left open. That would only invite trouble ― the suspicious sounds, unexplained candlelight, and moving shadows would draw attention. No. The windows had to be closed and the blinds drawn tightly shut. In the relative safety that followed, however, they had been able to heat up and were now tossing down another quick, furtive meal.

“Calm down, Felix,” Nora pleaded in the most soothing voice she could muster. “Less fuming and more breathing, okay? Just try it. We’re all in the same boat ― on the same side here ― remember?”

Rather than reply, Fremont took a long pull from a warm bottle of Bai Chang and stared at the ceiling.

“How about some
pla muek
?” she offered, extending a forkful tentatively. “Energy food, you know?”

“I got plenty of my own,” Felix barked, pointing to the half-eaten can of boiled pork sitting in front of him. “Can’t stand that damned calamari shit anyway.”

Lyköan knew that revealing the source of their inexplicable energy would be counterproductive, so h and Nora had decided instead to suffer Fremont’s mounting suspicion in silence ― deflecting it as best they could. Such suspicion was only to be expected, wasn’t it? Hadn’t Lyköan reacted similarly when first encountering Gordon and Narayan? Nora’s response had been different, a starry-eyed fascination bordering on reverence. When first encountering it, she had wished only to bathe in its soothing, euphoric glow, and seen Pandavas only as its delivering angel. Later, of course, once the enhanced organism’s true nature was fully exposed, that initial reverence had turned into something far more sinister.

Perceiving the same elusively subtle clues, only their reactions had differed. They had both immediately sensed something amiss, subliminally understood that the observable sum did not add up. The subconscious mind recognized the ambrosia ― the invisible life preserver ― whatever the hell it was, but the conscious mind could not. And even while baffled, they had both reacted. Fremont was reacting now. Everyone reacted. It was unavoidable, the universal human response to the inexplicable. When meeting an angel for the first time there are only two possible reactions: fear or adoration.

As if reading her thoughts, Fremont shook his head. “No, it ain’t your diet, sweetheart. It’s something else.” He had already implied a chemical stimulant ― something pilfered before the WHO labs had been abandoned. Let him think that if he liked. It was preferable to revealing the truth.

“You’re right, Felix,” she agreed. “There
is
something else...”

Fremont gave her a genuinely astonished look.

“It’s called
paranoia
. Do you know how crazy you sound?”

In the silence that followed, she returned to that final week in the lab and her bright idea to reverse-bioengineer the nano-scriptors ― use the HM sequencers to compare tissue lines from Lyköan and now, herself.

“Paranoia? Maybe with good reason,” Fremont grudgingly admitted, throwing his head back and emptying the long-necked bottle. “Anything’s possible,” Placing the now dead soldier next to the growing squad of empties already on the table, he wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, “but you and golden boy here,” he took a quick breath, “you’re just too damned perky. Something really odd about it.”

What had struck her immediately was how closely the rescriptors resembled retro viruses, or even more ― pluripotent embryonic human stem cells. Once introduced, after days tracing the vagaries of each new host’s unique DNA codec, they began unerringly firing the countless self-actualizing protein triggers that would best serve that particular organism. What resulted was the dizzying production of billions upon billions of uniquely tailored, minutely differentiated devices, each discrete organism performing a single biologic task ― creation, augmentation or reconstruction. An amazing, almost mystical process. She had followed the stream back to its source, but could deconstruct it no further. Perhaps if there had been more time...

Anyway, the process was a one-way street, limited in application. Multiple data runs and subsequent animal tests had confirmed that once the transformation was complete, the now mature rescriptors were useful for no other host. In fact, if they were then introduced into another organism not already possessing protective constructs of its own ― one of two decidedly unpleasant outcomes invariably resulted.

“Remember, Felix,” Lyköan happily agreed now that Fremont seemed willing to question the basis for his suspicion, “we had plenty of practice ― across half of England before you even entered the picture.”

In the majority of subjects, exposure to these now uniquely-matured rescriptors was lethally toxic, causing a very briefly delayed but systemic anaphylactic reaction as the ultramicroscopic devices, decomposing upon contact with the alien genomic environment, disintegrated into semi-operational protein springs, erratic sprockets whirring catastrophically through the unrecognized organism’s physiology even as they continued to replicate. In her animal tests, incapacitation occurred suddenly, never more than a few hours after ingestion, injection, or inhalation. Death invariably followed within minutes of the onset of symptoms. And the disintegration continued even after death ― until all that remained was an innocuous soup of untraceable common organic proteins.

“With all that experience under your belt―” Fremont said, displaying an unreadable grin, “―all that pumping adrenaline… then you won’t mind taking first watch tonight ― while I get some shuteye? You obviously think I need it, right? Maybe I do. Wake me up at midnight. I’ll take it from there. I’ve had enough for today.”

The enigmatic grin aside, Fremont seemed to have spun full circle, become almost docile. Maybe it was the beer. Lyköan didn’t argue. “Whatever you say, chief. Still some daylight left though, so remember to keep the blinds drawn.”

The outcome for the other subjects, those for whom the rescriptors remained intact, while not as immediate, was equally devastating. Retaining their full functionality, these rescriptors went merrily about their business. But already configured for another specific genomic blueprint, they invariably stimulated uncontrolled cellular division, producing multiple explosively invasive malignancies that presented within hours of exposure. Death through this progression took a little longer, but was no less certain. Not a single animal had survived more than a few days. Unfortunately, she was never able to identify what triggered either outcome.

Nora now knew that she had been incredibly lucky the night they had escaped from the Node. Egan’s embryonic rescriptors had obviously not fully matured. Another day, two at the most, and she would never have survived long enough to understand exactly how dangerous loving Egan Lyköan would soon become. And now? It was impossible to pass along host-specific rescriptors ― to anyone ― ever. Even incidental exposure, perhaps as little as a single unit of transfused blood would, without exception, prove fatal. What would be the point of explaining any of this to Fremont?

* * *

“Really puts everything into perspective,” Lyköan whispered in a mirthless, low register. “Everything we used to lose sleep over. Remember? Islamic terrorism. Global warming. The energy crisis.”

Nora had joined him at the window. In the background, Fremont’s snoring was already rumbling from behind a closed door. Far to the south the Bangkok skyline stood in the ebbing daylight like an uneven line of majestic flame-dipped crystals.

“So clear and quiet,” she said. “Except for the stink who’d suspect...” Leaving the question unfinished she leaned her head against his shoulder.

“I would,” Lyköan admitted, pushing a handful of open fingers nervously through his hair. “The old Bangkok was
never
this quiet. Not even at three in the morning.”

Even now, he could still imagine that lost metropolis. Which was more disturbing? The noxious odor of death as Nora claimed ― or this eerie sea of silence? A city of ghosts. The few fires set shortly after the power first failed had burned out long ago, replaced by a silence as thick as the pall of pollution it had replaced. Every trace of commerce and conversation, the incessant deafening noise and bustling activity of more than fifteen million thriving souls, had utterly vanished like a faded dream, dissolving so quickly that there had not been time enough to react, let alone prepare.

Infectious disease had stalked mankind from the beginning. Over eons its course had become almost formulaic. Death arrives first. Fear follows. Human beings are such shortsighted creatures. Who but an idiot would believe in the absolute permanence of the present, put any faith in the protection of magic or science ― or think that Nature preferred any one creation above another? Believing such things, humans have always been wrong. Dead wrong. Plague crosses the threshold and with it, doubt. One day a point arrives and there are no longer survivors healthy or brave enough to staff the essential bastions of civilization ― and no matter how unshakably stable and permanent, dynamic or elegant it might have formerly appeared ― the whole construct collapses.

Lyköan laughed under his breath. What had it really been? A beautifully flawed and fragile illusion. Now absent the empirical visionaries, the dreamers and designers, not even a hint of permanence remained ― nothing beyond this vast expanse of silent emptiness.

“You as worried about Fremont as I am?” he asked without taking his eyes from the empty soi. “He’s really starting to unravel.”

“No argument here,” Nora admitted. Outside the window, evening shadows were sliding eastward, devouring the city. “What are you thinking ― that we’d be better off without him?”