The SONG of SHIVA (6 page)

“We back-tested the TAI model and found that last year’s avian virus strain was already poised on the brink of an antigenic shift. All it required was an appropriately large population of close-quartered domesticated fowl to guarantee the species-jumping mutation that resulted. Of course, running these integrative calculations requires an enormous amount of computing power. There must be literally quadrillions or quintillions of potential variables...”

“What army of mathematicians could conceivably input the data?” Nora asked. The devil inside her kept insisting the idea was ridiculous.

It was as if Tardieu had been waiting for the question. “The created algorithms themselves identify and input the data by normal genetic sequencing. But the exponential programming work that went into the algorithms ― can you imagine? Generating every possible interacting equation at the molecular level ― billions of them at a minimum ― to arrive at those quintillions of potential outcomes. Well, that demanded truly inspirational genius. It’s a trade secret of course, but Innovac somehow succeeded in pulling it off. The proof is in the results.”

If nothing else, Tardieu was convincing.
He could take that enthusiasm on the road and become a successful sales rep
, Nora thought. He was that passionate. And the passion was contagious. Nora saw at once the tremendous potential of such powerful technology.

Before the afternoon arrived, she had been converted, forced to admit that the WHO’s research effort made the CDC look like freshman bio students poking around in the dark. Just one of many revelations she encountered that day. The resources being devoted to the effort were also prodigious: half of this facility filled with massive super-cooled server banks continually monitoring and integrating input from dozens of scientists investigating independently. As she had passed them this morning, more curious about Miss Thailand’s dress size, she had been unaware of exactly how much productive research was actually being accomplished in every one of those buzzing cubicles.

Her head was still spinning in the rarified air of this new technology’s full implications when, just before five that afternoon, she was ushered into another conference room and a second debriefing. Finding an empty chair at the horseshoe-shaped conference table, she sat down just as a large monitor descended from the center of the ceiling and the other participants busily linked individual netbooks to the central server application.

It had been a productive day. One new antigenic marker had been tentatively identified and another confirmed as actively pathogenic. The expressed protein key-set used to cleave the cellular wall had been documented. Two other equally important expressed protein factors, which could successfully confuse the killer T-cell self-non-self mechanism, had also been located. The exact mechanism for their subterfuge remained a mystery. A special team was formed to investigate. All the result of those elegant Hypothecated Modeling algorithms.

One of the research team leads, a young Korean microbiologist named Yin Yat Chen, had waited patiently for the others to speak in their assigned order and eventually got her opportunity to present to the group. Switching control of the monitor to her own netbook, she brought up a crisp image of an unassuming segment of the TAI virus’s RNA strand.

“You know how we were baffled by the precipitous decline in the infection rate beginning about six weeks after the epidemic began? We may have discovered the reason.”

Not a sound. Nothing but eyes, and all of them fixed on the holographic model, floating as though suspended in dark oil.

“One entire segment of the strand, sequenced from here to here...” She indicated the specific section using the HM system’s shared cursor, “It appears to be a novel anti-telomerase antibody ― a cleaving protein, that once triggered by some as yet unknown process, then targets the host-cell telomere chains and destroys them on contact.”

Nora understood immediately why the woman was so excited. Once this anti-telomerase antibody sequence was activated inside an infected cell, that cell would lose all ability to replicate, thereby removing the virus’s only method of propagation.

The process was particularly beneficial to an infected host. When the body’s specialized scavenger cells ― macrophages ― eventually arrived to remove the now dormant cell, they would also absorb the unique antigens of the trapped virus, producing improved immunologic recognition and antigenic response.

But why would a virus ever have evolved in such a manner? Nora had run through her silent analysis in the space of a single breath. The microbiologist had taken only one herself.

“When this sequence expresses,” she continued, “― we have yet to identify the trigger for that expression ― the proteins generated cause the infected cell to enter almost immediate senescence and the cell dies. Why it exists at all is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t make any sense, but there it is.”

The revelation silenced everyone around the conference table. Why would a virus develop such a mechanism? If borne out by further study, the TAI virus had evolved contrary to the primary biologic imperative.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Wonder at the strange dexterity of Fortune’s operations, the facility with which She makes one event the spring and motion of something wholly different, uniting every scattered accident, loose particular and remote action, and interweaves them together to serve Her purpose; so that things which in themselves seem to have no connection or interdependence whatsoever, become in Her hands, the end and beginning of each other.

Plutarch :
The Life of Timoleon

Lyköan paused in the moonlight at the lamp-lit entrance, removed his shoes and, placing them beside the doorway, entered the temple. One of the many descriptors embedded in Bangkok’s paragraph-long “official” name, usually shortened to the pronounceable
Krung Thep
, was: “The Grand Capitol of the World, Endowed with the Nine Precious Gems.” This wat was home to one of them. While the Emerald Buddha of Wat Phra Keo may have been more famous, it had never beckoned Lyköan from a distance.

But
Wat Tee Pueng Sut Taai
, with its equally sacred Sapphire Buddha, carved from a single block of gem-quality lapis, had. That had been more than four years ago. Initially entering as a desperate fugitive, the authorities in hot pursuit of Khmer artifacts they would never confiscate, Lyköan had, even then, felt summoned. In the years that followed he had returned often, finding here, and only here, a refuge, safe from the otherwise ever-roiling tumult. Exactly why it had happed as it had remained one of his life’s central mysteries.

The interior of the temple was shadow-filled,
joss
smoke rising in the flicker of votive candles. Moving cautiously, Lyköan walked in stoop-shouldered humility down the long dark
kutis
or monks’ quarters hallway, cell-like doorways stretching the full length of the corridor to his right and left. While the wat housed more than two dozen monks, he encountered none as he made his way in nearly total darkness. Reaching the end of the passageway, he paused briefly before passing through the final doorway into a modest, candle-lit alcove, hoping he would find the
chao awat
― the abbot of this temple – at home.

“Ah, my son, you have come again,” a voice murmured out of the shadows, the small, dark figure peering up from what might have been meditation, or slumber.

“Good evening, Father,” Lyköan replied, waiing deeply.

“You were lucky to find me in,” the abbot announced, his eyes two embers in the reflected candlelight. “As you know, we abbots are a very busy breed. Many responsibilities. Places to go. People to see.”

An attempt at humor? One could never be sure with the masters.

“What brings you this evening, my son? Please, please, have a seat.” The old man motioned to a spot beside the slightly elevated stone dais where he himself was seated upon his heels.

Silently, Lyköan knelt upon the packed earth as directed, being careful not to cross his legs or point his feet towards the master. Either posture would have expressed intentional disrespect. Once comfortable, he answered, “I have come to learn the meaning of life, Father.”

The timbre of his voice had not wavered. He had not given the game away. But under the abbot’s withering glare the crack of a smile, beginning at one corner of his mouth, slowly spread into a broad grin. He had made his contribution ― strict religious convention had been honored.

“Is something on your mind, Egan, or have you just dropped by to assure yourself I’m not out supplementing my alms bowl by turning winning lottery numbers on the black market?”

The sarcasm echoed hollowly in the tiny chamber. Lyköan wasn’t offended, recognizing after years of similar meetings with the wily old monk that this was only the feint. The abbot was probing, waiting for just the right word or phrase to initiate tonight’s discussion. “As the sun and rain open the petals of the lotus blossom,” the abbot would insist, and append the comment with a devilish wink.

Their roles had been fixed from that first meeting years before: the master and his acolyte. Lyköan understood that much. It worked for him. He might remain unconvinced that a karmic bond ― centuries old and passing through multiple deaths and rebirths ― had really brought them together, but that did not make the relationship any less compelling. From Lyköan’s perspective, a simple wrinkle in the fabric of random chance seemed far more likely to have been responsible. The abbot would then argue that there was no such thing as random chance. Without evidence, the truth could never be known. It mattered little.

Let the monk claim that he had experienced dozens of cycles of life, death and rebirth ― and could recall details of every one ― insisting that Lyköan had passed through only a handful of incarnations, at least in human form. That too was unimportant. What did matter was the bond.

Sun Shi had attempted to explain the mechanics of how he had come by his knowledge more than once, a lot of metaphysical doublespeak ― that one hand clapping sort of nonsense. In all honesty, the revelation of these perceived pasts might be little more than a sophisticated teaching tool ― Sun Shi’s variation on the Socratic Method ― rather than any actual statement of belief.

All that mattered were the results. It was all the proof Lyköan had ever needed.
Might as well get started and let him work his magic
.

“Just a lot of aggravation the last few days,” he began tentatively. “Thought maybe I could toss a few of the worst your way and see what you think. My continuing tussle with the middle way ― which still doesn’t seem to be working for me. Moderation’s never been my strong suit. Take this morning. I’m downtown on business and without provocation nearly get into a fistfight with the desk clerk at the Ayutt Haya.” Lyköan dragged in a quick breath. “If that lobby counter had been two centimeters narrower we’d probably be discussing bail right now.”

Sun Shi had heard the lament before. “The Tanner, of course. It is the unfettered, primal aspect of your personality. Unthinking. Passion-filled. The wrong sort of passion. Dark, wholly submerged. The middle way will be forever blocked while the Tanner remains in the driver’s seat. It’s a stumbling block that would yield to meditation, but of course you would actually have to practice meditating, my child.”

There was always a catch, usually the same one, like believing in the unseen. Sun Shi waited silently, his flesh stretched tight across the angles of sharp, ascetic facial bones, immobile as a statue, like a modern-day Arjuna Savyasaci, whose ancient story predated the historical Buddha’s by forty-five centuries.

Sun Shi was as much a spiritual anomaly as Lyköan. And he flaunted it. Born in Thailand and orphaned shortly after birth, he had been adopted by an American couple who raised him in Baltimore, believing their act the height of Christian compassion. The old monk rarely spoke of those days.

But two things had occurred simultaneously during his university years that had dramatically altered the course of his life: he had discovered Buddhism and afterwards decided to return to the land of his birth, moving first to India and ultimately settling here in Bangkok. Shunning the fabulist Greater Vehicle, Mahayana Buddhism, with its multiple celestial Buddhas, he had become a devotee6 of Theravada Buddhism, the Narrow Way or the Way of the Elders, which revered only the one historical Buddha. Then, in the spirit of other converts of that era, he had changed his name, and Ed Bennett became Sun Shi.

He was firm in his faith: that the eight-fold path and the five precepts held the ultimate keys to truth, the path of perfected cosmology. A short time after his return to Thailand he began to be recognized for the power of his understanding, particularly his ability to resist the temptations of earthly desire. He had only recently been elevated to the rank of chao awat at Wat Tee Pueng Sut Taai, an ancient and important Theravada shrine.

After a deep breath, Lyköan began in earnest. “Okay, here’s the problem. I’ve run up against this moral dilemma. At least it seems like one. Or maybe it’s just business and I’m looking for you to bless my greed, who knows?

“All I hear is you having trouble getting to the point,” Sun Shi said, attempting to be helpful.

“That’s just it. I don’t know what the point is. I’ve been offered the contract of a lifetime, but I’m having second thoughts about accepting it. We’ve talked about this before. The Primrose deal? I’ve already committed verbally, but something feels wrong. Can’t tell you what ’cause I really don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s what psychologists call the fear of success. Maybe subconsciously I still don’t think I
deserve
to land the big one.”

“Somehow I doubt that’s the problem,” the monk remarked with a chuckle. “Ask yourself this: Is your fear intellectual or emotional?”

Lyköan had mentioned psychology and the old man had become Carl Jung. Just like that. Not surprising.

“Well, I’ve busted my ass on this deal so, intellectually at least, I do think I deserve it.” Lyköan realized that didn’t exactly, or honestly, answered Sun Shi’s question.

“Here’s an approach you might try,” Sun Shi suggested, distractedly scratching the bridge of his nose. His shaved skull glistening in the candlelight, he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “First, consider your motivation. Karma is generated by the intensity of desire. Desire is detrimental to spiritual progress, so you must resist the temptation to be self-serving. Any decision you make must be based upon Right Intention. If you begin there, Right Conduct will naturally follow. Will you be harming others in any way by accepting this assignment?”

“No, nothing like that. As a matter of fact, my role might even accelerate the development of some lifesaving pharmaceuticals. If the new boss and his lieutenants like my work. Which reminds me of something. Something strange. More than anything else ― I think it’s what really brought me here tonight.”

“Also associated with the Primrose contract?”

“People involved with it, yes.”

“While you do appear troubled, I sense a spiritual component far more important than the material.”

“But be honest, Father, you perceive a spiritual component in just about everything, including your first trip to the latrine every morning.”

“A chao awat should be afforded more respect, my son. Sarcasm is a weak device when one is seeking spiritual guidance. You would do well to practice moderation, especially with that caustic tongue. The universe permits no impunity. A price is exacted for every indiscretion. But we’ve moved off subject. What was this strange experience you mentioned?”

“I met two high-level Innovac executives today, the lead architects of the Primrose acquisition. Accepting this deal means I’ll be taking orders from them and I want to go in thinking I can develop a decent working relationship. Still, I can’t shake this feeling they’re up to more than business. Just something about them... something odd.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. Like they’re hiding something, perhaps playing me for some reason. I don’t know. I wish I could explain it better. Maybe it’s just paranoia. But not without reason. Just yesterday I found out my prospective employer’s had somebody tailing me ― for weeks. Can you believe that?”

“Following you?” Sun Shi sounded genuinely surprised.

“Yeah. ‘Due diligence’ he claimed. One big happy family. Most of us anyway. The tail sure seemed to know all about my visits here ― called them my ‘alms bowl contributions.’ Have any of the monks mentioned noticing anything suspicious lately?”

“You’re not in any sort of trouble, are you?” Lyköan didn’t answer. The monk rephrased the question. “We’re talking about spiritual, not legal problems, yes? You haven’t been dabbling in any of those smuggled Cambodian artifacts again, have you? ”

“No, no, it’s all legit.
My
involvement anyway. But those characters from Innovac? Them I’m not so sure about. All I know is what I just told you. You might want to keep an eye out for strangers hanging around the wat from now on though.”

“I assure you, we shall,” Sun Shi promised. “In the meantime you will consider your decision based upon Right Intention and only then move forward. Anything else on your mind? Something more personal perhaps?”

“Haven’t returned to my old pals in Pat Pong or Nana Plaza, if that’s what you’re asking. Really, I’m not in any trouble. I have my work, the running, reading ― and a mangy soi mutt I’m looking after. I’ve taken on a little
metta
, you know, the compassionate burden. Don’t worry, Master Sun, my existence may be meager, but I know plenty of others who have it much worse. I’m not bitching. Out loud anyway.”

“And romantic liaisons?”

“Let’s not go there, okay?”

“It’s probably better that we do.”

“Look, I don’t pry into your love life, do I old man?”

“I have chosen the monastic life. My celibacy is self-imposed.”

“Mine too.”

“It needn’t be.”

“Oh no? You remember how it was when we first met. I was living on bourbon and bar girls. The women of Krung Thep were beautiful, sure… and very obliging, but I was screwing them more out of anger than anything else. Trying to erase the past… forget the unforgettable.”

Sun Shi stared into the distance. “Ah yes, a splendid performance as I recall. You, attempting to purchase paradise. The objects of your desire equally intent on escaping miseries of their own. A great carousel absent all hope of obtaining any true spiritual growth. Back then you were absolutely beaten. Desperate. Lost. I agree. But in all honesty, Egan ― and a true Buddhist must be ever truthful ― Prince Siddhartha followed much the same path: devoting many years to all manner of debauchery. It is like happiness, my son. Until sorrow arrives we are quite unaware of our good fortune. At the time of Gautama’s indulgence, his anger was directed at existence.”