The SONG of SHIVA (31 page)

Upending the last mouthful of tea from the container, he finished with, “Even you find it hard to believe ― and you’ve seen a lot of it firsthand. What intelligence agency is going to take us seriously if we come running to them with this? Not exactly up their alley. I have trouble believing it myself ― and I was there!”

“You may be right,” Nora agreed.

Lyköan continued. “For now, Pandavas is stymied. He doesn’t have his precious vessel. That’s something. From what he told me, a genome like mine isn’t very common. While he’s searching for a replacement, I doubt he’ll trigger a plague and kill all his potential candidates. Unless he has no other choice.”

“So we give him a choice?”

“It makes sense. To do that we have to make it through today. After we’ve got some breathing room we can decide how we’re going to deal with what we know. For now, we hide ― assume new identities. It’s called
deep cover
and demands anonymity. That’s why I picked the
BritRail
pass route.”

“Because?”

“Conductors never check the damned things against IDs. Hardly give’em a second glance. So long as we look like typical American tourists. New Scotland Yard profilers won’t give an Anglo American couple a second glace. And, sweetheart, we don’t have to say a word to stick out as obvious Yanks. We don’t fit the terrorist profile. The tickets will allow us to get on and off any train at will ― won’t even have to stop at a ticket counter. If push comes to shove and we’re asked, you show your passport. But I’m telling you, they won’t ask. It’s the summer holiday season. They’re just too damned busy.”

“Even if they’re looking for us?”

“Who’s looking? Not the local gendarmes. Whitehall maybe, Brit Intel, but I doubt anyone’s canvassing the countryside. CCTV scans are notoriously poor at providing feature recognition. We’ll alter our appearance as soon as we leave Bristol. These nano-scriptors are already transforming me. That’ll help. But you’ll need a little more work.”

“I’ll buy most of what you’re telling me, sweetheart, but I risked my life for the evidence in here,” Nora said, pointing to the nylon pack at her feet. “A terabyte of data ― all of it incriminating as hell. But it’s absolutely useless stuffed in my backpack. Shouldn’t we transmit it soon ― to somebody who can do something with it?”

“You got somebody in mind?”

“Marty Kosoy, my boss at CDC?”

“Not a bad idea, after we leave Salisbury. I’m willing to risk a wireless transmission from a moving train. But even then it won’t be safe. You trust this guy ― implicitly?”

“Yes, I trust him. He already knows I suspect Pandavas, but he refuses to do anything until there’s proof he can chum up the food chain. Well, we’ve got that now. Personally, I think you’re giving Whitehall way too much credit. Even at the top of their game, I’ve never met an intelligence bureaucrat a damned sixty watt bulb brighter than you or me ― and I’ve met plenty. Besides, we only have Whitehall’s word that MI-6 ― or whoever ― was ever investigating Pandavas at all. For all we know that was a bullshit story to win your confidence. He might not even be connected with the British government. You think Innovac’s any different? It’s possible, but I’d say unlikely. They’re probably still trying to connect enough dots to explain how I engineered your escape. I go along with not spilling our guts while Pandavas can still swing the hammer of God, but its plain foolishness to believe these guys are omnipotent.”

“Willing to bet your life on that?”

“Of course not. I was just making a point.”

“And my point is that it’s better to be scared, suspicious ― but still breathing.”

“
Nil credum et omnia cavebo
?”

“You got it,” Lyköan agreed with a nod. “What do we lose by running? Nothing. Assuming our enemies are quicker and smarter than we are, if it frightens us into moving even faster... isn’t such a bad thing. Certainly preferable to being caught by underestimating them, don’t you think? Pandavas, Whitehall, the Thai and British governments. God knows who else. Looks to me like they’re all involved to some degree. No way of knowing. Let’s stay away from all of them – for now. That’s all I’m saying.”

* * *

The Western Union office visit was mercifully anticlimactic. Nora presented her passport and signed the receipts in triplicate. After excusing himself and disappearing into the back office for a supervisor’s review and signature, the desk clerk returned and counted out the mountain of notes without so much as an odd remark. Before leaving the office, Nora handed Lyköan a few hundred pounds and, shoving an equal number into her own pocket, stashed the swollen envelope containing the remainder into the backpack.

Salisbury station was a short walk and they lost no time covering the distance. Standing in the ticket counter queue, Lyköan turned Nora’s wrist and glanced at her watch.
Hard to believe
, he thought.
Less than five hours ago we were scrambling out of the hangar.
Purchasing tickets for Keynsham, a middling town between Bath and Bristol, the couple walked to the end of Platform 4 and, facing away from the sweep of the CCTV cameras, waited.

Leaving the station at 3:04, the two-fifty-two accelerated north onto the Salisbury Plain. Once clear of the station, Lyköan gave Nora a knowing wink. She responded with an exaggerated, full-body sigh and leaning against him, affectionately buzzed his stubbled cheek, whispering into his ear, “So far, so good.”

“A little breathing room at least,” Lyköan agreed. Outside the coach window, unfiltered by a single cloud, the sun fell innocently upon the passing countryside. Sinking back into the upholstered seat, he brushed aside the burdens of the past twenty-nine hours and closed his eyes.

A delightfully cool breeze was blowing across his cheek. It smelled of lilac and dogwood and honeysuckle blossoms. The scents of youth. His youth. In the distance, soft music was playing ― flutes and violins, reeds, pipes and ever-after-yesterday’s sweet babbling brooks. And in the midst of all this sensory perfection Sun Shi was seated upon a carved golden dais in the posture of the Vitakamura Buddha, his eyes closed, his face an impenetrable sublimation. A plenary inner fire radiated from the bodhisavatta’s saffron robes, bathing him in a spectral glow. Beyond his aura a great panoramic landscape of rolling hills, covered in ornate cultivated gardens, stretched to the horizon in every direction.

The master’s eyelids fluttered open, exposing flawless orbs of blinding incandescence, more brilliant than two unobstructed midday suns. Lyköan averted his gaze. Rumbling like spring thunder rolling over open country, a voice announced, “The object is within your grasp.” Sun Shi’s lips had not moved.

“What object?” Lyköan asked.

“The object of Right Intention that will lead you to Right Action. Listen carefully. I am sending you a gift. Download it as soon as it arrives.” The visage remained motionless, more a statue than a living being, its ocular orbs cooling to the intensity of lava pools, the voice falling to a whisper, rustling like a breeze through summer leaves. 

“What gift?”

“A tool. Practice using it. Pay attention now.

At dawn and dusk, key colors blaze

By fasting then the narrow gate displays

Through aspect of the Fibonacci number

Drive true the spike at point of slumber

“What’s that?”

“Instructions for wielding the tool successfully. Without them my little present is quite useless. You’re an intelligent man, Egan; didn’t Pandavas tell you that? You’ll figure it out. We’ll speak again after your first success.”

“What’s the tool for?”

“It allows the wielder to multiply horizons, adjust aspects and shift ratios.”

“Oh, I see.” The astral bodhisattva was no more direct than his physical counterpart.

There was a quick falling sensation. Lyköan gasped, bolting upright in his seat. He looked at Nora. She returned his stare with an inquisitive lift of her eyebrows.

“Was I asleep?” he asked, momentarily disoriented.

“I don’t think so. If you were, it wasn’t for more than a second or two. Why?”

“Sun Shi and I were having this conversation in an enormous garden somewhere. Crazy sing-song stuff ― lousy, really dreadful poetry, but it rhymed ― about how I’m supposed to use some kind of tool he’s sending. Have you got a pen? I need to write this down while I can still remember it word for word.”

“How about this?” Nora suggested, pulling the yíb from her pack.

“Sure, that’ll work.”

“Here you go, hero,” she said with a smile, handing him the yíb. “While we have it out, what about that data we were going to send Kosoy once we were out of town?”

“One thing at a time, dear,” he smiled back, opening the device.

Quickly typing the two couplets onto a blank document, he read the lines. “That’s about right. We can leave the translation ― the interpretation ― for later.” Right now the doggerel was no more than the stuff of dreams. No sense racking his brain trying to figure out what it meant. “Okay, let’s send your boss that wake up call.”

* * *

Lying on the bed in the tidy little Wild Ivy Guest House room, Lyköan stared into the darkness, trying to make sense of this latest wrinkle. It was after midnight, but sleep eluded him. Nora was lying warm and naked against his side, a leg bent at the knee over his thighs, her arm thrown limply across his chest. She had draped herself over him hours ago, before falling asleep in the crook of his arm. In the otherwise silent room the regular ebb and flow of her breathing was sublimely reassuring, its rhythm announcing to creation that he was not alone. But maybe he deserved to be.

That was the rub. Had this turn been inevitable from the start, nothing more than pure biochemistry filtered through events? Stress-induced pheromones and human physiological certainties permitted to run their course? Whatever it was, the transition from complete strangers to desperado lovers had followed its strange unanswerable course and brought them here. All that had been lacking for final consummation turned out to be simple opportunity ― the closing of this bedroom door. There was nothing tentative about what had followed.

With the click of the latch, a force far more willful than forethought had taken control. In the low light of the setting sun, that most basic human imperative ― to express and explore, enter and envelop, drive and receive ― had all combined in the urgency of a single act exercised with complete abandon. Wants and needs and urges, rhythms of sensation ascending towards annihilation, deliciously delayed and denied and even then, wildly prolonged. The reverberations had long disturbed the stillness of this now quiet little room, distorting every perception of time, of place, and ultimately making clear the reason that the poets sing.

Desperate passions satisfied, they had collapsed in each others arms. Nora was soon asleep, her regular respiration a background to Lyköan’s wild thoughts. He had willingly fled into this raving wilderness without a second thought the instant his cell door had opened and he had found this woman come to his rescue. The attraction, affection and gratitude were genuine, but he could not shake innumerable misgivings about his motivations. About the truth.

Nora had risked her life to rescue him. He had taken the opportunity and escaped. But another ten minutes in Pandavas’s bath and everything would have turned out differently. She was lying beside him now by choice. He was here entirely by chance. Nora was entitled to the slumber of the innocent. What did
he
deserve?

He was also confused and frustrated. Attached to an innocuous email from Wat Tee Pueng Sut Taai, if he was to believe his dream encounter with Sun Shi, was the promised tool. For now, however, it remained an enigma. He’d played it on the train rolling into town and it appeared to be exactly what the email had claimed, a screen saver. Pretty enough. Some sort of freeform fractal creation program. Whirling spirals of rainbow-colored paisley designs spinning deeper and deeper into more paisley spirals like a full-color burrowing electron microscope. A little hypnotic and dizzying if watched too long, but that was it. No instructions, no additional file attachments, nothing. And the only part of the dream rhyme that made sense so far was the admonishment to fast and keep at it. He had yet to figure out the rest.

Maybe the dream was only a dream and the program nothing more than what it purported to be. Except that Sun Shi had never sent him an email before. Ever. Strange that it should arrive now and under these circumstances. He’d spend more time with it tomorrow.    

Nora shifted in her sleep, burrowing her face into the hollow of his neck. With a pleasant moan, she nuzzled closer, brushing her hand lightly down his stomach creating a swath of gooseflesh.
Hope it’s a sweet dream
, he thought,
because in the morning it’s back to reality.
Staring at the fathomless ceiling, he began one of Sun Shi’s breath control techniques, hoping sleep would overtake him soon.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Poor creatures nailed upon the corridor of Time

In vain we struggle here, unmindful of the rhyme

That binds both Mover and the moved perpetually

Retained like mirrored flames bereft of symmetry

As future, past and present all eventually agree

Québécoise Band We :
Astral Peaks

Lyköan stepped off the bathroom scale, shaking his head. He’d been fasting for only two days and already, every kilo he’d put on since the shooting had melted away. Being eaten alive by your own runaway metabolism shouldn’t feel this euphoric. Swiping the heel of a fist across the fogged mirror, he inspected his smiling reflection, convinced he looked as good as he felt. Why question the inexplicable increase in energy, muscle mass and definition? Same for the dramatic improvement in concentration, every perception somehow magnified through a glass of perfect clarity, every consideration racing at light speed and bursting with heretofore hidden import. It was all to the good, wasn’t it?

Sleep had become unnecessary, in fact, refused to come even when bidden. Two days gone and not two hours of unconsciousness at a stretch. He wasn’t even tired. The insomnia only seemed to heighten the overwhelming feeling of improved physical and mental acuity. On top of everything else, some kind of multitasking switch had been turned on inside his head ― an amazing ability to simultaneously dissect multiple lines of thought, move effortlessly and non-sequentially along any progression of possibilities, potentialities, and likelihoods ― like flipping back and forth through the pages of an open book. Or just some quirk, a perceptual chimera ― a sinister side effect of the ongoing internal molecular alteration. Were his improved mental and physical capabilities real or mere byproducts of the absence of food and sleep? A quick mental calculation put his current BMI at 18.

What am I carrying then – three percent body fat? A week ago I couldn’t have performed that computation in my head. I’m pretty sure of that much anyway.

Whatever was occurring, the universe felt as though it was finally falling into place, making complete sense for the first time in a very long time – in a manner he could only describe as intuitive revelation. No way to explain the process, but each next best step seemed to spring out of the ether, full-formed and obvious at the precise instant required. At the same time, his biomass was burning at pinpoint blue-flame perfection. And permeating everything was this odd, disquieting sense of being manipulated, directed in some vague, inexplicable way. Not exactly malicious, but it didn’t feel natural either. Unraveling the dream rhyme, for instance, had hit him like an epiphany.

The doggerel’s first line had directed that the program be used only at the sun’s rising or setting. Understanding why didn’t seem important. But he had gone looking. At the Keynsham library, he had found numerous references to a metaphysical gateway that supposedly opened at dawn and dusk. Both Eastern and Amerindian adepts claimed the passageway permitted spiritual access to the various planes of existence. Unfortunately, Lyköan was no adept. And so far, the program wasn’t helping him become one.

The gateway was described in the literature as ascending a series of meditational states. The first was identifiable by a pronounced sensation of physical expansion. So far, vertigo was the only sensation he had personally experienced, which probably didn’t qualify. The next level was supposed to be demarcated by phosphene pattern visualizations and disjointed auditory effects. Sun Shi’s blooming fractal creation program seemed to visually mimic the descriptions, but was utterly silent on how Lyköan should be using them.

Once this second level was attained, complex visualizations and recognizable landscapes should emerge as the unfolding exterior dawn or dusk twilight passed through its pinkest hues. From there, the full
Hermetic Transformation
would infuse the traveler, allowing for entrance through the gate and out into the metaphysical landscape. “Total interactivity with vivid qualities of immersion and response, representing integration and dissolution of the objective/subjective divide...” the text had read. That simple. If you had spent years in arcane practice and actually believed in this sort of thing.

Beyond the gateway, the spiritual third eye could be opened, its pure vision filled by what was known as “the unbinding” ― complete freedom to traverse the entire immaterial spectrum. So much for the theosophy. But in employing the recommended visualization technique at every dusk and dawn since receiving the dream instructions, Lyköan had yet to experience even a whiff of an altered metaphysical state.

In his current altered
physical
state, however, following the second line’s more obvious prohibition against filling his stomach ― that had been much easier. In the process, persistence and obsession had become second nature ― part and parcel with the running, the lovemaking, the mental analysis of every thought and observation that passed by ― almost an altered state in itself. 

The third line was almost as obvious ― defining the program’s viewing aspect ratio. Pandavas had mentioned Fibonacci progressions during the wearying verbal exchange in the days Lyköan had been strapped to the gurney at Club Shiva. He hadn’t forgotten a single word. Was it merely coincidence? Unlikely. Perhaps some underlying principle connected the material and spiritual universes. But what? He tossed the question aside. It could not be answered with what he presently knew.

But it was strange ― the implication that the animation’s optimal viewing aspect would be the
phi
constant, the Pythagorean golden ratio. Taking advantage of this intuitive supposition, Lyköan had adjusted the yíb’s tiny display, functioning at its maximum read rate, vibrating the operational aspect ratio between 1.6177 and 1.6178 to one ― the classic golden rectangle. To produce the optimal effect, however, he was forced to hold the yíb almost to the tip of his nose as he concentrated upon the screen’s spiraling fractal dance for twenty minutes twice a day. He couldn’t tell if he was making any progress. Would he even recognize progress if it occurred? The overall experience with the screen saver remained the same: a quick, sickening dive into stomach-churning motion sickness. Other than that, each exercise had been a complete bust. Maybe he was using the damned thing wrong.

Perhaps because of his inability to perform the last line’s direction: to reach ‘the spike at point of slumber’ ― that twitch or start that occurs at the juncture between waking and sleeping known as the
hypnogogic myoclonus
― during the twenty-minute window
.

How do you
fall asleep on cue while concentrating with open eyes?
he wondered.
Jesus, I’m having trouble falling asleep period.

In only a few minutes, this morning would again present the briefest opportunity to give the exercise another try. If the gateway existed, it could be accessed only twice a day. Like the tide, which arrived with the same frequency, it waited for no one.

Peering into the bathroom mirror as he considered this, Nora’s reflected form entered through the doorway behind him. Wrapping her arms tightly around his waist, she pressed against him, warm curves contouring against the angles of his body, lower belly at his buttocks, breasts pressed against the middle of his back. His breath clouding the mirror, he observed her turned cheek, glistening hair and closed eyelids ― a smiling, contented face above the line of his shoulder ― disappearing into the reflected fog.

He turned, wrapped his arms around her shoulders and drew her tightly against his chest. A perfection of point and counterpoint, object and reflection, fascination, fit and function. The human mind was so easily persuaded of these natural patterns, the interlocking of external stimuli and interior perception.

Is it just stress-induced credulity?
he wondered.
Passion brought on by desperation? Manipulated by circumstance? Are we just fooling ourselves?
Who knows?
If we are, so what? I’d rather
be
fooled
―
in fact, I am quite
happy
to be fooling myself.

“Big day ahead of us,” Nora murmured into his chest. “Are you nervous?”

Lyköan felt a twinge of apprehension bobbing in the sea of guilty conscience. The really important question was, ‘had they been running fast enough to stay ahead of Pandavas and Whitehall?’ For two days now he and Nora had been stuck fast, like insects trapped in amber, waiting for Diane’s package to arrive in Bristol. Lyköan wanted to believe that they were operating with some purpose, that Providence actually gave a shit, but of course there was no way of knowing such a thing.

“Nervous? Nah!” he lied. “Well, maybe a little. But I’m just the lookout. You’ll be doing the heavy lifting. The question oughta be, ‘How are
you
feeling?’”

“I’m okay,” Nora answered with a shiver. “A little scared,” she admitted. “I mean, we’ve been treading water for two days. Pandavas hasn’t. Resurfacing as Nora Carmichael is risky, right?”

“Breathing’s risky,” Lyköan retorted with a mocking smile, “But don’t worry, you’ll do just fine.”

Nora leaned her forehead against his shoulder, silently praying that he was right. She had already given in to this romance wholeheartedly. No second thoughts were permissible. Perhaps if her cycle hadn’t been irregular; if she hadn’t already been on the pill to regulate her periods, she might have hesitated that first night on the run and not given in so easily – so completely. It was no longer mere physiology. In that single ultimately beautiful expression, this relationship had turned into something else entirely.

Face it, sister, before the bedroom door even opened last night you were already beyond ready
―
you were downright eager.
Something to relish now and forever. Something to savor, no matter what the future might hold.

Reaching for the bathroom window, Lyköan spread the blinds with fingers and thumb. Observing the fast-approaching dawn dappling the overcast Eastern sky, he welcomed the opportunity to segue into a more certain subject, “But first things first. Looks like it’s almost time for another go with the video.” Kissing her forehead, he reached for a towel.

Nora let him go. Their individual roles were already well established. Lyköan was responsible for implementing their assumed identities and life on the run; her responsibilities lay with interpreting the medical biologics and communicating with the U.S. government. Everything else was open to the vagaries of the moment ― and debating how they might best derail the Shiva plot.

How Lyköan’s crazy dusk and dawn meditational routine or the hours of obsessive-compulsive running possibly played a role in that planning had yet to be fully explained to her satisfaction. Or how he expected to continue performing at his best when he never slept or ate. While she had exercised regularly since college, even in the lonely, dark days after 9/11, keeping up with Egan’s newfound hyperactivity had proven impossible, though that hadn’t kept her from trying. She had spent the past two mornings and evenings at his shoulder circling Keynsham for six miles at a stretch. Returning to the Wild Ivy House and dropping her off exhausted, Egan would afterwards put in another even more arduous hour alone. Looking at him now, Nora could see that he was obviously thriving on the abuse.

When she had suggested her free hours might be more productively spent finding out what Kosoy had been able to accomplish with the transmitted data, Egan had nixed the idea. He was afraid that, until they were ready to leave Keynsham, broadcasting the yíb’s telltale transmission signature from a stationary location would be both dangerous and unnecessary. That went double for the double-bud. The data files alone should be enough to motivate Kosoy, Egan had argued. Nora’s urging wouldn’t move the alarm along to the NSA any faster or make the State Department take quicker action. For the time being, except for very irregular contact with Kosoy, Egan was probably correct in assuming they would be safer remaining incommunicado. The lumbering wheels of American bureaucracy ground exceedingly fine. Neither of them could possibly speed up the process. All they could do was hope a viable response would come soon enough to be useful.

Egan headed for the bed to prepare for the morning’s ritual, leaving Nora standing in the doorway, watching the light filter into the room’s eerie predawn shadows. She felt remote and removed, noticeably out of kilter with reality. The wanton physical intimacy of the past two days might be explained by the catalyzing threat which had thrown the two of them together, but it hardly explained everything she was experiencing. It failed to explain her conviction that something intangible and important was operating upon events, expressing itself in a subliminal, oblique way. It was as though Egan’s accelerated metabolism had become contagious. If he had completely fallen off the deep end, compulsively and obsessively, then the quality of her perceptions had definitely changed too. One thing was certain; she wasn’t the same woman who had left Atlanta on CDC assignment six weeks ago. Blame it on the Bonnie and Clyde syndrome. That could explain a lot of things, especially the unremitting physical desire. Perhaps. But did it also explain why she had immediately and so wholeheartedly bought into the deep cover argument or her newfound paramour’s conviction that the two of them could succeed against Innovac Pharma when the most powerful government on earth might not prove up to the task? She hoped not.