The SONG of SHIVA (46 page)
Authors: Michael Caulfield
“When the hammer falls,” Pandavas answered from the depths of an echoing well, “the anvil must accept the blow. How much more woeful the looming thermonuclear exchange ― a future certain to slaughter an equal number ― and leave the globe fouled for generations ― rather than what has come to pass. Don’t you see?”
“What nuclear exchange?” Lyköan asked, still totally lost as to what Pandavas was talking about.
“Hypothecated modeling is a versatile predictive engine,” Pandavas explained. “Biology by no means its only application. The algorithms are quite capable of predicting from any set of interacting variables ― even human passions. We ran analyses in every conceivable sequence and were consistently presented with the same unerring projection ― that the triggering event of a worldwide conflagration was less than a year away ― courtesy of your benefactor.”
“My what? How?” Lyköan blurted out.
“The details are unimportant. A sequence of ill-timed coincidences and mistaken belief, coinciding with the twenty-seventh day of Rajab ― the year 1413 on the Muslim calendar ― when Buraq, Mohammed’s winged-horse, was destined to take flight for the ‘farthest Mosque’ ― Jerusalem…”
Pandavas paused, allowing Lyköan a moment of reflection. The reference was to a missile attack on Israel.
“Resulting in a filthy, radiologic exchange and a different end to civilization. A far more lasting one. If I were to place a million incriminating details in front of you ― would it matter?”
Lyköan felt weak. He could not identify if his body was shaking out of anger and fear or something external, but a sonorous reverberation was growing, tightening in the middle of his chest. Was it Soma-shu? He gulped down another breath. Smoke from the brazier flames seemed to be coiling oddly in serpentine rhythm to the echoing inner tolling, but no one else in the audience chamber seemed to notice.
“I thought this parley was about Doctor Carmichael,” he managed impatiently, reacting poorly to the incensed air. “Why the lesson in geopolitics?”
“Because they’re hardly irrelevant here. May I ask what
would
convince you?”
“At this point? Nothing,” Lyköan admitted.
“Still clinging like a brainwashed zealot,” Pandavas insisted.
“Right. I should listen to you after everything that’s happened?”
“You’re still breathing, Lyköan,” Pandavas parried. “Why do you suspect that might be? Perhaps because ― while you remain under the influence and protection of that still powerful prince ― we stand here stalemated. Were that not the case, we would have long since relieved you of your life, would never have had to resort to a common kidnapping. Believe what you like. That in this chamber it is you and I who wrangle. But I assure you, these negotiations are entirely in the hands of others.”
“You’re chasing an ephemeral dream, Egan Lyköan,” the figure on the throne interjected in a booming voice that reverberated to the rafters. “Beyond ephemeral. Nonexistent. Unaware that—” Falling into a lower, more seductive conversational tone, Soma-shu rose from the throne and descended the dais stairs. “Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.”
“Forgive me. My Latin’s a little rusty,” Lyköan replied, fearfully grasping for time as the figure approached, begging silently for understanding, and deliverance. “What is that? Something like ‘All things are changing...’” he thought for a moment, “and we’re changing with them?”
“Excellent. Yes. You and I both ― souls eternally vying over eons of infinite creation, ever in flux and never reaching full fruition. Constantly on the verge of a metaphysical chain reaction ― an ultimate fusion or fission. Tell me, my friend, which shall it be?”
“I’ll take door number two,” Lyköan offered.
“Ever the cynical scoundrel, eh Apsu?”
“Who?”
Soma-shu spoke to the open air. “What you see before you, Lyköan ― this physical and biological presence,” by hand gesture, he indicated himself, “is little more than a penetrating appendage. A transducer if you will. A device by which I may probe this place ― and witness all that blossoms in it without risk. You were destined to become such a transducer yourself. We have used this method from time immemorial.”
“We?” Lyköan wondered aloud.
“We powers forever jockeying for position ― like celestial bodies in ascendance or eclipse ― eternally circling this little island of creation like wild dogs around a celestial campfire ― this font of souls ― this tiny pinpoint of life within the great abyss ― this place called Earth.”
Knees quivering, Lyköan struggled with the idea. He couldn’t concentrate. A voice, rising in his throat, rich and enveloping, cut across the distance between himself and Soma-shu like an arrow slicing through the empty air.
“And who has given you this authority?”
Not his voice. Not his words. Lyköan tried to force back the interloping presence.
“You need not let him in, Lyköan,” Soma-shu instructed. “Listen to me. Concentrate. Why do you suppose I invited you here tonight? Better still, why did you in any event accept? Why indeed? Ask yourself, why have I allowed you to bring that weapon inside the palace, right here into the audience chamber, while we remained unarmed?”
Lyköan had no satisfactory answer. With Nora captive, coming here had seemed his only option. As to the second question, it had seemed remotely possible at the time that, if the mukti shadows abandoned him, perhaps the thirty-six would not.
“It wasn’t a strategy,” Lyköan replied defiantly: “I didn’t have a choice. I was just reacting.”
“Oh really? Take a look at yourself ― your situation. Alone, desperate ― haven’t slept in ― how long has it been? No. It wasn’t your choice at all. It was His. And I permitted you to remain armed because I am convinced you
can
be persuaded not to do that which is against your best interests.”
Soma-shu returned to the throne and sat down in a rustle of robes, a cunning smile sweeping like a shadow across his face. “Through the portals of your eyes I can clearly read your thoughts. You’re considering your options ― thinking maybe now might be the perfect time for that weapon you’re fondling. Kill me, Pandavas, Whitehall, perhaps a few more before you’re taken down. You will in all likelihood die in short order of course. But then, the woman dies too ― after an unwelcome dalliance or two ― or two hundred. I’ve already given orders. So what would you have accomplished?”
“I like the sound of that,” Lyköan grinned. “Not the
me
die part ― the
you
die part.”
“Listen to yourself. Are those really your thoughts? Yes a few here would perish ― but in this mortal vessel you would not reach
me
. The dark Tanner within you is calling out, demanding this. I can hear him singing in your thoughts, ‘So what? Don’t we all die anyway? Doesn’t everything eventually end? Why not take this abomination with me?’ Am I wrong? But though you would surely die ― and the woman too ― you wouldn’t win. I am not your enemy. But those Tanner thoughts inside you
are
― as they have always been.
“It’s a big world, Lyköan. You and your paramour might still flourish in some little corner of it. And you have even bigger dreams. Don’t you? Live out your lives. Pursue your happiness. Keep your smoldering hope for revenge alight. Intriguing? While you live it is still a possibility. When offered a similar choice eons ago, that was exactly what I chose. And look where it has brought me.”
“Yeah, look,” Lyköan countered. Inside his head the universe was seething with an endless river of images, plummeting over the edge of a spewing Niagara, Angel and Victoria Falls all rolled into one violent cascade capable of drowning out his better judgment. In the resulting vortex of raw emotion only this creature’s voice and his own hatred remained, filling the void with chaos and unexpressed potential. A fog of conflicting impulses hung in the horrid darkness where he had been cast adrift.
Soma-shu nodded towards the corner of the dais. From behind a golden-hemmed dark curtain two figures emerged, dragging Nora out before the throne, a beaten and humbled creature, thrown at the emperor’s feet, destined for all the ignoble acts the mind of such a beast might possibly imagine. She was barely conscious and had certainly not come willingly.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
If the red slayer thinks he slays
Or another fears he can be slain
Then neither knows the subtle ways
I keep, to pass along the truth again.
Emerson :
Brahma
If one man thinks he slays and another fears he
can be slain, then neither knows the paths of Truth.
For the Truth can never be extinguished. That which
was never born blows easy and forever through Eternity.
Bhagavad-Gītā : Text 81
The cold stone beneath Nora’s cheek was vibrating to the meter of a conversation rattling inside her throbbing head. Was one of the voices Lyköan’s? How did he get here? She didn’t recognize the other. It sounded like a funerary bell tolling mournfully, loathsomely, and as it tolled it dredged up dark images from the pit of her stomach.
“...this sumptuous banquet of passions,” it was saying, “a fearful feast of joy and angst, and above all else ― boundless desire.”
“And plenty of willing fools like your buddy Pandavas here ― to do whatever’s required.”
That’s
definitely
Egan’s voice
, she thought.
He continued, “Something sinister forever going on in the shadows though, isn’t there ― hidden out of sight in the unseen netherness?”
“All in good time, my friend,” Pandavas replied without further explanation, eyeing the weapon.
“So tell us, Apsu,” the unseen speaker behind her purred, “what is the
truth
?”
“I have no fucking idea.” That sounded like the Egan she knew. Raising her head, she saw him standing not twenty feet away, assault rifle in hand.
“Then I’ll enlighten you, Lyköan,” the still unseen speaker cooed. “There once was a planet seething with dangerous potentials ― teetering on the brink of annihilation ― ruled by a mad despot grown fat and indolent—”
“Ripe for a palace coup?” Lyköan interrupted, hoping to speed the conversation along. The room was humming madly in his ears, thick, humid air swirling around his head, every surface of the interior coated in a veneer of free-flowing quicksilver. Reflected in that mirrored patina was not the room in which he stood, but another place entirely: a huge expanse of angry clouds ringed by blazing stars stretching out into a horizonless infinity. Knees shaking, he swayed as the palace architecture expanded and contracted in concert with his respiration. Off every figure in the fluxing chamber, Kirlian coronas flared ― radiating with snapping electricity ― that seemed to call out to him something that ― try as he might ― he just could not decipher.
“You cannot be trusted to rule yourselves,” Soma-shu answered. “Slaves of the biologic imperative must be
cultivated
if they are ever to flourish.”
“Careful that the crop doesn’t stick in your craw and choke you,” Lyköan replied, swinging the assault rifle’s barrel towards the throne.
Soma-shu smiled. “The pitiful brevity of your intermittent lives limits perspective. We dwellers in the dark, however, possess no such limitation. During the eons that stretch between each leaf of our existence, we maintain an uninterrupted sentience. For more than three thousand years I have dreamed of how I would orchestrate my return. And that inner voice that you hear, Lyköan, has reason to fear me, for I have returned with but one purpose: to cast it down.”
“No love lost here, buddy. You and me both,” Lyköan admitted. “Matter of fact, seeing the two of you burn together ― hell, that would be something of an answered prayer.”
Soma-shu motioned to Whitehall, who lifted Nora until she was on her feet and finally able to turn her head and see the figure seated upon the throne. Resplendently garbed like an oriental prince, a beautiful youth, perfect in almost every detail, stared back at her, though his eyes were filled with an unsettling, dispassionate cunning.
“Forever to remain unanswered, I fear,” the youth answered, “because there’s no one listening.” Soma-shu shrugged. “And that fire burning in you now ― those seething emotions coursing through you? Passion is our energy and desire its igniting flame. Those thoughts of murder you harbor, Lyköan, understand, it is such stuff that fuels our power. In your case, the events that have produced those thoughts have been subtly orchestrated and played at the direction of that other and nurtured every seeming happenstance in your life, bringing you here tonight ― to threaten me and mine.”
“So, I’m just another transducer?” Lyköan asked.
A reactive gleam flared in the robed figure’s eyes. “Precisely. And the hotter those thoughts of murder burn, the more dangerous you become. But you are not without options, not beyond making your own choices, even now.”
The words pinged hollowly inside Lyköan’s skull. He felt the fire raging, his hatred for these things, the one glowering before him and the other even more hateful thing welling up inside. He feared their immense power ― especially loathed their haughty claim to sovereignty over him, over everything in existence. As the one within flexed its hideous strength it was taking every bit of his will to force it down. Panic of what was happening urged action, while that other, darker thing demanded breath.
“Yes, Hadad, ultimately it is man who is our mystery,” the unbidden thoughts inside his head erupted, speaking out of Lyköan’s mouth without is consent. “Just as we are his.”
“Beware your tongue!” Soma-shu threatened, rising abruptly from the canopied throne.
Do we share some sort of reciprocal link with these evil things
? Lyköan wondered. Maybe the relationship wasn’t a one-way street at all, the predator devouring its prey. Maybe there was something even these creatures feared, some weakness inherent in their parasitic relationship with humanity.
There must be
. The Artifact had let something important slip. Lyköan was certain this wanna-be usurper had been frightened by the revelation, but he no idea why.
Whatever it is, it may also explain why they need to hide in the shadows ―
like cockroaches.
Perhaps these hollow creatures, devoid of their own passion, were themselves as much slaves as the humans they feasted upon, slaves to the errant longings as strong as those that drove mortals and that was why they rarely entered the physical universe, risking exposure, except at these potentially transitionary points. Did the great cusp that Pandavas’s plague had created in some way expose them, somehow make them more vulnerable?
At the threshold of the open gate, Lyköan remained frozen as the two dark forces battled for control of the future, pandering to every petty fear and heartfelt hope he harbored, as the fate of this world and of all worlds, enjoying all the misery that had ever allowed them o gain their ends, dangled the promise of eternal bliss before the minds of mortals ― until one alone possessed the requisite energy to usurp the power of the other.
Perhaps no being ― even godlike creatures such as these ― could ever comfortably predict the future. How else could the scene now playing out before Lyköan’s eyes otherwise be explained? There were still decisions to be made and a resulting string of consequences that would trigger the infinite cascade of subsequent events. There was still the catbird seat, the germination point of the multiverse still under the Artifact’s control. Was what emerged unknowable even to these demigods? Or perhaps what they really feared was what lay
behind
the portal.
“Then why all the torture?” Lyköan shouted at Soma-shu, forcing the other entity aside. “What do you get out of all this suffering?”
“You might as well ask why the universe goes to all the bother of existing at all,” Soma-shu answered with an indecipherable grin. “Why inflame the angry mechanics of desire? Why indeed. Why, to prove that even the immortal soul is fungible, Mr. Lyköan. And like the weary tides, is there but to increase, to be gathered up ― and to be spent.”
Yes, there was little doubt now, it was the Tanner and the Devil who were deep in fiery argument. Lyköan had been a fool to ever have believed the real Devil could even possibly be human ― some idiot like Pandavas. But standing here before the elevated throne, seething with a hatred directed at both creatures, he was completely impotent, consumed by a conflagration of terror and rage. The Artifact and this
Other were really no different one from the other. Both made
Lyköan’s
flesh crawl, but the one that had somehow entered into his very being was by far the more
terrifying. Time and perception were accelerating. So little of existent choice re
mained as both time and space evaporated into a deluge of incoherent sensation.
“Like comets on the celestial plane,” the beast before him cried out like a possessed actor upon a purchased stage, “circling the great center in the ocean of being. When last I gazed upon these skies, King Tabnass ruled in fair Phoenicia and the fall of Troy still lingered in the memories of living men. Together, we weathered the plague of the sea peoples, held long the lush coasts of the middle sea ― the hills, the plains and the forests of the Levantine. My fortunes were as tightly bound to those who by my grace ruled then as now they are to Doctor Pandavas.
“I ruled through Ahab and Jezebel, sailed iron and civilization through the pillars of Gibraltar, talismans and charms, alloyed rings of newer, more wondrous metals still ― conquering kingdoms as far away as the worshippers of stone who then held sway upon the Salisbury plain in the land of Tin. The use of rare gems and sculpted amber I taught them ― how to cultivate and employ many arcane powers and powders, and by their use, produce subtle alterations in all who willingly bowed before my sacrificial altar.”
From inside his robes Soma-shu produced a large, curved ceremonial blade of some lustrous metal, with an ornate jewel-encrusted hilt, intricately carved, beautiful and compelling, glowing with an exquisite inner fire. He offered it to Lyköan. “Would you like to inspect the very sacrificial blade that brought about these miracles?”
Lyköan heard the faceted instrument beckon, but instinctively refused. With a shrug, Soma-shu returned the dagger to the folds of his robes and went back to his measured pacing back and forth before the golden throne.
“They worshipped me as Melkar ― God of the Unexpected Storm ― or Eshmon ― He Who Brings New Life
from
Life. In that long past age between the rise of Ur and the Punic collapse I accepted their treasure of sacrificial innocents before my great temple in opulent Sidon.
“But Carthage fell under the imperial yoke and after forty-five glorious generations of the lives of men my worshippers were no more ― crushed beneath the tread of usurping armies ― forced to flee into the backdrop of events and await the cycle of opportunity to come full circle. In the ensuing span of centuries, revenge became my only compass. During all of that long darkness, I never ceased my sibilant call for devotees ― knowing I would one day again find souls willing to assist me in my grand design and win back the throne as the scepter passed through time from one unworthy wielder to the next ― until it landed in the grasp of this present prince ― himself now grown senile and all too self-indulgent.”
Within the pause that followed, Lyköan spoke into the silence, “That’s quite a disquisition. Always wondered what was lurking at the end of the Pandavas rainbow ― what we were really running away from. Now we know.” Taking a step back, he pointed the gun at Whitehall, who still held Nora by an elbow.
“Be careful there, mate,” Whitehall warned, positioning Nora between the weapon and himself. “Unintended consequences, remember?” He cast a glance towards Soma-shu who stopped his pacing.
“Let her go, Whitehall. If you force me, I swear, the consequences are going to be
intended
.”
Soma-shu again withdrew the dagger from his robe and tossed it to Whitehall. In the blackness of the storm-clouded room it bloomed with a bouquet of scintillating colors as it tumbled through the air, humming a familiar deep-throated single note that pierced the silence like a harp. Whitehall caught the knife as it whizzed past Nora’s ear and in a single motion pressed its blade against her throat. Eyes locked with Lyköan’s, he left no doubt that he meant business.
Here was a truly tragic dilemma, standing like the end of a tragic epic. It was a conundrum not even a god could solve. There was no possible exit at this point. There would be no peace, no hope, no answer. Nothing but suffering could ever be expected from these petty, vile creatures, the one acting through Lyköan still guarding the font of the ever-expanding multiverse, the other nearing usurpation of that seat and with it, mastery over all of human existence.