The SONG of SHIVA (47 page)
Authors: Michael Caulfield
Lyköan witnessed all these potentials in an instant and every one of them reeked of certain failure. In one potential, the most likely by far, Lyköan would slay the beast that was Soma-shu with three well-placed rounds. But in that space, with a quick turn of his wrist, Whitehall would pull the faceted blade hard and deep across Nora’s throat. Lyköan held his breath and watched, as though in a slow-motion dream, as a crimson arc spurted rhythmically, like a fountain, out of her pale neck into the open air and splashed ghastly dark onto the dais steps. In the dreamscape vision, Nora’s eyes rolled back into her lovely head as she slumped lifeless against Whitehall’s chest. By that route there would not even be time for a goodbye. Nothing. Only Whitehall holding the blood-soaked lifeless body like a pathetic shield.
Lyköan knew he would then give into the miserably irresistible impulse. To the side of Nora’s ill-positioned head, three more rounds would rip into Whitehall’s face, explosively spraying blood and brain matter out against the marbled wall in front of which he stood. The executioner’s blade would clatter to the stone floor, followed immediately by the dull thud of two bodies collapsing together.
In every other even remotely possible uchronion could imagine, beginning at that self-same instant, Lyköan found no more hope of success. The details differed in only the slightest of particulars, but the outcome was invariably the same. Lyköan had only six or seven rounds remaining in the thirty-six’s magazine, far too few to make good a derring-do escape.
Reacting blindly, after the few remaining rounds had been spent, in whatever order the bodies might fall, Lyköan would, in a final act of desperation, charge up the dais steps toward Soma-shu, intent on tearing that smug expression from the monster’s face. But he also knew that, even in if he were clothed in full mukti armor, he would be no match for Soma-shu. Somewhere in what remained of his scattered thoughts he instinctively understood that he was being used. Any act he instigated would play perfectly into the hands of this evil incarnate. Even so, he was seething with but one purpose and that purpose was murder.
On his own he could never hope to reach his quarry. Tears streaming down his contorted face, ― guilt and remorse at how thoroughly he had been played, how easily he had allowed himself to be molded into this engine of energy for the darkness, how many lives had been snuffed out like candles just to feed the horrid Tanner voice within him ― he slogged against an invisible current. The harder he pushed, however, the stronger the opposing force became, a force that still held him exhausted a stone’s throw from the throne. There was only one power capable of challenging this creature and he would become its supplicant.
I am yours, Apsu
! he imagined himself saying.
Just help me wring this shithead’s neck!
That would at least give him an opportunity to wreak vengeance. Far off in the potential distance, a bugling fanfare of fallen stars and clarion calls blared across the fields of glorious inevitability. No. No. No. There was no way out in that direction either, certainly no hope of salvation. No matter what he did, Nora would die, and shortly thereafter, he would follow. Only another victory for Apsu or the equally ghastly Hadad. Another instant and one of the impinging possibilities was sure to take place.
With growing hopelessness, Lyköan weathered the infinite potentials, a succession of futile scenes, every one another lost cause, another unanswered prayer, all of them rushing by in the frozen instant. Within the star-strewn emptiness that lay outside the physical realm, however, the two demiurges were locked in mortal conflict. Sinking deeper, drifting farther from the fray, Apsu, Pandavas’s Artifact, had engaged wholly with Hadad, the self-named Soma-shu, and driving the battle into the farther realm, had been wholly consumed by the greater metaphysical threat. For an instant, near the nadir of the absence of desire, no longer requiring a physical form to engage his enemy, Apsu, the Artifact, had cut Lyköan loose, abandoned him to the nether.
It is understood that a mathematical point possesses no width nor depth nor breadth, no mass nor weight nor scope and in this regard cannot be said to exist at all. This is also true regarding the germination point of existence, the sole gateway to infinity and eternity, which comprises all of creation in its endless sweep forever. Within that limitless absence, the great Urgrund slumbers, unmindful of the host of its creation and caring naught for the portal through which that creation enters into being.
Exhaling a spiritual sigh of complete surrender, with total abandon, Lyköan lunged towards that point of singularity, and by doing so, swept away the amnesia he had borne through every fruitless former life ― each of them filled with loss piled upon loss ― dashed hope upon dashed hope. Through every one of those incarnations he had relished life, had clung to it like a forgiven sinner clings to faith, not understanding that it is life that is the ultimate burden. Lyköan recognized that now, saw it as a trifle he could easily cast into the void, desiring only to be utterly destroyed in the attempt. Crying out for absolution, he raced into the approaching oblivion in rapt attention as countless realities flew like inconsequential dreams through the mind of the entity which spawns them all.
Inside the throne room, the buzzing in his head had grown intolerable, humming in perfect concert with the incessant buzzing in the walls ― walls seemingly constructed of insects that deafeningly chirped and roiled ― voracious mandibles devouring countless breaches in the fabric of existence, reducing that existence to its basic, infinitesimal components ― individual notes of harmony bleeding through the expanding void and eliminating even the space between divergent uchronia.
Here was the power of the awakening Urgrund. Lyköan felt himself consumed and for the briefest instant understood. Understood the emptiness which could never be filled, the thirst that could never be quenched, the loneliness that demanded this forgetfulness, this need for self-deception. Within the eternal ether loomed the imposing aspects of the Artifact and the Manifestation, not in their physical forms, but reduced to their underlying metaphysical essences. And somewhere outside of both but still within the confines of this gnawing vacuum that he had become, a great multitude of souls was pleading with a single voice: “Permit us entry too, oh little one. Throw off attachment and accept. We will do the rest.”
In the physical world, only a few short meters now separated Lyköan from Soma-shu, but it was as if he were looking down upon the scene from somewhere else entirely unconnected to this place, witnessing events from a great distance. Upon the harmonic plane, the battle continued, projecting separate fields of arcane energy, joined in desperate turmoil one with the other, and in their struggle still oblivious that they were now being observed.
Obeying the clamoring voices, Lyköan let the sea of lost souls flood through the gates and join the mêlée, drowning out every other sound as they rushed in, including the cries of the two would-be purveyors of mortal existence. He had invited in the whirlwind, the full chorus in bitter rail against unconscionable and incomprehensible happenstance, condemning the finger of occurrence that eternally determines, absent desire or mercy or reason. Sweeping through the vast expanse of emptiness, the hue and cry drowned out everything in a squeal of anguished expiation.
And, when the trumpet of their condemnation had subsided like the final note in a crescendo-ending symphony, from somewhere in the midst of the silent emptiness arose the tiniest of voices. Imperceptible at first, it grew stronger and louder and more terrifying, until it had become a great howl, the breath of the emergent godhead, the totality of creation risen from its age-old slumber, limitless and unfathomable, the field within the void ― elemental and eternal ― the truth which brooks no argument. Within that breath, the whole of the all-encompassing multiverse rose up in adoration, where each and every atom was an individual soul, or not so much as an atom, a mere quark, no not even so much as a quark, but a string ― a string singing joyfully the praises of the ever and forever ― the living plenum. Lyköan had let it in, all of it, the demons and the angels both, the lurkers in the darkness and the light. And after achieving the necessary spiritual mass, the Urgrund had at last revealed itself as the incarnate great Lord Shiva, possessing the now and future, the once-weres and ever might-have-beens, and made an unassailable decision.
From out of the depths of its forgetfulness it had returned in the guise of the lone anamnesic consciousness come home to find itself once more and wring from all that was, everything that still might be. In emptiness and surrender, first the palace and all of half-deserted Bangkok, then the globe and solar system had been consumed at the speed of thought, and the entire galaxy as well, and on into the cold empty depths of space, until at last arriving at the thin edge of physical existence, upon a tide run rife to the end of being, the wave receded like its physical counterpart, although not exactly along the same star-strewn course it had taken on the outward journey. Nor did it return exactly to where it first began, but instead arrived at a somewhat altered destination. In that collapse, uchronia were shuffled, space and time intricately rewoven, great swaths of former realities obliterated and coalesced.
Out of the far-flung galaxies it returned, to the tiny backwater from whence the urge had sprung. A remote speck of inconsequential matter circling a nondescript star, flung here for no apparent purpose, with no revelatory design or ultimate objective. Upon this lone small orb where bloomed a vast meadow of sweet smelling joss smoke and tragic echoes, born of passion and desire, and now collapsed down along a single uchronion path chosen by the ultimate will.
Though he didn’t at first recognize where he was, Lyköan didn’t question his surroundings, because the bright eyes that were peering into his were so beautifully alive and calm, apparently unaware of what had just transpired. Ghost eyes. He felt a cold shiver shake him, as if he had just awakened from a disturbing dream.
“Don’t you think that’s wonderful?” Nora asked. She was waiting for his reply and he had no idea how he should respond.
Bewildered, he took a breath. “I’m just going to assume the answer to that question is... yes.” Explanations could come later. Or never come at all. For, after all the buffeting passage through shipwreck and storm, he had somehow found his way back home.
“Good news,” the voice on the radio announced. “The wreckage from that three-fatality pile-up on southbound 85 has been hauled away. All four north-bound lanes are open again and the three miles of parking lot it created ― from downtown all the way to exit 95 ― is finally starting to loosen up.”
Frozen in traffic, Lyköan cursed under his breath even though there was no one else in the car to hear the oath. Without the talents of a Michael Valentine Smith he was never going to make it home on time.
The sun had set more than an hour ago. Ahead of him a broad ribbon of taillights meandered like embers into the rolling landscape. Another unusually cold winter evening in the suburban hills north of Atlanta. Lately, some climatologists had gone so far as to suggest that the planet might be on the verge of a new ice age.
“Ninety-five point five,” Lyköan requested. The onboard audio-input slave complied. He was hoping for a little music to pass the time while he was stalled here, dead in the water.
Tonight the cold bites deep
Out walking ’cause I can’t sleep.
Held fast in the grasp of these angry streets
By a name that the whispering wind repeats
With a sigh and a scuttling edge of grief
Its sad song of desire and disbelief.
Months had passed since his encounter with Apsu and Hadad ― events that apparently had never taken place here where he had ultimately been deposited. From what he had been able to piece together, without revealing any of the lunatic memories he still retained, there had been minute alterations in the sequence of events ― a simple timing differential that, from a number of hints he had since been able to gather, must have occurred about the time he and Nora were fleeing Bristol.
Graveyards and squad cars pass by in the night
Beckoning sirens somewhere out of sight
Silence and sorrow embracing the tune
I wait for an answer that never arrives
Praying that it finds me soon.
He couldn’t ask too many questions without sounding like he had completely lost his marbles. Which meant he might never learn the exact circumstances that had created the particular uchronion in which he now found himself. How important was
knowing
anyway? Whether Brit Intel had shut down the Node before Pandavas was able to infect the world or something had transpired in the Thai final solution scenario to alter the outcome ― tantalizing clues continued to arrive in drips and drabs innocently through the idle comments of others ― in all likelihood, millions of minute alterations had been involved. He doubted he would ever discover more than a handful. Even the part he may have played.
O how that lilt in your laughter slew me
Just like this wind it blew right through me
Insisting on all that might have been
And nothing that Time did not intend
No one explains what snuffs out the flames
Or why what remains always turns out the same
And we, we never learned who to blame
Did we? Did we? Did we, Karen Lynn?
What was that? That name? Who was singing this song? It sounded like that old has-been, Dixon. Was he still alive? His voice was sure shot. But “Karen Lynn?” Impossible. Karen Lynn Lyköan was buried on a peaceful hillside outside of Albany near where she had been raised. Lyköan had visited her grave less than a month before ― to satisfy his curiosity and make his peace with that past. It was time he laid down that burden and bid that ghost adieu. Let the ghosts go bother someone else. He had had more than his fill of their demands.
In the process he had thrown off the Celtic cringe. Once he had accepted that it was illusory to expect a certain direction from life, that the flow of destinies was not restricted to this consciousness anyway, it had been easier to deal with everything. He was slowly learning to take life in stride and accept whatever happened. Except for this goddamned traffic.
Pulling into the drive at eight-thirty-two, he left the car outside the garage and walked through the front door. This was not his home, but maybe soon. He and Nora ― mostly Nora ― were planning an April wedding. Spring would be the perfect time for such a celebration. A new beginning. Maybe it would rain. That would be perfect, absolutely perfect.
Scolded for his late arrival, he sat down at the kitchen table and dug into the proffered plate of leftovers with an explanatory excuse. Even reheated, everything tasted wonderful. As though in a dream fugue he heard himself carrying on small talk with smiles and easy laughter ― but for an instant he had drifted elsewhere.
The visions still haunted him, but had somehow become far easier to ignore, even now as he watched them dancing upon the frost-bitten windowpane behind Nora’s smiling face. Perhaps they would always be there, a reminder of what he had for that instant been ― and what he was now. They were a reminder of where he had ultimately journeyed and from whence he had returned.
Buddhist theory holds that the universe perpetually cycles through four periods: formation, existence, destruction, and non-existence. If that were true then the destructive and non-existence phases had been incredibly swift. What he might expect from this new formation had yet to be revealed.
Karen and that other Egan would forever remain those unreachable membranous vibrations away. With Pandavas gone it was impossible to find passage to that farther shore. The truth was, he no longer had any desire, were it even possible, to attempt the journey. He had grown content with the idea of making do with only one imperfect world. Life was far less complicated that way.
Looking at Nora across the dining room table, her two daughters playing in the other room, their giggling voices carrying throughout the house, Lyköan knew he could live with that. Live with that and be happy. While not the Elysian Fields, it was as close as any man could ever hope to come. He had experienced the great beyond and survived an even greater adventure. Neither had been quite what they were cracked up to be.
Samsara
had arrived like an angry rogue wave upon a placid sea. After the tumult of its passage, life felt no different from the reality that had preceded it. Maybe it shouldn’t. Were the horrors of the spiritual environment pushed back a bit farther into the shadows? It felt that way, but who could say with any certainty? Existence was still infinite, unknowably enormous, and no less baffling than it had ever been.
* * *
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
Emerson :
Brahma