The SONG of SHIVA

by Michael Caulfield

  Utilizing the yíb’s seek-n-lok search function, his first attempt at accessing the password-protected Innovac LAN, running somewhere in the vicinity, probably the research labs below ground, had been rebuffed. But Sun Shi’s reverse-encryption hack had made short work of that hurdle. After a few simple access-configuration adjustments, he had slipped inside the server backbone and now had access to the pharma company’s entire database, augmenting the yíb’s already substantial capabilities.

  Bodhisattva Shi, if nothing else, was versatile. Those years spent on the computer engineering faculty at Kundu University in Madras had served the chao awat well. As he had confessed, his decision to pursue the monastic life had always presented serious conflicts with his passion for programming, though the word “passion” itself offended him. More than once he had admitted the irrational hold Number Theory had on him, like the Apostle Paul’s insistent thorn. And he possessed a truly amazing gift for cryptographic programming. Had he pursued this gift, he could have landed any governmental or industrial position he might ever have desired. If he had desired. He was that good.

  But he had chosen a different path. Even so, Lyköan never tired of deriding him about the apparent hypocrisy; that the saffron-robed aesthete’s monastic pose might be nothing more than a grand disguise, the best hiding place imaginable for the consummate closet hacker. There was certainly no denying that the guy was a programming genius. Whoever had stolen Lyköan’s old Ōkii might have ripped off an operational unit, but only if the thieves were willing to completely reformat the hard drive and give up every last byte of binary it contained. No team of experts alive could have ever accessed the data itself.

  The Zen-encryption key, techies liked to call it ICE, that Sun Shi had created and which served as the basis for that lock, operated on a completely different wavelength, a plane of spiritual programming architecture totally removed from any other earthly set of numerical algorithms. With its help, the yíb had been able to slip undetected inside Innovac’s protected network without creating so much as a traceable wake. How Sun Shi’s program avoided detection was a complete mystery to Lyköan. The old man had explained the thing in a Zen-Socratic construct, by posing a question: “How does a duck’s quack, of all the sounds in nature, escape its echo?” The obvious answer was that no one knew. Lyköan was even a little doubtful it was true. The monk had insisted, however, that such knowledge could be directed with useful purpose. As ludicrous as it may have sounded, this reverse-encryption crack-app was the programming equivalent of the duck’s quack, capable of slipping through even the most elegantly protected ICE shield without stirring so much as a whisper of the equivalent cyber-echo. All that was required was proximity to a protected system’s wireless signal.

  Initially, Lyköan had used the ICE-breaker innocuously, scanning for recent business messages sent to Lyköan IE, to which he had responded in kind. He followed that by transmitting to Whitehall the brief summary he had promised before leaving Bangkok, tactfully omitting any reference to his interlude with the fetching Doctor Carmichael. Maybe Whitehall had discovered something in the days since, where Lyköan had come up empty-handed.

  But open access to such dauntingly enormous unexplored terrain soon proved irresistible. He itched for a clearer picture of the hand that was feeding him. He was already trespassing upon Innovac intellectual property anyway. Why not see what a modern industrial empire looked like from the inside? His initial incursions returned little more than virtual wrong turns and blind alleys.

  On more than one occasion, after crashing into the great tangle that was the Innovac cyber-hierarchy, he was forced to dust off and reconstruct his virtual craft and then approach the target from a different direction. With each failed attempt, however, he was able to dig a little deeper into the mountainside. Once he had identified the vast Innovac Pharma Biologics R&D database, his flying improved immeasurably. Eventually, the innumerable mundane levels of commonplace business functions fell by the wayside. His target within sight, he drew a heading for a destination with which he thought he had some familiarity.

  The first organizational signpost that caught his attention was a subdirectory under the broad heading: TAIV CHRONO. Following the thread of the recent TAI antibody development, he pursued a string of data points back to the very beginning of the Bangkok outbreak. The complex information tree would often veer off in wild directions: intergovernmental communiqués, WHO field work analyses, wild and domesticated avian population studies ― and then something quite unexpected. Drilling down to a time before the very first case had turned up at Samphan Thawong Hospital, he discovered a lengthy trail of files, mostly scientific notation and formulaic gibberish, stretching back years.

  Entirely by chance, in racing through a group of files dated around the end of the previous year, he stumbled across another subdirectory simply named: i-maps. Inside this folder were dozens of detailed Bangkok subway and Skytrain system schematics that he recognized immediately. There were other renderings that looked like skyscraper architectural plans ― blueprints of buildings with elevator shafts highlighted in red. Only one explanation came immediately to mind and it certainly wasn’t comforting.

  Christ, maybe I was right all along ― suspecting these shitheads of something! I just didn’t know what it was. But what he suspected right now didn’t make complete sense. Why would Innovac have purposely released a virus that, from everything Nora had told him, was programmed to self destruct? What would that accomplish?

  Think man, think! He was speeding through one unintelligible jargon-filled file after another: Anti-Telomerasic Protein AgI Outcomes, Dendritic Cell and Plasmid-Based Vaccine Studies, Phoenix Phenotypical Recombinance, Altered RNA Arrays, Neurominidase Separators, Plasminogen Binders, Plenconaril-Resistant Variants, locum tenes ventorium. What the hell did it mean?

  One thing was certain: If the crew that had developed this shit discovered he was poking around inside... what was one more body added to the heap the TAI virus had already produced? He wasn’t thinking straight. Once you’ve dug yourself a hole so deep you can’t climb out, the first thing you’re supposed to do is stop digging. But he couldn’t stop. Careening into a tangential directory ― Hell, he might have exited the TAIV CHRONO directory entirely ― he encountered an unfamiliar file subset: ATYPICAL GENOMES.

  Just winging it now, he opened another subset folder, just riffling through its contents now, hoping he’d come across something he really understood. But this one was no different than the last ― cryptic scientific notation, formulae, DNA strings running volumes: The R-17 Genome, the TA-1 Genome, the S-7 Genome... There were dozens of them.

  Opening each in succession, the descriptors came, one-by-one, frighteningly into focus. R-17 appeared to be the genomic fingerprint and some sort of experimental history for somebody named “Rodgers, William M. ― Deceased.” TA-1 turned out to be “Tan Ang, Chen ― Deceased.” S-7: Sterronovich, Sestavonia V ― Deceased. R-2: Ruminski ― Deceased. R-11: Deceased. M-15: Deceased. BN-3: Deceased. S-6: Deceased. The dates of death moved closer to the present as he moved down the list. The earlier names went back years. It wasn’t possible that all of them had been victims of the Bangkok TAI outbreak.

  Lyköan scanned madly through the rest of the files. Deceased, deceased, deceased. Who were these people? Within minutes he had brought up more than fifty records. The last file in the sub-directory, L-9 Genome flashed on the screen.

  With a lightheaded dizziness, fingers tingling, he read the record. “L-9: Lyköan, Egan M.”

  “Ho-ly Shit,” he gasped aloud. What the fuck does this mean? Jesus. What are gigabytes of my fucking DNA doing buried in the vaults along with this list of obituaries? Am I their next target? Or their current?

  At least his name wasn’t followed by a dreaded “Deceased.” But if all the names and lives that preceded his were any indication, that little oversight couldn’t be far off.

  He looked at his watch. It was 4:23. Outside his window, dawn’s dull
gray was muddying the eastern sky. Folding the keyboard and shoving it into the main unit, he broke his connection with the Innovac server backbone.

  This was crazy! Utterly, absolutely, howl-at-the-moon fucking nuts. It wasn’t possible. His mind racing in sweat-dripping panic, he fought for an explanation ― some avenue down which he might escape. Anything.

  First impulse? Run. Down the hall and wake Nora. And tell her what? That he thought he might be the object of some secret Joe Mengele-style Innovac experiment? Would she believe him? Hell, it was even possible she was part of the conspiracy. Whitehall too.

  Sun Shi was the only person on earth he could possibly trust with such a revelation. But what could he possibly do from twelve thousand miles away? What could he do even if he was sitting in the next room? Fight or flight. Fight or flight. Run.

  Tearing off his boxers, he ran to the dresser naked. Pulling on a jockstrap, compression suit and socks, he jumped into his trusty RB25s with no more thought than to escape the confines of this terrifying place immediately. Rushing out of the room, he headed for the stairs intending to break out into the dawn, maybe think his way through this thing. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he feared.

  Downstairs he quietly exited through the first door he found and then tore off towards the creekside bridle path he had taken on horseback the day before. Twenty minutes at an equestrian walk became twelve minutes on the downstream slope in full adrenaline-fueled anaerobic panic. When he reached the horseshoe bend where he and Nora had begun their race for the hilltop oak, he took off cross country, uphill. Agonizing with a mixture of fear and fatigue as the silhouette of that same oak beckoned, he vaulted stone walls and, weaving along hedgerows, found crooked stiles that he carried in three steps, falling twice and skinning a knee.

  The morning half-light was just beginning to infuse the landscape with color when he reached the crest of the hill. Running up to the standing stones, he cast a glance back across the miles, catching Cairncrest’s windows glinting in the first rays of dawn. Turning back, he moved around the dolmen and peered down into the valley on the farther side. The view to the horizon was barren of any movement. He sat down on the dewy grass, his back wet against one of the bluestone pylons, arms wrapped around his knees. It had been his first run since being shot and it hadn’t done him a damned bit of good. Certainly no communing with the Buddha.

  What was he going to do? What could he do? What were Pandavas and Innovac really up to? Were they behind the shooting in Bangkok? If they really wanted him dead why had they taken such pains to protect his life after the attack? Something just didn’t add up. Fuck, nothing was adding up. You hire a guy just to off him? Why? He hadn’t a clue.

  Thoughts racing, he leaned his head back against the cold stone. It was humming. Was the vibration he felt coming from the stone or was it just his pounding heart? No, this time he was certain he could feel something. Neither panic nor his imagination. It was something else. The earth was definitely trembling. A guttural rumbling. Not like the rolling of an earthquake temblor, but regular. A mechanical whir of gear-driven hydraulics followed, then a rush of escaping air like distant surf. With an unnatural groan, a huge flap of boulder-covered earth seized from the landscape and opened its gaping maw. Low over the horizon a black dot appeared, approaching with the recognizable thrum of rotor blades, baffled but still audible – a helicopter following the rolling contours of the countryside coming in low and fast. The great sod and stone-clad door stood rigidly open at a forty-five degree angle, its huge lip hanging a good dozen meters above the dry creek bed at the base of the hill.

  Lyköan pulled back into the shadow beneath the dolmen’s capstone, falling flat on the ground behind a pylon. The chopper hovered briefly and then disappeared into the entrance. Muffled rotors ceased and the opening began closing. The whole operation hadn’t taken forty seconds.

  With an enormous sigh of expelled air, the door closed tight, returning the landscape to its original configuration. The vibrating ceased. After a brief silence, a different hum took its place, higher pitched and much fainter, a barely perceptible tremor in the earth. Hardly noticeable, it faded rapidly into nothingness.

  Jesus! Like some screwy plot device from a creaking Matt Helm movie! He looked into the sky. Clouds were rolling in. A stiff breeze was blowing. The bucolic scene had returned to its former tranquility. It didn’t seem possible.

  Emerging from the shadow, he looked around nervously and then raced for the brook and the trail back to Cairncrest. He couldn’t chance being caught out in the open. The entrance might be under surveillance. After what he had just witnessed, better safe than discovered.

  He still had enough residual fire, or fear, to maintain a full throttle pace all the way back, stumbling only once more. How could he possibly place all he’d just seen into some reasonable context? He couldn’t. Not now anyway. Not here. Just a nauseating jumble of nonsense filling the territory normally reserved for introspection.

  Reaching the manor house at last, he glanced at his watch. 5:36. He tried one of the side doors, but found it locked. Damned servants. He was forced to use the main entrance. The wind was blowing harder, cold and damp out of the west. A bank of clouds had overtaken him in the last mile and the misting precip had already begun beading on the compression suit fabric. Ascending the broad front stairway, he stood at the tall double doors, took a deep breath and entered.

  Cairncrest’s marbled foyer wasn’t empty. With a turn, Atma Pandavas and ― Harry Whitehall, of all people ― stared back at him from one of the curving grand staircases they had been climbing together. Their expressions indicated that his entrance, at the very least, had come as something of a surprise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Fountain of Truth

  The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

  Oscar Wilde : The Importance of Being Earnest

  Looking down from the stairway, Pandavas spoke first. “Out for a morning constitutional, Lyköan? Why, it’s barely dawn.” The edge in his voice and glint in his eye froze Lyköan for an instant. Pandavas was too perceptive not to have noticed.

  “Yeah, my first time out after a month on the DL,” Lyköan answered. He might very well be standing in the gallows’ shadow, but he’d be damned if he’d let the hangman catch even a whiff of terror. “Thought I could sneak out and be back before anybody else got up around here.” Shifting to a bluffed offense while his interior landscape was collapsing, he added, “From the look of things I got back just in time.”

  “How’s that then?” Pandavas asked, his dark expression deepening.

  Maybe the executioner was rattled too. It was sort of a noir solace and didn’t last. But Lyköan had sensed the fulcrum of the conversation shift and felt he could afford to give a little ground.

  “The rain, it’s just starting,” he said by way of explanation. Brushing a spray of beaded droplets from his shoulder he looked directly at Pandavas with a steadfast, innocent grin.

  Turning his head towards Whitehall, he pressed on. “Harry Whitehall! I sure wasn’t expecting to run into you.” That covered his startled expression. “Is this a scheduled visit?”

  Pandavas and Whitehall turned and descended the stairway together. Whitehall, carrying a small grip in one hand, walked over and stopped inches from Lyköan’s nose. Placing a hand on Lyköan’s shoulder, he smiled broadly with a glimmer of their former, familiar camaraderie. Lyköan tried not to flinch. Could Whitehall feel his heart pounding? Whitehall’s breath was hot and antiseptic.

  “The car must have dropped me off while you were out braving the elements, my boy,” he said. “I was just getting reacquainted with the doctor here, before heading for my room. It was a beastly long flight from Bangkok, as you well know.”

  Lyköan tried to force his question. “Business here in England then?”

  “A couple of manufacturing liability issues have turned up. My area of expertise,” Whitehall answered with a shrug indicating it was only a trifle. “Atma thou
ght it might be better if I came in person to negotiate directly with the government. I’ll be running a bit myself, I’m afraid.”

  It’s Atma now, is it? Lyköan reflected. Through the filter of his paranoia that sure sounded cozy.

  Smiling politely at Pandavas now standing next to Whitehall, he was thinking: Seems you’ve suddenly become everybody’s best buddy. If this problem’s no big deal why not just have one of your local boys handle it? Why fly in Whitehall all the way from Bangkok?

  Pandavas seemed to be leering back at him. Looking at Lyköan’s scrapped and bleeding knee he asked, “Did you stumble in the dark? A hundred yards into the countryside at night and the Cairncrest lights disappear.”

  The little mystery about Whitehall’s unexpected appearance could wait. Right now it was much more important to allay Pandavas’s suspicions about where he’d been and what he’d been up to.

  “Ran to the Roman mile marker at Haldon Heath ― where the road crosses that creek ―”

  “Haldon Stream,” Pandavas offered blandly. The doctor’s face lost a little of its strained tightness.

  “Sure, Haldon Stream,” Lyköan eagerly agreed. “Anyway, at the bridge I took the Tilsbury fork.” His heart was racing, but his delivery remained nonchalant. A believable ruse might draw Pandavas off the scent.