The SONG of SHIVA

by Michael Caulfield

  “Ran towards Tilsbury for maybe another three klicks and turned around. First time out since the shooting ― didn’t want to overdo it. On the return leg I did manage to slip on the bridge and skin my knee. Nothing serious.” He thought the explanation might have just enough detail to sound convincing. It also placed him miles from where he had actually been.

  “Guess I must have followed you up the drive,” he added as a believable embellishment.

  “We must have just missed each other,” Whitehall said with a strange emphasis. “Don’t suppose you would have accepted a ride though, what?”

  Lyköan had observed the few landmarks he’d included in his deception from the backseat of the limo coming to Cairncrest the day before. The driver had explained, when Lyköan had asked about the crossroads at the tiny hamlet of Haldon Heath, that the road to Tilsbury was little more than an unobstructed ten-mile country track of winding monotony.

  “Saturday morning and both your noses to the grindstone already?” Lyköan asked.

  “The wheels of industry need to be oiled constantly. I’m sure you’ve learned that in your own line of work,” Pandavas replied. His expression had grown dark again ― that worrisome furrow had crept back onto his brow. Exactly what was puzzling him? There were plenty of possibilities. Lyköan didn’t like thinking about any of them.

  Time to zip it, Lyköan, he thought, and hightail it for the tall grass.

  “Well, I’ll let you gents get to your business. Any chance we can get together later, Whitehall? All work and no play you know...” A conversation with Whitehall might prove useful. If he discovered something valuable it could double his chances of survival. From one in a million ― to two.

  “I might have some time tomorrow. I’ll let you know.”

  “I’ll look for you later, then,” Lyköan said. “Will you be back today?”

  “Much later. I really can’t say how long we’ll be in London,” Whitehall explained.

  “Sure. Whenever. Right now I plan to get out of this wet suit and into a hot shower. Nurse my wound. Good luck with your meeting.” He nodded his head to both men and headed for the other stairway. Once his back was turned he rolled his eyes hard into his head, gritting his teeth.

  No way that exchange improved my odds.

  “Until then, Lyköan. Cheerio,” Whitehall called behind him.

  Springing up the stairs, legs shaking, he thankfully didn’t stumble in the ascent. The hallway turned away at the head of the stairs, bringing cover and relief. As he disappeared down the empty corridor, the full impact of his naked solitude overtook him. He let himself be swept along, shoulders and head slumped ― a derelict vessel captured in a treacherous current.

  Still in the compression suit ten minutes later, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, head in hands, elbows on knees, staring blankly at the hardwood floor. He hadn’t slept all night, buoyed by an adrenaline-filled bloodstream denying even a hint of exhaustion. He certainly wasn’t thinking straight, nor had he been acting rationally.

  Was he still operating under the dictates of the fight or flight mechanism? That was the only explanation for his bizarre tear into the twilight zone. Only to run right into another mystery. What the hell was that buried facility? Obviously part of the Innovac operation. He’d wasted precious time. Time that he might have better spent... doing what?

  Perspiration was dripping onto the floor from his nose and chin. He was a mess. What to do right now? Take my own advice.

  Forcing himself from the bed, he unzipped and pulled off the running suit. Crumpling the soggy mass into a ball, he threw it violently into a corner and headed for the shower.

  Only after he was standing under its spray, the water beating hard and hot on his shoulders, streams rushing down the contours of his body, did the frantic pace of his wild thoughts finally begin to slow. Steam rose, filling the shower cubicle. The walls of the bathroom beyond the glass enclosure disappeared in thick fog. Too bad I can’t disappear into the night as easily as I fade into this steam, he thought, realizing immediately that if he was going to survive he’d have to do a helluva lot better than that, better than the irrational thoughts of some little kid with his head pulled under the covers.

  He returned to the central mystery. What was Pandavas up to? It seemed doubtful he would have Lyköan murdered here at Cairncrest, so why had he brought him here? Why would Pandavas want to kill him at all? It didn’t make any sense. He had never been a threat to either the man or his business. Before today’s revelations, Lyköan hadn’t even borne Pandavas any ill will. In the very beginning, before Lyköan was ever aware of the Innovac connection, they had come looking for him. Now that he knew the score, however, he was determined not to give in without putting up a fight, but what could he use as a weapon?

  Better start doing something, he thought, turning off the water.

  He toweled off and stepped from the cubicle. It was a little after six. Maybe if he fired up the yíb and dove back into the Innovac database...

  Walking over to the bed and picking up the device, he unfolded the keyboard. Propping the pillows against the headboard behind him, he turned on the power.

  There was a knock at the door. Lyköan opened his eyes, slightly disoriented. He looked at his watch. 10:43. Then he looked down at the yíb. It had lapsed into deep hibernation. A quick keystroke and it began reanimating.

  My God! How could almost five hours have passed? Did I fall asleep? Jesus!

  The knock came again.

  “Who is it?” he asked, rubbing his face. He was still wearing the shower towel.

  “It’s me, Nora. You decent?”

  “Depends,” he managed. “Give me a minute.”

  The screen came up displaying his logon query window. He hadn’t even gotten to his password.

  Unbelievable. My life depends on every precious second and I fall asleep?

  Dropping the yíb on the bed, he rushed to the dresser, shouting at the door, “Be right with you, Nora.”

  In the hallway he could hear her whistling a familiar tune, not impatiently. Easy for her. A pair of wrinkled cargo pants and tattered khaki shirt later, barely presentable, he opened the door. It wasn’t even locked. So much for being in fear for your life, genius.

  Nora looked at him, the corners of her mouth creeping into a smile. “Did I catch you in the shower?”

  “Uh, no, no,” he put his hand to his head, “though I guess I fell asleep after taking one. Here, c’mon in. Let me grab a comb.” He closed the door after her.

  “You been up long?” he shouted from the bathroom. “Pandavas was working today. Aren’t you?”

  “No. We’re wrapping up. Winding down, I mean. Only the regular Innovac crew in the lab.”

  “The WHO researchers?”

  “No. Chen and her people left for London around nine. They should be at Heathrow by now. Atma and that insurance agent, Whitehall, went with them. You missed all the action, sleepy head.”

  Lyköan smiled at the familiarity. The first name reference to Pandavas, however, was a different matter.

  “I stayed up after we said goodnight,” he explained. “Took a breather around dawn. Even went for a run.” The face in the mirror staring back at him looked far less panicked than he felt. Is this what Pandavas had seen? He hoped so.

  Should he cave and tell Nora everything? Did that make sense? Lyköan didn’t believe she was involved, but wouldn’t even possessing such knowledge put her in jeopardy?

  “Nora, do you still have access to the Innovac labs on-site?”

  “Uh huh. Why?”

  “I thought maybe you could give me the cook’s tour before you left for Atlanta.”

  “I didn’t know you were interested in the science, but sure, say the word and I’ll be happy to show you around.”

  “How about now?”

  “Why the sudden interest?” she asked. “You seem awfully eager.”

  “Oh, nothing special ― just curious.”

  “Abo
ut?”

  “What other research, besides the TAI virus, is Innovac working on these days?”

  “If that’s what you’re looking for you’re going to be disappointed,” Nora explained. “Except for our specific project, I have no access to the Innovac R&D database. Sorry. You know, intellectual property, patent protection, that sort of thing.”

  Lyköan had to make a quick decision. There was barely enough time to trust the Fates and take the required leap of faith. Pull Nora in and risk everything that might entail: a double-cross, doubtful; her life put at risk, more likely; or discovering what the L-9 Genome business was really all about and placing her life in jeopardy, most likely of all. How could he protect her if things turned ugly? He knew he couldn’t.

  “What if I could get you access to Innovac’s other projects?”

  “How?”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be with permission.”

  “You’re thinking of hacking into the Innovac LAN?”

  “Already have.” It was all about to come rushing out like water through a crack in the dike. Way past the point of simply sticking a finger in to staunch the flow.

  “Why?”

  “Originally? Just curiosity. Almost happened by accident.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet it did. How’d you mange it?”

  “Can we head for the lab? If you find us an isolated workstation where we won’t be seen or overheard I’ll spill the whole sad story.”

  “This doesn’t sound good. What kind of trouble are you trying to get me into?”

  “Serious trouble. If you don’t want to go any further, that’s okay. But let me tell you, our suspicions yesterday? They weren’t ill-founded”

  “And if I say yes?”

  “Then I’m afraid you’re in for the duration. Very afraid. Once you know, you know. Can’t take it back. I know, but I’m not even sure what I know – other than it’s killed people. If you do decide to get involved, you won’t be safe either.”

  Nora didn’t know what to say, or think. Her emotions were already in tatters because of this guy. Now he wanted to drag her into something derelict at best, probably criminal. He was asking for her help. Was she willing to risk what providing that help might require? He’d admitted it was dangerous. Why? Her innate curiosity could easily place her in serious danger, but even as she recognized this she found herself jumping on the bus.

  “Does anybody else know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That you’ve cracked into Innovac’s database.”

  “I don’t think so. I certainly didn’t tell anyone.”

  Good, Nora thought. Then he’s probably not working an organized corporate espionage scam. If it’s not that, then what?

  “Let’s go to my room and pick up my keycard.”

  “I take it that’s a yes?”

  “A yes?” she asked.

  “That you’re onboard. You believe me?”

  Nora opened the door. “C’mon, let’s get going.”

  Lyköan picked up his yíb and followed her out.

  * * *

  “See, there’s nobody around at all,” Nora said as they entered the darkened lab. She switched on a light and closed the door behind them. Two walled offices with doors and about a dozen workstation cubicles with large wall-mounted screens greeted them. A corner of the lab was completely enclosed in plexi with numerous scientific instruments arrayed in the square footage, their exact purpose a mystery to Lyköan.

  “Let’s use this office,” she said, indicating a doorway some distance into the larger space. “This is where I’ve been working since I arrived. It’s got an excellent hexi-processor workstation – all top of the line technology. As I told you upstairs, our access is confined to the WHO project. But let’s see what you got, Philbrick.”

  “You sure we won’t be interrupted? I thought you said there was still a skeleton crew on duty. Where are they?”

  “Don’t worry. We’re completely alone. The other Innovac labs, even the ones on this floor, are only accessible from a separate elevator. There are an additional two floors of BSL-4 research labs below us, all ultra-cleanroom environments. I saw them briefly when we first arrived, but they’re restricted too. Atma set up this center just for our use. We communicated with the Innovac research staff via video conferencing and shared workgroups over the LAN.”

  “So you have no idea what other projects Innovac might be working on in this facility?”

  “We were too busy. Why? Do you?”

  “Let’s take a look,” Lyköan suggested, plugging the yíb into the workstation’s MIMO port. Using the same access sequence as the night before, but omitting all the miscues and wrong turns, he brought up the TAIV CHRONO file.

  “Ever seen this before?” he asked.

  Nora took control of the directory at the workstation’s keyboard. “How did you get here? This is a part of the database I’ve never seen.”

  “It’s a long story. Let’s just say I got it from a friend.”

  Working through the yíb’s interface, Nora riffled through one subject file after another. It was time consuming, but Lyköan wanted her to draw her own conclusions. By the time she had drilled back to about the first of the year her eyes had grown wide.

  “Un-fricking-believable! This data, if it’s true, proves Innovac’s scientists were developing some sort of designer virus.”

  “The TAI outbreak?”

  “Haven’t gotten there yet. But they wanted a bug they could control, that’s certain. The data shows they had quite a few mishaps early on.”

  “Mishaps?”

  “Unexpected exposures. Fatalities.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lyköan ignored her question. “I wonder why it never made the news? Did you ever hear anything at the CDC?”

  “No,” Nora admitted, shaking her head.

  “When people die it usually draws attention. Take my word for it, if you dig deeper into that chrono directory you’ll find public transit and building dissemination plans, you name it. But here, I’ve got another mystery for you.” Lyköan leaned over her shoulder and with a few clicks brought up the ATYPICAL GENOMES directory. “Tell me what you make of this.”

  After what seemed like ages of flashing screens and data lists scrolling thousands of lines Nora finally answered. “Some kind of recombinant DNA research study ― with live subjects. Human subjects.”

  “Against their will?”

  “Give me a minute.”

  After running through additional screen sequences, consuming many minutes, she answered. “I don’t think it was against their will exactly. More like without their knowledge. Looks like Innovac was working surreptitiously, using some type of protein altering agent. Ingested or infused nano-constructs? Hell, I’m not sure what they were doing? What do you think?”

  “You’re the microbiologist, sweetheart, you tell me. Do you recognize any of the names?”

  “No.”

  “Take a look at their most recent subject, the L-9 Genome. The last one in the subdirectory.”

  After a few mouse clicks, Nora gasped, “My God, it’s you!”

  “So what were they doing? If you’ll notice, my name’s the only one on the whole fucking list who’s still alive. Have they infected me with something? Am I dying?”

  There, he’d finally said it. He needed to pose the question, but did he really want to learn the answer?

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell you.” She looked up at him and seeing the concern, knew it must be mirrored in her own eyes. But could she help him, even if she knew the full scope of why his name and DNA were on file in this obviously criminal project?

  “It’d take days, maybe weeks, to translate all this data into something we could understand and use.”

  “I doubt we have the time. Can’t we just concentrate on my data for now?

  “If you want, but even that single subdirectory contains terabytes of informati
on. It looks like they have your entire genome broken down to the molecular level, mapped and annotated. I don’t know what we should be looking for. We’d be forced to individually inspect maybe twenty or thirty thousand genes which could take months.”

  “How about the links to the subdirectory?” he suggested. “Dozens of these atypical genomes, mine included, were being studied ― altered ― for a reason. What reason? Here, let’s go up a level.” He placed his hand over hers and moved up one then two levels in the file configuration hierarchy.

  “Wait,” Nora lifted both their hands from the mouse.

  OPTIMAL HUMAN GENOME CONFIGURATION

  “Are they trying to identify it?” Lyköan asked.

  “I don’t know, but the underlying files might explain...”

  She quickly drilled down into a separate sequence of files. Opening one file after another, more precious minutes passing, she finally identified a target five levels down. When she answered it was low, almost prayer-like.

  “They’re not trying to identify it. I think they may have already done that. They’re attempting to construct it. They were taking pristine segments from a variety of almost perfect DNA and altering others ― using something they did create, just for that purpose, called activated nano-construct reassemblers ― nano-scriptors.”

  Nora’s voice was clinical, as though she were reading a scientific journal. “Then splicing ― no ― recreating the perfect DNA segments. By using these nano-scriptors they were able to alter the imperfect DNA in other subjects. But apparently the sequencing alterations or the infused reassemblers themselves would sometimes cause anomalies ― blood serum, telomerase, stem and T-cell disorders, rare cancers, all resulting in death.”

  “And me?”

  “I just don’t know, Egan. We’d need weeks of tests and a battery of investigators to give you even a reasonable guess.”

  “How were they infusing these reassemblers?” he asked.

  “I don’t know that either. I’m sorry. There’s just too much data here.”

  “What was the motive?”