The SONG of SHIVA

by Michael Caulfield

  There before him, in all his unexpected glory, was Sun Shi, the wrinkles of his weathered, ancient skin, that impish, cocked smile ― beautiful to behold. And the man was looking back at him with what Lyköan was sure was recognition!

  Sun Shi held Lyköan’s wrist for an instant after the bills had been exchanged, glancing quickly first at Karen and then back into Lyköan’s eyes. With a knowing wink, itself reminiscent of the other world’s bodhisattva, he pulled Lyköan forward and whispered in his ear, “Don’t be too intent on holding onto this, pal. Time, like fortune, has a reason for running through our hands, just the way it does. Ultimately, there is really no difference between reality and illusion. Spend both with considered intention.”

  Lyköan pulled away. He stepped back, almost stumbling on the curb. Turning abruptly away from the old man, with the bulging lunch bag in one hand, he took Karen’s hand in the other and pulled her towards the greenery of the sunlit southwest corner of Bryant Park.

  “What did that guy just say to you?” Karen asked with a deprecating wrinkle of her nose.

  “Thought I hadn’t tipped him enough,” Lyköan lied. “Weird.” Looking back over his shoulder he could still see Sun Shi standing at the side of the cart in white shirt, pants and stained checkered apron, now serving another patron.

  They walked through the park and sat down on a low cement wall, placing the bag between them. Lyköan pulled out the two bottles of fruit soda, noticing the unfamiliar label and logo. In the place he’d come from that same name was associated with a completely different product. Taking out the greasy hotdogs, he flattened the paper bag and placed them on it.

  “So, when will we start seeing the advertisements in bookstores?” he asked.

  “Sid claimed there’d be a ‘media blitz’ beginning two months before release.”

  “Can’t wait. What a hoot.”

  That was all. He tried to say something more, but could not. The colors were fading rapidly from the afternoon. He reached for Karen, feeling faint, everything slipping away from him or he was being dragged away from it. Too soon, too soon…

  Karen looked at him with a worried expression. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  Her voice sounded like it was already echoing through the Holland tunnel from miles away.

  * * *

  “So, unlike those waves making toward that pebbled shore, your minutes need not hasten to a miserably bitter end, my dear Lyköan,” Pandavas said with a smile. “Not immediately anyway.”

  Lyköan was still woozy from the excursion to that other ― what had it been? It took a few seconds to concentrate on what Pandavas was telling him.

  “Was it convincing? Everything I promised ― and more?”

  “More than enough. Too much.” Somewhere between process and poetry, nightmare and bliss, Lyköan felt a loss as tragic as the original. The experience had been believable alright. There was no doubt that the feel, the smell, even the taste, everything mortal senses latch onto in determining if something is real, had all been there ― in spades. But what had Sun Shi been doing in the midst of it? There was certainly something wrong about that.

  At first Lyköan suspected that it might have been something like a computer watermark that Pandavas had intentionally inserted into the middle of his fictitious virtual or neural sleight of hand. But why would he have done so? Was Pandavas even aware of his special relationship with the monk? Doubtful. Which made the experience feel all the more real.

  “Death, where is thy sting, eh Lyköan?”

  “My God, she was lovely. I’d forgotten. Memory always alters things in some way; never hits it dead on. Not like that.”

  “Is lovely, my friend,” Pandavas corrected.

  “Huh?” Lyköan grunted as the technicians finished removing the last of the sensors from his shivering body. For some reason, the process required full-body immersion in a coffin-like tank of a mysterious thicker-than-water liquid. It had the look, smell, and slick feel of antifreeze. Rivulets of the super-aqueous substance ran down his naked arms and face, dripping from his fingers and the point of his nose onto the reflective floor.

  “She is lovely, not was lovely. It takes some getting used to, I know. The beginnings and endings of everything have been forever expanded. This also means our former ideas of then and now, past and present, have been forever altered. But forgive me; you probably want to clean up before we continue this conversation.”

  Sitting up on the side of the gurney, still shivering, a soaking towel draped across his lap, Lyköan caught himself peering over the edge, that familiar vertigo of complete understanding acting as a stiff breeze threatening to blow him out into black fathomlessness. An echo from his unvoiced call into the void came back: What is Pandavas really after?

  * * *

  “And you’re certain that Egan never arrived in Bangkok?”

  “Quite certain, Doctor Carmichael. I doubt he ever left England. Have you been able to confirm his arrival in London?”

  “Master Shi, I have no way to check. I don’t trust the people who told me he was called away, and they’re the same people who claim to have provided his transportation.”

  Nora was walking the gentle slope of Old Sarum Hill, past the interior ruins of the fortress’s crumbling outer wall. Passing through a breach in that wall, she began to circle the hill along the lip of the sod-covered ditch that completely encircled the exposed ruins.

  “I don’t know where he is right now, but I do know where he’s been,” Sun Shi was saying, “and it isn’t somewhere he would ever have found on his own.”

  “Is that something you want to share with me?” Nora asked.

  “I’m afraid that the explanation wouldn’t help you ― would only add to the confusion.”

  The sun had just burned through the thinning clouds of the late afternoon, bringing the moss and lichen into colorful relief against the beige stonework. In the rubble of the verde antique courtyard where the outline of the former cathedral’s foundation and a few collapsed walls were still visible, sightseers milled around informational plaques describing the former glory of the place, none of them anywhere near her as she walked. The ground was still soggy and she had to be careful that a misstep didn’t send her tumbling down the steep embankment thirty feet or more to the ditch bottom below.

  “Egan placed so much trust in you. I guess I can accept your judgment on this. As though I have a choice. Is there anything you can tell me? Where I might look?”

  “Because we cannot place Egan in London, I suspect he has not strayed far from – Cairncrest is it?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “I’d suggest you begin your search there, but ever so discretely. Isn’t there anyone on the premises you might be able to use as an ally?”

  “Not really. Egan had someone he was supposed to be working with, but during our last conversation, he admitted he didn’t really trust the guy.”

  “Let me do some more investigating. While you’re in Salisbury, there’s a small Buddhist wat on Sussex Road in Harnham, just south of the city. Speak with the abbot there, Ning Zhòngní, and ask him to do something for me. Mention my name and you should have no trouble.”

  “But I’m scared to death something horrible has already happened.”

  “I wish that I could wave a wand and calm your fears, Doctor. That is not possible. But rest assured, nothing is occurring here, ever occurs anywhere, that isn’t meant to happen.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Deus in Vitro

  I felt a presence that disturbed me deeply with dreadful, elevated thoughts.

  David Garrick : Tamerlane

  Steam rose deliciously from the heaping plate of biryani. Lyköan shoveled it down, the first solid food he had tasted in days. He could only guess at the ingredients: A bed of basmati rice covered with large chunks of mutton or goat, and lime-marinated chilies in a rich sauce of cream curd, saffron strands, crushed almonds and cashews, hints of ginger, garlic, fennel, may
be omum, cardamom and poppy seed ― he simply couldn’t identify them all. The one thing he did know was that the hot food had dramatically improved his disposition and clarified his thinking. Even the aromatic anticipation of its arrival had been mood-altering. Before diving in, he had actually thanked plumber number one for placing it, along with the cooling pot of oolong, on the simple glass-topped table in his transformed cell. Plumbers one and two were the monikers he had given his personal jailors. Neither of the two stone-faced eunuchs had spoken more than three words since taking up their duties.

  After days with the catheter, the feeding tube and Pandavas’s interminable hectoring, sitting up unrestrained and eating from a plate with utensils seemed like salvation. Like a slice of paradise. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Paradise would have been another New York afternoon in that other Manhattan. Lingering images of that other place continued to flit through his head ― leaving stark and poignantly ephemeral emotions in their wake. He still had no idea what to truly make of that experience.

  Unfortunately, right now he had another, more pressing reality demanding his attention. It didn’t lend itself to easy answers either. He was confined in a white-walled, well-lit dungeon and apparently the object of considerable fascination. But why? Pandavas had thankfully not been to his cell for some hours. This had allowed Lyköan time to retrench, regain some focus and prepare for the next phase, whenever it arrived and whatever it turned out to be. While he was growing stronger, he couldn’t shake the feeling that present circumstances, especially this delicious meal, bore a striking resemblance to being fattened up for slaughter.

  He couldn’t help thinking about Nora and Whitehall. Where are they? What’re they doing? How did Pandavas explain my disappearance? Are they suspicious? A few pieces of rice fell from the corner of his mouth. He stared unfocused at the cell wall, reflexively wiping the edge of one hand across his greasy lips. Suspicious enough to come looking for me?

  * * *

  Winding south from Haldon Heath, the white Bentley Shadow raced through the even whiter knee-deep fog blanketing the narrow country lane’s drying macadam. A bilious wake churned wildly behind the vehicle, dividing and sweeping the fog momentarily into the tangled undergrowth on each side of the road, exposing blacktop for an instant, only to be immediately backfilled and swallowed again.

  Behind the wheel, Nora watched the ragged plumes fly in the rearview mirrors and silently cursed her sweating palms, slick on the stitched-leather steering wheel. Despite the frigid air blasting from an excellent climate control system, they were incriminating galvanic signals. Until this minute she had never thought much about racing gloves. But now it dawned on her. They weren’t worn for the heat or vibration. Not really. There was a more obvious reason. To soak up the sweat from the nerves, damn it ― that’s why I’d wear them anyway.

  Turning in at the broad elliptical driveway, past Cairncrest’s now familiar façade, she drove slowly to the freestanding garage that stood in a grove of mature oak trees some distance behind the main building. Today was a workday and the fifty-space parking lot between the stables and the garage was filled with vehicles.

  In front of the empty limousine bay, one of the manse’s two drivers leaned idly against the building, busy surveying his uniform boots while trimming his fingernails. It was the same fellow who had taken her dress shopping in Bath the week before. During that trip they had exchanged little more than pleasantries, but at least she knew his name, which was more than she knew about the other driver. Nora pulled in next to him, stopped the car and cut the engine.

  Leaning over, he opened the door, chirping a friendly, “Good’ay, Doctor, and welcome back. How did you find Salisbury?”

  “Relaxing ― interesting and informative, Sanjit, thanks,” Nora answered, stepping up out of the car. Not nearly as relaxing as she might have wished, but better that everyone think the daytrip had served its alleged purpose.

  “Are you finished with the vehicle, then?”

  “For now anyway, it’s all yours,” she replied, dropping the keys into the man’s open hand.

  “Just ring if you’ll be needing it again, Doctor,” he said with a nod. “The limousine is out on an errand and Ms. Prentice has taken the Land Rover. Will there be anything else?” He was being polite, but Nora could see he was eager to get back to those more pressing nail-cleaning duties.

  “Sanjit, may I ask you a question?”

  “Of course, Doctor.”

  “Was it you or the other driver who took Mr. Lyköan to London the other day?”

  The Indian shifted in his uniform. “I wasn’t on duty that morning. I don’t really know who drove Mr. Lyköan. Would you like me to inquire?”

  “No, that’s fine. I’ll check with Dr. Pandavas. That’s okay.”

  Cairncrest employed only the two drivers and Nora remembered the other taking Pandavas and Whitehall out to Bascombe Down, or somewhere, that morning. It was ninety minutes or more to Heathrow. So how had Egan gotten away from Cairncrest? He could have taken a cab all the way to London or only as far as Pewsey and hopped the train ― that would have worked in the time available. But if his exit had really been an emergency, the undependable rail route seemed particularly unlikely.

  That left just two possibilities: Either Egan had called a cab ― or he never left. Walking back to the main building’s rear stairway, she slipped in the double-bud and requested local directory assistance.

  * * *

  I still don’t get it. There just has to be some detail I’m missing ― a gap in my understanding ― something I’m not seeing ― or overlooking. But what?

  Why is my complicity so goddamn important? Paradise, while tantalizing, doesn’t explain it. Nobody ever signed a contract with wily ol’Nick that didn’t include some loophole – that crafty line of fine print guaranteed to bring disaster.

  “Any further questions now that you’ve had an opportunity to think a little more about your elsewhere experience?” Pandavas asked. “Was the doppelganger ― the physical experience ― acceptable?” Pandavas evidently had taken care of whatever required his attention for the previous uncounted hours and had chosen to drag Lyköan back to the precise spot where their earlier conversation had ended.

  “Oh, it was more than acceptable,” Lyköan replied. “But isn’t there a doppelganger Atma Pandavas about to slaughter everyone in that world too?” He was still worrying about the fine print.

  “If that concerns you, then select an alternate reality where I was never born. It matters little to me. Like our old friend Arjuna, my role is here. But if you’re really worried about me, I can’t possibly meddle in realms where I don’t exist, now, can I?”

  That didn’t help much. Lyköan was having trouble keeping any of this straight. The here, the now ― the there, the then ― they’d all become a jumbled confusion. No matter how that little trip to the otherwhere had been managed, it had disrupted everything, most of all his understanding of ― even comfort with ― who he was. All because of one damned fifteen-minute dimensional transmigration. Talk about your life-changing experiences.

  “But you still haven’t explained why you’re doing this. Why are you so interested in finding me this transcendent life experience ― out of this world?”

  “It’s your reward. We owe you so much, my friend ― without the toolset you supplied, we could never have come this far. It’s thanks to you that we are being blessed with all that is about to unfold.”

  Damned Pandavas was sounding biblical. And he really hadn’t answered Lyköan’s question. “You told me yourself that, by definition, it’s impossible to know now what we’re going to learn through experience in the future. Can’t move back and forth through time, remember? So isn’t talking about ‘the blessings about to unfold’ getting a little ahead of yourself?”

  “We both know that the human mind is designed ― I would argue: hard-wired ― to conceive and execute plans. What we’re doing here is only the next logical step for Hypothecated M
odeling ― nothing more or less unusual than predicting the route of a pathogen ― but in this case we are taking another step towards the Urgrund ― towards the ultimate direction of existence.”

  “Sorry doc, but my brain keeps insisting there’s something terribly wrong with mass murder ― no matter what it might bring about. If I’m suspicious about your motives now that I know your plans, well, excuse me… even with all my flaws, at least I’m still a human being.”

  “The truth is, Lyköan, with each hour that passes, those flaws are ― one by one ― being rectified. Even as we speak, the nano-scriptors coursing through your body are busy producing their finest work ― in fact, their masterpiece ― a tool capable of linking the microcosm to the macrocosm.”

  There was an unhealthy fire in Pandavas’s eyes. “It’s you, Lyköan. Not the you that existed yesterday, or even the you that exists at this very moment, but the you that is coming. And quite soon. Can’t you feel it already?”

  Lyköan wanted to throw a few appropriate words into Pandavas’s teeth, but something held him back. Was it fear? An enormous, unbalancing realization that maybe ― just maybe ― Pandavas wasn’t lying ― or deluded ― or mad ― wasn’t even exaggerating. Such an idea was too goddamned much to contemplate. The possibility though, had struck him dumb, left him with absolutely no words to throw.

  If Pandavas wasn’t lying and those tiny engines of mass construction were reconfiguring his body at the molecular level, what chance did he have? It wasn’t a poison you could simply vomit up or swallow some handy antidote. Maybe it would be better to get out now, while he was still the person he knew ― and liked. Like Pandavas had said when Lyköan first awakened from the anesthetic, there were only two exits: Allow the scriptors to create their new Prometheus, perhaps killing or driving him insane in the process and be stuck with the result ― or leave for far greener pastures.

  But it still didn’t explain why Pandavas was so eager to send him into exile, even exile in Elysium. The terrifying part, whether real or imagined, was that Lyköan did feel different ― not exactly Olympian, but maybe Delphic – as if he was even now perceiving things with more complete understanding – looking at existence with an entirely new pair of eyes.