Perhaps because of his inability to perform the last line’s direction: to reach ‘the spike at point of slumber’ ― that twitch or start that occurs at the juncture between waking and sleeping known as the hypnogogic myoclonus ― during the twenty-minute window.
How do you fall asleep on cue while concentrating with open eyes? he wondered. Jesus, I’m having trouble falling asleep period.
In only a few minutes, this morning would again present the briefest opportunity to give the exercise another try. If the gateway existed, it could be accessed only twice a day. Like the tide, which arrived with the same frequency, it waited for no one.
Peering into the bathroom mirror as he considered this, Nora’s reflected form entered through the doorway behind him. Wrapping her arms tightly around his waist, she pressed against him, warm curves contouring against the angles of his body, lower belly at his buttocks, breasts pressed against the middle of his back. His breath clouding the mirror, he observed her turned cheek, glistening hair and closed eyelids ― a smiling, contented face above the line of his shoulder ― disappearing into the reflected fog.
He turned, wrapped his arms around her shoulders and drew her tightly against his chest. A perfection of point and counterpoint, object and reflection, fascination, fit and function. The human mind was so easily persuaded of these natural patterns, the interlocking of external stimuli and interior perception.
Is it just stress-induced credulity? he wondered. Passion brought on by desperation? Manipulated by circumstance? Are we just fooling ourselves? Who knows? If we are, so what? I’d rather be fooled ― in fact, I am quite happy to be fooling myself.
“Big day ahead of us,” Nora murmured into his chest. “Are you nervous?”
Lyköan felt a twinge of apprehension bobbing in the sea of guilty conscience. The really important question was, ‘had they been running fast enough to stay ahead of Pandavas and Whitehall?’ For two days now he and Nora had been stuck fast, like insects trapped in amber, waiting for Diane’s package to arrive in Bristol. Lyköan wanted to believe that they were operating with some purpose, that Providence actually gave a shit, but of course there was no way of knowing such a thing.
“Nervous? Nah!” he lied. “Well, maybe a little. But I’m just the lookout. You’ll be doing the heavy lifting. The question oughta be, ‘How are you feeling?’”
“I’m okay,” Nora answered with a shiver. “A little scared,” she admitted. “I mean, we’ve been treading water for two days. Pandavas hasn’t. Resurfacing as Nora Carmichael is risky, right?”
“Breathing’s risky,” Lyköan retorted with a mocking smile, “But don’t worry, you’ll do just fine.”
Nora leaned her forehead against his shoulder, silently praying that he was right. She had already given in to this romance wholeheartedly. No second thoughts were permissible. Perhaps if her cycle hadn’t been irregular; if she hadn’t already been on the pill to regulate her periods, she might have hesitated that first night on the run and not given in so easily – so completely. It was no longer mere physiology. In that single ultimately beautiful expression, this relationship had turned into something else entirely.
Face it, sister, before the bedroom door even opened last night you were already beyond ready ― you were downright eager. Something to relish now and forever. Something to savor, no matter what the future might hold.
Reaching for the bathroom window, Lyköan spread the blinds with fingers and thumb. Observing the fast-approaching dawn dappling the overcast Eastern sky, he welcomed the opportunity to segue into a more certain subject, “But first things first. Looks like it’s almost time for another go with the video.” Kissing her forehead, he reached for a towel.
Nora let him go. Their individual roles were already well established. Lyköan was responsible for implementing their assumed identities and life on the run; her responsibilities lay with interpreting the medical biologics and communicating with the U.S. government. Everything else was open to the vagaries of the moment ― and debating how they might best derail the Shiva plot.
How Lyköan’s crazy dusk and dawn meditational routine or the hours of obsessive-compulsive running possibly played a role in that planning had yet to be fully explained to her satisfaction. Or how he expected to continue performing at his best when he never slept or ate. While she had exercised regularly since college, even in the lonely, dark days after 9/11, keeping up with Egan’s newfound hyperactivity had proven impossible, though that hadn’t kept her from trying. She had spent the past two mornings and evenings at his shoulder circling Keynsham for six miles at a stretch. Returning to the Wild Ivy House and dropping her off exhausted, Egan would afterwards put in another even more arduous hour alone. Looking at him now, Nora could see that he was obviously thriving on the abuse.
When she had suggested her free hours might be more productively spent finding out what Kosoy had been able to accomplish with the transmitted data, Egan had nixed the idea. He was afraid that, until they were ready to leave Keynsham, broadcasting the yíb’s telltale transmission signature from a stationary location would be both dangerous and unnecessary. That went double for the double-bud. The data files alone should be enough to motivate Kosoy, Egan had argued. Nora’s urging wouldn’t move the alarm along to the NSA any faster or make the State Department take quicker action. For the time being, except for very irregular contact with Kosoy, Egan was probably correct in assuming they would be safer remaining incommunicado. The lumbering wheels of American bureaucracy ground exceedingly fine. Neither of them could possibly speed up the process. All they could do was hope a viable response would come soon enough to be useful.
Egan headed for the bed to prepare for the morning’s ritual, leaving Nora standing in the doorway, watching the light filter into the room’s eerie predawn shadows. She felt remote and removed, noticeably out of kilter with reality. The wanton physical intimacy of the past two days might be explained by the catalyzing threat which had thrown the two of them together, but it hardly explained everything she was experiencing. It failed to explain her conviction that something intangible and important was operating upon events, expressing itself in a subliminal, oblique way. It was as though Egan’s accelerated metabolism had become contagious. If he had completely fallen off the deep end, compulsively and obsessively, then the quality of her perceptions had definitely changed too. One thing was certain; she wasn’t the same woman who had left Atlanta on CDC assignment six weeks ago. Blame it on the Bonnie and Clyde syndrome. That could explain a lot of things, especially the unremitting physical desire. Perhaps. But did it also explain why she had immediately and so wholeheartedly bought into the deep cover argument or her newfound paramour’s conviction that the two of them could succeed against Innovac Pharma when the most powerful government on earth might not prove up to the task? She hoped not.
Lyköan sat on the bed and pulled his legs into the lotus position. Launching the fractal generation program, he raised the yíb with both hands, holding it inches from his face. Outside, the overcast and muted grey sky was growing noticeably lighter.
Starring into the pixilated depths, he felt the now familiar swirling spiral of blossoming rainbows draw him forward. Like standing on the edge of a lofty precipice with a stiff breeze blowing hard at his back, the sensation of instability was overpowering. Resisting the natural impulse to pull away, he gave into the vertigo, let it drag him over the edge and towards the virtual abyss. He felt himself being stretched and pressed exceedingly thin against the display screen, soaking into every pixel of the approaching geometric progression.
Suddenly, a single point at the center of his wafer-thin essence began vibrating unstably, breaking through the plane of the display into the expiating infinite, drawing consciousness with it, becoming the very motion itself. A forest of rainbow-hued single helixes, composed entirely of three dimensional ever-expanding golden sections ― the universal proportion of the pine cone and the spiral galaxy ― rushed upwards, speeding past hi
m at incredible velocity as he plummeted in pulsing stutter steps down the virtual worm hole of colorful strands.
He tried concentrating on his breathing, rhythmically in through his nose and out around a tongue pressed hard against the roof of his mouth, deeper with each respiration. The spiraling staircases of paisley golden-sections flew by like sunlit crystalline methane spray erupting as he plunged ever onward. Mesmerized by its riotous geometry, he did not immediately notice the polite little bells playing melodiously somewhere far off in the unseen distance. He had been too preoccupied with his frighteningly expanding lung capacity ― each breath enough to fill an indoor stadium. He exhaled enormously into the deluge of strains and strings, violins joining the tubular bells. Snatches of susurrus conversation choired past his ears, sound and motion unified in expression.
“Where shall we go?” a voice whispered. “Whom shall we seek?” said another. With obvious authority, a third voice echoed in an unfamiliar tongue, “mystae agrae, epoptae eleusis, mystae eleusis, epoptae agrae.” A host of distinct whisperers chimed in. He caught few of the evaporating phrases: “Prana jiva”. What did it mean? Shudders and stops resonated with, “at the ley line intersection,” and “breathe the rhythm of creation,” after which, a barely intelligible, “guruparampar,” “gamma-aminobutyic acid,” “well worn ground beaten by innumerable footfalls...” A deafening drumbeat of overlapping whispered phrases, fluttering like the wings of an enormous flock of birds thundering by in a torrent. Approaching from the distance, a sublime orchestra played an ethereal crescendoing fanfare ― haunting flutes and sweet violins echoing from unseen hollows, ricocheting off rainbow-hued crevice walls, painting interweaving colors in the texture of crisscrossing voices, surging with and into the descending fractal array.
Scintillating sparks, shards of consciousness, each containing the whole, each blossoming – exploding and expanding ― until every individual point filled the ultimate void. Vision increasing omni-directionally, limited neither by distance nor horizon, he was moving at the speed of thought, volition uncontrolled and indeterminate, simultaneously capable of traversing space and time itself. Rushing along, metaphysically tumbling down a long bright tunnel of rainbow hues bursting ever onward, inward and outward, pulling him forward at an astonishing speed. Only enough time for a single question. Where?
Above and inside and becoming the little Vauxhall, he watched, felt the vehicle entering Salisbury and recognized the city immediately. His presence filled the interior of the automobile.
He watched and heard himself apologizing to Zhòngní for keeping the escape plan particulars secret, explaining that if the monk were ever interrogated, he wouldn’t be able to divulge what he didn’t know. Nora and this alter-Egan hurriedly exchanged hushed whispers. Zhòngní agreed he saw wisdom in this, but still he could not avoid overhearing much of their discussion. Lyköan, listening with the monk’s own ears, knew this to be true.
“We’re total strangers, Zhòngní,” this former Egan was saying. He could remember speaking those very words. “Why are you doing this for us?”
Rubbing his hand along the side of a glistening shaved head, aural sparks flying in tightening, multicolored fractal spirals, the monk brushed the question aside. “I owe the master more than I can ever repay. It is enough that he considers it important.”
“And now we owe you more than we can ever repay,” the shadow-Egan acknowledged.
“In this lifetime, perhaps,” Zhòngní answered, bowing his head, apparently embarrassed by the admission.
Broken Blossom was lying asleep in an open doorway. Like a dream, the scene had shifted...
* * *
The rain beat deafeningly on the umbrella, muffling the sound of traffic as they left Temple Meads Station, headlights reflecting off mirror-puddled streets harsh in the urban darkness. Lyköan felt anxious, viewing every passing figure as a potential threat. Heightened senses or reasonable paranoia? The session with the yíb had put him on edge. He still didn’t know what to make of it.
“Shit,” he said, directing Nora out into the downpour.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I know it’s a train station ― we should expect it ― but people in there were looking for someone. Just hope it wasn’t us.” As he spoke, he was paying particular attention to two dark raincoat-clad men, positioned at each end of the building, noses buried in their morning papers, cigarette smoke billowing around their heads. Lyköan smelled stakeout.
“Listen, if things get rough and we get separated, make your way upline to the next rail station. But don’t come back here to Temple Meads under any circumstance, you understand?”
“Why would we be separated?” Nora wanted to know.
Lyköan ignored the question. “Head northeast. Hop a bus if you can, a cab if there’s one available.”
“Mind answering the question, sweetheart?”
“I may need to create a diversion.”
Walking away from the station, he had observed the two men consulting under a single umbrella and, stepping off the curb, begin following at a less than comfortable distance.
“Take the first train to Chester and look for me somewhere along the city wall. I’ll find you there as soon as I can. Got that?”
“Aye, aye, captain,” Nora offered with a waggish salute.
St. Philips Marsh Postal Sub Station was less than five minutes away, at 34 Feeder Road, but the cold rain thundering upon the umbrella made the short walk feel much longer. The two strangers were less than a block behind when they arrived. Passing in front of the sub station door less than a minute later and casting an eye into the building, one of the men caught Lyköan’s eye as he and Nora waited at the end of the short queue.
“Don’t panic, but I’m pretty sure we’ve got company,” Lyköan whispered, leaning close to Nora’s ear.
She looked at him, eyes wide, resisting the urge to steal a glance at the door.
“Yeah ― two suspicious characters from the station. Right now they’re standing outside the front door, watching us. Let’s see if we can finish our business here before they decide to come in out of the rain. If we’re lucky they’re just would-be muggers.”
Minutes later, Nora left the counter with Diane’s package. Pulling her aside, Lyköan whispered, “I’m the one they really want ― all that Shiva vessel bullshit.” Pushing through the queue towards the door with Nora in tow, he turned and added softly. “Pandavas is after me. You’re a target now too, of course, but I doubt they consider you much of a threat. Be ready to make a break when the opportunity presents itself. You’ll know it when you see it.”
The door had barely closed behind them when the two men approached. The larger man pulled his mac aside, displaying a shoulder-holstered handgun.
“If you come along quietly, laddie,” the man promised sternly, showing an ugly mouthful of ill-gotten teeth, “there’ll be no trouble ― no one will get hurt.” Then shifting his gaze towards Nora, he added with a smiling wink, “We’re extending the invitation to you too, lass.”
“Sure, sure, anything you say,” Lyköan answered, eyeing the holstered gun as though it had settled the issue. Stepping in front of Nora and walking up to the speaker, he extended both arms, bent upwards at the elbows, palms spread open and outward. “I agree, we don’t want any trouble.” Trying his best to look resigned to following the man’s orders, beaten and dejected, he innocently asked, “How’d you find us anyway?”
“It’s never a bright idea to let your leave-behinds know your future plans, lad,” the man answered with a telling smile.
“Oh? How bad did you have to mess him up for the info?” Lyköan took a step closer. The fellow took one back. He was being careful.
“Not so much the coroner won’t recognize him.”
Dropping the umbrella, Lyköan lunged, taking a poorly considered swing. Bobbing expertly, the man snapped his head aside, causing the blow to connect with only a glancing impact, throwing Lyköan off balance. A
ttempting to regain his footing, Lyköan slipped on the rain-slicked curb and stumbled backwards.
For the briefest instant everything went into ultra slow-motion. Instinctively reaching out as he fell, Lyköan thrust a hand towards each man, grabbing the tie of one and the lapel of the other. With all the power of arms and momentum, he pulled both men forward as he fell back, arching his body towards the sidewalk with all his strength and, even though they threw out their own hands attempting to break their fall, he smashed both men’s skulls into the pavement. Obeying Newton’s first law, the miraculous maneuver recoiled energy and momentum. Lyköan’s backpack barely touched the pavement, springing him immediately back to his feet at the same instant both men crumpled into the rain-swollen gutter.
Nora had already reached the corner of the block. Splashing frantically across the street and racing in the opposite direction, Lyköan risked a quick glance over his shoulder as the two men stumbled to their feet, obviously dazed, one holding a badly gashed, bleeding brow. The other, seeing his quarry escaping, gave chase, pulling a small communications device from inside his raincoat with one hand, a revolver with the other. Shouting unintelligibly into the device, macintosh tails flailing raggedly as he ran, the man charged after Lyköan as Nora slipped out of sight.
Shifting the thirty pounds on his back and turning his face into the driving rain, Lyköan ran full tilt into the heart of Bristol. Wildly sidestepping sidewalk pedestrians, vaulting the larger puddles and splashing through the unavoidable smaller ones, drawing attention with every step, he was determined to put as much distance between himself and his gun-toting pursuer as his superior running ability would permit.
The SONG of SHIVA Page 32