The SONG of SHIVA

by Michael Caulfield

  * * *

  Nora awoke confused, hot points of light slicing painfully inside her skull, a bitter, metallic taste in her mouth. She opened her eyes. Shadows spun nauseatingly in front of her face and she immediately shut them again. Close by, excited voices were jabbering unintelligibly. Beneath her ear an engine rumbled. Above her head wind was whistling past an open window like fingernails on a chalkboard. Wishing to blot out the noise, she tried raising her hands to her ears only to find herself bound hand and foot, heels pulled tightly to her wrists behind her back. Instinctively, she cried out, but a wide piece of tape across her mouth muffled the cry. Panic rising in her throat, she struggled against the restraints.

  “Coming around at last are we? Here, let me help you, love.”

  That voice, oddly familiar even through the pounding headache. Slipping the knot binding wrists to heels, a gruff hand pulled her to a sitting position.

  “There you go, Doctor. None the worse for wear, I trust. Give the chloroform a minute or two to settle out of your system...”

  Starlight flashed into the vehicle as it raced through an unlit intersection. Nora’s eyes widened. The voice was Whitehall’s alright, but it was coming out of the mouth of Whitehall’s son, a man with hardly a hint of grey in his full head of hair, barely a wrinkle on his smiling face. And dressed in a breezy summer suit he looked more like a prime-of-life executive on his way to an after hours dinner engagement than the point man for what had obviously been a military operation.

  “Now, now, doctor,” Whitehall chuckled, “don’t look so surprised. You shouldn’t be.”

  Nora could only glare.

  “Are you wondering how we found you?”

  Not the question she would have asked first, but it would do.

  “You can blame your lover-boy, dearie,” Whitehall explained impishly. “Chap pressed his luck, I’m afraid. Placed a bit too much faith in his newfound talents. A serious mistake. Not his first by any means, but costly.”

  Outside, the headlights pushed through a dark and silent urban canyon. Sitting awkwardly behind the driver, Nora shifted painfully in her seat, hands grown numb. Next to the driver a helmeted guard braced a rifle like a child’s toy upright on his knee. Both men wore uniforms without insignia. Silent now, eyes on the road ahead, neither seemed interested in the backseat conversation. Nora leaned her head against the seatback trying to push the sweat-soaked hair out of her face. She cursed into the tape.

  “I beg your pardon, something you’d like to say?” Whitehall asked. “Only if you promise to keep a civil tongue now. Agreed?”

  Nora nodded. Whitehall ripped the duct tape from her mouth. Swallowing the pain, Nora glowered back, blew the hair from her face, snapping the wet strands aside with a flick of her head. Whitehall acknowledged the display of uncommon pluck with a wink.

  “I’m confused, Whitehall,” she admitted. “All this trouble ― for me?”

  “You, my dear? Why, what a foolish notion. You’re hardly of any consequence at all. Though you’ve yet a role to play or ― rest assured ― we would have left you lying alongside your meddlesome friend ― in similar condition.”

  “And Lyköan?” she asked.

  “Still at liberty ― though we did leave him a welcoming party.”

  “You didn’t stick around? Wasn’t that why you came ― to finish us off?”

  “Ah love, if it were only that simple. The destruction of the Node proved as much. That there’s danger in failed experiments ― requiring more diligent preparation than you might suspect ― more appropriate ― well ― precautions.”

  “No longer such an easy mark ― is that what you’re saying?”

  “Let’s stop kidding each other, shall we? We both know the answer to that question. Which is why we came for you ― while he was otherwise engaged.”

  “Otherwise engaged?”

  “Distracted.”

  Nora had a question, but let it go. “He’ll find you, you know,” she blurted out instead.

  “We’re not hiding.”

  “You should be.”

  “Good show, Doctor. Coming from the mouth of a trussed-up wench on her way to the sultan’s seraglio, you’re quite an entertainment.” Whitehall clapped his hands mockingly. “Really smashing. Bravo!

  “Actually, lass,” he continued, dropping his hands and putting his face close to Nora’s ear, “we’re counting on his coming after you. He’s just chivalrous and rash enough to try it ― which will save us the trouble of tracking him down. And when he comes ― this time we’ll be ready.”

  “Sounds like you’re more afraid of him than he is of you.”

  Whitehall looked away momentarily. “I prefer ‘prudent’ to afraid. Never sound judgment to underestimate one’s enemy ― twice.”

  “Which explains your need for the full-metal escort,” Nora spit back.

  “Please, don’t think you can mess me about, my dear. Pandavas has proven capable of playing you and your friends like bloody hurdy-gurdies to this point. If he advises wariness, I’m not about to fault the logic of that success.”

  “Not because you’re afraid of what failure might mean to you personally ― under the new regime, I mean. Couldn’t be that ― could it? ” Nora had hoped to elicit a response, but saw nothing.

  “Soma-shu has requested the pleasure of your company. We shan’t keep him waiting.”

  “Who?”

  “Soma-shu. The more superstitious have gone to calling him the Pra Yee Suu ― the Manifestation ― I believe. He, however, prefers the former. Quite a captivating personality ― an illuminating presence. You’ll see.”

  Emerging from behind a wall of darkened multistoried buildings, the Ultra-AP barreled into artificial daylight. A squad of armed guards standing beside a sandbagged checkpoint ― two parked military vehicles, each mounted with a large-caliber machine gun ― moved the barricades aside and waved the vehicle through.

  “Now that we’ve returned, perhaps you’d like to give your paramour a jingle ― inform him of your safe arrival. I imagine he’s worried sick.”

  * * *

  Ohm mahni podmi home. Ohm mahni podmi home. Ohm mahni podmi home…

  Lyköan was loping down the empty street, repeating the mantra with every stride. The mantra of Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion. A pointless exercise perhaps, but he could not leave it alone; meaningless syllables looping through his head like one of those inane tunes that sticks in your head and just won’t quit. Sun Shi had admitted when teaching them phonetically to his cynical disciple that the mantra’s meaning was untranslatable. Resignation, not bliss, wrapped around Lyköan like an overcoat in the sultry darkness, accompanied by a rage boiling into spiritual steam, billowing out into accelerating disruptions in perceptual acuity, intersecting ripples racing across the surface of the great lake of being, interfering with the normally staid look and feel of reality, surging away into the night as each inevitable potential ebbed and disappeared around him.

  With each pounding step, each thunderous footfall landing on the pavement, he was altering uchronia. Shuffling through limitless choices like cards in a deck, rhythm of heartbeat and footfall percussive backdrop to the impending event horizon, wading recklessly into the fray, intuitively shifting potential and actual, making choices. Not necessarily smart choices, he knew, but essential.

  At journey’s end loomed Grendel’s lair, the open gullet of an insatiable appetite. He understood that much, at least, about the enemy. Rushing closer with every footfall, a monster waited. Grendel would actually pale by comparison ― a mere monster of the physical world. The fire of the fool’s ignorant eye staring unafraid into the unknown. For like a fool, he still had no plan.

  Whitehall had dropped a clue, unintentionally Lyköan thought. “Don’t get smart, Lyköan. General Wattanasin thought he could pull strings too. Unfortunately, the poor fellow hasn’t survived. Everyone believes they will act differently, but in the presence of true divinity, we all act identically the same ― wit
h justifiable awe ― and fear. You’ll see.”

  From Lyköan’s present position coursed all the ratios of confirmation, obeying the universal constant, the reciprocal of the physical universe, possessing as strange and diverse elements as pulsars and black holes in its physical counterpart. Lyköan had become sensitive, acutely aware of every force and movement here extant. Like the swells of waves crashing upon a pebbled shore, washing through the infinite sheaves of this greater universe, reaching higher or lower points along the extent of its broad stroke upon the beach, each human soul and many other spiritual entities besides were rushing forward and then slipping back by varying meters into the universal sea, to rise again and again out of the spiritual soup. The course of lives and dreams.

  “Don’t abuse yourself, lad. Just because you cocked-up this whole business, got every last friend killed, missed our stinking arses at every turn...”

  “Just let me talk to her.”

  “Make it short.”

  A brief, hollow pause.

  “Egan?”

  “You okay? What can you tell me?”

  “They know you’re coming, but they’re afraid of someth―”

  Rending fabric. Hissing candles. A microphone falling into water.

  “We have your number,” Whitehall chirped. “We’ll be in touch. Ta-ta.”

  A short electronic squeal followed by dead air.

  Lyköan had stuffed the double-bud into his pocket. The good news: She was alive and he was headed in the right direction. The bad news: They knew. The thirty-six strap was digging painfully into his shoulder. He adjusted the weapon, pulling it tight against his back.

  Around him the night was swimming in unnatural colors that clung like a suffocating oil to the street, the buildings, even the atmosphere ― wild hues raging with electric fire ― tossed-sea green and failed-light indigo ― burning with an internal radiance.

  Up ahead was a well-lit intersection. A brightly colored barricade stretched across the road, behind which a squad of armed sentries was standing around a parked armored personnel carrier, cigarette smoke curling lazily into the still air above their heads. From two blocks away he could hear their voices ringing like dissonant chimes.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Driven and Drawn

  It takes a thorn to remove a thorn.

  Hindu Proverb

  Lyköan dashed across the street in a hail of gunfire. Lungs bursting, his heel struck the farther curb just as a hot round kicked the thirty-six out of his hands. Pirouetting through the air in a lazy arc, the weapon clattered onto the sidewalk. Diving after it, he grabbed the barrel and in a single fluid motion brought the rifle with him as he rolled over a shoulder into the nearest storefront doorway. A stream of slugs crackled into the masonry centimeters above his head, sending a shower of gritty particles falling like snow, sparkling under the streetlamps. Ejecting the empty, he jammed his last thirty-round clip home and waited.

  Another tight burst of ricocheting bullets pinged off the sidewalk almost hitting his exposed knees. He watched the line of rooster-tailed dust plumes slowly dissipate like mist in the harsh light. Thoughts collapsing into dizzying panic, ears and eyes aching, concentration reduced to a succession of breaths ― slow, deep, measured.

  That smell ― what in God’s name ― burning flesh? Clarity rushing out of existence. Air hissing from a punctured tire. An incongruously cool breeze blowing seductively into his face as he shivered in the shadows.

  C’mon buddy boy. Shake it off.

  Squeezing sweat from his eyes with a hard blink, he shook his head. The night sky above the buildings across the street was devoid of stars, of form, of meaning, of hope. That stench of burnt flesh again. The palm he had seared grabbing the hot gun barrel during the tumble into these shadows ― all at once throbbing mercilessly. He shoved the wounded appendage into his armpit, cursing under his breath.

  Goddamn-fuck-it-get-a-hold-of-yourself. Steady now... inhale. Now... exhale.

  Head pressed back against the unforgiving storefront glass, focusing solely on his breathing, listening for the slightest break in the gunfire...

  Inhale...

  He tried again to enter the mukti shadows, slip on the metaphysical armor, feel its cool embrace, its absolute protection, but once again he failed.

  Exhale...

  Something standing at the shadow-gate was barring his way.

  Inhale... Nothing but scrapes and bruises so far... Exhale...

  Bracing the rifle’s skeleton stock against his shoulder...

  Inhale... Think of something fast, genius... Exhale...

  Filling his lungs once more, he held the breath.

  Before one of these clowns gets lucky. Hold it. Get ready. Hold it... Hold it...

  A hiccup in the gunfire staccato.

  Now!

  Swinging out from behind the doorway edge he fired a quick round at each of the two remaining streetlights, immediately pulling back as lampblack flooded into the vacuum, accompanied by the faint tinkle of broken glass as the shards fell onto the pavement below.

  “Trouble at Chaeng Watthana and Pratcha Chung!” he heard a voice shout excitedly in Thai. An unintelligible response followed ― nails across slate ― tinny and hysterical. Even from a block away Lyköan could smell the fear. Peering into the darkness he watched as a bevy of starry crowns, auras of manifest terror bursting with wild synaptic energy from silhouetted heads, burst from various points in the darkness behind the barricade. Sighting on one of the targets he squeezed off a round.

  An explosion of rainbow-hued sparks erupted for an instant, then disappeared with a horrifying metallic crackle. Making a quick adjustment, he fired again with similar result. With two compatriots dropping dead in their ranks, the remaining figures tore off in all directions, dancing as if to the odd melody playing in his head.

  I bare my teeth and they scatter like birds...

  Emerging from the doorway, he crept forward and stopped under one of the recently extinguished lampposts, steadying a shoulder against the cool metal. Halfway down the block, crouching behind a concrete stairway, another brilliant display of multi-hued pyrotechnics sparkled in the darkness. Instinctively he dropped to one knee. With an inhuman squeal another brilliant flash imploded into blackness.

  Frightened shades crying out in the dark...

  In the middle of the intersection, pressed flat against the side of the armored car, two haloes flickered momentarily in the exposed ‘V’ between the cab and the vehicle’s open door. Lyköan’s rifle cracked twice, echoing down the street as two explosions of neon and fireflies shrieked and sputtered into nonexistence.

  Cutting short their last whispered words...

  From each mongrel throat I will squeeze out the bark... Exhale... What?

  How long had the double-bud been vibrating in his pocket? Racing into the nearest doorway he crouched low in the darkness, standing the rifle upright between his knees. He took a deep breath. Ripping the nodule from his shirt and pressing it into his ear, he exhaled a long sigh until it sprang to life with a familiar chirp.

  “Bout time, Whitehall,” he rasped breathlessly. “What is it?”

  “Everyone here agrees ― you’ve provided enough excitement for one night, Lyköan.”

  Lyköan recognized Pandavas’s voice immediately.

  “I don’t know, doc,” he replied, without a hint of surprise. “I could go a few more rounds. Why? You got something else in mind?”

  “That depends entirely on you ― and how much you value the woman.”

  * * *

  Shifting gears, the vehicle accelerated past the towering golden spire of Wat Mongkrut Krasat Thiyaram, empty and silent, punched out of the night like a scene woven into an ancient tapestry, crisp edges painted in fixed floodlight. Behind the wheel of the otherwise empty vehicle Lyköan paid little heed as the spire gave way to the Royal Thai Military Academy, aglow in its own blanket of delicate, gossamer-thin colored light veneer. He was only experiencing
the lights abstractly. Outside the window they swept by block after block in a torrent of shooting stars, bathing deserted Ban Makok in thousands of linear tracings.

  Lyköan’s thoughts were elsewhere. How could he force himself through this sea of phantoms? Bangkok had become a city of phi. Ghosts. Scarlet-tinged tormented souls. Fuel for time’s all-consuming sacrificial lamp. Bursting into flame. Briefly incandescent. Extinguished arbitrarily. Mute testimony to the madness of existence. An uninterrupted procession of paltry lives stretching through the vast expanse of could-have-beens and ending here after every hateful turn that had actually come to pass.

  Pulling off Thanon Na Phra Lan, he sped through the open northern gate of the outer palace wall, leaving the phi army clamoring silently in the rearview mirror. What were they after? Whatever it was, it was nothing he or anybody else could ever possibly deliver now.

  Ahead lay the Chakri Maha Prasat Palace. As agreed, the short but circuitous route had been cleared of all vehicles and personnel. To identify his destination, however, two unarmed guards had been stationed at the palace entrance. They were unnecessary. The eccentric amalgam of oriental and occidental design ― a massive stone Italian Renaissance structure oddly capped by a wondrously disparate golden Thai prasat roof ― could hardly have been passed by unnoticed. Nevertheless, Lyköan found a sentinel standing on either side of the ornately sculpted portal, dwarfed by the palace’s great bronze doors, thrown open for his anticipated arrival. Within the dark rectangle of the great doorway a wine-red glow rhythmically waxed and waned as though in architectural respiration.

  Stopping at the foot of the palace stairs, he cut the engine and tentatively opened the door. Neither guard moved. Dropping to the pavement and reaching back into the vehicle, he removed the thirty-six from the front seat, raised it over his head and shouted, “I’m bringing this with me! Okay with you fellas?” Both guards shrugged in unison.

  Odd. He had expected an argument. Lowering the rifle and coming around the vehicle he started up the stairs. The guards barely acknowledged his approach. He locked eyes with one of them just to gain a reference point.