The SONG of SHIVA

by Michael Caulfield

  No, he hadn’t given up. Not yet. But he had given in. Given in to what? He hardly knew. Whatever had just brought him unscathed through the skirmish at the intersection. Whatever had delivered him from the firefight that had snuffed out the lives of Blossom and Fremont. Whatever had protected him from the deadliest plague in all of history and molded him into that hero of an hour during the attack on the Node. Whatever had led them to Felix in the first place, opened the mukti gates in Hoole, saved him through a slo-mo pratfall in St. Phillips Marsh and brought Nora to his rescue just as he was waving bon voyage. Whatever had allowed him to survive a belly wound, caused Blossom to struggle at his apartment door, directed his meanderings to Wat Tee Pueng Sut Taai years before, put the bright idea into his head to leave the States for Bangkok and sent Karen on her last assignment. How far back must he follow the trail of connected events before he would learn who he should thank ― or blame? Or how far forward? There really was only one direction.

  At the top of the stairs, dressed in an elegant summer suit, between the towering viridian doors and flashing a lupine, toothy grin, Whitehall stood waiting.

  “Don’t suppose you’d care to dispense with the hardware,” he said as Lyköan reached the entrance. “I assure you, everyone inside is unarmed.”

  “Call me sentimental, Whitehall ― but I’ve grown attached to this piece. Never know when it might come in handy.”

  “As you will then. This way.”

  Whitehall turned and, stepping across the polished brass threshold, entered the palace. Lyköan followed. The entry opened into a long corridor through which the two men proceeded silently in single file. Along each wall a procession of sculpted mythological creatures peered out from the wavering shadows: liveried half-man, half-bird kinaree servants; stylized norasignh lions; emerald green yaksha demons snarling under gilded chedi-shaped crowns; and wide-winged garuda carrying amrita-filled chalices. In front of each statue an open brazier burned, coiling dark smoke into the arching rafters high overhead.

  Emerging from the entrance hall into the immense Amarin Winitchai audience chamber, Whitehall waited for Lyköan to draw alongside and together they approached the nine-tiered canopy that shaded the imperial throne. Every vacant space gushed with cut flowers and profligate illumination. Elevated above the chamber floor, Soma-shu sat upon the pale polished marble, as unblinking and expressionless as the corridor statues, the perfect image of an oriental potentate, clothed in shimmering folds of jet, scarlet, and golden silk.

  “Under the same roof again,” Pandavas called from the midst of a retinue gathered to one side of the dais, drawing Lyköan’s attention away from the figure upon the throne. A few of the faces with Pandavas, Lyköan recognized, but most were complete strangers.

  Leaving the group, Pandavas approached. “The deeper the burr, the bloodier its extraction, eh Lyköan? In your case, why it was simply hemorrhagic. For the longest time we were at a complete loss to explain your uncanny ability to rowel us at every turn…”

  “You don’t say,” Lyköan replied. “So when did you finally figure out how I was managing it?”

  “Cut the artifice. Things’ll move faster. Now that we know who we’re dealing with ― the real power behind the façade. Your patron. Your ally.”

  “My what?” Lyköan hadn’t a clue. His expression was genuine incredulity.

  “The Artifact, Lyköan?” Pandavas sounded irritated.

  “Oh, that ally,” Lyköan replied, playing along.

  “The only explanation that solved for all the variables. The threatened prince serves up a ringer. And that ringer, Lyköan ― was you.”

  Behind Pandavas, the fingers of both hands interlaced beneath his chin, Soma-shu leaned forward in the gilt-edged throne, intently following every word and nuance of the exchange. Across his face a languid grin cut like a cruel gash. Circumspection born of indolence? His eyes refuted even the possibility. In those eyes Lyköan sensed a voracious appetite, intent upon possessing everything the orbs beheld ― composed of absolute obsession ― originating at that ultimate and rudimentary point where the narrowing microcosm constricts into a singularity of purpose, meaning and understanding and believing its own lie, considers itself God. Beautiful in its baleful way. Powerful. But dangerous. Quite capable of altering egos and realities. And as the gaze beckoned, Lyköan found it difficult to look away.

  “Armageddon threatening,” Pandavas was raving in a hollow, phantom voice, breaking the spell, “and you fall in with the horror that wants to bring it about?”

  Lyköan pointed a thumb flippantly at Soma-shu. “What? Rather than throw in with this Caligula you mean?” He had no idea what Pandavas was suggesting.

  “When the hammer falls,” Pandavas answered from the depths of an echoing well, “the anvil must accept the blow. How much more woeful the looming thermonuclear exchange ― a future certain to slaughter an equal number ― and leave the globe fouled for generations ― rather than what has come to pass. Don’t you see?”

  “What nuclear exchange?” Lyköan asked, still totally lost as to what Pandavas was talking about.

  “Hypothecated modeling is a versatile predictive engine,” Pandavas explained. “Biology by no means its only application. The algorithms are quite capable of predicting from any set of interacting variables ― even human passions. We ran analyses in every conceivable sequence and were consistently presented with the same unerring projection ― that the triggering event of a worldwide conflagration was less than a year away ― courtesy of your benefactor.”

  “My what? How?” Lyköan blurted out.

  “The details are unimportant. A sequence of ill-timed coincidences and mistaken belief, coinciding with the twenty-seventh day of Rajab ― the year 1413 on the Muslim calendar ― when Buraq, Mohammed’s winged-horse, was destined to take flight for the ‘farthest Mosque’ ― Jerusalem…”

  Pandavas paused, allowing Lyköan a moment of reflection. The reference was to a missile attack on Israel.

  “Resulting in a filthy, radiologic exchange and a different end to civilization. A far more lasting one. If I were to place a million incriminating details in front of you ― would it matter?”

  Lyköan felt weak. He could not identify if his body was shaking out of anger and fear or something external, but a sonorous reverberation was growing, tightening in the middle of his chest. Was it Soma-shu? He gulped down another breath. Smoke from the brazier flames seemed to be coiling oddly in serpentine rhythm to the echoing inner tolling, but no one else in the audience chamber seemed to notice.

  “I thought this parley was about Doctor Carmichael,” he managed impatiently, reacting poorly to the incensed air. “Why the lesson in geopolitics?”

  “Because they’re hardly irrelevant here. May I ask what would convince you?”

  “At this point? Nothing,” Lyköan admitted.

  “Still clinging like a brainwashed zealot,” Pandavas insisted.

  “Right. I should listen to you after everything that’s happened?”

  “You’re still breathing, Lyköan,” Pandavas parried. “Why do you suspect that might be? Perhaps because ― while you remain under the influence and protection of that still powerful prince ― we stand here stalemated. Were that not the case, we would have long since relieved you of your life, would never have had to resort to a common kidnapping. Believe what you like. That in this chamber it is you and I who wrangle. But I assure you, these negotiations are entirely in the hands of others.”

  “You’re chasing an ephemeral dream, Egan Lyköan,” the figure on the throne interjected in a booming voice that reverberated to the rafters. “Beyond ephemeral. Nonexistent. Unaware that—” Falling into a lower, more seductive conversational tone, Soma-shu rose from the throne and descended the dais stairs. “Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.”

  “Forgive me. My Latin’s a little rusty,” Lyköan replied, fearfully grasping for time as the figure approached, begging silently for understanding, and deliverance
. “What is that? Something like ‘All things are changing...’” he thought for a moment, “and we’re changing with them?”

  “Excellent. Yes. You and I both ― souls eternally vying over eons of infinite creation, ever in flux and never reaching full fruition. Constantly on the verge of a metaphysical chain reaction ― an ultimate fusion or fission. Tell me, my friend, which shall it be?”

  “I’ll take door number two,” Lyköan offered.

  “Ever the cynical scoundrel, eh Apsu?”

  “Who?”

  Soma-shu spoke to the open air. “What you see before you, Lyköan ― this physical and biological presence,” by hand gesture, he indicated himself, “is little more than a penetrating appendage. A transducer if you will. A device by which I may probe this place ― and witness all that blossoms in it without risk. You were destined to become such a transducer yourself. We have used this method from time immemorial.”

  “We?” Lyköan wondered aloud.

  “We powers forever jockeying for position ― like celestial bodies in ascendance or eclipse ― eternally circling this little island of creation like wild dogs around a celestial campfire ― this font of souls ― this tiny pinpoint of life within the great abyss ― this place called Earth.”

  Knees quivering, Lyköan struggled with the idea. He couldn’t concentrate. A voice, rising in his throat, rich and enveloping, cut across the distance between himself and Soma-shu like an arrow slicing through the empty air.

  “And who has given you this authority?”

  Not his voice. Not his words. Lyköan tried to force back the interloping presence.

  “You need not let him in, Lyköan,” Soma-shu instructed. “Listen to me. Concentrate. Why do you suppose I invited you here tonight? Better still, why did you in any event accept? Why indeed? Ask yourself, why have I allowed you to bring that weapon inside the palace, right here into the audience chamber, while we remained unarmed?”

  Lyköan had no satisfactory answer. With Nora captive, coming here had seemed his only option. As to the second question, it had seemed remotely possible at the time that, if the mukti shadows abandoned him, perhaps the thirty-six would not.

  “It wasn’t a strategy,” Lyköan replied defiantly: “I didn’t have a choice. I was just reacting.”

  “Oh really? Take a look at yourself ― your situation. Alone, desperate ― haven’t slept in ― how long has it been? No. It wasn’t your choice at all. It was His. And I permitted you to remain armed because I am convinced you can be persuaded not to do that which is against your best interests.”

  Soma-shu returned to the throne and sat down in a rustle of robes, a cunning smile sweeping like a shadow across his face. “Through the portals of your eyes I can clearly read your thoughts. You’re considering your options ― thinking maybe now might be the perfect time for that weapon you’re fondling. Kill me, Pandavas, Whitehall, perhaps a few more before you’re taken down. You will in all likelihood die in short order of course. But then, the woman dies too ― after an unwelcome dalliance or two ― or two hundred. I’ve already given orders. So what would you have accomplished?”

  “I like the sound of that,” Lyköan grinned. “Not the me die part ― the you die part.”

  “Listen to yourself. Are those really your thoughts? Yes a few here would perish ― but in this mortal vessel you would not reach me. The dark Tanner within you is calling out, demanding this. I can hear him singing in your thoughts, ‘So what? Don’t we all die anyway? Doesn’t everything eventually end? Why not take this abomination with me?’ Am I wrong? But though you would surely die ― and the woman too ― you wouldn’t win. I am not your enemy. But those Tanner thoughts inside you are ― as they have always been.

  “It’s a big world, Lyköan. You and your paramour might still flourish in some little corner of it. And you have even bigger dreams. Don’t you? Live out your lives. Pursue your happiness. Keep your smoldering hope for revenge alight. Intriguing? While you live it is still a possibility. When offered a similar choice eons ago, that was exactly what I chose. And look where it has brought me.”

  “Yeah, look,” Lyköan countered. Inside his head the universe was seething with an endless river of images, plummeting over the edge of a spewing Niagara, Angel and Victoria Falls all rolled into one violent cascade capable of drowning out his better judgment. In the resulting vortex of raw emotion only this creature’s voice and his own hatred remained, filling the void with chaos and unexpressed potential. A fog of conflicting impulses hung in the horrid darkness where he had been cast adrift.

  Soma-shu nodded towards the corner of the dais. From behind a golden-hemmed dark curtain two figures emerged, dragging Nora out before the throne, a beaten and humbled creature, thrown at the emperor’s feet, destined for all the ignoble acts the mind of such a beast might possibly imagine. She was barely conscious and had certainly not come willingly.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Plenum Dominus

  If the red slayer thinks he slays

  Or another fears he can be slain

  Then neither knows the subtle ways

  I keep, to pass along the truth again.

  Emerson : Brahma

  If one man thinks he slays and another fears he

  can be slain, then neither knows the paths of Truth.

  For the Truth can never be extinguished. That which

  was never born blows easy and forever through Eternity.

  Bhagavad-Gītā : Text 81

  The cold stone beneath Nora’s cheek was vibrating to the meter of a conversation rattling inside her throbbing head. Was one of the voices Lyköan’s? How did he get here? She didn’t recognize the other. It sounded like a funerary bell tolling mournfully, loathsomely, and as it tolled it dredged up dark images from the pit of her stomach.

  “...this sumptuous banquet of passions,” it was saying, “a fearful feast of joy and angst, and above all else ― boundless desire.”

  “And plenty of willing fools like your buddy Pandavas here ― to do whatever’s required.”

  That’s definitely Egan’s voice, she thought.

  He continued, “Something sinister forever going on in the shadows though, isn’t there ― hidden out of sight in the unseen netherness?”

  “The most abundant element in all of creation, Lyköan,” the other voice boomed, “is man’s gullibility. His willingness to worship the unseen and, more importantly, his trust in its beneficence.”

  Lyköan waved the thirty-six at Pandavas. “This doesn’t bother you? It sure doesn’t sound like what you described back at the Node. What the hell is it?”

  “All in good time, my friend,” Pandavas replied without further explanation, eyeing the weapon.

  “It’s a lie!” the thing inside Lyköan’s head howled. Had he shouted out the words? Disjointed thoughts raging incoherently, he struggled to regain control.

  On the dais floor, Nora stirred, turning her head in the direction of what she was sure was Egan’s voice.

  “So tell us, Apsu,” the unseen speaker behind her purred, “what is the truth?”

  “I have no fucking idea.” That sounded like the Egan she knew. Raising her head, she saw him standing not twenty feet away, assault rifle in hand.

  “Then I’ll enlighten you, Lyköan,” the still unseen speaker cooed. “There once was a planet seething with dangerous potentials ― teetering on the brink of annihilation ― ruled by a mad despot grown fat and indolent—”

  “Ripe for a palace coup?” Lyköan interrupted, hoping to speed the conversation along. The room was humming madly in his ears, thick, humid air swirling around his head, every surface of the interior coated in a veneer of free-flowing quicksilver. Reflected in that mirrored patina was not the room in which he stood, but another place entirely: a huge expanse of angry clouds ringed by blazing stars stretching out into a horizonless infinity. Knees shaking, he swayed as the palace architecture expanded and contracted in concert with his respiration. Off every figure in
the fluxing chamber, Kirlian coronas flared ― radiating with snapping electricity ― that seemed to call out to him something that ― try as he might ― he just could not decipher.

  “You cannot be trusted to rule yourselves,” Soma-shu answered. “Slaves of the biologic imperative must be cultivated if they are ever to flourish.”

  “Careful that the crop doesn’t stick in your craw and choke you,” Lyköan replied, swinging the assault rifle’s barrel towards the throne.

  Soma-shu smiled. “The pitiful brevity of your intermittent lives limits perspective. We dwellers in the dark, however, possess no such limitation. During the eons that stretch between each leaf of our existence, we maintain an uninterrupted sentience. For more than three thousand years I have dreamed of how I would orchestrate my return. And that inner voice that you hear, Lyköan, has reason to fear me, for I have returned with but one purpose: to cast it down.”

  “No love lost here, buddy. You and me both,” Lyköan admitted. “Matter of fact, seeing the two of you burn together ― hell, that would be something of an answered prayer.”

  Soma-shu motioned to Whitehall, who lifted Nora until she was on her feet and finally able to turn her head and see the figure seated upon the throne. Resplendently garbed like an oriental prince, a beautiful youth, perfect in almost every detail, stared back at her, though his eyes were filled with an unsettling, dispassionate cunning.

  “Forever to remain unanswered, I fear,” the youth answered, “because there’s no one listening.” Soma-shu shrugged. “And that fire burning in you now ― those seething emotions coursing through you? Passion is our energy and desire its igniting flame. Those thoughts of murder you harbor, Lyköan, understand, it is such stuff that fuels our power. In your case, the events that have produced those thoughts have been subtly orchestrated and played at the direction of that other and nurtured every seeming happenstance in your life, bringing you here tonight ― to threaten me and mine.”