The SONG of SHIVA (14 page)

Out of the corner of his eye Lyköan watched Blossom gallop in his direction, leaping over his body as he instinctively rolled towards the wall. In mid-leap she hit the gun-wielder full force, sinking her teeth into the threatening hand holding the revolver. Sinew sang with a glorious crunch. Violently twisting her head, growling ferociously, she jerked the man’s forearm repeatedly towards the floor until the weapon fell free. The man then fled down the hall. The second intruder picked something off the floor and, carrying the familiar object in one hand, ran after his comrade, bounding through the exit doors and disappearing into the stairwell.

The adrenaline-fueled überperceptual slow-motion clarity vanished. Reality was now operating only in indistinct snippets, stuttering visuals all blending together. The spectrum began fading incrementally from polychromatic to grainy grays with flecks of black circling the periphery. Then darkness. All that remained was the echo of that comforting vicious snarl and, closing in on the receding distance, a high-pitched whimper. His own.

Slipping loose the bonds of consciousness, the sounds irrationally merged into a slick but sticky warmth, the blood seeping between his desperate fingers. Only that and the slow atonal symphony of his heart pounding erratically in his head. No fear. No pain. An entire universe contained in the escaping warmth of that precious life-sustaining claret.

— BOOK TWO —

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Dawn arrived muted, bleeding slowly through the western darkness in muddy tints, initially revealing little more than indistinct rolling pastureland. Then slowly, from the mist-enshrouded expanse of hill and hollow, an occasional stand of darker oak or evergreen would appear, starkly silhouetted against paler sky and heather, revealing a crisscrossing web of broken-toothed hedgerows and ancient moss-mottled fieldstone walls following crest and crevasse over the intersecting hills, dividing the landscape into dozens of irregularly shaped polygons.

As the twilight strengthened, individual colors burst into full character, erasing the night’s illusion of photographic stillness, the most noticeable aspect being a rippling breeze moving through foliage and across the waving surface of grain and grass like wind on water. High overhead, a jumble of dark-bottomed clouds stretched lazily across the sky, jutting into the volcanic pink plume of the eastern horizon, feathering shadow and undulating across the countryside. Halfway to the hilly horizon, a small herd of fallow deer emerged tentatively from a grove of tree-covered barrows. Sensing safety, they were soon mingling nonchalantly with a larger flock of black-faced ewes already grazing in the low-lying meadow.

Nora was sitting alone at one of half a dozen glass-topped tables scattered in perfect
feng shui
randomness across the roughhewn blueschist patio beyond the columned veranda. In front of her, an ornately sculpted alabaster banister ran between two caryatid-supported felsic granite finials, framing a breathtaking complex of hedged maze and riotously colored English garden. Summer’s spectrum of scarlet, sapphire, violet and gold in beds of green geometric designs swept back majestically from the patio, broken only by a few meandering cobbled stone paths that began their errant journeys at the foot of a wide flight of cyclopean steps.

Squinting at a scattering of tiny, lozenge-shaped holes seemingly punched through an artist’s canvas, she finally recognized them as another more distant flock of sheep. She leaned back against the wrought iron chair, luxuriating in the unsullied silence.

Behind her, an imposing structure rose grandly, owing its exquisite palazzo lines to the architectural genius of the legendary Inigo Jones. Rendered in crisp cream limestone, hand hewn in the sixteenth century, the Palladio-influenced classic temple façade with its innumerable pillars, porticos, and pilasters had weathered the elements and English history for more than four hundred years. Darker sandstone and granite accents artistically highlighted cornices, lintels and plinths even here in the rear of the gargantuan edifice. Pandavas had mentioned in passing that the spot upon which the manor house stood embraced a history that stretched back to Paleolithic times. Sitting upon the veranda’s patio at this moment, Nora sensed that the sweep of those eons was much closer and accessible than anyone might reasonably assume. 

This conviction, that time, like distance, might be transmutable, proved fleeting, its spell broken by a dark-skinned house servant approaching in snow-white livery, gliding towards her at a measured pace, carrying a polished silver tray, steam rising from a shallow bowl of bean and pea curry sitting next to a large tumbler of mixed juices. She had requested both, minutes before, when the servant had seen her sitting alone on the patio and inquired if she wanted breakfast.

He placed the bowl and glass on the table, producing two crisp, separate reports, which severed her spellbound communion with the dawn. It hadn’t been his fault. Time passes.
What was I thinking
?
Or hoping
...

She looked up into his dark, pleasant face. “Thank you, Prahn,” she said with a smile. After eighteen days at Cairncrest, she was on a first name basis with most of the servants, all of them native subcontinental Indians.

“Will there be anything else, Doctor?”

“No, this’ll be fine, thanks.”

He left the table without another word and disappeared into the mansion. Nora tried to return to the enveloping comfort of that earlier transcendence without success. The landscape seemed to have lost its accommodating aura. Those earlier soft shadows had grown shorter and harder. Her thoughts had shifted; she was already projecting into the day ahead. No willful force could carry her back.

It was about half past five. She had risen before dawn and come outside alone. The morning’s isolation had been a stolen pleasure and she was grateful for the respite, the solitude of a few tranquil minutes after weeks of hard labor at the center of the vast Innovac juggernaut; the frenetic dream fugue only now dissolving, laid bare by the morning’s stillness.

It’s all paid off, almost miraculously
, she thought.
Thanks to everyone’s hard work and Innovac’s phenomenal resources
.
Who knows how many lives we saved
?

The story would have been remarkable if only for its flawless execution. Yin Yat Chen’s identification of the TAI virus’s telomerase-severing RNA segment had been the start. Designing a sterile
E. coli
bacillus to act as the vector for the protein trigger had been child’s play for the Innovac scientists. Under Nora’s direction, billions of the aggressive single-purpose microbes had then been replicated and grown in a nutrient medium, from which the most active aliquot had been extracted. Within days of her arrival, a safe but effective therapeutic dose had been determined using weight ratio models. After a supersonic flight stateside, the untested but otherwise innocuous serum was delivered to the CDC quarantine.

We were out of the woods the minute our jury-rigged antiviral entered the first bloodstream
, Nora thought, with no small sense of pride.
Who could’ve guessed we’d be able to crack this nut so quickly
?
If only we could have reached Jarbeau and Gilbert in time
.

But Hank Jackson
―
though he might still blame me for his illness
―
can also thank me for saving his life
.
Everyone else survived
―
all of them in the clear now
.
We were lucky
.
A convergence of serendipity and that unexpected freak of nature
.

Nora had decided to stay a few more days to fully document her work before returning to Atlanta. A number of other biologic anomalies had come to light. Years of follow-up investigation lay ahead.

We pushed it hard
―
right up to the wire
― but we prevailed
.
So what if luck played a role
?
If not for our work
,
who knows how many more would have perished
?
What did Secretary Wiznecki say
? “
You not only saved lives, Carmichael, but the reputation of the CDC in the bargain
.”

Totally justifies my raising the alarm
.
Damned hard to be humble when you’re right
.
Everybody agrees
.
We’re heroes
.
Thanks to my big mouth
.
Put me in the right place at just the right time
.
Why shrink from the praise
?
Be gracious for once
.
Under the circumstances it’s well deserved
.

Taken in that context, a respite from the burdens of the past three weeks
was
deserved. Justified. And ultimately satisfying. Any thought of avoiding its comfort seemed foolish. As long as she didn’t start flaunting or wallowing in it.

For now anyway
,
we’re the victors
, she reasoned.
And to a great extent that’s thanks to me
.
Except
... 
Why is there always an
‘
except
’?
The development of the telomerase protease inhibitor trigger owes more to Innovac’s prowess than my personal genius
. I
may have been the instigator
,
but Innovac and Chan’s people did all the work
.
I suggested which doors to knock on
.
They opened them
.
Wouldn’t hurt to publicly acknowledge that important contribution
.
Only fair
.
There’s plenty enough praise to spread around
.  

Unnoticed, gathering clouds were already closing in on her reverie. With breakfast barely touched, the first raindrops began to fall. She first sought shelter under the rear portico’s columned roof, but the storm’s accompanying cold breeze forced her inside. Standing in the kitchen, staring through diamond-paned leaded windows, raindrops accelerating their earthward plunge, bouncing off darkening stone, glass tabletops and white wrought iron chairs, she gazed out across the western landscape. Nature sure had a way of putting everything into perspective.

And a girl like me in her rightful place
, she observed with a trenchant grin. Turning her back on the elements, she walked over to the granite-topped island counter and poured a cup of coffee. The morning had grown colder, her solitude no longer felt as comforting.

“Good morning, Nora,” Julie Prentice cooed from behind her.

Nora turned, the cup warming her hands, and asked in a relaxed way, “Are we the only early birds this morning?”

“Right.” Prentice answered as a negative. “Atma’s been working out in the gym for an hour. Can’t keep the energy contained in that man. You’ve been here awhile. You know how he is.”

Nora did know. She’d also learned a few other things during her stay at the Cairncrest estate. One of the first had been that Julie Prentice was providing more than legal counsel to the good doctor. 

“I know he’s got more energy than most men half his age,” Nora answered directly, keeping her prejudicial thoughts to herself. What business was it of hers? “Not that I meant he’s old or anything,” she corrected, attempting to diffuse what could have been thought an impolitic remark.

Julie gave her a sparkling-eyed, unabashed look that said everything the words that followed did not. “He pushes himself. More motivation than anyone else I’ve ever met. Prodigious.” The retort gave nothing and yet everything away in both tone and entendre.

Skirting the intricate steps of Ms. Prentice’s personal fandango with Pandavas was not the conversation Nora wanted right now. How about something with which she was more knowledgeable, more interested and certainly more comfortable?

“Makes the rest of us, people who work for and with him, more demanding of ourselves, is that what you mean?” she replied, adroitly sidestepping Prentice’s hard-edged pronouncement. “If so, it’s sure been successful.” Nora was alluding to the Innovac Empire, of which this manor house and surrounding baronial estate being only one small part.

“I mean Atma never pushes anyone harder than himself,” Prentice replied. “Luckily, the rest of us mortals receive a little more leeway ― but not much.” In qualifying her previous remark, she had stapled a new and unreadable smile on her face. Almost as an afterthought she added, “Praise couched in a platitude, Carmichael? Are you already preparing for tonight’s celebration?”

“Just anxious ― if that’s what you mean,” Nora answered. “Rattling on so I can burn off a little of the nervous energy this dinner tonight has created. The whole damned thing seems completely unnecessary.

“Don’t get me wrong. I couldn’t be more pleased with the results of our work here... finding a stopgap bullet for the CDC crisis. Even now it has a fairy tale quality. But I don’t want any reward… certainly not praise… even thanks. Anyway, everyone who was involved realizes the praise should be going to Innovac and the WHO investigative team. Yin Yat Chen ― her people deserve far more credit than I do. 

“Placing me as headliner on tonight’s bill is going overboard. I’m trying to be gracious, really I am, but honestly, I’ll be happy when all this is history and I can return to the shadows ― and my research. I don’t want the spotlight. And for quite awhile now it’s been nothing but.”

There it was. Nora had been struggling with this ever since she had discovered Pandavas had been planning tonight’s gala ― from the moment word of the serum’s success had reached Cairncrest.

“Don’t worry,” Prentice reassured her, “it was Atma’s idea, not yours. Everyone’s aware of that.”

Just as Prentice finished, Pandavas walked into the kitchen. He was already dressed for the day in a handcrafted, light and airy Herr Ganzi grey suit, borrowing its hue from the landscape’s dry-stone walls, both the suit and the man exuding an opulence that fell just shy of outright decadence. The morning workout had placed a sparkle in his darkly reflective eyes, kindling a subtle fire below the surface of his flesh, crowning the whole with a full head of recently showered hair, glistening like anthracite.