The SONG of SHIVA (29 page)

“But you, Lyköan, you need not remain trapped by this particular track of hours,” Pandavas finished for Whitehall. “You have a choice. You can choose to help us ― and obtain your soul’s desire in the process ― or you can die here anonymously while we proceed with our plan ― and let me assure you, we shall. Your refusal may cause a short delay in our effort ― I’ll be perfectly honest with you ― but understand, if necessary, we can always find or construct another equally acceptable vessel.”

Lyköan turned to Whitehall for a final barrage. “I really thought you were a better man than this, Whitehall. Too
civilized
to throw in with a mass murderer.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Lyköan, but civilization has ceased to be an object worthy of retention. Doctor Pandavas is completely convincing on that point. Though as yet unaware of it, existence is perched upon a self-realizing cascade and I intend to do everything in my power to help it along.”

“My own theology is pretty weak,” Lyköan returned with faux conviction, “but I find it incredibly hard to believe ― no matter what controls existence ― that you’re going to be able to pull this off, even with the purest of intentions. I keep thinking something’s sure to trip you up ― a person, a government, a leak, some mistake or miscalculation along the way ― plain chance. Even if you’re right and this Artifact actually exists, its power and intellect are way beyond any human being’s ― present company included,” he shot a glance at Pandavas. “Do you really believe it’s possible to outsmart something that, by your own admission, controls our reality?”

Pandavas looked at Lyköan incredulously. “Who said anything about
outsmarting
it? All we have to do is expose it. The rest is up to Shiva. But we’ve already covered this ground ― I’m not going to repeat myself. You have until tomorrow morning to make a decision. Whatever you decide, we need to move on ― with or without your help.”

Signaling one of the two plumbers standing outside the locked door, he added, “You’ve already been given more than enough time to consider your options.” The door opened into the room and Whitehall exited. Briefly silhouetted in the doorway, Pandavas turned back to face Lyköan one last time. “The original two exits haven’t changed, my friend,” he said with finality and was gone.

Plumber number two closed the door. His magnified face filled the tiny window for an instant before vanishing, leaving Lyköan alone. Pandavas had alluded to tomorrow morning. Lyköan wondered how many hours remained of today.

* * *

“We may need a few more fingers to tie this knot,” Sun Shi said clearly into Nora’s ear. Smoke-filled and dark, the Black Boar was bustling with dinner-hour activity. More than a dozen local patrons sat at the bar and around half a dozen small tables filled with glasses of mostly amber liquid and plates of beef and potatoes. The Boar, Haldon Heath’s only public house, served as its unofficial community center daily from this hour until well after midnight. Nora and her companion sat somberly at a small corner table, obviously the two people most out of place in the otherwise boisterously convivial room.

“Are you sure this will work?” Nora asked.

“As long as the original device hasn’t been destroyed, yes,” Sun Shi assured her through the double-bud’s earpiece.

The search protocol he was walking her through was designed to locate Egan’s yíb by identifying its stealth program’s unique signature. Bathed in the pale blue radiance of an identical yíb’s flickering screen, she completed the last few keystrokes as Sun Shi instructed. Ning Zhòngní had brought the device with him from Salisbury, where it had been delivered earlier that afternoon, and now sat across the ancient wooden table, trying to appear more comfortable than he was. With any luck, once the command sequence was initiated through the Innovac LAN back at Cairncrest, Nora would get a chance to learn where Egan’s yíb, and maybe even Egan himself, were being held.

What she could do with that information was still in doubt. As Master Sun had just admitted over the phone, any rescue attempt would require access to the restricted Innovac labs ― and at least one accomplice. Presently, she had neither.

When the screen acknowledged acceptance of the final command, she closed the attention-drawing device and allowed her eyes to again grow accustomed to the soft ambient light in this not-so-private corner of the pub. Nora slowly shook her head, thinking back to her conversation with Kosoy earlier that day. While Marty had listened patiently as Nora enumerated the details of the Innovac conspiracy, until she provided him with hard evidence, he refused to assign anyone at CDC to investigate.

She had saved his career only days before and already he’d returned to full CYA mode. When a reputation and paycheck were involved, she should have expected it. An outlandish conspiracy theory brought out that kind of response in people, even people who owed you. Until she provided more than mere accusations, he had explained apologetically, even if he was personally convinced that the world was actually coming to an end, which he admitted he wasn’t, there was no sense in trying to move her request up the HHS chain of command or going to bat for her by contacting another arm of the government. But maybe now, with this replacement yíb, she could get Marty something that would compel him to take that risk.

  Rurally-accented conversations wafted in the smoky pub. On the verge of a world-threatening pandemic, this outpost of civilization was oblivious.
So calm and unconcerned,
she thought, peering into the affable darkness,
totally oblivious about how close we are to annihilation.

As if reading her thoughts, Master Sun brought her back from this self-absorption with, “People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.” 

“Absolutely amazing, Master Sun. I can see why Egan found you so captivating. How do you do it?”

“No magician shares his secrets,” the abbot answered calmly. “For now just keep in mind that the next deluge is not the worst we have to fear.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan :
A Claimant’s Story

Sitting naked on the edge of the coffin-like tank, legs dangling in the frigid, oily liquid, Lyköan stared between his knees, barely recognizing the reflection of his own dazed face. Five lab-coated technicians were busily attaching a forest of filament-thin wires to his goose-bumped flesh. A few minutes earlier, needle-tipped lines of coiled IV tubing had been inserted into blood vessels at the backs of his knees, the insides of his elbows and both sides of his neck. The spaghetti tangle of electrical and fluid lines ran to a blinking bank of whirring machines and electronics playing a techno symphony along one entire wall of the emersion chamber. Even in the abstract, Lyköan barely understood their purpose. All he knew was that their hypnotic rhythm and the chill of the infusing fluid was about to usher him into exile far away from here. The sooner it happened and the farther it took him, the better.

The barrel of a figurative gun had been placed to his head and he had flinched. Once he had, any pretension to volition had evaporated. It had been so simple ― no more than giving in to the inevitable. Simple, yes, but by no means easy. Life’s most difficult decisions never are. He hadn’t chosen to participate in this nightmare. It had enveloped him, leaving viable options in woefully short supply. No doubt about it, wherever he wound up would be an improvement.

He had been beaten. From this point forward, whether his fugitive existence ran long or short, proved a success or failure, at least it would not carry the baggage of this particular fucked-up world. In the end, the instincts and intuition he had depended upon for so long had proven unreliable, incapable of providing a way out and he had begrudgingly abandoned them. The most important choice in his entire life, therefore, had been made by what had passed for self-interest. When the decision had been demanded, it had seemed less foolhardy to choose life over death. While there might be exceptions to such a decision, this certainly wasn’t one of them.

He watched the expression on the face reflected in the pool snigger with understanding. Once the revolver’s cocked hammer struck, mere minutes from now, all these self-indulgent recriminations would become history. However uncertain he might be about making it, the decision had been made. Even if he wanted to, there was no time left to paint his way out of this present corner.

He had wasted all of the previous night’s precious hours plodding step by illogical step through a poorly-conceived escape plan that finally had to be discarded as utterly unworkable. In his imaginings, the plan always began with the same rash act. He would overpower whichever plumber escorted him on his next bathroom break, grab the man’s access card, and race for the stairway exit door.

Beyond that point, however, the plan invariably unraveled into a series of unanswerable questions. Could he elude or overpower the second plumber? Would the access card open that particular door or was each card keyed to only certain locks? Some locks might be biometrically enabled, requiring thumbprint, iris, retinal scan or voice recognition confirmations, maybe all four simultaneously. Let that go. Assuming he succeeded in opening the door, should he head up or down the stairs? How would he find his way out when he had no idea exactly where he was being held? With surveillance cameras positioned everywhere, wouldn’t he be located and trapped or the purloined access card disabled, maybe before he could even secure his bearings?

And the hurdles to a clean getaway didn’t end there. Which direction should he run? What obstacles stood in his way? A single mistake in this completely unfamiliar environment meant recapture and, as Pandavas had promised, death. Just another “deceased” in the long list of such entries in Innovac’s Atypical Genome file. Even if he did somehow miraculously manage to escape into the open air, how could one man on foot, with dozens of people after him, possibly cross miles of open country undetected? And where would he run?

It might conceivably work as Hollywood screenplay material, but here in the real world, this one anyway, the plan depended entirely on pure dumb luck – way too much of it. It was as irrational an idea as that earlier urge to crash through the narrow cell door window had been. Were martyrdom impulses some side effect of the nano-scriptors? Thankfully, neither that earlier urge nor this crazy escape idea had proven irresistible.

When the plumbers had come to take him for that final walk, however, they had been armed and any foolish notions he still harbored about flight had evaporated. In the end, while he was sure to carry some level of guilt for his decision, being able to see tomorrow far outweighed all other considerations. He had been offered everything he’d longed for since Karen’s death – the perfect way out. Deserting this particular version of the damned planet could even be considered icing on the cake. Choosing to toss away his life in some noble display would have absolutely no impact on the subsequent course of events. It really shouldn’t have required any soul-searching whatsoever. He could even rationalize that it had many of the earmarks of the Buddhist middle way. Except its single most important tenet. By no means was he abandoning desire.

* * *

The null-lev car hurtled almost silently through the inky blackness. Shallow, rapid breaths alternated with hurried keystrokes as Nora concentrated on the yíb’s controls, scanning rapidly through a sequence of surveillance images. She had spent all of last night practicing with the bodhisattva’s onboard tutorial, but had yet to master the device. It might be days or weeks of uninterrupted practice before that would be possible. By then this tiny window of opportunity would have long since closed.

Help didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere else, not today, probably not in the immediate future, certainly not soon enough to save Egan. Circumstances demanded immediate action, or more accurately, a one-woman monkey wrench. Unfortunately, she wasn’t going in with any firepower, only the element of surprise and, thanks to Sun Shi, control of the Innovac computer system – at least for a while. The Innovac techs were no slouches. They would eventually discover what was happening and shut her down. Sun Shi thought that once initiated, she might have thirty minutes. Seven minutes had already passed.

Using the replacement yíb, she had located Egan’s original on a lab bench in the Shiva Node. It was still operational, running a series of self-diagnostic programs, but apparently no longer in Egan’s possession. There had never been the slightest doubt that she would go searching for its owner. She’d located him last night, sitting alone, looking exhausted in a small locked room, alive and obviously a prisoner. Time to put Master Sun’s plan into action.

There had been no time to enlist allies. She had been unable to locate Whitehall at Cairncrest when she returned from the Black Boar. He wasn’t in his room and none of the staff had seen him all evening. Anyway, she hardly knew the man. Egan had never entirely trusted him. Trying to convince a stranger to play a particular role in her sketchy break-in/break-out attempt could only delay its implementation. Time was short. Anything might happen while she searched for and then tried to convince Whitehall to participate.

If Whitehall was truly an agent of the British government, a surveillance and intervention plan might already be in the works. If she told him what she had in mind, Whitehall might not even allow her to implement a plan of her own that would interfere with theirs, might order her to keep her nose out of the king’s business. Then what?

Sun Shi had envisioned a role for the Englishman, but she could play both parts. Without his help, she had already succeeded with her opening foray. By triggering a fire alarm in one of the BSL-4 labs, then indicating a seal perforation, she had thrown the entire Cairncrest facility into apoplectic panic.

Waiting behind one of the two pneumatically sealed doors that still isolated the WHO labs from the rest of the facility, she had monitored the evacuation, as all but a small containment crew ran for the ground level exits. With the crew busy elsewhere, it had been easy to slip undetected through the deserted labs to the null-lev platform.

At the empty and dimly lit station, Nora’s first task had been to commandeer the surveillance cameras and, after adjusting their sweep just enough to create a blind spot in one of the null-lev cars, position herself inside it. Once safely out of sight, she typed with trembling hands:

Cairncrest Station: ACTIVATE

The blinding station lights came up full. Inside the car, Nora felt completely exposed, trapped by the glare in this little corner of Car 9. She didn’t intend to stay here long.

Car 9: ACTIVATE

The car rose with a now familiar low frequency, magnetic hum. As it sat hovering at the platform, she quickly created a phantom work order. Appearing to originate in one of the Node’s unfinished manufacturing locations, it requested immediate transfer of Car 9 for an undisclosed delivery.

That’s no lie
, she thought with a twisted grin, initiating the command.

The arrival of the car would now be integrated with the Node’s security and should cause no suspicion. Upon arrival, she would time her exit to escape undetected between sweeps of the Shiva Node station’s surveillance cameras. The car accelerated away from the platform. Nothing but atrial beat-skipping now, pounding into her throat. She had jumped in with both feet. There was no turning back. So this was how it felt to really be alone.

An abrupt increase in air pressure announced the transition from the empty station to the narrow tunnel. As the circle of light from the receding station shrank towards a single white dot in the distance behind her, Nora cut all power to the Cairncrest facility, including the auxiliary generators. The evacuation of the labs had started the clock. It wouldn’t be long before the Innovac techs discovered her subterfuge. But without power, it should take them that much longer.

As the car raced along, Nora hurriedly typed another surreptitious order to return the car to Cairncrest immediately after its arrival. Sun Shi had insisted she use only keyboard commands. He had explained that, while the access program utilized artificial intelligence and could mimic voice commands, such access left a wake a mile wide. No doubt Pandavas had followed that wake back to Egan. No sense in sending out the same beacon again. 

Six klicks passed in the blink of an eye ― more than five hundred heartbeats at the going rate. Crouching low on the floor in front of the seat, Nora peered over the lower edge of the riveted window trim as the car entered the brightly lit terminus. She found the platform deserted, just as the surveillance cameras had indicated. The car slowed to a stop in the shadow at the far end of the station and slowly settled onto the single stainless rail. Stowing the folded yíb in a pocket of a black nylon backpack and swinging it onto her shoulders, she sprang from the car and raced across the polished floor, footfalls echoing loudly in the still air. Bursting through two large swinging doors, she exited the platform before the null-lev car doors had closed. Within seconds she had entered an adjacent warehouse space.

Inside the enormous cavern of steel-shelved aisles, she found temporary refuge on the third level inside an arrangement of pallets containing shrink-wrapped plastic drums. Removing and unfolding the yíb again, she initiated phase two of the rescue plan. Was Egan still alone?

* * *

Lyköan wondered whether his decision to cut and run had ever really been in doubt. Had he thought honestly and fought courageously or was he merely escaping, hoping that the existence he was running to would treat him more generously than the one he was trying to escape? Maybe Pandavas was right and such considerations were of no consequence. Sun Shi would never have agreed. For one thing, he was leaving a mountain of unfinished business on this shelvy and shallow shore. His destination might offer a happy beginning, but at the same time demand the remainder of a lifetime to deal with the residual guilt.

He had experienced forty-seven years in this reality versus less than a half hour in the other. Was he truly convinced that it offered everything this one didn’t? Yes, because it offered the one thing this world never could. And that was enough.

“We’re just about ready here, Mr. Lyköan,” the lead tech announced. “Please, stand up inside the transfer medium. Over here,” the man gestured, indicating one end of the tank. Obeying the instruction, the porcupine-man took two unsteady steps through the bone-chilling fluid, unnatural ripples undulating slowly away from the motion of his legs, intersecting and rebounding from the sides of the tank.

“That’s it. Now, sit down.”

With one palm pressed against each side of the slick glass, he sucked in a deep, involuntary breath and lowered himself into the frigid bath. Within seconds, the aching cold had faded into a more tolerable, almost pleasant, numbness. One of the technicians slipped a pliable mask over his face, adjusting the seal around his nose and mouth. A cold mixture of oxygen and metallic-smelling gas filled the mask. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled, fogging the transparent plastic.

“Now, if you will, lie back in the medium,” the tech instructed calmly, supporting him as he leaned back and sank below the surface.

Looking up, the back of his head resting on the bottom of the tank, the play of overhead lights rippling through the lens of the disturbed surface above, a final thought came to mind. It seemed strange that Pandavas hadn’t attended this final bon voyage. Lyköan had planned a few select parting words for the occasion. Now they would never be uttered.