Kade stared grimly at the road as Feng steered the jeep over bumps and around potholes. The headlights turned this narrow dirt road into a tunnel through a dark and foreboding wilderness.
Twice now. Twice the same code had been used for murder. Once in DC, when they tried to kill the President. And now in Chicago, to kill dozens more.
Twice was a pattern. This was a new PLF weapon, a new method of operation. They were going to keep at it, keep up with bombings and assassinations, in the name of posthuman freedom.
War. That’s what Su-Yong Shu had said. War is coming. Between human and posthuman. Millions will die.
No, Kade told himself. Not with my technology.
Kade closed his eyes, started reviewing every bit of data he had on Code Sample Alpha, looking for some way to track it back to its creators.
Kade felt Ling touch him as the first hint of color touched the horizon. Feng splashed the jeep over a narrow jungle stream and on down the winding road from mountain to coastal plain, and then she was in his mind, pushing away code windows and files and everything else.
Feng! Kade!
The world shifted the way it always did when she found him. He saw the world as Ling saw it. He could feel the primitive electronic brain of the jeep, of the phone in his pocket. He looked up and the night sky overhead was crisscrossed with violet beams of wireless data, pulsing with bits that he could reach out and touch. Beyond them, blazing yellow communication satellites wheeled in their orbits, brighter than the stars, chattering endlessly to the ground and one another. Data was everywhere, flowing through him right now...
Ling, Kade sent her. He felt Feng reply as well.
They’re looking for you, she told them. Both of you.
Who is, Ling? Kade asked.
Everyone, she sent him. Be careful.
Ling. Who? Kade asked. Where are they looking? What do they know?
I have to go, she sent. It’s time to get Mommy out.
Kade felt alarm rise from Feng.
Be careful! the Confucian Fist sent.
Ling, wait, Kade sent Who are they? Where are they looking?
But she was gone from both their minds.
It was an hour after dawn when they reached the outskirts of Ayun Pa village and took the tiny dirt turn-off to reach the monastery. The road took them up a jungle-covered hill. Kade let out a breath when they rounded a bend and the walled monastery appeared in front of them. He’d been half afraid they’d find only a smoldering ruin or bounty hunters waiting for them.
But instead there were monks in orange robes, standing outside the white walls with their inlaid designs and their golden-painted posts. Two of the monks were opening the gate through the pagoda-like archway in the wall, beckoning them in, smiles on their faces. Already Kade could feel the mass of minds behind those walls, the compassion and radiance. His heart eased just a little and a smile formed on his lips.
Feng slowed and the monks reached out their hands to touch him as they passed. Their heads were nearly shaven and their faces wore huge smiles. Kade could feel their minds clearly and feel the awe they felt. He was the one who’d given them Nexus 5. He was the one who’d made the touch of another’s mind possible to millions, not just the most seasoned meditators who’d learned to permanently integrate the older Nexus 3.
Kade stretched out his arm, his posthuman hand partially reformed by gecko genes. His fingers brushed those of young monks as they passed. His eyes locked on to young eyes. His mind met tranquil thoughts, tinged with youthful excitement at his arrival.
Then they were through the gates and into the stone courtyard, and Kade’s breath caught. There were dozens more monks in orange robes standing in a ring around them. A hundred, maybe. Most of them just as young as the ones who’d greeted them outside the gate.
Feng stopped the jeep and Kade climbed out. The minds of the monks caressed his, bathed him in their peace and tranquility. He walked towards one at random, dazed by this. And as one, the monks dropped to their knees on the cobblestones.
“Bo Tat,” he heard. “Bo Tat.” A hundred voices said it. He didn’t know the words but he could see the meaning of it in their minds, their hundred minds merged as one.
Bodhisattva. Heroic-minded one. Bringer of light. He who would sacrifice himself, be reborn in suffering, time after time, until every living being reaches enlightenment.
Kade’s breath came fast. His heart was bursting. So much beauty. Amid all the pain and horrors of the world, there was so much beauty in the world. The way the minds of the monks intertwined, the way they connected to one another.
He caught an echo of those million minds he could feel when he tried, a thin layer of consciousness encircling the globe, still shapeless, still unformed. Those million minds could be like this, connected, merged, mutually comprehending, more than the sum of their parts. He closed his eyes and the dream pulled at him, tried to tug him out of the here and now.
Kade opened his eyes, forced himself back to the present, reached out the hundred monks before him with his thoughts. “I am not Bo Tat,” he told them with a laugh. Not enlightened. Not heroic. “I’m a novice. Less than a novice.”
He turned as he spoke, to take them all in, speak to them all.
“You are the brave ones,” he told them. “You are the ones risking your lives to shelter us. You are the ones who’ll build a better world. You are the beginning of something much bigger.”
He felt them smiling, joy and hope rising in unison across a hundred minds.
Then there was another mind behind him, harder, closed off. He finished the turn and came face to face with the man. Older than the rest. Tall, sharp featured, with dark expressionless eyes. The abbot.
“Welcome, Kaden Lane.” The voice carried no warmth.
Kade bowed and lowered his eyes to show respect.
“Thank you so much for taking us in.”
The old monk nodded. “I am Thich Quang An. This way. I’ll show you to your rooms.”
Feng grabbed their packs and they followed him. The monks rose as they left the courtyard. Two of them fell in behind Kade and Feng.
Quang An led them to a branch in the path. He rattled off something in Vietnamese to the two monks who’d followed them, then turned to Feng. “Dat and Lunh will take you to your rooms to get settled. Kaden, come with me to my quarters. There’s something I want to show you.”
Feng gave Kade a curious look. Kade shrugged. Feng shrugged back, and then he was off with their packs and the two monks.
The abbot’s mind was still hard and opaque as he led Kade the other way.
“Thank you again for taking us in,” Kade said. “I know it’s a risk for you.”
“It’s nothing,” the man said curtly. His mind was a mask, unyielding.
“If I’ve offended…” Kade began.
The old monk snorted.
They turned a corner, and then another, and kept walking. The monastery was larger than Kade had realized.
“I know that I’m not a bodhisattva,” Kade said. “Not a holy man.”
“Do you?” The abbot turned, raising an eyebrow. “Do you really?” His mind was inscrutable.
“Yes,” Kade said. “I do.”
“You’ve given great powers to the young and foolish. Dangerous powers. Powers they should have worked for. Powers that even now are being abused, are they not? Some may love you for it. I do not.”