The signal from her mind was strong and clear. Not as strong as that from Rangan or Ilya or Wats, but stronger than that of any casual user. She'd been running Nexus 5 for weeks, then. She'd been practicing.
"Hi, Robyn." He stressed her alias just a tiny bit. "You're headed there too?"
"Yep."
<Incoming chat request from Robyn Rodriguez. Accept? Y/N>
Full cooperation, they'd said. Sigh.
<Accept : Y>
[robyn] Hello there.
[kade] Fancy meeting you here.
He tried to keep the bitterness and anger from roiling off his mind.
[robyn] How's your head?
Kade reflexively brought his hand up to his temple, where she'd hit him. The bruise had lasted for a week.
[kade] Better. How's your side?
[robyn] Better.
He didn't like that her chat ID came across as "robyn". He needed to remember who he was really interacting with. He navigated a menu, aliased it to "sam".
[kade] Why you? No offense.
[sam] I was the only suitable agent available. And none taken.
[kade] Too bad.
[sam] Think what you want, Kade. My job is to keep you safe on this mission.
[kade] I'm overjoyed.
They sat in silence for a while, but despite himself, Kade didn't have the energy to stay angry for the entire flight. He wanted to just get this over with, please his ERD masters, and get safely home.
Sam, for her part, spent the time with her nose in her slate, first flipping through guide books of Bangkok and Thailand, pointing out interesting things to Kade, then doing the same with the program of the International Society for Neuroscience meeting.
Kade idly flipped through a guide book himself. Thailand did look amazingly beautiful, with jungles and waterfalls and beaches, and temple after temple after temple. If only I was coming here for a vacation, he thought.
The conference guide yielded up a plethora of fascinating talks: Neural Substrates of Symbolic Reasoning, Intelligence and Prospects for Increasing It, Emotive-Loop Programming: A New Path to Artificial General Intelligence. How could they even hold these talks? In the US the topics of half of them would be classified as Emerging Technological Threats.
No wonder the international meeting trumps the US neuroscience meetings these days, Kade thought. The cutting edge stuff isn't legal at home any more.
He looked over at Sam. She was part of the reason he was here. She was part of the organization blackmailing him. She was an enforcer of laws he despised, an agent of ignorance and repression, with violence as her primary tool. It wouldn't do to forget that.
Two movies, three meals, and fourteen hours later, they were finally approaching Bangkok. Cloud enveloped them for a seemingly endless time, and then they were out, below the clouds, and the lights of South East Asia's second largest metropolis were everywhere. Minutes later, they were on the ground.
Kade watched Sam as they collected their bags, passed through Customs and immigration. She smiled at the immigration officer, flipped her hair casually. He waved her through. How many identities did she have? How often did she do this? Kade could feel her, cool and collected through the Nexus link.
When it was his turn, immigration waived him through just as quickly. So this is what it's like to be a spy.
Outside the air-conditioned terminal, Bangkok's heat hit Kade like a wall. It was 11pm, local time, and yet hotter than noon on a summer day at home. And louder. They were enveloped in a din of small car engines, whooshing buses, shouting touts and trinket vendors, the zipping Skytrain above them, shouts in English and Thai of all sorts, smells of biodiesel, dust, sweat, and grilling meats, the feel of the damp hot air on his skin, the bright lights, police spinners, flashing ultrabright LED signs advertising places to sleep, places to eat, places to fuck, where to see naked girls, naked boys, and more.
As tired as he was, Kade was enraptured. This wasn't even Bangkok proper – just the exit from the airport. He could drink this all in. He could experience all of this at once.
Sam whistled and waved, and then a cabbie in an officiallooking uniform was tugging at the bags in Kade's hands and jerking his head towards a waiting car. Kade let himself be led, and then they were in the cab, and onto Bangkok-Chonburi Expressway, heading into the city.
The cabbie spoke decent English and rambled on as they headed into the city. Were they here for the conference? Yes, it was filling up all the hotels in the city. If they wanted a break from the temples and markets and conference, they should see the Samutprakarn Crocodile Farm. He could take them, and here was his card. That intersection off in the distance was Phra Ram 9, where they could find the Fortune Town IT Mall and buy software and electronics of all sorts very, very, very cheap, if they knew what he meant.
"Not just Indian!" he said. "Good Chinese stuff! Korean stuff! Even some American software!" In another direction was the road to the ancient Thai capital of Ayutthaya. His cousin ran a tour company with good guides and excellent prices and he could even get them a discount. This way to Damnoen Saduak floating market – get there right at dawn if they could.
If they wanted seedier delights, here were some ideas of places to go to see the best sex shows where the women could do the most amazing things with certain parts of their anatomy, and no offense to the lady. There were boy shows too, but, ummm, the fine miss in the back might be the only woman in the audience. They should see the night bazaar – just west of the Queen Sirikit Convention Center where the conference was being held. And of course anyone who visited Bangkok, the city of angels, should pay respects at the temple of Wat Phra Kaew and see the Grand Palace. If they had time for another temple go see the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho in the old city. And look, here they were at the Victory Monument, almost the center of the city, and here they were at the Prince Market Hotel where they were staying, and that would be one thousand baht please, plus whatever tip they felt so kind as to offer.
Sam peeled eleven hundred-baht notes off a roll and handed them to the cabbie as a hotel employee opened the cab door for her. The heat was a gauntlet to be run from air-conditioned cab to air-conditioned hotel lobby. They survived.
Inside, they checked in and found that their rooms were on the same floor, just a few doors down from each other, just as he'd been told to expect.
Sam's room was across the hall and four doors short of Kade's. She was close enough to keep tabs on him, positioned between his room and the elevator, but not conspicuously and improbably in the room next door. She carded the door, propped it open with her bags, and turned back to him with a faint smile.
"See you in the morning. 8am downstairs for breakfast, right?"
Kade grunted affirmatively in reply. Sam closed the door and disappeared into her room.
Kade's own room was small but nice, with a view of Bangkok's neon-lit downtown. He stood at the window for a moment, soaking in the tall towers, neon signs, and rivers of foot and vehicle traffic. Bright lights, big city, he thought. He tossed his slate and phone onto the charging plate atop the nightstand and collapsed into the bed, clothes still on.