Feng was suddenly alert. Something had caught his interest. Something had buffeted the car slightly, like a burst of wind.
He tapped a button on the console, muted the Brahms he'd had playing for her.
"What is it?" she asked.
The Confucian Fist didn't answer. Instead he killed the petrol engine, let the car coast on batteries, hit a button to lower the windows.
He's listening for something, she thought. She knew better than to interrupt him at such a moment. She felt for the contents of his thoughts, subtly, so as not to distract him.
Feng tapped another key. The windshield became a display. Infrared, she read from him.
There. On the display. Two faint red spots. Fainter than a human body. But elevated, above the ground. Receding, away and up. And in Feng's superhuman hearing, the faintest hint of the whup-whup-whup of rotors.
"Helicopters," he said aloud. "Stealthed. Heading where we are."
Shu felt a chill.
"Could they be Thai?" She knew the answer as she voiced the question.
Feng shook his head. "No. Chinese, EU, or American."
How long? She read the answer in Feng's mind. Five minutes until the choppers reached the monastery on current course and speed. Ten if they slowed over the mountain to come in silently.
She opened to her higher self. The light and power of her massive intellect coursed through her. She absorbed all knowledge of American military helicopters. Chinese Ministry of National Defense databases opened to her, showed her the known and suspected positions of all American forces, their capabilities. So… an American ship might possibly be in the Gulf of Thailand?
"Step on it," she told Feng. "Get us there as quickly as you're able."
Shu pulled out her phone, hit the button to call Ananda. She hoped she was in time.
The turbocharged gas engine roared into life as Feng took them from electric cruise into hydrocarbon sprint.
The phone pulled Ananda from his meditation just a bit after 1am. It was Shu. Was she here, then?
He answered.
"You have two or more American military helicopters headed towards you. ETA five minutes."
The words shook him. They would come here?
They would.
Ananda breathed in with his mind, yelled out the thought of alarm: Hide the Americans. Prepare for unwanted guests.
He looked at his phone. Dared he make this call? Dared he not?
He dialed. A voice answered in Thai. Crisp. Professional. Military.
"This is Professor Somdet Phra Ananda," he said, putting all the dignity and authority of his name and position into his voice. "Get me the Minister of Defence."
A hundred and ninety kilometers away, alarms began to sound at Korat Air Force Base. Ready fighters ignited their engines, raced down the runway, canted their noses up to achieve flight. In moments, two Indian-built IA-9 Rudra NG fighters were in the air, racing south-west towards Saraburi. Thirty seconds later they went supersonic. Time to Saraburi: eight minutes.
47
INCOMING
Kade woke to someone shaking him. Was it dawn? No. Was Shu here? He opened his eyes. It was Bahn, the monk who'd brought his meals, brought him crutches. There was another monk behind him.
"Helicopter!" the young monk said, pointing at the sky. "Helicopter!"
What? Kade didn't want to get on any helicopter.
"America!" Bahn yelled.
Oh no. Oh, fucking no. They've found us.
His heart was pounding. There was no serenity package running to calm him.
Bahn and the other monk were trying to lift him out of the bed.
"No!" he yelled.
They were half-carrying, half-dragging him towards the door of his tiny cell.
Kade thrashed.
"No!"
His ferocity surprised them. He slipped free of their hold and clattered onto the ground. They stared at this crazy American who wouldn't come with them to safety.
The slate was on the table, out of his reach. His crutches were by the bed, out of his reach. He tried to lever himself up onto his good leg and collapsed back to the ground in pain.
"The slate!" he yelled. He pointed madly at it.
Bahn grabbed it, pushed it into Kade's hands.
"Helicopter!" the young monk yelled, pointing up at the sky.
Kade pulled the chain around his neck up over his head with one hand.
"Helicopter." Kade nodded. "American helicopter."
Bahn nodded enthusiastically, tried to take his arm.
Kade shook himself free, jammed the data fob into the I/O slot on the cheap slate. Did he have net signal right now? Yes.
A window blossomed on the slate, showing the contents of the data fob. He hunted for the script Wats had placed there.
[Mass-Distrib]
His finger hovered over it. Did he really want to do this? He hadn't done any of the work to make Nexus 5 safe from abuse.
Images came to him unbidden. Narong pointing a gun at Ted Prat-Nung's head, his will the ERD's. The Dalai Lama, dead in a pool of his blood, murdered by his subverted friend. Sam's parents, their eyes glazed by Communion virus, watching her floggings, sending her off to be beaten and raped. He thought of all the horror stories he'd ever heard about DWITY.
People would abuse this. Monsters would use it for monstrous things. There would be blood on his hands, coercion on his hands, unthinkable terror and pain on his hands.
His finger trembled.
Bahn tugged at his arm, urgently. It was far away, another world.
He thought of Wats, of the way Nexus had changed him; of Shu, of her vision of picking and choosing who would make the jump to the posthuman condition, of her vision of a posthuman elite ruling over the rest of humanity; of Ilya, of her words to him on their call.
Broad dissemination and individual choice turn most technologies into a plus. If only the elites have access, it's a dystopia.
He thought of what he'd told Ananda just hours ago.
Because I think people would use it for more good than harm, he'd said. And because I think it's just good.
Kade's heart pounded in his chest. He was sweating. His whole body was beginning to shake. He could be dead in minutes. Dead or on his way to some deep dark hole he'd never emerge from. Was this how Wats had felt, just before he'd dropped through the ceiling to save them?