Ramez Naam - Nexus

"Wat Arun," Feng said quietly. "The Temple of the Dawn."

"It's beautiful," Kade said sincerely.

Feng nodded. "That's where Professor Shu is now. She meet us at the restaurant."

"Is it close?"

"Right there," Feng said, pointing at the river bank ahead of them.

The restaurant was called Ayutthaya, after the ancient Thai capital. It occupied a gorgeously ornate three-story building situated on the bank of the river, a few hundred yards north of Wat Arun. Red-skinned, gold-armored demon statues flanked the open double doorway, their five-foot-long swords held in two hands, points in the ground and hilts at their chests. Feng closed the car door behind Kade as he emerged, took him by the elbow to the maître d'.

"Guest for Professor Shu," he said.

A man-sized golden Buddha sat cross-legged on a stone just inside the doors.

"Oh, Mr Lane?" The hostess wore a long, flowing Thai dress in gold. Her hair was demurely pulled back into a bun. She was stunning.

"Yes, that's me." No stutter. No stammer. His voice sounded deep and confident in his own ears. I could get used to this.

"Please come with me." She lifted a menu and smiled winningly at him.

"See you after dinner." That was Feng.

"You're not coming up?"

"I'm just the driver, not an important person like you." Feng gave him the merest of bows and backed towards the car.

Kade turned to see the hostess waiting. She smiled again and turned to lead him into the restaurant. The dress hugged her shape. The sway of her hips was intoxicating.

Keep it down, buddy. There's more than one way to lose your cool.

They rounded the Buddha and the restaurant spread out before them. Floor-to-ceiling windows were cast open to the warm night. They framed the river and the Grand Palace beyond it. Through more windows to the south the spire of Wat Arun rose above the west bank. Gold and orange lanterns illuminated ornate tables with tourists and Thai alike.

They crossed a tiny bridge – over a softly gurgling stream that ran through the dining room and emptied itself into the Chao Phraya below.

She's trying to impress me, Kade thought to himself. Shu. She's recruiting.

The hostess led him up to a rooftop deck. There was a cool breeze from the river. The sky was darkening as evening turned to night. All sorts of delicious scents assailed him.

Do I want to be recruited?

The hostess steered him towards a table at the south-eastern corner of the rooftop, where the most majestic view of the river and temples would be. Su-Yong Shu rose to greet him, a wide smile on her face. She looked relaxed, confident, and elegant. Elegant and dangerous, Kade thought.

Show time.

18

AYUTTHAYA

"Kade. Thank you so much for joining me."

Su-Yong Shu took his hand in both of hers. Her eyes were bright, compelling.

"Professor Shu, it's an honor." They sat.

"This place is spectacular," Kade said.

Shu smiled again. She looked around, taking it all in. "I love it here," she said. She gestured at Wat Arun, soaring above them. "Humans create so much beauty."

Humans, Kade observed to himself. Not "we". Humans.

The waiter came to them with water and tea, walked them through the menu.

"Everything looks so incredible," Kade commented.

Shu smiled. "Let me. You'll be happy."

"I'm in your hands."

Shu rattled off a stream of high-speed Thai to the waiter, who smiled broadly, bowed, and backed away.

"You speak Thai," Kade noted.

Shu smiled. "Talk to me about your research, Kade. I hear your paper in Science is going to be very exciting. What's in it?"

Kade talked. He gave her the edited, sanitized version, with conventional nanotube filaments, software built on the models from Shu's lab. He left out all the leapfrogs that Nexus 5 had allowed them to make. All the dead ends it had allowed them to avoid.

Nexus had enabled them to paint a Leonardo. They'd traced that into a crude crayon drawing, and still they were years ahead of the field.

Shu asked good questions. She probed details and high-level conclusions. Kade struggled to keep up.

Finally, she nodded appreciatively. "Well, I'm very impressed." She held his eyes.

"Thank you." He smiled calmly, a little sheepishly. "We're really proud of it. Rangan did as much work as I did."

The food arrived, breaking the moment.

The waiter presented each small dish with fanfare.

Yum Mamuang , a delicious mango salad.

Pad Pak Boong , fried morning glory.

Goong Kra Tiem , savory garlic fried shrimp.

Ped bai Gra-pow , basil duck.

Phat goo-ay-dtee-o neu-a , stir-fried noodles with sliced beef.

They ate family style, remarking on each delicious dish. Shu had an enthusiasm for the food that Kade found infectious. The waiter brought them fresh guava juice, cool and refreshing. As they talked, the sky darkened into full night. Their table was illuminated by the flame from the lanterns, the amber lights on Wat Arun just to their south, the neon glow from the east, from the teeming city across the river.

Shu shifted the conversation from food back to neuroscience, grilling him on topics all across the field. He was being interviewed. The questions came thick and fast, on topics far and wide. The neural basis of creativity. Prospects for boosting human intelligence. The difficulty in uploading human minds into computers. The evolutionary basis of sleep. The limits of a human brain's storage capacity. Reasons for the human perception of time.

The questions were all speculative, open-ended, on the frontiers of modern neuroscience. He had to synthesize, reveal hunches, sketch out possibilities based on incomplete data in the field. Shu wouldn't accept "I don't know" as an answer. She kept pushing him to take an educated guess, to explain his thoughts. It was exhilarating. He wondered if she knew the answers to her own questions.

And then Kade felt it. Her mind reached out to his. He could feel her curiosity, her crystal clear intellect. Her mind felt amazing. Vast, intricate, like no one he'd ever felt before.

He longed to touch that mind. But he gave her nothing. To open to her would be to reveal why he was here and who had sent him.

Keep talking, Kade told himself. Pretend you've felt nothing.

Shu watched him, her face pensive.

Wats watched from a rooftop north of Ayutthaya Restaurant. He lay there on his stomach, utterly still, a scope to his eye. Chameleonware in his clothing blended him into the rooftop. There was Kade, with someone that facial recognition software identified as Professor Su-Yong Shu of Jiaotong University, Shanghai. Shu was one of the top researchers in Lane's field, and an occasional dabbler with the Chinese Ministry of National Defense. What was she doing there?

More troubling was the driver of that car. He'd seen that face before. He'd seen it on a very dangerous man, a man he could swear was dead.

It had been in the KZ. A Chinese "advisor" they'd flushed out of a rebel command center. They'd taken the command post, not aware of his presence. When they'd discovered him, he'd fought. Fought like no one Wats had seen fight, before or since. He was dead. How could he be here?

• • • •

Su-Yong Shu gave a contented sigh. Kade could feel the sensual satisfaction of the meal emanating from her. She was not what he'd expected.

"Kade," she said, "I had an ulterior motive for inviting you here. I'll likely have a postdoctoral position opening in my lab soon. I think you'd be a strong candidate. Would you be interested?"

Lightning flashed off to the east. It struck somewhere out beyond the city, flickered for a moment, lit up the sky.

"I'd be honored," he told her. "Can you tell me more about your lab's direction?"