'Shouldn't we have gone through Customs or something?' he asked. But the only building he'd noticed on their arrival had been a small comms tower.
Candice smiled. 'That's nothing you need to worry about. These are minor details, and there's always the danger of random security checks raising problems related to your bodily augmentations.' She smiled. 'I'm sure you yourself appreciate the importance of being able to move around relatively incognito.'
Kendrick nodded, and sighed. He couldn't turn back now. The sound of the engine had built up from a faint rumble to a steady, escalating roar. A few minutes later he saw the sun flash outside a window; they were now airborne, and he could see wisps of cloud through the glass near his shoulder.
Once the plane had levelled off, Candice unbuckled and stood up. 'I'm sure you'd like some privacy,' she said. 'I have some work to attend to before our arrival.'
'Where are you going?' Kendrick asked, puzzled.
'There's a working office next door. If there's anything you need, just let me know.'
Candice left through a door which clicked shut behind her. Kendrick was now alone. He wondered if the VTOL might perhaps be more than just a mode of transport: it was comfortable enough to double as somebody's home. He imagined Smeby and Candice jetting constantly across the world at Draeger's bidding.
He soon found that the gridscreen responded to his vocal commands, so at least boredom wouldn't become a problem during the flight.
After stumbling across Malky's corpse, Kendrick had spent several hours browsing through the Grid, digging up public archives relating to both Draeger and the Wilber Trials. What he found dragged up unpleasant memories.
Draeger had been born in England in the third decade of the twenty-first century and had established himself early as a scientific prodigy. He had already earned his Nobel Prize for physics by the time he was twenty-one. His lifelong interest had been artificial intelligence, and this led to pioneering work with 'distributed machine intelligence' – networks of tiny independent machines that worked together in colonies, highly adaptive, self- learning.
Then came the public crack-up when Draeger hit thirty, entailing a few years of psychiatric evaluation and treatment. That had been many people's first point of contact with the name Max Draeger.
Kendrick had gone on to scan through the more recent decades to remind himself exactly who he was dealing with. Draeger believed that the rules that allowed the universe to operate could be whittled down to a few simple lines of computer code. Certain of his theories had an almost religious quality to them.
None of this might have mattered too much had it not been that Draeger seemed to be almost equally skilled at making himself rich. The approaches to information processing that he had developed had revolutionized computing over the last half-century, and Draeger had since accumulated untold billions. Kendrick's researches reminded him how much more famous Draeger was now as a successful investor, entrepreneur and one of the richest men alive than for his earlier scientific achievements.
But then, inevitably, he came to Draeger's involvement with the Wilber administration. Of course, it would be difficult to find a Labrat who didn't have some degree of knowledge on this subject.
There was no direct proof that Draeger or any of his subsidiary companies had taken any part in helping Wilber develop his super-soldier research programme, or that Draeger himself had had any knowledge of what was going on. The suspicion nevertheless remained, bolstered by rumours of an enormous cover-up. The mere suggestion of involvement in Wilber's atrocities had been enough to turn much of the mainstream scientific community against Draeger.
Now – and not without a sense of foreboding – Kendrick was finally on his way to meet him.
19 October 2096 Angkor Wat
Several hours later they arrived. Kendrick was now peering down on great swathes of greenery that filled the horizon. Early during the flight, the plane had boosted high into the upper atmosphere, until the sky darkened and the world below became a distant chiaroscuro of greens, with the occasional blue when they passed over a wide expanse of sea or ocean.
But, beyond the curve of the aircraft's wing, he could now see only jungle, with mountains on the horizon lost in a blue haze. Below, a river cut its way through densely clustered trees, with no visible signs anywhere of human habitation.
The notion that he had been kidnapped, that he was not being taken to see Draeger at all and had in fact been severely duped, made Kendrick's stomach knot momentarily before good sense prevailed. Kidnappers, after all, didn't treat their victims to long-distance luxury flights with an excellent menu.
'The Mekong,' said Candice, appearing for the first time since their departure.
Kendrick turned away from the window. 'I'm sorry?'
'The river. We're just passing over the confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers. We passed Phnom Penh a little while ago.'
Kendrick nodded and glanced back out the window. He caught a glimpse of a village far beneath, gone again in an instant. A tiny nub of human life on the shore of the river below.
A lot of Asia had been badly affected by the Indian and Chinese nuclear wars, but looking down on that rich and verdant jungle it was hard to believe that quite so many countries had come to the edge of economic and environmental collapse in the general aftermath. Kendrick couldn't remember if Cambodia itself had become directly involved in any of the conflicts, but other countries, regardless of whether or not they were active participants, had still had to suffer the consequences.
It was like finding himself on an alien planet.
The VTOL dropped onto a landing platform erected somewhere above the treetops. At first, peering out from inside the plane, he thought they were over a city but one covered in jungle. When Kendrick disembarked, following Candice, the heat enveloped him like the breath of a furnace, leaving him temporarily disorientated. Massive shapes loomed above the jungle canopy for miles around; the landing platform itself appeared to be constructed on top of some enormous ancient temple that looked like it had been lost for millennia.
Which, as it turned out, was exactly the case.
'Where the hell are we?' Kendrick muttered as Candice guided him down a metal staircase that provided a vertiginous view right down through the jungle canopy below their feet. He studied the stone wall beside them as they descended. It was covered in inscriptions and carvings whose age he couldn't imagine.
Smeby was waiting for them on a lower-level platform that clanged under their feet. 'Welcome to Angkor Wat, Mr Gallmon,' he began.
To his consternation, Kendrick found that he was literally speechless. Smeby smiled on seeing this. 'The entire complex was built in the twelfth century as a mausoleum and temple for King Suryavarman the Second. It was only rediscovered by French explorers in the nineteenth century and was renovated over the following decades. Mr Draeger has invested greatly in the refurbishment of the temples here.'
'I thought you were still in Scotland,' Kendrick replied. The man must have flown back here shortly after their meeting. Smeby only smiled and gestured to them to follow.
They were below the level of the forest canopy now. Large sections of the complex had been roofed over in recent years. Enormous towers rose like granite lotuses through and above the upper foliage. Closer to the ground were low-roofed buildings – with the same colouring as the jungle – that seemed to have been designed to blend harmoniously with their surroundings.
A car was waiting for them at the bottom of the tower. The grass in the clearings between the trees had been carefully mown, and there were narrow paths laid out that connected the temple buildings and other, more recent structures. The whole place had the air of a massive enterprise. Kendrick could see dozens of people all around them, some working behind windows, some eating in an open-air cafeteria, others standing around chatting in the open air, all somehow contriving to look busy, creative, intelligent. It reminded him of a university campus more
