The Windup Girl Read online

  The scarred man watches. "So you're not engineered for the tropics," he says. He leans forward, studying her, his eyes moving across her skin. "It's interesting that your designers modified your pore structure."

  She fights the urge to recoil from his interest. She steels herself. Leans closer. "It is to make my skin more attractive. Smooth." She draws her pha sin above her knees, lets it slide up her thighs. "Would you like to touch?"

  He glances at her, questioning.

  "Please." She nods permission.

  He reaches out and his hand slips along her flesh. "Lovely," he murmurs. She feels a flush of satisfaction as his voice catches. His eyes have gone wide, like a child unmoored. He clears his throat.

  "Your skin is burning," he says.

  "Hai. As you say, I was not designed for this climate. "

  Now he's examining every bit of her. Eyes roaming across her, starving, as if he will feed upon her with his gaze. Raleigh will be pleased. "It makes sense," he says. "Your model must only sell to elites. . . . they'd have climate control." He nods to himself, studying her. "It would be worth the trade-off, to them."

  He looks up at her. "Mishimoto? Were you one of Mishimoto's then? You can't be diplomatic. The government would never bring a windup into the country, not with the palace's religious stance—" His eyes lock with hers. "You were dumped by Mishimoto, weren't you?"

  Emiko fights the sudden flood of shame. It's as though he has sliced her open and gone rooting through her entrails, impersonal and insulting, like some cibiscosis medical technician making an autopsy. She sets her drink down carefully. "Are you a generipper?" she asks. "Is this how you know so much about me?"

  His expression shifts in an instant, from wide-eyed fascination to smirking slyness. "More like a hobbyist," he says. "A genespotter, if you will."

  "Really?" She lets him see some of the contempt she feels for him. "Not, maybe, a man from the Midwest Compact, perhaps? Not a company man?" She leans forward. "Not a calorie man, possibly?"

  She whispers the last words, but they have their effect. The man jerks back. His smile remains, frozen, but his eyes now evaluate her the way a mongoose evaluates a cobra. "What an interesting thought," he says.

  She welcomes the guarded gaze after her own feelings of shame. If she's lucky, perhaps this gaijin will slaughter her and be done with it. At least then she can rest.

  She waits, expecting him to strike her. No one tolerates impudence from New People. Mizumi-sensei made sure that Emiko never showed a trace of rebellion. She taught Emiko to obey, to kowtow, to bend before the desires of her superiors, and to be proud of her place. Even though Emiko is ashamed by the gaijin's prying into her history and by her own loss of control, Mizumi-sensei would say this is no excuse to prod and bait the man. It hardly matters. It is done, and Emiko feels dead enough in her soul that she will happily pay whatever price he chooses to extract.

  Instead, the man says, "Tell me again about the night with the boy." The anger has left his eyes, replaced by an expression as implacable as Gendo-sama's once was. "Tell me everything," he says. "Now." His voice whips her with command.

  She wills herself to resist, but the in-built urge of a New Person to obey is too strong, the feeling of shame at her rebellion too overwhelming. He is not your patron, she reminds herself, but even so at the command in his voice she's nearly pissing herself with her need to please him.

  "He came last week. . ." She returns again to the details of her night with the white shirt. She spins out the story, telling it for this gaijin's pleasure much as she once played samisen for Gendo-sama, a dog desperate to serve. She wishes she could tell him to eat blister rust and die, but that is not her nature and so instead she speaks and the gaijin listens.

  He makes her repeat things, asks more questions. Returns to threads she thought he had forgotten. He is relentless, pecking at her story, forcing explanations. He is very good with his questions. Gendo-sama used to question underlings this way, when he wanted to know why a clipper ship was not completed on schedule. He bored through the excuses like a genehack weevil.

  Finally the gaijin nods, satisfied. "Good," he says. "Very good."

  Emiko feels a wash of pleasure at his compliment, and despises herself for it. The gaijin finishes his whiskey. Reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of cash, peels off several bills as he stands.

  "These are for you, only. Don't show them to Raleigh. I'll settle with him before I leave."

  She supposes she should feel grateful, but she instead feels used. As used by this man with his questions and his words as those others, the hypocritical Grahamites and the Environment Ministry's white shirts, who wish to transgress with her biological oddity, who all slaver for the pleasure of intercourse with an unclean creature.

  She holds the bills between her fingers. Her training tells her to be polite, but his self-satisfied largesse irritates her.

  "What does the gentleman think I will do with his extra baht?" she asks. "Buy a pretty piece of jewelry? Take myself out to dinner? I am property, yes? I am Raleigh's." She tosses the money at his feet. "It makes no difference if I am rich or poor. I am owned."

  The man pauses, one hand on the sliding door. "Why not run away, then?"

  "To where? My import permits have expired." She smiles bitterly. "Without Raleigh-san's patronage and connections, the white shirts would mulch me."

  "You wouldn't run for the North?" the man asks. "For the windups there?"

  "What windups?"

  The man smiles slightly. "Raleigh hasn't mentioned them to you? Windup enclaves in the high mountains? Escapees from the coal war? Released ones?"

  At her blank expression he goes on. "There are whole villages up there, living off the jungles. It's poor country, genehacked half to death, out beyond Chiang Rai and across the Mekong, but the windups there don't have any patrons and they don't have any owners. The coal war's still running, but if you hate your niche so much, it's an alternative to Raleigh."

  "Is it true?" She leans forward. "This village, is it real?"

  The man smiles slightly. "You can ask Raleigh, if you don't believe me. He's seen them with his own eyes." He pauses. "But then, I suppose he wouldn't see much benefit in telling you. Might encourage you to slip your leash."

  "You're telling the truth?"

  The pale strange man tips his hat. "At least as much truth as you've told me." He slides the door aside and slips out, leaving Emiko alone with a pounding heart and a sudden urge to live.

  4

  "500, 1000, 5000, 7500 . . . "

  Protecting the Kingdom from all the infections of the natural world is like trying to catch the ocean with a net. One can snare a certain number of fish, sure, but the ocean is always there, surging through.

  "10,000, 12,500, 15,000 . . . 25,000 . . . "

  Captain Jaidee Rojjanasukchai is more than aware of this as he stands under the vast belly of a farang dirigible in the middle of the sweltering night. The dirigible's turbofans gust and whir overhead. Its payload lies scattered, crates and boxes splintered open, their contents spilled across the anchor pad as though a child has recklessly strewn his toys. Sundry valuables and interdicted items lie everywhere.

  "30,000, 35,000 . . . 50,000 . . . "

  Around him, Bangkok's newly renovated airfield spreads in all directions, lit by high-intensity methane lamps mounted on mirror towers: a vast green-bathed expanse of anchor pads dotted with the massive balloons of the farang floating high overhead, and, at its edges, the thickly grown walls of HiGro Bamboo and spun barbed wire that are supposed to define the international boundaries of the field.

  "60,000, 70,000, 80,000 . . . "

  The Thai Kingdom is being swallowed. Jaidee idly surveys the wreckage his men have wrought, and it seems obvious. They are being swallowed by the ocean. Nearly every crate holds something of suspicion. But really, the crates are symbolic. The problem is ubiquitous: gray-market chemical baths are sold in Chatachuk Market and men pole their skiffs up the
Chao Phraya in the dead of night with hulls full of next-gen pineapples. Pollen wafts down the peninsula in steady surges, bearing AgriGen and PurCal's latest genetic rewrites, while cheshires molt through the garbage of the sois and jingjok2 lizards vandalize the eggs of nightjars and peafowl. Ivory beetles bore through the forests of Khao Yai even as cibiscosis sugars, blister rust, and fa' gan fringe bore through the vegetables and huddled humanity of Krung Thep.

  It is the ocean they all swim in. The very medium of life.

  "90 . . . 100,000 . . . 110 . . . 125 . . . "

  Great minds like Premwadee Srisati and Apichat Kunikorn may argue over best practices for protection or debate the merits of UV sterilization barriers along the Kingdom's borders versus the wisdom of pre-emptive genehack mutation, but in Jaidee's view they are idealists. The ocean always flows through.

  "126 . . . 127 . . . 128 . . . 129 . . . "

  Jaidee leans over Lieutenant Kanya Chirathivat's shoulder and watches as she counts bribe money. A pair of Customs inspectors stand stiffly aside, waiting for their authority to be returned to them.

  "130 . . . 140 . . . 150 . . . " Kanya's voice is a steady chant. A paean to wealth, to greasing the skids, to new business in an ancient country. Her voice is clear and meticulous. With her, the count will always be correct.

  Jaidee smiles. Nothing wrong with a little gift of good will.

  At the next anchor pad, 200 meters away, megodonts scream as they drag cargo out of a dirigible's belly and pile the shipment for sorting and Customs approval. Turbofans gust and surge, stabilizing the vast airship anchored overhead. The balloon lists and spins. Gritty winds and megodont dung scour across Jaidee's arrayed white shirts. Kanya places a hand over the baht she is counting. The rest of Jaidee's men wait, impassive, their hands on machetes as the winds whip against them.

  The turbofan gusts subside. Kanya continues her chant. "160 . . . 170 . . . 180 . . . "

  The Customs men are sweating. Even in the hot season, there's no reason to sweat so. Jaidee isn't sweating. But then, he's not the one who has been forced to pay twice for protection that was probably expensive the first time.

  Jaidee almost pities them. The poor men don't know what lines of authority may have changed: if payments have been rerouted; if Jaidee represents a new power, or a rival one; don't know where he ranks in the layers of bureaucracy and influence that run through the Environment Ministry. And so they pay. He's surprised that they managed to find the cash at all, on such short notice. Almost as surprised as they must have been when his white shirts smashed the doors of the Customs Office and secured the field.

  "Two hundred thousand." Kanya looks up at him. "It's all here."

  Jaidee grins. "I told you they'd pay."

  Kanya doesn't return the smile, but Jaidee doesn't let it damp his glee. It's a good hot night and they've made a lot of money and as a bonus they've watched the Customs Service sweat. Kanya always has difficulty accepting good fortune when it comes her way. Somewhere during her young life she lost track of how to take pleasure. Starvation in the Northeast. The loss of her parents and siblings. Hard travels to Krung Thep. Somewhere she lost her capacity for joy. She has no appreciation for sanuk, for fun, even such intense fun, such sanuk mak as successfully shaking down the Trade Ministry or the celebration of Songkran. And so when Kanya takes 200,000 baht from the Trade Ministry and doesn't bat an eye except to wipe away the scouring dust of the anchor pads, and certainly doesn't smile, Jaidee doesn't let it hurt his feelings. Kanya has no taste for fun, that is her kamma.

  Still, Jaidee pities her. Even the poorest people smile sometimes. Kanya, almost never. It's quite unnatural. She doesn't smile when she is embarrassed, when she is irritated, when she is angry or when she has joy. It makes others uncomfortable, her complete lack of social grace, and it is why she landed at last in Jaidee's unit. No one else can stand her. The two of them make a strange pair. Jaidee who always finds something to smile at, and Kanya, whose face is so cold it might as well be carved from jade. Jaidee grins again, sending goodwill to his lieutenant. "Let's pack it up, then."

  "You've overstepped your authority," one of the Customs men mutters.

  Jaidee shrugs complacently. "The Environment Ministry's jurisdiction extends to every place where the Thai Kingdom is threatened. It is the will of Her Royal Majesty the Queen."

  The man's eyes are cold, even though he forces himself to smile pleasantly. "You know what I mean."

  Jaidee grins, shrugging off the other's ill will. "Don't look so forlorn. I could have taken twice this much, and you still would have paid."

  Kanya begins packaging up the money as Jaidee sifts through the wreckage of a crate with the tip of his machete. "Look at all this important cargo that must be protected!" He flips over a bundle of kimonos. Probably shipped to a Japanese manager's wife. He stirs through lingerie worth more than his month's salary. "We wouldn't want some grubby official rifling through all of this, would we?" He grins and glances at Kanya. "Do you want any of this? It's made of real silk. The Japanese still have silk worms, you know."

  Kanya doesn't look up from her work with the money. "It's not my size. Those Japanese manager wives are all fat on genehack calories from their deals with AgriGen."

  "You would steal, too?" The Customs official's face is a mask of controlled rage behind a polite, gritted smile.

  "Apparently not." Jaidee shrugs. "My lieutenant seems to have better taste than the Japanese. Anyway, your profits will return, I'm sure. This will be but a minor inconvenience."

  "And what about the damage? How will that be explained?" The other Customs man waves at a folding screen in the Sony style that lies half-torn.

  Jaidee studies the artifact. It shows what he supposes must be the equivalent of a samurai family for the late twenty-second century: A Mishimoto Fluid Dynamics manager overseeing some kind of windup workers in a field and . . . Are those ten hands on each worker that he sees? Jaidee shudders at the bizarre blasphemy. The small natural family pictured at the edge of the field doesn't seem perturbed, but then, they are Japanese: they even let their children be entertained by a windup monkey.

  Jaidee makes a face. "I'm sure you'll find some excuse. Perhaps the freight megodonts stampeded." He claps the Customs men on their backs. "Don't look so glum! Use your imagination! You should think of this as building merit."

  Kanya finishes packing up the money. She secures the woven satchel and slings it over her shoulder.

  "We're done," she says.

  Down field, a new dirigible is slowly descending, its massive kink-spring fans using up the last of their joules to maneuver the beast over its anchors. Cables snake down from its belly, dragged by lead weights. Anchor pad workers wait with upraised hands to secure the floating monster to their megodont teams, as though praying to some massive god. Jaidee watches with interest. "In any case, the Benevolent Association of Retired Royal Environment Ministry Officers appreciates this. You've built merit with them, regardless." He hefts his machete and turns to his men.

  "Khun officers!" He shouts over the drone of the dirigible fans and the scream of freight megodonts. "I have a challenge for you!" He points to the descending dirigible with his machete. "I have two hundred thousand baht for the first man who searches a crate from that new vessel over there! Come on! That one! Now!"

  The Customs men stare, dumbstruck. They start to speak, but their voices are drowned out by the roar of dirigible fans. They mouth protestations: "Mai tum! Mai tum! Mai tawng tum! No no nonono!" as they wave their arms and object, but Jaidee is already dashing across the airfield, brandishing his machete and howling after this new prey.

  Behind him, his white shirts follow in a wave. They dodge crates and laborers, leap over anchor cables, duck under megodont bellies. His men. His loyal children. His sons. The foolish followers of ideals and the Queen, joining his call, the ones who cannot be bribed, the ones who hold all of the honor of the Environment Ministry in their hearts.

  "That one! That one!" />
  They speed like pale tigers across the landing field, leaving the carcasses of Japanese freight containers littered behind them like so much debris after a typhoon. The Customs men's voices fade. Jaidee is already far distant from them, feeling the joy of his legs pumping under him, the pleasure of clean and honorable pursuit, running faster ever faster, his men following, covering the distance with the adrenaline sprint of pure warrior purpose, raising their machetes and axes to the giant machine as it comes down from the sky, looming over them like the demon king Tosacan ten thousand feet tall, settling over them. The megodont of all megodonts, and on its side, in farang lettering, the words: CARLYLE & SONS.

  Jaidee is unaware that a shriek of joy has escaped his lips. Carlyle & Sons. The irritating farang who speaks so casually about changing pollution credit systems, of removing quarantine inspections, of streamlining everything that has kept the Kingdom alive as other countries have collapsed, the foreigner who curries so much favor with Trade Minister Akkarat and the Somdet Chaopraya, the Crown Protector. This is a true prize. Jaidee is all pursuit. He stretches for the landing cables as his men surge past, younger and faster and fanatically dedicated, all of them reaching out to secure their quarry.

  But this dirigible is smarter than the last.

  At the sight of the white shirts swarming under its landing position, the pilot reorients his turbofans. The wash gushes over Jaidee. The fans scream and rev as the pilot wastes gigajoules in an attempt to push away from the ground. The dirigible's landing cables whip inward, winding on spindle cranks like an octopus yanking in its limbs. The turbofans shove Jaidee to the ground as they spin to full power.

  The dirigible rises.

  Jaidee pushes himself up, squinting into the hot winds as the dirigible shrinks into night blackness. He wonders if the disappearing monster was warned by the control towers or the Customs Service or if the pilot was simply clever enough to realize that a white shirt inspection was of no benefit to his masters.