The Windup Girl

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  "Yes, of course." Hock Seng regards him drily. "Thank you for your management instruction."

  "You keep telling me I don't understand the culture here," Anderson says. "So take care of it. Get rid of that one. I don't care if you're polite or if everyone loses face, but find a way to axe him. It's dangerous to have someone like that in the power train."

  Hock Seng's lips purse, but he doesn't protest any more. Anderson decides to assume that he will be obeyed. He flips through the pages of another permit letter from the Environment Ministry, grimacing. Only Thais would spend so much time making a bribe look like a service agreement. They're polite, even when they're shaking you down. Or when there's a problem with the algae tanks. Banyat. . .

  Anderson shuffles through the forms on his desk. "Hock Seng?"

  The old man doesn't look up. "I will take care of your mahout," he says as he keeps typing. "It will be done, even if it costs you when they come to bargain again for bonuses."

  "Nice to know, but that's not my question." Anderson taps his desk. "You said Banyat was complaining about the algae skim. Is he having problems with the new tanks? Or the old ones?"

  "I. . . He was unclear."

  "Didn't you tell me we had replacement equipment coming off the anchor pads last week? New tanks, new nutrient cultures?"

  Hock Seng's typing falters for a moment. Anderson pretends puzzlement as he shuffles through his papers again, already knowing that the receipts and quarantine forms aren't present. "I should have a list here somewhere. I'm sure you told me it was arriving." He looks up. "The more I think I about it, the more I think I shouldn't be hearing about any contamination problems. Not if our new equipment actually cleared Customs and got installed."

  Hock Seng doesn't answer. Presses on with his typing as though he hasn't heard.

  "Hock Seng? Is there something you forgot to tell me?"

  Hock Seng's eyes remain fixed on the gray glow of his monitor. Anderson waits. The rhythmic creak of the crank fans and the ratchet of Hock Seng's treadle fills the silence.

  "There is no manifest," the old man says, finally. "The shipment is still in Customs."

  "It was supposed to clear last week."

  "There are delays."

  "You told me there wouldn't be any problem," Anderson says. "You were certain. You told me you were expediting the Customs personally. I gave you extra cash to be sure of it."

  "The Thai keep time in their own method. Perhaps it will be this afternoon. Perhaps tomorrow." Hock Seng makes a face that resembles a grin. "They are not like we Chinese. They are lazy."

  "Did you actually pay the bribes? The Trade Ministry was supposed to get a cut, to pass on to their pet white shirt inspector."

  "I paid them."

  "Enough?"

  Hock Seng looks up, eyes narrowed. "I paid."

  "You didn't pay half and keep half for yourself?"

  Hock Seng laughs nervously. "Of course I paid everything."

  Anderson studies the yellow card a moment longer, trying to determine his honesty, then gives up and tosses down the papers. He isn't even sure why he cares, but it galls him that the old man thinks he can be fooled so easily. He glances again at the sack of ngaw. Perhaps Hock Seng senses just how secondary the factory is. . . He forces the thought away and presses the old man again. "Tomorrow then?"

  Hock Seng inclines his head. "I think this is most likely."

  "I'll look forward to it."

  Hock Seng doesn't respond to the sarcasm. Anderson wonders if it even translates. The man speaks English with an extraordinary facility, but every so often they reach an impasse of language that seems more rooted in culture than vocabulary.

  Anderson returns to the paperwork. Tax forms here. Paychecks there. The workers cost twice as much as they should. Another problem of dealing with the Kingdom. Thai workers for Thai jobs. Yellow card refugees from Malaya are starving in the street, and he can't hire them. By rights, Hock Seng should be out in the job lines starving with all the other survivors of the Incident. Without his specialized skills in language and accountancy and Yates' indulgence, he would be starving.

  Anderson pauses on a new envelope. It's posted to him, personally, but true to form the seal is broken. Hock Seng has a hard time respecting the sanctity of other people's mail. They've discussed the problem repeatedly, but still the old man makes "mistakes."

  Inside the envelope, Anderson finds a small invitation card. Raleigh, proposing a meeting.

  Anderson taps the invitation card against his desk, thoughtful. Raleigh. Flotsam of the old Expansion. An ancient piece of driftwood left at high tide, from the time when petroleum was cheap and men and women crossed the globe in hours instead of weeks.

  When the last of the jumbo jets rumbled off the flooded runways of Suvarnabhumi, Raleigh stood knee-deep in rising seawater and watched them flee. He squatted with his girlfriends and then outlived them and then claimed new ones, forging a life of lemongrass and baht and fine opium. If his stories are to be believed, he has survived coups and counter-coups, calorie plagues and starvation. These days, the old man squats like a liver-spotted toad in his Ploenchit "club," smiling in self-satisfaction as he instructs newly arrived foreigners in the lost arts of pre-Contraction debauch.

  Anderson tosses the card on the desk. Whatever the old man's intentions, the invitation is innocuous enough. Raleigh hasn't lived this long in the Kingdom without developing a certain paranoia of his own. Anderson smiles slightly, glancing up at Hock Seng. The two would make a fine pair: two uprooted souls, two men far from their homelands, each of them surviving by their wits and paranoia. . .

  "If you are doing nothing other than watching me work," Hock Seng says, "the Megodont Union is requesting a renegotiation of their rates."

  Anderson regards the expenses piled on his desk. "I doubt they're so polite."

  Hock Seng's pen pauses. "The Thai are always polite. Even when they threaten."

  The megodont on the floor below screams again.

  Anderson gives Hock Seng a significant look. "I guess that gives you a bargaining chip when it comes to getting rid of the Number Four mahout. Hell, maybe I just won't pay them anything at all until they get rid of that bastard."

  "The union is powerful."

  Another scream shakes the factory, making Anderson flinch. "And stupid!" He glances toward the observation windows. "What the hell are they doing to that animal?" He motions at Hock Seng. "Go check on them."

  Hock Seng looks as if he will argue, but Anderson fixes him with a glare. The old man gets to his feet.

  A resounding trumpet of protest interrupts whatever complaint the old man is about to voice. The observation windows rattle violently.

  "What the—"

  Another trumpeted wail shakes the building, followed by a mechanical shriek: the power train, seizing. Anderson lurches out of his chair and runs for the window but Hock Seng reaches it ahead of him. The old man stares through the glass, mouth agape.

  Yellow eyes the size of dinner plates rise level with the observation window. The megodont is up on its hind legs, swaying. The beast's four tusks have been sawn off for safety, but it is still a monster, fifteen feet at the shoulder, ten tons of muscle and rage, balanced on its hind legs. It pulls against the chains that bind it to the winding spindle. Its trunk lifts, exposing a cavernous maw. Anderson jams his hands over his ears.

  The megodont's scream hammers through the glass. Anderson collapses to his knees, stunned. "Christ!" His ears are ringing. "Where's that mahout?"

  Hock Seng shakes his head. Anderson isn't even sure the man has heard. Sounds in his own ears are muffled and distant. He staggers to the door and yanks it open just as the megodont crashes down on Spindle Four. The power spindle shatters. Teak shards spray in all directions. Anderson flinches as splinters fly past and his skin burns with needle slashes.

  Down below, the mahouts are frantically unchaining their beasts and dragging them away from the maddened animal, shouting encouragement, f
orcing their will on the elephantine creatures. The megodonts shake their heads and groan protest, tugging against their training, overwhelmed by the instinctual urge to aid their cousin. The rest of the Thai workers are fleeing for the safety of the street.

  The maddened megodont launches another attack on its winding spindle. Spokes shatter. The mahout who should have controlled the beast is a mash of blood and bone on the floor.

  Anderson ducks back into his office. He dodges around empty desks and jumps another, sliding over its surface to land before the company's safes.

  His fingers slip as he spins combination dials. Sweat drips in his eyes. 23-right. 106-left. . . His hand moves to the next dial as he prays that he won't screw up the pattern and have to start again. More wood shatters out on the factory floor, accompanied by the screams of someone who got too close.

  Hock Seng appears at his elbow, crowding.

  Anderson waves the old man away. "Tell the people to get out of here! Clear everyone out! I want everyone out!"

  Hock Seng nods but lingers as Anderson continues to struggle with the combinations.

  Anderson glares at him. "Go!"

  Hock Seng ducks acquiescence and runs for the door, calling out, his voice lost in the screams of fleeing workers and shattering hardwoods. Anderson spins the last of the dials and yanks the safe open: papers, stacks of colorful money, eyes-only records, a compression rifle. . . a spring pistol.

  Yates.

  He grimaces. The old bastard seems to be everywhere today, as if his phii is riding on Anderson's shoulder. Anderson pumps the handgun's spring and stuffs it in his belt. He pulls out the compression rifle. Checks its load as another scream echoes behind. At least Yates prepared for this. The bastard was naïve, but he wasn't stupid. Anderson pumps the rifle and strides for the door.

  Down on the manufacturing floor, blood splashes the drive systems and QA lines. It's difficult to see who has died. More than just the one mahout. The sweet stink of human offal permeates the air. Gut streamers decorate the megodont's circuit around its spindle. The animal rises again, a mountain of genetically engineered muscle, fighting against the last of its bonds.

  Anderson levels his rifle. At the edge of his vision, another megodont rises onto its hind legs, trumpeting sympathy. The mahouts are losing control. He forces himself to ignore the expanding mayhem and puts his eye to the scope.

  His rifle's crosshairs sweep across a rusty wall of wrinkled flesh. Magnified with the scope, the beast is so vast he can't miss. He switches the rifle to full automatic, exhales, and lets the gas chamber unleash.

  A haze of darts leaps from the rifle. Blaze orange dots pepper the megodont's skin, marking hits. Toxins concentrated from AgriGen research on wasp venom pump through the animal's body, gunning for its central nervous system.

  Anderson lowers the rifle. Without the scope's magnification, he can barely make out the scattered darts on the beast's skin. In another few moments it will be dead.

  The megodont wheels and fixes its attention on Anderson, eyes flickering with Pleistocene rage. Despite himself, Anderson is impressed by the animal's intelligence. It's almost as if the animal knows what he has done.

  The megodont gathers itself and heaves against its chains. Iron links crack and whistle through the air, smashing into conveyor lines. A fleeing worker collapses. Anderson drops his useless rifle and yanks out the spring gun. It's a toy against ten tons of enraged animal, but it's all he has left. The megodont charges and Anderson fires, pulling the trigger as quickly as his finger can convulse. Useless bladed disks spatter against the avalanche.

  The megodont slaps him off his feet with its trunk. The prehensile appendage coils around his legs like a python. Anderson scrabbles for a grip on the door jam, trying to kick free. The trunk squeezes. Blood rushes into his head. He wonders if the monster simply plans to pop him like some blood-bloated mosquito, but then the beast is dragging him off the balcony. Anderson scrabbles for a last handhold as the railing slides past and then he's airborne. Flying free.

  The megodont's exultant trumpeting echoes as Anderson sails through the air. The factory floor rushes up. He slams into concrete. Blackness swallows him. Lie down and die. Anderson fights unconsciousness. Just die. He tries to get up, to roll away, to do anything at all, but he can't move.

  Colorful shapes fill his vision, trying to coalesce. The megodont is close. He can smell its breath.

  Color blotches converge. The megodont looms, rusty skin and ancient rage. It raises a foot to pulp him. Anderson rolls onto his side but can't get his legs to work. He can't even crawl. His hands scrabble against the concrete like spiders on ice. He can't move quickly enough. Oh Christ, I don't want to die like this. Not here. Not like this. . . . He's like a lizard with its tail caught. He can't get up, he can't get away, he's going to die, jelly under the foot of an oversized elephant.

  The megodont groans. Anderson looks over his shoulder. The beast has lowered its foot. It sways, drunken. It snuffles about with its trunk and then abruptly its hindquarters give out. The monster settles back on its haunches, looking ridiculously like a dog. Its expression is almost puzzled, a drugged surprise that its body no longer obeys.

  Slowly its forelegs sprawl before it and it sinks, groaning, into straw and dung. The megodont's eyes sink to Anderson's level. They stare into his own, nearly human, blinking confusion. Its trunk stretches out for him again, slapping clumsily, a python of muscle and instinct, all uncoordinated now. Its maw hangs open, panting. Sweet furnace heat gusts over him. The trunk prods at him. Rocks him. Can't get a grip.

  Anderson slowly drags himself out of reach. He gets to his knees, then forces himself upright. He sways, dizzy, then manages to plant his feet and stand tall. One of the megodont's yellow eyes tracks his movement. The rage is gone. Long-lashed eyelids blink. Anderson wonders what the animal is thinking. If the neural havoc tearing through its system is something it can feel. If it knows its end is imminent. Or if it just feels tired.

  Standing over it, Anderson can almost feel pity. The four ragged ovals where its tusks once stood are grimy foot-diameter ivory patches, savagely sawed away. Sores glisten on its knees and scabis growths speckle its mouth. Close up and dying, with its muscles paralyzed and its ribs heaving in and out, it is just an ill-used creature. The monster was never destined for fighting.

  The megodont lets out a final gust of breath. Its body sags.

  People are swarming all around Anderson, shouting, tugging at him, trying to help their wounded and find their dead. People are everywhere. Red and gold union colors, green SpringLife livery, the mahouts clambering over the giant corpse.

  For a second, Anderson imagines Yates standing beside him, smoking a nightshade and gloating at all the trouble. "And you said you'd be gone in a month." And then Hock Seng is beside him, whisper voice and black almond eyes and a bony hand that reaches up to touch his neck and comes away drenched red.

  "You're bleeding," he murmurs.

  2

  "Lift!" Hock Seng shouts. Pom and Nu and Kukrit and Kanda all lean against the shattered winding spindle, drawing it from its cradle like a splinter pulled from the flesh of a giant, dragging it up until they can send the girl Mai down underneath.

  "I can't see!" she shouts.

  Pom and Nu's muscles flex as they try to keep the spindle from reseating itself. Hock Seng kneels and slides a shakelight down to the girl. Her fingers brush his and then the LED tool is gone, down into the darkness. The light is worth more than she is. He hopes they won't drop the spindle back into its seat while she's down there.

  "Well?" he calls down a minute later. "Is it cracked?"

  No answer comes from below. Hock Seng hopes she isn't caught, trapped somehow. He settles into a squat as he waits for her to finish her inspection. All around, the factory is a hive of activity as workers try to put the place back in order. Men swarm over the megodont's corpse, union workers with bright machetes and four-foot bone saws, their hands red with their work as they re
nder down a mountain of flesh. Blood runs off the beast as its hide is stripped away revealing marbled muscle.

  Hock Seng shudders at the sight, remembering his own people similarly disassembled, other bloodlettings, other factory wreckage. Good warehouses destroyed. Good people lost. It's all so reminiscent of when the Green Headbands came with their machetes and his warehouses burned. Jute and tamarind and kink-springs all going up in fire and smoke. Slick machetes gleaming in the blaze. He turns his eyes away, forcing down memories. Forces himself to breathe.

  As soon as the Megodont Union heard one of their own was lost, they sent their professional butchers. Hock Seng tried to get them to drag the carcass outside and finish their work in the streets, to make room for the power train repairs, but the union people refused and so now in addition to the buzz of activity and cleanup, the factory is full of flies and the increasing reek of death.

  Bones protrude from the corpse like coral rising from an ocean of deep red meat. Blood runs from the animal, rivers of it, rushing toward the storm drains and Bangkok's coal-driven flood-control pumps. Hock Seng watches sourly as blood flows past. The beast held gallons of it. Untold calories rushing away. The butchers are fast, but it will take them most of the night to dismember the animal completely.

  "Is she done yet?" Pom gasps. Hock Seng's attention returns to the problem at hand. Pom and Nu and their compatriots are all straining against the spindle's weight.

  Hock Seng again calls down into the hole. "What do you see, Mai?"

  Her words are muffled.

  "Come up, then!" He settles back on his haunches. Wipes sweat off his face. The factory is hotter than a rice pot. With all the megodonts led back to their stables, there is nothing to drive the factory's lines or charge the fans that circulate air through the building. Wet heat and death stench swaddle them like a blanket. They might as well be in the slaughter grounds of Khlong Toey. Hock Seng fights the urge to gag.

  A shout rises from the union butchers. They've cut open the megodont's belly. Intestines gush out. Offal gatherers—the Dung Lord's people, all—wade into the mass and begin shoveling it into handcarts, a lucky source of calories. With such a clean source, the offal will likely go to feed the pigs of the Dung Lord's perimeter farms, or stock the yellow card food lines feeding the Malayan Chinese refugees who live in the sweltering old Expansion towers under the Dung Lord's protection. Whatever pigs and yellow cards won't eat will be dumped into the methane composters of the city along with the daily fruit rind and dung collections, to bake steadily into compost and gas and eventually light the city streets with the green glow of approved-burn methane.