The Windup Girl

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  He settles himself on the shoreline and drinks the rest of the green coconut water while a beggar boy watches. Hock Seng beckons. This one is smart enough, he supposes. He likes to reward the smart ones, the ones who are patient enough to linger and see what he will do with a coconut husk. He hands it to the boy. The boy takes it with a wai and goes to smash it on the mortared stones at the top of the seawall. Then he squats and uses a scrap of oyster shell to scrape the slimy tender meat from the interior, starving.

  Eventually, Dog Fucker arrives. His real name is Sukrit Kamsing, but Hock Seng seldom hears the man's true name on the lips of yellow cards. There is too much bile and history built up. Instead, it's always Dog Fucker, and the words drip with hate and fear. He's a squat man, full of calories and muscle. As perfect for his work as a megodont is for converting calories into joules. The scars on his hands and arms show pale. The slits where his nose once stood stare at Hock Seng, two dark vertical nostril slashes that give him a porcine appearance.

  There is some argument among yellow cards about whether Dog Fucker let fa' gan run too long, allowing its cauliflower growths to send enough tendrils deep into his flesh that doctors were forced to chop the whole thing off to save his life, or if the Dung Lord simply took his nose to teach him a lesson.

  Dog Fucker squats beside Hock Seng. Hard black eyes. "Your Doctor Chan came to me. With a letter."

  Hock Seng nods. "I want to meet with your patron."

  Dog Fucker laughs slightly. "I broke her fingers and fucked her dead for interrupting my nap."

  Hock Seng keeps his face impassive. Maybe Dog Fucker is lying. Maybe he is telling the truth. It is impossible to know. Regardless, it is a tease. To see if Hock Seng will flinch. To see if he will bargain. Perhaps Doctor Chan is gone. Another name to weigh him down when he finally reincarnates. Hock Seng says, "Your patron will look favorably on the offer, I think."

  Dog Fucker scratches absently at the slit of a nostril. "Why not meet me at my office, instead?"

  "I like open places."

  "You have people around here? More yellow cards? You think they'll make you safe?"

  Hock Seng shrugs. He looks out at the ships and their sails. At the wide world beckoning. "I want to offer you and your patron a deal. A mountain of profit."

  "Tell me what it is."

  Hock Seng shakes his head. "No. I must speak with him in person. Him only."

  "He doesn't talk to yellow cards. Maybe I'll just feed you to the red-fin plaa out there. Just like the Green Headbands did with your kind down south."

  "You know who I am."

  "I know who your letter says you were." Dog Fucker rubs at the edges of his nose slits, studying Hock Seng. "Here, you're just another yellow card."

  Hock Seng doesn't say anything. He hands the hemp sack of money across to Dog Fucker. Dog Fucker eyes it suspiciously, doesn't take it. "What is it?"

  "A gift. Look and see."

  Dog Fucker is curious. But also cautious. It's a good thing to know. He isn't the sort to put his hand in a bag and come up with a scorpion. Instead, he loosens the sack and dumps it. Bundles of cash spill out, roll in the shells and dirt of low tide. Dog Fucker's eyes widen. Hock Seng keeps himself from smiling.

  "Tell the Dung Lord that Tan Hock Seng, head of the Three Prosperities Trading Company has a business proposal. Deliver my note to him and you will also profit greatly."

  Dog Fucker smiles. "I think perhaps that I'll simply take this money, and my men will beat you until you tell me where you hide all your paranoid yellow card cash."

  Hock Seng doesn't say anything. Keeps his face impassive.

  Dog Fucker says, "I know all about Laughing Chan's people here. He owes me for his disrespect."

  Hock Seng is surprised that he feels no fear. He lives in fear of all things, but thuggish pi lien like Dog Fucker are not what fill his nights with terror. In the end, Dog Fucker is a businessman. He is not a white shirt, puffed on national pride or hungry for a little more respect. Dog Fucker works for money. Acts for money. He and Hock Seng are different parts of the economic organism, but underneath everything, they are brothers. Hock Seng smiles slightly as confidence builds.

  "This is just a gift, for your trouble. What I propose will provide much more. For all of us." He takes out the last two items. One, a letter. "Give it to your master, sealed." The other, he hands across: a small box with its familiar universal spindle and braces, a palm-oil polymer casing in a dull shade of yellow.

  Dog Fucker takes the object, turns it over. "A kink-spring?" He makes a face. "What's the point of this?"

  Hock Seng smiles. "He'll know when he reads the letter." He stands and turns away, without even waiting for Dog Fucker to respond, feeling stronger and more assured than any time since the Green Headbands came and his warehouses went up in smoke and his clipper ships went sliding down into the ocean depths. In this moment, Hock Seng feels like a man. He walks straighter, his limp forgotten.

  It's impossible to know if Dog Fucker's people will follow him and so he walks slowly, knowing that both Dog Fucker's and Laughing Chan's men surround him, a floating ring of surveillance as he works his way down the alleys and cuts into deeper slums, until, at last, Laughing Chan is there, waiting for him, smiling.

  "They let you go," he says.

  Hock Seng pulls out more money. "You did well. He knows it was your men, though." He gives Laughing Chan an extra roll of baht. "Pay him off with this."

  Laughing Chan smiles at the pile of money. "This is twice what I need for that. Even Dog Fucker likes to use us when he doesn't want to risk smuggling SoyPRO over from Koh Angrit."

  "Take it anyway."

  Laughing Chan shrugs and pockets it. "It's very kind of you. With the anchor pads shut down, we can use the extra baht."

  Hock Seng is turning away, but at Laughing Chan's words he turns back.

  "What did you say about the anchor pads?"

  "They're shut down. The white shirts raided them last night. Everything's locked tight."

  "What happened?"

  Laughing Chan shrugs. "I heard they burned everything. Sent it all up in smoke."

  Hock Seng doesn't pause to ask any more. He turns and runs, as fast as his old bones will carry him. Cursing himself all the way. Cursing that he was a fool and didn't put his nose to the wind, that he let himself be distracted from bare survival by the urgent wish to do something more, to reach ahead.

  Every time he makes plans for his future, he seems to fail. Every time he reaches forward, the world leans against him, pressing him down.

  On Thanon Sukhumvit, in the sweat of the sun, he finds a news vendor. He fumbles through newspapers and the hand-cranked whisper sheets of rumor, through luck pages advertising good numbers for gambling and the names of predicted muay thai champions.

  He tears them open, one after another, more frantic with every copy.

  All of them show the smiling face of Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, the incorruptible Tiger of Bangkok.

  7

  "Look! I'm famous!"

  Jaidee holds the whisper sheet picture up beside his own face, grinning at Kanya. When she doesn't smile, he puts it back in its rack, along with all the rest of his pictures.

  "Eh, you're right. It's not really a good likeness. They must have bribed it out of our records department." He sighs wistfully. "But I was young then."

  Still, Kanya doesn't respond, just stares morosely at the water of the khlong. They've spent the day hunting for skiffs smuggling PurCal and AgriGen crops up the river, sailing back and forth across the river mouth, and Jaidee still thrums with a certain exhilaration.

  The prize of the day was a clipper ship anchored just off the docks. Ostensibly an Indian trading vessel sailed north from Bali, it turned out to be brimming with cibiscosis-resistant pineapples. It was satisfying to see the harbormaster and the ship's captain both stammering excuses while Jaidee's white shirts poured lye over the entire shipment, crate after crate rendered sterile and inedible. All that smugg
ling profit gone.

  He flips though the other papers attached to the display board, finds a different image of himself. This one from his time as a muay thai competitor, laughing after a fight in Lumphini Stadium. The Bangkok Morning Post.

  "My boys will like this one."

  He opens the paper and scans the story. Trade Minister Akkarat is spitting mad. The quotes from the Trade Ministry call Jaidee a vandal. Jaidee is surprised they don't just call him a traitor or a terrorist. That they restrain themselves tells him just how impotent they really are.

  Jaidee can't help smiling over the pages at Kanya. "We really hurt them."

  Again, Kanya doesn't respond.

  There's a certain trick to ignoring her bad moods. The first time Jaidee met Kanya, he almost thought she was stupid, the way her face remained so impassive, so impervious to any hint of fun, as though she were missing an organ, a nose for smell, eyes for sight, and whatever curious organ makes a person sense sanuk when it is right in front of them.

  "We should be getting back to the Ministry," she says, and turns to scan the boat traffic along the khlong, looking for a possible ride.

  Jaidee pays the whisper sheet man for his paper as a canal taxi glides into view.

  Kanya flags it and it slides up beside them, its flywheel whining with accumulated power, waves sloshing the khlong embankment as its wake catches up. Huge kink-springs crowd half its displacement. Wealthy Chaozhou Chinese business people cram the covered prow of the boat like ducks on their way to slaughter.

  Kanya and Jaidee jump aboard and stand on the running board outside the seating compartment. The ticket child ignores their white uniforms, just as they ignore her. She sells a 30-baht ticket to another man who boards with them. Jaidee grabs a safety line as the boat accelerates away from the dock. Wind caresses his face as they make their way down the khlong, aiming for the heart of the city. The boat moves quickly, zipping around small paddled skiffs and long tail boats in the canal. Blocks of dilapidated houses and shopfronts slide past, pha sin and blouses and sarong hang colorful in the sun. Women bathe their long black hair in the brown waters of the canal. The boat slows abruptly.

  Kanya looks forward. "What is it?"

  Up ahead, a tree has fallen, blocking much of the canal. Boats jam around it, trying to squeeze past.

  "A bo tree," Jaidee says. He looks around for landmarks. "We'll have to let the monks know."

  No one else will move it. And despite the shortage of wood, no one will harvest it either. It would be unlucky. Their boat wallows as the khlong traffic tries to slip through the tiny gap left in the canal, where the sacred tree has not blocked movement.

  Jaidee makes a noise of impatience and then calls ahead. "Clear out, friends! Ministry business. Clear the way!" He waves his badge.

  The sight of the badge and his bright white uniform is enough to get boats and skiffs poling aside. The pilot of their taxi flashes Jaidee a grateful look. Their kink-spring craft slips into the press, jostling for space.

  As they ease around the bare branches of the tree, the khlong taxi's passengers all make deep wais of respect to the fallen trunk, pressing their palms together and touching them to their foreheads.

  Jaidee makes his own wai, then reaches out to touch the wood, letting his fingers slide over the riddled surface as they pass. Small boreholes speckle it. If he were to peel away the bark, a fine net of grooves would describe the tree's death. A bo tree. Sacred. The tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. And yet they could do nothing to save it. Not a single varietal of fig survived, despite their best efforts. The ivory beetles were too much for them. When the scientists failed, they prayed to Phra Seub Nakhasathien, a last desperate effort, but even the martyr couldn't save them in the end.

  "We couldn't save everything," Kanya murmurs, seeming to read his thoughts.

  "We couldn't save even one thing." Jaidee lets his fingers slide along the grooves where the ivory beetle did its work. "The farang have so much to answer for, and yet still Akkarat seeks to treat with them."

  "Not with AgriGen."

  Jaidee smiles bitterly and pulls his hand away from the fallen tree. "No, not with them. But their ilk, nonetheless. Generippers. Calorie men. Even PurCal when the famines are worst. Why else to do we let them squat out on Koh Angrit? In case we need them. In case we fail, and must go begging for their rice and wheat and soy."

  "We have our own generippers, now."

  "Thanks to His Royal Majesty King Rama XII's foresight."

  "And Chaopraya Gi Bu Sen."

  "Chaopraya." Jaidee makes a face. "No one that evil should be graced with such a respectful title."

  Kanya shrugs, but doesn't bait him. Soon the bo tree is behind them. At Srinakharin Bridge they disembark. The smell of food stalls calls to Jaidee. He motions Kanya to follow as he makes his way into a tiny soi. "Somchai says there's a good som tam cart down here. Good clean papayas, he tells me."

  "I'm not hungry," Kanya says.

  "That's why you're always in such a terrible mood."

  "Jaidee. . ." Kanya starts, then stops.

  Jaidee glances back at her, catches the worried expression on her face. "What is it? Come on then."

  "I'm worried about the anchor pads."

  Jaidee shrugs. "Don't be."

  Up ahead, food carts and tables cluster along the walls of the alley, all jammed together. Small bowls of nam plaa prik sit tidily in the centers of the scavenged table planks. "You see? Somchai was right." He finds the salad cart he wants and examines the spices and fruit, starts ordering for both of them. Kanya comes up beside, a compact cloud of dark mood.

  "Two hundred thousand baht is a lot of money for Akkarat to lose," she mutters as Jaidee tells the som tam vendor to add more chiles.

  Jaidee nods thoughtfully as the woman stirs the threads of green papaya into the mix of spices. "It's true. I had no idea there was so much money being made out there."

  It's enough to finance a new lab for generip research, or put five hundred white shirts on inspection in the tilapia farms of Thonburi. . . He shakes his head. And this was just one raid. It's amazing to him.

  There are times when he thinks he understands how the world works, and then, every so often, he lifts the lid of some new part of the divine city and finds roaches scuttling where he never expected. Something new, indeed.

  He goes to the next food cart, stacked with trays of chile-laden pork and RedStar bamboo tips. Fried snakehead plaa, battered and crisp, pulled from the Chao Phraya River that day. He orders more food. Enough for both of them, and Sato for drinking. He settles at an open table as the food is brought out.

  Teetering on a bamboo stool at the end of his day, with rice beer warming his belly, Jaidee can't help smiling at his dour subordinate.

  As usual, even with good food before her, Kanya remains herself. "Khun Bhirombhakdi was complaining about you at headquarters," she says. "He said he would go to General Pracha, and have your smiling lips ripped off."

  Jaidee scoops chiles into his mouth. "I'm not afraid of him."

  "The anchor pads were supposed to be his territory. His protection racket, his bribe money."

  "First you worry about Trade, now you worry about Bhirombhakdi. That old man is afraid of his own shadow. He makes his wife taste every dish for him to make sure he won't get blister rust." He shakes his head. "Stop being so sour. You should smile more. Laugh a little. Here, drink this." Jaidee pours more Sato for his lieutenant. "We used to call our country the Land of Smiles." Jaidee demonstrates. "And there you sit, sad-faced, as though you are eating limes all day."

  "Perhaps we had more to smile about, then."

  "Well, that might be true." Jaidee sets his Sato back on the splintered tabletop and stares at it thoughtfully. "We must have done something terrible in our previous lives to have earned these ones. It's the only thing I can think of that explains it all."

  Kanya sighs. "I sometimes see my grandmother's spirit, wandering around the chedi near my hous
e. She told me one time that she couldn't reincarnate until we made a better place for her to arrive."

  "Another of the Contraction phii? How did she find you? Wasn't she Isaan people, too?"

  "She found me anyway." Kanya shrugs. "She is very unhappy with me."

  "Yes, well, I suppose we'll be unhappy, too."

  Jaidee has seen these ghosts as well, walking the boulevards sometimes, sitting in the trees. Phii are everywhere, now. Too many to count. He has seen them in the graveyards and leaning against the bones of riddled bo trees, all of them looking at him with some irritation.

  Mediums all speak of how crazy with frustration the phii are, how they cannot reincarnate and thus linger, like a great mass of people at Hualamphong Station hoping for a train ride down to the beaches. All of them waiting for a reincarnation that they cannot have because none of them deserve the suffering of this particular world.

  Monks like Ajahn Suthep say this is nonsense. He sells amulets to ward off these phii and says that they are nothing but hungry ghosts, created by the unnatural death of eating from blister rust-tainted vegetables. Anyone can go to his shrine and make a donation, or else go to the Erawan shrine and make an offering to Brahma—perhaps have the temple dancers perform for a little while—and buy a hope that the spirits may be put to rest to travel on to their next incarnation. It is possible to hope for such things.

  Still, the ghosts are all around. Everyone agrees on that. The victims of AgriGen and PurCal and all their ilk.

  Jaidee says, "I wouldn't take it personally, about your grandmother. On the full moon, I've seen the phii crowding the roads around the Environment Ministry, too. Many dozens of them." He smiles sadly. "It's really impossible to fix, I think. When I think about Niwat and Surat growing up with this. . ." He takes a breath, fighting back more emotion than he cares to show before Kanya. Takes another drink. "Anyway, the fight is good. I just wish we could get hold of some AgriGen or PurCal executives and throttle them. Maybe give them a taste of blister rust AG134.s. Then my life would be complete. I could die happy."

  "You probably won't reincarnate, either," Kanya observes. "You're too good to end up in this hell again."