The Windup Girl

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  "If I'm lucky I'll be reborn in Des Moines, and bomb their generip labs."

  "If only."

  Jaidee looks up at Kanya's tone. "What's bothering you? Why so sad? We'll both be reborn somewhere beautiful, I'm sure. Both of us. Think of all the merit we earned just last night. I thought those Customs heeya were going to shit themselves when we burned the cargo."

  Kanya makes a bitter face. "They've probably never met a white shirt they couldn't bribe."

  And as quick as that, she kills his attempt at good humor. No wonder no one likes her at the Ministry. "No. That's true. Everyone takes bribes, now. It's not like before. People don't remember the worst times. They aren't afraid the way they were before."

  "And now you dive down the cobra's throat with Trade." Kanya says, "After the December 12coup, it seems as if General Pracha and Minister Akkarat are always circling one another, looking for a new excuse to fight. They never finished their feud, and now you do something to further anger Akkarat. It makes things unstable."

  "Well, I was always too jai rawn for my own good. Chaya complains about it, too. That's why I keep you around. I wouldn't worry about Akkarat, though. He'll spit for a while, then he'll calm down. He may not like it, but General Pracha has too many allies in the Army for another coup attempt. With Prime Minister Surawong dead, Akkarat really has nothing left. He's isolated. Without megodonts and tanks to back up his threats, Akkarat may be rich, but he is a paper tiger. This is a good lesson for him."

  "He's dangerous."

  Jaidee looks at her seriously. "So are cobras. So are megodonts. So is cibiscosis. We're surrounded by dangers. Akkarat. . ." Jaidee shrugs. "Anyway, it's already done. There's nothing you can do to change it. Why worry now? Mai pen rai. Never mind."

  "Still, you should be careful."

  "You're thinking of that man at the anchor pads? The one Somchai saw? Did he frighten you?"

  Kanya shrugs. "No."

  "I'm surprised. He frightened me." Jaidee watches Kanya, wondering how much he should say, how much he should reveal that he knows about the world around him. "I have a very bad feeling about him."

  "Really?" Kanya looks distressed. "You're frightened? Of one stupid man?"

  Jaidee shakes his head. "Not afraid so that I will run and hide behind Chaya's pha sin, but still, I've seen him before."

  "You didn't tell me."

  "I wasn't sure at first. Now I am. I think he is with Trade." He pauses, testing. "I think they are hunting me again. Maybe considering another assassination. What do you think of that?"

  "They wouldn't dare touch you. Her Majesty the Queen has spoken in your favor."

  Jaidee touches his neck where the old spring gun scar still shows light on his dark skin. "Not even after what I did to them at the anchor pads?"

  Kanya bridles. "I'll assign a bodyguard."

  Jaidee laughs at her fierceness and is warmed and reassured by it. "You're a good girl, but I'd be a fool to take a bodyguard. Then everyone would know that I can be frightened. That's not the way of a tiger. Here, eat this." He scoops more snake head plaa onto Kanya's plate.

  "I'm full."

  "Don't be so polite. Eat."

  "You should have a bodyguard. Please."

  "I'll trust you to guard my back. You should be more than enough."

  Kanya flinches. Jaidee hides a smile at her discomfort. Ahh, Kanya, he thinks. We all have choices we must face in life. I've made mine. But you have your own kamma. He speaks gently. "Go on and eat more, you look skinny. How will you find a special friend if you're only bones?"

  Kanya pushes her plate away. "I don't eat much these days, it seems."

  "People are starving everywhere, and you can't eat."

  Kanya makes a face and scoops a sliver of fish onto her spoon.

  Jaidee shakes his head. He sets down his own fork and spoon. "What is it? You're even more glum than usual. I feel like we've just put one of our brothers in a funeral urn. What's bothering you?"

  "It's nothing. Really. Just not hungry."

  "Speak up, Lieutenant. I want straight talk from you. It's an order. You're a good officer. I can't stand having your sad face. I don't like any of my people to be sad-faced, even the ones from Isaan."

  Kanya grimaces. Jaidee watches as his lieutenant mulls what she will say. He wonders if he was ever so tactful as this young woman. He doubts it. He has always been too brash, too easily angered. Not like Kanya, dour Kanya, all jai yen all the time. Not sanuk at all, but certainly jai yen.

  He waits, thinking that at last he will hear her story, her full story in all its painful humanity, but when Kanya finally summons the words, she surprises him. She speaks in a near whisper. Almost too embarrassed to form the words at all.

  "Some of the men complain that you don't take enough gifts of goodwill."

  "What?" Jaidee sits back, goggles at her. "We won't participate in that sort of thing. We're different than the rest. And proud of it."

  Kanya nods readily. "And the newspapers and whisper sheets love you for it. And the people love you for it."

  "But?"

  Her miserable look returns. "But you don't get promoted anymore, and the men who are loyal to you get no help from your patronage, and they lose heart."

  "But look what we accomplish!" Jaidee taps the sack of money between his legs that they confiscated off the clipper ship. "They all know that if they have a need, they will be helped. We have more than enough for anyone in need."

  Kanya looks down at the table and mumbles, "Some say you like to keep the money."

  "What?" Jaidee stares at her, dumbstruck. "Do you think this?"

  Kanya shrugs miserably. "Of course not."

  Jaidee shakes his head, apologizing. "No, of course you wouldn't. You've been a good girl. You've done great things here." He smiles at his lieutenant, almost overwhelmed with compassion for the young woman who came to him starving, idolizing him and his years as a champion, wanting so much to emulate him.

  "I do what I can to squash the rumors, but. . ." Kanya shrugs again, miserable. "Cadets say that being under Captain Jaidee is like starving of akah worms. You work and work and get skinnier and skinnier. These are good boys we have, but they can't help but feel ashamed when they have old uniforms and their comrades have new crisp ones. When they ride a bicycle two at a time, and their comrades ride kink-spring scooters."

  Jaidee sighs. "I remember a time when the white shirts were loved."

  "Everyone needs to eat."

  Jaidee sighs again. He pulls the satchel out from between his legs and shoves it across to Kanya. "Take the money. Divide it equally amongst them. For their bravery and hard work yesterday."

  She looks at him surprised. "You're sure?"

  Jaidee shrugs and smiles, hiding his own disappointment, knowing that this is the best way, and yet saddened immeasurably by it. "Why not? They're good boys, as you say. And it's not as though the farang and the Ministry of Trade aren't reeling at this very moment. They did good work."

  Kanya wais deep respect, ducking her head low and raising her pressed palms to her forehead.

  "Oh, stop that nonsense." Jaidee pours more Sato into Kanya's glass, finishing the bottle. "Mai pen rai. Never mind. These are small things. Tomorrow we'll have new battles to fight. And we'll need good loyal boys to follow us. How will we ever overcome the AgriGens and PurCals of the world if we don't feed our friends?"

  8

  "I lost 30,000."

  "Fifty," Otto mutters.

  Lucy Nguyen stares at the ceiling. "One-Eighty Five? Six?"

  "Four hundred." Quoile Napier sets his warm glass of Sato down on the low table. "I lost four hundred thousand blue bills on Carlyle's goddamn dirigible."

  The entire table falls silent, stunned. "Christ." Lucy sits up, bleary with drink in the middle of the afternoon. "What were you smuggling in, cibi-resistant seedstock?"

  The conversationalists sprawl on the veranda of Sir Francis Drake's, all five together, the "Farang Phalanx" as Lucy has
styled them, all of them staring out at the dry season blast furnace and drinking themselves into a stupor.

  Anderson reclines with them, half-listening to their slurred complaints as he turns the problem of the ngaw's origins over in his mind. He's got another bag of the fruit between his feet, and he can't help thinking that the answer to his puzzle lies close, if only he had sufficient ingenuity to suss it out. He drinks warm Khmer whiskey and ponders.

  Ngaw: apparently impervious to blister rust and cibiscosis even when directly exposed; obviously resistant to Nippon genehack weevil and leafcurl, or it could never have grown. A perfect product. The fruit of access to different genetic material than AgriGen and the rest of the calorie companies use for their generipping.

  Somewhere in this country a seedbank is hidden. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of carefully preserved seeds, a treasure trove of biological diversity. Infinite chains of DNA, each with their own potential uses. And from this gold mine, the Thais are extracting answers to their knottiest challenges of survival. With access to the Thai seedbank, Des Moines could mine genetic code for generations, beat back plague mutations. Stay alive a little longer.

  Anderson shifts in his seat, stifling irritation, wiping away sweat. He's so close. Nightshades have been reborn, and now ngaw. And Gibbons is running loose in Southeast Asia. If it weren't for that illegal windup girl he wouldn't even know about Gibbons. The Kingdom has been singularly successful at maintaining its operational security. If he could just ascertain the seedbank's location, a raid might even be possible. . . They've learned since Finland.

  Beyond the veranda, nothing with any intelligence is moving. Tantalizing beads of sweat run down Lucy's neck and soak her shirt as she complains about the state of the coal war with the Vietnamese. She can't hunt for jade if the Army is busy shooting anything that moves. Quoile's sideburns are matted. No breezes blow.

  Out in the street, rickshaw men huddle in thin pools of shade. Their bones and joints protrude from bare taut skin, skeletons with flesh stretched tight on their frames. At this time of day they only sullenly emerge from shadow when they are called, and then only for double fee.

  The entire ramshackle structure of the bar is scabbed to the outer wall of a wrecked Expansion tower. A hand-painted sign leans against one of the stairs up to the veranda, with the scrawled words: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE'S. The sign is a recent addition, relative to the decay and wreckage around it, painted by a handful of farang determined to name their surroundings. The fools who did the naming long ago disappeared up country, either swallowed in the jungle as blister rust rewrites swept over them, or torn apart in the tangle of war lines over coal and jade. Still, the sign remains, either because it amuses the owner, who has taken the name on as a nickname, or because no one can summon the energy to paint over it. In the meantime, it peels in the heat.

  Regardless of provenance, Drake's is perfectly placed between the seawall shipping locks and the factories. Its dilapidated wreckage faces off across from the Victory Hotel so the Farang Phalanx can drink itself stupid and watch to see if any new foreigners of interest have washed up on the shores.

  There are other, lower, dives for those sailors who manage to pass Customs and quarantine and washdown, but it is here, with the snapping white tablecloths of the Victory on one side of the cobbled street, and Sir Francis' bamboo slum on the other, where those foreigners who settle in Bangkok for any length of time eventually sink.

  "What were you shipping?" Lucy asks again, prodding Quoile to explain his losses.

  Quoile leans forward and lowers his voice, encouraging all of them to rouse themselves. "Saffron. From India."

  A pause, and then Cobb laughs. "Good airlift product. I should have thought of that."

  "Ideal for a dirigible. Low weight. More profitable than opium on the uplift," Quoile says. "The Kingdom still hasn't figured out how to crack the seedstock, and all the politicians and generals want it for their household kitchens. Lots of face, if they can get it. I had solid pre-orders. I was going to be rich. Unbelievably rich."

  "Are you ruined then?"

  "Maybe not. I'm negotiating with Sri Ganesha Insurance, they might cover some." Quoile shrugs. "Well, eighty percent. But all the bribes to get it into the country? All the payoffs to the Customs agents?" He makes a face. "That's a complete loss. Still, I might get out with my skin.

  "In a way, I got lucky. The shipment only falls under insurance guidelines because it was still on Carlyle's dirigible. I ought to toast that damn pilot for getting himself drowned in the ocean. If they'd unloaded the cargo and the white shirts had burned it on the ground, it would have been classified contraband. Then I'd be out there on the street with the fa' gan beggars and the yellow cards."

  Otto scowls. "That's about the only thing to be said for Carlyle. If he wasn't so interested in touching politics, none of this would have happened."

  Quoile shrugs. "We don't know that."

  "It's damn certain," Lucy interjects. "Carlyle spends half his energy complaining about the white shirts and the other half cozying up with Akkarat. It's a message from General Pracha to Carlyle and the Trade Ministry. We're just the carrier pigeons."

  "Carrier pigeons are extinct."

  "You think we won't be? General Pracha would be happy to throw every one of us into Khlong Prem prison if he thought it would send the right message to Akkarat." Her gaze swings to Anderson. "You're awfully quiet, Lake. You didn't lose anything at all?"

  Anderson stirs himself. "Manufacturing materials. Replacement parts for my line. Probably a hundred fifty thousand blue bills. My secretary's still evaluating the damage." He glances at Quoile. "Our stuff was on the ground. No insurance."

  The memory of his conversation with Hock Seng is still fresh. Hock Seng first played at denial, complaining of incompetence at the anchor pads, before finally confessing that everything was lost, and that he had failed to pay all the bribe money in the first place. An ugly confessional, almost hysterical, the old man terrified of losing his job and Anderson pressing him further and further into his fear, humiliating him and shouting at him, making the old man cower, making a point of his displeasure. Still, he can't help wondering if the lesson has been learned, or if Hock Seng will try to be tricky again. Anderson grimaces. If the old man didn't free up so much of Anderson's time for more important work, he'd ship the old bastard back to the yellow card towers.

  "I told you this was a stupid place to run a factory," Lucy says.

  "The Japanese do it."

  "Only because they have special arrangements with the palace."

  "The Chaozhou Chinese do just fine, too."

  Lucy makes a face. "They've been here for generations. Practically Thai at this point. We're more like yellow cards than Chaozhou, if you want to make comparisons. A smart farang knows not to keep too much invested in this place. The ground's always shifting. It's too damn easy to lose everything in a crackdown. Or another coup."

  "We all work with the hands we're dealt." Anderson shrugs. "Anyway, Yates chose the site."

  "I told Yates it was stupid, too."

  Anderson recalls Yates, eyes bright with the possibilities of a new global economy. "Maybe not stupid. But definitely an idealist." He finishes his drink. The bar owner is nowhere in sight. He waves for the waiters, who all ignore him. One of them, at least, is asleep, standing.

  "You're not worried you'll get yanked the way Yates did?" Lucy asks.

  Anderson shrugs. "Wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen. It's damn hot." He touches his sunburned nose. "I'm more of a northern wastes sort."

  Nguyen and Quoile, dark-skinned both, laugh at that, but Otto just nods grimly, his own peeling nose a testament to his inability to adapt to the burn of the equatorial sun.

  Lucy pulls out a pipe and pushes a couple of flies away before setting down her smoking tools and an accompanying ball of opium. The flies hobble away, but don't take to the air. Even the bugs seem stunned by the heat. Down an alley, near the rubble of
an old Expansion tower, children are playing next to a freshwater pump. Lucy watches them as she tamps her pipe. "Christ, I wish I was a kid again."

  Everyone seems to have lost the energy for conversation. Anderson pulls the sack of ngaw out from between his feet. Takes one out and peels it. Pries the translucent fruit from the ngaw's interior and tosses the hairy hollow rind on the table. Pops the fruit into his mouth.

  Otto cocks his head, curious. "What's that you've got?"

  Anderson digs more out of his sack, distributes them. "Not sure. Thais call them ngaw."

  Lucy stops tamping her pipe. "I've seen them. They're all over the market. They don't have blister rust?"

  Anderson shakes his head. "Not so far. The lady who sold them said they were clean. Had the certificates."

  Everyone laughs, but Anderson shrugs off their cynicism. "I let them sit for a week. Nothing. They're cleaner than U-Tex."

  The others follow his lead and eat their own fruits. Eyes widen. Smiles appear. Anderson opens the sack wide and sets it on the table. "Go ahead. I've been eating too many as it is."

  They all rifle the bag. A pile of rinds grows in the center of the table. Quoile chews thoughtfully. "It sort of reminds me of lychee."

  "Oh?" Anderson controls his interest. "Never heard of it."

  "Sure. I had a drink that tasted a bit like it. Last time I was in India. Kolkata. A PurCal sales rep took me to one of his restaurants, when I first started looking at shipping saffron."

  "So you think it's this. . . leechee?"

  "Could be. Lychee was what he called the drink. Might not have been the fruit at all."

  "If it's a PurCal product, I don't see how it would show up here," Lucy says. "These should all be out on Koh Angrit, under quarantine while the Environment Ministry finds ten thousand different ways to tax the thing." She spits the pit into her palm and tosses it off the balcony into the street. "I'm seeing these everywhere. They've got to be local." She reaches into the sack and takes another. "You know who might know about them, though. . ." She leans back and calls into the dimness of the bar. "Hagg! You still there? You awake back in there?"