The Windup Girl

by Paolo Bacigalupi

The clouded scent of fish frying washes over them, greasy and cloying. A night market, full of people dining by candlelight, hunched over noodles and skewers of octopus and plates of laap. Anderson stifles an urge to raise the rickshaw's rain hood and close the privacy curtain, to hide the evidence of her company. Woks flame brightly with the telltale green sparkles of Environment Ministry-taxed methane. The sweat sheen on the people's dark skins is barely lit. At their feet, cheshires circle, alert for charity scraps and opportunities for theft.

  A cheshire shadow bleeds across the darkness, causing Lao Gu to swerve. He curses softly in his own language. Emiko laughs, a small surprised sound as she claps her hands in delight. Lao Gu glares back at her.

  "You like cheshires?" Anderson asks.

  Emiko looks at him in surprise. "You do not?"

  "Back home, we can't kill them fast enough," he says. "Even Grahamites offer blue bills for their skins. Probably the only thing they've ever done that I agreed with."

  "Mmm, yes." Emiko's brow wrinkles thoughtfully. "They are too much improved for this world, I think. A natural bird has so little chance, now." She smiles slightly. "Just think if they had made New People first."

  Is it mischief in her eyes? Or melancholy?

  "What do you think would have happened?" Anderson asks.

  Emiko doesn't meet his gaze, looks out instead at the circling cats amongst the diners. "Generippers learned too much from cheshires."

  She doesn't say anything else, but Anderson can guess what's in her mind. If her kind had come first, before the generippers knew better, she would not have been made sterile. She would not have the signature tick-tock motions that make her so physically obvious. She might have even been designed as well as the military windups now operating in Vietnam—deadly and fearless. Without the lesson of the cheshires, Emiko might have had the opportunity to supplant the human species entirely with her own improved version. Instead, she is a genetic dead end. Doomed to a single life cycle, just like SoyPRO and TotalNutrient Wheat.

  Another shadow cat bolts across the street, shimmering and shading through darkness. A high-tech homage to Lewis Carroll, a few dirigible and clipper ship rides, and suddenly entire classes of animals are wiped out, unequipped to fight an invisible threat.

  "We would have realized our mistake," Anderson observes.

  "Yes. Of course. But perhaps not soon enough." She changes the subject abruptly. Nods at a temple rising against the night skyline. "It's very pretty, yes? You like their temples?"

  Anderson wonders if she has changed the subject to avoid conflict and argument, or if she is actually afraid that he will successfully refute her fantasy. He studies the rising chedi and bot of the temple. "It's a lot nicer than what the Grahamites are building back home."

  "Grahamites." She makes a face. "So concerned with niche and nature. So focused on their Noah's ark, after the flood has already happened."

  Anderson thinks of Hagg, sweating and distressed at the destruction caused by ivory beetle. "If they could, they'd keep us all on our own continents."

  "It is impossible, I think. People like to expand. To fill new niches."

  The temple's golden filigree shines dully under the moon. The world truly is shrinking again. A few dirigible and clipper rides and Anderson clatters through darkened streets on the far side of the planet. It's astounding. In his grandparents' time, even the commute between an old Expansion suburb and a city center was impossible. His grandparents used to tell stories of exploring abandoned suburbs, scavenging for the scrap and leavings of whole sprawling neighborhoods that were destroyed in the petroleum Contraction. To travel ten miles had been a great journey for them, and now look at him. . .

  Ahead of them, white uniforms materialize at the mouth of an alley.

  Emiko blanches and leans close. "Hold me."

  Anderson tries to shake her off, but she clings. The white shirts have stopped, are watching them approach. The windup clings more tightly. Anderson fights an urge to shove her from the rickshaw and flee. This is the last thing he needs.

  She whispers, "I am against quarantine now, like Nippon genehack weevil. If they see my movement, they will know. They will mulch me." She nestles close. "I am sorry. Please." Her eyes beg.

  In a sudden rush of pity he wraps his arms around her, enfolding her in whatever protection a calorie man can offer a piece of illegal Japanese trash. The Ministry men call out to them, smiling. Anderson smiles back and gives a bob of the head, even as his skin prickles. The white shirts' eyes linger. One of them smiles and says something to the other as he twirls the baton that dangles from his wrist. Emiko shivers uncontrollably beside Anderson, her smile a forced mask. Anderson pulls her closer.

  Please don't ask for a bribe. Not this time. Please.

  They slide past.

  Behind them, the white shirts start laughing, either about the farang and the girl clutched together or about something else completely unrelated and it doesn't matter really because they are disappearing into the distance and he and Emiko are safe again.

  She draws away, shaking. "Thank you," she whispers. "I was careless to come out. Stupid." She pushes her hair away from her face and looks back. The Ministry men are quickly receding. Her fists clench. "Stupid girl," she murmurs. "You are not a cheshire who disappears as you please." She shakes her head, angry, driving home her own lesson. "Stupid. Stupid. Stupid."

  Anderson watches, transfixed. Emiko is adapted for a different sort of world, not this brutal sweltering place. The city will swallow her eventually. It's obvious.

  She becomes aware of his gaze. Shares a small melancholy smile. "Nothing lasts forever, I think."

  "No." Anderson's throat is tight.

  They stare at one another. Her blouse has fallen open again, showing the line of her throat, the inner curve of her breasts. She doesn't move to hide herself, just looks back at him, solemn. Is it deliberate? Does she mean to encourage him? Or is it simply her nature to entice? Perhaps she cannot help herself at all. A set of instincts as ingrained in her DNA as the cheshire's clever stalking of birds. Anderson leans close, unsure.

  Emiko doesn't pull away, moves instead to meet him. Her lips are soft. Anderson runs his hand up her hip, pushes her blouse open and quests inside. She sighs and presses closer, her lips opening to him. Does she wish this? Or only acquiesce? Is she even capable of refusing? Her breasts press against him. Her hands slip down his body. He's shaking. Trembling like a sixteen-year-old boy. Did the geneticists embed her DNA with pheromones? Her body is intoxicating.

  Mindless of the street, of Lao Gu, of everything, he pulls her to him, running his hand up to cup her breast, to hold her perfect flesh.

  The windup girl's heart speeds like a hummingbird's under his palm.

  11

  Jaidee has a certain respect for the Chaozhou Chinese. Their factories are large and well-run. They have generations rooted in the Kingdom, and they are intensely loyal to Her Majesty the Child Queen. They are utterly unlike the pathetic Chinese refugees who have flooded in from Malaya, fleeing to his country in hopes of succor after they alienated the natives of their own. If the Malayan Chinese had been half as clever as the Chaozhou, they would have converted to Islam generations ago, and woven themselves fully into the tapestry of that society.

  Instead, the Chinese of Malacca and Penang and the Western Coast arrogantly held themselves apart, thinking the rising tide of fundamentalism would not affect them. And now they come begging to the Kingdom, hoping that their Chaozhou cousins will aid them when they were not clever enough to help themselves.

  The Chaozhou are smart, where the Malayan Chinese are stupid. They are practically Thai themselves. They speak Thai. They took Thai names. They may have Chinese roots somewhere in their distant past, but they are Thai. And they are loyal. Which, when Jaidee thinks about it, is more than can be said about some of his own race, certainly more than can be said of Akkarat and his brood at the Trade Ministry.

  So Jaidee feels a certain sympathy
when a Chaozhou businessman in a long white shirt, loose cotton trousers and sandals strides back and forth in front of him on the factory floor, complaining that his factory has been shut down because some coal ration has been exceeded, when he paid every white shirt who came through his door, and that Jaidee has no right—no right—to shut down the entire factory.

  Jaidee even has sympathy when the man calls him a turtle's egg—which is certainly an annoying thing to hear, knowing that it is a terrible insult in Chinese. Yet still, he remains tolerant of the emotional explosions on the part of this businessman. It's in the Chinese nature to be a bit hot-hearted. They are given to explosions of emotion that a Thai would never indulge in.

  All in all, Jaidee has sympathy for the man.

  But he doesn't have sympathy for a man who shoves a finger into his chest repeatedly while he curses, and so Jaidee is sitting atop that man's chest now—with a black baton over his windpipe—explaining the finer points of respect due a white shirt.

  "You seem to have mistaken me for another Ministry man," Jaidee observes.

  The man gurgles and tries to get free, but the baton crushing his throat prevents him. Jaidee watches him carefully. "You of course understand that we have coal rationing because we are a city underwater. Your carbon allocation was exceeded many months ago."

  "Ghghhaha."

  Jaidee considers the response. Shakes his head sadly. "No. I think that we cannot allow it to continue. King Rama XII decreed, and Her Royal Majesty the Child Queen now supports that we shall never abandon Krung Thep to the invasions of the rising sea. We will not flee from our City of Divine Beings the way the cowards of Ayutthaya fled from the Burmese. The ocean is not some marching army. Once we accede to the waters, we will never again throw it out." He regards the sweating Chinese man. "And so we must all do our part. We must all fight together, like the villagers of Bang Rajan, to keep this invader from our streets, don't you think?"

  "Gghhghghhghhhh. . ."

  "Good." Jaidee smiles. "I'm glad we're making progress."

  Someone clears his throat.

  Jaidee looks up, stifling his annoyance. "Yes?"

  A young private in new whites stands respectfully, waiting. "Khun Jaidee" He wais, lowering his head to his pressed palms. Holds the pose. "I am very sorry for my interruption."

  "Yes?"

  "Chao Khun General Pracha requests your presence."

  "I'm busy," Jaidee says. "Our friend here finally seems willing to communicate with a cool heart and a reasonable demeanor." He smiles kindly down at the businessman.

  The boy says, "I was to tell you. . . I was told to, to. . ."

  "Go ahead."

  "To tell you that you should get your, your – so sorry – 'glory-seeking ass' – so sorry – back to the Ministry. Immediately if not before." He winces at the words. "If you have no cycle you were supposed to take mine."

  Jaidee grimaces. "Ah. Yes. Well then." He gets up off the businessman. Nods to Kanya. "Lieutenant? Perhaps you can reason with our friend here?"

  Kanya makes a face of puzzlement. "Is something wrong?"

  "It seems Pracha is finally ready to rant and rave at me."

  "Should I come with you?" Kanya glances at the businessman. "This lizard can wait for another day."

  Jaidee grins at her concern. "Don't worry about me. Finish here. I'll let you know whether we're being exiled south to guard yellow card internments for the rest of our careers when you get back."

  As they head for the door, the businessman musters new bravery. "I'll have your head for this, heeya!"

  The sound of Kanya's club connecting and a yelp are the last things Jaidee hears as he exits the factory.

  Outside, the sun glares down. He's already sweating from the exertion of working on the businessman, and the sun burns uncomfortably. He stands under the shade of a coconut palm until the messenger can bring the bike around.

  The boy eyes Jaidee's sweating face with concern. "You wish to rest?"

  Jaidee laughs. "Don't worry about me, I'm just getting old. That heeya was a troublesome one, and I'm not the fighter I used to be. In the cool season I wouldn't be sweating so."

  "You won a lot of fights."

  "Some." Jaidee grins. "And I trained in weather hotter than this."

  "Your lieutenant could do such work," the boy says. "No need for you to work so hard."

  Jaidee wipes his brow and shakes his head. "And then what would my men think? That I'm lazy."

  The boy gasps. "No one would think such a thing of you. Never!"

  "When you're a captain, you'll understand better." Jaidee smiles indulgently. "Men are loyal when you lead from the front. I won't have a man wasting his time winding a crank fan for me, or waving a palm frond just to keep me comfortable like those heeya in the Trade Ministry. I may lead, but we are all brothers. When you're a captain, promise me you'll do the same."

  The boy's eyes shine. He wais again. "Yes, Khun. I won't forget. Thank you!"

  "Good boy." Jaidee swings his leg over the boy's bike. "When Lieutenant Kanya is finished here, she'll give you a ride back on our tandem."

  He steers out into traffic. In the hot season, without rain, not many except the insane or the motivated are out in the direct heat, but covered arches and paths hide markets full of vegetables and cooking implements and clothing.

  At Thanon Na Phralan, Jaidee takes his hands off the handlebars to wai to the City Pillar Shrine as he passes, whispering a prayer for the safety of the spiritual heart of Bangkok. It is the place where King Rama XII first announced that they would not abandon the city to the rising seas. Now, the sound of monks chanting for the city's survival filters out onto the street, filling Jaidee with a sense of peace. He raises his hands to his forehead three times, one of a river of other riders who all do the same.

  Fifteen minutes later, the Environment Ministry appears, a series of buildings, red-tiled, with steeply sloping roofs peering out of bamboo thickets and teak and rain trees. High white walls and Garuda and Singha images guard the Ministry's perimeter, stained with old rain marks and fringed with growing ferns and mosses.

  Jaidee has seen the compound from the air, one of a handful taken up for a dirigible overflight of the city when Chaiyanuchit still ran the Ministry and white shirt influence was absolute, when the plagues that swept the earth were killing crops at such a fantastic rate that no one knew if anything at all would survive.

  Chaiyanuchit remembered the beginning of the plagues. Not many could claim that. And when Jaidee was just a young draftee, he was lucky enough to work in the man's office, bringing dispatches.

  Chaiyanuchit understood what was at stake, and what had to be done. When the borders needed closing, when ministries needed isolating, when Phuket and Chiang Mai needed razing, he did not hesitate. When jungle blooms exploded in the north, he burned and burned and burned, and when he took to the sky in His Majesty the King's dirigible, Jaidee was blessed to ride with him.

  By then, they were only mopping up. AgriGen and PurCal and the rest were shipping their plague-resistant seeds and demanding exorbitant profits, and patriotic generippers were already working to crack the code of the calorie companies' products, fighting to keep the Kingdom fed as Burma and the Vietnamese and the Khmers all fell. AgriGen and its ilk were threatening embargo over intellectual property infringement, but the Thai Kingdom was still alive. Against all odds, they were alive. As others were crushed under the calorie companies' heels, the Kingdom stood strong.

  Embargo! Chaiyanuchit had laughed. Embargo is precisely what we want! We do not wish to interact with their outside world at all.

  And so the walls had gone up—those that the oil collapse had not already created, those that had not been raised against civil war and starving refugees—a final set of barriers to protect the Kingdom from the onslaughts of the outside world.

  As a young inductee Jaidee had been astounded at the hive of activity that was the Environment Ministry. White shirts rushing from office to street as
they tried to maintain tabs on thousands of hazards. In no other ministry was the sense of urgency so acute. Plagues waited for no one. A single genehack weevil found in an outlying district meant a response time counted in hours, white shirts on a kink-spring train rushing across the countryside to the epicenter.

  And at every turn the Ministry's purview was expanding. The plagues were but the latest insult to the Kingdom's survival. First came the rising sea levels, the need to construct the dikes and levees. And then came the oversight of power contracts and trading in pollution credits and climate infractions. The white shirts took over the licensing of methane capture and production. Then there was the monitoring of fishery health and toxin accumulations in the Kingdom's final bastion of calorie support (a blessing that the farang calorie companies thought as land-locked people and had only desultorily attacked fishing stocks). And there was the tracking of human health and viruses and bacteria: H7V9; cibiscoscosis111.b, c, d; fa' gan fringe; bitter water mussels, and their viral mutations that jumped so easily from saltwater to dry land; blister rust. . . There was no end to the duties of the Ministry.

  Jaidee passes a woman selling bananas. He can't resist hopping off his bike to buy one. It's a new varietal from the Ministry's rapid prototyping unit. Fast growing, resistant to makmak mites with their tiny black eggs that sicken banana flowers before they can hope to grow. He peels the banana and eats it greedily as he pushes his bike along, wishing he could take the time to have a real snack. He discards the peel beside the bulk of a rain tree.

  All life produces waste. The act of living produces costs, hazards and disposal questions, and so the Ministry has found itself in the center of all life, mitigating, guiding and policing the detritus of the average person along with investigating the infractions of the greedy and short-sighted, the ones who wish to make quick profits and trade on others' lives for it.

  The symbol for the Environment Ministry is the eye of a tortoise, for the long view—the understanding that nothing comes cheap or quickly without a hidden cost. And if others call them the Turtle Ministry, and if the Chaozhou Chinese now curse white shirts as turtle's eggs because they are not allowed to manufacture as many kink-spring scooters as they would like, so be it. If the farang make fun of the tortoise for its slow pace, so be it. The Environment Ministry has ensured that the Kingdom endures, and Jaidee can only stand in awe of its past glories.