The Windup Girl

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  By the time night falls, they are still far from his destination. SpringLife's stolen money weighs heavy on him. At times he fears that Mai will suddenly turn on him and report him to the white shirts in return for a share of the cash he carries. At other times, he mistakes her for a daughter mouth, and wishes he could protect her from everything that is coming.

  I'm going mad, he thinks. To mistake some silly Thai girl for my own.

  And yet still he trusts the slight girl, the child of fish farmers, who previously proved so obedient when he still had a scrap of managerial authority, and who he prays will not turn on him now that he is a target.

  Darkness falls completely.

  "Why are you so frightened?" Mai asks.

  Hock Seng shrugs. She does not—cannot—understand the complexities swirling around them. For her it is a game. Frightening, to be sure, but still a game.

  "When the brown people turned on the yellow people in Malaya, it was like this. All at once, everything was different. The religious fanatics came with their green headbands and their machetes. . ." He shrugs. "The more careful we are, the better."

  He peers out into the street from their hiding place and ducks back. A white shirt is pasting up another image of the Tiger of Bangkok, edged in black. Jaidee Rojjanasukchai. How quickly he falls from grace, and then rises like a bird to sainthood. Hock Seng grimaces. A lesson of politics.

  The white shirt moves on. Hock Seng scans the street again. People are starting to come out, encouraged by the relative cool of the evening. They walk through the humid darkness, coming out to do their shopping, to find a meal, to locate a favorite som tam cart. White shirts glow green under approved-burn methane. They move in teams, hunting like jackals for wounded meat. Small shrines to Jaidee have appeared before store fronts and homes. His image surrounded by flickering candles and draped with marigolds, displaying solidarity and begging for protection against white shirt rage.

  Accusations fill the airwaves on National Radio. General Pracha speaks of the need to protect the Kingdom from those—carefully unnamed—who would topple it. His voice crackles over the people, tinny from hand-cranked radios. Vendors and housewives. Beggars and children. The green of the methane lamps turns skin shimmery, a carnival. But amongst the rustle of sarongs and pha sin and the clank of red and gold megodont handlers, there are always the white shirts, hard eyes looking for an excuse to vent their rage.

  "Go on." Hock Seng prods Mai forward. "See if it is safe."

  A minute later Mai is back, motioning for him, and they are off again, threading through the crowds. Knots of silence warn them when new white shirts are near, fear sending laughing lovers silent, and children running. Heads duck low as the white shirts pass. Hock Seng and Mai work their way past a night market. His eyes rove over candles, frying noodles, cheshire shimmers.

  A shout rises ahead of them. Mai darts forward, scouting. She's back a moment later, tugging at his hand. "Khun. Come quickly. They're distracted." And then they're slipping past a clot of white shirts and the object of their abuse.

  An old woman lies beside her cart, her daughter at her side, clutching a shattered knee. A crowd has gathered as the daughter struggles to drag her mother upright.

  All around, the glass cases that held their ingredients are shattered. Shards glitter in chile sauce, amongst bean sprouts, on lime, like diamonds under the green light of methane. The white shirts stir through the woman's ingredients with their batons.

  "Come Auntie, there must be some more money here. You thought you could bribe white shirts, but you haven't done nearly enough to burn untaxed fuel."

  "Why are you doing this?" the daughter cries. "What have we done to you?"

  The white shirt studies her coldly. "You took us for granted." His baton crashes down on her mother's knee again. The woman shrieks and the daughter cowers.

  The white shirt calls to his men. "Put their methane tank in with the rest. We have three more streets to go." He turns to the watching silent crowd. Hock Seng freezes as the officer's eyes travel across him.

  Don't run. Don't panic. You can pass, as long as you don't speak.

  The white shirt smiles at the watching people. "Tell your friends what you see here. We are not dogs you feed with scraps. We are tigers. Fear us." And then he raises his baton and the crowd scatters, Hock Seng and Mai with them.

  A block later, Hock Seng leans against a wall, panting with the effort of their flight. The city has grown monstrous. Every street holds hazard now.

  Down the alley, a hand-cranked radio crackles with more news. The docks and factories have been shut down. Access to the waterfront is restricted to those with permits.

  Hock Seng suppresses a shiver. It's happening again. The walls are going up and he is stuck inside the city, a rat in a trap. He fights down panic. He planned for this. There are contingencies. But first he has to make it home.

  Bangkok is not Malacca. This time you are prepared.

  Eventually the familiar shacks and smells of the Yaowarat slums surround them. They slip through tight squeezeways. Past the people who do not know him. He forces down another rush of fear. If the white shirts have influenced the slum's godfathers, he could be in danger. He forces the thought away, drags open the door to his hovel, guides Mai inside.

  "You did well." He digs in his bag and hands her a bundle of the stolen money. "If you want more, come back to me tomorrow."

  She stares at the wealth that he has so casually handed her.

  If he were smart, he would strangle her and reduce the chances that she will turn on him for the rest of his savings. He forces down the thought. She has been loyal. He must trust someone. And she is Thai, which is useful when yellow cards are suddenly as disposable as cheshires.

  She takes the money and stuffs it into a pocket.

  "You can find your way from here?" he asks.

  She grins. "I'm not a yellow card. I don't have anything to fear."

  Hock Seng makes himself smile in return, thinking that she does not know how little anyone cares to separate wheat from chaff, when all anyone wants to do is burn a field.

  23

  "Goddamn General Pracha and goddamn white shirts!"

  Carlyle pounds the railing of the apartment. He's unshaven and unbathed. He hasn't been back to the Victory in a week, thanks to the lockdown of the farang district. His clothing is beginning to show the wear of the tropics.

  "They've got the anchor pads locked down, they've got the locks closed. Banned access to the piers." He turns and comes back inside. Pours himself a drink. "Fucking white shirts."

  Anderson can't help smiling at Carlyle's irritation. "I warned you about poking cobras."

  Carlyle scowls. "It wasn't me. Someone in Trade had a bright idea and went too far. Fucking Jaidee," he fumes. "They should have known better."

  "Was it Akkarat?"

  "He's not that stupid."

  "It doesn't matter, I suppose." Anderson toasts him with warm scotch. "A week of lockdown, and it looks like the white shirts are just getting started."

  Carlyle glowers. "Don't look so satisfied. I know you're hurting, too."

  Anderson sips. "Honestly, I can't say that I care. The factory was useful. Now it's not." He leans forward. "Now I want to know if Akkarat has really done as much groundwork as you claimed." He nods toward the city. "Because it's looking like he's overstretched."

  "And you think that's funny?"

  "I think that if he's isolated, he needs friends. I want you to reach out to him again. Offer him our sincere support in this crisis."

  "You've got a better offer than the one that had him threatening to have you trampled?"

  "The price is the same. The gift is the same." Anderson sips again. "But maybe Akkarat is willing to listen to reason now."

  Carlyle stares out at the green glow of methane lamps. Grimaces. "I'm losing money every day."

  "I thought you had leverage with your pumps."

  "Stop smirking." Carlyle scowls. "You can't
even threaten these bastards. They won't take messengers."

  Anderson smiles slightly. "Well, I don't feel like waiting until the monsoons for the white shirts to come to their senses. Set up a meeting with Akkarat. We can offer him all the help he needs."

  "You think you'll just swim out to Koh Angrit and lead a revolution back in? With what? A couple clerks and shipping captains? Maybe some junior trade rep who sits out there drinking all day and hoping the Kingdom will have a famine and drop its embargoes? Pretty threatening."

  Anderson smiles. "If we come, we'll come from Burma. And no one will notice until its too late." He holds Carlyle's eyes until the man looks away.

  "Same terms?" Carlyle asks. "You're not changing anything?"

  "Access to the Thai seedbank, and a man named Gibbons. That's all."

  "And you'll give what?"

  "What does Akkarat need? Money for bribes? Gold? Diamonds? Jade?" He pauses. "Shock troops."

  "Christ. You're serious about the Burma thing."

  Anderson waves his glass toward the night beyond. "My cover here is blown. I accept that and move forward or I pack up and head back to Des Moines with my tail between my legs. Let's be honest. AgriGen has always played for keeps. Ever since Vincent Hu and Chitra D'Allessa started the company. We're not afraid of a little mess."

  "Like Finland."

  Anderson smiles. "I'm hoping for a better return on investment, this time."

  Carlyle grimaces. "Christ. All right. I'll set up the meeting. But you better remember me when this is over."

  "AgriGen always remembers its friends."

  He ushers Carlyle out the door and closes it behind him, thoughtful. It's interesting to see what crisis brings out in a man. Carlyle, always so cocky and confident, now harried by the realization that he stands out as if he were painted blue. That the white shirts could begin interning farang or executing them at any time, and no one would mourn. Suddenly Carlyle's confidence is stripped away like a used filter mask.

  Anderson goes to the balcony and stares out at the darkness, to the waters far beyond, to the island of Koh Angrit and the powers that wait so patiently at the Kingdom's edge.

  Almost time.

  24

  Amid the wreckage of white shirt reprisals, Kanya sits, sipping coffee. In the far corner of the noodle shop, a few patrons squat sullenly, listening to a muay thai match on a hand-cranked radio. Kanya, monopolizing the customer bench, ignores them. No one dares to sit beside her.

  Before, they might have hazarded the companionship, but now the white shirts have shown their teeth and she sits alone. Her men have already proceeded ahead of her, ravening like jackals, cleaning out old history and bad alliances, starting fresh.

  Sweat trickles off the owner's chin as he leans over steaming bowls of rice noodles. Water beads on his face, glinting blue with the flare of illegal methane. He doesn't look at Kanya, probably rues the day he decided to buy fuel on the black market.

  The radio's tinny crackle and the faint shout of the Lumphini crowds competes with the burn of the wok as he boils sen mi for soup. None of the listeners look at her.

  Kanya sips her coffee and smiles grimly. Violence, they understand. A soft Environment Ministry they ignored or scoffed at. But this Ministry—one with its batons swinging and spring guns ready to cut a body down—elicits a different response.

  How many illegal burn stands has she already trashed? Ones just like this one? Ones where some poor coffee or noodle man couldn't afford the Kingdom's taxed and sanctioned methane? Hundreds, she supposes. Methane is expensive. Bribes are cheaper. And if black market fuel lacked the additives that turned the methane a safe shade of green, well, that was a risk they all took willingly.

  We were so easy to bribe.

  Kanya pulls out a cigarette and lights it on the damning blue flame under the man's wok. He doesn't stop her, acts as though she doesn't exist—a comfortable fiction for both of them. She is not a white shirt sitting at his illegal burn stand; he is not a yellow card that she could throw into the towers to sweat and die with his countrymen.

  She draws on her cigarette, thoughtful. Even if he doesn't show his fear, she knows his feelings. Remembers when the white shirts came to her own village. They filled her aunt's fish ponds with lye and salt and burned her poultry in slaughter piles.

  You're lucky, yellow card. When the white shirts came for us, they didn't care about preserving anything at all. They came with their torches and they burned and burned. You'll get better treatment than we did.

  The memory of those sooty pale men, demon-eyed behind biohazard masks makes her want to cower even now. They came at night. There was no warning. Her neighbors and cousins fled naked and screaming ahead of the torches. Behind them, their stilt houses erupted in flames, bamboo and palm roaring orange and alive in the blackness. Ash swirled around them, scalding skin, sending everyone coughing and retching. She still carries scars from that burning, pale pocks where flakes of burning palm landed hot and permanent on her thin childish arms. How she hated the white shirts. She and her cousins had huddled together, watching in awe and terror as the Environment Ministry razed their village, and she had hated them with all her heart.

  And now she marshals her own troops to do the same. Jaidee would appreciate the irony.

  In the distance, shouts of fear rise up like smoke, as black and oily as farmers' hovels burning. Kanya sniffs. It's nostalgic, in a way. The smoke is the same. She draws again on her cigarette, exhales. Wonders if her men have gotten ahead of themselves. A fire in these WeatherAll slums would be problematic. The oils that keep the wood from rotting ignite easily in the heat. She takes another puff of her cigarette. Nothing she can do about it now. Perhaps it is only an officer torching illegally scavenged scrap. She reaches out to sip her coffee and eyes the bruise on the cheek of the man who serves her.

  If the Environment Ministry had anything to say about it, all these yellow card refugees would be on the other side of the border. A Malayan problem. The problem of another sovereign country. Not a problem for the Kingdom at all. But Her Royal Majesty the Child Queen is merciful, compassionate in a way Kanya is not.

  Kanya snuffs her cigarette. It's a good tobacco, Gold Leaf, local engineering, better than anything else in the Kingdom. She pulls another cigarette from its switchgrass-cellophane box, lights it on the blue flame.

  The yellow card keeps his expression polite as Kanya motions for him to pour more sweet coffee. The radio crackles with the stadium's cheers and the men huddling around it all cheer as well, momentarily forgetting the white shirt nearby.

  The footsteps are almost silent, timed with the sound of pleasure, but the yellow card's expression gives the arrival away. Kanya doesn't look up. She motions for the man standing behind to join her.

  "Either kill me or sit down," she says.

  A low chuckle. The man sits.

  Narong wears a loose black high-collar shirt and gray trousers. Tidy clothes. He could work as a clerk perhaps. Except for his eyes: his eyes are too alert. And his body is too relaxed. There is an easy confidence to him. An arrogance that has difficulty fitting into his clothes. Some people are simply too powerful to pretend a lower status. It made him stand out at the anchor pads as well. She bottles her anger, waits without speaking.

  "You like the silk?" He touches his shirt. "It's Japanese. They still have silk worms."

  She shrugs. "I don't like anything about you, Narong."

  He smiles at that. "Come now, Kanya. Here you are, promoted to captain and not a single smile in you."

  He motions to the yellow card for coffee. They watch the rich brown liquid splash into a glass. The yellow card sets a bowl of soup down before Kanya, fish balls and lemongrass and chicken stock. She starts fishing out U-Tex noodles.

  Narong sits quietly, patiently. "You asked for this meeting," he says finally.

  "Did you kill Chaya?"

  Narong straightens. "You always lacked social grace. Even after all these years in the city
and all the money we've given to you, you might as well be a Mekong fish farmer."

  Kanya looks at him coldly. If she's honest with herself, he frightens her, but she won't let that show. Behind her, another cheer from the radio. "You're the same as Pracha. You're all disgusting," she says.

  "You didn't think so when we came to you, a very small and vulnerable girl, and invited you to Bangkok. You didn't think so when we supported your aunt through the rest of her years. You didn't think so when we offered you an opportunity to strike at General Pracha and the white shirts."

  "There are limits. Chaya did nothing."

  Narong is as still as spider, regarding her. Finally he says, "Jaidee overstepped himself. You even warned him. Be careful that you don't dive down the cobra's throat yourself."

  Kanya starts to speak, then closes her mouth. Starts again, keeping her voice under control. "Will you do the same to me as you did to Jaidee?"

  "Kanya, how long have I known you?" Narong smiles. "How long have I cared for your family? You are our valued daughter." He slides a thick envelope across to her. "I would never hurt you," he says. "We are not like Pracha." Narong pauses. "How is the loss of the Tiger affecting the department?"

  "Look around you." Kanya jerks her head toward the sounds of conflict. "The general is enraged. Jaidee was almost a brother to him."

  "I hear he wants to come after Trade directly. Maybe even burn the Ministry to the ground."

  "Of course he wants to go after Trade. Without Trade, our problems would be halved."

  Narong shrugs. The envelope sits between them. It might as well be Jaidee's heart laying the counter. The return on her long-ago investment in revenge.

  I'm sorry, Jaidee. I tried to warn you.

  She takes the envelope, empties the money and stuffs it into a belt pouch as Narong looks on. Even the man's smiles are sharp with cutting edges. His hair is slicked back on his head, sleek. He is both entirely still and entirely terrifying.

  And this is the sort you consort with, mutters a voice inside her head.