The Windup Girl

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  What happens to windup girls who are broken? She never knew a windup girl who died. Sometimes an old patron did. But the windup girl lived. Her girlfriends lived. They lasted longer. Something she never asked Mizumi-sensei. Emiko hobbles to the bar, stumbles. Leans against it. Drinks the ice. Raleigh shoves the money over.

  She finishes the ice water. Swallows the cubes. Feels their cold seeping into her core. "Have you asked, yet?"

  "About what?" He's playing solitaire on the bar.

  "Going north."

  He glances up at her, then flips another set of cards. He's quiet for a second. "That's tough work. Not something you set up in a day."

  "Have you asked?"

  He glances at her. "Yeah. I asked. And no one's going anywhere while the white shirts are pissed off about the Jaidee massacre. I'll let you know when the situation changes."

  "I want to go north."

  "You already told me. Earn up, and it will happen."

  "I earn plenty. I want to go now."

  Raleigh's slap comes fast, but she sees it coming. It is fast for him, but not for her. She watches his hand proceed toward her face with the sort of servile gratitude that she used to feel when Gendo-sama took her to dinner at a fancy restaurant. Her cheek stings and then floods with puffy numbness. She touches it with her fingers, savoring the wound.

  Raleigh looks at her coldly. "You'll go when it's damn well convenient."

  Emiko bows her head slightly, allowing the well-deserved lesson to filter into her core. "You aren't going to help me, are you?"

  Raleigh shrugs, goes back to his cards.

  "Does it even exist?" she asks.

  Raleigh glances over at her. "Sure. If it makes you happy. It's there. If you keep hassling me about it, it doesn't. Now get out of my face."

  The falcon dangles dead. She is dead. Mulch for composters. Meat for the city, rot for gaslights. Emiko stares at Raleigh. The falcon lies dead.

  And then she thinks that some things are worse than dying. Some things can never be borne.

  Her fist is very fast. Raleigh-san's throat is soft.

  The old man topples, hands flying to his throat, eyes wide with shock. It is all slow-motion: Daeng turning at the sound of the stool clattering to the floor; Raleigh sprawling, his mouth working, trying to suck air; the cleaning man dropping his mop; Noi and Saeng at the other side of the bar with their men waiting to escort them home, all of them turning toward the sound, and every one of them is slow.

  By the time Raleigh hits the floor, Emiko is already bolting across the room, toward the VIP door and the man who hurt her most. The man who sits and laughs with his friends and thinks nothing of the pain he inflicts.

  She slams into the door. Men look up with surprise. Heads turn, mouths open to cry out. The bodyguards are reaching for their spring guns, but all of them are moving too too slow.

  None of them are New People.

  30

  Pai crawls up beside Kanya, stares down at the shadow village below. "That's it?"

  Kanya nods and glances back at the rest of her squad, who have spread out to cover the other approaches to the shrimp farms where they breed bitter water-resistant prawns for the Krung Thep fish markets.

  The houses are all on bamboo rafts currently grounded, but when the floods come, the houses will float, rising, as water and silt rushes across their paddy and ponds. Her own family on the Mekong used something similar long years ago, before General Pracha came.

  "It was a good lead," she murmurs.

  Ratana had been almost ecstatic. A link, a clue: fish mites between the third body's toes.

  And if fish mites, then shrimp farms, and if shrimp farms then the only ones that would have sent a worker into Bangkok. And that meant shrimp farms that had experienced a die-off. Which led her to this Thonburi half-floating settlement with all of her men at the edge of the embankment, ready to raid in the darkness.

  Down below, a few candles flicker inside the bamboo houses. A dog barks. They're all wearing their containment suits. Ratana insisted that the likelihood of a jump was slender, and yet still a worry. A mosquito whines in Kanya's ear. She slaps it away and draws her containment suit's hood tight. Starts to sweat in earnest.

  The sound of laughter carries across the fish ponds. A family, all together in the warmth of their hut. Even now, with all their hardship, people still can laugh. Not Kanya, though. Something in her is broken, it seems.

  Jaidee always insisted that the Kingdom was a happy country, that old story about the Land of Smiles. But Kanya cannot think of a time when she has seen smiles as wide as those in museum photos from before the Contraction. She sometimes wonders if those people in the photos were acting, if perhaps the National Gallery is intended to depress her, or if it is really true that at one point people smiled so totally, so fearlessly.

  Kanya pulls her mask over her face. "Send them in."

  Pai signals the men, and then her troops are all up and over the edges, coming down on the village, surrounding it as they always do before the burning begins.

  When they came to her own village, the white shirts appeared between two huts in the space of a minute, flares hissing and sparking in their hands. This is different. No blaring megaphones. No officers splashing through ankle-deep waters, dragging screaming people away from their houses as bamboo and WeatherAll burst orange and alive with flame.

  General Pracha wants it quiet. As he signed the quarantine waivers he said, "Jaidee would have turned this into an emergency, but we don't have the resources to stir the cobra nest with Trade and also handle this. It could even be used against us. Deal with this quietly."

  "Of course. Quietly."

  The dog starts barking madly. It's joined by others as they approach. A few villagers come out on their porches, peer out into the darkness. Catch the gleam of white in the night. They shout warnings to their families as Kanya's white shirts break into a run.

  Jaidee kneels beside her, watching the action. "Pracha talks about me as if I were some sort of a megodont, trampling rice shoots," he says.

  Kanya ignores him but Jaidee doesn't shut up. "You should have seen him when we were both cadets," he says. "He would piss his pants when we went out into the field."

  Kanya glances over at Jaidee. "Stop. Just because you are dead doesn't mean that you should heap disrespect upon him."

  Her men's shakelight LEDs blaze alive, illuminating the village in a bitter glare. Families are dashing about like chickens, trying to hide food and animals. Someone tries to dash past the cordon, splashing through the water, diving into a pond and flailing for the other side. . . where more of Kanya's net appears. The man treads water in the center of the muddy shrimp hole, trapped.

  Jaidee asks, "How can you call him your leader when we both know where your true loyalties lie?"

  "Shut up."

  "Is it hard being a horse ridden by two men at once? Both of them riding you like—"

  "Shut up!"

  Pai startles. "What is it?"

  "Sorry." Kanya shakes her head. "My fault. I was thinking."

  Pai nods down at the villagers. "It looks like they're ready for you."

  Kanya gets to her feet and she and Pai and Jaidee—uninvited but smiling and pleased with himself—all descend. She has a photo of the dead man, a black and white thing developed in the lab with fumbling dark fingers. She shows it to the farmers under the beam of her shakelight's LEDs, shining it from the photo to their eyes, trying to catch them in a flinch of recognition.

  With some people, a white uniform opens doors, but with fish farmers it is always a problem. She knows them well, reads the calluses on their hands, smells the stink of their successes and failures in the reek of the ponds. She sees herself through their eyes, and knows she might as well be an enforcer from a calorie company, hunting for signs of a genehack. Still the charade continues, all of them shaking their heads, Kanya shining her light into each one's eyes. One by one, they look away.

  Finally she finds
a man and waves the picture in front of him. "Do you know him? Won't his relatives be looking for him?"

  The man looks at the picture and then at Kanya's uniform. "He doesn't have any relatives."

  Kanya jerks with surprise. "You know him? Who was he?"

  "He's dead then?"

  "Doesn't he look dead?"

  They both study the bloodless photo, the ravaged face. "I told him there were better things than factory jobs. He didn't listen."

  "You say he worked in the city."

  "That's right."

  "Do you know where?"

  He shakes his head.

  "Where did he live?"

  The man points toward a black shadow stilt-house. Kanya waves at her men. "Quarantine that hut."

  She tightens her mask and enters, sweeping her light around the space. It's gloomy. Broken and strange and empty. Dust gleams in her beam. Knowing that the owner is already dead gives her a sense of foreboding. The man's spirit might be here. His hungry ghost lurking and angry that he is still in this world, that he has been sickened. That he may have been murdered. She fingers the man's few effects and wanders around the place. Nothing. She steps back outside. Off in the distance, the city rises, haloed in green, the place the dead man ran to when fish farming proved untenable. She goes back to the man. "You're sure you don't know anything about where he worked?"

  The man shakes his head.

  "Nothing? Not a name? Anything." She tries not to let her desperation show. He shakes his head again. She turns in frustration and surveys the village blackness. Crickets chirp. Ivory beetles creak steadily. They're in the right place. She's so close. Where is this factory? Gi Bu Sen was right. She should just burn the entire factory district. In the old days, when the white shirts were strong, it would have been easy.

  "You want to burn now?" Jaidee snickers beside her. "Now you see my side?"

  She ignores his jab. Not far away, a young girl is watching her intently. When Kanya catches her staring, she looks away. Kanya touches Pai on the shoulder. "That one."

  "The girl?" He's surprised. Kanya is already walking, closing on her. The girl looks as if she will bolt. Kanya kneels, still a good distance away. Beckons her over. "You. What's your name?"

  The girl is obviously torn. She wants to flee, but Kanya has an authority that cannot be denied. "Come over here. Tell me your name." She beckons again and this time the girl allows herself to be reeled close.

  "Mai," the girl whispers.

  Kanya holds up the photo. "You know where this man worked, don't you?"

  Mai shakes her head, but Kanya knows the girl is lying. Children are terrible liars. Kanya had been a terrible liar. When the white shirts questioned where her family was hiding their carp breeding stock, she had told them south and they had gone north, with knowing adult smiles.

  She offers the photo to the girl. "You understand how dangerous this is, yes?"

  The girl hesitates. "Will you burn the village?"

  Kanya tries to keep the flood of reaction off her face. "Of course not." She smiles again, speaks soothingly. "Don't worry, Mai. I know what it is to fear. I grew up in a village like this. I know how hard it is. But you must help me find the source of this sickness, or more will die."

  "I was told not to tell."

  "And it is good for us to respect our patrons," Kanya pauses. "But we all owe loyalty to Her Royal Majesty the Queen, and she wishes that we all be safe. The Queen would want you to help us."

  Mai hesitates, then says, "Three others worked at the factory."

  Kanya leans forward, trying to hide her eagerness. "Which one?"

  Mai hesitates. Kanya leans close. "How many phii will blame you if you allow them to die before their kamma allots their passing?"

  Still Mai hesitates.

  Pai says, "If we break her fingers, she will tell us."

  The girl looks frightened. But Kanya holds out a soothing hand. "Don't worry. He won't do anything. He is a tiger, but I have his leash. Please. Just help us save the city. You can help us save Krung Thep."

  The girl looks away, toward the crumbling glow of Bangkok across the waters. "The factory is closed now. Closed by you."

  "That's very good then. But we must make sure the disease doesn't go any further. What is the name of the factory?"

  The answer comes unwillingly. "SpringLife."

  Kanya frowns, trying to remember the name. "A kink-spring company? One of the Chaozhou?"

  Mai shakes her head. "Farang. Very rich farang."

  Kanya settles beside her. "Tell me more."

  31

  Anderson finds Emiko huddled outside his door, and all at once a good night becomes an uncertain one.

  For the last several days he has worked frantically to prepare the invasion, all of it crippled by the fact that he never expected to be cut off from his own factory. His own piss-poor planning forced him to waste extra days scouting a safe route back into the SpringLife facility without being caught by the plethora of white shirt patrols that cordoned the manufacturing district. If it hadn't been for the discovery of Hock Seng's escape route, he might still have been lurking around the back alleys, wishing for an access method.

  As it was, Anderson slipped in through the shutters of the SpringLife offices with a blackened face and grapple slung over his shoulder while giving thanks to a crazy old man who just days before had robbed the company's entire payroll.

  The factory had reeked. The algae baths had all gone to rot but not a thing moved in the gloom, and for that he was grateful. If the white shirts had posted guards within. . . Anderson held a hand over his mouth as he slipped down to the main hall and then down along the manufacturing lines. The stink of rot and megodont dung thickened.

  Under the shadow of algae racks and the loom of the cutting presses, he examined the floor. This close to the algae tanks, the stink was horrific, as if a cow had died and rotted. The end-stage reek of Yates' optimistic plan for a new energy future.

  Anderson knelt and pushed away desiccated algae strands from around one of the drains. He felt along the edges, seeking purchase. Lifted. The iron grate came up with a squeal. As quietly as he could, Anderson rolled the heavy grate away and set it with a clank on concrete. He lay down on the floor, prayed he wouldn't surprise a snake or scorpion, and plunged his arm down the hole. His fingers scrabbled in the darkness, questing. Straining deeper into moist blackness.

  For a moment he feared it had slipped loose, had floated down the drain and on through the sewers to King Rama's groundwater pumps, but then his fingers touched oilskin. He peeled it from the drain wall, drew it out, smiling. A code book. For contingencies that he never seriously believed would come to pass.

  In the blackness of the offices, he dialed numbers and brought operators alert in Burma and India. Sent secretaries scurrying for code strings unused since Finland.

  Two days later, he stood on the floating island of Koh Angrit, arranging the last details with strike team leaders in the AgriGen compound. The weaponry would arrive within days, the invasion teams were assembling. And the money had already been shipped across, the gold and jade that would help generals change their loyalties and turn on their old friend General Pracha.

  But now, with all the preparations completed, he returns to the city to find Emiko huddled at his door, miserable, and covered with blood. As soon as she sees him, she lunges into his arms, sobbing.

  "What are you doing here?" he whispers. Cradling her against him he unlocks the door and urges her inside. Her skin burns. The blood is everywhere. Slashes mark her face and scar her arms. He shuts the door quickly. "What happened to you?" He pries her off him, tries to inspect her. She's a furnace of blood, but the wounds on her face and arms don't account for the sticky spattering that coats her. "Whose blood is this?"

  She shakes her head. Begins sobbing again.

  "Let's get you cleaned up."

  He leads her into the bath, turns on cool water spray, puts her under it. She's shivering now, her ey
es fever bright and panicked as she looks around. She looks half-mad. He tries to peel off her half-jacket, to get rid of the bloody clothing, but her face twists, enraged.

  "No!" She slashes at him with her hand and he jerks back, touching his cheek.

  "What the hell?!" He stares at her, shocked. Christ she was fast. He's hurting. His hand comes away bloody. "What the hell's wrong with you?"

  The panicked animal flicker leaves her eyes. She stares at him blankly, and then seems to recover herself, becomes human. "I am sorry," she whispers. "So sorry." She collapses, curls into a ball under the water. "So sorry. So sorry." She lapses into Japanese.

  Anderson squats down beside her, his own clothing becoming soaked in the spray. "Don't worry about it." He speaks gently. "Why don't you get out of those clothes? We'll get you something else. Okay? Can you do that?"

  She nods dully. Peels off her jacket. Unwraps her pha sin. Huddles nude in the cool water. He leaves her in the spray. Takes her bloody clothes and bundles them into a sheet and carries them down the stair, out into the darkness. People are all around. He ignores them, walking quickly into the shadows, carrying the clothes until he reaches a khlong. Tosses the bloody garments into the water, where snakehead fish and boddhi carp will consume them with an obsessive determination. The water roils, splashing as they tear at the blood food scent.

  By the time he's back in his apartment, Emiko is out of the shower, her black hair clinging to her face, a small frightened creature. He goes to his medicine supplies. Pours alcohol on the cuts, rubs antivirals in after. She doesn't cry out. Her nails are broken and ravaged. Bruises are blooming all across her body. But for all the blood she arrived with, she seems miraculously little damaged.

  "What happened?" he asks gently.

  She huddles against him. "I'm alone," she whispers. "There is no place for New People." Her shaking increases.

  He pulls her to him, feeling the burning heat through her skin. "It's all right. Everything will change soon. It will be different."