Windup Girl

by Bacigalupi, Paolo

  Anderson studies Carlyle, trying to decide how much to trust the man. For two years they have drunk together, have whored occasionally, have closed shipping contracts on a handshake, but Anderson knows only a little about him. The home office has a portfolio, but it’s thin. Anderson mulls. The seedbank is out there, waiting. With a pliable government …

  “Which generals are backing you?”

  Carlyle laughs. “If I told you that, you’d just think I was foolish and unable to keep secrets.”

  The man is all talk, Anderson decides. He’ll have to make sure Carlyle disappears, soon, quietly, before his cover gets blown. “It sounds interesting. Maybe we should meet to talk a little more about our mutual goals.”

  Carlyle opens his mouth to respond then pauses, studying Anderson. He smiles and shakes his head. “Oh no. You don’t believe me.” He shrugs. “Fair enough. Just wait then. In two days time, I think you’ll be more impressed. We’ll talk then.” He looks significantly at Anderson. “And we’ll talk at a place of my choosing.” He finishes his drink.

  “Why wait? What’s going to change between now and then?”

  Carlyle settles his hat on his head and smiles. “Everything, my dear farang. Everything.”

  9

  Emiko wakes to afternoon swelter. She stretches, breathing shallowly in the oven bake of her five-by.

  There is a place for windups. The knowledge tingles within her. A reason to live.

  She presses a hand up against the WeatherAll planks that divide her sleeping slot from the one above. Touching the knots. Thinking of the last time she felt so content. Remembering Japan and the luxuries that Gendo-sama bequeathed: her own flat; climate control that blew cool through humid summer days; dangan fish that glowed and changed colors like chameleons, iridescent and changeable dependent on their speed: blue slow fish, red fast ones. She used to tap the glass of their tank and watch them streak red through dark waters, their windup nature in brightest bloom.

  She, too, used to glow brightly. She was built well. Trained well. Knew the ways of pillow companion, secretary, translator and observer, services for her master that she performed so admirably that he honored her like a dove, and released her into the bright blue arc of the sky. She had been so honored.

  The WeatherAll knots stare down at her, the only decoration on the divider that separates her sleeping slot from the one above and keeps the garbage of her neighbors from raining down. Linseed reek billows off the wood, nauseating in the five-by’s hot confines. In Japan there were rules about using such wood for human habitation. Here in the tower slums, no one cares.

  Emiko’s lungs burn. She breathes shallowly, listening to the grunt and snore of the other bodies. No sound filters down from the slot above. Puenthai must not be back. Otherwise, she would have suffered already, would have been kicked or fucked by now. It’s not often that she survives a whole day without abuse. Puenthai is not yet home. Perhaps he is dead. The fa’ gan fringe on his neck was certainly thick enough the last time she saw him.

  She squirms out of her slot and straightens in the narrow gap between the five-by and the door. Stretches again, then reaches in and fumbles for her plastic bottle, yellowed and thinned with age. Drinks blood-warm water. She swallows convulsively, wishing she had ice.

  Two flights up, a splintered door gives way and she spills out onto the roof. Sunlight and heat envelop her. Even with the sun hammering down, it is cooler than her five-by.

  All around her, clotheslines draped with rustling pha sin and trousers rustle in the sea breeze. The sun is sinking, glistening from the tips of wats and chedi. The water of the khlongs and the Chao Phraya glistens. Kink-spring skiffs and trimaran clipper ships glide across red mirrors.

  To the north, the distance is lost in the orange haze of dung burn and humidity, but somewhere out there, if the pale scarred farang is to be believed, windups dwell. Somewhere beyond the armies that war for shares of coal and jade and opium, her own lost tribe awaits her. She was never Japanese; she was only ever a windup. And now her true clan awaits her, if only she can find a way.

  She stares north a moment longer, hungering, then goes to the bucket she stowed the night before. There is no water on the upper levels, no pressure to reach so high, and she cannot risk bathing at the public pumps—so every night she struggles up the stairs with her water bucket, and leaves it here in anticipation of the day.

  In the privacy of the open air and the setting sun, she bathes. It is a ritual process, a careful cleansing. The bucket of water, a fingerling of soap. She squats beside the bucket and ladles the warm water over herself. It is a precise thing, a scripted act as deliberate as Jo No Mai, each move choreographed, a worship of scarcity.

  She pours a ladleful over her head. Water courses down her face, runs over breasts and ribs and thighs, trickles onto hot concrete. Another ladleful, soaking her black hair, coursing down her spine and curling around her buttocks. Again a ladle of water, sheeting over her skin like mercury. And then the soap, rubbing it into her hair and then her skin, scouring herself of the previous night’s insults until she wears a pale sheen of suds. And again the bucket and ladle, rinsing herself as carefully as with the first wetting.

  Water sluices away soap and grime, even some of the shame comes with it. If she were to scrub for a thousand years she would not be clean, but she is too tired to care and she has grown accustomed to scars she cannot scour away. The sweat, the alcohol, the humid salt of semen and degradation, these she can cleanse. It is enough. She is too tired to scrub harder. Too hot and too tired, always.

  At the end of her rinsing, she is happy to find a little water left in the bucket. She dips one ladleful and drinks it, gulping. And then in a wasteful, unrestrained gesture, she upends the bucket over her head in one glorious cathartic rush. In that moment, between the touch of the water, and the splash as it pools around her toes, she is clean.

  Out on the streets, she tries to blend into the daylight street activity. Mizumi-sensei trained her to walk in certain ways, to accent and make beautiful the stutter motion of her body. But if Emiko is very careful, and fights her nature and training—if she wears pha sin, and does not swing her arms—she almost passes.

  Along the sidewalks, seamstresses lounge beside treadle sewing machines, waiting for evening trade. Snack sellers stack the remains of their wares in tidy piles, awaiting the day’s final shoppers. Night market food stalls are setting out little bamboo stools and tables in the street, the ritual encroachment on the thoroughfares that signals the end of day and the beginning of life in a tropic city.

  Emiko tries not to stare; it’s been a long time since she risked walking streets in daylight. When Raleigh acquired her five-by, he gave her strict instructions. He could not keep her in Ploenchit itself—even whores and pimps and drug addicts had limits—so he installed her in a slum where bribes were cheaper and the neighbors were not so picky about the neighboring offal. But his instructions were strict: walk only at night, keep to shadows, come directly to the club, and return directly home. Anything else and there was little hope of survival.

  Her nape prickles as she makes her way through the daylit crowds. Most of these people will not care about her. The benefit of the daytime is that people are far too busy with their own lives to worry about a creature like her, even if they catch sight of her odd movements. In the deep night of green methane flicker, there are fewer eyes, but they are idle ones, high on yaba or laolao, eyes with the time and opportunity to pursue.

  A woman selling Environment Ministry-certified sticks of sliced papaya watches her suspiciously. Emiko forces herself not to panic. She continues down the street with her mincing steps, trying to convince herself that she appears eccentric, rather than genetically transgressive. Her heart pounds against her ribs.

  Too fast. Slow down. You have time. Not so much as you would like, but still, enough to ask questions. Slowly. Patiently. Do not betray yourself. Do not overheat.

  Her palms are wet with sweat, the o
nly part of her body that ever really feels cool. She keeps them open wide like fans, trying to absorb comfort. She pauses at a public pump to splash water on her skin and drink deep, glad that New People fear little in the way of bacterial or parasitic infection. She is an inhospitable host. That, at least, is benefit.

  If she were not a New Person, she would simply strut into Hualamphong Railway Station and purchase a ticket on a kink-spring train, ride it as far as the wastes of Chiang Mai, and then proceed into the wilderness. It would be easy. Instead she must be clever. The roads will be guarded. Anything that leads to the Northeast and the Mekong will be clogged with military personnel transferring between the eastern front and the capital. A New Person would excite attention, particularly given that New People military models sometimes fight on behalf of the Vietnamese.

  But there is another way. From her time with Gendo-sama she remembers that much of the Kingdom’s freight moves by river.

  Emiko turns down Thanon Mongkut toward the docks and levees, and stops short. White shirts. She cringes against a wall as the pair stalks past. They don’t even look at her—she blends if she does not move—but still, as soon as they are out of sight, she has the urge to scuttle back to her tower. Most of the white shirts there have been bribed. These ones … She shivers.

  At last, the gaijin warehouses and trading stations rise before her, the newly built commercial blocks. She makes her way up the seawall. At its top, the ocean spreads before her, bustling with clipper ships unloading, dock workers and coolies hauling freight, mahout coaxing megodonts to greater labor as pallets come off the clippers and are loaded on huge Laotian-rubber-wheeled wagons for transit to the warehouses. Reminders of her former life litter the view.

  A smudge on the horizon marks the quarantine zone of Koh Angrit, where gaijin traders and agricultural executives squat amid stockpiles of calories, all of them waiting patiently for a crop failure or plague to beat aside the Kingdom’s trade barriers. Gendo-sama once led her to that floating island of bamboo rafts and warehouses. Stood on its gently rolling decks and had her translate as he confidently sold the foreigners on advances in sailing technologies that would speed a shipment of patented SoyPRO around the world.

  Emiko sighs and ducks under the draped lines of saisin that top the levee. The sacred thread runs down the seawall in both directions, disappearing into the distance. Every morning the monks of a different temple bless the thread, adding spiritual support to the physical defenses that push back the hungry sea.

  In her former life, when Gendo-sama provided her with permits and indulgences to move inside the city with impunity, Emiko had the opportunity to see the yearly blessing ceremonies of the dikes and pumps and the saisin that connects it all. As the first monsoon rains poured down on the assembled people, Emiko watched Her Revered Majesty the Child Queen pull the levers that set the divine pumps roaring to life, her delicate form dwarfed by the apparatus that her ancestors had created. Monks chanted and stretched fresh saisin from the city pillar, the spiritual heart of Krung Thep, to all of the twelve coal-driven pumps that ringed the city, and then they had all prayed for the continued life of their fragile city.

  Now, in the dry season, the saisin looks ragged and the pumps are largely silent. The floating docks and their barges and skiffs bob softly in red sunlight.

  Emiko makes her way down into the bustle, watching faces, hoping to spy someone who seems kind. She watches people pass, keeping her body still so that she does not betray her nature. Finally steels herself. She calls out to a passing day laborer, “Kathorh kha. Please, Khun. Can you tell me where I might purchase ferry tickets north?”

  The man is covered with the powder and sweat of his work but he smiles, friendly. “How far north?”

  She hazards a city name, unsure even if it will be close enough to the place that the gaijin has described. “Phitsanulok?”

  He makes a face. “There’s nothing going that far, not much past Ayutthaya. The rivers have gotten too low. Some people are using mulies to pull their way north, but that is all. Some kink-spring skiffs. And the war …” He shrugs. “If you need to go north, the roads will be dry for a while yet.”

  She masks her disappointment and wais carefully. No river then. By road or nothing. If she could go by river, then she would also have a way to cool herself. By road … she imagines the long distance through the tropic blaze of the dry season. Perhaps she should wait for the rainy season. With the monsoon, the temperatures will fall and the rivers rise …

  Emiko starts back over the seawall and down through the slums that house dock families and de-quarantined sailors on shore leave. By road then. It was foolish even for her to go looking. If she could get aboard a kink-spring train—but that would require permits. Many, many permits, just to get aboard. But if she could bribe someone, stow away … She grimaces. All roads lead to Raleigh. She will have to speak with him. To beg the old crow for things he has no reason to give.

  A man with dragon tattoos on his stomach and a takraw ball tattooed on his shoulder gawks at her as she walks past. “Heechy-keechy,” he murmurs.

  Emiko doesn’t slow, doesn’t turn at the words, but her skin prickles.

  The man follows her. “Heechy-keechy,” he says again.

  She glances back. His face is unfriendly. He’s missing a hand as well, she’s horrified to notice. He reaches out with the stump and prods her shoulder. She jerks away, stutter-stop reaction, betraying her nature. He smiles, and his teeth are black with betel nut.

  Emiko turns down a soi, hoping to escape his attention. Again he calls after her. “Heechy-keechy.”

  Emiko ducks into another winding squeezeway, breaks into a faster walk. Her body warms. Her hands become slick with sweat. She pants rapidly, trying to expel the increasing heat. Still the man follows. He doesn’t call out again but she hears his footsteps. She makes another turn. Cheshires scatter before her, shimmers of light flushed like cockroaches. If only she could evaporate as they do, fade against a wall and let this man slide past.

  “Where are you going, windup?” the man calls. “I just want to get a look at you.”

  If she were still with Gendo-sama she would face this man. Would stand confident, protected by import stamps and ownership permits and consulates and the awful threat of her master’s retribution. A piece of property, true, but respected nonetheless. She could even go to a white shirt or the police for protection. With stamps and a passport, she was not a transgression against niche and nature, but an exquisite valued object.

  The alley opens onto a new street, full of gaijin warehouses and trading fronts, but the man grabs her arm before she can reach it. She’s hot. Already flushed with her rising panic. She stares at the street longingly but it is all shacks and dry goods and a few gaijin, who will be no help for her. Grahamites are the last people she wishes to encounter.

  The man drags her back into the alley. “Where do you think you’re going, windup?”

  His eyes are bright and hard. He’s chewing something—an amphetamine stick. Yaba. Coolie laborers use them to keep working, to burn calories that they do not have. His eyes sparkle as he grips her wrist. He pulls her deeper into the alley, out of sight. She’s too hot to run. There is nowhere to go, even if she did.

  “Stand against the wall,” he says. “No.” He shoves her around. “Don’t look at me.”

  “Please.”

  A knife appears in his good hand, glinting. “Shut up,” he says. “Stay there.”

  His voice has the power of command, and despite her better instincts she finds herself obeying. “Please. Just let me go,” she whispers.

  “I fought your kind. In the jungles in the north. Windups everywhere. Heechy-keechy soldiers.”

  “I am not that kind.” She whispers. “Not military.”

  “Japanese, same as you. I lost a hand because of your kind. And a lot of good friends.” He shows her the stump where his hand is missing, pushes it against her cheek. His breath gusts hot on her nape as he wr
aps his arm around her neck, pressing the knife to her jugular. Indenting the skin.

  “Please. Just let me go.” She presses back against his crotch. “I’ll do anything.”

  “You think I’d soil myself that way?” He shoves her hard against the wall, making her cry out. “With an animal like you?” A pause, then. “Get down on your knees.”

  Out on the street, cycle rickshaws clatter over cobbles. People call out, asking about the price of hemp rope and whether anyone knows the time of the Lumphini muay thai fight. The knife hooks around her neck again, finds her pulse with its point. “I saw my friends all die in the forests because of Japanese windups.”

  She swallows, and repeats softly, “I am not that kind.”

  He laughs. “Of course not. You’re some other creature. Another one of their devils like they keep in their shipyard across the river. Our people are starving, and your kind take their rice.”

  The blade presses against her throat. He will kill her. She is sure of it. His hatred is great, and she is nothing but trash. He is high and angry and dangerous and she is nothing. Even Gendo-sama couldn’t have protected her from this. She swallows, feeling the blade press against her Adam’s apple.

  Is this how you will die? Is this what you were meant for? To simply be bled out like a pig?

  A spark of rage flickers, an antidote to despair.

  Will you not even try to survive? Did the scientists make you too stupid even to consider fighting for your own life?

  Emiko closes her eyes and prays to Mizuko Jizo Bodhisattva, and then the bakeneko cheshire spirit for good measure. She takes a breath, and then with all her strength she slams her hand against the knife. The blade slices past her neck, a searing line.