The Windup Girl (11 page)

Inside, a single candle burns, illuminating Chaya where she lies on a floor couch, asleep, waiting. He smiles tenderly and slips into the bathroom to quickly disrobe and pour water over his shoulders. He tries to be quick and quiet about his bath, but water spatters flatly on the wood. He dips water again and spills it over his back. Even in the dead of night the air is warm enough that he doesn't mind the water's slight chill. In the hot season, everything is a relief.

When he comes out of his bath with a sarong wrapped around his waist, Chaya is awake, looking up at him with thoughtful brown eyes. "You're very late," she says. "I was worried."

Jaidee grins. "You should know better than to worry. I'm a tiger." He nuzzles close to her. Kisses her gently.

Chaya grimaces and pushes him away. "Don't believe everything the newspapers say. A tiger." She makes a face. "You smell like smoke."

"I just bathed."

"It's in your hair."

He rocks back on his heels. "It was a very good night."

She smiles in the darkness, her white teeth flashing, mahogany skin a dull sheen in the black. "Did you strike a blow for our Queen?"

"I struck a blow against Trade."

She flinches. "Ah."

He touches her arm. "You used to be happy when I made important people angry."

She pushes away from him and stands, starts straightening the cushions. Her movements are abrupt, irritated. "That was before. Now I worry about you."

"You shouldn't." Jaidee moves out of her way as she finishes with the couch. "I'm surprised you bother to wait up. If I were you, I would go to sleep and dream beautiful dreams. Everyone has given up on controlling me. I'm just a line-item expense for them, now. I'm too popular with the people to do anything about. They put spies on me to watch me, but they do nothing to stop me anymore."

"A hero to the people, and a thorn for the Ministry of Trade. I would rather have Trade Minister Akkarat as a friend and the people as your enemy. We'd all be safer."

"You didn't think so when you married me. You liked that I was a fighter. That I had so many victories in Lumphini Stadium. You remember?"

She doesn't answer. Instead begins rearranging the cushions again, refusing to turn around. Jaidee sighs and puts a hand on her shoulder, pulls her up to face him, so that he can see her eyes. "Anyway, why is it that you bring this up, now? Am I not here? And perfectly fine?"

"When they shot you, you weren't so fine."

"That's in the past."

"Only because they put you behind a desk, and General Pracha paid reparations." She holds up her hand, showing her own missing fingers. "Don't tell me you're safe. I was there. I know what they can do."

Jaidee makes a face. "We aren't safe in any case. If it's not Trade, it's blister rust or cibiscosis or something else, something worse. We aren't living in a perfect world anymore. This isn't the Expansion."

She opens her mouth to respond, then closes it and turns away. Jaidee waits, letting her master herself. When she turns back, her emotions are under control again. "No. You're right. None of us are safe. I wish, though."

"You might as well run to Ta Prachan market and get an amulet, for all the good wishing does."

"I did. The one with Phra Seub. But you don't wear it."

"Because it's just superstition. Whatever happens to me is my
kamma
. A magic amulet isn't going to change that."

"Still, it doesn't hurt." She pauses. "I would feel better if you wore it."

Jaidee smiles and starts to make a joke of it, but something in her expression makes him change his mind. "Fine. If it makes you happy. I'll wear your Phra Seub."

From the sleeping rooms, a noise echoes, a wet coughing. Jaidee stiffens. Chaya shifts and looks over her shoulder to the noise. "It's Surat."

"Did you take him to Ratana?"

"It's not her job to examine sick children. She has real work to do. Real genehacks to worry over."

"Did you take him or not?"

Chaya sighs. "She said it's not an upgrade. Nothing to worry about."

Jaidee tries not to let his relief show. "Good." The coughing comes again. It reminds him of Num, dead and gone. He fights off sadness.

Chaya touches his chin, pulls his attention back to her. Smiles up at him. "So what is it that left you smelling of smoke, noble warrior, defender of Krung Thep? Why so pleased with yourself?"

Jaidee smiles slightly. "You can read it in the whisper sheets tomorrow."

She purses her lips. "I'm worried about you. Really."

"That's because you have a good heart. But you shouldn't worry. They're done with heavy-handed measures against me. It went badly the last time. The papers and whisper sheets liked the story too much. And our most revered Queen has registered her own support for what I do. They'll keep their distance. Her Majesty the Queen, at least, they still respect."

"You were lucky that she was allowed to hear of you at all."

"Even that
heeya
the Crown Protector can't blind her."

Chaya stiffens at his words. "Jaidee, please. Not so loud. The Somdet Chaopraya has too many ears."

Jaidee makes a face. "You see? This is what we've come to. A Crown Protector who spends his time meditating on how to take the inner apartments of the Grand Palace. A Trade Minister who conspires with
farang
to destroy our trade and quarantine laws. And meanwhile, we all try not to speak too loudly."

"I'm glad I went to the anchor pads tonight. You should have seen how much money those Customs officers were raking in, just standing aside and letting anything at all pass through. The next mutation of cibiscosis could have been sitting in vials right in front of them, and they would have held out a hand for a bribe. Sometimes, I think we're living the last days of old Ayutthaya all over again."

"Don't be melodramatic."

"History repeats itself. No one fought to protect Ayutthaya, either."

"And so what does that make you? Some villager of Bang Rajan, reincarnated? Holding back the
farang
tide? Fighting to the last man? That sort of thing?"

"At least they fought! Which would you rather be? The farmers who held off the Burmese army for a month, or the ministers of the Kingdom who ran away and let their capital be sacked?" He grimaces. "If I were smart, I'd go to the anchor pads every night and teach Akkarat and the
farang
a real lesson. Show them that someone's still willing to fight for Krung Thep."

He expects Chaya to try to shut him up again, to cool his hot-hearted talk, but instead, she is silent. Finally she asks, "Do you think our lives are always reborn here, in this place? Do we have to come back and face all of this again, no matter what?"

"I don't know," Jaidee says. "That's the sort of question Kanya would ask."

"She's a dour one. I should get her an amulet, too. Something that would make her smile for once."

"She is a bit strange."

"I thought Ratana was going to propose to her."

Jaidee pauses, considering Kanya and pretty Ratana, with her breathing mask and her underground life in the Ministry's biological containment labs. "I don't pry into her private life."

"She'd smile more if she had a man."

"If someone as good as Ratana couldn't make her happy, then no man has a hope." Jaidee grins. "Anyway, if she had a man, he'd spend all his time being jealous of the men she commands in my unit. All the handsome men. . ." He leans forward and tries to kiss Chaya but she pulls away too quickly.

"Ugh. You smell like whiskey, too."

"Whiskey and smoke. I smell like a real man."

"Go off to bed. You'll wake up Niwat and Surat. And mother."

Jaidee pulls her close, puts his lips to her ear. "She wouldn't mind another grandchild."

Chaya pushes him away, laughing. "She will if you wake her up."

His hands slip along her hips. "I'll be very quiet."

She slaps his hands away, but doesn't try very hard. He catches her hand. Feels the stumps of her missing fingers, caresses their ridges. Suddenly they're both solemn again. She takes a ragged breath. "We've all lost too many things. I can't bear to lose you, too."

"You won't. I'm a tiger. And I'm no fool."

She holds him close. "I hope so. I truly do." Her warm body presses against him. He can feel her breathing, steady, full of concern for him. She draws back and looks at him solemnly, her eyes dark and full of care.

"I'll be fine," he says again.

She nods but doesn't seem to be listening. Instead she seems to be studying him, following the lines of his brow, of his smiles, of his scars and pocks. The moment seems to stretch forever, her dark eyes on him, memorizing, solemn. At last she nods, as though listening to something she tells herself, and her worried expression lifts. She smiles and pulls him close, pressing her lips to his ear. "You are a tiger," she whispers, as if she is a fortune teller pronouncing, and her body relaxes into him, pressing to him fully. He feels a rush of relief as they come together, finally.

He clasps her to him more tightly. "I've missed you," he whispers.

"Come with me." She slips free and takes him by the hand. Leads him toward their bed. She pulls aside the mosquito netting and slips under its tenting gossamer. Clothing rustles, falling away. A shadow woman teases him from within.

"You still smell like smoke," she says.

Jaidee pulls aside the nets. "And whiskey. Don't forget the whiskey."

5

The sun peers over the rim of the earth, casting its blaze across Bangkok. It rushes molten over the wrecked tower bones of the old Expansion and the gold-sheathed
chedi
of the city's temples, engulfing them in light and heat. It ignites the sharp high roofs of the Grand Palace where the Child Queen lives cloistered with her attendants, and flames from the filigreed ornamentation of the City Pillar Shrine where monks chant 24-7 on behalf of the city's seawalls and dikes. The blood warm ocean flickers with blue mirror waves as the sun moves on, burning.

The sun hits Anderson Lake's sixth-floor balcony and pours into his flat. Jasmine vines at the edge of the veranda rustle in the hot breeze. Anderson looks up, blue eyes slitted against the glare. Sweat jewels pop and gleam on his pale skin. Beyond the rail, the city appears as a molten sea, glinting gold where spires
and
glass catch the full blaze of the sun.

He's naked in the heat, seated on the floor, surrounded by open books: flora and fauna catalogs, travel notes, an entire history of the Southeast Asian peninsula scattered across teak. Moldy, crumbling tomes. Scraps of paper. Half-torn diaries. The excavated memories of a time when tens of thousands of plants lofted pollen and spores and seeds into the air. He has spent all night at work, and yet he barely remembers the many varietals he has examined. Instead, his mind returns to flesh exposed—a
pha sin
sliding up a girl's legs, the memory of peacocks on a shimmering purple weave riding high, smooth thighs damply parted.

In the far distance, the towers of Ploenchit stand tall, backlit. Three shadow fingers spiking skyward in a yellow haze of humidity. In the daylight they just look like more Expansion-era slums, without a hint of the pulsing addictions contained within.

A windup girl.

His fingers on her skin. Her dark eyes solemn as she said, "You may touch."

Anderson takes a shuddering breath, forcing away the memories. She is the opposite of the invasive plagues he fights every day. A hothouse flower, dropped into a world too harsh for her delicate heritage. It seems unlikely that she will survive for long. Not in this climate. Not with these people. Perhaps it was that vulnerability that moved him, her pretended strength when she had nothing at all. Seeing her fight for a semblance of pride even as she hiked up her skirt at Raleigh's order.

Is that why you told her about the villages? Because you pitied her? Not because her skin felt as smooth as mango? Not because you could hardly breathe when you touched her?

He grimaces and turns his attention again to his open books, forcing himself to attend to his true problem, the question that has brought him across the world on clipper ship and dirigible: Gi Bu Sen. The windup girl said Gi Bu Sen.

Anderson shuffles through his books and papers, comes up with a photograph. A fat man, sitting with other Midwest scientists at an AgriGen-sponsored conference on blister rust mutation. He is looking away from the camera, bored, the wattles of his neck showing.

Are you still fat?
Anderson wonders.
Do the Thais feed you as well as we did?

There were only three possibilities: Bowman, Gibbons and Chaudhuri. Bowman, who disappeared just before the SoyPRO monopoly broke. Chaudhuri, who walked off a dirigible and disappeared into the Indian Estates, either kidnapped by PurCal or run off, or dead. And Gibbons. Gi Bu Sen. The smartest of them all, and the one deemed least likely. Dead, after all. His seared body recovered from the ashes of his home by his children. . . and then entirely cremated before the company could perform an autopsy. But dead. And when the children were questioned with lie detectors and drugs, all they could say was that their father had always insisted that he not be autopsied. That he couldn't abide anyone cutting into his corpse and pumping it with preservatives. But the DNA matched. It was him. Everyone was sure it was him.

Except that it's easy to doubt when all you have are a few genetic clippings from the supposed corpse of the finest generipper in the world.

Anderson shuffles through more papers, hunting up the transcripts of the calorie man's final days, culled from bugging devices they kept in the labs. Nothing. Not a hint of his plans. And then he was dead. And they were forced to believe that it was true.

In that way, the
ngaw
almost makes sense. The nightshades as well. Gibbons always enjoyed flaunting his expertise. An egotist. Every colleague said so. Gibbons would delight in playing with the full range of a complete seedbank. An entire genus resurrected and then a bit of local lore to top it off.
Ngaw
. At least, Anderson assumes the fruit is local. But who knows? Perhaps it is an entirely new creation. Something sprung complete from Gibbons' mind, like Adam's rib spawning Eve.