The Windup Girl (16 page)

Jaidee sighs. "I remember a time when the white shirts were loved."

"Everyone needs to eat."

Jaidee sighs again. He pulls the satchel out from between his legs and shoves it across to Kanya. "Take the money. Divide it equally amongst them. For their bravery and hard work yesterday."

She looks at him surprised. "You're sure?"

Jaidee shrugs and smiles, hiding his own disappointment, knowing that this is the best way, and yet saddened immeasurably by it. "Why not? They're good boys, as you say. And it's not as though the
farang
and the Ministry of Trade aren't reeling at this very moment. They did good work."

Kanya
wais
deep respect, ducking her head low and raising her pressed palms to her forehead.

"Oh, stop that nonsense." Jaidee pours more Sato into Kanya's glass, finishing the bottle. "
Mai pen rai.
Never mind. These are small things. Tomorrow we'll have new battles to fight. And we'll need good loyal boys to follow us. How will we ever overcome the AgriGens and PurCals of the world if we don't feed our friends?"

8

"I lost 30,000."

"Fifty," Otto mutters.

Lucy Nguyen stares at the ceiling. "One-Eighty Five? Six?"

"Four hundred." Quoile Napier sets his warm glass of Sato down on the low table. "I lost four hundred thousand blue bills on Carlyle's goddamn dirigible."

The entire table falls silent, stunned. "Christ." Lucy sits up, bleary with drink in the middle of the afternoon. "What were you smuggling in, cibi-resistant seedstock?"

The conversationalists sprawl on the veranda of Sir Francis Drake's, all five together, the
"Farang
Phalanx" as Lucy has styled them, all of them staring out at the dry season blast furnace and drinking themselves into a stupor.

Anderson reclines with them, half-listening to their slurred complaints as he turns the problem of the
ngaw
's origins over in his mind. He's got another bag of the fruit between his feet, and he can't help thinking that the answer to his puzzle lies close, if only he had sufficient ingenuity to suss it out. He drinks warm Khmer whiskey and ponders.

Ngaw
:
apparently impervious to blister rust and cibiscosis even when directly exposed; obviously resistant to Nippon genehack weevil and leafcurl, or it could never have grown. A perfect product. The fruit of access to different genetic material than AgriGen and the rest of the calorie companies use for their generipping.

Somewhere in this country a seedbank is hidden. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of carefully preserved seeds, a treasure trove of biological diversity. Infinite chains of DNA, each with their own potential uses. And from this gold mine, the Thais are extracting answers to their knottiest challenges of survival. With access to the Thai seedbank, Des Moines could mine genetic code for generations, beat back plague mutations. Stay alive a little longer.

Anderson shifts in his seat, stifling irritation, wiping away sweat. He's so close. Nightshades have been reborn, and now
ngaw.
And Gibbons is running loose in Southeast Asia. If it weren't for that illegal windup girl he wouldn't even know about Gibbons. The Kingdom has been singularly successful at maintaining its operational security. If he could just ascertain the seedbank's location, a raid might even be possible. . . They've learned since Finland.

Beyond the veranda, nothing with any intelligence is moving. Tantalizing beads of sweat run down Lucy's neck and soak her shirt as she complains about the state of the coal war with the Vietnamese. She can't hunt for jade if the Army is busy shooting anything that moves. Quoile's sideburns are matted. No breezes blow.

Out in the street, rickshaw men huddle in thin pools of shade. Their bones and joints protrude from bare taut skin, skeletons with flesh stretched tight on their frames. At this time of day they only sullenly emerge from shadow when they are called, and then only for double fee.

The entire ramshackle structure of the bar is scabbed to the outer wall of a wrecked Expansion tower. A hand-painted sign leans against one of the stairs up to the veranda, with the scrawled words: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE'S. The sign is a recent addition, relative to the decay and wreckage around it, painted by a handful of
farang
determined to name their surroundings. The fools who did the naming long ago disappeared up country, either swallowed in the jungle as blister rust rewrites swept over them, or torn apart in the tangle of war lines over coal and jade. Still, the sign remains, either because it amuses the owner, who has taken the name on as a nickname, or because no one can summon the energy to paint over it. In the meantime, it peels in the heat.

Regardless of provenance, Drake's is perfectly placed between the seawall shipping locks and the factories. Its dilapidated wreckage faces off across from the Victory Hotel so the
Farang
Phalanx can drink itself stupid and watch to see if any new foreigners of interest have washed up on the shores.

There are other, lower, dives for those sailors who manage to pass Customs and quarantine and washdown, but it is here, with the snapping white tablecloths of the Victory on one side of the cobbled street, and Sir Francis' bamboo slum on the other, where those foreigners who settle in Bangkok for any length of time eventually sink.

"What were you shipping?" Lucy asks again, prodding Quoile to explain his losses.

Quoile leans forward and lowers his voice, encouraging all of them to rouse themselves. "Saffron. From India."

A pause, and then Cobb laughs. "Good airlift product. I should have thought of that."

"Ideal for a dirigible. Low weight. More profitable than opium on the uplift," Quoile says. "The Kingdom still hasn't figured out how to crack the seedstock, and all the politicians and generals want it for their household kitchens. Lots of face, if they can get it. I had solid pre-orders. I was going to be rich. Unbelievably rich."

"Are you ruined then?"

"Maybe not. I'm negotiating with Sri Ganesha Insurance, they might cover some." Quoile shrugs. "Well, eighty percent. But all the bribes to get it into the country? All the payoffs to the Customs agents?" He makes a face. "That's a complete loss. Still, I might get out with my skin.

"In a way, I got lucky. The shipment only falls under insurance guidelines because it was still on Carlyle's dirigible. I ought to toast that damn pilot for getting himself drowned in the ocean. If they'd unloaded the cargo and the white shirts had burned it on the ground, it would have been classified contraband. Then I'd be out there on the street with the
fa' gan
beggars and the yellow cards."

Otto scowls. "That's about the only thing to be said for Carlyle. If he wasn't so interested in touching politics, none of this would have happened."

Quoile shrugs. "We don't know that."

"It's damn certain," Lucy interjects. "Carlyle spends half his energy complaining about the white shirts and the other half cozying up with Akkarat. It's a message from General Pracha to Carlyle and the Trade Ministry. We're just the carrier pigeons."

"Carrier pigeons are extinct."

"You think we won't be? General Pracha would be happy to throw every one of us into Khlong Prem prison if he thought it would send the right message to Akkarat." Her gaze swings to Anderson. "You're awfully quiet, Lake. You didn't lose anything at all?"

Anderson stirs himself. "Manufacturing materials. Replacement parts for my line. Probably a hundred fifty thousand blue bills. My secretary's still evaluating the damage." He glances at Quoile. "Our stuff was on the ground. No insurance."

The memory of his conversation with Hock Seng is still fresh. Hock Seng first played at denial, complaining of incompetence at the anchor pads, before finally confessing that everything was lost, and that he had failed to pay all the bribe money in the first place. An ugly confessional, almost hysterical, the old man terrified of losing his job and Anderson pressing him further and further into his fear, humiliating him and shouting at him, making the old man cower, making a point of his displeasure. Still, he can't help wondering if the lesson has been learned, or if Hock Seng will try to be tricky again. Anderson grimaces. If the old man didn't free up so much of Anderson's time for more important work, he'd ship the old bastard back to the yellow card towers.

"I told you this was a stupid place to run a factory," Lucy says.

"The Japanese do it."

"Only because they have special arrangements with the palace."

"The Chaozhou Chinese do just fine, too."

Lucy makes a face. "They've been here for generations. Practically Thai at this point. We're more like yellow cards than Chaozhou, if you want to make comparisons. A smart
farang
knows not to keep too much invested in this place. The ground's always shifting. It's too damn easy to lose everything in a crackdown. Or another coup."

"We all work with the hands we're dealt." Anderson shrugs. "Anyway, Yates chose the site."

"I told Yates it was stupid, too."

Anderson recalls Yates, eyes bright with the possibilities of a new global economy. "Maybe not stupid. But definitely an idealist." He finishes his drink. The bar owner is nowhere in sight. He waves for the waiters, who all ignore him. One of them, at least, is asleep, standing.

"You're not worried you'll get yanked the way Yates did?" Lucy asks.

Anderson shrugs. "Wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen. It's damn hot." He touches his sunburned nose. "I'm more of a northern wastes sort."

Nguyen and Quoile, dark-skinned both, laugh at that, but Otto just nods grimly, his own peeling nose a testament to his inability to adapt to the burn of the equatorial sun.

Lucy pulls out a pipe and pushes a couple of flies away before setting down her smoking tools and an accompanying ball of opium. The flies hobble away, but don't take to the air. Even the bugs seem stunned by the heat. Down an alley, near the rubble of an old Expansion tower, children are playing next to a freshwater pump. Lucy watches them as she tamps her pipe. "Christ, I wish I was a kid again."

Everyone seems to have lost the energy for conversation. Anderson pulls the sack of
ngaw
out from between his feet. Takes one out and peels it. Pries the translucent fruit from the
ngaw's
interior and tosses the hairy hollow rind on the table. Pops the fruit into his mouth.

Otto cocks his head, curious. "What's that you've got?"

Anderson digs more out of his sack, distributes them. "Not sure. Thais call them
ngaw
."

Lucy stops tamping her pipe. "I've seen them. They're all over the market. They don't have blister rust?"

Anderson shakes his head. "Not so far. The lady who sold them said they were clean. Had the certificates."

Everyone laughs, but Anderson shrugs off their cynicism. "I let them sit for a week. Nothing. They're cleaner than U-Tex."

The others follow his lead and eat their own fruits. Eyes widen. Smiles appear. Anderson opens the sack wide and sets it on the table. "Go ahead. I've been eating too many as it is."

They all rifle the bag. A pile of rinds grows in the center of the table. Quoile chews thoughtfully. "It sort of reminds me of lychee."

"Oh?" Anderson controls his interest. "Never heard of it."

"Sure. I had a drink that tasted a bit like it. Last time I was in India. Kolkata. A PurCal sales rep took me to one of his restaurants, when I first started looking at shipping saffron."

"So you think it's this. . . leechee?"

"Could be. Lychee was what he called the drink. Might not have been the fruit at all."

"If it's a PurCal product, I don't see how it would show up here," Lucy says. "These should all be out on Koh Angrit, under quarantine while the Environment Ministry finds ten thousand different ways to tax the thing." She spits the pit into her palm and tosses it off the balcony into the street. "I'm seeing these everywhere. They've got to be local." She reaches into the sack and takes another. "You know who might know about them, though. . ." She leans back and calls into the dimness of the bar. "Hagg! You still there? You awake back in there?"

At the man's name, the others stir and try to straighten themselves, like children caught by a strict parent. Anderson forces down an instinctive chill. "I wish you hadn't done that," he mutters.

Otto grimaces. "I thought he died."

"Blister rust never gets the chosen ones, don't you know?"

Everyone stifles a laugh as a form shambles out of the gloom. Hagg's face is flushed, and sweat speckles his face. He surveys the Phalanx solemnly. "Hello, all." He nods his head to Lucy. "Still trafficking with these sort, then?"

Lucy shrugs. "I make do." She nods at a chair. "Don't just stand there. Have a drink on us. Tell us your stories." She lights her opium pipe and draws on it as the man pulls up the chair beside her and sags into it.

Hagg is a solid man, well-fleshed. Not for the first time, Anderson thinks how interesting it is that Grahamite priests, of all their flock, are always the ones whose waistlines overflow their niche. Hagg waves for whiskey, and surprises everyone when a waiter appears at his elbow almost immediately.

"No ice," the waiter says on arrival.

"No, no ice. Of course not." Hagg shakes his head emphatically. "Don't want the damn calories spent, anyway."

When the waiter returns, Hagg takes the drink and downs it instantly, then sends the waiter back for a second. "It's good to be back in from the countryside," he says. "You start missing the pleasures of civilization." He toasts them all with his second glass and downs it as well.

"How far out were you?" Lucy asks around the pipe clamped in her teeth. She's starting to look a little glassy from the burning tar.

"Near the old border with Burma, Three Pagodas pass." He looks sourly at them all as if they are guilty of the sins he researches. "Looking into ivory beetle spread."

"Not safe up there, I heard." Otto says. "Who's the
jao por?
"