The Windup Girl (25 page)

Hock Seng nods.

"And you have them to sell?"

Hock Seng shakes his head. "The way of making them."

"What makes you think I am a buyer?"

Hock Seng shrugs, forcing himself to hide his nervousness. There was a time when this sort of bargaining was easy for him. Second nature. But he wasn't desperate then. "If you are not, then there are others."

The Dung Lord nods. Finishes his coffee. A servant pours more. "And why do you come to me?"

"Because you are rich."

The Dung Lord laughs at that. He nearly spits out his coffee. His belly rolls and his body shakes. The servants freeze, watchful. When the Dung Lord finally controls his laughter, he wipes his mouth and shakes his head. "A fair answer, that." His smile disappears. "But I am also dangerous."

Hock Seng buries his nervousness and speaks directly. "When the rest of the Kingdom would have rejected our kind, you took us in. Not even our own people, the Thai-Chinese, were so generous. Her Royal Majesty the Queen showed mercy, allowing us to come across the border, but it was you who provided safe haven."

The Dung Lord shrugs. "No one uses these towers anyway."

"And yet you are the only one who showed compassion. An entire country full of good Buddhist people, and only you gave shelter, instead of forcing us back across the border. I would be dead by now if not for you."

The Dung Lord studies Hock Seng a moment longer. "My advisors thought it was foolish. That it would put me in opposition with the white shirts. Set me at odds with General Pracha. Maybe even threaten my methane deals."

Hock Seng nods. "Only you had enough influence to risk it."

"And what do you want for this wondrous bit of technology?"

Hock Seng readies himself. "A ship."

The Dung Lord looks up, surprised. "Not money? Not jade? Not opium?"

Hock Seng shakes his head. "A ship. A fast clipper. Mishimoto-designed. Registered and approved to transport cargo to the Kingdom and throughout the South China Sea. Under the protection of her Majesty the Queen. . ." He waits a beat. "And your patronage."

"Ah. Clever yellow card." The Dung Lord smiles. "And I thought you were truly grateful."

Hock Seng shrugs. "You are the only person who has the influence to provide such permits and guarantees."

"The only one who can make a yellow card truly legitimate, you mean. The only one who could convince white shirts to allow a yellow card shipping king to develop."

Hock Seng doesn't blink. "Your union lights the city. Your influence is unparalleled."

Unexpectedly, the Dung Lord forces himself out of his seat, stands. "Yes. Well. So it is." He turns and shambles across the patio to the edge of his terrace, hands behind his back, surveying the city below. "Yes. I suppose I still have strings I can pull. Ministers I can influence." He turns back. "You're asking for a lot."

"I give even more."

"And if you're selling this to more than one?"

Hock Seng shakes his head. "I do not need a fleet. I need one ship."

"Tan Hock Seng, seeking to restore his shipping empire here in the Thai Kingdom" The Dung Lord turns abruptly. "Maybe you've already sold it to others."

"I can only swear that it is not so."

"Would you swear on your ancestors? On your family's ghosts all walking hungry in Malaya?"

Hock Seng shifts uneasily. "I would."

"I want to see this technology you claim."

Hock Seng looks up surprised. "You haven't already started to wind it?"

"Why don't you demonstrate now?"

Hock Seng grins. "You're afraid it is a booby trap of some sort? A blade bomb maybe?" He laughs. "I do not play games. I come for business only." He looks around. "You have a winding man? Let us both see how many joules he can put into it. Wind it and see. But do be careful with it. It is not as resilient as a standard spring, because of the torque it operates under. It cannot be dropped." He points at a servant. "You there, put this spring on your winding spindle, see how many joules you can shove into it."

The servant looks uncertain. The Dung Lord nods agreement. A sea breeze rustles across the high garden as the young man sets the kink-spring on its spindle and settles on the winding cycle.

Hock Seng is suddenly seized by new worry. He confirmed with Banyat that he was taking one of the good springs, that it had passed QA, unlike the ones that always failed and cracked as soon as they started their winding. Banyat assured him that he should take one from a certain stack. But now, as the servant prepares to lean on his pedals, doubt flares. If he chose wrong, if Banyat was wrong. . . and now Banyat is dead under the feet of a crazed megodont. Hock Seng couldn't confirm one last time. He was sure. . . and yet. . .

The servant leans against the pedals. Hock Seng holds his breath. Sweat appears on the servant's brow and he looks over at Hock Seng and the Dung Lord, surprised at the resistance. He changes gears. The pedals turn, slowly at first, then faster. He begins cycling up through the gears as his momentum increases, jamming more and more energy into the kink-spring.

The Dung Lord watches thoughtfully. "I knew a man who worked at your kink-spring company. A few years ago. He didn't spread his wealth around as you do. Didn't curry favor with so many of his fellow yellow cards." He pauses. "I understand that the white shirts killed him for his watch. Beat him bloody, robbed him blind, right in the street, because he was out after curfew."

Hock Seng shrugs, forcing down memories of a man lying on cobbles, a ruined mess, broken already, begging for help. . .

The Dung Lord's eyes are thoughtful. "And now you work for this company as well. It seems like an unlikely coincidence."

Hock Seng doesn't say anything.

The Dung Lord says, "Dog Fucker should have paid more attention. You're a dangerous one."

Hock Seng shakes his head emphatically. "I only wish to reestablish myself."

The servant continues to pedal, cranking more joules into the spring, forcing more energy into the tiny box. The Dung Lord watches, trying to hide his astonishment as the process continues, but still, his eyes have widened. Already the servant has pushed more energy into the box than any spring its size should accept. The cycle whines as the servant pedals. Hock Seng says, "It will take all night for a man like this to wind it. You should take it to a megodont."

"How does it work?"

Hock Seng shrugs. "There is a new lubricating solution, it allows the springs to be tightened to significantly higher tensions, without breaking or locking."

The man continues to pour power into the spring. Servants and bodyguards begin to gather around, all of them watching with a certain awe as he cranks away at the box.

"Astonishing," the Dung Lord mutters.

"If you chain it to a more efficient animal—a megodont or a mulie—the calorie-to-joule transfer is nearly lossless," Hock Seng says.

The Dung Lord watches the spring as the man continues to wind. He is smiling. "We'll test your spring, Hock Seng. If it performs as well as it winds, you'll have your ship. Bring the specifications and blueprints. Your kind I can do business with." He motions to a servant and orders liquor. "A toast. To a new business partner."

Relief floods through Hock Seng. For the first time since blood washed his hands in an alley long ago, since a man begged for mercy and found none, liquor flows in Hock Seng's veins, and he is content.

13

Jaidee remembers when he first met Chaya. He had just finished one of his early
muay thai
bouts; he can't even remember who he competed against but he remembers coming out of the ring, people congratulating him, everyone saying that he moved better even than Nai Khanom Tom. He drank
laolao
that night, and then stumbled out into the streets with his friends, all of them laughing, trying to kick a
takraw
ball, drunk, absurd, and all of them flushed with victory and with life.

And there Chaya was, closing her parents' shop, propping up the wooden panels that secured the storefront where they sold marigolds and newly reengineered jasmine flowers for temple offerings. When he smiled at her, she gave him and his drunk friends a look of disgust. But Jaidee felt a shock of recognition—as if they had known one another in a past life, and were at last meeting again, fated lovers.

He had stared at her, stunned, and his friends had caught the look—Suttipong and Jaiporn and all the rest, all of them lost when the violet comb epidemic hit and they went into the breach to burn the villages where it had struck, all of them gone—but he remembers them all catching him staring, suddenly stupid with infatuation, and how they teased him. Chaya looked at him with a studied contempt and sent him stumbling away.

For Jaidee, it had always been easy to attract a girlfriend, some girl either pleased by his
muay thai
or his white uniform. But Chaya had simply looked through him and turned her back.

It took him a month to get up the nerve to return. That first time, he dressed well, shopped for temple offerings, took his change, and slipped out silently. Over the course of weeks he dropped by, talking with her more, establishing a connection. At first, he thought that she knew him for the drunken fool trying to make amends, but over time it became apparent that she had not made the connection, that the arrogant drunk on the streets that night had been completely forgotten.

Jaidee never told her how they first met, not even after they were married. It was too humiliating to admit to what she had seen in him that night on the street. To tell her that the man she loved was that other fool as well.

And now he prepares to do something worse. He puts on his white dress uniform while Niwat and Surat watch. They are solemn as he prepares to bring himself low in their eyes. He kneels before them.

"Whatever you see today, do not let it shame you."

They nod solemnly, but he knows they do not understand. They are too young to understand pressures and necessity. He pulls them close, and then he goes out into blinding sunlight.

Kanya awaits him in a cycle rickshaw, compassion in her eyes, even if she is too polite to speak what is in her heart.

They ride silently through the streets. The Ministry appears ahead and they ride through the gates. Servants and rickshaw men and carriages clog the outer gates, waiting for their patrons to return. The witnesses have already been arriving, then.

Their own rickshaw makes its way to the temple. Wat Phra Seub was erected inside the Ministry in honor of the biodiversity martyr. It is the place where white shirts make their vows and are formally ordained as protectors of the Kingdom, before they are given their first ranks. It is here that they receive their ordination, and it is here—

Jaidee starts, and nearly jumps to his feet in anger.
Farang
are milling all around the temple's steps.
Foreigners inside the Ministry compound. Traders and factory owners and Japanese, sunburned sweating stinking creatures, invading the Ministry's most sacred place.

"Jai yen yen,"
Kanya mutters. "It's Akkarat's doing. Part of the bargain."

Jaidee can't hide his disgust. Worse yet, Akkarat is standing beside the Somdet Chaopraya, saying something to him, telling a joke, perhaps. The two of them have become too close by far. Jaidee looks away and sees General Pracha watching from the top of the temple steps, his face expressionless. Around him, the brothers and sisters that Jaidee has worked with and warred with are all streaming into the temple. Bhirombhakdi is there, smiling widely, pleased to have his revenge for his lost revenue.

People catch sight of Jaidee's arrival. A hush overtakes the crowd.

"Jai yen yen,"
Kanya murmurs again, and then they are climbing down and he is being escorted inside.

Golden statues of Buddha and Phra Seub gaze down on the assembling people, serene. The screens on the temple walls portray scenes of the fall of Old Thailand: The
farang
releasing their plagues on the earth, animals and plants collapsing as their food webs unravelled; his Royal Majesty King Rama XII mustering his final pitiful human forces, flanked by Hanuman and his monkey warriors. Images of Krut and Kirimukha and an army of half-human
kala
fighting back the rising seas and plagues. Jaidee's eyes sweep over the panels, remembering how proud he had been at his own ordination.

No cameras are allowed anywhere inside the Ministry, but the whisper sheet scribblers are there with their pencils. Jaidee removes his shoes and enters, followed by the jackals who slaver after this rendering down of their greatest enemy. The Somdet Chaopraya kneels beside Akkarat.

Jaidee eyes the designated protector of the Queen, wondering how someone as divine as the last king could have been fooled into making the Somdet Chaopraya the protector of Her Royal Majesty the Child Queen. The man has so little that is good. Jaidee shivers at the thought of the Queen so close to someone so well-known for his darkness—

Jaidee sucks in his breath. The man from the anchor pads is kneeling beside Akkarat. A long rat-face, watchful and arrogant.

"Cool heart," Kanya mutters again as she leads him forward. "It's for Chaya."

Jaidee forces down his rage, the shock of seeing the man. He leans close to Kanya. "That's the one who took her. The one from the airfields. Right there! Beside Akkarat."

Kanya scans the faces. "Even if it is true, we must do this. It's the only way."

"Do you truly believe that?"

Kanya has the grace to duck her head. "I am sorry, Jaidee. I wish—"

"Don't worry, Kanya." He nods toward the man and Akkarat. "Just remember those two. Remember that they will stop at nothing for power." He looks at her. "Will you remember that?"

"I will."

"You swear on Phra Seub?"

She has the grace to look embarrassed, but she nods. "If I could perform the triple bow before you, I would."

He thinks he sees tears in her eyes as she backs away. The crowd hushes as the Somdet Chaopraya stands and steps forward to witness the proceedings. Four monks begin to chant. On happier occasions, they would be seven or nine in number, and consecrating a wedding, or blessing the laying of a new building's cornerstone. Instead they are here to oversee a humiliation.