The Windup Girl (35 page)

The white shirts' mouths open to shout again. Their spring guns rise, seeking her. Emiko watches their slit barrels zero in on her. Wonders absently if perhaps she is actually the slow one. If gravity itself will be too slow.

The wind gusts around her, beckoning. The spirits of the air tug at her, blow the black net of her hair across her eyes. She pushes it aside. Smiles calmly at the white shirts—still running, still pointing their spring guns—and steps backward into open air. The white shirts' eyes widen. Their guns glint red. Disks spit toward her. One, two, three. . . she counts them as they fly. . . four, five—

Gravity yanks her down. The men and their projectiles disappear. She smashes into the balcony. Her knees slam into her chin. Her ankle twists as metal shrieks. She rolls, crashing into the balcony's railing. It shatters and peels away and she plunges into open air. Emiko grabs for a broken copper balustrade as she goes over. Yanks to a stop, dangling above an abyss.

Empty air yawns all around, beckoning free-fall. Hot wind gusts. Tugs at her. Emiko pulls herself up to the listing balcony, gasping. Her whole body is shaking, feels bruised, and yet all her limbs still work. She has not broken a single bone in the fall.
Optimal.
She swings a leg up onto the balcony, and hauls herself to safety. Metal grinds. The balcony sags under her weight, its ancient bolts loosening. She's burning up. She wants to collapse. To let herself slide from her precarious ledge and pour into the open air. . .

Shouts from above.

Emiko looks up. White shirts peer over the edge, aiming their spring guns at her. Disks pour down like silver rain. They ricochet, slash her skin, spark on metal. Fear gives her strength. She lunges for the safety of the balcony's glass doors.
Optimal.
The doors shatter.
Glass slices her palms. Sparkling shards envelope her and then she's through the glass and in the apartment and she's running fast, blurringly fast. People are staring at her, shocked, impossibly slow—

Frozen.

Emiko smashes through another door and out into the hall. White shirts surround her. She plunges through them. Their surprised shouts are leaden as she streaks past. Down the stairwells. Down, down, down the stairs, leaving the white shirts far behind. Shouts from high above.

Her blood is on fire. The stairwells burn. She stumbles. Leans against a wall. Even the heat of the concrete is better than her skin. She's becoming dizzy, but still she stumbles on. Men shout from above, chasing after her. Their boots thump on the stairs.

Around and around and down she goes. She shoves through obstructing knots of people, jams herself between dwellers rousted by the raid. She is delirious with the furnace inside her.

Tiny beads of sweat speckle her skin, forcing their way out through her absurdly designed pores, but in the heat and humidity, it does nothing to cool her. She has never felt moisture on her skin before. Always she is dry—

She brushes against a man. He recoils in surprise from her blazing skin. She's burning up. She cannot blend amongst these people. Her limbs move like the flash-frame pages of a child's animation book, fast, fast, fast, but choppy. Everyone is staring.

She turns from the stairwell and jams through a door, stumbles down a hall, leans against a wall, panting. She can hardly keep her eyes open with the fire that burns within.

I jumped,
she thinks.

I jumped.

Adrenaline and shock. Cocktail terror, giddy amphetamine high. She's shaking. A windup's jitters. She's boiling. Faint with heat. She presses herself against the wall, trying to absorb its cool.

I need water. Ice.

Emiko tries to control her breathing, to listen, to know where the exterminators come from, but her mind is dizzy and clouded. How far down is she? How many flights?

Keep moving. Keep going.

Instead, she collapses.

The floor is cool. Her breath saws in and out of her lungs. Her halter is torn. There is blood on her arms and hands where she went through the glass. She stretches out, fingers wide, palms pressed to tile, trying to absorb the coolness of the floor. Her eyes close.

Get up!

But she can't. She tries to control her beating heart and listen for her pursuers, but she can barely breathe. She's so hot, and the floor is so cool.

Hands seize her. Voices exclaim and drop her. Grab her again. Then the white shirts are all around, dragging her down the stairs, and she's grateful, thankful that they're at least dragging her down and out into the blessed evening air, even as they scream at her and slap her.

Their words wash over her. She can't understand any of it. It's all just sounds, dark and dizzy heat. They do not speak Japanese, they are not even civilized. None of them are optimal—

Water splashes over her. She gags and chokes. Another deluge, in her mouth, her nose, drowning her.

People are shaking her. They yell into her face. Slap her. Ask questions. Demand answers.

They grab her hair and jam her face down into a bucket of water, trying to drown her, to punish her, to kill her and all she can think is
thank you thank you thank you thank you
because some scientist made her optimal, and in another minute this slip of a windup girl that they shout at and slap will be cool.

22

The white shirts are everywhere: inspecting passes, stalking through food markets, confiscating methane. It's taken hours for Hock Seng to cross the city. Rumors say that all the Malayan Chinese have been interned in the yellow card towers. That they're about to be shipped south, back across the border to the mercy of the Green Headbands. Hock Seng listens to every whisper as he scuttles through alleys on his way back to his cash and gems, sending native Mai ahead of him, using her local's accent to scout.

By the time night falls, they are still far from his destination. SpringLife's stolen money weighs heavy on him. At times he fears that Mai will suddenly turn on him and report him to the white shirts in return for a share of the cash he carries. At other times, he mistakes her for a daughter mouth, and wishes he could protect her from everything that is coming.

I'm going mad,
he thinks.
To mistake some silly Thai girl for my own.

And yet still he trusts the slight girl, the child of fish farmers, who previously proved so obedient when he still had a scrap of managerial authority, and who he prays will not turn on him now that he is a target.

Darkness falls completely.

"Why are you so frightened?" Mai asks.

Hock Seng shrugs. She does not—cannot—understand the complexities swirling around them. For her it is a game. Frightening, to be sure, but still a game.

"When the brown people turned on the yellow people in Malaya, it was like this. All at once, everything was different. The religious fanatics came with their green headbands and their machetes. . ." He shrugs. "The more careful we are, the better."

He peers out into the street from their hiding place and ducks back. A white shirt is pasting up another image of the Tiger of Bangkok, edged in black. Jaidee Rojjanasukchai. How quickly he falls from grace, and then rises like a bird to sainthood. Hock Seng grimaces. A lesson of politics.

The white shirt moves on. Hock Seng scans the street again. People are starting to come out, encouraged by the relative cool of the evening. They walk through the humid darkness, coming out to do their shopping, to find a meal, to locate a favorite
som tam
cart. White shirts glow green under approved-burn methane. They move in teams, hunting like jackals for wounded meat. Small shrines to Jaidee have appeared before store fronts and homes. His image surrounded by flickering candles and draped with marigolds, displaying solidarity and begging for protection against white shirt rage.

Accusations fill the airwaves on National Radio. General Pracha speaks of the need to protect the Kingdom from those—carefully unnamed—who would topple it. His voice crackles over the people, tinny from hand-cranked radios. Vendors and housewives. Beggars and children. The green of the methane lamps turns skin shimmery, a carnival. But amongst the rustle of sarongs and
pha sin
and the clank of red and gold megodont handlers, there are always the white shirts, hard eyes looking for an excuse to vent their rage.

"Go on." Hock Seng prods Mai forward. "See if it is safe."

A minute later Mai is back, motioning for him, and they are off again, threading through the crowds. Knots of silence warn them when new white shirts are near, fear sending laughing lovers silent, and children running. Heads duck low as the white shirts pass. Hock Seng and Mai work their way past a night market. His eyes rove over candles, frying noodles, cheshire shimmers.

A shout rises ahead of them. Mai darts forward, scouting. She's back a moment later, tugging at his hand. "
Khun.
Come quickly. They're distracted." And then they're slipping past a clot of white shirts and the object of their abuse.

An old woman lies beside her cart, her daughter at her side, clutching a shattered knee. A crowd has gathered as the daughter struggles to drag her mother upright.

All around, the glass cases that held their ingredients are shattered. Shards glitter in chile sauce, amongst bean sprouts, on lime, like diamonds under the green light of methane. The white shirts stir through the woman's ingredients with their batons.

"Come Auntie, there must be some more money here. You thought you could bribe white shirts, but you haven't done nearly enough to burn untaxed fuel."

"Why are you doing this?" the daughter cries. "What have we done to you?"

The white shirt studies her coldly. "You took us for granted." His baton crashes down on her mother's knee again. The woman shrieks and the daughter cowers.

The white shirt calls to his men. "Put their methane tank in with the rest. We have three more streets to go." He turns to the watching silent crowd. Hock Seng freezes as the officer's eyes travel across him.

Don't run. Don't panic. You can pass, as long as you don't speak
.

The white shirt smiles at the watching people. "Tell your friends what you see here. We are not dogs you feed with scraps. We are tigers. Fear us." And then he raises his baton and the crowd scatters, Hock Seng and Mai with them.

A block later, Hock Seng leans against a wall, panting with the effort of their flight. The city has grown monstrous. Every street holds hazard now.

Down the alley, a hand-cranked radio crackles with more news. The docks and factories have been shut down. Access to the waterfront is restricted to those with permits.

Hock Seng suppresses a shiver. It's happening again. The walls are going up and he is stuck inside the city, a rat in a trap. He fights down panic. He planned for this. There are contingencies. But first he has to make it home.

Bangkok is not Malacca. This time you are prepared.

Eventually the familiar shacks and smells of the Yaowarat slums surround them. They slip through tight squeezeways. Past the people who do not know him. He forces down another rush of fear. If the white shirts have influenced the slum's godfathers
,
he could be in danger. He forces the thought away, drags open the door to his hovel, guides Mai inside.

"You did well." He digs in his bag and hands her a bundle of the stolen money. "If you want more, come back to me tomorrow."

She stares at the wealth that he has so casually handed her.

If he were smart, he would strangle her and reduce the chances that she will turn on him for the rest of his savings. He forces down the thought. She has been loyal. He must trust someone. And she is Thai, which is useful when yellow cards are suddenly as disposable as cheshires.

She takes the money and stuffs it into a pocket.

"You can find your way from here?" he asks.

She grins. "I'm not a yellow card. I don't have anything to fear."

Hock Seng makes himself smile in return, thinking that she does not know how little anyone cares to separate wheat from chaff, when all anyone wants to do is burn a field.

23

"Goddamn General Pracha and goddamn white shirts!"

Carlyle pounds the railing of the apartment. He's unshaven and unbathed. He hasn't been back to the Victory in a week, thanks to the lockdown of the
farang
district. His clothing is beginning to show the wear of the tropics.

"They've got the anchor pads locked down, they've got the locks closed. Banned access to the piers." He turns and comes back inside. Pours himself a drink. "Fucking white shirts."

Anderson can't help smiling at Carlyle's irritation. "I warned you about poking cobras."

Carlyle scowls. "It wasn't me. Someone in Trade had a bright idea and went too far. Fucking Jaidee," he fumes. "They should have known better."

"Was it Akkarat?"

"He's not that stupid."

"It doesn't matter, I suppose." Anderson toasts him with warm scotch. "A week of lockdown, and it looks like the white shirts are just getting started."

Carlyle glowers. "Don't look so satisfied. I know you're hurting, too."

Anderson sips. "Honestly, I can't say that I care. The factory was useful. Now it's not." He leans forward. "Now I want to know if Akkarat has really done as much groundwork as you claimed." He nods toward the city. "Because it's looking like he's overstretched."

"And you think that's funny?"

"I think that if he's isolated, he needs friends. I want you to reach out to him again. Offer him our sincere support in this crisis."

"You've got a better offer than the one that had him threatening to have you trampled?"

"The price is the same. The gift is the same." Anderson sips again. "But maybe Akkarat is willing to listen to reason now."

Carlyle stares out at the green glow of methane lamps. Grimaces. "I'm losing money every day."

"I thought you had leverage with your pumps."

"Stop smirking." Carlyle scowls. "You can't even threaten these bastards. They won't take messengers."