He tosses back another shot of whiskey, grimaces and slaps it down on the bar. "We should all send flowers to that Jaidee white shirt bastard. He's done his job perfectly. With half the city's coal pumps offline. . ." He shrugs. "The nice thing about dealing with the Thais is that they're really a very sensitive people. I won't even have to make a threat. They'll figure it out all on their own, and make things right."
"Quite a gamble."
"Isn't everything?" Carlyle favors Anderson with a cynical smile. "Maybe we're all dead tomorrow from a blister rust rewrite. Or maybe we're the richest men in the Kingdom. It's all a gamble. The Thais play for keeps. So should we."
"I'd just put a spring gun to your head and trade your brains for the pumps."
"That's the spirit!" Carlyle laughs. "Now you're thinking like a Thai. But I've got myself covered there, too."
"What? With the Trade Ministry?" Anderson makes a face. "Akkarat doesn't have the muscle to protect you."
"Better than that. He's got generals."
"You're drunk. General Pracha's friends run every part of the military. The only reason the white shirts don't run the entire country already is because the old King stepped in before Pracha could squash Akkarat the last time."
"Times change. Pracha's white shirts and his payoffs have made a lot of people angry. People want a change."
"You're talking revolution, now?"
"Is it revolution if the palace asks for it?" Carlyle reaches nonchalantly across the bar for the bottle of whiskey and pours. He upends it and gets less than half a shot from the bottle. He raises an eyebrow to Anderson. "Ah. Now you're paying attention." He points to Anderson's tumbler. "Are you going to drink that?"
"How far does this go?"
"You want in on the deal?"
"Why would you offer?"
"You have to ask?" Carlyle shrugs. "When Yates set up your factory, he tripled the Megodont Union's fees for joules. Threw money everywhere. Hard not to notice that kind of funding."
He nods at the other expatriates, now playing a listless game of poker and waiting for the heat of the day to abate so that they can go on with their work or their whoring or their passive wait for the next day. "Everyone else, they're children. Little kids wearing adult clothes. You're different."
"You think we're rich?"
"Oh stop the theatrics. My dirigibles haul your cargo." Carlyle regards him. "I've seen where your supply shipments originate from," he looks at Anderson significantly, "before they arrive in Kolkata."
Anderson pretends nonchalance. "So?"
"An awful lot of material coming from Des Moines."
"You think I'm worth talking to because I've got Midwestern investors? Doesn't everyone get their investors where the money is? So what if a rich widow wants to experiment with kink-springs. You read too much into small things."
"Do I?" Carlyle looks around the bar and leans close. "People are talking about you."
"How so?"
"They say you're quite interested in seeds." He looks significantly at the rind of the ngaw between them. "We're all genespotters, these days. But you're the only one who pays for your intelligence. The only one who asks about white shirts and generippers. "
Anderson smiles coldly. "You've been talking to Raleigh."
Carlyle inclines his head. "If it's any consolation, it wasn't easy. He didn't want to talk about you. Not at all."
"He should have thought a little harder."
"He can't get his aging treatments without me." Carlyle shrugs. "We have shipping representatives in Japan. You weren't offering him another decade of easy living."
Anderson forces a laugh. "Of course." He smiles, but inside he is seething. He'll have to deal with Raleigh. And now perhaps Carlyle as well. He's been sloppy. He eyes the ngaw with disgust. He's been waving his latest interest in front of everyone. Grahamites, even, and now this. It's too easy to get comfortable. To forget all the lines of exposure. And then one day in a bar, someone slaps you in the face.
Carlyle is saying, "If I could just speak with certain people. Discuss certain propositions. . ." he trails off, brown eyes hunting for a sign of agreement in Anderson's expression. "I don't care which company you're working for. If I understand your interests correctly, then we might find our goals lie in similar directions."
Anderson drums his fingers on the bar, thoughtful. If Carlyle were to disappear, would it rouse any interest at all? He might even be able to blame it on overzealous white shirts. . .
"You think you've got a chance?" Anderson asks.
"It wouldn't be the first time the Thais have reformed their government with force. The Victory Hotel wouldn't exist if Prime Minister Surawong hadn't lost his head and his mansion in the December 12 coup. Thai history is littered with changes in administration."
"I'm a little concerned that if you're talking to me, you're talking to others. Maybe too many others."
"Who else would I talk to?" Carlyle jerks his head toward the rest of the Farang Phalanx. "They're nothing. Wouldn't consider them for a second. Your people though. . ." Carlyle trails off, considering his words, then leans forward.
"Look, Akkarat has some experience with these matters. The white shirts have created a number of enemies. And not just farang. All our project requires is a bit of help gathering momentum." He takes a sip of his whiskey, considers the taste for a moment before setting the glass down. "The consequences would be quite favorable for us if it succeeds." He locks eyes with Anderson. "Quite favorable for you. For your friends in the Midwest."
"What do you get out of it?"
"Trade, of course." Carlyle grins. "If the Thais face outward instead of living in this absurd defensive crouch of theirs, my company expands. It's just good business. I can't imagine that your people enjoy cooling their heels on Koh Angrit, begging to be allowed to sell a few tons of U-Tex or SoyPRO to the Kingdom when there's a crop failure. You could have free trade, instead of sitting out on that quarantine island. I'd think that would be attractive to you. It certainly would benefit me."
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 only 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 fl
oating 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?"