The Windup Girl

He makes her repeat things, asks more questions. Returns to threads she thought he had forgotten. He is relentless, pecking at her story, forcing explanations. He is very good with his questions. Gendo-sama used to question underlings this way, when he wanted to know why a clipper ship was not completed on schedule. He bored through the excuses like a genehack weevil.

Finally the gaijin nods, satisfied. "Good," he says. "Very good."

Emiko feels a wash of pleasure at his compliment, and despises herself for it. The gaijin finishes his whiskey. Reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of cash, peels off several bills as he stands.

"These are for you, only. Don't show them to Raleigh. I'll settle with him before I leave."

She supposes she should feel grateful, but she instead feels used. As used by this man with his questions and his words as those others, the hypocritical Grahamites and the Environment Ministry's white shirts, who wish to transgress with her biological oddity, who all slaver for the pleasure of intercourse with an unclean creature.

She holds the bills between her fingers. Her training tells her to be polite, but his self-satisfied largesse irritates her.

"What does the gentleman think I will do with his extra baht?" she asks. "Buy a pretty piece of jewelry? Take myself out to dinner? I am property, yes? I am Raleigh's." She tosses the money at his feet. "It makes no difference if I am rich or poor. I am owned."

The man pauses, one hand on the sliding door. "Why not run away, then?"

"To where? My import permits have expired." She smiles bitterly. "Without Raleigh-san's patronage and connections, the white shirts would mulch me."

"You wouldn't run for the North?" the man asks. "For the windups there?"

"What windups?"

The man smiles slightly. "Raleigh hasn't mentioned them to you? Windup enclaves in the high mountains? Escapees from the coal war? Released ones?"

At her blank expression he goes on. "There are whole villages up there, living off the jungles. It's poor country, genehacked half to death, out beyond Chiang Rai and across the Mekong, but the windups there don't have any patrons and they don't have any owners. The coal war's still running, but if you hate your niche so much, it's an alternative to Raleigh."

"Is it true?" She leans forward. "This village, is it real?"

The man smiles slightly. "You can ask Raleigh, if you don't believe me. He's seen them with his own eyes." He pauses. "But then, I suppose he wouldn't see much benefit in telling you. Might encourage you to slip your leash."

"You're telling the truth?"

The pale strange man tips his hat. "At least as much truth as you've told me." He slides the door aside and slips out, leaving Emiko alone with a pounding heart and a sudden urge to live.

4

"500, 1000, 5000, 7500… "

Protecting the Kingdom from all the infections of the natural world is like trying to catch the ocean with a net. One can snare a certain number of fish, sure, but the ocean is always there, surging through.

"10,000, 12,500, 15,000… 25,000… "

Captain Jaidee Rojjanasukchai is more than aware of this as he stands under the vast belly of a farang dirigible in the middle of the sweltering night. The dirigible's turbofans gust and whir overhead. Its payload lies scattered, crates and boxes splintered open, their contents spilled across the anchor pad as though a child has recklessly strewn his toys. Sundry valuables and interdicted items lie everywhere.

"30,000, 35,000… 50,000… "

Around him, Bangkok's newly renovated airfield spreads in all directions, lit by high-intensity methane lamps mounted on mirror towers: a vast green-bathed expanse of anchor pads dotted with the massive balloons of the farang floating high overhead, and, at its edges, the thickly grown walls of HiGro Bamboo and spun barbed wire that are supposed to define the international boundaries of the field.

"60,000, 70,000, 80,000… "

The Thai Kingdom is being swallowed. Jaidee idly surveys the wreckage his men have wrought, and it seems obvious. They are being swallowed by the ocean. Nearly every crate holds something of suspicion. But really, the crates are symbolic. The problem is ubiquitous: gray-market chemical baths are sold in Chatachuk Market and men pole their skiffs up the Chao Phraya in the dead of night with hulls full of next-gen pineapples. Pollen wafts down the peninsula in steady surges, bearing AgriGen and PurCal's latest genetic rewrites, while cheshires molt through the garbage of the sois and jingjok2 lizards vandalize the eggs of nightjars and peafowl. Ivory beetles bore through the forests of Khao Yai even as cibiscosis sugars, blister rust, and fa' gan fringe bore through the vegetables and huddled humanity of Krung Thep.

It is the ocean they all swim in. The very medium of life.

"90… 100,000… 110… 125… "