The Windup Girl

10

The windup girl does nothing to defend herself. She cries out, but barely flinches as the knife bites. “Bai!” Anderson shouts to Lao Gu. “Kuai kuai kuai!”

He shoves the attacker away as the cycle lurches forward. The Thai man hacks clumsily at Anderson, then goes after the windup girl again, slashing. She does nothing to escape. Blood spatters. Anderson yanks a spring pistol from beneath his shirt and shoves it into the man’s face. The man’s eyes widen.

He drops off the rickshaw, running for cover. Anderson follows him with the barrel, trying to decide if he should put a disk in the man’s head or let him escape, but the man ducks behind a megodont wagon, robbing him of the decision.

“Goddamnit.” Anderson peers through the traffic, making sure the man is truly gone, then shoves his pistol back under his shirt. He turns to the slumped girl. “You’re safe now.”

The windup lies inert, clothes slashed and disarrayed, eyes closed, panting rapidly. When he presses his palm to her flushed forehead, she flinches and her eyelids flutter. Her skin is scalding. Listless black eyes stare up at him. “Please,” she murmurs.

The heat in her skin is overwhelming. She’s dying. Anderson yanks her jacket open, trying to vent her. She’s burning up, overheated by her flight and poor genetic design. Absurd that anyone would do this to a creature, hobble it so.

He shouts over his shoulder, “Lao Gu! Go to the levees!” Lao Gu glances back, uncomprehending. “Shui! Water! Nam! The ocean, damn it!” Anderson motions toward the dike walls. “Quickly! Kuai, kuai kuai!”

Lao Gu nods sharply. He stands on his pedals and accelerates again, forcing the bike through the clotted traffic, calling out warnings and curses at obstructing pedestrians and draft animals. Anderson fans the windup girl with his hat.

At the levee walls, Anderson throws the windup girl over his shoulder and hauls her up uneven stairs. Guardian naga flank the stairs, their long undulating snake bodies guiding him upward. Their faces watch impassive as he staggers higher. Sweat drips in his eyes. The windup is a furnace against his skin.

He tops the levee. Red sun burns against his face, silhouetting drowned Thonburi across the waters. The sun is almost as hot as the body draped over his shoulder. He stumbles down the other side of the embankment and heaves the girl into the sea. The splash soaks him with saltwater.

She sinks like a stone. Anderson gasps and lunges after her sinking form. You fool. You stupid fool. He catches a limp arm and drags her body up from the depths. Holds her so that her face floats above the waves, bracing himself to keep her from sinking again. Her skin burns. He half expects the sea to boil around her. Her black hair fans out like a net in the lapping waves. She dangles in his grasp. Lao Gu jostles down beside him. Anderson waves him over. “Here. Hold her.”

Lao Gu hesitates.

“Hold her, damn it. Zhua ta.”

Reluctantly, Lao Gu slides his hands under her arms. Anderson touches her neck, feeling for a pulse. Is her brain already cooked? He could be trying to revive a vegetable.

The windup’s pulse whirs like a hummingbird’s, faster than any creature her size should run. Anderson leans down to listen to her breathing.

Her eyes snap open. He jerks away. She thrashes and Lao Gu loses his grip. She disappears under water.

“No!” Anderson lunges after her.

She surfaces again, thrashing and coughing and reaching for him. Her hand locks on his and he pulls her to the bank. Her clothes swirl about her like tangled seaweed and her black hair glistens like silk. She stares up at Anderson with dark eyes. Her skin is suddenly blessedly cool.

“Why did you help me?”

Methane lamps flicker on the streets, turning the city ethereal shades of green. Darkness has fallen and the lampposts hiss against the blackness. Humidity reflects on cobbles and concrete, gleams on people’s skin as they lean close around candles in the night markets.

The windup girl asks again. “Why?”

Anderson shrugs, glad the darkness hides his expression. He doesn’t have a good answer himself. If her attacker complains of a farang and a windup girl, it will trigger questions and attract white shirts to him. A foolish risk, considering how exposed he already finds himself. He’s far too easy to describe, and it’s not far from where he found the girl to Sir Francis’, and from there to more uncomfortable questions.

He forces down his paranoia. He’s as bad as Hock Seng. The nak leng was obviously high on yaba. He won’t go to the white shirts. He’ll slink away and lick his wounds.

Still, it was foolish.

When she fainted in the rickshaw he was sure that she was about to die, and a part of him had been glad. Relieved that he could take back that moment when he recognized her, and against all his training, tied his fate to hers.

He glances over at her. Her skin has lost its terrifying flush and furnace heat. She holds the remnants of slashed clothes around her, keeping her modesty. It’s pitiable, really, that a creature so utterly owned clings to modesty.

“Why?” she asks again.

He shrugs again. “You needed help.”

“No one helps a windup.” Her voice is flat. “You are a fool.” She pushes damp hair away from her face. A surreal stutter-stop motion, the genetic bits of her unkinking. Her smooth skin shines between the edges of her slashed blouse, the gentle promise of her breasts. What would she feel like? Her skin gleams, smooth and inviting.

She catches him staring. “Do you wish to use me?”

“No.” he looks away, uneasy. “It’s not necessary.”

“I would not fight you,” she says.

Anderson feels a sudden revulsion at the acquiescence in her voice. On another day, at another time, he probably would have taken her for the novelty. Thought nothing of it. But the fact that she expects so little fills him with distaste. He forces a smile. “Thank you. No.”

She nods shortly. Looks out again at the humid night and the green glow of the street lamps. It’s impossible to say if she is grateful or surprised, or if his decision even matters to her. However her mask might have slipped in the heat of terror and relief of escape, her thoughts are carefully locked away now.

“Is there someplace I should take you?”

She shrugs. “Raleigh. He is the only one who will keep me.”

“But he wasn’t the first, was he? You weren’t always…” He trails off. There’s no polite word and, looking at the girl, he doesn’t have the appetite to call her a toy.

She glances over at him, then out again at the passing city. Gas lights puddle the street with low green pockets of phosphor, separated by deep canyons of shadow. They pass under a lamp and Anderson catches her face, dimly illuminated, humidity sheened and pensive, before it disappears again in darkness.

“No. I was not always this way. Not…” she trails off. “Not like this.” She falls quiet, thoughtful. “Mishimoto employed me. I had…” she shrugs, “an owner. An owner at the company. I was owned. Gen-my owner acquired a temporary foreign business exemption to bring me to the Kingdom. A ninety-day permit. Extendible by palace waiver because of the Japanese Friendship. I was his Personal Secretary: translation, office management and… companion.” Another shrug, more felt than seen. “But it is expensive to return to Japan. A dirigible ticket for a New Person is the same as for your kind. My owner concluded that leaving his secretary in Bangkok was more economical. When his assignment here ended, he decided to upgrade new in Osaka.”

“Jesus and Noah.”

She shrugs. “I was given my final pay at the anchor pad and he went away. Up and away.”

“And now Raleigh?” he asks.

Again the shrug. “No Thai wants a New Person for secretary, or translation. In Japan, okay. Common, even. Too few babies born, too much working needed. Here…” She shakes her head. “Calorie markets are controlled. Everyone is jealous for U-Tex. Everyone protects their rice. Raleigh does not care. Raleigh… likes novelty.”

The clouded scent of fish frying washes over them, greasy and cloying. A night market, full of people dining by candlelight, hunched over noodles and skewers of octopus and plates of laap. Anderson stifles an urge to raise the rickshaw’s rain hood and close the privacy curtain, to hide the evidence of her company. Woks flame brightly with the telltale green sparkles of Environment Ministry-taxed methane. The sweat sheen on the people’s dark skins is barely lit. At their feet, cheshires circle, alert for charity scraps and opportunities for theft.

A cheshire shadow bleeds across the darkness, causing Lao Gu to swerve. He curses softly in his own language. Emiko laughs, a small surprised sound as she claps her hands in delight. Lao Gu glares back at her.

“You like cheshires?” Anderson asks.

Emiko looks at him in surprise. “You do not?”

“Back home, we can’t kill them fast enough,” he says. “Even Grahamites offer blue bills for their skins. Probably the only thing they’ve ever done that I agreed with.”

“Mmm, yes.” Emiko’s brow wrinkles thoughtfully. “They are too much improved for this world, I think. A natural bird has so little chance, now.” She smiles slightly. “Just think if they had made New People first.”

Is it mischief in her eyes? Or melancholy?

“What do you think would have happened?” Anderson asks.

Emiko doesn’t meet his gaze, looks out instead at the circling cats amongst the diners. “Generippers learned too much from cheshires.”

She doesn’t say anything else, but Anderson can guess what’s in her mind. If her kind had come first, before the generippers knew better, she would not have been made sterile. She would not have the signature tick-tock motions that make her so physically obvious. She might have even been designed as well as the military windups now operating in Vietnam-deadly and fearless. Without the lesson of the cheshires, Emiko might have had the opportunity to supplant the human species entirely with her own improved version. Instead, she is a genetic dead end. Doomed to a single life cycle, just like SoyPRO and TotalNutrient Wheat.

Another shadow cat bolts across the street, shimmering and shading through darkness. A high-tech homage to Lewis Carroll, a few dirigible and clipper ship rides, and suddenly entire classes of animals are wiped out, unequipped to fight an invisible threat.

“We would have realized our mistake,” Anderson observes.

“Yes. Of course. But perhaps not soon enough.” She changes the subject abruptly. Nods at a temple rising against the night skyline. “It’s very pretty, yes? You like their temples?”

Anderson wonders if she has changed the subject to avoid conflict and argument, or if she is actually afraid that he will successfully refute her fantasy. He studies the rising chedi and bot of the temple. “It’s a lot nicer than what the Grahamites are building back home.”

“Grahamites.” She makes a face. “So concerned with niche and nature. So focused on their Noah’s ark, after the flood has already happened.”

Anderson thinks of Hagg, sweating and distressed at the destruction caused by ivory beetle. “If they could, they’d keep us all on our own continents.”

“It is impossible, I think. People like to expand. To fill new niches.”

The temple’s golden filigree shines dully under the moon. The world truly is shrinking again. A few dirigible and clipper rides and Anderson clatters through darkened streets on the far side of the planet. It’s astounding. In his grandparents’ time, even the commute between an old Expansion suburb and a city center was impossible. His grandparents used to tell stories of exploring abandoned suburbs, scavenging for the scrap and leavings of whole sprawling neighborhoods that were destroyed in the petroleum Contraction. To travel ten miles had been a great journey for them, and now look at him…

Ahead of them, white uniforms materialize at the mouth of an alley.

Emiko blanches and leans close. “Hold me.”

Anderson tries to shake her off, but she clings. The white shirts have stopped, are watching them approach. The windup clings more tightly. Anderson fights an urge to shove her from the rickshaw and flee. This is the last thing he needs.

She whispers, “I am against quarantine now, like Nippon genehack weevil. If they see my movement, they will know. They will mulch me.” She nestles close. “I am sorry. Please.” Her eyes beg.

In a sudden rush of pity he wraps his arms around her, enfolding her in whatever protection a calorie man can offer a piece of illegal Japanese trash. The Ministry men call out to them, smiling. Anderson smiles back and gives a bob of the head, even as his skin prickles. The white shirts’ eyes linger. One of them smiles and says something to the other as he twirls the baton that dangles from his wrist. Emiko shivers uncontrollably beside Anderson, her smile a forced mask. Anderson pulls her closer.

Please don’t ask for a bribe. Not this time. Please.

They slide past.

Behind them, the white shirts start laughing, either about the farang and the girl clutched together or about something else completely unrelated and it doesn’t matter really because they are disappearing into the distance and he and Emiko are safe again.

She draws away, shaking. “Thank you,” she whispers. “I was careless to come out. Stupid.” She pushes her hair away from her face and looks back. The Ministry men are quickly receding. Her fists clench. “Stupid girl,” she murmurs. “You are not a cheshire who disappears as you please.” She shakes her head, angry, driving home her own lesson. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”

Anderson watches, transfixed. Emiko is adapted for a different sort of world, not this brutal sweltering place. The city will swallow her eventually. It’s obvious.

She becomes aware of his gaze. Shares a small melancholy smile. “Nothing lasts forever, I think.”

“No.” Anderson’s throat is tight.

They stare at one another. Her blouse has fallen open again, showing the line of her throat, the inner curve of her breasts. She doesn’t move to hide herself, just looks back at him, solemn. Is it deliberate? Does she mean to encourage him? Or is it simply her nature to entice? Perhaps she cannot help herself at all. A set of instincts as ingrained in her DNA as the cheshire’s clever stalking of birds. Anderson leans close, unsure.

Emiko doesn’t pull away, moves instead to meet him. Her lips are soft. Anderson runs his hand up her hip, pushes her blouse open and quests inside. She sighs and presses closer, her lips opening to him. Does she wish this? Or only acquiesce? Is she even capable of refusing? Her breasts press against him. Her hands slip down his body. He’s shaking. Trembling like a sixteen-year-old boy. Did the geneticists embed her DNA with pheromones? Her body is intoxicating.

Mindless of the street, of Lao Gu, of everything, he pulls her to him, running his hand up to cup her breast, to hold her perfect flesh.

The windup girl’s heart speeds like a hummingbird’s under his palm.