The Windup Girl

28

“We found another.”

Kanya starts. It’s Pai, standing at her doorway. Kanya rubs her face. She was sitting at her desk, trying to write another report, waiting for word from Ratana. And now drool soaks the back of her hand and her pen leaks everywhere. Asleep. And dreaming of Jaidee who simply sits and pokes fun at all her justifications.

“Were you sleeping?” Pai asks.

Kanya rubs her face. “What time is it?”

“Second hour in the morning. The sun’s been up for a while.” Pai waits patiently for her to gather her wits, a pockmarked man who should be her senior, but who Kanya has overtaken. He is of the old guard. One who worshipped Jaidee and his ways, and whom remembers the Environment Ministry when it was not ridiculed, but feted. A good man. A man whose bribes are all known to Kanya. Pai may be corrupt, but she knows who owns which parts, and so she trusts him.

“We found another,” he repeats.

Kanya straightens. “Who else knows?”

Pai shakes his head.

“You took it to Ratana?”

He nods. “It wasn’t tagged as a suspicious death. It took some effort to find. This is like looking for a silver minnow in the rice paddies.”

“Not even tagged?” Kanya sucks in her breath, lets it out in an irritated hiss. “They’re all incompetent. No one remembers how it always comes. They forget so quickly.”

Pai nods easily, listening to his mistress rant. The pits and holes of his face stare back at her. Another worming disease. Kanya can’t remember if it was a genehack weevil that did it, or a variation on phii bacteria. All Pai says is, “This makes two, then?”

“Three.” Kanya pauses. “A name? Did the man have a name?”

Pai shakes his head. “They were careful.”

Kanya nods sourly. “I want you to go around to the districts and see if anyone has reported any missing relatives. Three people missing. Get photos taken.”

Pai shrugs.

“You have a better idea?”

“Perhaps forensics will find something to link them,” he suggests.

“Yes, fine. Do that as well. Where is Ratana?”

“She has sent the body to the pits. She asks for you to meet her.”

Kanya grimaces. “Of course.” She tidies her papers and leaves Pai to his futile searches.

As she leaves the administrative building, she wonders what Jaidee would do in this situation. For him, inspiration came easily. Jaidee would stop in the middle of the road, struck suddenly by enlightenment, and then they would be off, running through the city, hunting for the source of contamination, and invariably, the man would be right. It sickens Kanya to think that the Kingdom must rely on her instead.

I am bought, she thinks. I am paid for. I am bought.

When she first arrived at the Environment Ministry as Akkarat’s mole, it was a surprise to discover that the little privileges of the Environment Ministry were always enough. The weekly take from street stalls to burn something other than expensive approved-source methane. The pleasure of a night patrol spent sleeping well. It was an easy existence. Even under Jaidee, it was easy. And now by ill-luck she must work, and the work is important, and she has had two masters for so long that she cannot remember which one should be ascendant.

Someone else should have replaced you, Jaidee. Someone worthy. The Kingdom falls because we are not strong. We are not virtuous, we do not follow the eightfold path and now the sicknesses come again.

And she is the one who must stand against them, like Phra Seub-but without the strength or moral compass.

Kanya strides across the quads, nodding at other officers, scowling. Jaidee, what is it in your kamma that placed me second to you? That placed your life’s work in my fickle hands? What joker did this? Was this Phii Oun, the cheshire trickster spirit, happy to see more carrion and offal in the world? Happy to see our corpses piled high?

Ahead, men wearing filter masks jump to attention as they spy her pushing open the gates to the crematory grounds. She has a mask issued, but leaves it dangling around her neck. It does no good for an officer to show fear, and she knows the mask will not save her. She places more faith in a Phra Seub amulet.

The open dirt expanse of the pits lays before her, massive holes cut into the red earth, lined to keep out the seep of the water table that lies close below. Wet land, and yet the surface bakes in the heat. The dry season never ends. Will the monsoon even come this year? Will it save them or drown them? There are gamblers who bet on nothing else, changing the odds on the monsoon daily. But with the climate so much altered, even the Environment Ministry’s own modelling computers are unsure of the monsoon from year to year.

Ratana stands at the edge of a pit. Oily smoke roils up from the burning bodies below. Overhead a few ravens and vultures circle. A dog has gotten into the compound and skulks along the walls, looking for scraps.

“How did that get in?” Kanya asks.

Ratana looks up and spies the dog. “Nature finds a way,” she observes dully. “If we leave food, it will reach for it.”

“You found another body?”

“Same symptoms.” Ratana’s body is slumped, her shoulders bowed inward. Below them, the fires crackle. A vulture sweeps low. A uniformed officer fires a cannon and the explosion sends the vulture screeching skyward again. It circles. Ratana closes her eyes briefly. Tears threaten at the corners of her eyes. She shakes her head, seeming to steel herself. Kanya watches sadly, wondering if either of them will be alive at the end of this newest plague.

“We should warn everyone,” Ratana says. “Inform General Pracha. The palace as well.”

“You’re sure now?”

Ratana sighs. “It was in a different hospital. Across the city. A street clinic. They assumed it was yaba stick overdose. Pai found them by accident. A casual conversation on his way to Bangkok Mercy to look for evidence.”

“By accident.” Kanya shakes her head. “He didn’t tell me that. How many could there be out there? Hundreds already? Thousands?”

“I don’t know. The only good thing is that we haven’t seen any sign that they themselves are contagious.”

“Yet.”

“You must go ask Gi Bu Sen for advice. He is the only one who knows what sort of monster we face. These are his children, coming to torment us. He will recognize them. I’m having the new samples prepared. Between the three, he will know. ”

“There’s no other way?”

“Our only other choice is to begin quarantining the city, and then the riots will begin and there will be nothing left to save.”

Rice paddies sprawl in all directions, emerald green, bright and neon in the tropic sun. Kanya has been inside the sinkhole of Krung Thep for so long that it’s a relief to see this growing world. It makes her imagine that there is hope. That the rice grasses will not wilt red under some new variant of blister rust. That some engineered spore will not float over from Burma and take root. Flooded fields still grow, the dikes still hold, and His Royal Majesty King Rama XII’s pumps still move water.

Tattooed farmers make wais of respect as Kanya cycles past. By the stamps on their arms, most of them have already done corvée labor for the year. A few others are marked for the start of the rainy season when they will be required to come to the city and shore up its dikes for the deluge. Kanya has her own tattoos from her time in the countryside, before Akkarat’s agents tasked her with this burrowing into the very heart of the Environment Ministry.

After an hour of steady pedalling down raised causeways, the compound materializes. First the wires. Then the men with their dogs. Then the walls topped with glass and razor wire and high bamboo stakes. Kanya keeps to the road, avoiding trip patches. Technically, it is simply the home of a wealthy man, perched atop an artificial hill of concrete and Expansion tower rubble.

Given the loss of life over the last century it is an impressive focusing of human labor for something so silly-when dikes need repairs and fields need sowing and wars need fighting-that a man was able to channel labor into the building of a hill. A rich man’s retreat. It was originally Rama XII’s, and officially it is still the property of the palace. From the vantage of a dirigible passing overhead, it is nothing. Just another compound. An extravagance for some branch of royalty. And yet, a wall is a wall, a tiger pit is a tiger pit, and men with dogs look both ways.

Kanya shows the guards her papers as mastiffs growl and lunge against their chains. The beasts are larger than any natural dog. Windups. Hungry and deadly and well-built for their work. They weigh twice what she does, all muscle and teeth. The horror of Gi Bu Sen’s imagination, brought to life.

The guards unpattern encryptions with their hand-cranked code breakers. They wear the black livery of the Queen’s own, and are frightening in their seriousness and efficiency. Finally they wave her past their dogs’ straining teeth. Kanya cycles toward the gate, her neck prickling with the knowledge that she can never ride as fast as those dogs can run.

At the gates, another set of guards reconfirm her passes before guiding her inside to a tiled terrace, and a blue jewel swimming pool.

A trio of ladyboys titter and smile from where they lounge in the shade of a banana tree. Kanya smiles in return. They are pretty. And if they love a farang, then they are only foolish.

“I am Kip,” one of them says. “The doctor is having his massage.” She nods at the blue water. “You can wait for him by the pool.”

The scent of the ocean is strong. Kanya walks to the edge of the terrace. Below her, waves lap and curl, scrubbing white across beach sands. A breeze pours over her, clean and fresh and astonishingly optimistic after the claustrophobic stink of Bangkok behind its seawalls.

She takes a deep breath, enjoying the salt and wind. A butterfly flutters past and alights on the terrace railing. Closes its jewel wings. Opens them gently. Folding itself over and over again, bright and cobalt and gold and black.

Kanya studies it, stricken by its beauty, the gaudy evidence of a world beyond her own. She wonders what hungers have driven it to fly to this alien mansion with its strange farang prisoner. Of all the things of beauty, here is one that cannot be denied. Nature has worked itself into a frenzy.

Kanya leans close, studying it as it clings to the rail. An unwary hand might brush it and grind it into dust without ever realizing the destruction.

She reaches out with a careful finger. The butterfly startles, then allows her to gather it in, to walk it into her cupped palm. It has come a long distance. It must be tired. As tired as she feels. It has travelled continents. Crossed high steppes and emerald jungles to land here, amongst hibiscus and paving stones, so that Kanya can now hold it in her hand and appreciate its beauty. Such a long way to travel.

Kanya makes a fist on its fluttering. Opens her hand and lets its dust drop to the tiles. Wing fragments and pulped body. A manufactured pollinator, wafted from some PurCal laboratory most likely.

Windups have no souls. But they are beautiful.

A splash comes from behind her. Kip is wearing a bathing suit now. She flickers under water, rises, pushing her long black hair back and smiling, before turning and beginning another lap. Kanya watches her swim, the graceful crawl of blue suit and brown limbs. A pretty girl. A pleasant creature to watch.

Eventually, the demon wheels out to the pool edge. He is much worse than when she last saw him. Fa’ gan scars mark his throat and curl to his ear. An opportunistic infection that he fought off despite the doctor’s prognosis. He is in a wheelchair, pushed by an attendant. A thin blanket covers his stick legs.

So his disease truly is progressing. For a long time, she thought it was only a myth, but now she can see. The man is ugly. Horrifying in his disease and his burning intensity. Kanya shivers. She’ll be glad when the demon finally goes on to his next life. Becomes a corpse they can burn in quarantine. Until then, she hopes the drugs will continue to suppress his contagion. He is a crabbed hairy man with brushy eyebrows, a fat nose, and wide rubbery lips that break into a hyena grin when he sees Kanya.

“Ah. My jailer.”

“Hardly.”

Gibbons glances at Kip where she swims. “Just because you give me pretty girls with pretty mouths doesn’t mean I am not jailed.” He looks up. “So, Kanya, I haven’t seen you in a while. Where is your upright lord and master? My most favorite keeper? Where is our fighting Captain Jaidee? I don’t deal with subordinates—” He breaks off, studying Kanya’s collar ranks. His eyes narrow. “Ah. I see.” He leans back, regarding Kanya. “It was just a matter of time before someone disposed of him. Congratulations on your promotion, Captain.”

Kanya forces herself to remain impassive. On her previous visits it was Jaidee who always treated with the devil. They went away into interior offices, leaving Kanya to wait beside the pool with whatever creature the doctor had chosen for his pleasure. When Jaidee returned, it was always with a purse-lipped silence.

On one occasion, as they left the compound, Jaidee had nearly spoken, had nearly said whatever was churning in his head. He opened his mouth and said, “But—” a protest that remained half-formed, dead as soon as it passed his lips.

Kanya had the impression that Jaidee was still carrying on a conversation, a verbal battle that pinged back and forth, like a takraw game. A war of words, flying and ricocheting, with Jaidee’s skull as the playing court. On another occasion, Jaidee had simply left the compound with a scowl and the words, “He is too dangerous to keep.”

Kanya had responded, confused. “But he does not work for AgriGen any longer,” and Jaidee had looked at her surprised, only then realizing that he had spoken aloud.

The doctor was legendary. A demon to frighten children with. When Kanya first met him, she expected the man to be bound in chains, not sitting complacently and scooping out the guts of a Koh Angrit papaya, happy and grinning with juice running down his chin.

Kanya was never sure if it was guilt or some other strange driving force that had sent the doctor to the Kingdom. If the lure of ladyboys and his imminent death had caused it. If a falling out with his colleagues had driven him. The doctor seemed to have no regrets. No concerns over the damage he had inflicted in the world. Spoke jokingly of foiling Ravaita and Domingo. Of wrecking ten years’ labor for Doctor Michael Ping.

A cheshire steals across the patio, breaking Kanya’s thoughts. It leaps into the doctor’s lap. Kanya steps back, disgusted, as the man scratches behind the cheshire’s ears. It molts, legs and body changing hue, taking on the colors of the old man’s quilt.

The doctor smiles. “Don’t cling too tightly to what is natural, Captain. Here, look,” he bends forward, makes cooing noises. The shimmer of the cheshire cranes toward his face, mewling. Its tortoiseshell fur glimmers. It licks tentatively at his chin. “A hungry little beast,” he says. “A good thing, that. If it’s hungry enough, it will succeed us entirely, unless we design a better predator. Something that hungers for it, in turn.”

“We’ve run the analysis of that,” Kanya says. “The food web only unravels more completely. Another super-predator won’t solve the damage already done.”

Gibbons snorts. “The ecosystem unravelled when man first went a-seafaring. When we first lit fires on the broad savannas of Africa. We have only accelerated the phenomenon. The food web you talk about is nostalgia, nothing more. Nature.” He makes a disgusted face. “We are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your potential fully upon it.”

“Like AgriGen? Like U Texas? Like RedStar HiGro?” Kanya shakes her head. “How many of us are dead because of their potential unleashed? Your calorie masters showed us what happens. People die.”

“Everyone dies.” The doctor waves a dismissal. “But you die now because you cling to the past. We should all be windups by now. It’s easier to build a person impervious to blister rust than to protect an earlier version of the human creature. A generation from now, we could be well-suited for our new environment. Your children could be the beneficiaries. Yet you people refuse to adapt. You cling to some idea of a humanity that evolved in concert with your environment over millennia, and which you now, perversely, refuse to remain in lockstep with.

“Blister rust is our environment. Cibiscosis. Genehack weevil. Cheshires. They have adapted. Quibble as you like about whether they evolved naturally or not. Our environment has changed. If we wish to remain at the top of our food chain, we will evolve. Or we will refuse, and go the way of the dinosaurs and Felis domesticus. Evolve or die. It has always been nature’s guiding principle, and yet you white shirts seek to stand in the way of inevitable change.” He leans forward. “I want to shake you sometimes. If you would just let me, I could be your god and shape you to the Eden that beckons us.”

“I’m Buddhist.”

“And we all know windups have no souls.” Gibbons grins. “No rebirth for them. They will have to find their own gods to protect them. Their own gods to pray for their dead.” His grin widens. “Perhaps I will be that one, and your windup children will pray to me for salvation.” His eyes twinkle. “I would like a few more worshippers, I must admit. Jaidee was like you. Always such a doubter. Not as bad as Grahamites, but still, not particularly satisfactory for a god.”

Kanya makes a face. “When you die, we will burn you to ash and bury you in chlorine and lye and no one will remember you.”

The doctor shrugs, unconcerned. “All gods must suffer.” He leans back in his chair, smiling slyly. “So, would you like to burn me at the stake now? Or would you like to prostrate yourself before me, and worship my intelligence once again?”

Kanya hides her disgust at the man. Pulls out the bundle of papers and hands them across. The doctor takes them, but doesn’t do anything else. Doesn’t open them. Barely glances at them.

“Yes?”

“It’s all in there,” she says.

“You haven’t knelt yet. You give more respect to your father, I’m sure. To the city pillar, for certain.”

“My father is dead.”

“And Bangkok will drown. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t show respect.”

Kanya fights the urge to take out her baton and club him.

Gibbons smiles at her resistance. “Shall we chat awhile then, first?” he asks. “Jaidee always liked to talk. No? I can see from your expression you despise me. You think I’m some murderer, perhaps? Some killer of children? You won’t break bread with one such as me?”

“You are a killer.”

“Your killer. Your tool entirely. What does that make you?” He watches her, amused. It feels to Kanya as if the man is using his eyes to carefully cut open her innards, lifting and examining each organ in turn: lungs, stomach, liver, heart…

Gibbons smiles slightly. “You want me dead.” His pale mottled face splits into a wider grin, his eyes mad and intense. “You should shoot me if you hate me so.” When Kanya doesn’t respond, he throws up his hands in disgust. “Fuck me, you’re all so shy! Kip’s the only one of you who’s worth a damn.” His eyes turn to the girl where she swims, watches her, mesmerized for a moment. “Go ahead and kill me. I’d be happy to die. I’m only alive because you keep me this way.”

“Not for much longer.”

The doctor looks down at his paralyzed legs, laughs. “No. Not for long. And then what will you do when AgriGen and its ilk launch another assault? When spores float to you from Burma? When they wash up on the beach from India. Will you starve the way the Indians did? Will your flesh rot off you as it did for the Burmese? Your country only stays one step ahead of the plagues because of me, and my rotting mind.” He waves at his legs. “Will you rot with me?” He pulls aside his blankets, shows the sores and scabs on his pale fishy legs, pasty with the loss of blood and weals of suppurating flesh. “Will you die like this?” He grins mirthlessly.

Kanya looks away. “You deserve it. It’s your kamma. Your death will be painful.”

“Karma? Did you say karma?” The doctor leans closer, brown eyes rolling, tongue lolling. “And what sort of karma is it that ties your entire country to me, to my rotting broken body? What sort of karma is it that behooves you to keep me, of all people, alive?” He grins. “I think a great deal about your karma. Perhaps it’s your pride, your hubris that is being repaid, that forces you to lap seedstock from my hand. Or perhaps you’re the vehicle of my enlightenment and salvation. Who knows? Perhaps I’ll be reborn at the right hand of Buddha thanks to the kindnesses I do for you.”

“That’s not the way it works.”

The doctor shrugs. “I don’t care. Just give me another like Kip to fuck. Throw me another of your sickened lost souls. Throw me a windup. I don’t care. I’ll take what flesh you throw me. Just don’t bother me. I’m beyond worrying about your rotting country now.”

He tosses the papers into the pool. They scatter across the water. Kanya gasps, horrified, and nearly lunges after them before steeling herself and forcing herself to draw back. She will not allow Gibbons to bait her. This is the way of the calorie man. Always manipulating. Always testing. She forces herself to look away from the parchment slowly soaking in the pool and turn her eyes to him.

Gibbons smiles slightly. “Well? Are you going to swim for them or not?” He nods at Kip. “My little nymph will help you. I’d enjoy seeing you two little nymphs frolicking together.”

Kanya shakes her head. “Get them out yourself.”

“I always like it when an upright person such as yourself comes before me. A woman with pure convictions.” He leans forward, eyes narrowed. “Someone with real qualifications to judge my work.”

“You were a killer.”

“I advanced my field. It wasn’t my business what they did with my research. You have a spring gun. It’s not the manufacturer’s fault that you are likely unreliable. That you may at any time kill the wrong person. I built the tools of life. If people use them for their own ends, then that is their karma, not mine.”

“AgriGen paid you well to think so.”

“AgriGen paid me well to make them rich. My thoughts are my own.” He studies Kanya. “I suppose you have a clean conscience. One of those upright Ministry officers. As pure as your uniform. As clean as sterilizer can make you.” He leans forward. “Tell me, do you take bribes?”

Kanya opens her mouth to retort, but words fail her. She can almost feel Jaidee drifting close. Listening. Her skin prickles. She forces himself not to look over her shoulder.

Gibbons smiles. “Of course you do. All of your kind are the same. Corrupt from top to bottom.”

Kanya’s hand slides toward her pistol. The doctor watches, smiling. “What? Are you threatening to shoot me? Do you want a bribe from me as well? Would you like me to suck your cunt? To offer you my not-quite girl?” He stares at Kanya, hard-eyed. “You’ve taken my money already. My life is already shortened and full of pain. What else do you want? Why not take my girl?”

Kip looks up expectantly from the pool, treading water. Her body shimmers under the clear ripples of the waves. Kanya looks away. The doctor laughs. “Sorry, Kip. We don’t have the bribes this one likes.” His drums his fingers on his chair. “What about a young boy, then? There’s a lovely twelve-year-old who works my kitchen. He would be happy to perform. The pleasure of a white shirt is always paramount.”

Kanya glares at him. “I could break your bones.”

“Do it then. But hurry up. I want a reason not to help you.”

“Why did you help AgriGen for so long?”

The doctor’s eyes narrow. “The same reason you run like a dog for your masters. They paid me in the coin I wanted most.”

Her slap rings across the water. The guards start forward, but Kanya is already drawing back, shaking off the sting in her hand, waving away the guards. “We’re fine. Nothing is wrong.”

The guards pause, unsure of their duty and loyalties. The doctor touches his broken lip, examines the blood thoughtfully. Looks up. “A sore spot, there… How much of yourself have you already sold?” He smiles showing teeth rimed bloody from Kanya’s strike. “Are you AgriGen’s then? Complicit?” He looks into Kanya’s eyes. “Are you here to kill me? To end my thorn in their side?” He watches closely, eyes peering into her soul, observant, curious. “It is only a matter of time. They must know that I am here. That I am yours. The Kingdom couldn’t have fared so well for so long without me. Couldn’t have released nightshades and ngaw without my help. We all know they are hunting. Are you my hunter, then? Are you my destiny?”

Kanya scowls. “Hardly. We’re not done with you yet.”

Gibbons slumps. “Ah, of course not. But then, you never will be. That is the nature of our beasts and plagues. They are not dumb machines to be driven about. They have their own needs and hungers. Their own evolutionary demands. They must mutate and adapt, and so you will never be done with me, and when I am gone, what will you do then? We have released demons upon the world, and your walls are only as good as my intellect. Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly. And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be?”

“Kamma,” she murmurs.

“Precisely.” Gibbons leans back, smiling. “Kip. Get the pages. Let us see what can be deciphered from this puzzle.” He drums his fingers on his ruined legs, thoughtful. Smirks at Kanya. “Let us see how close to death your precious Kingdom lies.”

Kip swims to collect the pages, rippling through the water as she gathers them to her, pulling them dripping and limp from the pool. A smile flickers across Gibbons’ lips as he watches her swim. “You’re lucky I like Kip. If I didn’t, I would have let you all succumb years ago.”

He nods to his guards. “The captain will have samples on her bicycle. Get them. We’ll take them down into the lab.”

Kip finally emerges from the pool and sets the sopping stack of papers on the doctor’s lap. He motions and she begins pushing him toward the door of his villa. The doctor waves for Kanya to follow.

“Come on, then. This won’t take long.”

The doctor squints over one of the slides. “I’m surprised you think this is an inert mutation.”

“Three cases, only.”

The doctor looks up. “For now.” He smiles. “Life is algorithmic. Two becomes four, becomes ten thousand, becomes a plague. Maybe it’s everywhere in the population already and we never noticed. Maybe this is end-stage. Terminal without symptoms, like poor Kip.”

Kanya glances at the ladyboy. Kip gives a gentle return smile. Nothing shows on her skin. Nothing shows on her body. It is not the doctor’s disease she dies of. And yet… Kanya steps away, involuntarily.

The doctor grins. “Don’t look so worried. You have the same sickness. Life is, after all, inevitably fatal.” He looks into the microscope. “Not an indie genehack. Something else. Not a blister rust. Nothing of AgriGen’s markings.” Abruptly, he makes a face of disgust. “This is nothing interesting for me. Just a stupid mistake by some fool. Hardly worth my intellect at all.”

“That’s good, then?”

“An accidental plague kills just as surely.”

“Is there a way to stop it?”

The doctor picks up a crust of bread. A greenish mold covers it. He eyes the stuff. “So many growing things are beneficial to us. And so many are deadly.” He offers the piece of bread to Kanya. “Try it.”

Kanya recoils. Gibbons grins and takes a bite. Offers it again. “Trust me.”

Kanya shakes her head, forcing herself not to mouth superstitious prayers to Phra Seub for luck and cleanliness. She envisions the revered man sitting in a lotus, forces herself not to respond to the doctor’s taunts, touches her amulets.

The doctor takes another bite. Grins as crumbs cascade down his chin. “If you take a bite, I’ll guarantee you an answer.”

“I wouldn’t take anything from your hand.”

The doctor laughs. “You already have. Every injection you took as a child. Every inoculation. Every booster since.” He offers the bread. “This is just more direct. You’ll be glad you did.”

Kanya nods at the microscope. “What is that thing? Do you need to test it more?”

Gibbons shakes his head. “That? It’s nothing. A stupid mutation. A standard outcome. We used to see them in our labs. Junk.”

“Then why haven’t we ever seen it before?”

Gibbons makes a face of impatience. “You don’t culture death the way we do. You don’t tinker with the building blocks of nature.” Interest and passion flicker briefly in the old man’s eyes. Mischief and predatory interests. “You have no idea what things we succeeded in creating in our labs. This stuff is hardly worth my time. I hoped you were bringing me a challenge. Something from Drs. Ping and Raymond. Or perhaps Mahmoud Sonthalia. Those are challenges.” For a moment, his eyes lose their cynicism. He becomes entranced. “Ah. Now those are worthy opponents.”

We are in the hands of a gamesman.

In a flash of insight, Kanya understands the doctor entirely. A fierce intellect. A man who reached the pinnacle of his field. A jealous and competitive man. A man who found his competition too lacking, and so switched sides and joined the Thai Kingdom for the stimulation it might provide. An intellectual exercise for him. As if Jaidee had decided to fight a muay thai match with his hands tied behind his back to see if he could win with kicks alone.

We rest in the hands of a fickle god. He plays on our behalf only for entertainment, and he will close his eyes and sleep if we fail to engage his intellect.

A horrifying thought. The man exists only for competition, the chess match of evolution, fought on a global scale. An exercise in ego, a single giant fending off the attacks of dozens of others, a giant swatting them from the sky and laughing. But all giants must fall, and then what must the Kingdom look forward to? It makes Kanya sweat, thinking about it.

Gibbons is watching her. “You have more questions for me?”

Kanya shakes off her terror. “You’re sure about this? You know what we need to do, already? You can tell just by looking?”

The doctor shrugs. “If you don’t believe me, then go back and follow your standard methods. Textbook your way to your deaths. Or you can simply burn your factory district to the ground and root out the problem.” He grins. “Now there’s a blunt-instrument solution for you white shirts. The Environment Ministry was always fond of those.” He waves a hand. “This garbage isn’t particularly viable, yet. It mutates quickly, certainly, but it is fragile, and the human host is not ideal. It needs to be rubbed on the mucus membranes: in the nostrils, in the eyes, in the anus, somewhere close to blood and life. Somewhere it can breed.”

“Then we’re safe. It’s no worse than a hepatitis or fa’ gan.”

“But much more inclined to mutate.” He looks at Kanya again. “One other thing you should know. The manufacturer you want will have chemical baths. Someplace where they can culture biological products. A HiGro factory. An AgriGen facility. A windup manufactory. Something like that.”

Kanya glances at the mastiffs. “Would windups carry it?”

He reaches down and pats one of the guard dogs, goading her. “If it’s avian or mammalian, it could. A bath facility is where I would look first. If this were Japan, a windup crèche would be my first guess, but anyone involved in biological products could be the index source.”

“What kind of windups?”

Gibbons blows out an exasperated breath. “It’s not a kind. It’s a matter of exposure. If they were cultured in tainted baths, they may be carriers. Then again, if you leave that garbage to mutate, it will be in people soon enough. And the question of its index will be moot.”

“How long do we have?”

Gibbons shrugs. “This isn’t the decay of uranium or the velocity of a clipper ship. This is not predictable. Feed the beasts well, and they will learn to gorge. Culture them in a humid city of dense-packed people and they will thrive. Decide for yourself how worried you should be.”

Kanya turns, disgusted, and heads out the door.

Gibbons calls after her, “Good luck! I’ll be interested to see which of your many enemies kills you first.”

Kanya ignores the taunt and bolts into clean open air.

Kip approaches her, towelling her hair. “Was the doctor helpful?”

“He gave me enough.”

Kip laughs, a soft twittering. “I used to think so. But I’ve learned that he never tells everything the first time. He leaves things out. Vital things. He likes company.” She touches Kanya’s arm and Kanya has to force herself not to recoil. Kip sees the movement but only smiles gently. “He likes you. He’ll want you to return.”

Kanya shivers. “He’ll be disappointed then.”

Kip watches her with wide liquid eyes. “I hope you don’t die too soon. I also like you.”

As Kanya leaves the compound, she catches sight of Jaidee, standing at the edge of the ocean, watching the surf. As if sensing her gaze, he turns and smiles, before shimmering into nothingness. Another spirit with no place to go. She wonders if Jaidee will ever manage to reincarnate, or if he will continue to haunt her. If the doctor is right, perhaps he is waiting to come back as something that will not fear the plagues, some creature that has not yet been conceived. Maybe Jaidee’s only hope for reincarnation is to find new life in the husk of a windup body.

Kanya squashes the thought. It’s an evil idea. She hopes instead that Jaidee will reincarnate into some heaven where windups and blister rust can never be, that even if he never achieves nibbana, never finishes his time as a monk, never makes his way into buddha-hood, that at least he will be saved from the anguish of watching the world he so dutifully defended stripped of its flesh by the slavering mass of nature’s new successes, these windup creatures that seethe all around.

Jaidee died. But perhaps that is the best that anyone can hope for. Perhaps if she put a spring gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger, she would be happier. Perhaps if she had no large house and no kamma of betrayal…

Kanya shakes her head. If anything is certain, she must do her duty here. Her own soul will certainly be sent back to this world again, at best as a human being, at worst as something else, some dog or cockroach. Whatever mess she leaves behind, she will undoubtedly face it again and again and again. Her betrayals guarantee it. She must fight this battle until her kamma is finally cleansed. To flee it now in suicide would be to face it in an uglier form in the future. There is no escape for such as she.