The Windup Girl

30

Pai crawls up beside Kanya, stares down at the shadow village below. “That’s it?”

Kanya nods and glances back at the rest of her squad, who have spread out to cover the other approaches to the shrimp farms where they breed bitter water-resistant prawns for the Krung Thep fish markets.

The houses are all on bamboo rafts currently grounded, but when the floods come, the houses will float, rising, as water and silt rushes across their paddy and ponds. Her own family on the Mekong used something similar long years ago, before General Pracha came.

“It was a good lead,” she murmurs.

Ratana had been almost ecstatic. A link, a clue: fish mites between the third body’s toes.

And if fish mites, then shrimp farms, and if shrimp farms then the only ones that would have sent a worker into Bangkok. And that meant shrimp farms that had experienced a die-off. Which led her to this Thonburi half-floating settlement with all of her men at the edge of the embankment, ready to raid in the darkness.

Down below, a few candles flicker inside the bamboo houses. A dog barks. They’re all wearing their containment suits. Ratana insisted that the likelihood of a jump was slender, and yet still a worry. A mosquito whines in Kanya’s ear. She slaps it away and draws her containment suit’s hood tight. Starts to sweat in earnest.

The sound of laughter carries across the fish ponds. A family, all together in the warmth of their hut. Even now, with all their hardship, people still can laugh. Not Kanya, though. Something in her is broken, it seems.

Jaidee always insisted that the Kingdom was a happy country, that old story about the Land of Smiles. But Kanya cannot think of a time when she has seen smiles as wide as those in museum photos from before the Contraction. She sometimes wonders if those people in the photos were acting, if perhaps the National Gallery is intended to depress her, or if it is really true that at one point people smiled so totally, so fearlessly.

Kanya pulls her mask over her face. “Send them in.”

Pai signals the men, and then her troops are all up and over the edges, coming down on the village, surrounding it as they always do before the burning begins.

When they came to her own village, the white shirts appeared between two huts in the space of a minute, flares hissing and sparking in their hands. This is different. No blaring megaphones. No officers splashing through ankle-deep waters, dragging screaming people away from their houses as bamboo and WeatherAll burst orange and alive with flame.

General Pracha wants it quiet. As he signed the quarantine waivers he said, “Jaidee would have turned this into an emergency, but we don’t have the resources to stir the cobra nest with Trade and also handle this. It could even be used against us. Deal with this quietly.”

“Of course. Quietly.”

The dog starts barking madly. It’s joined by others as they approach. A few villagers come out on their porches, peer out into the darkness. Catch the gleam of white in the night. They shout warnings to their families as Kanya’s white shirts break into a run.

Jaidee kneels beside her, watching the action. “Pracha talks about me as if I were some sort of a megodont, trampling rice shoots,” he says.

Kanya ignores him but Jaidee doesn’t shut up. “You should have seen him when we were both cadets,” he says. “He would piss his pants when we went out into the field.”

Kanya glances over at Jaidee. “Stop. Just because you are dead doesn’t mean that you should heap disrespect upon him.”

Her men’s shakelight LEDs blaze alive, illuminating the village in a bitter glare. Families are dashing about like chickens, trying to hide food and animals. Someone tries to dash past the cordon, splashing through the water, diving into a pond and flailing for the other side… where more of Kanya’s net appears. The man treads water in the center of the muddy shrimp hole, trapped.

Jaidee asks, “How can you call him your leader when we both know where your true loyalties lie?”

“Shut up.”

“Is it hard being a horse ridden by two men at once? Both of them riding you like—”

“Shut up!”

Pai startles. “What is it?”

“Sorry.” Kanya shakes her head. “My fault. I was thinking.”

Pai nods down at the villagers. “It looks like they’re ready for you.”

Kanya gets to her feet and she and Pai and Jaidee-uninvited but smiling and pleased with himself-all descend. She has a photo of the dead man, a black and white thing developed in the lab with fumbling dark fingers. She shows it to the farmers under the beam of her shakelight’s LEDs, shining it from the photo to their eyes, trying to catch them in a flinch of recognition.

With some people, a white uniform opens doors, but with fish farmers it is always a problem. She knows them well, reads the calluses on their hands, smells the stink of their successes and failures in the reek of the ponds. She sees herself through their eyes, and knows she might as well be an enforcer from a calorie company, hunting for signs of a genehack. Still the charade continues, all of them shaking their heads, Kanya shining her light into each one’s eyes. One by one, they look away.

Finally she finds a man and waves the picture in front of him. “Do you know him? Won’t his relatives be looking for him?”

The man looks at the picture and then at Kanya’s uniform. “He doesn’t have any relatives.”

Kanya jerks with surprise. “You know him? Who was he?”

“He’s dead then?”

“Doesn’t he look dead?”

They both study the bloodless photo, the ravaged face. “I told him there were better things than factory jobs. He didn’t listen.”

“You say he worked in the city.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know where?”

He shakes his head.

“Where did he live?”

The man points toward a black shadow stilt-house. Kanya waves at her men. “Quarantine that hut.”

She tightens her mask and enters, sweeping her light around the space. It’s gloomy. Broken and strange and empty. Dust gleams in her beam. Knowing that the owner is already dead gives her a sense of foreboding. The man’s spirit might be here. His hungry ghost lurking and angry that he is still in this world, that he has been sickened. That he may have been murdered. She fingers the man’s few effects and wanders around the place. Nothing. She steps back outside. Off in the distance, the city rises, haloed in green, the place the dead man ran to when fish farming proved untenable. She goes back to the man. “You’re sure you don’t know anything about where he worked?”

The man shakes his head.

“Nothing? Not a name? Anything.” She tries not to let her desperation show. He shakes his head again. She turns in frustration and surveys the village blackness. Crickets chirp. Ivory beetles creak steadily. They’re in the right place. She’s so close. Where is this factory? Gi Bu Sen was right. She should just burn the entire factory district. In the old days, when the white shirts were strong, it would have been easy.

“You want to burn now?” Jaidee snickers beside her. “Now you see my side?”

She ignores his jab. Not far away, a young girl is watching her intently. When Kanya catches her staring, she looks away. Kanya touches Pai on the shoulder. “That one.”

“The girl?” He’s surprised. Kanya is already walking, closing on her. The girl looks as if she will bolt. Kanya kneels, still a good distance away. Beckons her over. “You. What’s your name?”

The girl is obviously torn. She wants to flee, but Kanya has an authority that cannot be denied. “Come over here. Tell me your name.” She beckons again and this time the girl allows herself to be reeled close.

“Mai,” the girl whispers.

Kanya holds up the photo. “You know where this man worked, don’t you?”

Mai shakes her head, but Kanya knows the girl is lying. Children are terrible liars. Kanya had been a terrible liar. When the white shirts questioned where her family was hiding their carp breeding stock, she had told them south and they had gone north, with knowing adult smiles.

She offers the photo to the girl. “You understand how dangerous this is, yes?”

The girl hesitates. “Will you burn the village?”

Kanya tries to keep the flood of reaction off her face. “Of course not.” She smiles again, speaks soothingly. “Don’t worry, Mai. I know what it is to fear. I grew up in a village like this. I know how hard it is. But you must help me find the source of this sickness, or more will die.”

“I was told not to tell.”

“And it is good for us to respect our patrons,” Kanya pauses. “But we all owe loyalty to Her Royal Majesty the Queen, and she wishes that we all be safe. The Queen would want you to help us.”

Mai hesitates, then says, “Three others worked at the factory.”

Kanya leans forward, trying to hide her eagerness. “Which one?”

Mai hesitates. Kanya leans close. “How many phii will blame you if you allow them to die before their kamma allots their passing?”

Still Mai hesitates.

Pai says, “If we break her fingers, she will tell us.”

The girl looks frightened. But Kanya holds out a soothing hand. “Don’t worry. He won’t do anything. He is a tiger, but I have his leash. Please. Just help us save the city. You can help us save Krung Thep.”

The girl looks away, toward the crumbling glow of Bangkok across the waters. “The factory is closed now. Closed by you.”

“That’s very good then. But we must make sure the disease doesn’t go any further. What is the name of the factory?”

The answer comes unwillingly. “SpringLife.”

Kanya frowns, trying to remember the name. “A kink-spring company? One of the Chaozhou?”

Mai shakes her head. “Farang. Very rich farang.”

Kanya settles beside her. “Tell me more.”