The Windup Girl(106)

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."