The Windup Girl(12)

Mr. Lake grins, his pale blue eyes on Hock Seng. Twin watery devil pools. "You're damn right I will." He holds up the bottle of fake Mekong, already half gone. "I'll be celebrating all night long."

"Perhaps you would like me to arrange a companion?"

The foreign devil's face turns to stone. He looks at Hock Seng with something akin to disgust. "That's not your business."

Hock Seng curses himself, even as he keeps his face immobile. He has apparently pushed too far, and now the creature is angry again. He makes a quick wai of apology. "Of course. I do not mean to insult you."

The yang guizi looks out across the factory floor. The pleasure of the moment seems drained from him "How bad is the damage?"

Hock Seng shrugs. "You are right about the spindle core. It is cracked."

"And the main chain?"

"We will inspect every link. If we are lucky, it will only be the sub-train that is affected."

"Not likely." The foreign devil offers him the whiskey bottle. Hock Seng tries to hide his revulsion as he shakes his head. Mr. Lake grins knowingly and takes another pull. Wipes his lips on the back of his arm.

A new shout rises from the union's butchers as more blood gushes from the megodont. Its head lies at an angle now, half-severed from the rest of the body. More and more, the carcass is taking on the appearance of separated parts. Not an animal at all, more a child's play set for building a megodont from the ground up.

Hock Seng wonders if there is a way to force the union to cut him in on the profits they get from selling the untainted meat. It seems unlikely, given how quickly they staked out their space, but perhaps when their power contract is renegotiated, or when they demand their reparations.

"Will you take the head?" Hock Seng asks. "You can make a trophy of it."

"No." The yang guizi looks offended.

Hock Seng forces himself not to grimace. It's maddening to work with the creature. The devil's moods are mercurial, and always aggressive. Like a child. One moment joyful, the next petulant. Hock Seng forces down his irritation; Mr. Lake is what he is. His karma has made him a foreign devil, and Hock Seng's karma has brought them together. It's no use complaining about the quality of U-Tex when you are starving.

Mr. Lake seems to catch Hock Seng's expression and explains himself. "This wasn't a hunt. It was just an extermination. As soon as I hit it with the darts, it was dead. There's no sport in that."

"Ah. Of course. Very honorable." Hock Seng stifles his disappointment. With the foreign devil demanding the head, he could have replaced the stumpy tusk remainders with coconut oil composites and sold the ivory to the doctors near Wat Boworniwet. Now, even that money will be gone. A waste. Hock Seng considers explaining the situation to Mr. Lake, explaining the value of meat and calories and ivory lying before them, then decides against it. The foreign devil would not understand, and the man is too easy to anger as it is.

"The cheshires are here," Mr. Lake comments.

Hock Seng looks to where the yang guizi indicates. At the periphery of the bloodletting, shimmering feline shapes have appeared; twists of shadow and light summoned by the carrion scent. The yang guizi makes a face of distaste, but Hock Seng has a measure of respect for the devil cats. They are clever, thriving in places where they are despised. Almost supernatural in their tenacity. Sometimes it seems that they smell blood before it is even spilled. As if they can peer a little way into the future and know precisely where their next meal will appear. The feline shimmers stealth toward the sticky pools of blood. A butcher kicks one away, but there are too many to really fight, and his attack is desultory.

Mr. Lake takes another pull of whiskey. "We'll never get them out."

"There are children who will hunt them," Hock Seng says. "A bounty is not expensive."

The yang guizi makes a face of dismissal. "We have bounties back in the Midwest, too."

Our children are more motivated than yours.

But Hock Seng doesn't contest the foreigner's words. He'll put out the bounty, regardless. If the cats are allowed to stay, the workers will start rumors that Phii Oun the cheshire trickster spirit has caused the calamity. The devil cats flicker closer. Calico and ginger, black as night-all of them fading in and out of view as their bodies take on the colors of their surroundings. They shade red as they dip into the blood pool.

Hock Seng has heard that cheshires were supposedly created by a calorie executive-some PurCal or AgriGen man, most likely-for a daughter's birthday. A party favor for when the little princess turned as old as Lewis Carroll's Alice.

The child guests took their new pets home where they mated with natural felines, and within twenty years, the devil cats were on every continent and Felis domesticus was gone from the face of the world, replaced by a genetic string that bred true ninety-eight percent of the time. The Green Headbands in Malaya hated Chinese people and cheshires equally, but as far as Hock Seng knows, the devil cats still thrive there.

The yang guizi flinches as Doctor Chan sticks him again and he gives her a dirty look. "Finish up," he says to her. "Now."

She wais carefully, hiding her fear. "He moved again," she whispers to Hock Seng. "The anesthetic is not good. Not as good as what I am used to."

"Don't worry." Hock Seng replies. "That's why I gave him the whiskey. Finish your work. I will deal with him." To Lake Xiansheng he says, "She is almost finished."