The Windup Girl(137)

He shrugs. "Stay, then."

But she follows him anyway, back to where they store the curing acid. They walk gingerly. He uses a rag to push aside the fining room curtains, careful to let nothing touch him. His breath is loud inside the mask, ragged sawing. The manufacturing rooms are disarrayed. White shirts have been here, inspecting. The stink of the rotting algae tanks is intense, even through the mask. Hock Seng breathes shallowly, forcing himself not to gag. Overhead, the drying screens are all black with withered algae. A few streamers dangle down, black emaciated tentacles. Hock Seng fights the urge to duck from them.

"What are you doing?" Mai pants.

"Looking for a future." He spares her small smile before he realizes she can't see his expressions through the mask. He digs gloves out of a supply cabinet and hands her a pair. Gives her an apron as well. "Help me with this." He indicates a sack of powder. "We're working for ourselves, now. No more foreign influences, yes?" He stops her as she reaches for the sack. "Don't get any on your skin," he says. "And don't let your sweat touch it." He guides her back up to the offices.

"What is it?"

"You shall see, child."

"Yes, but-"

"It's magic. Now go get some water from the khlong out back."

When she returns, he takes a knife and carefully slices into the sacking. "Bring me the water." She pulls the bucket close. He dips into the water with his knife, then runs it through the powder. The powder hisses and begins to boil. When he takes the knife out, it's half gone, melted into nothing, still hissing.

Mai's eyes go wide. A viscous liquid pours off the knife. "What is it?"

"A specialized bacteria. Something the farang have created."

"Not acid, though"

"No. It's alive. In a way."

He takes the knife and begins to scrape it along the face of the safe. The knife disintegrates completely. Hock Seng grimaces. "I need something else, something long, to spread it with."

"Put water on the safe," Mai suggests. "Then pour on the powder."

He laughs. "Clever child."

Soon the safe is soaking. He prepares a paper funnel and lets the powder stream through in a tiny fountain. Wherever it touches the metal face it begins to boil. Hock Seng steps back, horrified at the speed of the stuff. Fights the urge to wipe his hands. "Don't get any on your skin," he mutters. Stares at his gloves. If there is a trace of powder on them and they are wetted… His skin crawls. Mai is already backed away to the far side of the office, watching with terrified eyes.

Metal pours off the face, eaten and discarded iron, peeling away in sheaves, layers of it flaking away as if blown by autumn winds. The bright leaves of melting iron land on teak flooring. They hiss and spread. The flakes burn on, creating a lattice of broken seared wood.

"It doesn't stop," Mai says, awed. Hock Seng watches with increasing unease, wondering if the yeastlike stuff will eat away the floor below and send the safe crashing down into the manufacturing lines. He finds his voice. "It is alive. It should lose its ability to digest, soon."

"This is what the farang make." Mai's voice is frightened and awed.

"Our people have made such things as well." Hock Seng shakes his head. "Don't think the farang are so much as all that."

The safe continues to disintegrate. If only he had been brave before. He could have done this when there wasn't a war boiling outside the window. He wishes he could go back in time to his former frightened paranoid self, so worried about deportation, about angering foreign devils, about preserving his good name, and simply whisper in that old man's ear that there was no hope. That he should steal and run, and it could not turn out worse.

A voice interrupts his thoughts. "Well, well. Tan Hock Seng. How nice to see you here."

Hock Seng turns. Dog Fucker and Old Bones, along with six others, are standing in the doorway. All of them carrying spring guns. They're scratched and sooted from the warfare of the streets, but smiling and confident.

"We all seem to have been thinking along the same lines," Dog Fucker observes.

An explosion lights the sky, casting orange across the office. The rumble of destruction trembles through Hock Seng's soles. It's hard to tell how far away it was. The shells seem to fall randomly. If there is intelligence guiding them, it's not for them to understand. Another rumble, this one closer. The white shirts, defending the levees, most likely. Hock Seng fights an urge to flee. The cracking of the iron-digesting bacteria continues. Leaves of metal waft to the floor.

Hock Seng tests the waters. "I'm glad you're here. Help me, then. Come on."

Old Bones smiles. "I think not."

The men shoulder past Hock Seng. All of them larger than he. All of them armed. All of them uncaring of his and Mai's presence. Hock Seng staggers as they bump him aside.

"But it's mine," he protests. "You can't take it! I told you where it was!"

The men ignore him.

"You can't take it!" Hock Seng fumbles for his gun. Suddenly a pistol presses against his skull. Old Bones, smiling.

Dog Fucker watches with interest. "Another killing will make little difference on my rebirth. Don't test me."

Hock Seng can barely control his rage. A part of him wants to fire anyway, to steal away the man's smug expression. The safe's metal continues to bubble and hiss, falling away, slowly revealing his last object of hope. The nak leng all watch Hock Seng and Old Bones. They're loose, smiling. Unafraid. They haven't even lifted their pistols. They simply watch, interested, as Hock Seng points his pistol at them.