The Windup Girl(16)

Hock Seng prays for luck. Even an old Chinese yellow card needs luck.

3

Emiko sips whiskey, wishing she were drunk, and waits for the signal from Kannika that it is time for her humiliation. A part of her still struggles against it but the rest of her-the part that sits with her midriff-baring mini-jacket and tight pha sin skirt and a glass of whiskey in her hand-doesn't have the energy to fight.

And then she wonders if she has it backwards, if the part that struggles to maintain her illusions of self-respect is the part intent upon her destruction. If her body, this collection of cells and manipulated DNA-with its own stronger, more practical needs-is actually the survivor: the one with will.

Isn't that why she sits here, listening to the throb of beating sticks and the wail of pi klang as girls writhe under glow worms and men and whores shout their encouragement? Is it because she lacks the will to die? Or because she is too stubborn to allow it?

Raleigh says that all things come in cycles, like the rise and fall of the tides along the beaches of Koh Samet, or the rise and fall of a man's prick when he has a pretty girl. Raleigh slaps his girls on their bare bottoms and laughs at the jokes of the new wave gaijin and tells Emiko that whatever they want to do with her, money is money, and nothing is new under the sun. And perhaps he is right. Nothing that Raleigh demands has not been demanded before. Nothing that Kannika conceives to hurt her and make her cry out is truly different. Except that she draws cries and moans from a windup girl. This, at least, is novelty.

Look! She is almost human!

Gendo-sama used to say that she was more than human. He used to stroke her black hair after they had made love and say that he thought it a pity New People were not more respected, and really it was too bad her movements would never be smooth. But still, did she not have perfect eyesight and perfect skin and disease- and cancer-resistant genes, and who was she to complain? At least her hair would never turn gray, and she would never age as quickly as he, even with his surgeries and pills and ointments and herbs that kept him young.

He had stroked her hair and said, "You are beautiful, even if you are New People. Do not be ashamed."

And Emiko had snuggled into his embrace. "No. I am not ashamed."

But that had been in Kyoto, where New People were common, where they served well, and were sometimes well-respected. Not human, certainly, but also not the threat that the people of this savage basic culture make her out to be. Certainly not the devils that the Grahamites warn against at their pulpits, or the soulless creatures imagined out of hell that the forest monk Buddhists claim; not a creature unable to ever achieve a soul or a place in the cycles of rebirth and striving for Nirvana. Not the affront to the Q'ran that the Green Headbands believe.

The Japanese were practical. An old population needed young workers in all their varieties, and if they came from test tubes and grew in crèches, this was no sin. The Japanese were practical.

And isn't that why you sit here? Because the Japanese are so very practical? Though you look like one, though you speak their tongue, though Kyoto is the only home you knew, you were not Japanese.

Emiko puts her head in her hands. She wonders if she will find a date, or if she will be left alone at the end of the night, and then wonders if she knows which she prefers.

Raleigh says there is nothing new under the sun, but tonight, when Emiko pointed out that she was New People, and there had never been New People before, Raleigh laughed, and said she was right and special and who knows, maybe that meant anything was possible. And then he slapped her bottom and told her to get up on stage and show how special she was going to be tonight.

Emiko traces her fingers through the wetness of bar rings. Warm beers sit and sweat wet slick rings, as slick as girls and men, as slick as her skin when she oils it to shine, to be soft like butter when a man touches her. As soft as skin can be, and perhaps more so, because even if her physical movements are all stutter-stop flash-bulb strange, her skin is more than perfect. Even with her augmented vision she barely spies the pores of her flesh. So small. So delicate. So optimal. But made for Nippon and a rich man's climate control, not for here. Here, she is too hot and sweats too little.

She wonders if she were a different kind of animal, some mindless furry cheshire, say, if she would feel cooler. Not because her pores would be larger and more efficient and her skin not so painfully impermeable, but simply because she wouldn't have to think. She wouldn't have to know that she had been trapped in this suffocating perfect skin by some irritating scientist with his test tubes and DNA confetti mixes who made her flesh so so smooth, and her insides too too hot.

Kannika grabs her by the hair.

Emiko gasps at the sudden attack. She searches for help but none of the other patrons are interested in her. They are watching the girls on stage. Emiko's peers are servicing the guests, plying them with Khmer whiskey and pressing their bottoms to their laps and running their hands over the men's chests. And anyway, they have no love for her. Even the good-hearted ones-the ones with jai dee, who somehow manage to care for a windup like herself-will not step in.

Raleigh is talking with another gaijin, smiling and laughing with the man, but his ancient eyes are on Emiko, watching for what she will do.

Kannika yanks her hair again. "Bai!"

Emiko obeys, climbing down from her bar stool and tottering in her windup way toward the circle stage. The men all laugh and point at the Japanese windup and her broken unnatural steps. A freak of nature transplanted from her native habitat, trained from birth to duck her head and bow.