The Windup Girl(24)

Jaidee grimaces. Richard Carlyle. Too clever by half, that one. Always in meetings with Akkarat, always at public benefits for cibiscosis victims, tossing money about, always talking about the positives of free trade. He is just one of dozens of farang who have returned to the shores like jellyfish after a bitter water epidemic, but Carlyle is the loudest. The one whose smiling face annoys Jaidee most.

Jaidee pushes himself fully upright and brushes off the white hemp weave of his uniform. It doesn't matter; the dirigible will return. Like the ocean rushing onto the beach, it is impossible to keep the farang away. Land and sea must intersect. These men with profits in their beating hearts have no choice, they must rush in no matter the consequence, and he must always meet them.

Kamma.

Jaidee slowly returns to the cracked contents of the inspected shipping crates, wiping his face of sweat, breathing from the exertion of his run. He waves at his men to continue their labor. "There! Break those open over there! I don't want a single crate uninspected."

The Customs men are waiting for him. He pokes through a new crate's wreckage with the point of his machete as the two men approach. They're like dogs. Impossible to be rid of unless you feed them. One of them tries to prevent Jaidee from swinging his machete into another crate.

"We paid! We will be filing protests. There will be investigations. This is international soil!"

Jaidee makes a face. "Why are you still here?"

"We paid you a fair price for protection!"

"More than fair." Jaidee shoulders past the men. "But I am not here to debate these things. It is your damma to protest. It is mine to protect our borders, and if that means I must invade your 'international soil' to save our country, so be it." He swings his machete and another crate crackles open. WeatherAll wood bursts wide.

"You've overstepped yourself!"

"Probably. But you will have to send someone from the Ministry of Trade to tell me himself. Someone more much powerful than you." He spins his machete thoughtfully. "Unless you wish to debate me now, with my men?"

The two flinch. Jaidee thinks he catches a flicker of a smile on Kanya's lips. He glances over, surprised, but already his lieutenant is again the face of blank professionalism. It is pleasant to see her smile. Jaidee briefly wonders if there is something more he can do to encourage a second flash of teeth from his dour subordinate.

Sadly, the Customs men seem to be reconsidering their position; they are backing away from his machete.

"Do not think that you can insult us in this way, without consequence."

"Of course not." Jaidee chops at the shipping crate again, shattering it fully. "But I appreciate your monetary donation, even so." He looks up at them. "When you complain, make sure you tell them it was me, Jaidee Rojjanasukchai who did this work." He grins again. "And make sure you tell them that you actually tried to bribe the Tiger of Bangkok."

Around him, his men all laugh at the joke. The Customs men step back, surprised at this new revelation, the dawning comprehension of their opponent.

Jaidee surveys the destruction around him. Splinters of the balsa crate material lie everywhere. The crates are engineered for strength and weightlessness and their lattice works well enough to hold goods-as long as no one applies a machete.

The work goes quickly. Materials are pulled from crates and laid out in careful rows. The Customs men hover, taking the names of his white shirts until his men finally raise their machetes and give chase. The officers retreat, then stop and observe from a safer distance. The scene reminds Jaidee of animals fighting over a carcass. His men feeding on the offal of foreign lands while the scavengers probe and test, the ravens and cheshires and dogs all waiting their own chance to converge on the carrion. The thought depresses him a little.

The Customs men hang back, watching.

Jaidee inspects the line of sorted contents. Kanya follows close behind. Jaidee asks, "What do we have, Lieutenant?"

"Agar solutions. Nutrient cultures. Some kind of breeding tanks. PurCal cinnamon. A papaya seedstock we don't recognize. A new iteration of U-Tex that probably sterilizes any rice varietal it meets." She shrugs. "About what we expected."

Jaidee flips open a shipping container's lid and peers inside. Checks the address. A company in the farang manufacturing district. He tries sounding out the foreign letters, then gives up. He tries to remember if he's seen the logo before, but doesn't think so. He fingers through the materials inside, sacks of some sort of protein powder. "Nothing of wonderful interest, then. No new version of blister rust leaping out of a box from AgriGen or PurCal."

"No."

"It's a pity we couldn't catch that last dirigible. They ran quite quickly. I would have liked to search the cargo of Khun Carlyle."

Kanya shrugs. "They will return."

"They always do."

"Like dogs to a carcass," she says.

Jaidee follows Kanya's gaze to the Customs men, watching from their safe distance. He is saddened that they see the world so similarly. Does he influence Kanya? Or does she influence him? He used to have much more fun at this work. But then, work used to be so much more clear-cut. He's not accustomed to stalking the gray landscapes that Kanya walks. But at least he has more fun.

His reverie is broken by the arrival of one of his men. Somchai, sauntering over, his machete swinging casually. He's a fast one, as old as Jaidee but hard-edged from losses when blister rust swept the North for the third time in a single growing season. A good man, and loyal. And clever.