The Windup Girl(40)

"We all work with the hands we're dealt." Anderson shrugs. "Anyway, Yates chose the site."

"I told Yates it was stupid, too."

Anderson recalls Yates, eyes bright with the possibilities of a new global economy. "Maybe not stupid. But definitely an idealist." He finishes his drink. The bar owner is nowhere in sight. He waves for the waiters, who all ignore him. One of them, at least, is asleep, standing.

"You're not worried you'll get yanked the way Yates did?" Lucy asks.

Anderson shrugs. "Wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen. It's damn hot." He touches his sunburned nose. "I'm more of a northern wastes sort."

Nguyen and Quoile, dark-skinned both, laugh at that, but Otto just nods grimly, his own peeling nose a testament to his inability to adapt to the burn of the equatorial sun.

Lucy pulls out a pipe and pushes a couple of flies away before setting down her smoking tools and an accompanying ball of opium. The flies hobble away, but don't take to the air. Even the bugs seem stunned by the heat. Down an alley, near the rubble of an old Expansion tower, children are playing next to a freshwater pump. Lucy watches them as she tamps her pipe. "Christ, I wish I was a kid again."

Everyone seems to have lost the energy for conversation. Anderson pulls the sack of ngaw out from between his feet. Takes one out and peels it. Pries the translucent fruit from the ngaw's interior and tosses the hairy hollow rind on the table. Pops the fruit into his mouth.

Otto cocks his head, curious. "What's that you've got?"

Anderson digs more out of his sack, distributes them. "Not sure. Thais call them ngaw."

Lucy stops tamping her pipe. "I've seen them. They're all over the market. They don't have blister rust?"

Anderson shakes his head. "Not so far. The lady who sold them said they were clean. Had the certificates."

Everyone laughs, but Anderson shrugs off their cynicism. "I let them sit for a week. Nothing. They're cleaner than U-Tex."

The others follow his lead and eat their own fruits. Eyes widen. Smiles appear. Anderson opens the sack wide and sets it on the table. "Go ahead. I've been eating too many as it is."

They all rifle the bag. A pile of rinds grows in the center of the table. Quoile chews thoughtfully. "It sort of reminds me of lychee."

"Oh?" Anderson controls his interest. "Never heard of it."

"Sure. I had a drink that tasted a bit like it. Last time I was in India. Kolkata. A PurCal sales rep took me to one of his restaurants, when I first started looking at shipping saffron."

"So you think it's this… leechee?"

"Could be. Lychee was what he called the drink. Might not have been the fruit at all."

"If it's a PurCal product, I don't see how it would show up here," Lucy says. "These should all be out on Koh Angrit, under quarantine while the Environment Ministry finds ten thousand different ways to tax the thing." She spits the pit into her palm and tosses it off the balcony into the street. "I'm seeing these everywhere. They've got to be local." She reaches into the sack and takes another. "You know who might know about them, though…" She leans back and calls into the dimness of the bar. "Hagg! You still there? You awake back in there?"

At the man's name, the others stir and try to straighten themselves, like children caught by a strict parent. Anderson forces down an instinctive chill. "I wish you hadn't done that," he mutters.

Otto grimaces. "I thought he died."

"Blister rust never gets the chosen ones, don't you know?"

Everyone stifles a laugh as a form shambles out of the gloom. Hagg's face is flushed, and sweat speckles his face. He surveys the Phalanx solemnly. "Hello, all." He nods his head to Lucy. "Still trafficking with these sort, then?"

Lucy shrugs. "I make do." She nods at a chair. "Don't just stand there. Have a drink on us. Tell us your stories." She lights her opium pipe and draws on it as the man pulls up the chair beside her and sags into it.

Hagg is a solid man, well-fleshed. Not for the first time, Anderson thinks how interesting it is that Grahamite priests, of all their flock, are always the ones whose waistlines overflow their niche. Hagg waves for whiskey, and surprises everyone when a waiter appears at his elbow almost immediately.

"No ice," the waiter says on arrival.

"No, no ice. Of course not." Hagg shakes his head emphatically. "Don't want the damn calories spent, anyway."

When the waiter returns, Hagg takes the drink and downs it instantly, then sends the waiter back for a second. "It's good to be back in from the countryside," he says. "You start missing the pleasures of civilization." He toasts them all with his second glass and downs it as well.

"How far out were you?" Lucy asks around the pipe clamped in her teeth. She's starting to look a little glassy from the burning tar.

"Near the old border with Burma, Three Pagodas pass." He looks sourly at them all as if they are guilty of the sins he researches. "Looking into ivory beetle spread."

"Not safe up there, I heard." Otto says. "Who's the jao por?"

"A man named Chanarong. And he was no trouble at all. Far easier to work with him than the Dung Lord or any of the small jao por in the city. Not all of the godfathers are so focused on profits and power." Hagg looks back pointedly. "For those of us who aren't interested in pillaging the Kingdom of coal or jade or opium, the countryside is safe enough." He shrugs. "In any case, I was invited by Phra Kritipong to visit his monastery. To observe the changes in ivory beetle behavior." He shakes is head. "The devastation is extraordinary. Whole forests with not a leaf on them. Kudzu, and nothing else. The entire overstory is gone, timber fallen everywhere."