The Windup Girl(50)
Still, it was foolish.
When she fainted in the rickshaw he was sure that she was about to die, and a part of him had been glad. Relieved that he could take back that moment when he recognized her, and against all his training, tied his fate to hers.
He glances over at her. Her skin has lost its terrifying flush and furnace heat. She holds the remnants of slashed clothes around her, keeping her modesty. It's pitiable, really, that a creature so utterly owned clings to modesty.
"Why?" she asks again.
He shrugs again. "You needed help."
"No one helps a windup." Her voice is flat. "You are a fool." She pushes damp hair away from her face. A surreal stutter-stop motion, the genetic bits of her unkinking. Her smooth skin shines between the edges of her slashed blouse, the gentle promise of her br**sts. What would she feel like? Her skin gleams, smooth and inviting.
She catches him staring. "Do you wish to use me?"
"No." he looks away, uneasy. "It's not necessary."
"I would not fight you," she says.
Anderson feels a sudden revulsion at the acquiescence in her voice. On another day, at another time, he probably would have taken her for the novelty. Thought nothing of it. But the fact that she expects so little fills him with distaste. He forces a smile. "Thank you. No."
She nods shortly. Looks out again at the humid night and the green glow of the street lamps. It's impossible to say if she is grateful or surprised, or if his decision even matters to her. However her mask might have slipped in the heat of terror and relief of escape, her thoughts are carefully locked away now.
"Is there someplace I should take you?"
She shrugs. "Raleigh. He is the only one who will keep me."
"But he wasn't the first, was he? You weren't always…" He trails off. There's no polite word and, looking at the girl, he doesn't have the appetite to call her a toy.
She glances over at him, then out again at the passing city. Gas lights puddle the street with low green pockets of phosphor, separated by deep canyons of shadow. They pass under a lamp and Anderson catches her face, dimly illuminated, humidity sheened and pensive, before it disappears again in darkness.
"No. I was not always this way. Not…" she trails off. "Not like this." She falls quiet, thoughtful. "Mishimoto employed me. I had…" she shrugs, "an owner. An owner at the company. I was owned. Gen-my owner acquired a temporary foreign business exemption to bring me to the Kingdom. A ninety-day permit. Extendible by palace waiver because of the Japanese Friendship. I was his Personal Secretary: translation, office management and… companion." Another shrug, more felt than seen. "But it is expensive to return to Japan. A dirigible ticket for a New Person is the same as for your kind. My owner concluded that leaving his secretary in Bangkok was more economical. When his assignment here ended, he decided to upgrade new in Osaka."
"Jesus and Noah."
She shrugs. "I was given my final pay at the anchor pad and he went away. Up and away."
"And now Raleigh?" he asks.
Again the shrug. "No Thai wants a New Person for secretary, or translation. In Japan, okay. Common, even. Too few babies born, too much working needed. Here… " She shakes her head. "Calorie markets are controlled. Everyone is jealous for U-Tex. Everyone protects their rice. Raleigh does not care. Raleigh… likes novelty."
The clouded scent of fish frying washes over them, greasy and cloying. A night market, full of people dining by candlelight, hunched over noodles and skewers of octopus and plates of laap. Anderson stifles an urge to raise the rickshaw's rain hood and close the privacy curtain, to hide the evidence of her company. Woks flame brightly with the telltale green sparkles of Environment Ministry-taxed methane. The sweat sheen on the people's dark skins is barely lit. At their feet, cheshires circle, alert for charity scraps and opportunities for theft.
A cheshire shadow bleeds across the darkness, causing Lao Gu to swerve. He curses softly in his own language. Emiko laughs, a small surprised sound as she claps her hands in delight. Lao Gu glares back at her.
"You like cheshires?" Anderson asks.
Emiko looks at him in surprise. "You do not?"
"Back home, we can't kill them fast enough," he says. "Even Grahamites offer blue bills for their skins. Probably the only thing they've ever done that I agreed with."
"Mmm, yes." Emiko's brow wrinkles thoughtfully. "They are too much improved for this world, I think. A natural bird has so little chance, now." She smiles slightly. "Just think if they had made New People first."
Is it mischief in her eyes? Or melancholy?
"What do you think would have happened?" Anderson asks.
Emiko doesn't meet his gaze, looks out instead at the circling cats amongst the diners. "Generippers learned too much from cheshires."
She doesn't say anything else, but Anderson can guess what's in her mind. If her kind had come first, before the generippers knew better, she would not have been made sterile. She would not have the signature tick-tock motions that make her so physically obvious. She might have even been designed as well as the military windups now operating in Vietnam-deadly and fearless. Without the lesson of the cheshires, Emiko might have had the opportunity to supplant the human species entirely with her own improved version. Instead, she is a genetic dead end. Doomed to a single life cycle, just like SoyPRO and TotalNutrient Wheat.