The Windup Girl(62)

The Dung Lord watches thoughtfully. "I knew a man who worked at your kink-spring company. A few years ago. He didn't spread his wealth around as you do. Didn't curry favor with so many of his fellow yellow cards." He pauses. "I understand that the white shirts killed him for his watch. Beat him bloody, robbed him blind, right in the street, because he was out after curfew."

Hock Seng shrugs, forcing down memories of a man lying on cobbles, a ruined mess, broken already, begging for help…

The Dung Lord's eyes are thoughtful. "And now you work for this company as well. It seems like an unlikely coincidence."

Hock Seng doesn't say anything.

The Dung Lord says, "Dog Fucker should have paid more attention. You're a dangerous one."

Hock Seng shakes his head emphatically. "I only wish to reestablish myself."

The servant continues to pedal, cranking more joules into the spring, forcing more energy into the tiny box. The Dung Lord watches, trying to hide his astonishment as the process continues, but still, his eyes have widened. Already the servant has pushed more energy into the box than any spring its size should accept. The cycle whines as the servant pedals. Hock Seng says, "It will take all night for a man like this to wind it. You should take it to a megodont."

"How does it work?"

Hock Seng shrugs. "There is a new lubricating solution, it allows the springs to be tightened to significantly higher tensions, without breaking or locking."

The man continues to pour power into the spring. Servants and bodyguards begin to gather around, all of them watching with a certain awe as he cranks away at the box.

"Astonishing," the Dung Lord mutters.

"If you chain it to a more efficient animal-a megodont or a mulie-the calorie-to-joule transfer is nearly lossless," Hock Seng says.

The Dung Lord watches the spring as the man continues to wind. He is smiling. "We'll test your spring, Hock Seng. If it performs as well as it winds, you'll have your ship. Bring the specifications and blueprints. Your kind I can do business with." He motions to a servant and orders liquor. "A toast. To a new business partner."

Relief floods through Hock Seng. For the first time since blood washed his hands in an alley long ago, since a man begged for mercy and found none, liquor flows in Hock Seng's veins, and he is content.

13

Jaidee remembers when he first met Chaya. He had just finished one of his early muay thai bouts; he can't even remember who he competed against but he remembers coming out of the ring, people congratulating him, everyone saying that he moved better even than Nai Khanom Tom. He drank laolao that night, and then stumbled out into the streets with his friends, all of them laughing, trying to kick a takraw ball, drunk, absurd, and all of them flushed with victory and with life.

And there Chaya was, closing her parents' shop, propping up the wooden panels that secured the storefront where they sold marigolds and newly reengineered jasmine flowers for temple offerings. When he smiled at her, she gave him and his drunk friends a look of disgust. But Jaidee felt a shock of recognition-as if they had known one another in a past life, and were at last meeting again, fated lovers.

He had stared at her, stunned, and his friends had caught the look-Suttipong and Jai p**n  and all the rest, all of them lost when the violet comb epidemic hit and they went into the breach to burn the villages where it had struck, all of them gone-but he remembers them all catching him staring, suddenly stupid with infatuation, and how they teased him. Chaya looked at him with a studied contempt and sent him stumbling away.

For Jaidee, it had always been easy to attract a girlfriend, some girl either pleased by his muay thai or his white uniform. But Chaya had simply looked through him and turned her back.

It took him a month to get up the nerve to return. That first time, he dressed well, shopped for temple offerings, took his change, and slipped out silently. Over the course of weeks he dropped by, talking with her more, establishing a connection. At first, he thought that she knew him for the drunken fool trying to make amends, but over time it became apparent that she had not made the connection, that the arrogant drunk on the streets that night had been completely forgotten.

Jaidee never told her how they first met, not even after they were married. It was too humiliating to admit to what she had seen in him that night on the street. To tell her that the man she loved was that other fool as well.

And now he prepares to do something worse. He puts on his white dress uniform while Niwat and Surat watch. They are solemn as he prepares to bring himself low in their eyes. He kneels before them.

"Whatever you see today, do not let it shame you."

They nod solemnly, but he knows they do not understand. They are too young to understand pressures and necessity. He pulls them close, and then he goes out into blinding sunlight.

Kanya awaits him in a cycle rickshaw, compassion in her eyes, even if she is too polite to speak what is in her heart.

They ride silently through the streets. The Ministry appears ahead and they ride through the gates. Servants and rickshaw men and carriages clog the outer gates, waiting for their patrons to return. The witnesses have already been arriving, then.

Their own rickshaw makes its way to the temple. Wat Phra Seub was erected inside the Ministry in honor of the biodiversity martyr. It is the place where white shirts make their vows and are formally ordained as protectors of the Kingdom, before they are given their first ranks. It is here that they receive their ordination, and it is here-