The Windup Girl(91)

Narong nods, dismissing her. Kanya stalks out of the coffee shop, followed by new groans of disappointment from the radio listeners as Sakda is cowed by Charoen's newfound ferocity.

On the street corner, under the green glow of methane, Kanya straightens her uniform. There is a blotchy stain on her jacket, residue of the destruction she has wreaked tonight. She frowns with distaste. Brushes at it. Again opens the list that Narong gave her, memorizing the names.

The men and women are General Pracha's closest friends. And they will now be enforced against as vigorously as the yellow cards in their towers. As vigorously as General Pracha once enforced against a small village in the northeast, leaving starving families and burning homes behind him.

Difficult. But, for once, fair.

Kanya crumples the list in her hand. This is the shape of our world, she thinks. Tit for tat until we're all dead and cheshires lap at our blood.

She wonders if it was really better in the past, if there really was a golden age fueled by petroleum and technology. A time when every solution to a problem didn't engender another. She wants to curse those farang who came before. The calorie men with their active labs and their carefully cultured crop strains that would feed the world. Their modified animals that would work so much more efficiently on fewer calories. The AgriGens and PurCals who claimed that they were happy to feed the world, to export their patented grains, and then always found a way to delay.

Ah, Jaidee, she thinks. I am sorry. So sorry. For everything I have done to you and yours. I did not set out to hurt you. If I had known how much it would cost to balance against Pracha's greed, I would have never come to Krung Thep.

Instead of going after her men, she makes her way to a temple. It is small, a neighborhood shrine more than anything, with only a few monks in attendance. A young boy kneels before the glittering Buddha image with his grandmother, but otherwise, the place is empty. Kanya buys some incense from the vendor at the gate and goes inside. She lights the incense and kneels, holds the burning sticks to her forehead, raises them three times in the Triple Gem: buddha, damma, sanga. She prays.

How many evils has she committed? How much bad kamma must she atone for? Was it more important to honor Akkarat and his promises of a balancing of the scales? Or was it more important to honor her adoptive father, Jaidee?

A man comes to your village with a promise of food for your belly, a life in the city, and money for your aunt's cough and your uncle's whiskey. And he doesn't even want to buy your body. What else can one wish for? What else could buy loyalty? Everyone needs a patron.

May you have much better friends in your next life, loyal fighter.

Ah, Jaidee, I am sorry.

May I wander as a ghost for a million years to make atonement.

May you be reborn in a better place than this.

She stands and makes a final wai to the Buddha and goes out of the temple. On the steps, she looks up at the stars. She wonders how it is that her kamma has so destroyed her. She closes her eyes, fighting back tears.

In the distance, a building explodes in flame. She has over a hundred men working this district, letting everyone feel the pain of real enforcement. Laws are a fine thing on paper, but painful when no bribery can ease their bind. People have forgotten this. Suddenly she feels tired. She turns away from the carnage. She has enough blood and soot on her hands for one night. Her men know their work. Home is not far.

* * *

"Captain Kanya?"

Kanya opens her eyes to dawn light filtering into her home. For a moment, she is too groggy to remember anything about the days, about her position…

"Captain?" The voice is calling in through her screened window.

Kanya pulls herself out of bed and goes to her door. "Yes?" she calls through. "What is it?"

"You're wanted at the Ministry."

Kanya opens the door and takes an envelope from the man, unbinds the seal. "This is from the Quarantine Department," she says, surprised.

He nods. "It was a volunteer duty that Captain Jaidee had…" he trails off. "With everyone working, General Pracha asked…" he hesitates.

Kanya nods. "Yes. Of course."

Her skin crawls, remembering Jaidee's stories of the wars against early strains of cibiscosis. How he worked with his heart in his throat alongside his men, all of them wondering who would die before the week was done. All of them in a terror of sickness and a sweat of work as they burned whole villages: homes and wats and Buddha images all going up in smoke while monks chanted and called spirits to their aid and people all around them lay on the ground and died, gagging on fluids as their lungs ruptured. The Quarantine Department. She reads the message. Nods sharply to the boy. "Yes. I see."

"Any return?"

"No." She sets the envelope on a side table, a scorpion crouched. "This is all I need."

The messenger salutes and runs down the steps to his bicycle. Kanya closes the door, thoughtful. The envelope hints at horrors. Perhaps this is her kamma. Retribution.

In a short time she is on her way to the Ministry, cycling through leafy streets, crossing canals, coasting down city boulevards built for five lanes of petroleum-burning cars that now carry herds of megodonts.

At the Quarantine Department, she endures a second security check before she is allowed to enter the complex.

Computer and climate fans hum relentlessly. The whole building seems to vibrate with the energy burning within. More than three-quarters of the Ministry's carbon allocation goes to this single building, the brain of the Quarantine Department that evaluates and predicts the shifts in genetic architecture that necessitate a Ministry response.