Subterrene War 03: Chimera (16 page)

One of the men spoke to her in English, his accent almost perfect. “We’re wasting time, mother.”

She nodded and then gestured to me with her carbine. “Go back the way you came. There is no information here, but you can leave alive.”

“Wait; I need to know if the same C. L. Chen means anything to you. Or Samuel Ling or Project Sunshine.”

The girl cocked her head again and made me angrier; this was an abomination. The gesture looked too human, and it felt as though someone had stolen something not just from me, but from the entire human race, and that she didn’t
deserve
life.

“C. L. Chen, no; nor have I heard of Sunshine. But Samuel Ling is a genetic engineer. He had a small shop in the gene-therapy section of Khlong Toei.”

I nodded. “Did Ling ever work with the Thais—to reverse your spoiling?”

“Ling is a very smart man but not that smart. Six months ago we lost a couple of our sisters; they disappeared from their living quarters, and someone suggested that we look into Ling. When we entered his offices, they had been cleaned out—except for the remains of my two sisters, vivisected, analyzed, and dead long before we got there. Otherwise, the offices were empty and pristine, and we do not expect Ling’s return.”

“Did you run here with Margaret? Did you travel with her when she originally came to Thailand?”

The girl shook her head. “No. Margaret was blessed.
She is the only one to have met Catherine, the most perfect of all.”

At the name, all of them bowed their heads, and Jihoon and I glanced at each other. The spoiling affected all the major organs, including the brain, and their manner would have made me think they were all crazy except that the men were human—would never have experienced the spoiling, whereas the satos’ own immune systems turned traitor. This was weird, but it
wasn’t
a sign of insanity.

“What was so special about Catherine?” Jihoon asked.

Apparently it was another joke, and they all chuckled. She shouldered her carbine and lit a cigarette, handing them out to the others. “They send you to hunt us but don’t teach you about Catherine? You are nothing for us to fear then.”

And all of them left. They filtered out through the other side of the courtyard, and although my initial thought was to follow, narrow windows dotted the walls around us and there was no telling if someone watched. It felt like there were crosshairs on my forehead. The sun inched lower, and the day had gotten late anyway, so we both turned and headed back for the ghetto entrance.

“What do you think, Chong?” I asked.

“That was the craziest stuff I’ve ever seen. You hunted them?”

“Yeah. But they weren’t like that. The ones I chased rotted alive, incapable in some cases of even seeing. We just saw a sato in perfect form. A killing tool. She could have wiped us both before we even started to draw, and they can all rot in hell.”

He grunted and then looked at me. “Why do you hate them so much?”

“Who?”

“Them. Satos.”

I started walking faster, thinking about Phillip’s father and the jungles. “We have a long way to go, Chong, and frankly, you don’t know me well enough to start asking that kind of crap.”

We were lost. The maze of rusting and crumbling structures wasn’t at all familiar on our return trip, and the best I could manage was to make sure the wharf cranes were at our backs as we tried to find the gate. After a half hour of searching, we turned a corner and stepped into an area that looked like an amusement park for all its neon and terra-cotta. A narrow route went straight through sets of buildings that were newer than the rest and that resembled what I imagined to be Japanese architecture—more so than either Thai buildings or the makeshift housing typical of what we’d seen so far. These were built by people who had money. Outside each shop hung signs, along with flashing images that showed pictures of animals or body parts.

“What the hell is this?” I asked Jihoon.

“Genetic engineering. That sign says organ repair, and there’s a shop farther down selling small dragons, safe for children. I’m surprised the Thais haven’t cracked down.”

“Well, as long as they restrict themselves to animals and gene therapy, it shouldn’t be a problem—especially if they pay off the officials.”

A man in a long rubber apron stood in front of one shop, smoking while he gestured to us with rubber-gloved hands. “Come in, come in.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You need new liver, yes? I can tell.” He chuckled and
looked at Jihoon. “Your friend heavy drinker. The skin says it all. And the nose.”

“You know,” said Jihoon, “he might be right. You do look a little yellow.”

“Screw you.” But it struck me that this must have been where Chen had camped out, somewhere in the area. I nodded to the man and followed him in with Jihoon.

The shop’s waiting room was gleaming white, its tile extending from the floor almost to the ceiling, and a tiny robot crawled across it, cleaning every centimeter with pulses of disinfectant. One wall had a menu. The writing was in Japanese and Thai, but next to each item was a picture of an organ—everything you could ever want replaced.

“Those prices old,” the man said. “No good now. Liver therapy, five thousand.”

“Bhat?” I asked.

“Dollar.”

“Too steep, friend,” I said, shaking my head. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you tell me what you know about Samuel Ling.”

The man’s face paled, and he ducked behind his counter, pulling off both gloves. “Don’t know Samuel Ling. Shop is closing now, you go.”

“Watch the door,” I said to Ji and waited until he had taken a position outside before turning back to the shopkeeper. “You’re a genetic engineer?”

“Yes. But you go.”

I shook my head and put one hand on my pistol. “No, I stay. Samuel Ling. Where is he?”

“You don’t understand.” The man looked panicked now, his gaze shifting back and forth between the front door and me. “Ling has many friends in Bangkok. Colleagues.”

“All you have to do is tell me where he went. Then I’ll leave. If you don’t, not only could I put a few holes in you, but look at my uniform, pal. I could have every Thai official in here until you’d make more money by burning the place to the ground and selling charcoal.”

“He’s gone,” the man said.

“I know that. Where?”

He ran a hand through his hair and then shrugged. “I don’t know Ling. But friend say he bragged about having institute. In Burma. That all I know.”

I stared at the man and pulled my fléchette pistol out, but when he started to cry and begged me to believe him, I guessed he’d told the truth. I handed him my credit chit.

“Take a hundred dollars.”

With the transaction completed, I left, grabbing Jihoon’s arm and pulling him through the alley.

“What’s the rush?” he asked.

“Ling. If the shop guy was that scared of someone who’s not even here, Ling must have a lot of contacts who still owe him, and I’d bet you anything that the first thing that guy will do is tell them about our visit.”

To his credit, Jihoon didn’t ask any more questions and moved with me, keeping pace. The sun was about to set. With any luck, I figured, we’d find the gate and hightail it back to the hotel before the curfew started, but I had that feeling now, like something was about to go wrong, because Khlong Toei had changed. The crowds had vanished as if they knew something we didn’t, and I imagined a current running through the place because it was a living thing, a single entity with a unified consciousness taking in everything at once instead of a collection of individuals. We started jogging once we hit a
restaurant area, and Jihoon looked over his shoulder for the fifth time.

“We’re being followed,” he said.

“How many?”

He shrugged, and we quickened our pace when the ghetto’s wall came into view. Now all we had to do was trace it north to our gate—any gate—and get the hell out.

“Four. Armed with clubs or something. Not Thai, maybe Japanese.”

“Follow my lead and don’t hesitate; just waste the bastards.”

I pulled my pistol and ducked behind a stall, the vendor shouting at me in English to go away and that he didn’t want trouble. Then he screamed something else in Japanese. The guy pulled out a broom and started whacking me with it until I pointed my pistol at him, at which point he dropped the broom and ran. But it had distracted me. Jihoon shouted a warning, too late, so I didn’t see it when a guy came from the other side, shouting and swinging a club in a downward arc at my head. I blocked it with my pistol, but the impact knocked the weapon from my hand. It skittered over the concrete. The guy, who looked Asian and wore a T-shirt so tight that every muscle showed, raised his club again and grinned. But before he could strike, three fléchettes buzzed and cracked by my head, hitting the man in his throat; he grabbed his neck with both hands, dropping the club and gurgling as he died.

Jihoon had already wiped two more. The last one ran back the way he had come, and we stood, sprinting for the wall and then heading north once we reached it. I stopped to grab my fléchette pistol, ramming it back into the holster.

“We need to get out of here before any cops show,” I said, panting.

“It was self-defense.”

“Yeah, but do we really need to get tied up in Bangkok’s legal system? It’s bad enough I’ve gone around asking point-blank about Chen, so having to explain everything to the cops just isn’t on my to-do list. Besides, if those guys were connected, self-defense might not be on the menu.”

Jihoon nodded. A gate was in sight with two Thai Army guards chatting and leaning against the barrier as the sun set. We slowed to a walk, not wanting to look like anything was wrong.

“How’d those guys find out about us so fast?” Jihoon asked.

“Either the shopkeeper was more plugged in than I thought, or our friends with the
Gra Jaai
let someone know about us. Out of courtesy.” I thought for a second and then added one more possibility. “Or someone was following us the whole way and questioned our friend, the genetic engineer, as soon as we left.”

We showed the Thai guards our passport chits and let them scan our retinas, after which we were back in Bangkok proper and broke once more into a jog, heading north on the sidewalk. I was breathing easier now. Still, my age showed, and both legs screamed with the effort of running so I had to fight to hide my discomfort, not wanting Jihoon to realize that it was a struggle.

“Did you learn anything from the Japanese guy?” he asked.

I waited to answer, trying to catch my breath. “Yeah. Chen is in Burma.”

“Christ.”

“Well, if we go to the front, we’ll be heading in that direction anyway.”

I don’t know if my voice had betrayed the fact that I was about to give out, but Jihoon slowed down. “You wanna walk for a little while?”

“If you want to, Chong.” But secretly, I was relieved at the suggestion, maybe liking Jihoon a bit more. “And you were good.”

“At what?” he asked.

“At wiping that guy before he clocked me.”

In the morning we’d head into the bush. The colonel had left a message at the hotel, letting us know that our gear had arrived and that a vehicle would be waiting for us outside the hotel at 4:00 a.m.; knowing that it wouldn’t be long—a matter of hours before making my return to the jungle—made it hard to sleep. I risked opening the drapes in the darkness and lit a cigarette, sitting in one of the room’s chairs to look out over Bangkok. The stillness broke with an occasional pop, far-off gunfire that the heavy air muffled so it sounded like a cracking branch. Bangkok was a tinderbox, a mixture of immigrants who even after at least two generations hadn’t assimilated and who panicked at the threat of yet another war; just the word
Chinese
was enough to send them into riotous panic, maybe with a little help from foreign operatives sprinkled throughout the city. Even this late, tiny red lights flared up and then dimmed from windows in buildings across the street, the glow of cigarettes from others who couldn’t sleep. We were a brotherhood of strangers bound by anxiety.

And bumping into the sato had unnerved me. Jihoon still didn’t understand, or he’d be awake like me, worried that once we reached the line they would surround us, an army of satos who would see me as a murderer. There had been more to Margaret than the holo image. I’d studied what was on the chit, an account of what the girl had seen in Russia, having escaped one of their gulags and made it south through the Chinese invasion of eastern Siberia and into North Korea, where she had braved a nuclear wasteland, finally making it into Unified Korea. Everything had moved so quickly that I hadn’t thought of it before: Who had taken Margaret’s account of events? She was here in Thailand, so it was possible that someone had gotten the chance to interview her, but I doubted it, and the thing that the sato had said echoed in my thoughts:
“They send you to hunt us but don’t teach you about Catherine.”
Who was Catherine? They’d mentioned her in my briefing, but there hadn’t been any data in the files they’d shown me, so something crucial had been omitted and it drove me crazy to think that the answer was just beyond my reach, eluding me no matter how hard I tried to grasp it.