The Windup Girl (24 page)

Not for the first time, he curses that he works with Thais. They simply lack the spirit of entrepreneurship that a Chinese would throw into the work.

"Khun?"

It's Mai, still lingering. She flinches at his glare.

"The man says that this is your last chance."

"My last chance? Show me this
heeya
." Hock Seng storms toward the main floor, shoving aside the curtains of the fining rooms. Out in the main hall, where the megodonts lean against spindle cranks burning money that they simply don't have, Hock Seng stops short, wiping algae fines from his hands, feeling like a terrified fool.

Dog Fucker stands in the middle of the factory like cibiscosis in the middle of Spring Festival, watching the whir and clatter of the QA line as it runs through tests. Old Bones and Horseface Ma and Dog Fucker. All of them standing so confidently. Dog Fucker, with his
fa' gan
fringe and his missing nose, and his thug cronies, hard-edged
nak leng
who have no pity for yellow cards and no fear of police.

It's only dumb luck that Mr. Lake is upstairs going over the books, only dumb luck that little Mai came to him and not to the foreign devil. Mai scampers ahead, leading him toward his future.

Hock Seng motions for Dog Fucker to join him out of sight of the observation windows above, but Dog Fucker, maddeningly, sets his feet and continues to study the rumbling line and the shamble of the megodonts.

"Very impressive," he says. "Is this where you make your fabulous kink-springs?"

Hock Seng glares and motions for him to move out of the factory. "We should not be having this conversation here."

Dog Fucker ignores him. His eyes are on the offices and the observation windows. He stares up at them intently. "And is that where you do your work? Up there?"

"Not for long, if a certain
farang
catches sight of you." Hock Seng forces himself to make a polite smile. "Please. It would be better if we went outside. Your presence arouses questions."

For a long moment, Dog Fucker doesn't move, still staring up at the offices. Hock Seng has the unnerving feeling that the man sees through the walls, that he sees the huge iron safe sitting up there, holding its valuable secrets tight.

"Please," Hock Seng mutters. "The workers will speak enough about this as it is."

Abruptly the gangster turns away, nodding to his men to follow. Hock Seng stifles a rush of relief as he hurries after them. "Someone wants to see you," Dog Fucker says, gesturing toward the outer gates.

The Dung Lord. Now, of all times. Hock Seng glances up at the observation window. Mr. Lake will be angry if he leaves.

"Yes. Of course." Hock Seng motions back toward the office. "I will just tidy my papers."

"Now," Dog Fucker says. "No one keeps him waiting." He motions for Hock Seng to follow. "Now or never."

Hock Seng hesitates, torn, then waves for Mai. She dashes up as Dog Fucker leads them toward the gates. Hock Seng leans low and whispers. "Tell
Khun
Anderson that I will not be returning. . . that I have an idea of where to locate a new winding spindle." He nods sharply. "Yes. Tell him that. A winding spindle."

Mai nods and starts to turn away, but Hock Seng pulls her back, pulls her close. "Remember to speak slowly, and in simple words. I don't want the
farang
to misunderstand and put me out on the street. If I go, so do you. Remember that."

Mai grins.
"Mai pen rai.
I will make him very happy that you are working so hard." She dashes back into the factory.

Dog Fucker smiles over his shoulder. "And I thought you were only the king of yellow cards. Here you have a pretty Thai girl doing your bidding, too. Not bad for a Yellow Card King."

Hock Seng makes a face. "The king of yellow cards is not a title to aspire to."

"Nor the Lord of Dung," he says. "Names hide much." He surveys the compound. "I've never been in a
farang
factory," he says. "It's very impressive. A lot of money here."

Hock Seng forces a smile. "The
farang
are crazy with how much they spend." His neck prickles at the workers' eyes watching him. He wonders how many of them know of Dog Fucker. For once he is grateful that more yellow card Chinese don't work at the factory. They would recognize in an instant who he treats with. Hock Seng forces down the irritation and fear he feels at the exposure. Of course Dog Fucker would like to see him off-balance. It is part of the bargaining process.

You are Tan Hock Seng, head of the New Tri-Clipper. Do not let petty tactics unsettle you.

This mantra of self-assurance lasts until they reach the outer gates. Hock Seng stops short.

Dog Fucker laughs as he opens the door for Hock Seng. "What's the matter? You've never seen a car before?"

Hock Seng stifles an urge to slap the man for his arrogance and stupidity. "You're a fool," he mutters. "Do you know how this exposes me? How people will speak of an extravagance like this, parked in front of this factory?"

He ducks inside. Dog Fucker climbs in after him, still grinning. The rest of his men crowd in after. Old Bones calls forward to the driver. The machine's engine rumbles to life. They start to roll.

"Is it coal diesel?" Hock Seng asks. He can't help whispering.

Dog Fucker grins. "The boss does so much for the carbon load. . ." He shrugs. "This is a small extravagance."

"But the cost. . ." Hock Seng trails off. The exorbitant cost of turning this steel behemoth into acceleration. An extraordinary waste. A testament to the Dung Lord's monopolies. Even in his wealthiest days in Malaya, Hock Seng would never have considered such an extravagance.

Despite the heat in the car, he shivers. There is an ancient solidity to the thing, so heavy and massive—it might as well be a tank. It's as if he's locked inside one of SpringLife's safes, isolated from the world beyond. Claustrophobia swallows him.

Dog Fucker smiles as Hock Seng tries to master his emotions. "I hope you aren't wasting his time," he says.

Hock Seng makes himself meet Dog Fucker's gaze. "I think you would like it better if I failed."

"You're right." Dog Fucker shrugs. "If it were up to me, we would have let your kind die on the other side of the border."

The car accelerates, pressing Hock Seng into the leather seat.

Outside the windows, Krung Thep slides past, utterly removed from him: crowds of sun-drenched skin and dusty draft animals and bicycles like schools of fish. Eyes turn toward the car as it forges past. Mouths open wide and silent as people shout and point at his passage.

The speed of the machine is appalling.

* * *

Yellow cards crowd around the tower entrances, Malayan Chinese men and women trying to look hopeful as they wait for labor opportunities that have already faded in the heat of the afternoon. And yet still they try to look vital, try to show that their bony limbs have calories to spare, if only someone will allow them to burn.

Everyone stares as the Dung Lord's car arrives. When the door opens, they kneel in a wave, all of them performing
khrabs
of abasement, triple bows to the patron who keeps them housed, the one man in Krung Thep who willingly shoulders the burden of them, who provides a measure of safety from the red machetes of the Malays and the black batons of the white shirts.

Hock Seng's eyes slide over yellow card backs, wondering if he knows any of them, momentarily surprised that he is not among them performing his own
khrab
of obeisance.

Dog Fucker leads him into the tower darkness. The skitter of rats and the smell of close-packed sweating bodies convects down from the floors above. At a pair of gaping elevator shafts he flips open a tarnished brass speaking tube and shouts with brisk authority. They wait, eyes on one another: Dog Fucker bored; Hock Seng carefully hiding anxiety. A rattling comes from above, gears clicking, the scrape of iron on stone. A lift sinks into view.

Dog Fucker drags open the gate and steps in. The woman at the elevator controls disengages the brake and shouts into the speaking tube before yanking the gate closed again. Dog Fucker smiles through the gate. "Wait here, yellow card." And then he is whisked up into darkness.

A minute later, ballast men slide into view in the secondary shaft. They squeeze out of the lift and dash for the stairwell in a herd. One of them catches sight of Hock Seng. Mistakes his look.

"There aren't any more places. He has enough of us already."

Hock Seng shakes his head. "No. Of course not," he mutters, but the men are already disappearing back up the stairs, sandals slapping as they scramble for the sky to make the ballast drop again.

From where he stands inside the building, the glare of the tropics is a distant rectangle, clotted with refugees, all watching the street with nothing to do and nowhere to go. A few yellow cards shuffle the halls. Babies cry, their small voices echoing against hot concrete. From somewhere above, the grunt of sex comes. People screwing in halls like animals, out in the open because they have given up on privacy. It is all so familiar. Extraordinary that he once lived in this same building, sweltered in this same pen.

Minutes tick by. Perhaps the Dung Lord has changed his mind. Dog Fucker should have returned by now. Movement catches the corner of Hock Seng's eye and he flinches, but there is nothing but shadow.

Sometimes he dreams that the Green Headbands have become cheshires, that they can molt and appear where he least expects them—while he pours water over his head as he makes his bath, or as he eats a bowl of rice, or squats over the latrine. . . they simply shimmer into existence and grab him and gut him and stack his head on the streets as a warning. Just like Jade Blossom and First Wife's elder sister. Just like his sons. . .

The lift rattles. A moment later Dog Fucker descends. The elevator woman is gone, Dog Fucker's own hand runs the brake system.

"Good. You didn't run away."

"I'm not afraid of this place."

Dog Fucker gives him an appraising look. "No. Of course not. You came from it, didn't you?" He steps out and motions toward the tower dimness. Guards materialize where Hock Seng thought only shadows existed. He forces himself not yelp, but Dog Fucker still catches his twitch. Smiles at it. "Search him."

Hands pat Hock Seng's ribs, run down his legs, prod at his genitals. When the guards are finished, Dog Fucker gestures Hock Seng into the lift. He guesses the heft of them and shouts up the speaking tube.

From high above, the rattle of men climbing into the ballast cage filters down. And then they are rising, climbing up through the layers of hell. The heat thickens. Deep in the heart of the building, exposed as it is to the full force of the tropic sun, it is an oven.

Hock Seng remembers sleeping in the stairwells here, struggling to breathe as the bodies of his fellow refugees stank and rolled about him. Remembers how his belly pressed against his spine. And then, all in a rush he remembers blood on his hands, hot and alive. A fellow yellow card, reaching out to him, begging for aid, even as he drove the knife edge of his whiskey bottle into the man's throat.

Hock Seng closes his eyes, forcing away memory.

You were starving. There was no other way.

But he has a hard time convincing himself.

They continue to rise. A breeze caresses him. The air cools. Scents of hibiscus and citrus.

An open hall flashes by—a promenade, exposed to the city air, careful gardens, lime trees bordering the edges of wide balconies. Hock Seng wonders at the amount of water men must carry to this height. Wonders at the calories that must be spent and the man who has access to such power. It's both thrilling and terrifying. He is close. So very close.

They reach the top of the building. The sun-drenched expanse of the city spreads before them. The gold spires of the Grand Palace where the Child Queen holds court and the Somdet Chaopraya pulls the strings, the
chedi
of Mongkut's temple on its hill, the only thing that will survive if the levees fail. The broken and tumbling spires of the old Expansion. And all around, the sea.

"It's a good view, isn't it, yellow card?"

Across the wide roof, a white pavilion has been erected. It rustles gently in salt breezes. Under its shade, in a rattan chair, the Dung Lord sprawls. The man is fat. Fatter than anyone Hock Seng has seen since Pearl Koh in Malaya cornered the market on blister rust-resistant durian. Perhaps not as fat as Ah Deng who ran a sweet stand in Penang, but still, the man is astonishingly fat, given the privations of the calorie economy.

Hock Seng approaches slowly,
wais
, lowering his head until his chin touches his chest and his pressed palms are nearly above his head with the respect he shows the man.

The fat man regards Hock Seng. "You wish to treat with me?"

Hock Seng's throat catches. He nods. The man waits, patient. A servant brings cold sweet coffee and offers it to the Dung Lord. He takes a sip. "Are you thirsty?" he asks.

Hock Seng has the presence of mind to shake his head. The Dung Lord shrugs. Sips again. Says nothing. Four servants in white suits shuffle over, carrying a linen draped table. They set the table before him. The Dung Lord nods to Hock Seng.

"Come now, don't worry about being polite. Eat. Drink."

A chair is produced for him.
The Dung Lord offers Hock Seng wide fried U-Tex noodles, a crab and green papaya salad, along with
laab mu,
gaeng gai
, and steamed U-Tex. Along with it all, he offers a plate of sliced papaya. "Don't be afraid. The chicken is latest generip and the papaya are just picked, from my eastern plantation. Not a trace of blister rust in the last two seasons."

"How—?"

"We burn any trees that show the disease and those around them as well. Also, we have widened our buffer perimeter to five kilometers. With UV sterilization, it seems to be enough."

"Ah."

The Dung Lord nods at the small kink-spring, sitting on the table. "A gigajoule?"