The Windup Girl (6 page)

"The
mahout
will have to be paid off again. Bribed to come back to work," Hock Seng observes.

"Yes."

"And we will have to hire monks to chant for the factory. To make the workers happy again.
Phii
must be placated." Hock Seng pauses. "It will be expensive. People will say that your factory has bad spirits in it. That it is sited wrong, or that the spirit house is not large enough. Or that you cut down a
phii's
tree when it was built. We will have to bring a fortune teller, perhaps a
feng shui
master to get them to believe the place is good. And then the
mahout
will demand hazard pay—"

Mr. Lake interrupts. "I want to replace the
mahout
," he says. "All of them."

Hock Seng sucks air through his teeth. "It is impossible. The Megodont Union controls all of the city's power contracts. It is a government mandate. The white shirts award the power monopoly. There is nothing we can do about the unions."

"They're incompetent. I don't want them here. Not anymore."

Hock Seng tries to tell if the
farang
is joking. He smiles hesitantly. "It is Royal Mandate. One might as well wish to replace the Environment Ministry."

"There's a thought." Mr. Lake laughs. "I could team up with Carlyle & Sons and start complaining every day about taxes and carbon credit laws. Get Trade Minister Akkarat to take up our cause." His gaze rests on Hock Seng. "But that's not the way you like to operate, is it?" His eyes become abruptly cold. "You like the shadows and the bargaining. The quiet deal."

Hock Seng swallows. The foreign devil's pale skin and blue eyes are truly horrific. As alien as a devil cat, and just as comfortable in a hostile land. "It would be unwise to enrage the white shirts." Hock Seng murmurs. "The nail that stands up will be pounded down."

"That's yellow card talk."

"As you say. But I am alive when others are dead, and the Environment Ministry is very powerful. General Pracha and his white shirts have survived every challenge. Even the December 12 attempt. If you wish to poke at a cobra, be ready for its bite."

Mr. Lake looks as if he will argue, but instead shrugs. "I'm sure you know best."

"It is why you pay me."

The
yang guizi
stares at the dead megodont. "That animal shouldn't have been able to break out of its harness." He takes another drink from his bottle. "The safety chains were rusted; I checked. We aren't going to pay a cent of reparations. That's final. That's my bottom line. If they had secured their animal, I wouldn't have had to kill it."

Hock Seng inclines his head in tacit agreement, though he will not speak it out loud. "
Khun
, there is no other option."

Mr. Lake smiles coldly. "Yes, of course. They're a monopoly." He makes a face. "Yates was a fool to locate here."

Hock Seng experiences a chill of anxiety. The
yang guizi
suddenly
looks like a petulant child. Children are rash. Children do things to anger the white shirts or the unions. And sometimes they pick up their toys and run away home. A disturbing thought indeed. Anderson Lake and his investors must not run away. Not yet.

"What are our losses, to date?" Mr. Lake asks.

Hock Seng hesitates, then steels himself to deliver bad news. "With the loss of the megodont, and now the cost of placating the unions? Ninety million baht, perhaps?"

A shout comes from Mai, waving Hock Seng over. He doesn't have to look to know it is bad news. He says, "There will be damage below as well, I think. Expensive to repair." He pauses, touches the delicate subject. "Your investors, the Misters Gregg and Yee, will have to be notified. It is likely that we do not have the cash to do repairs and also to install and calibrate the new algae baths when they arrive." He pauses. "We will require new funds."

He waits anxiously, wondering what the
yang guizi
's reaction will be. Money flows through the company so quickly sometimes Hock Seng thinks of it as water, and yet he knows this will not be pleasant news. The investors sometimes become balky at expenses. With Mr. Yates, the fights over money were common. With Mr. Lake, less so. The investors do not complain so much now that Mr. Lake has arrived, yet it is still a fantastic amount of money to spend on a dream. If Hock Seng ran the company, he would have shut it down more than a year ago.

But Mr. Lake doesn't blink at the news. All he says is, "More money." He turns to Hock Seng. "And when will the algae tanks and nutrient cultures clear Customs?" he asks. "When, really?"

Hock Seng blanches. "It is difficult. Parting the bamboo curtain is not something done in a day. The Environment Ministry likes to interfere."

"You said you paid to keep the white shirts off our backs."

"Yes." Hock Seng inclines his head. "All the appropriate gifts have been given."

"So why was Banyat complaining about contaminated baths? If we've got live organisms breeding—"

Hock Seng hurries to interrupt. "Everything is at the anchor pads. Delivered by Carlyle & Sons last week. . ." He makes a decision. The
yang guizi
needs to hear good news. "Tomorrow the shipment will clear Customs. The bamboo curtain will part, and your shipment will arrive on the backs of megodonts." He makes himself smile. "Unless you wish to fire the Union right now?"

The devil shakes his head, even smiles a little at the joke, and Hock Seng feels a flush of relief.

"Tomorrow then. For certain?" Mr. Lake asks.

Hock Seng steels himself and inclines his head in agreement, willing it to be the truth. Still the foreigner holds him with his blue eyes. "We spend a lot of money here. But the one thing the investors can't tolerate is incompetence. I won't tolerate it, either."

"I understand."

Mr. Lake nods, satisfied. "Good then. We'll wait to talk with the home office. After we've got the new line equipment out of Customs, we'll call. Give them some good news with the bad. I don't want to ask for money with nothing to show at all." He looks at Hock Seng again. "We wouldn't want that, would we?"

Hock Seng makes himself nod. "As you say."

Mr. Lake takes another drink from his bottle. "Good. Find out how bad the damage is. I'll want a report in the morning."

With this dismissal, Hock Seng heads across the factory floor to the waiting spindle crew. He hopes that he is right about the shipment. That it will be truly released. That he will be proven right by events. It is a gamble, but not a bad one. And the devil would not have wanted to hear too much bad news at once, in any case.

When Hock Seng arrives at the winding spindle, Mai is dusting herself off from another foray into the hole. "How does it look?" Hock Seng asks. The winding spindle is fully disengaged from the line. Now drawn forth, it lies on the ground, a massive spike of teak. The cracks are large and obvious. He calls down the hole. "A lot of damage?"

A minute later, Pom crawls out covered in grease. "Those tunnels are tight." he gasps. "I can't fit down some of them." He wipes the sweat and grime with an arm. "It's the sub-train for certain, and we won't know about the rest until we send children down along the links. If the main chain is damaged, we'll have to pull up the floor."

Hock Seng peers into the revealed spindle hole with a grimace, flashing back to tunnels and rats and cowering survival in the jungles of the south. "We'll have Mai find some of her friends."

He surveys the damage again. He owned buildings like this, once. Whole warehouses filled with goods. And now look what he is, a factotum for
yang guizi.
An old man with a body that's falling apart and a clan that has been filed down to his single head. He sighs and forces down frustration. "I want to know everything about how bad the damage is, before I talk to the
farang
again. No surprises."

Pom
wais
. "Yes,
Khun
."

Hock Seng turns for the offices, limping slightly for the first few steps before forcing himself not to favor the leg. With all the activity, his knee aches, a reminder of an encounter of his own with the monsters that drive the factory. He can't help stopping at the top of the steps to study the megodont carcass, the places where the workers died. Memories scratch and peck at him, swirling like black crows, hungry to take over his head. So many friends dead. So much family gone. Four years ago, he was a big name. Now? Nothing.

He pushes through the door. The offices are silent. Empty desks, expensive treadle computers, the treadmill and its tiny communications screen, the company's massive safes. As he scans the room, religious fanatics in green headbands leap from the shadows, machetes whirling, but they are only memories.

He closes the door behind him, shutting out the sounds of butchery and repair. Forces himself not to go to the window and look down again on the blood and carcass. Not to dwell on memories of blood running down the gutters of Malacca, of Chinese heads stacked like durians for sale.

This is not Malaya,
he reminds himself.
You are safe.

Still, the images are there. As bright as photographs and spring festival fireworks. Even with the Incident four years in the past, he must perform calming rituals. When the feeling is bad, almost any object reminds him of menace. He closes his eyes, forces himself to breathe deeply, to remember the blue ocean and his clipper fleets white upon the waves. . . . He takes another deep breath and opens his eyes. The room is safe again. Nothing but empty desks set in careful rows and dusty treadle computers. Shutters blocking out the blaze of tropic sunlight. Dust motes and incense.

Across the room, deep in shadows, the twinned vaults of SpringLife's safes gleam dully, iron and steel, squatting there, taunting him. Hock Seng has keys to one, the petty cash safe. But the other, the great safe, only Mr. Lake can open.

So close,
he thinks.

The blueprints are there. Just inches away. He has seen them laid out. The DNA samples of the genehacked algae, their genome maps on solid state data cubes. The specifications for growing and processing the resulting skim into lubricants and powder. The necessary tempering requirements for the kink-spring filament to accept the new coatings. A next generation of energy storage sits within his grasp. And with it, a hope of resurrection for himself and his clan.

Yates mumbled and drank and Hock Seng filled his
baijiu
glass and listened to his rambles and encouraged his trust and dependence for more than a year. And it was all a waste. Now it comes down to this safe that he cannot open because Yates was foolish enough to raise the investors' ire, and too incompetent to bring his dream to fruition.

There are new empires waiting to be built, if only Hock Seng can reach the documents. All he has are incomplete copies from when they used to sit in the open, splashed across Yates' desk, before the drunken fool bought the cursed office safe.

Now there is a key and a combination, and a wall of iron between him and the blueprints. A good safe. Hock Seng is familiar with its sort. Benefited from its security when he too was a big name and had files he needed to protect. It is irritating—perhaps more irritating than anything else—that the foreign devils use the same brand of safe as he used for his own trading empire in Malaya: YingTie. A Chinese tool, twisted to foreign purposes. He has spent days staring at that safe. Meditating on the knowledge that it contains—

Hock Seng cocks his head, suddenly thoughtful.

Did you close it, Mr. Lake?
In all the excitement, did you forget perhaps to lock it closed once again?

Hock Seng's heart beats faster.

Did you lapse?

Mr. Yates sometimes did.

Hock Seng tries to control growing excitement. He limps across to the safe. Stands before it. A shrine, an object of worship. A monolith of forged steel, impervious to everything except patience and diamond drills. Every day he sits across from it, feels it mocking him.

Could it be as simple as this? Is it possible that in the rush of disaster that Mr. Lake simply forgot to close it?

Hock Seng reaches out hesitantly and puts his hand on the lever. He holds his breath. Prays to his ancestors, prays to the elephant-headed Phra Kanet, the Thai people's remover of obstacles, to every god he knows. He leans on the handle.

One thousand
jin
of steel push back, every molecule resisting his pressure.

Hock Seng lets out his breath and steps back, forcing down his disappointment.

Patience. Every safe has a key. If Mr. Yates had not been so incompetent, if he had not somehow angered the investors, he would have been the perfect key. Now it must be Mr. Lake instead.

When Mr. Yates installed the safe, he joked that he had to keep the family jewels safe, and laughed. Hock Seng had made himself nod and
wai
and smile, but all he could think about was how valuable the blueprints were, and how stupid he had been not to copy faster, when they had been easily available.

And now Yates is gone, and in his place a new devil. A devil truly. Blue-eyed and gold-haired and hard-edged where Yates was soft. This dangerous creature who double-checks everything Hock Seng does and makes everything so much harder, and who must somehow be convinced to give up the secrets of his company. Hock Seng purses his lips.
Patience. You must be patient. Eventually the foreign devil will make a mistake.

"Hock Seng!"

Hock Seng goes to the door and waves down to Mr. Lake, acknowledging the summons, but instead of going downstairs immediately, he goes to his shrine.

He prostrates himself before the image of Kuan Yin and begs that she will have mercy on him and his ancestors. That she will give him a chance to redeem himself and his family. Beneath the golden character for good fortune, suspended upside down so that it will gush down upon him, Hock Seng places U-Tex rice and cuts open a blood orange. The juice runs down his arm; a ripe one, clean of contamination, and expensive. One cannot cut too close to the bone with gods; they like the fat, not the lean. He lights incense.