John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

We are in the panoramic back room with all the perfume bottles. As before, I am overwhelmed by the range of aromas that hit me in half a dozen vulnerable and exotic places. It is impossible not to feel high and intrigued in this room, as if a thousand mysteries could be solved through the subtle computations of smell.

Gloria Ching settles herself on the sofa. “I am supposed to simply tell you about myself. I grew up suddenly during the Cultural Revolution, before I was smuggled out of the PRC. I experienced collective barbarism close up. Basically, there has always been and will always be two kinds of humanity. Up to now the civilized have kept the hordes at bay with technology. Now that technology has risen to a different level. We no longer need the masses, they can be replaced by machines. Their riots and revolutions can be put down, we have no need to be intimidated anymore. Let them have their pornography and their football and their TV series while we-the-saved take over. The New Humans are simply those with the civilization and the learning skills to acquire talents that would only destroy the inferior half of our species.” She turns her head to the ceiling. “If I were in your place, I would be thrilled at the chance to get on the program at all. To have the kind of future they are offering you, as brother to the Messiah-you have it made, my friend. You are literally the luckiest man on earth. That’s what they wanted me to tell you. And now I think I hear Krom in the hall.”

Gloria Ching takes me, clicking, to the door and opens it on Krom, who cannot look me in the eye. I follow to her room, which is not at all what I expected: none of the ruthless minimalism of a willful dyke, more like the boudoir of a practiced seducer. All over the room, including the ceiling, the female form is celebrated in oils, watercolors, photographs, and, naturally, lady lamps. The counterpane on the bed is midnight-blue silk; a replica of a primeval mother goddess, with huge breasts, belly, and vagina, hangs on the wall above.

“Chanya was here with you, wasn’t she?” I say. “I can feel it. Where is she? What have you done with her?”

“She’s safe, Sonchai. You’ll see her very soon. You’re nearly there, man. Just one more hurdle to go.”

“What are you talking about?”

She seems about to reply, then changes her mind. “The way we’re doing it, we’re showing you the life stories of different initiates, but you already know mine.”

The room sports a bentwood rocker in a bay window that looks over the garden. I cannot bear to look at her, so I sit in it, staring out at the frangipani trees and the bougainvillea, the pond and the cats all prone around it. She speaks while I stare.

“You know what I was, because you’ve seen so many examples. A trashy dykey piece of female garbage that nobody wanted, a total nonentity like someone dying at the bottom of a well. I think you know what I’m talking about. I think you’ve been there. There’s only one thing that remains when you’re in that state. Just two primeval words that won’t go away: I am. It’s not a lesson you ever forget. I am plus body. My beautiful, young, female body that so loves to be with other female bodies. Basically life is either money or sex, and for me it was a no-brainer. Naturally, I had them give me the sex App soon as I was ready.”

“There’s a sex App?”

She draws a chair up and sits obliquely behind me so that I can feel her breath on the back of my neck.

“Sonchai, it’s not just because you’re a man that you have no idea. Most women don’t realize either.”

“What?”

“What a world of sensuality lies just under a woman’s skin. Thousands of years of male jealousy and dominance have left us stupefied and totally cut off from our own sexual identity, which ought to be so vivid, so life-filled. There are ways of releasing that, my friend, ways for a woman to come out, to wake up to her deep, hungry, life-affirming power. ”

“You used some kind of drug on her?”

“Don’t kid yourself, it’s not just a matter of chemicals. It’s something inside so deeply denied …As the song says. You know that much about her. I can help you. That of which I speak is not exclusively homosexual. Even a man can learn how to enhance a woman’s sensuality. I have to give her back to you, anyway. There, I’ve said it. I’m not allowed to keep her. You are the brother of the Messiah, you win. You only have to join us, which you almost have anyway.”

“But why is everyone so keen on me, Krom? I’m flattered. Why is it so damn important that I become one of you?”

“Your genes, Sonchai. I don’t know the details. It seems all your father’s kids at the camp were unusually gifted. After he met you, Dr. Bride confirmed that you seemed to have those characteristics, that same kind of genius.”

We let quite a few beats pass, then Krom coughs and starts to talk again.

“Face it, Sonchai,” Krom says. “Chanya is all you’ve got, man, the only real relationship in the world, your only anchor. Would you even be able to sleep tonight if you went home without her? Or tomorrow? Or the next night?”

I let that hang, refusing to respond.

“It’s all over for the nonenhanced, Sonchai. You’re an elitist yourself at some level. You’re certainly a lot smarter than average, and you detest most of modern culture. Even without enhancement you’re all too alert to the pathetic state of the world-the imminent squalor of war and economic disruption that the sad seven billion homunculi are going to live through during the next few centuries: you’ve seen that. You want a superbrain, a superbody, membership of the new race of humans who really will reach the stars-admit it, you do, don’t you?”

“I don’t give a damn about any of that, I want to see Chanya,” I say. “I want to hear her tell me how she feels, what she wants to do.”

“Okay,” Krom says. “Okay.”

She stands and I stand with her. At the front door she seems deflated, as if some superior power, which happens to be male, is about to take her favorite doll away. I check the limo, which has not moved in the drive.

In the back of the Rolls, Matthew speaks so softly to the driver I cannot hear the name of our destination. I’m not entirely surprised when we wind up back at Sakagorn’s mansion. Matthew has his own key. There is no one around when he lets us in and takes me up to a room at the top of the house. He nods at the closed door, turns and leaves. I knock. A familiar voice says Come in. I enter.

“You’re okay?” I blurt.

Chanya is standing by a window from which she must have turned when I entered. She holds up both wrists. “Look, no handcuffs. I’m free to come and go. No kidnapping. No coercion. Nobody has molested me. I can walk out of this house anytime I like.” She steps forward and we embrace. I hold her tight, she puts up with it.

“Then let’s do that,” I cry in a sudden flash of hope. As if life is ever that simple. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

She sighs. “What would that solve? Wouldn’t we be back in some state of constant denial? We need to sort this out, Sonchai.”

“Sort what out?”

She holds both my hands and stares into my eyes. “Darling, you are our ticket out of this. I can’t believe how fortunate I am to be married to you. The opportunity being offered is just totally mind-blowing.”

“What opportunity?”

She wrings her hands. “I can’t believe it. They’re offering you the world and you pretend not to understand. How perverse can you be?”

“Let me get it straight, you want me to have their implants?”

“Why not? It’s the way the world is going. There will be the enhanced and the slaves. They’re offering you the ultimate enhancement, the God implant. I don’t fully understand, but the difference it would make to us, Sonchai! From a life of squalid pettiness to governors of the universe.”