Paolo Bacigalupi - The Windup Girl

"The payments. As long as Raleigh-san is willing to pay, they will ignore."

"And you live somewhere, too? Raleigh pays for that as well?" When she nods, he says, "Expensive, I suppose?"

She shrugs. "Raleigh-san keeps a tally of my debts."

As if summoned, Raleigh returns with her ice. The gaijin pauses as Raleigh comes through the door, waits impatiently as Raleigh sets down the glass on the low table. Raleigh hesitates, and when the scarred man ignores him, he mumbles something about enjoying themselves and leaves again. She watches the old man's departure thoughtfully, wondering at the hold this man has over Raleigh. Before her, the glass of icy water sweats, seductive. At the man's nod she reaches for it and drinks. Convulsive. Before she knows it, it is gone. She presses the cold glass against her cheek.

The scarred man watches. "So you're not engineered for the tropics," he says. He leans forward, studying her, his eyes moving across her skin. "It's interesting that your designers modified your pore structure."

She fights the urge to recoil from his interest. She steels herself. Leans closer. "It is to make my skin more attractive. Smooth." She draws her pha sin above her knees, lets it slide up her thighs. "Would you like to touch?"

He glances at her, questioning.

"Please." She nods permission.

He reaches out and his hand slips along her flesh. "Lovely," he murmurs. She feels a flush of satisfaction as his voice catches. His eyes have gone wide, like a child unmoored. He clears his throat.

"Your skin is burning," he says.

" Hai . As you say, I was not designed for this climate. "

Now he's examining every bit of her. Eyes roaming across her, starving, as if he will feed upon her with his gaze. Raleigh will be pleased. "It makes sense," he says. "Your model must only sell to elites… they'd have climate control." He nods to himself, studying her. "It would be worth the trade-off, to them."

He looks up at her. "Mishimoto? Were you one of Mishimoto's then? You can't be diplomatic. The government would never bring a windup into the country, not with the palace's religious stance-" His eyes lock with hers. "You were dumped by Mishimoto, weren't you?"

Emiko fights the sudden flood of shame. It's as though he has sliced her open and gone rooting through her entrails, impersonal and insulting, like some cibiscosis medical technician making an autopsy. She sets her drink down carefully. "Are you a generipper?" she asks. "Is this how you know so much about me?"

His expression shifts in an instant, from wide-eyed fascination to smirking slyness. "More like a hobbyist," he says. "A genespotter, if you will."

"Really?" She lets him see some of the contempt she feels for him. "Not, maybe, a man from the Midwest Compact, perhaps? Not a company man?" She leans forward. "Not a calorie man, possibly?"

She whispers the last words, but they have their effect. The man jerks back. His smile remains, frozen, but his eyes now evaluate her the way a mongoose evaluates a cobra. "What an interesting thought," he says.

She welcomes the guarded gaze after her own feelings of shame. If she's lucky, perhaps this gaijin will slaughter her and be done with it. At least then she can rest.

She waits, expecting him to strike her. No one tolerates impudence from New People. Mizumi-sensei made sure that Emiko never showed a trace of rebellion. She taught Emiko to obey, to kowtow, to bend before the desires of her superiors, and to be proud of her place. Even though Emiko is ashamed by the gaijin's prying into her history and by her own loss of control, Mizumi-sensei would say this is no excuse to prod and bait the man. It hardly matters. It is done, and Emiko feels dead enough in her soul that she will happily pay whatever price he chooses to extract.

Instead, the man says, "Tell me again about the night with the boy." The anger has left his eyes, replaced by an expression as implacable as Gendo-sama's once was. "Tell me everything," he says. "Now." His voice whips her with command.

She wills herself to resist, but the in-built urge of a New Person to obey is too strong, the feeling of shame at her rebellion too overwhelming. He is not your patron , she reminds herself, but even so at the command in his voice she's nearly pissing herself with her need to please him.

"He came last week…" She returns again to the details of her night with the white shirt. She spins out the story, telling it for this gaijin's pleasure much as she once played samisen for Gendo-sama, a dog desperate to serve. She wishes she could tell him to eat blister rust and die, but that is not her nature and so instead she speaks and the gaijin listens.

He makes her repeat things, asks more questions. Returns to threads she thought he had forgotten. He is relentless, pecking at her story, forcing explanations. He is very good with his questions. Gendo-sama used to question underlings this way, when he wanted to know why a clipper ship was not completed on schedule. He bored through the excuses like a genehack weevil.

Finally the gaijin nods, satisfied. "Good," he says. "Very good."

Emiko feels a wash of pleasure at his compliment, and despises herself for it. The gaijin finishes his whiskey. Reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of cash, peels off several bills as he stands.

"These are for you, only. Don't show them to Raleigh. I'll settle with him before I leave."

She supposes she should feel grateful, but she instead feels used. As used by this man with his questions and his words as those others, the hypocritical Grahamites and the Environment Ministry's white shirts, who wish to transgress with her biological oddity, who all slaver for the pleasure of intercourse with an unclean creature.

She holds the bills between her fingers. Her training tells her to be polite, but his self-satisfied largesse irritates her.

"What does the gentleman think I will do with his extra baht?" she asks. "Buy a pretty piece of jewelry? Take myself out to dinner? I am property, yes? I am Raleigh's." She tosses the money at his feet. "It makes no difference if I am rich or poor. I am owned."

The man pauses, one hand on the sliding door. "Why not run away, then?"

"To where? My import permits have expired." She smiles bitterly. "Without Raleigh-san's patronage and connections, the white shirts would mulch me."

"You wouldn't run for the North?" the man asks. "For the windups there?"

"What windups?"

The man smiles slightly. "Raleigh hasn't mentioned them to you? Windup enclaves in the high mountains? Escapees from the coal war? Released ones?"

At her blank expression he goes on. "There are whole villages up there, living off the jungles. It's poor country, genehacked half to death, out beyond Chiang Rai and across the Mekong, but the windups there don't have any patrons and they don't have any owners. The coal war's still running, but if you hate your niche so much, it's an alternative to Raleigh."

"Is it true?" She leans forward. "This village, is it real?"

The man smiles slightly. "You can ask Raleigh, if you don't believe me. He's seen them with his own eyes." He pauses. "But then, I suppose he wouldn't see much benefit in telling you. Might encourage you to slip your leash."

"You're telling the truth?"

The pale strange man tips his hat. "At least as much truth as you've told me." He slides the door aside and slips out, leaving Emiko alone with a pounding heart and a sudden urge to live.

"500, 1000, 5000, 7500… "

Protecting the Kingdom from all the infections of the natural world is like trying to catch the ocean with a net. One can snare a certain number of fish, sure, but the ocean is always there, surging through.