Hock Seng rushes to the door, looks down at lines. Ploi is waving her hand toward the gates. Others are abandoning their posts, running to the doors. Hock Seng cranes his neck, seeking the cause.
"What is it?" Mai asks.
"I can't tell." He turns and runs to the shutters, yanks them open. White shirts fill the avenue, marching in ordered ranks. He sucks in his breath. "White shirts."
"Are they coming here?"
Hock Seng doesn't answer. He looks over his shoulder at the safe.
"Are they coming because of the sick?" Mai asks.
Hock Seng shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. Come here." He goes to another window and opens the shutters, revealing the blaze of the factory rooftop.
Mai peers out over hot tiles. "What's this?"
"An escape route. Yellow cards always prepare for the worst." He smiles as he hoists her up. "We are paranoid, you know."
"You emphasized to Akkarat that this was a time-sensitive offer?" Anderson asks.
"What are you complaining about?" Carlyle toasts Anderson over a warm glass of rice beer. "He hasn't had you ripped apart by megodonts."
"I can put resources in his hands. And we aren't asking for much in return. Not by historical standards."
"Things are going his way. He might not think he needs you. Not with the white shirts bowing and scraping. He hasn't had this much influence since before the December 12 debacle."
Anderson makes a face of irritation. He reaches for his drink then sets it back. He doesn't want more warm booze. Between the swelter of the day and the Sato, his mind is already dumb and clouded. He's starting to suspect that Sir Francis is trying to drive
"You should have joined up when I first offered," Carlyle observes. "You wouldn't be stewing now."
"When you first offered, you were a blowhard who'd just lost an entire dirigible."
Carlyle laughs. "Missed the big picture on that one, didn't you?"
Anderson doesn't respond to the man's needling. It's annoying to have Akkarat dismiss the offer of support so easily, but the truth is, Anderson can barely focus on his job. Emiko fills his thoughts, and his time. Every night he seeks her out at Ploenchit, monopolizes her, rains baht on her. Even with Raleigh's greed, the windup's company is cheap. In a few more hours, the sun will sink, and she will once again totter up on stage. The first time he saw her perform, she caught him watching and her eyes had clutched at him, begging to be saved from what was about to occur.
"My body is not mine," she told him, her voice flat when he asked about the performances. "The men who designed me, they make me do things I cannot control. As if their hands are inside me. Like a puppet, yes?" Her fists clenched, opening and closing unconsciously, but her voice remained subdued. "They made me obedient, in all ways."
And then she had smiled prettily and flowed into his arms, as if she had made no complaint at all.
She is an animal. Servile as a dog. And yet if he is careful to make no demands, to leave the air between them open, another version of the windup girl emerges. As precious and rare as a living bo tree. Her soul, emerging from within the strangling strands of her engineered DNA.
He wonders if she were a real person if he would feel more incensed at the abuse she suffers. It's an odd thing, being with a manufactured creature, built and trained to serve. She herself admits that her soul wars with itself. That she does not rightly know which parts of her are hers alone and which have been inbuilt genetically. Does her eagerness to serve come from some portion of canine DNA that makes her always assume that natural people outrank her for pack loyalty? Or is it simply the training that she has spoken of?
The sound of marching boots intrudes on Anderson's thoughts. Carlyle straightens from his slump, craning for a view of the commotion. Anderson turns, and nearly knocks over his beer.
White uniforms fill the street. Pedestrians and bicycles and food carts are scattering aside, frantically piling against the walls of rubble and factories, making way for the Environment Ministry's troops. Anderson cranes his neck. Spring rifles and black batons and gleaming white uniforms as far as he can see. A streaming dragon of determination marching past. The resolute face of a nation that has never been conquered.
"Jesus and Noah," Carlyle mutters.
Anderson watches carefully. "That's a lot of white shirts."
At some unknown signal, two of the white shirts peel away from the main group and enter Sir Francis'. They survey the farang lying stupid in the heat with barely masked disgust.
