The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi Read Free Book Online Page A

bodies take on the colors of their surroundings. They shade red as they dip into the blood pool.

    Hock Seng has heard that cheshires were supposedly created by a calorie executive—some PurCal or AgriGen man, most likely—for a daughter's birthday. A party favor for when the little princess turned as old as Lewis Carroll's Alice.

    The child guests took their new pets home where they mated with natural felines, and within twenty years, the devil cats were on every continent and Felis domesticus was gone from the face of the world, replaced by a genetic string that bred true ninety-eight percent of the time. The Green Headbands in Malaya hated Chinese people and cheshires equally, but as far as Hock Seng knows, the devil cats still thrive there.

    The yang guizi flinches as Doctor Chan sticks him again and he gives her a dirty look. "Finish up," he says to her. "Now."

    She wais carefully, hiding her fear. "He moved again," she whispers to Hock Seng. "The anesthetic is not good. Not as good as what I am used to."

    "Don't worry." Hock Seng replies. "That's why I gave him the whiskey. Finish your work. I will deal with him." To Lake Xiansheng he says, "She is almost finished."

    The foreigner makes a face but doesn't threaten her anymore, and at last the doctor completes her sewing. Hock Seng takes her aside and hands her an envelope with her payment. She wais her thanks but Hock Seng shakes his head. "There is a bonus in it. I wish you to deliver a letter as well." He hands her another envelope. "I would like to speak with the boss of your tower."

    "Dog Fucker?" She makes a face of distaste.

    "If he heard you call him that, he'd destroy whatever is left of your family."

    "He's a hard one."

    "Just deliver the note. That will be enough."

    Doubtfully, she takes the envelope. "You've been good to our family. All the neighbors also speak of your kindness. Make offerings to your. . . loss."

    "What I do is too little." Hock Seng forces a smile. "Anyway, we Chinese must stick together. Perhaps in Malaya we were still Hokkien, or Hakka or Fifth Wave, but here we are all yellow cards. I am embarrassed I cannot do more."

    "It is more than anyone else." She wais to him, emulating the manners of their new culture, and departs.

    Mr. Lake watches her go. "She's a yellow card, isn't she?"

    Hock Seng nods. "Yes. A doctor in Malacca. Before the Incident."

    The man is quiet, seeming to digest this information. "Was she cheaper than a Thai doctor?"

    Hock Seng glances at the yang guizi, trying to decide what he wants to hear. Finally he says, "Yes. Much cheaper. Just as good. Maybe better. But much cheaper. They do not allow us to take Thai niches here. So she has very little work except for yellow cards—who of course have too little to pay. She is happy for the work."

    Mr. Lake nods thoughtfully and Hock Seng wonders what he is thinking. The man is an enigma. Sometimes, Hock Seng thinks yang guizi are too stupid to have possibly taken over the world once, let alone twice. That they succeeded in the Expansion and then—even after the energy collapse beat them back to their own shores—that they returned again, with their calorie companies and their plagues and their patented grains. . . They seem protected by the supernatural. By rights, Mr. Lake should be dead, a bit of human offal mingled with the bodies of Banyat and Noi and the nameless stupid Number Four Spindle megodont handler who caused the beast to panic in the first place. And yet here the foreign devil sits, complaining about the tiny prick of a needle, but completely unconcerned that he has destroyed a ten-ton animal in the blink of an eye. The yang guizi are strange creatures indeed. More alien than he suspected, even when he traded with them regularly.

    "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