by Sean Wallace
At the sound of the daguerreograph’s click, Quinnipiac looked up at Algernon. “Damn your eyes!” The Consul-General swore, and dropped the book again to lunge for Algernon. Istvan tackled him from behind in best Choate rugby fashion.
Algernon kicked Quinnipiac in the side of the head, to accelerate their discussion. He got down on the floor and stared into Quinnipiac’s marbled blue eyes. “Listen, sir. We’ve got a daguerreotype of you kneeling to a Papist with Crown secrets in your hand. I’ll make sure that image is never released if you’ll drop this business about me stealing the Crown Privy Report binder. I’ll courier the binder to the Viceroy in Boston, give you the credit for recovery, and we’ll all look good. Or you can try to ruin me while I succeed in ruining you.” He and Istvan were banking on Quinnipiac’s self-interest.
Quinnipiac strained against Istvan’s hold on him. “And let you have what’s in that thing? Are you mad?”
“The damned thing is a blank book and you know it,” snapped Algernon, hoping the Consul-General would take that bait in the distraction of the moment. “I’ll never know why you made such a fuss, but by God, sir, you shan’t murder me for empty pages.”
Quinnipiac suddenly relaxed, a small smile stealing across his face before he began to chuckle. “Well, lad, you know just looking at one of those books is treason, to which you’ve now admitted.”
With an immense sense of relief, Algernon removed the plate from the daguerreograph. He placed it in the inside pocket of his morning coat. “You have admitted the same, sir. We can both fall or prosper on your word here.”
“The game is done, then.” Quinnipiac glared up at Istvan. “Let me up, man. You’re no more a Papist than I am.”
“Benedice te,” said Istvan, pulling Quinnipiac to his feet with an armlock.
Algernon retreated to the galley to avoid further tempting the Consul-General as Istvan continued to whisper quiet threats. Honor had been satisfied, and the problem of the binder solved, with his skin still whole. Algernon knew he should be pleased.
“Naturally you have a copy of everything,” said Algernon later.
Istvan smiled his broad smile. “Naturally I can’t tell you that.”
“They’ll know the book’s been tampered with.”
Istvan shrugged. “You recovered it, you’re a hero. We’ve sent official commendations for you via pneu to the High Commissioner in San Antonio de Bexar and to your Viceroy in Boston. That should cause some confusion if Quinnipiac gets snarky clever in his reporting.”
What if Quinnipiac has a secret boffin works already set up, Algernon wanted to ask, working on this miniature mechanology? He didn’t dare say that – he knew Istvan had the same thought, Istvan knew Algernon did, but if they kept silent about it, they could part friends.
Algernon watched the Texas countryside fall away. The zeppelin headed for Nouveau Orleans, capital of French America. He would report to the Consulate-General there, fairly safe from Quinnipiac’s interference, and be sent on to Boston, and maybe even London, as a hero.
“Or we could keep it all for ourselves,” he whispered. Set up our own works.
“No,” said Istvan. “Duty to the Crown, old friend. If you ran off empire-building with that stuff, you’d just be another white wog.”
Algernon patted the red leather book. “Then it’s a damned good thing God made me an Englishman.”
Istvan made the sign of the cross. “Benedice te,” he said.
I will be back, Algernon thought, hunting Quinnipiac’s secrets, and maybe Istvan’s as well. I will be back. “Thank you, Istvan. I may need your blessings.”
Five Hundred and Ninety-Nine
Benjanun Sriduangkaew
In the morning they burned the last farang corpses.
Some of the children made a game of this, lobbing Molotov cocktails in amber and green, making bets. Who would catch fire first, that slavering pervert from Angrit, that wife-beater from Australia, that pedophile from Canada who bought boys in Soi Pratuchai?
They all burned equally well, fat sizzling in the air, hair crisping with foul odors, cologne and grooming products. Nathamol watched, and was not sorry.
A pick-up came to collect soon-to-be carrion; with mask and gloves on, Nathamol supervised the loading. Beyond the boundaries they would be deposited for the glass storms and murdering clouds, and turn to nothing very much, their prestigious citizenship going to dust with them. Only Thai ID chips mattered these days. She had seen women turning hard-worn first-world passports in their hands before dropping them into garbage compactors or pyres. Useless now; useless forever.
Before the war Muangthai and America were excellent friends; the latter proved this by putting its soldiers in Krungthep’s streets, spy-chips in Krungthep’s skyscrapers, and data-mining trojan on websites Thai citizens frequented. Certain parts of Muangthai after all were so very Chinese in blood if not in name, not least of them Krungthep itself, and America must protect everyone against Chinese interests. The government smiled collectively, quietly migrated to Russian administrative software known for being proof against snooping, and life went on. China and Muangthai remained on amicable grounds.
The situation was growing fraught by then. Zodiacally it was a tiger year, and everyone knew tigers gobbled up everything. Earthquakes, flash floods, hurricanes, a presidential election that went badly in America: some were blamed on Chinese sabotage. Nathamol could not conceive how an entire government decided such a conclusion was reasonable. Perhaps the Hollywood blockbusters were right – she had always gotten the impression that America was ruled by uninterrupted lines of war-mongering psychopaths.
“War’s what they froth at the mouth for,” her room-mate Rinnapha said over little Japanese cakes and orange tea, in a Siam Square café. “It’s how they went deep into debt. All that money thrown at military research while their people go hungry and homeless in the streets.”
“We’re deep in debt too,” Kwankaew pointed out dryly, “and if we weren’t up to the nostrils in farang spies we’d be throwing trillions into weapons development, same as anyone else.”
Under the chill of air conditioners at full blast and unable to imagine a day where electricity wouldn’t be abundant, Nathamol tried to keep pace with the conversation. She was – knew herself to be – dreadfully apolitical, with no real opinion on anything. Usually this made her a fine listener, but in the company of her vocal friends she always felt lacking, like she should be contributing insight or at least passion.
Nathamol set down her forkful of cheesecake and edged her way into conversation. “Have you heard from your cousin in Los Angeles, Som?”
Rinnapha’s forehead creased. “It’s been weeks since the last email. Funny, Pim used to call every day. Didn’t want us getting worried. I hope she gets back soon.” Two soldiers sat down at the next table, blond and splotchy from Krungthep heat. Without missing a beat Rinnapha switched to beautiful, pitch-perfect Angrit: “But America’s a country of murderous lunatics, I’ve no idea why she wanted to visit.”
The soldiers scowled. Nathamol hissed, “Som, in Thai, please.”
Rinnapha laughed.
A month after that they found out Pimnapha had been murdered, one of the casualties at her campus. An attack that left students and personnel looking even faintly East Asian dead; an attack that repeated elsewhere, in hotels and hospitals, in so many cities and airports throughout that glittering land where Hollywood stars and post-modern cathedrals lived.
The work of a fringe supremacist group, a green-eyed CNN newscaster said, looking mournful and serious. They watched this announcement together in their dorm room; Rinnapha’s mouth became thinner and thinner, her knuckles whiter and whiter. Nathamol could not, quite, make herself put her arms around her room-mate. She wanted to. But she told herself it wasn’t that she was a coward; this simply wasn’t her place, so she stayed quiet as the next news item unreeled, a mass arrest of Yemeni visitors on terrorism charges.
A secret budded at their
university after that. Thammasat had always been political to a fault. Nathamol, a law student, knew little of it beyond that Rinnapha and Kwankaew, neurologist and engineer, were part of it. Neither told her anything, but she knew the secret would flower into something dangerous, something frightening.
Over textbooks they’d sometimes joke what they would do if conflict erupted between superpowers. “Learn Chinese.” This, glib, from the only boy in their group.
Kwankaew, who had spoken fluent Taechew since age five, chortled. “I knew that’d come in handy someday other than asking for red envelopes. And to think Ahma was preparing me for enlistment in the world-domination army!”
Elbow-jabs and arm-pinches were traded. The following summer, as if their little chat had been oraculous, the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America went to war.
As global wars went its beginning was subdued. Nathamol heard of blackouts in New York, Chicago, other interchangeable names that didn’t signify much to her. She was mostly just glad the farang soldiers vacated their premises in Krungthep and her aunt, a MICT sysadmin, told her that it was much easier to obfuscate American data-miners. “Most of it is automated,” her aunt explained, diluting down to layman’s language, “but when there isn’t anyone on the other end working it’s down to just scripts, and those are easy to stop. You see what I mean?”
She nodded, though she didn’t see. Absurdly, she was more anxious about her finals than this development. Later she’d find it astounding she could worry over something so trivial, but at the time it’d seemed important. A degree. A finishing.
More than the graduation, Nathamol fretted over how to ask Rinnapha out. If Rinnapha even liked girls – she hadn’t dated anyone, had mentioned no crush either on boy or tom. Would rejection break Nathamol’s secret; would their friends call her a disgusting pervert? Would her mother hear about it?
And Rinnapha was intelligent, outspoken, determined: Nathamol knew she was none of those. She suspected Rinnapha only let her tag along to exercise calming influences when they got a little too loud, a little too controversial, in public. “A good thing you are around too,” Professor Vipannee, who oversaw their dorm, liked to say, “or we’d have had to kick Kwankaew and Rinnapha out a long time ago, and them being so bright.”
Nathamol had the feeling this was her only real academic worth, since her performance was – at best – average. She couldn’t imagine practicing law. Unlike some in her classes, she couldn’t even blame her mother, who had let her freely pick a faculty. She’d pursued law because it’d seemed the thing to do.
Still. Still. Rinnapha had a way of biting her lip when she concentrated that made Nathamol, unreasonably, flush; she had a way of smiling that made Nathamol immediately smile back, however she felt at the time. In the middle of debate Rinnapha exuded fierceness difficult to ignore, and sharing a not-large room with their beds close gave Nathamol acute insomnia on occasion.
It was after lunch, one day, that Rinnapha pulled her out of the cafeteria – “There’s something you have to see – it’s still a secret now, but I wanted you to see.”
Nathamol’s cheeks pinked. They rarely went anywhere on their own. It was always the entire posse. She’d miss afternoon classes, but it didn’t even occur to her to protest.
They went by bus, rushing through a crush of bodies into a car full of tourists chattering in Gwangtung, Malay, Vietnamese. The ASEAN still wasn’t the power it aspired to be, but it’d come a long way to ease traveling and business. Nathamol had always wanted to see Singapore. A master’s there, perhaps. It might be the turning point she needed, to become less like herself and more like Rinnapha. Refinement, worldliness.
To her mortification they disembarked near the Grand Hyatt. Nathamol gesticulated wildly at her white shirt, pencil skirt and yellow Thammasat pin. “We aren’t going in there. They’re going to kick us out.”
“I’ll tell the receptionists we’re on a field trip. Seriously, nobody cares. Thammasat students are plenty respectable.” Rinnapha took her elbow, linking arms. “Look casual. Don’t hyperventilate.”
Rinnapha led her through the lobby, which was furnished equal parts in upholstery and suited businesspeople, then downstairs while singing the praise of the half-price hotel bakery after seven thirty. Nathamol kept her mouth shut about not being able to afford chocolate and preserves this expensive, half price or not. Their sensible student heels clicked on marble. She felt grubby, out of place, and avoided eye contact. Rinnapha came from a well-off family, but it was a difference they could usually bury.
They made their way into the bar. It was closed, but nobody stopped them or informed them of the opening hours. Past immaculately varnished tables and seats tucked neatly in, Rinnapha stopped at a patch of the wall. She took out her phone and did something with it.
Where there had been stylish, shiny wood panels there was now a door. “How did you do that?”
“Magic,” Rinnapha said.
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Not a bit. Identification by dream, Ying. Much better than retinal or fingerprint. More secure, too.”
Bewildered, she followed Rinnapha into a narrow passage, whitewashed cement, then a service lift that smelled of rust. Mostly though she inhaled Rinnapha’s scent, sweat and faint tamarind, just on this side of edible. Did Rinnapha know how soft her hair looked?
The lift stopped, hissing open. Rinnapha thumbed her phone and, with metallic clicks, a dozen naked bulbs glassed in pale blue and green snapped to attention. Light like unforecast monsoon drenched the steel ceiling and parquet floor. Incense smells clustered cloud-thick. Among all this, dead center, sat Chaomae Guanim on a dais: blacked brass for hair, lab-grown ivory for robes. Her chest rose and fell, and her skin glistened mother-of-pearl. Eyelashes finer than northern silk. For all the brass she looked alive.
“She seemed like the logical choice,” Rinnapha said. “All of them will be Chaomae Guanim. She has a lot of manifestations.”
“I don’t understand.”
Rinnapha smiled wide, that expression which always jolted Nathamol’s pulse to a mad race toward—what she couldn’t even name, couldn’t even realize. “Protection. When America and the rest are done it’s going to be rough. But this, the chaomae network, will keep us safe from anything short of a tectonic shift.”
“Chaomae network,” Nathamol repeated and couldn’t keep from giggling. “It sounds like a union for lady gang leaders.”
“Ying. Don’t be awful. Listen, it’s a focus for intent. You can distill that, turn it into energy more efficient than electricity, solar power, anything. Prayers and mantras are ideal, but there’s not enough of either to go around, so I started looking into dreams. Tough stuff, that, but we found a way. A little like using sleeping brains for processing power? Only there aren’t circuits, there’s no need for a connective infrastructure so it can keep going no matter what. It’s elegant. I’m so proud of it. I won’t ever do anything this fine again, this perfect or this powerful.”
Rinnapha’s face, in blue-green light as though underwater and she a mermaid, effulgent and alive. Nathamol had never wanted—to touch, to do more than look – she’d never wanted Rinnapha so desperately. Her hand lifted, slow, and she knew this would be the moment, the opening. Please. “Som—”
Her friend turned to her, eyes glittering. “There’s something else, Ying. I wanted you to be the first to know.”
Nathamol could not, quite, breathe. Her skull pounded. Please. “What is it?”
“This will sound strange, but you do like girls?”
Her palms sweated. “Who told you that?”
“Fai did. Wait, don’t get angry yet.” Rinnapha tugged at the silver chain around her neck. It was long, and only now could Nathamol see what its length hid: a silver ring that must’ve rested against Rinnapha’s breast. An embedded ruby sliver glinted. “She only told after I’d, well—this ring. Kwan has a matching one. As soon as the finals are done, we’re going to
marry.”
Something in Nathamol quivered. Nerves pulled too taut, on the verge of snap. “Oh. When did you . . . ? If I’m the first to know.” She sounded so calm, as though from the bottom of a pond.
“We’ve been really careful, it looks weird to people since neither of us is tom or dee and—you don’t need me to tell you about it. We’re going to try and have a wedding. You’ll come?” Rinnapha took her hand, squeezed it tight. “When you find your special someone we’ll help, every step of the way. Promise.”
“Oh,” Nathamol said, faint and distant. “Thank you.”
Rinnapha and Kwankaew kept their word; they flew into the wild territory of being wife and wife just after the finals, which took place two months before those of law students. Friends gently teased Kwankaew for needing to have her dress tailored larger than the wasp-waisted ones off the rack.
No monk married them and the too-new phiksunee order did not want to risk the status they’d won with tooth, nail and forbearance beyond human ken. The wedding was still technically legal. Kwankaew’s family disapproved. Rinnapha’s disowned and severed her from a considerable inheritance, the family connections that’d have guaranteed her a fine position wherever she went. She didn’t appear to care; her work with the chaomae project had earned her respect and extravagant pay. Her superiors mightn’t like her marriage, but she was too valuable. Besides, the Minister of Public Health lived with a woman openly.
Nathamol returned from the wedding – quiet, attended by less than twenty – to stare at the empty bed opposite hers in the dorm room, at the wardrobe that no longer held Rinnapha’s uniforms, at the bathroom cabinet that no longer contained the cat mug, the pink toothbrush and haphazard rarely used make-up.
She plunged into revisions and graduated with much better results than previously anticipated. She interned at court, and on the first day sat through an abuse case. The defendant was a Mr Mors, the prosecutor a woman who represented girls from rural Chiang Rai, and the trial was conducted in Angrit with westerners making up more than half the jury. Mors had been accused of molesting and abusing girls he’d been supposed to educate and convert into good Christians. So many farangs sat in attendance, Mors’s friends and family, teeth gritted and quietly scowling. Even Nathamol had felt intimidated, wrestling with the irrational thought that these people could not possibly do wrong; that she should be deferring to them, appease them because they spoke Angrit in a certain way, because they looked expensive and secure. Because their western brand-name clothes, their foreign smells, made them celestial. Beings she should worship.