Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures

by Sean Wallace

  Her mind stumbled and she couldn’t think like that. She’d been a law student. Who in Krungthep could be more ordinary than she, more removed from clandestine plots and politics shaping a nation?

  Footsteps, a creak of hinge. “There you are,” Maneerat said. “The farang woman told me you’d be up here. Can I join you?”

  Nathamol put aside her papers, closing the binder. “Sure.”

  She didn’t quite expect Maneerat to burrow into the blankets, rearranging the topmost duvet so it would drape over them both. It took enormous self-control not to leap out of her skin when Maneerat slipped an arm around her.

  “Much better.” Maneerat sighed.

  “Fifteen degrees,” Nathamol said and hoped she didn’t sound as stunned as she felt. The warmth from Maneerat communicated despite the layers of clothing. A denim-clad hip against her own, a line of thigh and knee and shin. “It’s gotten very cold outside Krungthep, I heard.”

  “I felt it, in the tunnels. But I never came out, though they said the storms stopped sometimes, and you could breathe without dying.” Maneerat’s eyelids fluttered. “I wasn’t that brave.”

  “You walked all the way here from Pattaya.”

  “That wasn’t brave. That was a gun I have.”

  “A gun.”

  Maneerat snorted. “I didn’t shoot anyone. But it told people to leave me be.”

  They stayed to watch the expressway light up below them, vendors taking up positions by lampposts to hawk flashlights and drinks to bikers and cabbies. Nathamol pointed out the monitor balloons as they rose, gondolas festooned in epileptic disco colors. The Chang Building stood just visible, bas-relief outline wreathed in the writhing lights that’d replaced the stars.

  Maneerat told her of the village-stations that’d sprung up underground, the camps that filled the tunnels and dead cars. Some were run by gangs, others by committee, and economy balanced on the bartering of liquor, firearms and scavengings. Maneerat met people who went above during storm-calms and ranged through countryside gone to brown, touching rice stalks black as coal and bits of roof on asphalt like seashells on sand. They’d come down with tales of ghosts, canned food, and electronics that by chance continued functioning. Not long, but they were hoarded and coveted all the same.

  “That man died two years in,” Maneerat said with utter indifference. The German had mistaken a gangster for a prostitute; the woman’s answer had been to knife him in the face and shoot him in the knee. No medical attention had been found in time, and that had been that.

  “He and his friends liked to talk how backward we were, how hopeless, like I couldn’t understand Angrit – like their wives or Thai step-children couldn’t. They hated Muangthai. I always wondered why they stayed here, why they even came.”

  “Did it . . . disgust you?” She didn’t say, Weren’t you disgusted with yourself, didn’t you find it degrading?

  Maneerat heard those regardless. She stiffened and drew away, dislodging the shared duvet. “Did you ever have to help your mother pay farmer loans?”

  “No, but—”

  “Did it ever occur to you that looking at dirty old farangs sideways and knowing they were absolutely beneath you was a luxury?”

  “I didn’t think of it like . . . that.”

  “Ah,” Maneerat said and with perfect precision slapped Nathamol in the face.

  The ringing lingered after Maneerat was gone. Nathamol touched her cheek. It was fever-hot. She sat unmoving for a long time, breathing slowly, and put her papers in order: wrote down a few more ideas occurring to her in cold duty.

  Nathamol was in the shower when Maneerat returned, unlocking the door with a spare key, and stepped into the bathroom. No shower curtain hung from the empty rusted rings – there had never been any need for it – and there was nothing for Nathamol to cover herself with. So she did not.

  “I’m back,” Maneerat said quietly, not averting her eyes, not even pretending to.

  “What if I asked you to pack your things and go?”

  The other woman looked down. She removed her hairband, busy work, and twisted it between her fingers. “I’m not apologizing because I got angry at what you said. But I know I shouldn’t have done more than get angry.” When Maneerat’s eyes returned to Nathamol’s face they were wide. Her lower lip caught between her teeth, sawed back and forth. “Are you asking me to pack my things and go?”

  Maneerat didn’t need her, didn’t need this dinky apartment. Nathamol knew that. “You could afford a nicer place than this.”

  “That’s not what I want. I like the sofa. The roof.”

  The pressure, between fury and relief and nerves, eased slightly from Nathamol’s chest. She turned back to the wall. “Then I guess you can stay.”

  She thought Maneerat would leave. Instead she heard a rustle of clothes, and when she looked again Maneerat’s brassiere had fallen to join jeans and blouse. Then she was bare, and there next to Nathamol. Without a word she took the soap and lathered Nathamol’s back. Under the recalcitrant showerhead, they did more than scrubbing each other’s shoulder blades; paused just long enough to towel off so they wouldn’t drench everything in the room.

  They sought each other’s soft places and tasted each other’s salt, writing their impatience in nail-marks and teeth-prints. A glass storm brewed inside Nathamol’s ribcage. It poured out of her into Maneerat’s mouth, a thousand shards of windows, a hundred fragments of skies.

  “I think I’ve found my problem. They’re all dead.”

  “Who are?” Nathamol asked automatically, not really listening to what she heard. In the lab much of what she did was routine paperwork, routine check-ups of machines, measuring voltages to keep them from shorting out or overheating. Power supplied by the miniature Guanim was not efficient, prone to fluctuations, and had to be recalibrated constantly. She was no electrician, but the tools were intuitive. She felt useful and competent, and more alive than she’d been with her job at Immigration.

  Kwankaew shook papers so wrinkled and stained it was obvious she’d had to straighten them out from crumpled wads. “Som’s test subjects. The ones she tried her prototype on, to see if it could work. I get the impression they were individuals with unusually vivid inner lives. Who had focused dreams.” Kwankaew made a face. “This sounds like hogwash. It’s not even a little bit scientific. She might as well have written notes about cursing people with buffalo hides.”

  A slow chill spidered up her vertebrae. “Her tests killed them?”

  “What? No! She scanned brainwaves, put them through mild stimuli, that sort of thing. It’s just that most of them didn’t live in Krungthep and probably didn’t survive. Som didn’t even keep their names, so it’s all moot anyway.” Kwankaew nodded at her assistant Thanakit, a neurologist from Isaan. “He’s been drawing up concepts for artificial dreams. If it was possible to get back to where Som started, I could maybe reverse-engineer some things, optimize others.”

  Nathamol made another circuit, deep in thought, jotted down corrections to be made for several power sockets. When she got back to Kwankaew’s desk she sat down. “Do you have the results from Som’s first subjects?”

  “Some.” A pen jab at the tattered papers.

  “Could you match them with people? There are a lot of refugees, and if the—the neural signature’s unique . . .” Heat warmed the back of her ears. “I’m probably talking nonsense.”

  “You aren’t. Thanakit!” The assistant sauntered over and snapped a mock salute. She held up one of Rinnapha’s notes. “How soon can you come up with a recognition protocol?”

  “Easy, boss. A couple days or three.”

  “I want it by tomorrow,” Kwankaew said and raised an eyebrow when he started protesting. “Be glad I’m not asking for it by the end of the day. Earn your keep. And, Ying, that was simple but—let’s just say most of us would have come up with some stupid convoluted thing involving lots of numbers. Just to calculate the statistical likelihood of whether those subjects mi
ght still be alive, or trying to replicate their brains. But ID-matching sensors I can get installed everywhere. Simple. Efficient. I told you, you undersell yourself.”

  Nathamol grinned, giddy. “Are you offering me a raise . . . boss?”

  “Oh for—not you too. Don’t call me that. I heard you sneezing by the way, so get some pills from the cabinet. Wouldn’t want you to give us all the flu. Us academic types are delicate.”

  She nodded, but her smile dried and crumbled. She wasn’t contributing anywhere near enough to earn this privilege. Kwankaew’s facility enjoyed a luxury found nowhere outside of the king’s household: the best medical care that could still be had. It hadn’t gotten to the point where a cold could be fatal, but she heard giving birth these days was a challenge. With more and more entering Krungthep, it was all the hospitals could do to keep up, and was the next generation of doctors and nurses to be trained in archaic medicine and acupuncture? How much more aid was China willing to give, and how much more could they accept?

  She came home to Maneerat propping a mirror on law textbooks and applying eyeshadow. “Oh,” Maneerat said, looking faintly embarrassed. She’d put on a shimmery purple dress, black bolero, and silver choker. “I was just leaving – I’d have left a note. I found a job. I don’t suppose you’d . . . walk me there?”

  “I would,” Nathamol said, shrugging on the jacket she’d just taken off. She tried not to sound too eager. “What kind of work is it?”

  “It’s something. You might like it.”

  On the way out Nathamol hesitated; should they hold hands? Would Maneerat want to? They walked side by side, centimeters apart, and sometimes their fingers would brush, would collide.

  Maneerat’s workplace was just a few soi away, and when they stopped it dawned on Nathamol what this place was. The club was warm inside, neon lit, a hum of conversation, utensils, clinking glasses and a diesel power generator. There were more tom–dee couples than Nathamol had ever seen in any one place.

  “I’ve never been to—one of these,” Nathamol whispered after Maneerat had spoken to the owner, a tall, muscled woman guarding the bar. “What do you do here?”

  “Be presentable. Khun Vee says she gets too many toms, not enough—well, you know. And she wants someone to take care of first-timers, break the ice. So they wouldn’t be scared and lonely.” Maneerat ushered her to one of the divans. “Maybe I could practice on you.”

  “Won’t people mind? We look like two dee.”

  “I think Khun Vee’s past caring about that.” Maneerat nodded toward a table on the far end, where two women sat almost in each other’s lap, one in hijab, the other in lacy blouse and wide skirt. “This isn’t some sort of sex club. It’s just a place to be, to chat. What do you think of it?”

  A place to not hide, she thought. Maneerat was right. Nobody cared; nobody glanced at them sidelong. “It’s nice,” Nathamol said and realized that wasn’t enough. “It’s wonderful.”

  Maneerat first smiled a little, then widely. “I’m glad. I thought you’d find it . . . indecorous. Sleazy.”

  “I wouldn’t. I’d have liked to find somewhere like this when I was younger, but I was too shy.” And she still was. She fiddled with the cuff of her jacket.

  “I’m glad. I really am.” Maneerat’s painted nails drew paths in Nathamol’s palm, gentle-sharp. “Can I kiss you?”

  A look up before she lowered her eyes, gazing at shiny fabric through a filter of lashes and pleased embarrassment. The purple dress clung. It became Maneerat, but then she imagined anything Maneerat put on was flattering. “Here?”

  “Here.”

  It was brief, but as her eyelashes beat against Maneerat’s skin she was happy and she had forgotten what that felt like. A smear of transferred lipstick later she murmured, “You’ve got to teach me how to use make-up.”

  “You look fine. I’ll get us—do you drink?”

  Nathamol laughed. They were getting to know each other all backward. “Sorry, no. Get me something cheerful?”

  By the end of the evening, Maneerat had made a round of the tables, getting acquainted with regulars, speaking to a group of girls who’d come for the first time; offered a sip here and a sip there, when she came back to Nathamol she was red and tipsy. Vee asked them if they needed escort getting home; Nathamol demurred – they lived close by enough, and she didn’t want to impose any more than she already had.

  Maneerat was giggling and teetering on her feet by the time they reached the apartment. Nathamol fished for her keys, but having to support Maneerat’s weight made even that a challenge. So when Samantha opened the front gate from the inside and asked if she needed a hand she was all too glad. The farang’s arms corded as she lifted and carried Maneerat upstairs, but she made it look effortless. “You’re strong,” Nathamol said, pressed to say something.

  “In my line of work I’d have to be.”

  “You’ve never said what you do.”

  “The kind of career with a lot of men in it, though you fixed that.”

  Nathamol didn’t know what to make of that; Angrit was so imprecise – you could be individual or collective. Did Samantha believe the disease had been a Thai plot? She didn’t push; she wasn’t that tactless. Instead she thanked the farang politely and maneuvered Maneerat into the bed. She wet a clean towel and wiped Maneerat’s arms and face down, wrinkling her nose at the alcohol smell. Come morning, Maneerat was going to have a splitting headache; she amused herself with the prospect of teasing Maneerat just a little.

  She didn’t wake up in her own room. It took a full minute to process that – gray ceiling, funereal decor, an icon of bleeding Yesu in his undignified loincloth and starveling’s ribs. Nathamol always thought it inappropriate Christians dressed up their prophet like that, exposed and ugly.

  Hard wood dug into her back. She pushed herself up using shoulders and elbows – her wrists were bound behind her, her ankles duct-taped into numbness. Fear pricked her throat, acidic.

  Maneerat crouched by the altar. Over her, Samantha sat on a stool, a gun carelessly pointed in her direction. There were bruises on her face. By the side, a slim brunette stood, face closed like a fist. She too was armed.

  Samantha turned to look at Nathamol. “Good, you’re awake,” she said and walked over, heavy booted footsteps, and settled on the pew.

  Nathamol’s breath hissed through her teeth.

  “Tell me about your work. We’ve never talked about that, have we? And us being neighbors.”

  “Why are you doing this?” She swallowed, loud.

  “Seventy-thousand dead Americans. Farang to you, people to us.”

  She choked back brown-bile laughter. People! Farangs were almost little gods, shrines springing up for them wherever they went. “That just—just happened. And I’m not important enough to know anything.”

  Samantha did not blink those huge blue eyes as she backhanded Nathamol. Salt and blood flooded her mouth. “You started working for the Ministry of Defense two weeks ago, directly under Kwankaew Srithongkul.”

  “But I don’t know anything.”

  “I know,” Maneerat said, voice slurred and Nathamol thought Please, don’t talk, “why those farangs died: they deserved it.”

  A little gesture from Samantha and the brunette administered the butt of her gun to Maneerat’s head. Nathamol heard a crack and strangled back a little cry as Maneerat crumpled, chin on chest and blood on bodice.

  They were blindfolded, gagged, and hoisted up shoulders. Nathamol breathed shallowly and kept her ears open. The farang women spoke infrequently, but she caught a few scraps of conversation: they had to keep moving.

  When they stopped next time, Samantha bent one of Nathamol’s fingers so far backward it almost touched her wrist. Then it did, and she screamed and told them – which was not much, and they didn’t believe that she knew so little. They brought a sloshing bucket, and shoved Nathamol’s head into it. They kept her there until her lungs burned, jerked her out by the hair, and did it a
ll over again. She vomited on their shoes.

  There came a day when there were no questions, no water, no bone breaking. Nathamol waited until the minutes stretched into a certainty that nothing would be done to her for the next hour, or the next few hours, and she wept relief.

  A hand touched hers, groping its way from wrist to forearm, to face: encountered either tears or drool or both and paused. “Ying?”

  “Bua,” she whispered back even though there was no telling if they were on their own, if either American was listening.

  Maneerat’s feet and hands must be as bound as her own; they could not do anything more than press close, press tight, against each other. Warmth to warmth. “I kept meaning to ask,” Maneerat murmured. There was still wrongness in her enunciation, her mouth not having healed or having been hit over and over. “You don’t live on your own because your family’s too far from the immigration bureau. I kept thinking about it and it made no sense.”

  Nathamol felt no pain, only a distance from her own body. It was this freedom that let her laugh. “That’s all you wanted to talk about?”

  “Yes. No.” Spoken straight into her ear, with breath gone stale but real and Maneerat’s. “It’s because your mother and sister don’t know about—well—isn’t it?”

  “I never knew how to tell them.” Khunmae, I like girls? Nong Ping, if older sister marries it’ll be a woman? “They’d have been disappointed.”

  “Mine, too.”

  Their captors were so much on the move that they seemed to have no time for further interviews. It occurred to them, gradually, that she could be of no further use: when this did they spoke – three distinguishable voices, Nathamol counted – in rapid-fire Angrit. Samantha decided that the next time they had to move they’d kill their captives.

  This was said in such a concise way, as she might have said that she meant to weed a vegetable patch.