Carlyle wipes his forehead with a handkerchief. "Christ, you're a crazy bastard. I should have never agreed to introduce you."

Now that the bet is made and the risk defined, Anderson is inclined to agree. The U-Tex rice offering is a real risk. Even if his handlers back the play, the finance people will fight. One lost calorie man is infinitely more replaceable than primary seedstock. If the Thais start exporting the rice, it will undercut profits for years. "It's fine," he mutters. "Trust me."

"Trust you?" Carlyle's hands are shaking. "Trust you to put me under a megodont?" He glances around. "I should just run for it."

"Don't bother. The Somdet Chaopraya gave his guards instructions. If we have second thoughts now…" He jerks his head back toward the men riding in the rickshaw behind. "They'll kill you as soon as you try to run."

A few minutes later, familiar towers rise into view.

"Ploenchit?" Carlyle asks. "Jesus and Noah, you're seriously taking the Somdet Chaopraya here?"

"Calm down. You're the one who gave me the idea."

Anderson gets down from his rickshaw. The Somdet Chaopraya and his retinue all mill before the entrance. The Somdet Chaopraya gives him a pitying look. "This is the best you can do? Girls? Sex?" He shakes his head.

"Don't be too quick to judge." Anderson indicates that they should come inside. "Please. I'm sorry that we'll have to climb the stairs. The accommodations do not befit your rank, but I assure you that the experience is worth it."

The Somdet Chaopraya shrugs and lets Anderson lead. His guards crowd close, nervous in the dark confines. The junkies and whores in the stairwells all catch sight of the Somdet Chaopraya and collapse into panicked khrabs. Word of their arrival rushes up the stairwells. The Chaopraya's guards run ahead, searching the darkness.

The doors of Soil open. Girls drop to their knees. The Somdet Chaopraya looks around himself with distaste. "This is a place you farang frequent?"

"As I said, not the finest. I am very sorry for that." Anderson beckons him. "It's this way." He strides across the room and pulls aside the curtain, revealing the inner theater.

Emiko lies on stage with Kannika kneeling over her. Men crowd around as Kannika draws out the telltale movements of the windup girl's design. Her body twitches and jerks in the light of glow worms. The Somdet Chaopraya stops short and stares.

"I thought only the Japanese had them," he murmurs.

28

"We found another."

Kanya starts. It's Pai, standing at her doorway. Kanya rubs her face. She was sitting at her desk, trying to write another report, waiting for word from Ratana. And now drool soaks the back of her hand and her pen leaks everywhere. Asleep. And dreaming of Jaidee who simply sits and pokes fun at all her justifications.

"Were you sleeping?" Pai asks.

Kanya rubs her face. "What time is it?"

"Second hour in the morning. The sun's been up for a while." Pai waits patiently for her to gather her wits, a pockmarked man who should be her senior, but who Kanya has overtaken. He is of the old guard. One who worshipped Jaidee and his ways, and whom remembers the Environment Ministry when it was not ridiculed, but feted. A good man. A man whose bribes are all known to Kanya. Pai may be corrupt, but she knows who owns which parts, and so she trusts him.

"We found another," he repeats.

Kanya straightens. "Who else knows?"

Pai shakes his head.

"You took it to Ratana?"

He nods. "It wasn't tagged as a suspicious death. It took some effort to find. This is like looking for a silver minnow in the rice paddies."

"Not even tagged?" Kanya sucks in her breath, lets it out in an irritated hiss. "They're all incompetent. No one remembers how it always comes. They forget so quickly."

Pai nods easily, listening to his mistress rant. The pits and holes of his face stare back at her. Another worming disease. Kanya can't remember if it was a genehack weevil that did it, or a variation on phii bacteria. All Pai says is, "This makes two, then?"

"Three." Kanya pauses. "A name? Did the man have a name?"

Pai shakes his head. "They were careful."

Kanya nods sourly. "I want you to go around to the districts and see if anyone has reported any missing relatives. Three people missing. Get photos taken."

Pai shrugs.

"You have a better idea?"

"Perhaps forensics will find something to link them," he suggests.

"Yes, fine. Do that as well. Where is Ratana?"

"She has sent the body to the pits. She asks for you to meet her."

Kanya grimaces. "Of course." She tidies her papers and leaves Pai to his futile searches.

As she leaves the administrative building, she wonders what Jaidee would do in this situation. For him, inspiration came easily. Jaidee would stop in the middle of the road, struck suddenly by enlightenment, and then they would be off, running through the city, hunting for the source of contamination, and invariably, the man would be right. It sickens Kanya to think that the Kingdom must rely on her instead.

I am bought, she thinks. I am paid for. I am bought.

When she first arrived at the Environment Ministry as Akkarat's mole, it was a surprise to discover that the little privileges of the Environment Ministry were always enough. The weekly take from street stalls to burn something other than expensive approved-source methane. The pleasure of a night patrol spent sleeping well. It was an easy existence. Even under Jaidee, it was easy. And now by ill-luck she must work, and the work is important, and she has had two masters for so long that she cannot remember which one should be ascendant.

Someone else should have replaced you, Jaidee. Someone worthy. The Kingdom falls because we are not strong. We are not virtuous, we do not follow the eightfold path and now the sicknesses come again.

And she is the one who must stand against them, like Phra Seub-but without the strength or moral compass.

Kanya strides across the quads, nodding at other officers, scowling. Jaidee, what is it in your kamma that placed me second to you? That placed your life's work in my fickle hands? What joker did this? Was this Phii Oun, the cheshire trickster spirit, happy to see more carrion and offal in the world? Happy to see our corpses piled high?

Ahead, men wearing filter masks jump to attention as they spy her pushing open the gates to the crematory grounds. She has a mask issued, but leaves it dangling around her neck. It does no good for an officer to show fear, and she knows the mask will not save her. She places more faith in a Phra Seub amulet.

The open dirt expanse of the pits lays before her, massive holes cut into the red earth, lined to keep out the seep of the water table that lies close below. Wet land, and yet the surface bakes in the heat. The dry season never ends. Will the monsoon even come this year? Will it save them or drown them? There are gamblers who bet on nothing else, changing the odds on the monsoon daily. But with the climate so much altered, even the Environment Ministry's own modelling computers are unsure of the monsoon from year to year.

Ratana stands at the edge of a pit. Oily smoke roils up from the burning bodies below. Overhead a few ravens and vultures circle. A dog has gotten into the compound and skulks along the walls, looking for scraps.

"How did that get in?" Kanya asks.

Ratana looks up and spies the dog. "Nature finds a way," she observes dully. "If we leave food, it will reach for it."

"You found another body?"

"Same symptoms." Ratana's body is slumped, her shoulders bowed inward. Below them, the fires crackle. A vulture sweeps low. A uniformed officer fires a cannon and the explosion sends the vulture screeching skyward again. It circles. Ratana closes her eyes briefly. Tears threaten at the corners of her eyes. She shakes her head, seeming to steel herself. Kanya watches sadly, wondering if either of them will be alive at the end of this newest plague.