Ma closes his eyes, tries to smile. “You believe me, then?” His eyes are nearly swollen shut, blood runs down from a cut in his brow, trickling freely.
“Yes.”
“I think they broke my leg.” He tries to pull himself upright, gasps and collapses. He probes his ribs, runs his hand down to his shin. “I can’t walk.” He sucks air as he prods another broken bone. “You were right about the white shirts.”
“A nail that stands up gets pounded down.”
Something in Tranh’s tone makes Ma look up. He studies Tranh’s face. “Please. I gave you food. Find me a rickshaw.” One hand strays to his wrist, fumbling for the timepiece that is no longer his, trying to offer it. Trying to bargain.
Is this fate? Tranh wonders. Or luck? Tranh purses his lips, considering. Was it fate that his own shiny wristwatch drew the white shirts and their wicked black batons? Was it luck that he arrived to see Ma fall? Do he and Ma Ping still have some larger karmic business?
Tranh watches Ma beg and remembers firing a young clerk so many lifetimes ago, sending him packing with a thrashing and a warning never to return. But that was when he was a great man. And now he is such a small one.
As small as the clerk he thrashed so long ago. Perhaps smaller. He slides his hands under Ma’s back, lifts.
“Thank you,” Ma gasps. “Thank you.”
Tranh runs his fingers into Ma’s pockets, working through them methodically, checking for baht the white shirts have left.
Ma groans, forces out a curse as Tranh jostles him.
Tranh counts his scavenge, the dregs of Ma’s pockets that still look like wealth to him. He stuffs the coins into his own pocket.
Ma’s breathing comes in short panting gasps.
“Please. A rickshaw. That’s all.” He barely manages to exhale the words.
Tranh cocks his head, considering, his instincts warring with themselves. He sighs and shakes his head. “A man makes his own luck, isn’t that what you told me?” He smiles tightly. “My own arrogant words, coming from a brash young mouth.” He shakes his head again, astounded at his previously fat ego, and smashes his whiskey bottle on the cobbles. Glass sprays. Shards glint green in the methane light.
“If I were still a great man…” Tranh grimaces. “But then, I suppose we’re both past such illusions. I’m very sorry about this.”
With one last glance around the darkened street, he drives the broken bottle into Ma’s throat. Ma jerks and blood spills out around Tranh’s hand. Tranh scuttles back, keeping this new welling of blood off his Hwang Brothers fabrics. Ma’s lungs bubble and his hands reach up for the bottle lodged in his neck, then fall away. His wet breathing stops.
Tranh is trembling. His hands shake with an electric palsy. He has seen so much death, and dealt so little. And now Ma lies before him, another Malay-Chinese dead, with only himself to blame. Again. He stifles an urge to be sick.
He turns and crawls into the protective shadows of the alley and pulls himself upright. He tests his weak leg. It seems to hold him. Beyond the shadows, the street is silent. Ma’s body lies like a heap of garbage in its center. Nothing moves.
Tranh turns and limps down the street, keeping to the walls, bracing himself when his knee threatens to give way. After a few blocks, the methane lamps start to go out. One by one, as though a great hand is moving down the street snuffing them, they gutter into silence as the Public Works Ministry cuts off the gas. The street settles into complete darkness.
When Tranh finally arrives at Surawong Road, its wide black thoroughfare is nearly empty of traffic. A pair of ancient water buffalo placidly haul a rubber-wheeled wagon under starlight. A shadow farmer rides behind them, muttering softly. The yowls of mating devil cats scrape the hot night air, but that is all.
And then, from behind, the creak of bicycle chains. The rattle of wheels on cobbles. Tranh turns, half-expecting avenging white shirts, but it is only a cycle rickshaw, chattering down the darkened street.
Tranh raises a hand, flashing newfound baht.
The rickshaw slows. A man’s ropey limbs gleam with moonlit sweat. Twin earrings decorate his lobes, gobs of silver in the night. “Where you going?”
Tranh scans the rickshaw man’s broad face for hints of betrayal, for hints that he is a hunter, but the man is only looking at the baht in Tranh’s hand. Tranh forces down his paranoia and climbs into the rickshaw’s seat. “The
farang
factories. By the river.”
The rickshaw man glances over his shoulder, surprised. “All the factories will be closed. Too much energy to run at night. It’s all black night down there.”
“It doesn’t matter. There’s a job opening. There will be interviews.”
The
man stands on his pedals. “At night?”
“Tomorrow.” Tranh settles deeper into his seat.
“I don’t want to be late.”
Paolo Bacigalupi’s short stories have appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
,
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, and the environmental journal
High Country News
. His fiction has been nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best sf short story of the year. His non-fiction essays have appeared in
Salon.com
and
High Country News
, and have been syndicated in numerous western newspapers including the
Idaho Statesman
, the
Albuquerque Journal
, and the
Salt Lake Tribune
. He lives in Western Colorado with his wife and son, where he is working on his next novel.
More fiction by Paolo Bacigalupi can be found online at his website:
http://windupstories.com