Still, Jaidee pities her. Even the poorest people smile sometimes. Kanya, almost never. It’s quite unnatural. She doesn’t smile when she is embarrassed, when she is irritated, when she is angry or when she has joy. It makes others uncomfortable, her complete lack of social grace, and it is why she landed at last in Jaidee’s unit. No one else can stand her. The two of them make a strange pair. Jaidee who always finds something to smile at, and Kanya, whose face is so cold it might as well be carved from jade. Jaidee grins again, sending goodwill to his lieutenant. “Let’s pack it up, then.”
“You’ve overstepped your authority,” one of the Customs men mutters.
Jaidee shrugs complacently. “The Environment Ministry’s jurisdiction extends to every place where the Thai Kingdom is threatened. It is the will of Her Royal Majesty the Queen.”
The man’s eyes are cold, even though he forces himself to smile pleasantly. “You know what I mean.”
Jaidee grins, shrugging off the other’s ill will. “Don’t look so forlorn. I could have taken twice this much, and you still would have paid.”
Kanya begins packaging up the money as Jaidee sifts through the wreckage of a crate with the tip of his machete. “Look at all this important cargo that must be protected!” He flips over a bundle of kimonos. Probably shipped to a Japanese manager’s wife. He stirs through lingerie worth more than his month’s salary. “We wouldn’t want some grubby official rifling through all of this, would we?” He grins and glances at Kanya. “Do you want any of this? It’s made of real silk. The Japanese still have silk worms, you know.”
Kanya doesn’t look up from her work with the money. “It’s not my size. Those Japanese manager wives are all fat on genehack calories from their deals with AgriGen.”
“You would steal, too?” The Customs official’s face is a mask of controlled rage behind a polite, gritted smile.
“Apparently not.” Jaidee shrugs. “My lieutenant seems to have better taste than the Japanese. Anyway, your profits will return, I’m sure. This will be but a minor inconvenience.”
“And what about the damage? How will that be explained?” The other Customs man waves at a folding screen in the Sony style that lies half-torn.
Jaidee studies the artifact. It shows what he supposes must be the equivalent of a samurai family for the late twenty-second century: A Mishimoto Fluid Dynamics manager overseeing some kind of windup workers in a field and… Are those ten hands on each worker that he sees? Jaidee shudders at the bizarre blasphemy. The small natural family pictured at the edge of the field doesn’t seem perturbed, but then, they are Japanese: they even let their children be entertained by a windup monkey.
Jaidee makes a face. “I’m sure you’ll find some excuse. Perhaps the freight megodonts stampeded.” He claps the Customs men on their backs. “Don’t look so glum! Use your imagination! You should think of this as building merit.”
Kanya finishes packing up the money. She secures the woven satchel and slings it over her shoulder.
“We’re done,” she says.
Down field, a new dirigible is slowly descending, its massive kink-spring fans using up the last of their joules to maneuver the beast over its anchors. Cables snake down from its belly, dragged by lead weights. Anchor pad workers wait with upraised hands to secure the floating monster to their megodont teams, as though praying to some massive god. Jaidee watches with interest. “In any case, the Benevolent Association of Retired Royal Environment Ministry Officers appreciates this. You’ve built merit with them, regardless.” He hefts his machete and turns to his men.
“Khun officers!” He shouts over the drone of the dirigible fans and the scream of freight megodonts. “I have a challenge for you!” He points to the descending dirigible with his machete. “I have two hundred thousand baht for the first man who searches a crate from that new vessel over there! Come on! That one! Now!”
The Customs men stare, dumbstruck. They start to speak, but their voices are drowned out by the roar of dirigible fans. They mouth protestations: “Mai tum! Mai tum! Mai tawng tum! No no nonono!” as they wave their arms and object, but Jaidee is already dashing across the airfield, brandishing his machete and howling after this new prey.
Behind him, his white shirts follow in a wave. They dodge crates and laborers, leap over anchor cables, duck under megodont bellies. His men. His loyal children. His sons. The foolish followers of ideals and the Queen, joining his call, the ones who cannot be bribed, the ones who hold all of the honor of the Environment Ministry in their hearts.
“That one! That one!”
They speed like pale tigers across the landing field, leaving the carcasses of Japanese freight containers littered behind them like so much debris after a typhoon. The Customs men’s voices fade. Jaidee is already far distant from them, feeling the joy of his legs pumping under him, the pleasure of clean and honorable pursuit, running faster ever faster, his men following, covering the distance with the adrenaline sprint of pure warrior purpose, raising their machetes and axes to the giant machine as it comes down from the sky, looming over them like the demon king Tosacan ten thousand feet tall, settling over them. The megodont of all megodonts, and on its side, in farang lettering, the words: CARLYLE & SONS.
Jaidee is unaware that a shriek of joy has escaped his lips. Carlyle & Sons. The irritating farang who speaks so casually about changing pollution credit systems, of removing quarantine inspections, of streamlining everything that has kept the Kingdom alive as other countries have collapsed, the foreigner who curries so much favor with Trade Minister Akkarat and the Somdet Chaopraya, the Crown Protector. This is a true prize. Jaidee is all pursuit. He stretches for the landing cables as his men surge past, younger and faster and fanatically dedicated, all of them reaching out to secure their quarry.
But this dirigible is smarter than the last.
At the sight of the white shirts swarming under its landing position, the pilot reorients his turbofans. The wash gushes over Jaidee. The fans scream and rev as the pilot wastes gigajoules in an attempt to push away from the ground. The dirigible’s landing cables whip inward, winding on spindle cranks like an octopus yanking in its limbs. The turbofans shove Jaidee to the ground as they spin to full power.
The dirigible rises.
Jaidee pushes himself up, squinting into the hot winds as the dirigible shrinks into night blackness. He wonders if the disappearing monster was warned by the control towers or the Customs Service or if the pilot was simply clever enough to realize that a white shirt inspection was of no benefit to his masters.
Jaidee grimaces. Richard Carlyle. Too clever by half, that one. Always in meetings with Akkarat, always at public benefits for cibiscosis victims, tossing money about, always talking about the positives of free trade. He is just one of dozens of farang who have returned to the shores like jellyfish after a bitter water epidemic, but Carlyle is the loudest. The one whose smiling face annoys Jaidee most.
Jaidee pushes himself fully upright and brushes off the white hemp weave of his uniform. It doesn’t matter; the dirigible will return. Like the ocean rushing onto the beach, it is impossible to keep the farang away. Land and sea must intersect. These men with profits in their beating hearts have no choice, they must rush in no matter the consequence, and he must always meet them.