Kanya opens her mouth to retort, but words fail her. She can almost feel Jaidee drifting close. Listening. Her skin prickles. She forces himself not to look over her shoulder.
Gibbons smiles. “Of course you do. All of your kind are the same. Corrupt from top to bottom.”
Kanya’s hand slides toward her pistol. The doctor watches, smiling. “What? Are you threatening to shoot me? Do you want a bribe from me as well? Would you like me to suck your cunt? To offer you my not-quite girl?” He stares at Kanya, hard-eyed. “You’ve taken my money already. My life is already shortened and full of pain. What else do you want? Why not take my girl?”
Kip looks up expectantly from the pool, treading water. Her body shimmers under the clear ripples of the waves. Kanya looks away. The doctor laughs. “Sorry, Kip. We don’t have the bribes this one likes.” His drums his fingers on his chair. “What about a young boy, then? There’s a lovely twelve-year-old who works my kitchen. He would be happy to perform. The pleasure of a white shirt is always paramount.”
Kanya glares at him. “I could break your bones.”
“Do it then. But hurry up. I want a reason not to help you.”
“Why did you help AgriGen for so long?”
The doctor’s eyes narrow. “The same reason you run like a dog for your masters. They paid me in the coin I wanted most.”
Her slap rings across the water. The guards start forward, but Kanya is already drawing back, shaking off the sting in her hand, waving away the guards. “We’re fine. Nothing is wrong.”
The guards pause, unsure of their duty and loyalties. The doctor touches his broken lip, examines the blood thoughtfully. Looks up. “A sore spot, there… How much of yourself have you already sold?” He smiles showing teeth rimed bloody from Kanya’s strike. “Are you AgriGen’s then? Complicit?” He looks into Kanya’s eyes. “Are you here to kill me? To end my thorn in their side?” He watches closely, eyes peering into her soul, observant, curious. “It is only a matter of time. They must know that I am here. That I am yours. The Kingdom couldn’t have fared so well for so long without me. Couldn’t have released nightshades and ngaw without my help. We all know they are hunting. Are you my hunter, then? Are you my destiny?”
Kanya scowls. “Hardly. We’re not done with you yet.”
Gibbons slumps. “Ah, of course not. But then, you never will be. That is the nature of our beasts and plagues. They are not dumb machines to be driven about. They have their own needs and hungers. Their own evolutionary demands. They must mutate and adapt, and so you will never be done with me, and when I am gone, what will you do then? We have released demons upon the world, and your walls are only as good as my intellect. Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly. And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be?”
“Kamma,” she murmurs.
“Precisely.” Gibbons leans back, smiling. “Kip. Get the pages. Let us see what can be deciphered from this puzzle.” He drums his fingers on his ruined legs, thoughtful. Smirks at Kanya. “Let us see how close to death your precious Kingdom lies.”
Kip swims to collect the pages, rippling through the water as she gathers them to her, pulling them dripping and limp from the pool. A smile flickers across Gibbons’ lips as he watches her swim. “You’re lucky I like Kip. If I didn’t, I would have let you all succumb years ago.”
He nods to his guards. “The captain will have samples on her bicycle. Get them. We’ll take them down into the lab.”
Kip finally emerges from the pool and sets the sopping stack of papers on the doctor’s lap. He motions and she begins pushing him toward the door of his villa. The doctor waves for Kanya to follow.
“Come on, then. This won’t take long.”
The doctor squints over one of the slides. “I’m surprised you think this is an inert mutation.”
“Three cases, only.”
The doctor looks up. “For now.” He smiles. “Life is algorithmic. Two becomes four, becomes ten thousand, becomes a plague. Maybe it’s everywhere in the population already and we never noticed. Maybe this is end-stage. Terminal without symptoms, like poor Kip.”
Kanya glances at the ladyboy. Kip gives a gentle return smile. Nothing shows on her skin. Nothing shows on her body. It is not the doctor’s disease she dies of. And yet… Kanya steps away, involuntarily.
The doctor grins. “Don’t look so worried. You have the same sickness. Life is, after all, inevitably fatal.” He looks into the microscope. “Not an indie genehack. Something else. Not a blister rust. Nothing of AgriGen’s markings.” Abruptly, he makes a face of disgust. “This is nothing interesting for me. Just a stupid mistake by some fool. Hardly worth my intellect at all.”
“That’s good, then?”
“An accidental plague kills just as surely.”
“Is there a way to stop it?”
The doctor picks up a crust of bread. A greenish mold covers it. He eyes the stuff. “So many growing things are beneficial to us. And so many are deadly.” He offers the piece of bread to Kanya. “Try it.”
Kanya recoils. Gibbons grins and takes a bite. Offers it again. “Trust me.”
Kanya shakes her head, forcing herself not to mouth superstitious prayers to Phra Seub for luck and cleanliness. She envisions the revered man sitting in a lotus, forces herself not to respond to the doctor’s taunts, touches her amulets.
The doctor takes another bite. Grins as crumbs cascade down his chin. “If you take a bite, I’ll guarantee you an answer.”
“I wouldn’t take anything from your hand.”
The doctor laughs. “You already have. Every injection you took as a child. Every inoculation. Every booster since.” He offers the bread. “This is just more direct. You’ll be glad you did.”
Kanya nods at the microscope. “What is that thing? Do you need to test it more?”
Gibbons shakes his head. “That? It’s nothing. A stupid mutation. A standard outcome. We used to see them in our labs. Junk.”
“Then why haven’t we ever seen it before?”
Gibbons makes a face of impatience. “You don’t culture death the way we do. You don’t tinker with the building blocks of nature.” Interest and passion flicker briefly in the old man’s eyes. Mischief and predatory interests. “You have no idea what things we succeeded in creating in our labs. This stuff is hardly worth my time. I hoped you were bringing me a challenge. Something from Drs. Ping and Raymond. Or perhaps Mahmoud Sonthalia. Those are challenges.” For a moment, his eyes lose their cynicism. He becomes entranced. “Ah. Now those are worthy opponents.”
We are in the hands of a gamesman.
In a flash of insight, Kanya understands the doctor entirely. A fierce intellect. A man who reached the pinnacle of his field. A jealous and competitive man. A man who found his competition too lacking, and so switched sides and joined the Thai Kingdom for the stimulation it might provide. An intellectual exercise for him. As if Jaidee had decided to fight a muay thai match with his hands tied behind his back to see if he could win with kicks alone.
We rest in the hands of a fickle god. He plays on our behalf only for entertainment, and he will close his eyes and sleep if we fail to engage his intellect.
A horrifying thought. The man exists only for competition, the chess match of evolution, fought on a global scale. An exercise in ego, a single giant fending off the attacks of dozens of others, a giant swatting them from the sky and laughing. But all giants must fall, and then what must the Kingdom look forward to? It makes Kanya sweat, thinking about it.
Gibbons is watching her. “You have more questions for me?”
Kanya shakes off her terror. “You’re sure about this? You know what we need to do, already? You can tell just by looking?”