Windup Stories Read Online Free PDF

grains into the sack.
    Lalji chopped the air with his hand. “Your food is not the issue. Your girl is the issue, and she is a risk!”
    Bowman shook his head. “No risk. No one is looking for her. She can travel in the open, even.”
    “No. You must leave her. I will not take her.”
    The old man looked down at the girl, uncertain. She gazed back, extricated her hand from his. “I’m not afraid. I can live here still. Like before.”
    Bowman frowned, thinking. Finally, he shook his head. “No.” He faced Lalji. “If she cannot go, then I cannot. She fed me when I worked. I deprived her of calories for my research when they should have gone to her. I owe her too much. I will not leave her to the wolves of this place.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and placed her ahead of him, between himself and Lalji.
    Creo made a face of disgust. “What difference does it make? Just bring her. We’ve got plenty of space.”
    Lalji shook his head. He and Bowman stared at one another across the cellar. Creo said, “What if he gives us the computer? We could call it payment.”
    Lalji shook his head stubbornly. “No. I do not care about the money. It is too dangerous to bring her.”
    Bowman laughed. “Then why come all this way if you are afraid? Half the calorie companies want to kill me and you talk about risk?”
    Creo frowned. “What’s he talking about?”
    Bowman’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “You haven’t told your partner about me?”
    Creo looked from Lalji to Bowman and back. “Lalji?”
    Lalji took a deep breath, his eyes still locked on Bowman. “They say he can break the calorie monopolies. That he can pirate SoyPRO.”
    Creo boggled for a moment. “That’s impossible!”
    Bowman shrugged. “For you, perhaps. But for a knowledgeable man? Willing to dedicate his life to DNA helixes? More than possible. If one is willing to burn the calories for such a project, to waste energy on statistics and genome analysis, to pedal a computer through millions upon millions of cycles. More than possible.” He wrapped his arms around his skinny girl and held her to him. He smiled at Lalji. “So. Do we have any agreement?”
    Creo shook his head, puzzling. “I thought you had a money plan, Lalji, but this…” He shook his head again. “I don’t get it. How the hell do we make money off this?”
    Lalji gave Creo a dirty look. Bowman smiled, patiently waiting. Lalji stifled an urge to seize the lantern and throw it in his face, such a confident man, so sure of himself, so loyal.…
    He turned abruptly and headed for the stairs. “Bring the computer, Creo. If his girl makes any trouble, we dump them both in the river, and still keep his knowledge.”
     
    Lalji remembered his father pushing back his thali, pretending he was full when dal had barely stained the steel plate. He remembered his mother pressing an extra bite onto his own. He remembered Gita, watching, silent, and then all of them unfolding their legs and climbing off the family bed, bustling around the hovel, ostentatiously ignoring him as he consumed the extra portion. He remembered roti in his mouth, dry like ashes, and forcing himself to swallow anyway.
    He remembered planting. Squatting with his father in desert heat, yellow dust all around them, burying seeds they had stored away, saved when they might have been eaten, kept when they might have made Gita fat and marriageable, his father smiling, saying, “These seeds will make hundreds of new seeds and then we will all eat well.”
    “How many seeds will they make?” Lalji had asked.
    And his father had laughed and spread his arms fully wide, and seemed so large and great with his big white teeth and red and gold earrings and crinkling eyes as he cried, “Hundreds! Thousands if you pray!” And Lalji had prayed, to Ganesha and Lakshmi and Krishna and Rani Sati and Ram and Vishnu, to every god he could think of, joining the many villagers who did the same as he poured water from the well