Windup Stories Read Free

Then they would cross the Earth on tradewinds and sea, in time for the next season’s planting, so that the world could go on eating.
    Lalji watched the barges moving slowly past, wallowing and bloated with their wealth, then hefted his kink-spring and jumped aboard his needleboat.
    Creo was lying on deck as Lalji had left him, his muscled body oiled and shining in the sun, a blond Arjuna waiting for glorious battle. His cornrows spread around his head in a halo, their tipped bits of bone lying like foretelling stones on the hot deck. He didn’t open his eyes as Lalji jumped aboard. Lalji went and stood in Creo’s sun, eclipsing his tan. Slowly, the young man opened his blue eyes.
    “Get up.” Lalji dropped the spring on Creo’s rippled stomach.
    Creo let out a whuff and wrapped his arms around the spring. He sat up easily and set it on the deck. “Rest of the springs wound?”
      Lalji nodded. Creo took the spring and went down the boat’s narrow stairs to the mechanical room. When he returned from fitting the spring into the gearings of the boat’s power system, he said, “Your springs are shit, all of them. I don’t know why you didn’t bring bigger ones. We have to rewind, what, every twenty hours? You could have gotten all the way here on a couple of the big ones.”
    Lalji scowled at Creo and jerked his head toward the guard still standing at the top of the riverbank and looking down on them. He lowered his voice. “And then what would the MidWest Authority be saying as we are going upriver? All their IP men all over our boat, wondering where we are going so far? Boarding us and then wondering what we are doing with such big springs. Where have we gotten so many joules? Wondering what business we have so far upriver.” He shook his head. “No, no. This is better. Small boat, small distance, who worries about Lalji and his stupid blond helpboy then? No one. No, this is better.”
    “You always were a cheap bastard.”
    Lalji glanced at Creo. “You are lucky it is not forty years ago. Then you would be paddling up this river by hand, instead of lying on your lazy back letting these fancy kink-springs do the work. Then we would be seeing you use those muscles of yours.”
    “If I was lucky, I would have been born during the Expansion and we’d still be using gasoline.”
    Lalji was about to retort but an IP boat slashed past them, ripping a deep wake. Creo lunged for their cache of spring guns. Lalji dove after him and slammed the cache shut. “They’re not after us!”
    Creo stared at Lalji, uncomprehending for a moment, then relaxed. He stepped away from the stored weapons. The IP boat continued upriver, half its displacement dedicated to massive precision kink-springs and the stored joules that gushed from their unlocking molecules. Its curling wake rocked the needleboat. Lalji steadied himself against the rail as the IP boat dwindled to a speck and disappeared between obstructing barge chains.
    Creo scowled after the boat. “I could have taken them.”
    Lalji took a deep breath. “You would have gotten us killed.” He glanced at the top of the riverbank to see if the IP man had noticed their panic. He wasn’t even visible. Lalji silently gave thanks to Ganesha.
    “I don’t like all of them around,” Creo complained. “They’re like ants. Fourteen at the last lock. That one, up on the hill. Now these boats.”
      “It is the heart of calorie country. It is to be expected.”
    “You making a lot of money on this trip?”
    “Why should you care?”
    “Because you never used to take risks like this.” Creo swept his arm, indicating the village, the cultivated fields, the muddy width of river gurgling past, and the massive barges clogging it. “No one comes this far upriver.”
      “I’m making enough money to pay you. That’s all you should concern yourself with. Now go get the rest of the springs. When you think too much, your brain makes mush.”
    Creo shook his head doubtfully