Ascendancies (20 page)

But Canada, Turner's birthplace, had left its mark on him. Years of steak and Wonder Bread had given him a six-foot frame and the build of a linebacker.

Georgie came back with the printout. Turner said goodbye and cut the link.

He pulled up the blinds for the climax of the movie downstairs. The monkey-demon massacred a small army of Moslem extremists in the corroded remnants of a Shell refinery. Moslem fanatics had been stock villains in Brunei since the failure of their coup of '98.

The last of the reel flickered loose. Turner unpinned a banana-leaf wrapping and dug his chopsticks into a midnight snack of rice fried with green pineapple. He leaned on the open window, propping one booted foot on the massive window box with its dense ranks of onions and pepper plants.

The call to Vancouver had sent a shiver of culture shock through him. He saw his apartment with new eyes. It was decorated with housewarming gifts from other members of his
kampong
. A flat leather shadow-puppet, all perforations and curlicues. A gold-framed photo of the sultan shaking hands with the king of England. A hand-painted glass ant farm full of inch-long Borneo ants, torpid on molasses. And a young banyan bonsai tree from the
kampong
headman.

The headman, an elderly Malay, was a political wardheeler for Brunei's ruling party, the Greens, or “Partai Ekolojasi.” In the West, the Greens had long ago been co-opted into larger parties. But Brunei's Partai Ekolojasi had twenty years of deep roots.

The banyan tree came with five pages of meticulous instructions on care and feeding, but despite Turner's best efforts the midget tree was yellowing and shedding leaves. The tree was not just a gift; it was a test, and Turner knew it. The
kampong
smiled, but they had their ways of testing, and they watched.

Turner glanced reflexively at his deadbolt on the door. The locks were not exactly forbidden, but they were frowned on. The Greens had converted Brunei's old office buildings into huge multilayered village longhouses. Western notions of privacy were unpopular.

But Turner needed the lock for his work. He had to be discreet. Brunei might seem loose and informal, but it was still a one-party state under autocratic rule.

Twenty years earlier, when the oil crash had hit, the monarchy had seemed doomed. The Muslim insurgents had tried to murder them outright. Even the Greens had had bigger dreams then. Turner had seen their peeling, forgotten wall posters, their global logo of the Whole Earth half-buried under layered years of want ads and soccer schedules.

The Royal Family had won through, a symbol of tradition and stability. They'd weathered the storm of the Muslim insurgence, and stifled the Greens' first wild ambitions. After five months in Brunei, Turner, like the Royals, had grasped Brunei's hidden dynamics. It was
adat
, Malay custom, that ruled. And the first law of
adat
was that you didn't embarrass your neighbors.

Turner unpinned his favorite movie poster, a big promotional four-sheet for a Brunei historical epic. In garish four-color printing, a boatload of heroic Malay pirates gallantly advanced on a sinister Portuguese galleon. Turner had carved a hideout in the sheetrock wall behind the poster. He stowed his phone gear.

Somebody tried the door, hit the deadbolt, and knocked softly. Turner hastily smoothed the poster and pinned it up.

He opened the door. It was his Australian neighbor, McGinty, a retired newscaster from Melbourne. McGinty loved Brunei for its utter lack of televisions. It was one of the last places on the planet in which one could truly get away from it all.

McGinty glanced up and down the hall, stepped inside, and reached into his loose cotton blouse. He produced a cold quart can of Foster's Lager. “Have a beer, chum?”

“Fantastic!” Turner said. “Where'd you get it?”

McGinty smiled evasively. “The bloody fridge is on the blink, and I thought you'd fancy one while they're still cold.”

“Right,” Turner said, popping the top. “I'll have a look at your fridge as soon as I destroy this evidence.” The
kampong
ran on a web of barter and mutual obligation. Turner's skills were part of it. It was tiresome, but a Foster's Lager was good pay. It was a big improvement over the liquid brain damage from the illegal stills down on Floor 4.

They went to McGinty's place. McGinty lived next door with his aged parents; four of them, for his father and mother had divorced and both remarried. The ancient Australians thrived in Brunei's somnolent atmosphere, pottering about the
kampong
gardens in pith helmets, gurkha shorts, and khaki bush vests. McGinty, like many of his generation, had never had children. Now in retirement he seemed content to shepherd these older folk, plying them with megavitamins and morning Tai Chi exercises.

Turner stripped the refrigerator. “It's your compressor,” he said. “I'll track you down one on the waterfront. I can jury-rig something. You know me. Always tinkering.”

McGinty looked uncomfortable, since he was now in Turner's debt. Suddenly he brightened. “There's a party at the privy councilor's tomorrow night. Jimmy Brooke. You know him?”

“Heard of him,” Turner said. He'd heard rumors about Brooke: hints of corruption, some long-buried scandal. “He was a big man when the Parlai got started, right? Minister of something.”

“Communications.”

Turner laughed. “That's not much of a job around here.”

“Well, he still knows a lot of movie people.” McGinty lowered his voice.

“And he has a private bar. He's chummy with the Royal Family. They make allowances for him.”

“Yeah?” Turner didn't relish mingling with McGinty's social circle of wealthy retirees, but it might be smart, politically. A word with the old com minister might solve a lot of his problems. “Okay,” he said. “Sounds like fun.”

The privy councilor, Yang Amat Mulia Pengiran Indera Negara Pengiran Jimmy Brooke, was one of Brunei's odder relics. He was a British tax exile, a naturalized Bruneian, who had shown up in the late '90s after the oil crash. His wealth had helped cushion the blow and had won him a place in the government.

Larger and better-organized governments might have thought twice about co-opting this deaf, white-haired eccentric, a washed-up pop idol with a parasitic retinue of balding bohemians. But the aging rock star, with his decaying glamour, fit in easily with the comic-opera glitter of Brunei's tiny aristocracy. He owned the old Bank of Singapore office block, a
kampong
of remarkable looseness where peccadillos flourished under Brooke's noblesse oblige.

Monsoon rain pelted the city. Brooke's henchmen, paunchy bodyguards in bulging denim, had shut the glass doors of the penthouse and turned on the air conditioning. The party had close to a hundred people, mostly retired Westerners from Europe and Australia. They had the stifling clubbiness of exiles who have all known each other too long. A handful of refugee Americans, still powdered and rouged with their habitual video makeup, munched imported beer nuts by the long mahogany bar.

The Bruneian actress Dewi Serrudin was holding court on a rattan couch, surrounded by admirers. Cinema was a lost art in the West, finally murdered and buried by video; but Brunei's odd policies had given it a last toehold. Turner, who had a mild long-distance crush on the actress, edged up between two hopeful émigrés: a portly Madrasi producer in dhoti and jubbah, and a Hong Kong chop-socky director in a black frogged cotton jacket.

Miss Serrudin, in a gold lamé blouse and a skirt of antique ultrasuede, was playing the role to the hilt, chattering brightly and chain-burning imported Rothmans in a jade holder. She had the ritual concentration of a Balinese dancer evoking postures handed down through the centuries. And she was older than he'd thought she was.

Turner finished his whiskey sour and handed it to one of Brooke's balding gofers. He felt depressed and lonely. He wandered away from the crowd, and turned down a hall at random. The walls were hung with gold albums and old yellowing pub-shots of Brooke and his band, all rhinestones and platform heels, their flying hair lavishly backlit with klieg lights.

Turner passed a library, and a billiards room where two wrinkled, turbaned Sikhs were racking up a game of snooker. Farther down the hall, he glanced through an archway, into a sunken conversation pit lavishly carpeted with ancient, indestructible synthetic plush.

A bony young Malay woman in black jeans and a satin jacket sat alone in the room, reading a month-old issue of
New Musical Express
. It was headlined “Leningrad Pop Cuts Loose!” Her sandaled feet were propped on a coffee table next to a beaten silver platter with a pitcher and an ice bucket. Her bright red, shoulder-length hair showed two long inches of black roots.

She looked up at him in blank surprise. Turner hesitated at the archway, then stepped into the room. “Hi,” he said.

“Hello. What's your
kampong
?”

“Citibank Building,” Turner said. He was used to the question by now. “I'm with the industrial ministry, consulting engineer. I'm a Canadian. Turner Choi.”

She folded the newspaper and smiled. “Ah, you're the bloke who's working on the robots.”

“Word gets around,” Turner said, pleased.

She watched him narrowly. “Seria Bolkiah Muizzaddin Waddaulah.”

“Sorry, I don't speak Malay.”

“That's my name,” she said.

Turner laughed. “Oh, Lord. Look, I'm just a no-neck Canuck with hay in my hair. Make allowances, okay?”

“You're a Western technician,” she said. “How exotic. How is your work progressing?”

“It's a strange assignment,” Turner said. He sat on the couch at a polite distance, marveling at her bizarre accent. “You've spent some time in Britain?”

“I went to school there.” She studied his face. “You look rather like a Chinese Keith Richards.”

“Sorry, don't know him.”

“The guitarist of the Rolling Stones.”

“I don't keep up with the new bands,” Turner said. “A little Russian pop, maybe.” He felt a peculiar tension in the situation. Turner glanced quickly at the woman's hands. No wedding ring, so that wasn't it.

“Would you like a drink?” the woman said. “It's grape juice.”

“Sure,” Turner said. “Thanks.” She poured gracefully: innocent grape juice over ice. She was a Moslem, Turner thought, despite her dyed hair. Maybe that was why she was oddly standoffish.

He would have to bend the rules again. She was not conventionally pretty, but she had the kind of neurotic intensity that Turner had always found fatally attractive. And his love life had suffered in Brunei; the
kampongs
with their prying eyes and village gossip had cramped his style.

He wondered how he could arrange to see her. It wasn't a question of just asking her out to dinner—it all depended on her
kampong
. Some were stricter than others. He might end up with half-a-dozen veiled Muslim chaperones—or maybe a gang of muscular cousins and brothers with a bad attitude about Western lechers.

“When do you plan to start production, Mr. Choi?”

Turner said, “We've built a few fishing skiffs already, just minor stuff. We have bigger plans once the robots are up.”

“A real factory,” she said. “Like the old days.”

Turner smiled, seeing his chance. “Maybe you'd like a tour of the plant?”

“It sounds romantic,” she said. “Those robots are free labor. They were supposed to take the place of our free oil when it ran out. Brunei used to be rich, you know. Oil paid for everything. The Shellfare state, they used to call us.” She smiled wistfully.

“How about Monday?” Turner said.

She looked at him, surprised, and suddenly blushed. “I'm afraid not.”

Turner caught her eye. It's not me, he thought. It was something in the way—
adat
or something. “It's all right,” he said gently. “I'd like to see you, is that so bad? Bring your whole
kampong
if you want.”

“My
kampong
is the Palace,” she said.

“Uh-oh.” Suddenly he had that cold feeling again.

“You didn't know,” she said triumphantly. “You thought I was just some rock groupie.”

“Who are you, then?”

“I'm the Duli Yang Maha Mulia Diranee…Well, I'm the princess. Princess Seria.” She smiled.

“Good lord.” He had been sitting and flirting with the royal princess of Brunei. It was bizarre. He half expected a troupe of bronzed eunuchs to burst in, armed with scimitars. “You're the sultan's daughter?”

“You mustn't think too much of it,” she said. “Our country is only two thousand square miles. It's so small that it's a family business, that's all. The mayor of your Vancouver rules more people than my family does.”

Turner sipped his grape juice to cover his confusion. Brunei was a Commonwealth country, after all, with a British-educated aristocracy. The sultan had polo ponies and cricket pitches. But still, a princess…

“I never said I was from Vancouver,” he told her. “You knew who I was all along.”

“Brunei doesn't have many tall Chinese in lumberjack shirts.” She smiled wickedly. “And those boots.”

Turner glanced down. His legs were armored in knee-high engineering boots, a mass of shiny leather and buckles. His mother had bought them for him, convinced that they would save his life from snakebite in savage Borneo. “I promised I'd wear them,” he said. “Family obligation.”

She looked sour. “You, too? That sounds all too familiar, Mr. Choi.” Now that the spell of anonymity was broken, she seemed flustered. Their quick rapport was grinding to a halt. She lifted the music paper with a rustle of pages. He saw that her nails were gnawed down to the quick.

For some perverse reason this put Turner's libido jarringly back into gear. She had that edgy flyaway look that spelled trouble with a capital
T
. Ironically, she was just his type.