Paolo Bacigalupi - The Windup Girl

Hock Seng tugs at a lucky mole, thoughtful. A good monopoly, that. The Dung Lord's influence touches so many parts of the city, it's a wonder that he hasn't been made Prime Minister. Certainly, if he wanted it, the godfather of godfathers, the greatest jao por to ever influence the Kingdom could have anything he wanted.

But will he want what I have to offer? Hock Seng wonders. Will he appreciate a good business opportunity?

Mai's voice finally filters up from underneath, interrupting his ruminations. "It's cracked!" she shouts. A moment later she claws her way out of the hole, dripping sweat and covered with dust. Nu and Pom and the rest release their hemp ropes. The spindle crashes back into its cradle and the floor shakes.

Mai glances behind her at the noise. Hock Seng thinks he catches a glimpse of fear, the realization that the spindle could have truly crushed her. The look is gone as quickly as it came. A resilient child.

"Yes?" Hock Seng asks. "Go on? Is it the core that has split?"

"Yes, Khun, I can slide my hand into the crack this far." She shows him, touching her hand nearly at her wrist. "And another on the far side, just the same."

"Tamade," Hock Seng curses. He's not surprised, but still. "And the chain drive?"

She shakes her head. "The links I could see were bent."

He nods. "Get Lin and Lek and Chuan-"

"Chuan is dead." She waves toward the smears where the megodont trampled two workers.

Hock Seng grimaces. "Yes of course." Along with Noi and Kapiphon and unfortunate Banyat the QA man who will never now hear Mr. Anderson's irritation that he allowed line contamination in the algae baths. Another expense. A thousand baht to the dead workers' families and two thousand for Banyat. He grimaces again. "Find someone else then, someone small from the cleaning gang like you. You will be going underground. Pom and Nu and Kukrit, get the spindle out. All the way out. We will need to inspect the main drive system, link by link. We cannot even consider starting again until it has been checked."

"What's the rush?" Pom laughs. "It will be a long time before we run again. The farang will have to pay the union bags and bags of opium before they're willing to come back. Not after he gunned down Hapreet."

"When they do return, we won't have Number Four Spindle," Hock Seng snaps. "It will take time to win an approval from the crown to cut another tree of this diameter, and then to float the log down from the North-assuming the monsoon comes at all this year-and all that time we will be running under constrained power. Think about that. Some of you will not be working at all." He nods at the spindle. "The ones who work hardest will be the ones who stay."

Pom smiles apologetically, hiding his anger, and wais. "Khun , I was loose with my words. I meant no offense."

"Good then." Hock Seng nods and turns away. He keeps his face sour, but privately, he agrees. It will take opium and bribes and a renegotiation of their power contract before the megodonts once again make their shuffling revolutions around the spindle cranks. Another red item for the balance sheets. And it doesn't even include the cost of the monks who will need to chant, or the Brahmin priests, or the feng shui experts, or the mediums who must consult with the phii so that workers will be placated and continue working in this bad luck factory-

"Tan Xiansheng!"

Hock Seng looks up from his calculations. Across the floor, the yang guizi Anderson Lake is sitting on a bench beside the workers' lockers, a doctor tending his wounds. At first, the foreign devil wanted to have her sew him upstairs, but Hock Seng convinced him to do it down on the factory floor, in public, where the workers could see him, with his white tropical suit covered with blood like a phii out of a graveyard, but still alive at least. And unafraid. A lot of face to be gained from that. The foreigner is fearless.

The man drinks from a bottle of Mekong whiskey that he sent Hock Seng out to buy as if Hock Seng was nothing more than a servant. Hock Seng sent Mai, who came back with a bottle of fake Mekong with an adequate label and enough change to spare that he tipped her a few baht extra for her cleverness, while looking into her eyes and saying, "Remember that I did this for you."

In a different life, he would have believed that he had bought a little loyalty when she nodded solemnly in response. In this life, he only hopes that she will not immediately try to kill him if the Thais suddenly turn on his kind and decide to send the yellow card Chinese all fleeing into the blister rusted jungle. Perhaps he has bought himself a little time. Or not.

As he approaches, Doctor Chan calls out in Mandarin, "Your foreign devil is a stubborn one. Always moving around."

She's a yellow card, like him. Another refugee forbidden from feeding herself except by wits and clever machinations. If the white shirts discovered she was taking rice from a Thai doctor's bowl… He stifles the thought. It's worth it to help someone from the homeland, even if it is only for a day. An atonement of sorts for all that has gone before.

"Please try to keep him alive." Hock Seng smiles slightly. "We still need him to sign our pay stubs."

She laughs. "Ting mafan. I'm rusty with a needle and thread, but for you, I'd bring this ugly creature back from the dead."

"If you're that good, I'll call for you when I catch cibiscosis."

The yang guizi interjects in English, "What's she complaining about?"

Hock Seng eyes him. "You move about too much."

"She's damn clumsy. Tell her to hurry up."

"She also says you are very very lucky. Another centimeter difference and the splinter cuts your artery. Then your blood is on the floor with all the rest."

Surprisingly, Mr. Lake smiles at this news. His eyes go to the mountain of meat being rendered down. "A splinter. And I thought it was the megodont that was going to get me."

"Yes. You nearly died," Hock Seng says. And that would have been disastrous. If Mr. Lake's investors were to lose heart and give up the factory… Hock Seng grimaces. It is so much harder to influence this yang guizi than Mr. Yates, and yet this stubborn foreign devil must be kept alive, if only so that the factory will not close.

It's an irritating realization, that he was once so close to Mr. Yates, and now so far from Mr. Lake. Bad luck and a stubborn yang guizi, and now he must come up with a new plan to cement his long-term survival and the revival of his clan.

"You should celebrate your survival, I think," Hock Seng suggests. "Make offerings to Kuan Yin and Budai for your very good luck."

Mr. Lake grins, his pale blue eyes on Hock Seng. Twin watery devil pools. "You're damn right I will." He holds up the bottle of fake Mekong, already half gone. "I'll be celebrating all night long."

"Perhaps you would like me to arrange a companion?"

The foreign devil's face turns to stone. He looks at Hock Seng with something akin to disgust. "That's not your business."

Hock Seng curses himself, even as he keeps his face immobile. He has apparently pushed too far, and now the creature is angry again. He makes a quick wai of apology. "Of course. I do not mean to insult you."

The yang guizi looks out across the factory floor. The pleasure of the moment seems drained from him "How bad is the damage?"

Hock Seng shrugs. "You are right about the spindle core. It is cracked."

"And the main chain?"

"We will inspect every link. If we are lucky, it will only be the sub-train that is affected."

"Not likely." The foreign devil offers him the whiskey bottle. Hock Seng tries to hide his revulsion as he shakes his head. Mr. Lake grins knowingly and takes another pull. Wipes his lips on the back of his arm.