The Windup Girl(11)

"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 Lakeis 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 toKuan Yin and Budai for your very good luck."