Mr. Lake watches her go. “She’s a yellow card, isn’t she?”
Hock Seng nods. “Yes. A doctor in Malacca. Before the Incident.”
The man is quiet, seeming to digest this information. “Was she cheaper than a Thai doctor?”
Hock Seng glances at the yang guizi, trying to decide what he wants to hear. Finally he says, “Yes. Much cheaper. Just as good. Maybe better. But much cheaper. They do not allow us to take Thai niches here. So she has very little work except for yellow cards-who of course have too little to pay. She is happy for the work.”
Mr. Lake nods thoughtfully and Hock Seng wonders what he is thinking. The man is an enigma. Sometimes, Hock Seng thinks yang guizi are too stupid to have possibly taken over the world once, let alone twice. That they succeeded in the Expansion and then-even after the energy collapse beat them back to their own shores-that they returned again, with their calorie companies and their plagues and their patented grains… They seem protected by the supernatural. By rights, Mr. Lake should be dead, a bit of human offal mingled with the bodies of Banyat and Noi and the nameless stupid Number Four Spindle megodont handler who caused the beast to panic in the first place. And yet here the foreign devil sits, complaining about the tiny prick of a needle, but completely unconcerned that he has destroyed a ten-ton animal in the blink of an eye. The yang guizi are strange creatures indeed. More alien than he suspected, even when he traded with them regularly.
“The mahout will have to be paid off again. Bribed to come back to work,” Hock Seng observes.
“Yes.”
“And we will have to hire monks to chant for the factory. To make the workers happy again. Phii must be placated.” Hock Seng pauses. “It will be expensive. People will say that your factory has bad spirits in it. That it is sited wrong, or that the spirit house is not large enough. Or that you cut down a phii’s tree when it was built. We will have to bring a fortune teller, perhaps a feng shui master to get them to believe the place is good. And then the mahout will demand hazard pay—”
Mr. Lake interrupts. “I want to replace the mahout,” he says. “All of them.”
Hock Seng sucks air through his teeth. “It is impossible. The Megodont Union controls all of the city’s power contracts. It is a government mandate. The white shirts award the power monopoly. There is nothing we can do about the unions.”
“They’re incompetent. I don’t want them here. Not anymore.”
Hock Seng tries to tell if the farang is joking. He smiles hesitantly. “It is Royal Mandate. One might as well wish to replace the Environment Ministry.”
“There’s a thought.” Mr. Lake laughs. “I could team up with Carlyle & Sons and start complaining every day about taxes and carbon credit laws. Get Trade Minister Akkarat to take up our cause.” His gaze rests on Hock Seng. “But that’s not the way you like to operate, is it?” His eyes become abruptly cold. “You like the shadows and the bargaining. The quiet deal.”
Hock Seng swallows. The foreign devil’s pale skin and blue eyes are truly horrific. As alien as a devil cat, and just as comfortable in a hostile land. “It would be unwise to enrage the white shirts.” Hock Seng murmurs. “The nail that stands up will be pounded down.”
“That’s yellow card talk.”
“As you say. But I am alive when others are dead, and the Environment Ministry is very powerful. General Pracha and his white shirts have survived every challenge. Even the December 12 attempt. If you wish to poke at a cobra, be ready for its bite.”
Mr. Lake looks as if he will argue, but instead shrugs. “I’m sure you know best.”
“It is why you pay me.”
The yang guizi stares at the dead megodont. “That animal shouldn’t have been able to break out of its harness.” He takes another drink from his bottle. “The safety chains were rusted; I checked. We aren’t going to pay a cent of reparations. That’s final. That’s my bottom line. If they had secured their animal, I wouldn’t have had to kill it.”
Hock Seng inclines his head in tacit agreement, though he will not speak it out loud. “Khun, there is no other option.”
Mr. Lake smiles coldly. “Yes, of course. They’re a monopoly.” He makes a face. “Yates was a fool to locate here.”
Hock Seng experiences a chill of anxiety. The yang guizi suddenly looks like a petulant child. Children are rash. Children do things to anger the white shirts or the unions. And sometimes they pick up their toys and run away home. A disturbing thought indeed. Anderson Lake and his investors must not run away. Not yet.
“What are our losses, to date?” Mr. Lake asks.
Hock Seng hesitates, then steels himself to deliver bad news. “With the loss of the megodont, and now the cost of placating the unions? Ninety million baht, perhaps?”
A shout comes from Mai, waving Hock Seng over. He doesn’t have to look to know it is bad news. He says, “There will be damage below as well, I think. Expensive to repair.” He pauses, touches the delicate subject. “Your investors, the Misters Gregg and Yee, will have to be notified. It is likely that we do not have the cash to do repairs and also to install and calibrate the new algae baths when they arrive.” He pauses. “We will require new funds.”
He waits anxiously, wondering what the yang guizi’s reaction will be. Money flows through the company so quickly sometimes Hock Seng thinks of it as water, and yet he knows this will not be pleasant news. The investors sometimes become balky at expenses. With Mr. Yates, the fights over money were common. With Mr. Lake, less so. The investors do not complain so much now that Mr. Lake has arrived, yet it is still a fantastic amount of money to spend on a dream. If Hock Seng ran the company, he would have shut it down more than a year ago.
But Mr. Lake doesn’t blink at the news. All he says is, “More money.” He turns to Hock Seng. “And when will the algae tanks and nutrient cultures clear Customs?” he asks. “When, really?”
Hock Seng blanches. “It is difficult. Parting the bamboo curtain is not something done in a day. The Environment Ministry likes to interfere.”
“You said you paid to keep the white shirts off our backs.”
“Yes.” Hock Seng inclines his head. “All the appropriate gifts have been given.”
“So why was Banyat complaining about contaminated baths? If we’ve got live organisms breeding—”
Hock Seng hurries to interrupt. “Everything is at the anchor pads. Delivered by Carlyle & Sons last week…” He makes a decision. The yang guizi needs to hear good news. “Tomorrow the shipment will clear Customs. The bamboo curtain will part, and your shipment will arrive on the backs of megodonts.” He makes himself smile. “Unless you wish to fire the Union right now?”
The devil shakes his head, even smiles a little at the joke, and Hock Seng feels a flush of relief.
“Tomorrow then. For certain?” Mr. Lake asks.
Hock Seng steels himself and inclines his head in agreement, willing it to be the truth. Still the foreigner holds him with his blue eyes. “We spend a lot of money here. But the one thing the investors can’t tolerate is incompetence. I won’t tolerate it, either.”
“I understand.”
Mr. Lake nods, satisfied. “Good then. We’ll wait to talk with the home office. After we’ve got the new line equipment out of Customs, we’ll call. Give them some good news with the bad. I don’t want to ask for money with nothing to show at all.” He looks at Hock Seng again. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Hock Seng makes himself nod. “As you say.”
Mr. Lake takes another drink from his bottle. “Good. Find out how bad the damage is. I’ll want a report in the morning.”