The Lotus Eaters

'And how much . . . to just buy your contract . . . from the . . . proprietor?'

The girl immediately stopped moving. She looked very worried. It was a trick, often enough, to wait for a girl nearly to pay off her contract and then resell the rights to her, which resale price was inevitably added to her debt.

Sig understood this. 'No, no. I'll give you your contract back once my business here is done.'

That was much better, much less worrisome. She resumed her gentle, rhythmic movements, saying, 'About eight hundred FSD, free and clear. How long will you be here?'

That was actually about twice her price; a girl has to watch out for herself.

Sig answered, 'A few years.'

Oh, Lord Buddha, the girl thought. A few years to be free.

* * *

God, I hate this place. It isn't even the stink from the rice paddies. But whatever Tsarist Marxism in its Cochinese mutation may have been, pretty to look at, it is not.

Dan Kurolski, Sig and Han were in a warehouse quite close to the riverside docks that made Prey Nokor an inland port. Inland from the river, past the city, the newer parts of the city grew from the ground like rancid, gray, concrete mushrooms.

Kuralski, who had thought it advisable to see to the offloading of this first shipment of guns, thought he knew what Sig was thinking.

'If it makes you any happier,' he said to Sig, 'Volga's about as bad . . . except for the rice paddies, of course; they're in a league by themselves. On the other hand, Volga has some water and air pollution problems you don't have here.'

Between the warehouse and the dock, but nearer to the former, a shipping container rocked on large forklift carrying it along a less than smooth road. The rocking grew worse until, finally, the thing upended, falling completely off of the forklift's tongues.

Han scowled and walked away, toward the forklift, without a word. When she reached it, she scrambled her four foot, eleven frame up the side of the lift to the driver's station. There she proceeded to berate the shrinking, cringing, embarrassed driver until his head hung in utter humiliation.

'Who's she?' Kurolski asked.

Sig answered, 'Han? She's my . . . ummm . . . administrative assistant and translator.'

'Yes, I am sure,' Kurolski said, grinning. 'What did you pay for her?'

'Eight hundred FSD,' Sig answered, 'for her contract. Plus a salary of thirty-two FSD a month. If I'd known how valuable she was, I'd have paid ten times that.'

'You mean you would have billed it to Pat?'

'Well . . . duh.'

Han returned, still scowling. In French, which Kuralski didn't speak, she said, 'Stupidmotherfuckingrefugeefromareeducationcamp! Pigfuckingdumbbastard! Shiteater!'

'Thanks, Han,' said a beaming Siegel. 'I couldn't do this without you.'

'What's she think you're actually doing?' Kurolski asked.

'She thinks I'm smuggling arms to some revolutionary movement in Uhuru or Colombia del Norte.'

'Works for me,' Kuralski shrugged.

* * *

Later that afternoon, after the last of the guns were offloaded and transshipped into the warehouse, Sig oversaw the repackaging of a light artillery piece. He read from the data plate, Serial Number: 12543. Glancing over the manifest, Sig checked the gun off. He watched as a crew of Cochinese slave workers he was renting from a re-education camp moved the gun by hand into a shipping container, then braced it from several angles with precut lumber. The container was on its side. Shells, three hundred and seventy-five boxes of two shells each, were fitted around the gun and bracing. Then more lumber was used to fix them in place. Sight, aiming stakes, field telephone and wire, gunner's swab and worm, camouflage net and about fifteen other items almost completed the package. Then more precut sections of lumber were added. When the workers were done, Sig closed the container and placed a metal railroad seal on the door. The crew then replaced the atmosphere with an inert gas.

One down. Twenty-three more to go. This week. Sig signaled for a forklift to move the filled container to a fenced yard by the docks.

Gia Lai, Cochin

One of the nice things about Cochin, as a place to test explosives, was that there was so much unexploded ordnance laying around, which ordnance the Cochinese Army made some effort to clear, that surface explosions, even fairly large ones, were so common as to not incite commentary. Or even to be noticed.

Sig wondered, Do you suppose that was in Carrera's mind when he selected this place for testing? Hmmm . . . might have been.

Sig swatted away a mosquito as he and a Cochinese sapper, Sergeant Tranh, a combat engineer whose commander was being paid twenty FSD a week for the use of him, primed a plastic barrel with blasting cap and fuse. Siegal watched the sapper carefully tap the cap, held in his right hand, one wrist slapping against the other to knock out any dirt which might be in the cap and which could interfere with detonation. Tranh then inserted the