The Lotus Eaters

Prey Nokor, Cochin, Terra Nova

"Nokor," Sig said, as his eyes opened wide to the sun streaming in through the blind over the window. The mattress of the bed on which he lay was lumpy, but at least the linen was clean.

"Shit, still in Nokor."

A former colony of the Gauls, and then of the Red Tsars, Cochin had all the decay—physical, economic, and moral—that one might associate with either of those two bits of history, or with suffering a major civil war in recent memory. Because the Cochinese had endured all three, the decay was not just trebled but cubed.

Proof of that decay, over and above the lumpy mattress, occupied a fraction of that mattress in the form of a fifteen or sixteen year old Cochinese hooker who was effectively owned by the house. At least Sig hoped she was only fifteen or sixteen. This was not from any perverse preference for very young girls, but merely because a hooker of that age was most likely to be just a hooker, rather than a spy for either Cochinese Intelligence or the Secret Police.

The girl's name was Han. She'd told a more than half drunken Siegel, down in the hotel bar, that it meant 'moral.' She'd told him, moreover, in French and then laughed her cute little rear end off.

"Moral? Me? Isn't that just too funny?"

Sig had shrugged it off. "We all sell ourselves, Han," he'd said. "Some of us even get a fair price."

* * *

It had been an ugly scene, with Siegel's soon to be ex-wife, shortly before he'd departed Balboa. It was uglier still when he'd called Fernandez who had come immediately with an escort of military police. These had handcuffed her, forced her to sign some papers, and then escorted her to the airport with her passport stamped to prevent readmission to the country.

As Carrera had, Fernandez said, "I'm sorry, Sig."

"Don't be," Siegel had answered. "Right now I'm too pissed off to be hurt. Besides, I'm going to the land of the two drachma blow job. It could be worse.

"Would it have been better, do you think," Siegel inquired, "to have kept her on and fed her disinformation?"

Fernandez shrugged. "Close question. If we don't bust the occasional spy, the Tauros, who are not necessarily stupid, will assume we choose not to bust any. They might assume then that we know about all of them. This could make it problematic to feed disinformation when we want to. Then, too, busting one validates the perceived secrecy of the rest. We've even had it happen that we busted one—that one we shot—and fear from that caused two more to panic, do something dumb, and reveal themselves.

"Better, I think, to take one into custody occasionally. And, too," Fernandez added, "you're one of us and if you want the bitch out of the country and an in absentia divorce, I think we owe it to you to help. Patricio agreed. Besides, you don't need any distractions, where you're going and what you'll be doing there."

* * *

Distractions? Sig thought, while Han, straddling his loins, performed a slow corkscrew. Now this is a distraction. The best kind. Except that I need a distraction from the distraction, or it will be over much, much too soon.

"Hey, Han," he asked, "how much to rent you from the house . . . as a translator?"

The girl didn't miss a beat . . . or a twist. "Five million Cochinese Bac a day," she answered. "Or six Federated States Drachma."

Must delay . . .

"And of that, how much do you get to keep?" Sig asked.

"In FSD? Two," she answered, switching from a corkscrew to a slow and graceful up and down. "One of which goes to my debt."

Always the way, isn't it, then? Someone else gets most of the girl's profit. Oh, Jesus that's . . . MUST DELAY.

"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.