"Oh, I was just thinking how crazy life is. This time last month I was surfing at Malibu Colony, California. Boy, A6erdeen's something else, isn't it?"

"You mean the smell?"

"Sure."

"Yes it is."

"It's not much better at high tide. No one but me seems to smell the stench!"

"When were you last here?"

"Couple of years back for ten days after I graduated, B.A. in business, but I never seem to get used to it." Choy laughed. "New England it ain't!"

"Where did you go to school?"

"Seattle first. Then undergraduate school, University of Washington at Seattle. Then I got a master's at Harvard, Harvard Business School."

Gornt stopped. "Harvard?"

"Sure. I got an assist, a scholarship."

"That's very good. When did you graduate?"

"June last year. It was like getting out of prison! Boy, they really put your ass on the block if you don't keep up your grades. Two years of hell! After I got out I headed for California with a buddy doing odd jobs here and there to make enough to keep surfing having ourselves a time after sweating out so much school. Thena" Choy grinned. "a then a couple of months back Uncle Wu caught up with me and said it's time you went to work so here I am! After all, he paid for my education. My parents died years ago."

"Were you top of your class at Harvard?"

"Third."

"That's very good."

"Thank you. It's not far now, ours is the end junk."

They negotiated a precarious gangway, Gornt watched suspiciously by silent boat dwellers as they crossed from floating home to floating home, the families dozing or cooking or eating or playing mabjong, some still repairing fishing nets, some children night fishing.

"This bit's slippery, Mr. Gornt." He jumped onto the tacky deck. "We made it! Home sweet home!" He tousled the hair of the sleepy little boy who was the lookout and said in Haklo, which he knew Gornt did not understand, "Keep awake, Little Brother, or the devils will get us."

"Yes, yes I will," the boy piped, his suspicious eyes on Gornt.

Paul Choy led the way below. The old junk smelled of tar and teak, rotting fish and sea salt and a thousand storms. Below decks the midship gangway opened on to the normal single large cabin fortard that went the breadth of the ship and the length to the bow. An open charcoal fire burned in a careless brick fireplace with a sooty kettle singing over it. Smoke curled upward and found its way to the outside through a rough flue cut in the deck. A few old rattan chairs, tables and tiers of rough bunks lined one side.

Four Finger Wu was alone and he waved at one of the chairs and beamed. "Heya, good see," he said in halting, hardly understandable English. "Whiskey?"

"Thanks," Gornt said. "Good to see you too."

Paul Choy poured the good Scotch into two semiclean glasses. "You want water, Mr. Gornt?" he asked.

"No, straight's fine. Not too much please."

"Sure."

Wu accepted his glass and toasted Gornt. "Good see you, heya?"

"Yes. Health!"

They watched Gornt sip his whiskey.

"Good," Gornt said. "Very good whiskey."

Wu beamed again and motioned at Paul. "Him sister son."

"Yes."

"Good school Golden Country."

"Yes. Yes, he told me. You should be very proud."

"Wat?"

Paul Choy translated for the old man. "Ah thank, thank you. He talk good, heya7"

"Yes." Gornt smiled. "Very good."

"Ah, good never mind. Smoke?"

"Thank you." They watched Gornt take a cigarette. Then Wu took one and Paul Choy lit both of them. Another silence.

"Good with old frien'?"

"Yes. And you?"

"Good." Another silence. "Him sister son," the old seaman said again and saw Gornt nod and say nothing, waiting. It pleased him that Gornt just sat there, waiting patiently for him to come to the point as a civilized person should.

Some of these pink devils are learning at long last. Yes, but some have learned too fornicating well the tai-pan for instance, him with those cold, ugly blue fish-eyes that most foreign devils have, that stare at you like a dead shark the one who can even speak a little Haklo dialect. Yes, the tai-pan's too cunning and too civilized, but then he's had generations before him and his ancestors had the Evil Eye before him. Yes, but old Devil Green Eyes, the first of his line, who made a pact with my ancestor the great sea warlord, Wu Fang Choi and his son, Wu Kwok, and kept it, and saw that his sons kept it and their sons. So this present tai-pan must be considered an old friend even though he's the most deadly of the line.

The old man suppressed a shudder and hawked and spat to scare away the evil spit god that lurked in all men's throats. He studied Gornt. Eeeee, he told himself, it must be vile to have to look at that pink face in every mirror all that face hair like a monkey and a pallid white toad's belly skin elsewhere! Ugh!

He put a smile on his face to cover his embarrassment and tried to read Gornt's face, what was beneath it, but he could not. Never mind, he told himself gleefully, that's why all the time and money's been spent to prepare Number Seven Son he'll know.

"Maybe ask favor?" he said tentatively.

The beams of the ship creaked pleasantly as she wallowed at her moorings.

"Yes. What favor, old friend?"

"Sister son time go work give job?" He saw astonishment on Gornt's face and this annoyed him but he hid it. " 'Sprain," he said in English then added to Paul Choy in guttural Haklo, "Explain to this Eater of Turtle Shit what I want. Just as I told you."

"My uncle apologizes that he can't speak directly to you so he's asked me to explain, Mr. Gornt," Paul Choy said politely. "He wants to ask if you'd give me a job as a sort of trainee in your airplane and shipping division."

Gornt sipped his whiskey. "Why those, Mr. Choy?"

"My uncle has substantial shipping interests, as you know, and he wants me to modernize his operation. I can give you chapter and verse on my background, if you'd consider me, sir my second year at Harvard was directed to those areas my major interest was transportation of all types. I'd been accepted in the International Division of the Bank of Ohio before my uncle jer pulled me back." Paul Choy hesitated. "Anyway that's what he asks."

"What dialects do you speak, other than Haklo?"

"Mandarin."

"How many characters can you write?"

"About four thousand."

"Can you take shorthand?"

"Speedwriting only, sir. I can type about eighty words a minute but not clean."

"Wat?" Wu asked.

Gornt watched Paul Choy as the young man translated what had been said for his uncle, weighing him and Four Finger Wu. Then he said, "What sort of trainee do you want to be?"

"He wants me to learn all there is to know about running shipping and airlines, the braking and freighting business also, the practical operation, and of course to be a profitable cog for you in your machine. Maybe my Yankee expertise, theoretical expertise, could help you somehow. I'm twenty-six. I've a master's. I'm into all the new computer theory. Of course I can program one. At Harvard I backgroundedin conglomerates, cash flows."

"And if you don't perform, or there's, how would you put it, a personality conflicts""

The young man said firmly, "There won't be, Mr. Gornt leastways I'll work my can off to prevent that."

"Wat? What did he say? Exactly?" Four Fingers asked sharply in Haklo, noticing a change in inflection, his eyes and ears highly tuned.

His son explained, exactly.

"Good," Wu said, his voice a rasp. "Tell him exactly, if you don't do all your tasks to his satisfaction you'll be cast out of the family and my wrath will waste your days."

Paul Choy hesitated, hiding his shock, all his American training screaming to tell his father to go screw, that he was a Harvard graduate, that he was an American and had an American passport that he'd earned, whatever goddamn sampan or goddamn family he came from. But he kept his eyes averted and his anger off his face.

Don't be ungrateful, he ordered himself. You're not American, truly American. You're Chinese, and the head of your family has the right to rule. But for him you could be running a floating cathouse here in Aberdeen.

Paul Choy sighed. He knew that he was more fortunate than his eleven brothers. Four were junk captains here in Aberdeen, one lived in Bangkok and plied the Mekong River, one had a ferryboat in Singapore, another ran an import/export shipwright business in Indonesia, two had been lost at sea, one brother was in England doing what he didn't know and the last, the eldest, ruled the dozen feeder sampans in Aberdeen Harbor that were floating kitchens and also three pleasure boats and eight ladies of the night.

After a pause Gornt asked, "What did he say? Exactly?"

Paul Choy hesitated, then decided to tell him, exactly.

"Thank you for being honest with me, Mr. Choy. That was wise. You're a very impressive young man," Gornt said. "I understand perfectly." Now for the first time since Wu had asked the original question he turned his eyes to the old seaman and smiled. "Of course. Glad to give nephew job."

Wu beamed and Paul Choy tried to keep the relief off his face.

"I won't let you down, Mr. Gornt."

"Yes, I know you won't."

Wu motioned at the bottle. "Whiskey?"

"No thank you. This is fine," Gornt said.

"When start job?"

Gornt looked at Paul Choy. "When would you like to start?"

"Tomorrow? Whenever's good for you, sir."

"Tomorrow. Wednesday."

"Gee, thanks. Eight o'clock?"

"Nine, eight thereafter. A six-day week of course. You'll have long hours and I'll push you. It'll be up to you how much you can learn and how fast I can increase your responsibilities."

"Thanks, Mr. Gornt." Happily Paul Choy translated for his father. Wu sipped his whiskey without hurrying. "What money?" he asked.

Gornt hesitated. He knew it had to be just the right sum, not too much, not too little, to give Paul Choy face and his uncle face. "1,000 HK a month for the first three months, then I'll review."

The young man kept his gloom off his face. That was hardly 200 U.S. but he translated it into Haklo.

"Maybe 2,000?" Wu said, hiding his pleasure. A thousand was the perfect figure but he was bargaining merely to give the foreign devil face and his son face.

"If he's to be trained, many valuable managers will have to take time away from their other duties," Gornt said politely. "It's expensive to train anyone."

"Much money Golden Mountain," Wu said firmly. "Two?"

"1,000 first month, 1,250 next two months?"

Wu frowned and added, "Month three, 1,500?"

"Very well. Months three and four at 1,500. And I'll review his salary after four months. And Paul Choy guarantees to work for Rothwell-Gornt for at least two years."

"Wat?"

Paul Choy translated again. Shit, he was thinking, how'm I going to vacation in the States on 50 bucks a week, even 60. Shit! And where the hell'm I gonna live? On a goddamn sampan? Then he heard Gornt say something and his brain twisted.

"Sir?"

"I said because you've been so honest with me, we'll give you free accommodation in one of our company houses The Gables. That's where we put all our managerial trainees who come out from England. If you're going to be part of a foreign devil hong then you'd better mix with its future leaders."

"Yes sir!" Paul Choy could not stop the beam. "Yes sir, thank you sir."

Four Finger Wu asked something in Haklo.

"He wants to know where's the house, sir?"

"It's on the Peak. It's really very nice, Mr. Choy. I'm sure you'll be more than satisfied."