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tired.

    Standing over it, Anderson can almost feel pity. The four ragged ovals where its tusks once stood are grimy foot-diameter ivory patches, savagely sawed away. Sores glisten on its knees and scabis growths speckle its mouth. Close up and dying, with its muscles paralyzed and its ribs heaving in and out, it is just an ill-used creature. The monster was never destined for fighting.

    The megodont lets out a final gust of breath. Its body sags.

    People are swarming all around Anderson, shouting, tugging at him, trying to help their wounded and find their dead. People are everywhere. Red and gold union colors, green SpringLife livery, the mahouts clambering over the giant corpse.

    For a second, Anderson imagines Yates standing beside him, smoking a nightshade and gloating at all the trouble. "And you said you'd be gone in a month." And then Hock Seng is beside him, whisper voice and black almond eyes and a bony hand that reaches up to touch his neck and comes away drenched red.

    "You're bleeding," he murmurs.

    2

    "Lift!" Hock Seng shouts. Pom and Nu and Kukrit and Kanda all lean against the shattered winding spindle, drawing it from its cradle like a splinter pulled from the flesh of a giant, dragging it up until they can send the girl Mai down underneath.

    "I can't see!" she shouts.

    Pom and Nu's muscles flex as they try to keep the spindle from reseating itself. Hock Seng kneels and slides a shakelight down to the girl. Her fingers brush his and then the LED tool is gone, down into the darkness. The light is worth more than she is. He hopes they won't drop the spindle back into its seat while she's down there.

    "Well?" he calls down a minute later. "Is it cracked?"

    No answer comes from below. Hock Seng hopes she isn't caught, trapped somehow. He settles into a squat as he waits for her to finish her inspection. All around, the factory is a hive of activity as workers try to put the place back in order. Men swarm over the megodont's corpse, union workers with bright machetes and four-foot bone saws, their hands red with their work as they render down a mountain of flesh. Blood runs off the beast as its hide is stripped away revealing marbled muscle.

    Hock Seng shudders at the sight, remembering his own people similarly disassembled, other bloodlettings, other factory wreckage. Good warehouses destroyed. Good people lost. It's all so reminiscent of when the Green Headbands came with their machetes and his warehouses burned. Jute and tamarind and kink-springs all going up in fire and smoke. Slick machetes gleaming in the blaze. He turns his eyes away, forcing down memories. Forces himself to breathe.

    As soon as the Megodont Union heard one of their own was lost, they sent their professional butchers. Hock Seng tried to get them to drag the carcass outside and finish their work in the streets, to make room for the power train repairs, but the union people refused and so now in addition to the buzz of activity and cleanup, the factory is full of flies and the increasing reek of death.

    Bones protrude from the corpse like coral rising from an ocean of deep red meat. Blood runs from the animal, rivers of it, rushing toward the storm drains and Bangkok's coal-driven flood-control pumps. Hock Seng watches sourly as blood flows past. The beast held gallons of it. Untold calories rushing away. The butchers are fast, but it will take them most of the night to dismember the animal completely.

    "Is she done yet?" Pom gasps. Hock Seng's attention returns to the problem at hand. Pom and Nu and their compatriots are all straining against the spindle's weight.

    Hock Seng again calls down into the hole. "What do you see, Mai?"

    Her words are muffled.

    "Come up, then!" He settles back on his haunches. Wipes sweat off his face. The factory is hotter than a rice pot. With all the megodonts led back to their stables, there is nothing to drive the factory's lines or charge the fans that circulate air through the building. Wet