too?”
With a slight shake of his head, “I could never do that to you, Jo. We’re partners, you and I. We have to agree out of our own free will.”
She shot a glance at the apprehensive Dr. Lucacs and the eager Rozmenko. “I’ll go back to Hawaii alone,” she said. “But I sure as hell don’t like it.”
“Come back for the funeral, and then we’ll fly home together.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Okay,” Jo said reluctantly. “I’ll phone you when I get home.”
He tapped a finger against the communicator on his wrist. “I’ll be right here.”
CHAPTER 10
LI-PO Hsen believed that he was a self-made man.
Born in bustling, crowded Shanghai, his father had been a street peddler, offering stolen radios and wristwatches from his ancient bicycle on the streets and alleys of the vast city, while his mother slaved twelve hours a day in a sweatshop that manufactured electronic circuit boards more cheaply that the modern roboticized factories could, thanks to the starvation wages it paid the women who worked there.
His father had died when Hsen was barely nine years old, an opium pipe clutched so tightly in his cold fingers that it took the neighborhood mortician and two assistants to pry it loose. When he was twelve Hsen ran away from the rat-infested crumbling ruin of an apartment block that had served as home for hundreds of families. He left his graying mother to fend for herself. He could work, just as his father did. He could support himself.
He had only one goal in life: to become rich. His father’s example had given him a priceless nugget of wisdom: stay off narcotics —all the narcotics that can cripple a man and kill him slowly from within. Hsen neither smoked nor drank. He never allowed a woman to gain a hold on him. He sold drugs, when the opportunity presented itself, and women too. But he took none for himself.
He saw his mother only once again after leaving her miserable home. Through the human chain of street talk that spread information across the length and breadth of Shanghai, he learned that she had died. For one day, a few hours merely, he returned to the filthy overcrowded slums where he had been born and gazed upon his mother’s dead features. He cut a strange figure, in his hand-tailored westernized suit, among all the ragged tenement dwellers. Then he went through her meager possessions, which included the key to a safe deposit box in one of the city’s largest and most dignified banks.
To his utter surprise and delight, the safe deposit box contained handfuls of paper money. The old woman had amassed a meager fortune over her years of toil. He pictured her shuffling from the factory to this bank every week, shabby and exhausted, to secrete another yuan or two in this steel box.
Hsen stuffed the bills into his pockets and strode out of the bank purposefully. He had a plan.
For although Li-Po Hsen had sworn to abstain from all narcotics, he was hopelessly gripped by the most common drug of all: the desire for wealth.
With his mother’s pitiful savings he bought a hand-sized computer (his mother had probably made its circuit boards) and a train ticket to Hong Kong, the city of golden opportunity for a man of strong will, strong stomach, and quick wits.
Within five years he was a successful merchant, respected by the business community and suspected by the police of smuggling, drug running, and dealing in stolen goods. But the police could prove nothing and as Hsen’s fortune grew, his esteem among his fellow businessmen rose.
By the time he was thirty he, with three older associates, created Pacific Commerce Corporation out of a failed shipping line, a scattering of warehouses in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and elsewhere, and a fleet of aged jet cargo planes whose owner faced bankruptcy and disgrace. Hsen made a key decision the following year: he convinced his three associates that Pacific Commerce must enter the booming business of space transportation.
With a slight shake of his head, “I could never do that to you, Jo. We’re partners, you and I. We have to agree out of our own free will.”
She shot a glance at the apprehensive Dr. Lucacs and the eager Rozmenko. “I’ll go back to Hawaii alone,” she said. “But I sure as hell don’t like it.”
“Come back for the funeral, and then we’ll fly home together.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Okay,” Jo said reluctantly. “I’ll phone you when I get home.”
He tapped a finger against the communicator on his wrist. “I’ll be right here.”
CHAPTER 10
LI-PO Hsen believed that he was a self-made man.
Born in bustling, crowded Shanghai, his father had been a street peddler, offering stolen radios and wristwatches from his ancient bicycle on the streets and alleys of the vast city, while his mother slaved twelve hours a day in a sweatshop that manufactured electronic circuit boards more cheaply that the modern roboticized factories could, thanks to the starvation wages it paid the women who worked there.
His father had died when Hsen was barely nine years old, an opium pipe clutched so tightly in his cold fingers that it took the neighborhood mortician and two assistants to pry it loose. When he was twelve Hsen ran away from the rat-infested crumbling ruin of an apartment block that had served as home for hundreds of families. He left his graying mother to fend for herself. He could work, just as his father did. He could support himself.
He had only one goal in life: to become rich. His father’s example had given him a priceless nugget of wisdom: stay off narcotics —all the narcotics that can cripple a man and kill him slowly from within. Hsen neither smoked nor drank. He never allowed a woman to gain a hold on him. He sold drugs, when the opportunity presented itself, and women too. But he took none for himself.
He saw his mother only once again after leaving her miserable home. Through the human chain of street talk that spread information across the length and breadth of Shanghai, he learned that she had died. For one day, a few hours merely, he returned to the filthy overcrowded slums where he had been born and gazed upon his mother’s dead features. He cut a strange figure, in his hand-tailored westernized suit, among all the ragged tenement dwellers. Then he went through her meager possessions, which included the key to a safe deposit box in one of the city’s largest and most dignified banks.
To his utter surprise and delight, the safe deposit box contained handfuls of paper money. The old woman had amassed a meager fortune over her years of toil. He pictured her shuffling from the factory to this bank every week, shabby and exhausted, to secrete another yuan or two in this steel box.
Hsen stuffed the bills into his pockets and strode out of the bank purposefully. He had a plan.
For although Li-Po Hsen had sworn to abstain from all narcotics, he was hopelessly gripped by the most common drug of all: the desire for wealth.
With his mother’s pitiful savings he bought a hand-sized computer (his mother had probably made its circuit boards) and a train ticket to Hong Kong, the city of golden opportunity for a man of strong will, strong stomach, and quick wits.
Within five years he was a successful merchant, respected by the business community and suspected by the police of smuggling, drug running, and dealing in stolen goods. But the police could prove nothing and as Hsen’s fortune grew, his esteem among his fellow businessmen rose.
By the time he was thirty he, with three older associates, created Pacific Commerce Corporation out of a failed shipping line, a scattering of warehouses in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and elsewhere, and a fleet of aged jet cargo planes whose owner faced bankruptcy and disgrace. Hsen made a key decision the following year: he convinced his three associates that Pacific Commerce must enter the booming business of space transportation.
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