NEAL STEPHENSON
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smoke starting to cough out of its stacks, lights starting to come on. Just down the pier from the Kodiak Queen is the Kowloon, which is the big Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong boat.
Hiro turns his back on the Spectrum 2000 and starts running up and down the waterfront streets, scanning the logos until he sees the one he wants: Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong.
They don’t want to let him in. He flashes his passport; the doors open. The guard is Chinese but speaks a bit of English. This is a measure of how weird things are in Port Sherman: they have a guard on the door. Usually, Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong is an open country, always looking for new citizens, even if they are the poorest Refus.
“Sorry,” the guard says in a reedy, insincere voice, “I did not know-” He points to Hiro’s passport.
The franchulate is literally a breath of fresh air. It doesn’t have that Third World ambience, doesn’t smell like urine at all. Which means it must be the local headquarters, or close to it, because most of Hong Kong’s Port Sherman real estate probably consists of nothing more than a gunman hogging a pay phone in a lobby. But this place is spacious, clean, and nice. A few hundred Refus stare at him through the windows, held at bay not by the mere plate glass but by the eloquent promise of the three Rat Thing hutches lined up against one wall. From the looks of it, two of those have just been moved in recently. Pays to beef up your security when the Raft is coming through.
Hiro proceeds to the counter. A man is talking on the phone in Cantonese, which means that he is, in fact, shouting. Hiro recognizes him as the Port Sherman proconsul. He is deeply involved in this little chat, but he has definitely noticed Him’s swords, is watching him carefully.
“We are very busy,” the man says, hanging up.
“Now you are a lot busier,” Hiro says. ‘I would like to charter your boat, the Kowloon.”
“It’s very expensive,” the man says.
“I just threw away a brand-new top-of-the-line motorcycle in the midclje of the street because I didn’t feel like pushing it half a block to the garage,” Hiro says. “I am on an expense account that would blow your mind.”
“It’s broken.”
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