Model Worker Master Mo!
In the end, they never did get to eat that meal.
Comrade Ling Ling Qi had no appetite, but he still made good on his promise.
Two bags of golden, glistening fried giant silkworm pupae from Northeast China, and one bag of bright-red, hot and spicy grasshoppers.
"Here, high-protein supplements made exclusively for China."
"This is good stuff you can only get through internal channels. Silkworm pupae are rich in unsaturated fatty acids and high-quality protein, and grasshoppers are packed with chitin and trace elements."
"They're three whole grades more nutritious than those wild bugs you dug out of American dumpsters."
Toad took the bags and gave them a sniff.
They smelled fantastic!
He tore open the bag of silkworm pupae, and with a flick of his tongue, three or four golden pupae vanished into his mouth.
Crunch.
"Delicious!"
He shouted in his still imperfect Chinese, "A... a hundred times tastier than cockroaches!"
Sing Sing edged two steps away in disgust. "Could you not discuss how cockroaches taste in public? You're spoiling the scenery."
Toad didn't hear him at all. His tongue swept the pupae into his mouth one after another.
"Slow down! Eat them on the way! Eat them on the train! Don't polish them all off at once!"
On the high-speed train.
Mortimer wore a mask and a baseball cap, huddled in a window seat.
The woven sack was stuffed under his feet, and he held the unfinished bag of spicy grasshoppers in his arms.
Sing Sing sat beside him, scrolling through a mission report on his phone.
"Ah Qi," Toad suddenly said in a low voice.
"Hmm?"
"I... learned a song."
Sing Sing looked up at him.
Mortimer's vertical pupils held nervousness and anticipation, like an elementary school student about to perform for his parents.
"Teacher Li taught me," he added.
"Want to sing it for me?"
Mortimer cleared his throat.
Then the British Mutant, with his rough skin and outward-turning lips, began to sing softly in a strange, heavily accented but extraordinarily earnest voice:
"Unity—is strength—!"
"This strength is iron—! This strength is steel—!"
He was miles off-key.
But he enunciated every word with immense effort.
Sing Sing was silent for a few seconds.
Then he switched off his phone screen, leaned back in his seat, and closed his eyes.
"Pass. I'll test you on the second verse next time."
Mortimer stretched his wide mouth into a radiant smile.
From the high-speed rail station, they transferred to a bus, then a minivan, then a three-wheeled motorcycle.
They rounded the final bend, and Tiankeng Village came into view.
"Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!"
"Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang!"
Good grief, firecrackers were thundering, and gongs and drums were sounding together.
Sing Sing almost thought he'd wandered onto the wrong film set.
At the entrance to the construction site, dozens of workers stood neatly in two rows.
The project manager, Lao Liu, stood at the very front, his face glowing as he held up a megaphone.
A red banner hung overhead:
[Warmly welcoming the triumphant return of Master Mo, one of the top ten model workers]
Two strings of firecrackers hung beside the banner, crackling merrily.
"Master Mo!" Lao Liu called out through the megaphone in a booming voice. "Welcome home!"
"Lao Mo's back!"
"Lao Mo! I've been craving fish!"
"Master Mo! We missed you so much!"
The workers swarmed forward.
Lao Li squeezed his way to the front and grabbed Mortimer's hand, gripping it tight.
"Master Mo!" The middle-aged worker who had once fallen from the cliff and been saved by Mortimer in midair had tears in his eyes. "My wife gave birth to a big, healthy boy the day before yesterday! Seven jin and eight liang!"
"If you hadn't saved me back then, my son wouldn't even have a dad!"
"My wife and I talked it over. We're calling him 'Mo Mo' as a nickname! After your surname!"
Sing Sing stood at the edge of the crowd and chuckled.
That evening.
In the construction site cafeteria.
Master Lao Wang brought out his best cooking skills.
The table was laden with red-braised pork, fish in sour soup, spicy chicken, and a mixed houttuynia salad.
In the middle stood two cases of beer and a bottle of baijiu from Lao Liu's treasured collection.
Toad sat right in the middle of the main table.
He had fully mastered chopsticks by now, and he picked up meat faster than anyone else at the table.
"Master Mo, have a drink!"
"Bottoms up!"
So cute.
Mortimer raised his beer bottle and clinked it with each of the workers around him.
His Chinese still wasn't fluent enough, and most of the time he could only get a few words out.
But the workers didn't mind at all. They gestured and chatted with him, guessing their way through the conversation.
Sing Sing sat in a corner, eating a piece of red-braised pork as he watched it all.
Lao Liu came over with a glass of liquor and lowered his voice. "Lao Mo's been gone ten days or half a month, and our progress slowed by a whole half. Now that he's back, we've probably got a shot at finishing by year's end!"
"As you should." Sing Sing wiped his mouth. "Have you been paying his social insurance on time?"
"We have, we have! Didn't miss a single day! We've been paying into his housing fund too!"
"What about his high-temperature allowance?"
"Paid it! Guizhou isn't especially hot, but the sun beats right down on the cliff, so I claimed the maximum rate for him!"
"Good." Sing Sing nodded in satisfaction. "If there are awards in the year-end evaluation, remember to nominate him as an outstanding individual. Print the certificate in color; don't fob him off with a black-and-white one."
"Don't worry!"
Early the next morning.
Sing Sing stood on the cliffside viewing platform in Tiankeng Village, holding a cup of strong tea brewed in a construction-site thermos.
Before him stood a dizzying karst cliff.
A winding temporary construction road was extending deeper along the rock face, which dropped vertically for more than three hundred meters.
Sections of rebar, anchor bolts, and concrete supports advanced along it.
On the steepest part of the cliff at the very front, Mortimer moved as easily as if he were on level ground.
The mucus secreted by his palms and soles held him firmly to the almost vertical rock face.
"Rat-a-tat-tat..."
The sound of the pneumatic pick echoed through the gorge.
Each time Mortimer finished drilling a hole, he moved sideways to the next marked point like a gecko.
Sing Sing took out the "Overseas Special Talent Evaluation Form" he carried with him and turned to Mortimer's page.
It was already densely covered with all kinds of notes:
[Attendance: 100%]
[Safety incidents: 0]
[Chinese proficiency: no difficulty with everyday communication (Guizhou dialect version)]
[Relations with colleagues: excellent]
[Special note: above-average cafeteria consumption of silkworm pupae]
Sing Sing drew a big "excellent" in the overall evaluation box with satisfaction.
Then he closed the notebook, turned, and left.
Lao Liu arranged for a jeep to take Sing Sing to the county town to catch his ride.
Toad stood at the edge of the cliff, watching the vehicle grow smaller and smaller.
Then he stretched out his tongue, curled it around the hard hat on his head, lifted it high overhead, and waved it vigorously.
"Thank you, Ah Qi!"
In the vehicle.
Sing Sing leaned back in the bouncing seat and took a small notebook out of his pocket.
A list of names was written inside, some already crossed out in red pen:
~~Toad~~ ✓ Tiankeng Village · on duty
~~Riptide~~ ✓ special service firefighting · on duty
~~Polaris~~ ✓ Aerospace City · on duty
~~Soft Serve~~ ✓ Aerospace City logistics · on duty
~~Anton~~ ✓ 749 Bureau archives · on duty
The last name had yet to be crossed out.
[Wandering Girl] — to be determined
Sing Sing stared at the name and tapped his fingers on the notebook's cover.
"That just leaves you, blue-skinned drunkard."
He closed the notebook and looked out the window at the Guizhou mountains rushing past.
"I need to find you a job where you can't drink..."
The jeep disappeared at the end of the winding mountain road.
On the distant cliff, the pneumatic pick started up again.