Full Throttle

River Steelarm wanted to build a motorcycle engine. He had a permanent job at a gear plant and gave it up, opened a repair shop, and spent three years on the design. His wife's relatives told her he was never going to amount to anything and she believed them. She divorced him and married the manager of a cylinder sleeve plant. River and his daughter were put out of the house and moved into the shop, which was falling apart. A friend he had known since childhood heard about it and came to help. His research notes had gone to specialists in Beijing, who built the engine on a test bench and got it to run. They called Chongqing looking for him, worried that a foreign company would reach him first. He knew none of this. He needed money for his daughter, so he took a repair job on an imported motorcycle belonging to a man called Long who ran things around Chaotianmen. The bike interested him more than the job did. He took it apart to see how it was made, without asking, and Long's men came for him. Company men from Chongqing, from Japan and from Italy arrived at the shop at the same time as Long.