CHAPTER EIGHT
Chummy got a call from Jeffy before he could get to the airport. He couldn’t go to Kilimanjaro.
“Fabrice,” Jeffy said, “you were right. Again. That Ethan got his entire core team on airplanes yesterday. He even managed to get Kilimanjaro office space for them. I’d tell you to get me five more just like him, but unless you can replicate yourself too—don’t.”
“Got it, boss,” Chummy said. He signaled DeeDee to wait a moment. Jeffy finished telling him what was going on, and Chummy ended the call with bigger problems than Ethan’s brush with the law. And Jeffy thought there weren’t problems at all, which, once again, did not make anything better. He turned to his assistant. “Change of plans. We’re going to Hainan.”
She nodded sleepily.
Her exhaustion gave him pause, and Chummy opened his messaging application to contact Samson instead of calling just in case his other assistant was asleep.
DeeDee handed over her comm with Samson’s cheerful face appearing on the screen. “He’s awake.”
“Hi, boss,” Samson said. “DeeDee says you’re rerouting. I’ll handle things in East Africa.” The face on the screen wore a few more fine lines than it had when Chummy had snatched him up out of the junior management track a couple years before, and his gray eyes had a steely look to them now rather than being merely bright. Samson was ready for a job that allowed him to do more than just smooth personnel problems, but a replacement assistant would take time to reach Samson’s skill level. So Chummy needed him to de-thorn a few more briars before letting him go. And since this trouble was partly of Chummy’s own making, if, as he suspected, Ethan’s personality had caused it, it didn’t seem right to dump things on Samson. But maybe the Kilimanjaro placements would be Samson’s final project, and thus it could become reputation gold for him. If it went well, Samson might be remembered for it as he moved on up within TCG. Though if things went very wrong, the TCG name itself could become résumé kryptonite for not just Samson but every executive in the company. Yet another reason it had to be made to work.
“Are you sure?” Chummy searched for the records TCG had on Kilimanjaro. The combination of the politically complex site and the new chief of sciences might be all wrong. Maybe it wasn’t too late to change ground stations. He could talk to Jeffy about it. Could they buy a private island with a decent-sized mountain or pay the extra cost in tether length and build a platform at sea to anchor the elevator?
“Hey, boss,” Samson called his attention back to the call, “I got this. Jax is apologizing. Nairobi is apologizing. Dodoma is apologizing. Ethan is pissed, but give me another hour or two and I’ll have him be graciously forgiving. I think it’ll be fine. I’ll grab some interpreters and go visit the appropriate offices to make sure, but really, I got it.”
DeeDee fed him background data on the things Samson was saying. Jax’s TCG employee ID appeared as a thumbnail pic in the corner of the screen, but just briefly for him to tap on if he’d forgotten who Ethan Schmidt-Li’s assistant was. DeeDee also sent screen captures of the comments released by government representatives from the Kenyan and Tanzanian capitals. Samson paused, letting the other assistant do her thing, and calmly awaited Chummy’s response.
“Kilimanjaro was historically Tanzanian,” Chummy cautioned.
“Uh huh,” Samson acknowledged, sounding bored. “And in some administrations the Kenyan government has claimed it too. But TCG owns it outright now, and our management of the park has been great for the growth of both Kenyan and Tanzanian tourism industries. Both countries want to assure Mr. Jeffy that they look forward to the speedy construction of the elevator on the site and that they are expanding rail, highway, and airstrips to support the needs of our commercial spaceport.”
A little icon on Chummy’s screen did a victory dance involving a merged cartoon of road construction and paper bills falling from the sky with masses of cheering stick figures waving Kenyan and Tanzanian flags. “DeeDee agrees with me,” Samson pointed out.
“That better be an amazing public relations team.”
“The best,” Samson agreed. “DeeDee sent me profiles for a few former diplomats looking for a second career. I got this. Good luck in China, boss.”
Chummy let Samson go, promising himself that if it went wrong, he’d find a way to make it up to the young man somehow.
“Shen Kong is ready to make a deal,” Jeffy had said. “Go back up Cory Aanderson. He thinks you can help. I’m the profit and loss guy, Fabrice. Trust me and trust Cory. Go do your thing. This is going to be big.”
Big was exactly what Chummy was worried about. Cory Aanderson engaged in deals directly when companies were bought and sold. He’d heard nothing.
They landed in Hainan with no new details. He should have slept like DeeDee did, but he spent the hours fretting about the little Sadou support launcher instead. They’d need a mountain too. Ethan’s near daily reports on the status of the elevator showed a frugality that disturbed him as much as it delighted Jeffy. Ethan showed no signs of contracting for anyone else to duplicate much of anything beyond station-side life support.
Clearing the space debris remained a major problem, and Ethan “welcomed advice and ideas from the board.” Anything with enough mass to be the space-side anchor for the elevator could easily use some of that mass to armor against debris impacts, but the tether itself must absolutely be protected from even the chance of a glancing impact. And if they sustained injuries in space to employees while building out the anchor station, it would sow doubt about TCG’s ability to protect the tether, which should absolutely not be allowed to be sheered through and whip down through the atmosphere and slam into eastern Africa. If the first attempt at an elevator failed not in early design or in funding, but in a catastrophic engineering casualty, a stronger driving force than John-Philip Jeffy would be required to convince humanity to try it again. “Advice and ideas welcome,” indeed.
Chummy could almost see Ethan sweating over the words and mopping at his face with makeup coming off on the tissues. Ethan had gone with gratitude for assistance and offers of shared credit for success rather than attempting to spread blame. Not bad at all. He must have realized he was too close to the project to duck responsibility. Chummy grinned to himself. That part of his efforts were working perfectly. The man was applying himself.
The engineers he’d set to reviewing launcher plans to select a system for the West African Launcher had come back with only a slightly more refined mass of ideas. They needed constraints. Someone from the Sadou family needed to talk to them. Pascaline? No. He wanted them to be happy about the interactions, not eager to see whoever they talked to pulverized by a failed rocket launch. It should be Maurie. He sent Aunt Mami a note. She hadn’t been talking to him recently, which, now that he thought about it, was odd.
He closed his eyes to think. The jet landed with a jerk and his eyes snapped open.
“Want some coffee, boss?” DeeDee had a cup ready for him.
He sipped. Rich and strong, it smelled like heaven. He took a wake-up pill and used the brew to wash it down.
DeeDee talked for a few moments about the weather in Hainan and the instructions Cory Aanderson and his deputy, Rodney Johnson, had sent.
“Oh,” she said. “And Samson has a report on East Africa. I read it while you were sleeping and you’ll want the details later, but everything is fine, and you can wait until after this visit to get to it.”
Chummy held his coffee mug a moment more while they taxied and lined up with a jetway bridge. He marveled at how well his assistants worked together to support him. He’d selected them for that, of course. But at times like these with too little sleep and who knows what tasks ahead, he really, really appreciated them for it.
That’s when it hit him. Pascaline had always loved space and hated having her engineering expertise constrained to the Earth-focus of the Sadou Corporation’s oil and gas industry needs. Maurie’s management skills smoothed out Pascaline’s brusque nature. Sadou Moussa already had the manager he needed for the launcher. It was a pair: Maurie and Pascaline. They were young for the work, but more experienced than most since their family connections had caused them to be pushed into engineering management responsibilities far sooner than an employee at somewhere like TCG would have been. He considered the variety of side jobs they’d also handled for Grandpere and the kinds of support workers they could draft or that he might be able to push their way as collaborating TCG technical liaisons. It might…
“Okay. Let’s go,” DeeDee said.
“Just one moment.” Chummy grabbed his comm. It wasn’t the personal one, but he’d have to risk it. They needed the data. The engineering teams’ discussion threads on the West Africa launcher project and their preliminary specs were still there in his most recently opened files. He compressed all of it and sent them to Pascaline and Maurie with the barest minimum of explanation. He didn’t have time for more, and surely Aunt Mami would be there to help explain whatever their grandfather didn’t.
He followed DeeDee out to find out just what Cory Aanderson had done.
Shen Kong skipped past the preliminaries of assistants meeting with assistants. The chief executive herself met Chummy just inside the jetway at Haikou Meilan International Airport. He’d heard that Zhu Zhang Li, who generally went by Julie or Julie Zhu, liked to keep tight control of the schedules of senior visitors to prevent side meetings with competitors, but this was extreme even for her.
The slender leader of China’s most successful space-based state-owned enterprise brushed sleek black hair behind one ear and rose to greet Chummy. Age brushed only faint marks over her features as if her iron will wouldn’t allow it. The woman reminded him of Jeffy, for all that physically they had little in common.
All the hyper-effective executives had a certain something in their eyes. Julie’s deep brown eyes smiled at him even while her mouth barely twitched.
She directed a few waiting staff to assist DeeDee with setting up any equipment. DeeDee gave them polite bows which was not quite correct, but they bowed back as if it were. She kept her equipment components in their bags and settled on an empty chair without plugging anything in.
Cory Aanderson, already there as Jeffy had said, waggled his fingers in greeting at Chummy. He looked more tired than usual in a wheeled hospital bed propped up to be almost chair-like, but he let one hand hang down where the Shen Kong executive and her staff couldn’t see and made a thumbs-up gesture. Coming from TCG’s VP of Sales, that was promising—except for what it meant.
Understanding hit Chummy hard. Ethan’s messages, Jeffy’s reaction, and the things Jeffy had said—he got it now. Cory and Julie smiling politely at each other meant that TCG and Shen Kong had just made a space deal. And that meant they were both betting heavily on the space elevator. The construction should be about a decade from completion, but everyone was moving fast and assuming total success.
He really wished the senior executives would hedge their bets a bit more. Or at least enough to let him hedge his bets. DeeDee offered a polite smile to all the strangers and moved to stand out of the way behind Cory Aanderson’s deputy.
The salesman himself sat up a bit and made introductions.
“Julie, meet Chummy. And Chummy, meet Julie.” Cory Aanderson exchanged a knowing look with the Shen Kong staff members and added a comment in Mandarin to the effect of, “Nobody uses their original given names for international business anymore. I feel so left out—will someone please give me a Chinese nickname?”
Julie laughed and responded in flawless English, “Watch out Aanderson. You only think you’re fluent. Give my people a few more taunts and you’ll find yourself being called Dog Vomit for the rest of your life without knowing it.”
“Better than some titles he could end up with,” Chummy pointed out.
“Ha.” Cory laid back his bed a bit more and pulled up his lap blankets. The blankets were a soft charcoal matching his thoroughly rumpled gray suit coat. “I’ve got to make my jokes to keep in practice. Making the doctors laugh now and then is the only reason they’re still working so hard to keep me around.” He shook his finger at DeeDee, easily the youngest person present, and said: “Remember that when you get old. It’s important to be a good patient, so they’ll work extra hard to keep you alive.”
DeeDee flushed, which earned a laugh from their Shen Kong audience.
“Oh and Chummy?” Cory Aanderson put a hand on his forehead and emitted a dramatic sigh of feigned regret, which earned more titters. “I think I’m going to steal your jet.”
DeeDee held her reaction to only a blink, so Chummy pretended to be shocked, which no one believed.
“Those doctors are always on me to come back for checkups,” Cory Aanderson said quite truthfully. And to Julie he added, “Chummy is our magic man. Let him help with choosing your crew for the asteroid retrieval. Call it a contract finalization bonus from TCG for you.”
Oh. Chummy hid his relief. They were just teaming with Shen Kong for the space elevator construction. This wasn’t about selling elevator freight prematurely. He held his expression carefully constant.
“So you’re saying I should have argued for a bigger discount on transport fees in exchange for providing the rock for the orbital station?” Julie’s eyes twinkled.
“Oh, probably,” Cory agreed. “And Mr. Jeffy is sure to fire me for saying so. But won’t it be great to have it all in operation sooner rather than later?”
A medical device attached to the old salesman’s bed beeped at him.
Cory grimaced at it. “Yes, machine. I’m not allowed to get excited,” he explained. “Raises my heart rate.”
He signaled to Rodney Johnson, and the unassuming man, who’d be sales vice president himself one day all too soon, released the wheel locks and turned his boss toward the jetway.
Rodney was a soft-spoken American with a shock of red hair and very white teeth who could still fade into the shadows when he wanted to. If Cory Aanderson had just closed a billion-dollar deal with contract options for expansion into the multibillion dollar range, it would explain why Rodney had wanted and had needed to be present in the background for the conversation—especially if Rodney might have to be the one to talk Shen Kong into executing those options.
Chummy gave the deputy a nod, which the man returned with hard, smiling eyes. Chummy suppressed a sigh. Cory Aanderson couldn’t be read that easily, but Rodney’s happiness meant TCG had done something big. It had to be more than an agreement to pay Shen Kong for the asteroid to be the elevator’s space-side tether point. They’d worked out some more complex deal, and… Chummy’s gut twisted. In context, it did have to involve elevator freight arrangements.
Shen Kong’s orbital manufacturing made top-of-the-line satellites, but that was only part of their business. They were also an asteroid resource-extraction company. The costs of getting out to the Belt and keeping the crews supplied kept competitors few. It was also why only a company backed by a big government could get started in the industry.
Rodney checked the readouts on the side of his boss’s bed and silenced the beeping one. He waved at everyone and pushed his boss down the jetway and onto the aircraft. DeeDee helped with the luggage, but they didn’t have much.
“Should I send a doctor with him or at least a nurse?” Julie asked.
Chummy shook his head. “Old Cory does this airplane-stealing trick all the time. There’s a slew of medical equipment onboard, and Rodney will get one of his on-call physicians to review everything remotely.”
“Hmm,” she said. “An ambitious man would have the job for himself. They say you recommended your company promote that almost-gone peddler and then you gave him an acolyte and a nurse and a successor all in one package?”
Zhu Zhang Li’s summary of Chummy as the chief architect of Cory and Rodney’s situation didn’t quite match the real history, but he was typically credited for the duo. “Mr. Jeffy hasn’t fired me yet.” Chummy lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. “I guess I haven’t set up too many bad video dramas with junior businessmen stabbing their bosses to take their jobs.”
She glanced at DeeDee, who had returned and stood shifting from one foot to the other.
“Hmm.” Julie walked over and took Chummy by the arm. “Let’s go then.”
DeeDee trailed after.
They walked through customs without stopping, which meant Julie at least didn’t feel cheated by the latest Shen Kong–TCG business arrangement. Business and government relations in China remained fairly confusing to outsiders. TCG’s corporate headquarters in Beijing mostly existed to facilitate subsidiary and vendor relationships with wholly Chinese companies. The potential for nationalization of corporate assets made even the extremely optimistic John-Philip Jeffy hesitant to engage in much direct competition with executives like Julie of Shen Kong. And she knew it.
“That rock you’re buying, it’s overpriced,” Julie confided in him. “So you might want to tell Aanderson to count his fingers and toes again when he reaches international airspace.”
Chummy shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll get along somehow. He says his doctors have made him half bionic already, so he might look forward to trying out a few toe prosthetics.” DeeDee was trailing behind. The turns of airport corridors hadn’t quite lost her, but she wasn’t close on their heels anymore. “Why did you really ask for me, Zhang Li?”
“Chummy, you remember my name.” She suppressed a smile. “But stick with Julie or I’ll start calling you Tchami and you’ll have to deal with everyone mangling the name in creative ways instead of with your preferred mispronunciation.”
He held his peace, waiting.
“Come on.” Julie shook her head. “You’re going to make me ask? You know I can double your salary.” When he didn’t speak, she added, “Triple it even. Or even give you something you actually want, because we both know you’re better than some European-American workers’ health and safety protector.”
“Human resources management specialist,” he corrected.
“Mmhmm.” Julie lifted an eyebrow. “Shen Kong could have an office in Yaoundé. Or Douala if you like the rainforest climate better.”
“There’s no spaceport in either,” Chummy pointed out.
Julie looked at him. “And why is that, do you suppose?”
DeeDee caught up, out of breath.
“Hello, little spy.” Julie greeted her in Mandarin which earned only a blink from the young assistant. The hubbub of a busy airport had the young assistant twitchy and focused on her own feet. When she could slow enough for it, she’d steal comforting glances at her own comm screen.
A soft vibration alerted Chummy to a message on his comm: “She called me a spy, but if you take the job with Shen Kong, can I come with? I don’t know any Chinese yet, but my programs have translator subroutines.”
Julie saw it.
“You win again,” she said in English. “Want to hire me a few unbreakably loyal assistants while you go over our asteroid retrieval crew candidates?”
“If you recall,” Chummy reminded her, “I did try to hire you not once but twice when you were at university.”
Julie made a face. “You had no interest in hiring me. John-Philip wanted to try exotic dating, and you came up with a scheme of getting me hired on by his father’s company, so he’d have enough to time to work up the nerve to ask me out.”
His comm vibrated again. DeeDee was trying desperately to disprove Julie’s assertion. That sort of hiring motivation would break several of TCG’s current Best Practices in Personnel Management directives.
They paused inside wide glass doors for an elegant vehicle to pull up.
“Please, Julie.” Chummy gave the senior executive a polite bow of head and shoulders, deeper than he probably needed, but the relaxation of tension in her face showed she appreciated the formality. “You’d’ve been an amazing hire. But you’d’ve been wasted in what we were then. TCG was just another Earth-focused multinational company. We might’ve been building some aerospace engines, but most of the company was and is in consumer goods. Our highest grossing product is a whitening toothpaste. Yours is minerals from asteroid mining. Our scale was too small for someone like you.”
Julie’s mouth twitched. She was mollified. Chummy made a note to have a talk with Cory Aanderson later. Twenty-some years was a long time to nurse a grudge about not being offered a job for the right reasons.
“But Julie,” Chummy continued, “I’ve met that corporate psychologist you have assessing those long-duration mission teams, and you don’t need me.”
“I do if you hire him away from me.” Julie raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen the signing bonus your people are offering for anyone with even a hint of space operational experience. Smart of you to just hire whole companies for much of the station design for the elevator’s upper anchor point, though. It makes the whole industry eager to help you instead of viewing you as the interloper you are.” Her eyes glinted with a smile that didn’t show on her lips. “And even so, it doesn’t take a futurist to predict TCG is planning to expand into at least the near-Earth service industry.”
“Are you looking for a promise?” he asked.
Julie gave him a level stare. “Consider it a warning.”
“Ethan tried to get him.” DeeDee helpfully supplied to his comm. Chummy gave Julie a knowing look.
“You have two of his three kids working for Shen Kong. They’re having the time of their lives on cramped little spaceships. We’ll come up with another teaming agreement at some point and pair some of our better people with him to learn the process. No one is going to steal your people, Julie. We need Shen Kong too much. You’re probably going to be our biggest customer for a long time! And I’ll talk to Ethan about it. But you’d have been insulted if he hadn’t made that play.”
Julie didn’t admit it, but she seemed mollified again. She knew all that, but she’d wanted to hear him say it.
Chummy definitely needed to get Cory Aanderson alone for a debrief. Something was going on.
“And as for hiring me?” Chummy gave her the wide-eyed look that generally drew laughs.
Julie raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“I don’t see what I could offer as a Shen Kong employee besides unnecessary costs—which you are quite famous for not tolerating.” He gave her an extra bow. China’s business environment would have eviscerated a weaker executive.
“Maybe,” she acknowledged. “Though I get nervous when you start buttering me up.”
The sleek black vehicle pulled up. A vending machine next to the glass doors offered air pollution masks, and DeeDee tried to get it to accept her cash cards.
“But the offer stands.” Julie smiled at him.
“I couldn’t,” Chummy declined. “Unless of course you wanted to date?” He batted his eyelashes at her and saw her finally relax into the normal cheerful mode he remembered from her college days.
Julie howled laughter. DeeDee turned from trying to make a mask selection to goggle at her boss. Chummy winked at them both.
“You aren’t my type, and I’m not yours either.” Julie finally recovered her breath enough to reply.
Taking mercy on DeeDee, she scanned a card under the vending machine’s reader. “I generally hold my breath and do the Beijing dash. The car’s got a fast-start filtration system. Though Hainan’s air is better than a lot of industrial areas. And my industry partners are moving more and more manufacturing off planet, so the air quality really is getting better, but go with the one with the bendable nose clip if you want to fuss with a mask.”
DeeDee listened and nodded along at Julie’s explanation. She bobble-headed accidentally when she tried to make a thank you bow at the same time as nodding.
Julie suppressed her laughter. “If you get your boss to come work for me, we are absolutely hiring you too.”
Chummy’s comm vibrated a third time; the message had been sent while Julie had her focus on the vending machine. DeeDee’s text scrolled across: “No record of job offer for any Zhu Zhang Li or Zhang Li Zhu or Julie Zhu or any common misspellings of those names.” He tapped the comm to silence it. He’d explain later.
DeeDee selected a pink mask with a fluffy kitten print and fit it over her nose and mouth. She reached for the buttons to pick out one for him, and Chummy shook his head.
“How do we do this Beijing Dash?” he asked.
Julie pressed a button and the vehicle’s nearest doors unlatched and slid open. “We send the assistant with the mask out with all the luggage while we wait. Then we run out, close the doors, and either turn purple or take a few breathes of nasty air while the assistant laughs at us.”
“I won’t laugh,” DeeDee promised earnestly.
It worked about as well as Julie had said, though the cabin air filter truly was fast, and he had a hacking coughing fit. Julie showed no signs of turning purple and managed to hold her breath an extra thirty seconds.
The doors whisked shut and fresh air poured in from vents all around. Julie took in a deep breath and patted him on the back.
They were settled into the vehicle: an all-in-one spacious cabin with windows all around and no steering wheel. It was configured for four seats facing each other with one of the rear-facing seats removed to make space for luggage. DeeDee had taken the furthest rear-facing seat and plugged into a data port. Julie settled into the forward-facing seat furthest from the door and Chummy had joined her in the last one.
Julie got the vehicle moving with a few quick button presses on her armrest.
“All jokes aside, we’re good, though, right?” Chummy smiled at her. A company like Shen Kong could be an extremely valuable partner for TCG if the space elevator succeeded. China more than any nation had embraced the goal of moving industrial processes off planet, but they still had a lot of heavy industry and its pollution left. They needed a cheaper way to move more Earth-sourced materials up and delicate finished products down.
“With Aanderson’s deal?” Julie quirked an eyebrow at him. “I wouldn’t have signed it if I weren’t.” Her eyes tracked over to DeeDee who sat quietly, head bowed over her plugged-in comm. She looked back at Chummy.
“Are you happy?” Julie asked. “You want something. And it doesn’t involve a date. My company has data miners too, you know. And you haven’t been standing behind your buddy Jeffy in several of the last quarterly video sessions with shareholders. They’ve got the usual chicken-entrails guesses about what that means, but if you aren’t happy, just know that Shen Kong would be delighted to help you find a new home.”
“Just busy,” Chummy insisted. “You may have heard that there’s a space elevator under construction.”
Julie nodded. “Might’ve heard something like that.”
“Speaking of space elevators,” Chummy said, “let’s talk about the asteroid retrieval. Give me info. How long is the crewed portion of the mission? What kinds of skills do the specialists need? And is there anyone you’ve already picked out as absolutely critical that we’ll have to form the team around?”
DeeDee’s eyes lit up as Julie linked the vehicle into corporate systems and provided a database full of past mission data and current space crew profiles. A large side window blanked the view of Haikou’s streets and became a screen.
“The usual,” Julie said. She highlighted a few of the major parts of the mission plan. “We’ve done this sort of thing before on a more distributed scale out in the Belt. The only significant difference is bringing an intact rock all the way back instead of pushing it to a convenient spot for shredding into more commercial components.”
Chummy scrolled through the employee files on the prospective team and laughed. These were a well-matched team with long experience working together. “Julie, did you really only pull me halfway around the world only to make a job offer? You don’t need any input on this team. They’re repeat performers, and you’ve already got them in orbit.”
Julie smiled. “Aanderson offered, and it didn’t cost Shen Kong anything. Did you expect me to decline an advantage in the middle of negotiating a major business arrangement?” She folded her hands. “So. Your turn. Tell me about the teams my people are going to be working with. Our space crew selection might be final, but I wouldn’t mind your thoughts on the shifts of ground support teams. And it’d be especially useful to us if you’d share how you plan to populate the elevator team.”
DeeDee’s head snapped up, eyes wide.
Chummy arched an inquisitive eyebrow at Julie. To DeeDee he tapped his comm once to repeat the last message he’d sent her: “Later.”
“After the elevator’s built,” Julie expanded, “do you intend to use TCG employees to serve as station crew, or will there be, shall we say, leasing opportunities?”
Chummy tried to imagine Ethan Schmidt-Li working effectively with not just a multinational ground crew at Kilimanjaro but also a station crew supplied by a subsidiary which might have different financial motivations. It sounded horrific.
“I’m open to hearing your thoughts,” he said.
Julie watched DeeDee, who hadn’t even blinked. “No, you’re not,” she translated, and relaxed. “Good. You haven’t gone insane on me. We added in plenty of clauses that allow fractional payment for fractional deliveries up and down, but I’m really hoping you and Jeffy don’t make a total hash of this thing. Stick with one central authority running things. Please!”
She flipped out a compact and smoothed a touch of powder on her face. “Most of my futures planners thought you would, but I’ve got some oddballs who were absolutely convinced that there had to be some kind of side project going on.” DeeDee did blink then, but Julie missed it. “And keep the governments out of it, or mine might need to go to war over it.”
DeeDee lost all her color at that, which Julie did notice. “That’d be bad for business,” Chummy agreed.
“Just kidding!” Julie broke into a broad grin. “Did you see your assistant’s reaction?”
The set of Chummy’s jaw tightened despite his efforts to keep up a calm front.
“Fine,” Julie said, still smiling. “You don’t like teasing the staff. I get it.”
“I’d prefer not to threaten Armageddon prematurely,” he agreed.
“I didn’t see it at first because she seemed on edge, but I get it now.” Julie nodded. “And you care deeply about your protégés. I learn something from Jeffy every time. He gives you people to help you and you give him loyalty.”
DeeDee seemed on edge. Chummy’s stomach dropped. His assistant was nervous, and she had been before the whole war-of-the-elevator idea had been brought up. She was worried about something, and she hadn’t said a word to him. He ran through his day in reverse and found the reason for her anxiety. He’d sent proprietary files to a non-company comm in front of her when he’d sleepily messaged Maurie and Pascaline about the western launcher. Shit.
Had she talked with Samson about it yet? With her tendency to use electronics for as much human conversation as she possibly could, there’d be records all over the place of her knowledge when it all came out. He didn’t want her fired. He could get her a position with the Sadous, but she’d hate that.
Julie misread his discomfort. “You can’t take a joke at all anymore, can you?” Julie rapped on the side of the vehicle and the doors swung open. “We’re here. Try not to look like I just kicked your puppy.”
The vehicle had circled back around and returned to the same airport terminal.
Chummy got out, nodded to Julie—who waved rather than speak in the smoggy air—and walked back inside. DeeDee followed a moment later with her gear and her mask.
“Our jet is still here,” DeeDee volunteered. “Mr. Aanderson hasn’t left yet.”
“About the files…” he started to say.
“Yes, ‘Later,’” DeeDee answered. “I got the message.” She dropped her mask in a recycling bin. “Mr. Rodney Johnson says we’ve got a slot for takeoff soon, so we need to get moving.”
“They’d’ve better air quality if they didn’t take a drive just to have a conversation.”
“Mmm,” DeeDee agreed. She towed the luggage and led the way through the airport. Officials nodded at them and waved them past security checks as they headed to the private aircraft gates.
“Or we could have done it remotely and saved the trip.” Chummy was feeling increasingly grumpy.
“They have a higher level of corporate security here,” DeeDee said. “This all makes perfect sense. ‘Later,’ okay, boss?”