Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER TWELVE

Grandpere’s current personal aide, Fatima, met Maurie at one of the Limbe airstrips. The beach town at the base of the mountain wasn’t far from Buea. From the scowl on her face, Maurie doubted Pascaline’s travel arrangements for her had been to Fatima’s liking. Her cousin was somewhere on the northern roads again returning Great Aunt Mami’s car and possibly trying to further calm Uncle Benoit down. The idea of Pascaline as a peacemaker brought a smile to Maurie’s lips; an expression not appreciated at all by Fatima.

“You should have landed in Douala,” Fatima said, giving Maurie a pinch-lipped glare. No “Ms. Sadou, may I help you, ma’am?” pleasantries from this woman. Her contempt was almost refreshing after the flight. Not quite, though.

The all-amenities inclusive flight on a small jet part-leased and part-borrowed from a friend of Uncle Benoit’s had involved a full staff. But in the typical state of things they were nervous part-time staff who desperately wanted to impress a Sadou dropped into their midst and perhaps earn a full-time place in her extended family’s employ. She could maybe employ the ground crew who serviced the machine, but probably no one else. And of course the mechanics were the only ones she didn’t meet.

“Thank you for picking me up,” Maurie said instead of the things she might have.

She examined the woman for a moment. Fatima stopped to the talk with the charter crew for a moment before discovering Maurie had no luggage beyond what she was already holding and hurrying back.

Fatima had new breasts and something had been done to her ears. They were flattened against her skull a bit more. Fatima’s straightened hair hung in a simple ponytail today without any blackest-black lowlights, and her eyeliner was mussed in a way that didn’t look intentional. She noticed the inspection and didn’t care for it.

“What do you have against beauty anyway?” Fatima said.

“You do know you’ve always been gorgeous,” Maurie said, trying to be consolatory. It would have been a bit easier to do if she’d believed it. Maurie didn’t remember what Fatima had looked like before the touchups started, so she’d probably been sort of average.

Fatima still looked pretty with her face screwed up like that. It was amazing really. The ears looked vaguely familiar. Was there a famous musician with that overly rounded shape?

Curiosity got the better of Maurie. “The ears are an interesting choice. What doctor are you using now?”

Fatima gave a long-suffering sigh. “Mr. Sadou is waiting for you in the car. He is very busy. Do not waste his time.” She turned on bleach-white tennis shoes and stomped off to the waiting vehicle. “Some of us have work to do.”

Unlike a lot of others who’d tried cosmetic surgery, the aide’s changes always worked for her. When Fatima had taken the nursing job, she had, Maurie was told, acted like it was a marriage audition. But Grandpere wasn’t interested in remarrying, at least not to someone the approximate age of his grandchildren and had told Pascaline to explain the facts of life to her.

A realization dawned on Maurie as she looked at the back of Fatima’s squat neck where the puffiness and red marks from a not quite healed touchup made the sleek ponytail seem painful rather than snobbish. She’d been present when Grandpere had told Pascaline to do it, but somehow Pascaline hadn’t delivered the message. It had been Maurie who was talked into doing it in Pascaline’s stead, and yet Maurie had no recollection of how that had come about.

Her cousin’s knack for giving away trouble like that should have made Pascaline eminently unwelcome. But every family needed someone who remembered to order the toilet paper restocked and to double-check on the maintenance that kept the generators running. Or at least to make sure a senior staff member who did so stayed with them.

Maurie let her mind wander back to Chummy’s project. There had to be other companies who’d be contracted to deliver carbon and other stuff up to TCG soon. She didn’t expect Sadou Corporation to end up with even half a billion out of the multibillions it could be. The stuff about a supersonic engine with maglev assist for a heavy-use surface-to-orbit lift system meant the whole thing was complicated. But Uncle Chummy believed they could do it. And when he thought that, he was right.

What was his actual message again?

“Here’s the work of a few specialists to help with the project. This is a one shot thing. I need you to put everything you’ve got into making this work.”

Supplying the space elevator during its multiyear construction phase would have been such an elegant way to jump-start a space industry. She raised a hand to block the sun and peered upslope toward the peak of the mountain. Clouds obscured it from view. The Endeleys owned this mountain, and she had it from Great Aunt Mami herself that Pascaline had just recently personally insulted their favored son, Endeley Adamou.

Grandpere suggested that she would charm him enough that Pascaline would be no trouble. Fatima’s eyerolls were not encouraging. Sometimes she wondered if the rest of the family were blind.

Probably just as well. A mountain in Ecuador would be nice. And then they’d have to hire out to someone else to do all the work. She imagined the opinions the legendary spirit of the mountain might have about being used as a spaceport and had to suppress a laugh. The Mami-Wata nightmares had turned her thoughts far too wild to be spoken aloud.

“Are you coming, Ms. Maurie?” Fatima stood next to a pearl gray van with her arms crossed.

“Your hair looks really nice,” Maurie said, trying politeness again. “Grandpere suggested I come straight here. How is he doing today?”

“See for yourself.” Fatima still hadn’t forgiven her. The aide flung her car door open and climbed into the driver’s seat.

The rear passenger door opened at a button press. Waves of approval from Grandpere washed over Maurie as he positively beamed at her. It was impossible not to smile back.

“Maurie, Maurie! So good to see you!” Grandpere beckoned her inside where the flush of air-conditioning hit her with an instant chill.

He closed the door behind her.

“Ms. Maurie, seat belt, please,” Fatima said, and she nosed the car out of the parking lot.

Maurie rushed to comply, but Grandpere laughed at her hurry. Fatima drove slowly and carefully. Few vehicles joined them on the outer edge of Limbe, and Buea’s streets weren’t particularly crowded either. Some of the buildings lining the road looked like they might have been boarded up a decade or so ago, but since then trash pickers had found a better use for the plywood.

“Did Fatima tell you our big secret?” Grandpere’s grin couldn’t get any wider.

Fatima spoke up before Maurie could answer. “I saved it for you, Mr. Sadou.” Fatima’s mood change toward Maurie might be false, but the assistant did have genuine affection for the old man.

“Did you…” Maurie trailed off. She wished she’d paid more attention to Fatima’s hands. If Grandpere had changed his mind and decided to marry his assistant after all, she might need to punch Pascaline. But no, Fatima seemed frazzled, not triumphant. “I give up. What’s the big surprise?”

“Your Uncle Fabrice has done the most wonderful thing!” Grandpere had never looked so smug or so triumphant. Maurie was used to him looking old, but today his wrinkles were laugh lines and he sat straighter than she’d ever remembered seeing him. Had the signs she’d taken for age been exhaustion before? But he had a fat mug of coffee in the armrest and from the rumpled creases on his normally pristine clothes, he hadn’t been resting or slowing down enough to let even Fatima maintain her own normally polished appearance. “Whatever you were doing for the next couple years,” Grandpere continued, “cancel it. I’ve got things for you to do.”

“Years.” Maurie repeated, mystified. Did he really not see that they were going to have to pass this off to someone else? Indonesia, if not Ecuador. The Bakweri were not going to be selling them a mountain even if Pascaline hadn’t just offended Adamou. The Bakweri hadn’t even let the Germans, British, or French have the mountain itself in the 1800s or 1900s. The colonizers had been stuck on the shoreline and inland.

“Five years, I think,” he said, “but at least two and maybe quite a bit more if we do it right. We’ve got a contract with the space elevator.”

Maurie blinked; oh, poor man. Nobody had told him about Pascaline and Adamou. “Ah, yes, Grandpere. Do you want me to go to Ecuador or Indonesia first to see about backup-site options?” Surely he knew that the Bakweri people held their mountain sacred, and the other mountains nearby weren’t tall enough. Their chief would never allow a bunch of outsiders to build something like Uncle Chummy’s launcher up the side of it.

“No, no, we’re doing it here.” Grandpere slapped his armrest and the other hand generally in the direction of the mountain peak. “Mount Fako will make a wonderful spaceport.”

“Have you talked to the Bakweri chief about it?” she said. Fatima gave her a minute shake of her head, but Maurie had to know.

“Yes!” Grandpere fairly bounced in his seat. “At first, I’ll admit”—he pressed his hands together in a gesture of prayer toward the roof of the van—“I thought Fabrice’s risks might all be for nothing. We could buy rockets and set up a launch pad somewhere in the savannah maybe, but that wouldn’t make anyone a reasonable profit even with supplying our own fuel. It has to make money with a good-sized margin.” He knocked his fist on the armrest again in emphasis. “Remember that. Margins.”

“But the mountain,” Maurie said.

“Oh, yes.” Grandpere looked out the window at it with a pleased expression of ownership. “I offered to buy it.”

“They said no.” Fatima pointed out. Of course they did. Maurie nodded.

Grandpere made a face, not losing his grin. “But they asked me to come back and talk again. We get to negotiate.” He rubbed his hands together in pure delight.


In Buea, Endeley Adamou waited for the Sadous at the Bakweri compound gate in full priestly regalia. A light wind flapped the blue tarp held down with rocks on the neighbor’s roof. As a temporary roof repair turned semipermanent, it worked. His uncle’s place showed no such disrepair. Good concrete and brightly painted walls as befitted a chief and, like the neighbors, the house had a two-story wall surrounding it. That also worked.

The wide gate stood open, as it usually did. The sounds of the open-air market down the street drifted back. Some street performers played folk songs about the mountain, and he did his best to repress his grin.

His uncle, the chief, had been quite clear on that. “Stand there and let people see you being all spiritual, but don’t smirk. Pretend everyone isn’t looking at you. Pretend you wear that getup all the time. Nobody, well, hardly anyone, actually believes this shit. But it’ll be a construction site. There’ll be injuries, maybe even some deaths if the Sadous are sloppy, and I don’t want people deciding Fako is against it.” Then his uncle, who clearly saw nothing wrong with a chief wearing a face-splitting grin, had bounced with delight at the sound of an approaching car. “I’ll be waiting in the office. You stand here and give directions. Don’t explain anything. Don’t answer anything about our plans or make any agreements.”

Dibussi, the cook’s boy, a tall eight with a fluff of untamable hair, hung back in the wall’s shadow on the inside of the gate. Adamou obediently pulled on a bland expression, and when his uncle’s back turned, winked at the boy, who clapped his hands over his mouth in delight.

The whole tribe had plenty to celebrate if this deal could be made. The press had more news reports about Kilimanjaro. The presidents of Tanzania and Kenya both had eloquent things to say about their support of TCG and how precious and unique Mount Kilimanjaro was with many mentions of its great height and how right it was for the space elevator to be built there, as opposed to the many other sites now being put forward by nations who hoped to convince TCG to change construction plans.

“We have a mountain too,” his uncle had pointed out when they discussed the news and weighed various options for work with the Sadous.

The speculative look on the chief’s face had turned to a grin when he’d noticed Adamou’s concern. “Don’t worry. I understand that I’m negotiating with Sadou Moussa and not with TCG directly. I won’t make him promise to shift the whole elevator construction itself to our side of the continent. But, we do have the mountain. And he can’t do it without us.”

The window of the chief’s office cracked open, and Adamou heard him whistling the tune to the ballad about a chief who traded volcanic rocks for treasure. Adamou sent Dibussi scrambling off to close the window. The Sadous might not take the sentiment well if they recognized the song.

Pascaline hadn’t answered his phone calls, but the Bakweri chief’s call to Sadou Moussa had resulted in an immediately scheduled meeting. And then it had been delayed. The Sadou patriarch’s aide had said, “Mr. Sadou is picking up a grandchild who will also attend.” The woman on the phone had muttered the word grandchild like it was a curse, so he was certain it had to be Pascaline.

Adamou amused himself planning the things he could say about favors to the sharp-tongued beautiful woman. Or maybe he’d suggest that she owed him the favor now?

His priestly robe with its layers and thick embroidery itched, but they were part of the role. People would feel better about the chances of the big project with somebody dressed up fancy as if the enormous pile of rock and dirt had some kind of essence that could be consulted. And his uncle was right about the sulfur stink being thoroughly embedded in the cloth. He imagined Pascaline’s wrinkled nose. Would she say something or pretend not to notice?

Dibussi headed back at a run when the van pulled in through the gate. He signaled the boy to close the gate. No need to risk a bored kid scratching the important visitor’s car while Mr. Sadou and the chief had their very important discussion.

The visitor’s van had the battered rims and deep-threaded tires of a vehicle routinely used on unpaved roads, but its polish gleamed. He thought it suited the head of the Sadou family rather well.

The woman who emerged first was not Pascaline. Startlingly gorgeous and wearing white nurse’s shoes, she ignored him and rushed around to the passenger to hold out an arm for Sadou Moussa as he stepped carefully out. The second woman who emerged with the patriarch was also not Pascaline. She was just as startling in a garish red snakeskin-print outfit with hair that had to be intentional but managed to look like messy braids following camping for two weeks. And then they shut the doors with no one else coming out.

“Ms. Maurie,” the first woman said with a scowl at the second woman, “I will help Mr. Sadou.”

Dibussi slid up next to Adamou to whisper identifications. The man was Moussa, the Sadou patriarch. The stunner was his aide Fatima, and the last was Sadou Maurie, one of his grandchildren.

“Fatima knows the way.” Sadou Moussa cast a knowing look at Adamou, smiling in a way that made him wonder what else his uncle might have discussed. “We’ll go speak with the chief. Why don’t you and young Adamou here get to know each other?”

Sadou Maurie looked just as annoyed to be left out as he was.

“Is there some kind of festival going on?” Maurie nodded at his robes. “Something smells very, um, mountain.”

“Volcano,” he agreed. “Let’s follow them in. I can’t let my uncle take everything your grandfather’s got or you’ll have nothing left to build this launcher system with.”

Maurie gaped at him. The expression would have meant a lot more on Pascaline’s face. “Wait. Is Mount Fako a very active volcano? I mean, I know it’s had some lava flows sometimes, but surely that’s only semi-active or something like that, technically, right?”

He arched an eyebrow. The ashen pallor of her face didn’t do her any favors even with the off-putting witch-lady aura of her aggressively red outfit taken into consideration.

“The correct term is ‘active,’ even when an eruption is predicted to be a long time off,” Adamou said. “It has microtremors every now and then and we’ve got gas venting often. If you want me to predict the end of days, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

“But we can’t build on an unstable surface!” Maurie looked like she wanted to run after her grandfather and pull him out of the house.

Adamou blocked her path. “We can work with it.”

“There’s got to be another option.” Maurie dodged to the left like she was going to skip around him but crumpled. She caught herself, using his shoulder to hold herself up.

“Dibussi!” Adamou called out to the cook’s son, “Bring us a chair.”

The kid dashed off, wide-eyed.

Maurie removed her hand from his shoulder. “I’m fine,” she said.

“Um, sure.” Something of Pascaline’s backbone showed up in the milder cousin too, it appeared. “But I’m overheating a bit in this thing,” he lied smoothly in return, “so why don’t we both get into the air-conditioning?”

He convinced her to take his arm, and she leaned heavily enough on it that it was clear she wasn’t fine.

As they reached the front entry, Dibussi almost bumped into them. He had a sturdy wood armchair over his head and was knocking it into the door sill. The kid returned the chair to its seating arrangement, and Adamou dispatched him for water.

Adamou’s uncle, Sadou Moussa, and Fatima had the door to the chief’s office closed, so he couldn’t listen in to the more interesting discussions that must be starting.

Maurie’s comm chose that moment to ring. She slipped the device out of her pocket and set it on the table. The still-locked screen showed a video feed closeup of Pascaline’s face. “I know you’re there, Maurie. Fatima messaged me when you got to the Endeleys and told me she’d replaced your comm with this one. Turn on at least the audio. I want to hear what Grandpere has to say.”

Adamou tapped the answer button and angled it so Pascaline could see both of them.

“You and me both,” Maurie said. “Grandpere went off separately to go trade the family fortune for a handful of magic beans.”

“Magic rocks and far more than a handful,” Adamou corrected. “Also, expect it to be a more long-term partnership than a simple sales transaction.”

“Adamou?” Pascaline said.

Her expression was quite delightfully surprised, and he wanted to see her work through disbelief and finally recognition. But, he was also mid-argument with her cousin, Maurie, who might cause troubles for his uncle’s arrangements with the Sadou family, if he let her doubts about the suitability of Fako as a launch ground go unanswered. So he ignored Pascaline.

“I’m not saying it would be a good idea to build the space elevator on Fako, but we’ve had the town of Buea halfway up the mountain for many centuries without ever having a National Geographic–worthy disaster. Our Fako is a friendly sort of volcano. And, as I understand it, this is a launcher, not a lander. If there’s a microtremor in progress, we’ll just delay the launch, right?”

Maurie accepted a glass of water from Dibussi and drank it. She looked at her comm. “You’re the engineer. What do you think, Pascaline?”

“Why are you even here?” Pascaline had ignored Maurie’s question, he noted. “And what have you done to my cousin? She was fully healthy when I put her on the plane.”

Maurie did seem wan. She more lay in the chair than sat in it. She used both hands to drink. “Just trying to keep everyone from going broke,” she said.

“Mountain people are hard for you flatlanders to handle,” Adamou said.

“Yeah, right.” Pascaline made a face at him. “You break my cousin, you’re going to owe me double. Maurie.” Pascaline snapped her fingers right next to the microphone so it made a nasty crackling noise through the speakers on their side. “Send him the files from Uncle Chummy. He owes me. They’ve been on Fako and the other mountains in the Mandaras range for centuries. Tribe, not family, remember. He’ll have more engineers of all types than we do and some of them might even have specialized in something useful for the people who never left home.”

Maurie did not move to give him anything, so Adamou helped himself to the data transfer with directions from Pascaline about which ones to read first.

He didn’t get very far in before Maurie rallied enough to protest. “That’s private and if you share it around, my family will take you to court.”

Adamou shot a disbelieving look at Pascaline. She merely rolled her eyes at her cousin.

“It is private,” he noticed. “But it’s marked ‘TCG internal-only’ with nothing at all about it belonging on your devices.”

Maurie shifted uncomfortably.

“Some people have trouble adjusting to reality,” Pascaline said. “You’re an Endeley, and if the Bakweri chief has you there while he works out the details with Grandpere, you are far more involved in running things than Great Aunt Mami chose to mention in her little summaries.”

Adamou gave her a shrug and a smile.

“Fuck reality.” Maurie emptied her water glass. Then saw little Dibussi hovering and waiting to refill it. She blushed. “Sorry, kid.”

“I bring out the worst in her,” Pascaline said, not without pride.

Dibussi, who’d heard worse, winked.

“Hmm.” Adamou skimmed through more of the files. “Do you realize TCG’s aerospace subcontractors have documents in here warrantying this as a tested design?” He looked at Maurie since she was the one in the room. “What are you worried about?”

She accepted more water from Dibussi and thanked him most politely. He grinned back and scampered off to refill the pitcher.

“I don’t want to talk about it outside the family,” she said.

“Well, to summarize,” Pascaline ignored her cousin’s glare and continued, “we’ve got a major deal here, that might not work at all if your tribe decides to pitch a fit about old-time religion, and it’s pretty clear that the most successful guy the extended family has ever managed to get related to us has risked everything he’s got to give us this one chance. And oh, by the way, you may not follow oil futures, because, you know, it’s just some other little family’s thing and not one that’s related to the cashflow for your tribe’s elite, but the taxes from oil and natural gas fund a massive portion of that thing we mere families like to call a government. So unless the tribal leaders want to step up and start covering elementary school construction and police officers’ pension plans, and, oh yeah, roads and infrastructure”—Pascaline batted her eyes at him—“you might want to use that goofy outfit to convince a certain chief to let us use a slice of a really tall mountain to make some money. Because if this doesn’t work, I’m betting my rich uncle has enough personal savings set aside to let my little family live at his French villa in relative comfort for the rest of our lives, because unlike some people, we Sadous don’t have whole tribes to watch out for.”

“Nice rant.” Adamou saluted the comm screen. “But I give you about six months confined in a villa with your relatives before you steal the silver spoons and start hitchhiking to freedom. If, that is, someone else hasn’t stolen everything not nailed down first and used it to buy some random toy. Your aunts and uncles don’t have much of a reputation for frugality.”

“Are you sure you aren’t related to us?” Maurie muttered.

“I’m working on that,” he said.

Pascaline’s mouth tightened.

Excellent. Adamou beckoned Dibussi in and presented Maurie with a plate of Hadjara’s chocolates. They had little hearts drawn in milk chocolate swirls.

Maurie ate one. Adamou held another up to the screen. “If you’d come yourself, you’d be having chocolate too.”

“He’s no relation, Maurie,” Pascaline said. “And I expect you to save me some of those chocolates if they’re any good.”

“They’re horrible,” her cousin answered, reaching for another.

“I want two, no, make it four,” Pascaline said. “And you can find out where he gets them.”

“We aren’t related yet,” Adamou said, “but Pascaline and I are engaged.”

He smiled serenely as Pascaline opened her mouth and shut it again without saying anything.

“If you’d like to be, that is.” Amadou gave the comm screen a bow followed by a slow wink.

Maurie just ate a third chocolate rather than interrupt.

“Hey,” Pascaline snapped, “I think some congratulations are in order.”

“Congratulations.” Maurie nodded at Pascaline, but not as though she really meant it. To Adamou she said, “Are you sure that’s a good idea? You have met her in person?”

Adamou removed the chocolates.

“Fine.” Maurie held up her hands. “I withdraw the question. It just isn’t often my cousin gets along with, uh, real live people.”

“There’s nothing wrong with needing a little space,” he said, surprised at the growl of anger in his voice. “And of course it’s purely business. We have our own little spaceport to build. Nothing like the elevator itself, but things will go more smoothly if your family has a few more ties to the stronger tribes. I can make some introductions for you too, if you want.”

“She doesn’t need any introductions,” Pascaline interrupted. “Maurie’s an old soul loved by all but too busy saving humanity for any real relationships. And besides, Great Aunt Mami’s plans won’t work if she’s running around dating half the tribal princes in the country.”

“That is way overstating it,” Maurie said. “I’m just sick of dating right now. Again, tell Great Aunt Mami that I’m sorry again about letting the comm get broken, and I need the name of that clinic she said was good for bush diseases, like, yesterday…”

“Ignore her,” Pascaline said to Adamou. “According to our Great Aunt Mami, our Little Maurie has been possessed by a water spirit and hasn’t come to terms with it yet.”

Maurie’s jaw dropped. Pascaline added more softly, “Great Aunt Mami’s doctor called several times. It’s hard to reach someone who shattered her comm. He’s got some concerns, and yeah, I did get Fatima to make you an appointment.”

Adamou considered Maurie’s outfit more carefully. She did look like some of those posters of the made-up water spirit Mami-Wata, if you left off the snake familiar.

“I think she needs to hiss a bit more if she expects that to be interpreted as a cobra face.” Adamou raised an eyebrow at Pascaline. “Are you sure about this? My divine connection thing has been going on quite a while and is mostly about making people feel better about doing the things they were going to do anyway. So it’s an easy sell. What’s up with trying to channel a folklore spirit best known for drowning kids who play at the beach without supervision?”

“He’s a coastal boy,” Pascaline said. “You have to make allowances. He doesn’t understand what streambeds mean to people living closer to the desert edge.”

“It’s only been some fever dreams,” Maurie protested.

Adamou gave her a sharp look and almost missed Pascaline’s eyes widening.

“Right. Adamou has mentioned that certain members of our family aren’t particularly known for their frugality. Well, Great Aunt Mami and Grandpere have had some discussions.”

“Which you influenced by being right next to Great Aunt while I was stuck by myself on an aircraft that was supposed to have you on it too,” Maurie accused.

Pascaline shrugged. “Uncle Chummy did say he needed us to give this everything we’ve got. I’m giving it you.”

Maurie ate another chocolate. There weren’t going to be four left for Pascaline. At this rate there might not be any.

“Anyway, fiancé”—Pascaline nodded at Adamou—“our Maurie has been made project treasurer. All purchases and expenses will have to go through her and her secretaries. And everyone knows Mami-Wata showers down riches on her devotees and snatches them back away again like a draining flood if you don’t keep perfectly true to her. So, no dates for Maurie.”

Dibussi ran back into the room and flashed him a double thumbs-up. “They did it. They agreed.” He vanished again just as quickly off to spread the news.


Back | Next
Framed