CHAPTER SIX
Fabrice Tchami, known company-wide as Chummy to everyone but the CEO down the hall, flexed his fingers and prepared to work administrative magic. His tools of choice were a battered desk and a connection to the corporate network. He used the same monitor and keyboard devices all the entry-level employees got; he didn’t need anything fancier.
He also didn’t want them. The latest generation neural monitor DeeDee had attempted to use for a few weeks stuck out of the office trashcan. But she really did seem to like the newest VR-compatible gloves for large dataset analysis tasks.
The office had a few more generous touches, because Jeffy insisted on it. And Chummy did appreciate them, but he could have done without. The white-noise maker by the door, the deluxe office chair, and the combination air scrubber and freshener with the lemon grove scent pod were overkill. Or maybe they were Jeffy’s way of making sure Chummy felt both appreciated and indebted to the company. In which case they were working perfectly.
Because Chummy felt like shit.
He clocked out for his lunch hour. He could at least do his cheating on his own time. Since on a slow week he typically logged around eighty hours and the minimum was thirty-five, it was a meaningless gesture, but he felt slightly better about it.
The contract had gone through. Ethan Schmidt-Li had signed off on it. Sadou Moussa’s electronic signature had been applied. Legal had filed a copy. Finance had dumped a great pile of money into a new escrow account and a withdrawal for the first quarter awaited only the Sadou Corporation designating an authorized individual to make the transfer.
None of the amounts were significant compared to the cost of the elevator itself or TCG’s annual operating budget, and, Chummy reminded himself, as long as Sadous could deliver on the contract it would be a good price for the service. But only if.
Chummy needed to do something or this golden ticket could transmute into a Midas curse. Aunt Mami would tell him he was incubating fine eggs without knowing if they’d hatch wild geese or cobras.
Geese. He intended it to be geese. A whole flock of them laying golden eggs that hatched other geese that laid golden eggs and the whole Sadou family and their children and children’s children could spend their days employed in metaphorical geese tending. That and separating 24-karat eggshell bits from the dung and straw of old goose nests. He couldn’t imagine any future without some amount of work. Chummy was too much of a realist for that.
Or he’d take the snake version instead if the snake’s eggshells were also gold. Antivenom treatments were very well understood these days.
He hadn’t, quite, betrayed Jeffy’s trust by keeping Sadou Moussa’s. If only enough people of the right skills could be found to support the Sadou patriarch, Jeffy could have his elevator and the Sadous could have this small assist into that new economy as well.
All Chummy had to do was bend his own scruples a little bit more.
TCG had so very many teams working on projects. No one cross-checked them all. Well, no one else. And Ethan might be one of Chummy’s better finds, but he was new in his position. He certainly didn’t have Chummy’s expertise in leveraging the cracks between the corporate hierarchies.
He forwarded a message with a copied bit of this manager’s report and a different copied bit of that manager’s report and a few attachments to push them all in the direction he wanted them to go. It took a knowledge of the engineering teams, their interests, and their competitive attitudes, but Chummy could direct researchers to examine the launcher problem without looking like he’d started the work at all. In separate one-on-one messages, he let the managers he’d selected know he could help them find funding lines with available hours if their teams needed more charge codes. They thanked him effusively for the unexpected support and assured him that they appreciated their teams being remembered for work supporting Jeffy’s top project.
A cartoon with blonde hair and bat wings waved from the lower right corner of Chummy’s screen.
His assistant, DeeDee Nelson, should be asleep. He’d sent her home hours ago after discovering she’d pulled an all-nighter scouring employee files and recruiter candidate submissions for the perfect public relations specialist.
And he had his other assistant, Samson Young, traveling. If, later, this all fell apart and the cutthroats he’d put on the corporate ethics team came after him, they’d find the time stamps proved his assistants had nothing to do with it.
Ethan Schmidt-Li’s interoffice employee thefts had continued to mount, so Chummy had sent Samson on personal visits to all of the offended managers’ offices. Samson had a snaggletooth grin and legs that didn’t work, but he had a motor chair with racing stripes and could achieve likeable faster than anyone else Chummy had ever hired. And that skill, of course, was why Chummy had kept the young man for himself. He’d have to give the kid up soon to let him grow into his full potential, but for now the Samson and DeeDee pair were perfect. Well, perfect when he wasn’t trying to stop their efforts to assist him.
The cartoon waggled its wings again to get his attention.
If DeeDee were monitoring his work, she already knew he was scheming. He had hoped she was still too tired to have noticed, and he didn’t want to draw her attention to the things neither assistant should be involved in. So he made no effort to hide anything. As long as he didn’t hide his work, there was a good chance she’d not have time to look at it.
A tap on the touch screen acknowledged the little cartoon. A text bubble opened.
“Hi Boss!” it said. “The interoffice calendar has you on personal time still. Want me to fix that?”
“Go to sleep, DeeDee,” Chummy typed back.
“I’m not DeeDee. I’m a construct she built to check for accurate time card alerts.” The cartoon smiled and flapped its bat wings. “Would you like me to wake her?”
Meticulous DeeDee and her programs. He did vaguely remember explaining to her after the third time she’d neglected to submit her time report that company policy called for employee termination to be considered any time two inaccurate time reports were made within a six-month period by the same employee. And he’d said that he’d keep filing the manager’s correction paperwork to keep her employed, but would she please do whatever was necessary to stop forgetting?
Her tendency as a new hire to not file reports wasn’t the same as intentionally submitting inaccurate ones—even within the most draconian reading of that particular policy she hadn’t been in any real danger of termination, but Chummy hadn’t fully understood DeeDee back then.
Her meticulous attention to detail had been clear from the first, but he’d been less careful about his own words than he could have been. And there had been some junior vice president or another who’d wanted Chummy out and had needled him in a meeting about his newly hired assistant flouting policy.
She’d fixed the problem, and he’d never thought to ask how. DeeDee Nelson was a truly dedicated assistant who might be about to get him fired if, after she woke up, she had enough time to check her program’s logs.
He was in too far to stop now. He’d find things to keep her busy.
“Would you like me to wake DeeDee?” the cartoon asked again.
“No, thank you.” Chummy watched the cartoon take a bow and vanish into the corner of his screen.
After a moment he pulled up his time card and marked himself as back from lunch. If he backdated the work time to start when he’d logged into the network, would DeeDee be less inclined to check what his actual work had been? He’d have to allocate the time toward a particular time-charging code, and she would want to check to make sure he’d picked the right one. Let it stay a lunch break.
Chummy selected “human resources general operations” as his charge code for the next couple hours. He’d be able to find plenty of things to pile up in DeeDee’s inbox while he checked on the status of the company.
And he needed to check on Samson’s work anyway. Ethan knew more North American employees than German or Chinese ones, so complaints were coming in from European and Asian engineering managers who hadn’t been robbed of people. Samson did such good work convincing team leaders to feel honored about having their best people stolen for the elevator that they were bragging about it.
From Samson’s notes, he needed a bit more funding for recruiting replacements. Some of the managers wanted to increase the workload on their remaining staff without new hires in order to claim efficiencies for their own evaluations. Chummy added assessments of those managers to DeeDee’s to-do pile.
He sent Samson a reminder to drop a word in those managers’ ears about the company liking to see the same managerial staff achieve benchmark goals for at least a year post staff reduction. Gut a staff, claim enough corporate savings to gain a promotion out into a new part of the company, and leave the old team broken behind them? Not with Chummy on the job, they wouldn’t. He expected they’d want their full teams.
Though some of them might truly be overstaffed for their workloads. He added a note to DeeDee’s list to check on the team’s workloads as well.
“Tell them we have special projects,” he added. People got scared when senior management types asked questions that might imply some employees had been stretching a few hours of work across a whole week. He expanded the note to explain that. Chummy was capable of inventing make-work to distract her, but these were genuinely useful tasks that she’d enjoy doing.
Inspiration struck.
Ethan could use some cross-enterprise support, and Jeffy would back it if Chummy made it happen. And it’d also appease the engineering managers prideful enough to be upset instead of relieved that Ethan lacked the connections to steal away their most brilliant employees in addition to the ones he’d already been grabbing from North America.
Chummy flexed and started firing off emails. “No formal realignment, but certain key positions will be reassigned to this important project.” That was a good line; he dropped it into a notes file to save for future reuse. “Please nominate your best and brightest for special projects in support of the elevator enterprise movement.” He didn’t like the phrasing of that last bit as much. Enterprise was such an archaic corporate term and movement sounded like he was channeling that old businessman-as-evangelist trope. Still, it got him thinking about Ethan’s public relations blind spot.
He pulled up DeeDee’s notes. As he’d hoped, she had compiled data on the employees Ethan had drafted so far and even started preliminary assessments of their team strengths.
They were light on managers. So, Ethan was planning on either large teams or a bunch of engineering collaborations. It could work either way. Unless he was afraid of management competition.
Was Ethan Schmidt-Li scared of losing his job?
Ethan had drafted lots of engineers and scientists but comparatively few project coordinators. Chummy glared at the data. He might be.
Chummy couldn’t allow that. Ethan’s managerial strengths wouldn’t hold up properly under that type of stress. Hadn’t Cindy Brooks documented that well enough in Chicago?
Chummy swore at himself. He was losing his touch. Focus too much on the Sadou problem and he’d let Ethan freaking Schmidt-Li go supernova. Sadou Moussa needed to find a way to make good on the contract himself. Chummy had his hands full.
He checked the time in Beijing and then shrugged and dialed anyway.
“Yes, I know what time it is,” he said into the phone by way of greeting.
A groan was his only answer.
“Omer, I’m sending you to Kilimanjaro.”
“What? Kilimanjaro! For me?” Omer hollered triumph.
Chummy had to pull the phone away from his ear. The automatic sound dampening would probably prevent hearing damage, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable.
“Yes, Omer, I do mean you. I’m giving you a bad boss to go with a great job. Good luck.”
“You mean Ethan? I get to work for Ethan Schmidt-Li directly?” An awake, but not quite coherent Omer Ehrlich didn’t believe him. But Chummy was confident the new Director of Sciences, Worldwide, would show enough spirit for the man to understand what Chummy’d meant once he got on site.
“Yes, Omer. And call me if you need anything.”
“Right.” Omer let out a laugh. “I need a flight. Do I get to bring my people?”
“Sure.” If there was ever a project Jeffy wouldn’t mind throwing extra workers at, this was it. “But there probably won’t be much in the way of office facilities set up right away. Check with Ethan’s aide, Jax. I’ll have DeeDee send you his contact. Don’t wake him up,” Chummy added. “I think he’s still on North American east coast time.”
Omer babbled his agreement without challenging the instruction to respect Jax’s sleep cycle. Ethan had found Jax himself. That man’s hiring had been the turning point when Chummy had realized just how effective a man like Ethan Schmidt-Li could be under the right circumstances.
Now onto giving Ethan the rest of the support he needed. Ethan had not been the only person who Chummy could have used to head up the building of the space elevator. He might not even have been the best candidate. But he ought to be able to do it. And he’d been malleable enough for the side plan.
Chummy focused back on the situation at hand. It was too late to go back and change things. If he had Ethan fired, the next person in the job would have a real reason to be afraid. Scared managers were almost always bad managers. And the complexity of the job required excellence.
Chummy moved on down his list finding gaps in Ethan’s teams and filling them. Testing, quality assurance, operations evaluators—the elevator would have plenty of problem finders on the job. Now he needed to make sure Ethan could match them with problem solvers.
The air freshener squirted another lemon-scented plume, and Chummy sneezed.
“Bless you.”
Chummy jerked up.
John-Philip Jeffy, chief executive officer of TCG, waved at him from the doorway. “Can I convince you to accept another couple staff members? You’ll run your two assistants ragged and break all your own nonexempt employee rules.” The brown-haired short man with an easy smile wagged a finger at him but beamed while he did it.
“I’d have come over if you needed me, Jeffy,” Chummy said.
Jeffy shrugged and wandered all the way in through the outer office into Chummy’s workspace. “I was thinking about the elevator. Just needed to bounce a few ideas around.” He eased the door shut and bumped up the level of the white-noise maker. Jeffy liked the settings a little high. True quiet helped him think, he’d often said.
“Sure, Jeffy.” Chummy sat back while his boss and friend wandered the room.
“You’d tell me if this were all a big mistake, right?” Jeffy ran his fingers through his short, thinning hair. “Ethan.” He shook his head. “I really don’t get a good vibe from that guy. I keep wanting to rip the whole thing out of his hands and do it myself.”
Chummy’s mouth went dry.
Jeffy chuckled. “I’m not actually going to take direct control. You’ve made it quite clear. This is a moonshot. And if the rest of the company has a dip in profitability because I let my focus shift… Or, God help us, if that results in a drop in investor confidence enough to tank our corporate bond rating, I suppose I could spin off portions of TCG and sell them to fund the elevator long enough to complete the construction. But the sharks would see me bleeding and underbid everything’s value… Fuck me, I might run cash dry too soon. And then it would be decades before anyone else is gutsy enough to try it.”
“I didn’t say the elevator wouldn’t be profitable,” Chummy said.
Jeffy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, Fabrice. Profit and loss isn’t your thing, you always say. I’m just a little stressed. And I do hear you.” Jeffy poked at the air unit, sniffed, and made a face. “I think I’m changing your office to a linen fresh scent pod next. Funny thing about you and profits, though. The things you get involved in. Really involved in. They work. We make money hand over fist. And—” he held up a finger—“it’s not just because you can get people to work for almost nothing. I had an outside consultant check on you.”
Chummy did his best not to look uneasy.
“Not like that.” Jeffy chuckled. “I wanted to know if anyone else has that same magic touch.”
“And?” Jeffy didn’t have a lot of people who he could talk to without massive unwanted changes being made to corporate policies, but Chummy did have work to get back to.
“And you are not special.” Jeffy shook his head in mock sadness. “You’re good, but there are other companies, even big ones, that manage to recruit some top-tier people, pay them a lot less than we do, and still keep them loyal enough not to quit.”
“Do you want to cut pay?” Chummy asked. He suppressed the sigh. He was fairly certain TCG payroll was around five percent more generous than it needed to be. He pushed policies to keep the extras mostly in bonuses, so employees wouldn’t bank on cash flow they might not be getting in leaner years. But…
“Nope.” Jeffy snorted. “I talk to you because you don’t jump to make drastic changes like that. Profits are good. We could fatten up even, but I’m thinking we’ll need the war chest for our expansion into the space industries.”
“Sounds good, Jeffy.”
“Yeah, sure. You got me distracted. Where was I?”
“I’m good, not special.” Chummy flashed the man a grin and added, “Just another HR guy.”
“Yes!” Jeffy snapped his fingers. “That was it. And no. It’s not the people you find, or the compensation levels you convince them to take. It’s the way you put them together. I was going to come over to tell you to back up that asshole Ethan however he needed, but you already have, haven’t you?”
Chummy spread his hands admitting culpability. “It’s my job.”
“Thought so.” Jeffy nodded to himself. “Okay. I’ll leave you to it.” He walked through the outer office and paused with the door to the hall half open. “Oh, and did you hear Shen Kong had another payload splatter at their Gobi landing site? Parachute failure again. The super lightweight ones aren’t working for them. Cory Aanderson told them we aren’t ready to sell orbit-to-surface transport yet, but they don’t want to take no for an answer.”
“The standard parachute systems and reentry vehicles that they’ve been using all along still work, boss,” Chummy said. “And our biggest market will be surface-to-orbit lift, don’t you think?”
“Maybe, maybe,” Jeffy said. “Shen Kong’s had good success with their asteroid mining efforts, so there could soon be plenty of raw material and fuel for everybody already in orbit. That’s straight up ‘industrialized space for the new green China’ or however you translate the yuefu folk song’s refrain. Julie Zhu’s getting some dividends rolling in for Shen Kong finally.
“The coming influx isn’t slowing anyone down now, of course. Lots of companies are seeking to expand their in-orbit manufacturing. And every one of ’em wants to lock in the most economical way to transport finished products back down here.” He grinned. “Tell Ethan no pressure next time you see him.”
The doors to every one of the C-suite offices lining the hallway hung open. Rodney Johnson, Cory Aanderson’s deputy, leaned halfway out his doorway attentive to anything the big boss might say involving his own boss. Jeffy waved cheerily, and Rodney scuttled back inside to report.
Jeffy smirked. He’d intended those last remarks for the corporate rumor mill.
DeeDee Nelson slouched down the hall in almost professional attire and a serious case of bedhead. She blinked without speaking at the CEO but did give him a polite smile and made eye contact.
“Good afternoon, DeeDee,” Jeffy said.
“Hi, Mr. Jeffy,” she said.
He nodded without commenting on the sleep creases on her face. But he gave Chummy a look over his shoulder.
Chummy shrugged, and Jeffy went back to his own office without further shocks to the office gossip line.
DeeDee closed the outer office door to the hallway, readjusted the white-noise generator to Chummy’s preferred level and collapsed in her chair.
“You could have slept longer,” Chummy pointed out.
“Could have,” she agreed. “But Mr. Schmidt-Li just got arrested.”
“He did not!” Chummy did intend it as a question, but the shock overcame him.
DeeDee flapped a hand. “It wasn’t so bad. Jax talked to the Kenyan police and then to the Tanzanian police and he didn’t even have to stay in the jail overnight. But I think he needs some help with government and international agency collaboration.” She checked her inbox for taskers and groaned. “Can we please call Samson back from his hand-holding trip? I’d really like to sleep again sometime this week.”
Chummy nodded slowly. “Yes, I think we can do that.”
DeeDee retrieved her interface gloves from her desk drawer and started in on the task at the top of her list without letting the display or chair adjust for ergonomic comfort. Her back was going to demand surgery in payback for that posture one day.
“How did you find out about the arrest?”
“Huh?” DeeDee’s head came up. “Oh, one of my programs looks for that kind of thing. But Jax actually called me while I was on my way in. He should have called Samson; he’s better at people stuff, but still.” She made a plus-one sign in the air granting Ethan’s assistant a point. “He called for backup. Didn’t know the right amount for a police gratuity. Well, he did call it a bribe, but when I pointed out that corporate policy reimburses gifts and gratuities but not bribes, he made the self-correction quickly enough.”
She poked at her assignment a bit more before adding, “Can you believe Ethan Schmidt-Li got into a brawl over office space?”
Chummy winced. Unfortunately, he could believe it. “I’m sorry, DeeDee. But I think we’re going to have to go to Kilimanjaro too.”
DeeDee nodded. “That’s why I wore my pajamas to work under the suit jacket.” When Chummy didn’t say anything she added, “They’re nice pajamas. And I put on shoes.”
He glanced at her feet: one black shoe and one brown shoe both of a slip-on variety. She followed his look down.
“I can change. There’s a store that delivers to…”
“Don’t worry about it. Foreigners are expected to be eccentric.”
“But the dress code says…”
“It’s okay, DeeDee.”
“I really don’t like breaking rules.”
Chummy nodded minutely. He did know. “It’ll take a few hours to arrange transportation anyway. You can go home and grab a few things and change shoes. Or shoe at least.”