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CHAPTER TWO

Ethan Schmidt-Li hid the photos his wife kept sending from the fiftieth birthday party. He’d managed to intercept the invitations in time to prevent any of his colleagues from coming. Officially, his company TCG had a policy decrying ageism, but Ethan had no faith in that sort of document.

A glance at the mirrored floor-to-ceiling office building windows confirmed his light brown hair still appeared almost as thick as it had been in his twenties. He still looked thirty-five thanks to expertly applied hair care and even more careful use of male makeup.

Male use of everything from concealer to eye shadow was a fad exclusive to a part of China he never visited but which had gotten lots of special interest news coverage in North America. Beijing, Berlin, and Atlanta were the company’s three main offices, so affectations that had cultural ties to the other parts of the corporation served him well. And more importantly it helped hide his scowl lines.

Ethan was only Assistant Director for the Sciences, North American Division, and he badly wanted a vice president position one day, preferably in operations, but he’d take sales or marketing if that’s what he could get. He’d had a slow start and hadn’t gotten his MBA until he was nearly forty, but he’d let his classmates think he’d been twenty-eight like most of them. So long as he didn’t mention his real age or let anyone meet his wife—who, darling though she was, had an exceptionally naive view of humanity—he had a real shot at breaking into the million-dollars-a-year pay bracket, and more importantly finally getting a job where he controlled the company instead of the company controlling him.

The last six months he had dedicated himself to working through the company’s internal promotion process, and he’d succeeded. The fat packet on his desk held a detailed position description with pay and benefits on the right side and had all the forms for moving out of his current position on the left. Legal wanted him to sign the more detailed version of the nondisclosure agreement as if he’d have access to scientific research when he went back into sales management.

Ethan laughed and flipped pages, initialing all the paragraphs. He’d sign a blank check if that’s what it took to get back into the revenue-generating side of the business.

The next job was going to be great. He’d been interviewing for Sales Director, North America, and had almost been blindsided by the goofballs at the Nairobi University Kilimanjaro Campus. Ethan’s NUKCs, they called themselves. They were technically working with Ivy League–designated research grant money, but good old Chummy had talked him into twisting the rules and funding a small team of researchers in East Africa.

After surviving that first round of interviews he’d hauled in a few of the researchers who’d rotated out of Kilimanjaro recently and listened to their excited babble. Carbon nanofiber gobbledygook speak had poured out, and he’d sent them over to a few levelheaded engineers who came back with shining eyes saying things like “industrial lengths” and “space elevator.” Then marketing got involved and rebranded it DiamondWire™. Legal reminded everyone of corporate’s nondisclosure policy, and some market analytics types suggested not selling the tech at all but keeping it solely for TCG’s use.

A space elevator! Ethan had had a great laugh in his private office over that idea. The engineers seemed certain it could be done. There had been notional designs for one for ages and even some prototype ideas for placing one on the Moon. But Earth-to-orbit was where humanity really needed a space elevator. The limiting construction challenge was finding a material that could serve as the central tether. If it could truly be made, a carbon nanotube fiber around twenty-two thousand miles long would do it. The TCG scientists at Kilimanjaro insisted that DiamondWire™ could be made in any length, including that one. If actually true, then TCG had just gotten the final component necessary to build the first planet-based space elevator.

A few previous experiences of being stung by discoveries that didn’t pan out had kept Ethan’s smile superficial. He’d made his arrangements. And he’d continued the interview rounds for a transition back into sales. They’d hate him when this was over, but he didn’t care.

Two pages stuck together and he had to break his concentration to flip back and check that he hadn’t missed any other pages. It reminded him to check on a few more things. Transitioning out of sciences needed to go just right.

Ethan sent his assistant, Jax, a query to look up who was at Kilimanjaro now. Before the breakthrough, he’d assumed the scientists were running around the Kilimanjaro garden and parks facility run by TCG’s small entertainment division. Taking a relaxed sabbatical like that was certainly what he would have done if he weren’t working on climbing to corporate power. It wasn’t like the scientists were really expected to make breakthroughs. Sure, he’d always told them he expected results, but they weren’t fired if they didn’t find anything.

Ethan had only shifted over from sales to sciences because it had let him jump up to assistant director without waiting for Cory Aanderson to die first. Good thing he had, too. Far from dying, Cory kept rising through the sales ranks. The corporate ladder was more of a scaffold than a straight line, but as long as Ethan kept climbing, many paths led to the C-suite.

The next page was an acknowledgement of his responsibility as a manager to follow each country’s laws relating to human resources management. He rolled his eyes.

Ethan paged Chummy. It was rude and impolite to summon him with the ancient in-house propriety comms system, but the man had almost lost him the promotion. There was absolutely no call for questions that pointed when speaking to a senior executive in your own company. Ethan was going to make certain Chummy knew how pissed off he was.

The buzzy noise sounded from right outside. Ethan gritted his teeth in annoyance.

“Go right in, Mr. Tchami,” Ethan heard Jax say from the outer office. The door stood open. Jax’s gut pressed out the button-down shirt even when he sucked it in hard to make a good impression, as he was trying to do now. His assistant treated TCG’s head of human resources like someone who mattered. Ethan gave a mental shrug. It didn’t hurt.

“None of that,” Fabrice Tchami said. Ethan muttered under his breath in unison with the man, “Just call me Chummy.”

Ethan then schooled his features to calm blankness.

Chummy rattled the door frame with his powerful knock and strode in flashing those bright white teeth in an ear-to-ear grin. He loomed over Ethan’s desk, took Ethan’s right hand, and pumped it in a two-fisted handshake.

“Congratulations!” Chummy said. “Well deserved. I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were interviewing for sales. I put a word in Jeffy and Zhou’s ears, and I’m so glad they listened.”

Ethan’s mouth fell open, and he closed it again before forming words to reply.

Chummy gave him a sly wink. “I went to school with Jeffy,” he added as if that explained everything, and in a way it did.

The entirely too pleased man in front of him was, yes, technically, a vice president since the head of human resources for the conglomerate did rate a boardroom seat with the C-level officers. But HR on all levels made the same or less than any profit center position three levels below. They weren’t actually important or in control in any way. Or shouldn’t be.

The blood ran out of Ethan’s face. Chummy flashed a dimple.

Except, of course, when they’d managed to parley their shoulder-rubbing positions into personal friendships with the people who did control the company’s direction.

Ethan stole a look at the screen in front of him where he’d been composing a scathing input for Chummy’s annual report to be submitted after he transitioned back into sales. All the profit center directors were asked to contribute to the reviews for the non-profit-generating colleagues. The profit rainmakers controlled the trickle-down to the admin bloat, was the usual way everyone said it.

Ethan switched screens to hide it from Chummy, and the goofy picture of him grinning over the cake with that giant “50” scrawled in frosting filled the screen instead.

He almost switched it back, but Chummy had already seen that he was hiding something. Something in the twitch of the man’s eyebrows warned Ethan that he’d noticed and was now interested.

Chummy’s smile grew even bigger. “And it’s your birthday too?”

“Uh, just passed.” Ethan swallowed hard and used the distraction. “I took a few days off. Had to fly the wife to the Caicos, but I don’t like to make a big deal about it. The company is more important, though I was grateful to have the few days off, of course.”

“Of course, of course.” Chummy patted him on the back.

He’d come around to Ethan’s side of the desk and was looking closely at the photo on the screen, leaning in to expand one corner. Ethan closed his eyes. The glaring number on the cake required no closer inspection.

“What a beautiful woman.” Chummy whistled appreciatively. “I’m starting to understand why you never bring her along to the office get-togethers.”

“Oh, she doesn’t really do social gatherings much,” Ethan lied.

Chummy nodded along, some pleasant memory flickering across his rich brown face. “My last boyfriend was the same way. Couldn’t stand crowds.” Chummy sighed with a theatrical flair Ethan suspected wasn’t studied at all. “Probably why that relationship didn’t last. Though the hours make it hard to meet anyone and, well, I couldn’t date anyone at work. Can’t break the rules I set up. Should have thought more carefully before I wrote those.” He turned his bright smile back on Ethan. “Wise of you to find your love first and then jump into the work.”

Ethan blinked. He wasn’t going to say anything. None of the harsh words he’d planned seemed safe to say. Ethan just nodded, thinking as fast as he could.

“Say, Chummy, let me know if you ever need anything, okay?” he said, after what he hoped wasn’t too long of a pause.

“Sure.” Chummy nodded right back. “There is this one thing. You’d want it anyway, but it’s best to get this sort of deal top-level support. I’ll send your assistant a subsidiary contract; you’ll want to approve; it’ll help you out with the elevator.” He patted Ethan on the back. “Just brilliant giving the researchers free rein like that. And congratulations again on Sciences Worldwide. I can’t wait to see what you do with the elevator project. The scientists all adore you, of course, and wanted to revolt when operations was going to run the big build, but I floated your name.” Chummy paused to give him another wink. “Not that anyone needed much convincing. Ops loves a sales guy, and the scientists all know you have their backs, so we made a new position, and you’re the go-to guy to make this all happen.”

Chummy tapped on the door frame again as he let himself back out. “Knock ’em dead, champ.”

Ethan stared after the man, appalled, and then with growing horror looked back more carefully through his new position description. Chummy was exactly right. Ethan Schmidt-Li’s promotion had not been to North American Sales Director.

He was now Chief of Sciences, Worldwide. A job that hadn’t existed before. Maybe not even a profit center position.

Ethan started to sweat. He didn’t have the luxury of spending another five years off track if he was ever going to enter the C-suite. And space elevator! Sure, he’d approved that research field for the team at the Nairobi University affiliate campus, but it was like cold fusion or faster-than-light travel. Bits and pieces of useful science came from side discoveries made while studying it, but a working one wasn’t ever going to be built. Was it?

He leaned back in his chair. The ergonomic smart system started a back and rump massage as the soft chime reminded him to lean back his neck to let it work the kinks out of his upper spine and shoulders. His mind raced and he set his fingers on the keyboard to type as fast as thought.

He needed the chief scientists to conduct thorough second checks of material properties. He needed the company’s engineering teams to give him their absolute best for the design phase. Hell if he’d let them go forward using a hundred-year-old concept design! Absolutely not.

This thing was going on his résumé. He didn’t trust any of the director-level managers in engineering.

Jax’s dossier on all the employees currently at the Kilimanjaro site arrived in his files with a chime. A check of the document size showed his assistant had been thorough. As if someone had warned him not to expect a move with his boss over to the sales building.

Ethan closed his eyes and focused on the horrible situation immediately in front of him. One did not turn down a promotion at this level and hope to ever rise in the company again. He was simply going to have to take this crackpot space elevator project idea and make it work.

He remembered bits and pieces of the suddenly no longer irrelevant debate from the glorious past few months when he’d been sure his replacement would have to handle the mess. The engineering management dweebs had been irate about not having one of their own in overall control of this project.

Ethan sent Jax a note: “Order gift baskets.” He tagged the contact files for all the spouses of the five chief engineers he’d need. His assistant had all their preferences on file. Flowers, fruit, artisanal cheeses, specialty bacon—they’d get whatever they really liked.

A certain Zen feeling overcame him. Ethan was good at this, and he knew it. He might be a late bloomer, but he’d paid rapt attention to office political dynamics, and he knew exactly how and when to cheat to get what he needed.

Ethan composed personal letters and wrote them out by hand on actual paper. There were known high achievers in TCG who got hard jobs done again and again. Their bosses would try to destroy anyone who poached them. Ethan was past caring.

He composed a list and selected a core team. He sent them all invitations to Kilimanjaro and asked them to bring their families. He expanded the list. There were more people he’d need. The spouses for that group were added to the list too. For the two single guys he wanted from engineering, he suggested one bring his golf buddies and the other treat his current lady friend. The Kilimanjaro amusement park was truly top-notch. Ethan had never been, but his wife and her friends had gone several times.

Chummy’s human resources minions had a myriad of regulations that prevented exactly this sort of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, but all those rules had one core weakness. Ethan could do anything he wanted as long as he used his own money. And since he’d always wanted power and not cash, he had built up a sizable nest egg, which let him afford things exactly like this.

When it really mattered, Ethan would liquidate everything to turn money into power.


“That idiot can’t make a consistent profit selling energy! And you think he can manage a project of this scale? This is a classic dabare! You need the sort of people who can take a solar-powered hot plate, two bicycles, a shipping crate, a boat engine, and mound of rubber ties and build a market day food truck that not only runs but looks beautiful. That’s the level of dabare skill you need here. Instead, you have Sadou Moussa. He might have lots of friends and locally powerful connections, but that’s just not enough. You do realize the kids Maurie and Pascaline have been his problem solvers since their teens and been running the whole technical side of the family business for the last fifteen years, right?” She paused a moment as if doing a calculation. “Make that twenty-five years. I can’t believe I’m that old.”

Chummy winced at her words. “Aunt Mami, listen…”

“No, you listen.” The woman on the screen of his car’s built-in phone glared from kohl-rimmed eyes with a not entirely angelic halo of white frizzed hair around her brown face. “You want this to work, you need to get your butt over here and run it.”

“I’m just a human resources guy,” Chummy said. “Sadou has all the energy right there ready to tap, a workable location and a mass of great technical talent. Sadou Moussa can handle this.”

“Bullshit you’re just an HR anything. This isn’t coddling whiners to protect a company from lawsuits. This is what people outside business think HR is! You read people and you pick the ones so eager to bleed for a cause that they’ll do it for just a company. Sometimes you can even take rational people and turn them into that.”

“And I’m picking Sadou,” he said.

“For all the wrong reasons!” Aunt Mami rolled her eyes and continued the argument. “Oil, gas, and related mechanical engineering is one thing, but space systems engineering is a whole ’nother level. I read your summary. You need hypersonics people, maglev experts, and don’t get me started on the civil engineering side of this! You need to quit your job and come run things over here if you want Sadou Corp to be able to build this thing.”

“I can’t quit!” The light changed. The visual blinked off because he had the car in driver operator mode, and corporate car insurance rates didn’t allow distractions while driving. The call dropped a few moments later.

Chummy hit a button on the dashboard of his car to reconnect. He left his thumb on the dash an extra moment to have his fingerprint scanned to make the call personal and link the charge to his own account rather than the company’s.

“Okay, you can’t quit.” Aunt Mami tilted her head to the side. “And why can’t you quit? Might it be because this plan of yours to give the family some work that pays in this century and has potential to keep paying isn’t exactly the most ethical choice?”

“It’s a gray zone, but the family needs it.”

“Just gray.” Aunt Mami sighed and shook her head. “Fine. How long do you think you can get away with it?”

Chummy shrugged even though he knew she couldn’t see him. Even if it had been on, the camera for the built-in phone system pointed at the comfortable back seat where anyone using the automatic drive system would sit. Out loud he said, “As long as I can. See what you can do to make it long enough, okay?”

“I’ll use all my very best curses,” she assured him.

Chummy acknowledged that with a snort. “No one believes that shit about you being possessed by a water spirit.”

“Yeah, well, the nickname sure has stuck hard for nobody believing it, hasn’t it?” Her expression turned bleak. “One snake bite changed my life.”

“One underfunded hospital,” Chummy corrected.

“You mean poor.”

Chummy shrugged again. He mashed a button to switch the car over to autodrive even though the routing system would take an extra five minutes to reach the airport. It had a glitch. The thing always stopped for a recharge at the North Central exit instead of using Charles W Grant Parkway and the recharge stations at the airport itself.

He shifted his seat back to where the camera could see him.

“This is exactly the problem, Aunt Mami. It wasn’t about the snakes. Antivenom treatments were well understood even then. If the hospital hadn’t been nearly broke, they would have had a few more doctors and not needed to wait for one to be woken up to come treat you. What happened should never have happened.”

“And sending Michel out in the dark to try to find the snake and bring back its body to confirm they’d used the right antivenom was foolish, and that sweet man was foolish to have agreed to do it.” Aunt Mami waved a hand. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Chummy gave his relative a tired smile. “You can bring it up anytime you want.”

“I like being Mami,” she said.

“I know.”

“Okay.” Aunt Mami shook her head. “I don’t think they can do it without you, but I’ll help as much as I can. And I will happily curse anyone who gets in the way.”

“Curses have a way of turning on us,” Chummy cautioned. Aunt Mami’s affectations bothered him sometimes.

“Yeah, maybe. They’ve never worked before, but then neither have the prayers of blessing, so why not try something new?”

“I’m almost at the airport and I need to call—”

“Grandpere Moussa, the great patriarch of the Sadou family, my dead husband’s cousin who will adore you forever for this.” Aunt Mami held up a finger in admonishment. “Do not let him manage the funds for it himself. He hasn’t got the willpower.”

“Yes, Aunt Mami. I don’t need spiritual inspiration to know that.” Chummy cut off the call and started the next one.

The name Sadou Moussa popped up on the contact screen with video declined.

“Hello?” Grandpere himself answered. “Who is this?”

The man had answered an unknown number without an assistant screening the call. Not the way to manage the valuable time of a senior executive, but maybe he had better managers these days and could afford to be less careful with his time?

“It’s Fabrice,” he said using his first name, and then when he didn’t get an immediate response, Chummy provided his full name with the family name first as was normal back in the home country. “Tchami Fabrice. How are you, my old friend?” Chummy didn’t let his concern show. He waited a few beats for the image to turn on. It didn’t.

“Oh Fabrice, my brother! It’s been a long time!” The video stayed off while Grandpere meandered through greetings extending through every board member Chummy worked with and wishes for everyone’s continued good health before giving him a chance to bring up the reason he’d called.

This was the man who many years ago had arranged for the care of a younger cousin by marriage who was barely even related to the family heirs. Chummy had had his schooling paid for and had received a fat stipend provided in addition. It had let him prove himself and make the contacts that he’d used to build his career. It had been a generous gift even decades ago when the family’s wealth had seemed both vast and secure. But years of executive search experience were forming a lead lump in Chummy’s belly. Sadou Moussa wasn’t the man he needed.

“How are you looking today, my brother?” Chummy hinted. Maybe looking in the eyes of the man he was trying to make very rich would help him see a way to push things. Some people could be shaped.

“Well, I’m well. Cut all the hair off ages ago when it started to make me look old. You remember. We saw each other ten years, no, twelve years back at that graduation party for Reuben in Boston.”

Chummy did remember. The Sadou patriarch had complained of more aches and pains then and had started to use a cane. Chummy recalled trying to get the patriarch to hire a promising physical therapist who could’ve had him walking easily again and being rebuffed. He returned his focus to the present. “You could turn on the video?”

“Oh, I don’t know how. It’s a new system Pascaline and Maurie put in a while back. You know how it is. People keep discontinuing support for things as soon as you get to understanding them.”

Chummy froze his own video feed before the horror could show. Aunt Mami was right. But still, Sadou Moussa was the man they had.

Grandpere’s face suddenly appeared on the screen. Not so many age lines etched the familiar face, but he sat with a slump.

A young woman’s voice in the background said, “There you go, Mr. Sadou. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

“Isn’t it wonderful to have staff?” Grandpere smiled pleasantly and turned the conversation back to Chummy’s health.

The man did have aides, and he trusted them. Chummy took comfort in those observations. The Sadou patriarch could be turned into an excellent delegator, perhaps. Chummy nodded to himself. He might be able to make this work. And besides, he had to now.

Ethan Schmidt-Li, another imperfect choice who’d been the best he could do under the circumstances, had signed off on the contract already.

“I’m well,” Chummy finally summed up. Now he could get to the good part. “Turn off any transcription programs you’ve got.” He paused a moment while the man conferred with his staff to confirm that indeed the automated transcript program that came with his business communications program suite had never been installed. Then Chummy continued, “Never mind that. I have some things to tell you. I’m sending work your way. I’m paying the family back for all you’ve done.” There would be the engineering design proposal, and the contract details to follow later. First, he needed to sell it.

Chummy himself wasn’t much of a salesman, but whatever his other limitations, Sadou Moussa did understand how to be an excellent buyer.


The output from installed and heavily used transcription programs waited for Chummy on the jet. John-Philip Jeffy used every new business efficiency tool as soon as he could arrange to acquire a prototype. And as CEO of TCG, Jeffy could arrange quite a lot.

Some of them didn’t really work, which is why Chummy had DeeDee. She fed him the transcripts, so he didn’t have to spend time learning the system-of-the-week. Chummy cringed internally at the similarity between Sadou Moussa and himself and resolved to get DeeDee to teach him how she did it.

Jeffy’s comments boiled down to one overall sentiment.

“Ethan Schmidt-Li is an asshole,” DeeDee summarized. “And Mr. Jeffy would rather work with someone who isn’t.”

Chummy considered the stories he’d been told about the man. It wasn’t untrue.

“He’s our asshole,” Chummy agreed. He settled down into a generous seat and stretched out his legs for the flight. “Has he done anything nasty yet?”

“Well, sort of. We’ve got a problem.”

Chummy’s gut clenched. Then relaxed. DeeDee would not be frowning at her screen and ignoring his rules about practicing eye contact if it were something truly serious. Like, just as a random example, if a newly appointed Chief of Sciences, Worldwide, had realized the contract the Vice President for Human Resources had asked him to approve without bid was one that benefited his own extended family. Not a thing strictly forbidden, but Chummy was certain that Jeffy would have his job and ensure he never worked again if he learned Chummy had done something to risk the elevator.

“Sorry, boss.” DeeDee Nelson blinked blue eyes through stringy blonde hair and did remember to turn her pale face toward him and to speak out loud. “It’s Mr. Schmidt-Li. He’s using actual mail, so I almost didn’t notice. But he used the company printer for the mailing addresses.” She made a grabbing hand gesture with a wire-mesh glove and scowled at her screen. “I think he’s going to poach a whole lot of people. How do you want to stop him?”

“I don’t.” Chummy thought about Jeffy’s message. “See what you can do to help him. Let the team know to start some search efforts for filling in the kinds of people he isn’t recruiting. Did he get a public relations director?”

DeeDee’s brow rumpled as she searched. “No. Or at least not deliberately. There’s a mass of interns I don’t think he had anything to do with directly who just got stipends approved. Doesn’t seem like he rejected anyone and looks like the lead scientists asked to hire everyone who applied. Not following policy.” Her scowl deepened. She disliked rule-breaking.

“Hmm, Pascaline Tchami, same family name as yours.”

Chummy froze.

“She has three months of ‘Assistant Communications Director for Sadou Corporation’ on her résumé. They should be rescinding that internship offer if they have time to do background checks. Her college dates at MIT came back unverified.”

DeeDee looked up at Chummy. “So, no. No real PR types. How many should we get him?”

“A full team,” he said. Pascaline would hate him if she ever found out, but he had to do it. “And scrub those internship applications. Make sure the unqualified get notified that we wish them the best of luck finding positions elsewhere.”

“And don’t lie on your résumé.” DeeDee added, “I can’t believe she thought she could get away with it.”

The internship cancellations took an extra day to process, because DeeDee followed rules. And the corporate policy said legal got to review all personnel changes after a formal offer had been made.


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