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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Adamou, at a much higher point on the mountain, did a victory dance around his data relay display. The tremors had been precisely as strong as he’d predicted. Precisely! Even the data from the downslope sensors was well within the new narrow error bar ranges he’d calculated.

“Praise Allah, I’m getting really good at this!” His voice through the mask sounded like a mumbled prayer spoken by someone who didn’t speak English, but there wasn’t anyone to hear him besides Old Fako, so he indulged himself. He whispered a fragment of an old prayer memorized during his childhood. “Praise be to the Lord of the Heavens and the Earth and all that is between them. Bless His holy name. By the work of our hands and our hearts, may we bring the people of the mountain to the heavens.”

Fako gave a barely perceptible rumble of agreement as Adamou reached the end of the line. Adamou patted a stone outcropping in encouragement, and the mountain settled.

His comm pinged a reminder at him, and he, too, headed down the mountainside.

He had somebody he needed to see face-to-face. He expected to do a lot of yelling. Wearing a robe thick with volcano-stink and standing behind the chief’s desk would help him get his points across without also needing to punch the officious TCG twit.

Adamou considered having one of the project foremen meet the TCG guy at the little Limbe airstrip which serviced the string of beach properties at the base of Fako. He could’ve had the unwelcome visitor brought all the way to the top of the mountain. But someone unused to mountain living would get altitude sickness from the speedy drive up and probably be too busy vomiting to absorb any other lesson. And, today, even Adamou wouldn’t be able to breathe easily at Fako’s peak without a mask.

The questions that the guy had been asking weren’t rude in and of themselves, but the presumptive tone made Adamou inclined to strangle Mr. Samson Young, primary assistant to just-call-me-Chummy. The TCG minion should be landing in about a half hour and then be presented to him within an hour after arrival, provided that he didn’t throw too many fits and waste time during customs inspections.

Dibussi called.

“Mr. Adamou, sir, I gotta call from my Auntie T. Um, she’s really my oldest sister-in-law’s cousin. But she called me from the Douala airport, and your visitor is, um, tricky.”

“I already knew that,” Adamou said. “That’s why he’s getting the mountain-chief treatment instead of the fellow businessman coffeeshop meetup.”

“Oh, um, maybe do the coffeeshop anyway? I mean, Ms. Hadjara was working on new chocolates, right? You could feed him one of the ones with chita, if he’s rude. But don’t bring me back any of those. Wouldn’t it be better to go to a coffeeshop right there in Limbe?”

“Dibussi, no.” Adamou checked the stretch of dirt pathway in front of him and took a risk. The mists were clear enough that the vehicle’s computer should be able to manage safe operation for at least a minute or two. He switched the Jeep to autodrive and turned on the video to give Dibussi his full attention. “If you want chocolate, we can get you chocolate without giving any to foreigner jerks.”

“Oh”—Dibussi flapped his little hands in frustration—“it’s not that. Or not just that. I do want chocolate. But he’s not going to fit into the office.”

“He’s that fat?” Adamou dropped the comm and grabbed the wheel to jerk the car back onto the road. That rock hadn’t been there in the middle of the lane on the way up. If rains were softening the earth up here enough for boulders to shift, he better be using operator drive mode. “Fako,” he grumbled, “if you kill me off now, you won’t have a replacement priest anytime soon. Maybe, not ever.”

The road smoothed out again, but he didn’t try to use autodrive again.

“You okay, Mr. Adamou?” Dibussi’s thin voice rose up from the passenger side floorboards.

“Yeah,” Adamou said. “How obese is Samson? Too much to walk, or what? How did he get onto the airplane, if he’s that big? The little puddle jumper aircraft they use to go from Douala to Limbe usually doesn’t have triple-width seats.” Adamou jabbed a button on the dash to transfer the comm call to the vehicle’s built-in screen.

“Um, not fat,” Dibussi said. His young face scrunched with a childish concern for accuracy. “I don’t know if his legs work at all or not, but they are really skinny in the photo Auntie T sent to explain the trouble. Mr. Samson has got a real nice motor chair with red racing stripes, and Auntie T said he’s a very cheerful guy who had the whole flight crew laughing. But it was tricky figuring out how to get his chair secured well enough, so that it didn’t get banged into other stuff on the flight.

“And he needed them to find the little skinny wheelchair thing. You know the ones that you can use for aisle races during the aircraft crew family days at the hangar? They get broke pretty easy, you know. When they couldn’t find one that wasn’t too banged up to hold a grown-up, he borrowed a kid’s skateboard and tied his briefcase on top and somehow made that work.”

“Oh,” Adamou said. Samson Young’s travel experience sounded anything but cheer inducing. It sounded closer to infuriating. “How badly did he curse them out?”

“What?” Dibussi’s face wrinkled in confusion. “No, no, he was sweet. Told lots of jokes. Didn’t let anybody feel bad about it.”

Ah. So “very cheerful guy” hadn’t been sarcasm at all.

“Okay, call Hadjara and ask her to reserve the coffee shop back room for a private party starting in thirty minutes.”

“She won’t be cheerful,” Dibussi predicted.

“I know,” Adamou said. “Remind her that my uncle put up the money to start her shop and tell her to fake ‘cheerful’ for my visitor.” He thought for another couple minutes. “Warn her that the rainfall is going to be heavy.” The town would probably see some more side street flooding in the parts of Limbe that didn’t put in the drainage systems his uncle had recommended after the last moderate eruption eighteen years ago. “She might want to tell her employees to stay put for a while. Did your sister-in-law’s cousin happen to notice if Samson can get into and out of a regular passenger car or not? And what are the dimensions for that fancy motor chair of his? Will it fit in the sedan?”

“Well, she didn’t say exactly. But getting into seats oughta be okay. She said he hopped in and out of the airport assist carts real easy, but the chair will only fit in the chief’s sedan if you don’t put any people in it.”

Adamou glanced at his rearview window where the many spares and tools lashed into their niches were reflected. The sheer number of them turned his work Jeep’s spacious compartment into a warren of equipment. “Dibussi, transfer my call to Grandpere Sadou.”

“Uh, okay, but you’ll probably only get Fatima and she’s still mad about Ms. Maurie’s car accidents.”

Adamou laughed. “Yeah, I’d heard about those. Try to get through anyway.”

“Mr. Endeley, Fatima speaking. What would you like to discuss?”

“Thanks for taking my call, Fatima,” Adamou said in his smoothest voice. “I was actually hoping to talk to you.”

“I don’t date engaged m—”

“Of course, Ms. Fatima,” Adamou said, “though I suspect plenty wish you would.”

A suspicious silence greeted his comment.

“So, anyway,” he said, “is there any chance that in Ms. Maurie’s adventures with wrapping cars around trees to avoid running over giant animals no one else can see, you might have any Jeeps stored away somewhere near Limbe?”

“I’m not giving that woman another Sadou vehicle until she finishes the safe-driver course.” That sounded like a “yes.” Allah be praised.

“I won’t let her touch it,” Adamou promised. “I need a vehicle to show a TCG rep around in. I’d planned on my uncle’s sedan, but…”

“Oh, that won’t do,” Fatima said. “Mr. Young’s legs are crippled, and his fancy motor chair won’t fit. Did you know he built it himself?”

Adamou shook his head, listening as sounds of Fatima’s typing filled the dead space. She came back on. “I’m willing to send it unoccupied as far as the launcher base station, but it’s going to stay locked. You call me when you get there, and I’ll give you—and only you—the entry code. Ms. Maurie is not, under any circumstances, to be allowed to operate the vehicle.”

“Thank you, Ms. Fatima,” Adamou said.

How did one intimidate into silence a man like Samson Young who’d already overcome so much? A man who had, somehow, so completely overcome the loss of his legs, that complete strangers knew him for his technical skill with his motor chair rather than for his limitations? Adamou increased his Jeep’s speed, trying to find an answer in the fog.


Adamou reached the base station, transferred into the pristine new Jeep complete with a wheelchair loader ramp, and reached the Limbe airstrip before coming up with a plan.

The flight attendant and pilot waved a welcome at Adamou and he was encouraged to drive directly up to the side of the small aircraft. Samson Young laughed off the pilot and co-pilot’s offers to carry him down the steep stairs and hand-walked down the rail instead.

Samson paused with his eye level about four inches above Adamou’s and gave him a knowing wink before continuing the rest of the way to perform an expert dismount into his motor chair. And, yes, it did have thick, red racing stripes painted on each side.

“Good morning. It’s Endeley Adamou, isn’t it?” Samson said with a wide grin. “I didn’t expect airport service. Weren’t we to meet up in Buea? I believe a chat in the chief’s office was mentioned?”

Adamou let go of his plan to pummel the man and decided to try something else. “May I interest you in some lunch instead? There’s a local place with artisan chocolates I’ve been meaning to visit.”

“Some place around the corner that I can get to without using a vehicle, I suppose,” Samson said. This time the man did not manage to keep a wry edge of tension out of his voice.

Adamou pressed a button on the Jeep’s key fob. The rear door opened and the ramp descended. He chose not to mention the Sadou Grandpere’s fading health and how Fatima made certain to have vehicles around that could accommodate him comfortably on days when the patriarch allowed his body a rest and let a chair do some of his walking.

Samson blinked.

Adamou glanced inside. “The wheel clamps are adjustable for whichever way you’d like to position the chair, or if you wish, it can be secured at the back of the compartment while you shift to one of the built-in seats. The trip’ll take us about fifteen minutes routing around some of the more flooded streets.”

Samson glanced up at the overcast sky.

It wasn’t raining in this part of Limbe thanks to an ocean breeze, but that might change at any minute. Adamou didn’t see any obvious umbrella attachments on Samson’s fancy chair.

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Yeah, let’s do lunch.” Samson rolled his chair into the vehicle, latched it in, and gave Adamou an ear-to-ear grin. “I so love meeting up with competent people.”

Adamou chose not to reveal that on this occasion it was Fatima’s competence, Dibussi’s family connections, and his own luck in knowing both of them that combined to make him appear more prepared than he really was. He punched in the address, set the autodrive options to route around flooding streets, and settled in across from Samson. “‘Competent people,’ huh?” he said.

Samson shrugged, still smiling. “Yes, I did know about your modeling and sims expertise, but a lot of people get really good at one thing and then aren’t quite up to average at other stuff. From some of the communications coming into Mr. Chummy’s inbox, I had some concerns about the space launcher. Nepotistic contract assignments aren’t typically acceptable in some of the cultures TCG works in, you may realize.”

Adamou gave Samson a long look. This conversation wasn’t going in the direction he’d expected.

“Covert nepotism and cronyism are among the more successful methods of garnering support for business efforts that need political backing, as I understand it,” he said dryly, “or I’m gravely misinformed about Western world history with regards to your own company’s growth and continued prosperity.”

“Yeah, about that.” Samson nodded his acknowledgement. “The key word there is covert. I like my boss. I like him a lot. And no senior vice president or above at TCG who was given a family tree for the Sadou oil dynasty would consider Chummy a close relative of Sadou Moussa. But here, Chummy is spoken of as the Sadou patriarch’s nephew and the two people on the launcher contract as ‘project manager’ and ‘technical lead’ grew up calling him ‘Uncle Chummy.’ The TCG leadership might have a number of cross-cultural blind spots, but they won’t stay unaware enough to miss this. Unless, of course, they never look, because the project smoothly meets and exceeds all the milestones.” That familiar grin grew wider again.

“I’m here to join the conspiracy,” Samson said.

A gush of water poured out between two buildings, and Adamou jumped forward to take back autodrive control of the Jeep.

“Um, excuse me, I better operate manually for a bit,” he explained. “We are almost there anyway.”

“Why is the road flooding?” Samson asked. The water only lapped at the wheels as Adamou turned onto a higher road with a more robust drainage and pumping system around it.

“Oh, it’s a local microclimate thing. We used to have mudslide issues too before we built in some more robust civil engineering to redirect the runoff away from our towns. It’s just life next to a volcano.”

Samson lost his smile. “I saw the mountain range on the flight in. There was a lot of cloud cover, but the pilot made an announcement. He said the construction for the new spaceport launcher was just below our flightpath on the slopes of the largest mountain. I couldn’t see a thing. How close is this volcano?”

Adamou pulled into the parking spot closest to the door of Hadjara’s Café and Chocolaterie. “You already said you were joining the conspiracy. You don’t get to back out that fast.”

Samson piloted his motor chair out of the Jeep and followed Adamou in to a private table in the back of Hadjara’s. Samson landed in the handwoven wicker chair with enough force that Adamou suppressed a wince. It hadn’t broken, but he didn’t think Hadjara had considered how hard stressed-out customers could be on the furniture, classic basketweave patterning or not.

“Do you really mean to tell me that some distant relatives of Chummy’s conned him into handing them one of the elevator’s critical path support projects and they threw the cash into an active volcano?”

Adamou tried not to—he really did—but he laughed in Samson’s face.

“Oh thank God,” Samson said, leaning back with deep relief. “You really got me there. I completely fell for it. I honestly thought the whole maglev sled-assist portion of the launch craft was going up the side of the volcano. I was picturing a full load of the carbon intended to become the core DiamondWire tether that finally gives humanity cheap uplift into orbit getting swallowed by great gouts of lava and then watching on a worldwide live broadcast feed as rocks bigger than your car out there dropped on what’s left of the launcher rail line itself.”

“Hmm,” Adamou said, “I recommend the mini chocolate wafers with coconut paste dusted in chita. Local specialty. Hadjara called them ‘coco lava melts.’”

Samson considered the menu. “I don’t see those.”

“They aren’t on the menu.” Hadjara herself came out to wait on them and set a loaded tray of mixed sandwiches and decorative chocolates. “And they aren’t going to be. Chita is a pepper. A very hot one. It grows like a weed in the north near the desert, and the flavor doesn’t blend well with coconut. I’m working a pomegranate-chita glaze that might go well with my sixty-percent-cocoa dark truffle. But it’s not ready. And it’s not for certain jokers to use on unsuspecting customers.” She gave Adamou a glare. “I don’t know what Pascaline sees in you, really I don’t.” Hadjara’s face warmed with a grin as she turned toward Samson. “If Mr. Volcano gives you trouble, you call, and I’ll kick him out of my shop.”

“I’m his ride,” Adamou pointed out.

“Then you’ll have to wait outside in the rain for him like a good chauffer while he finishes his lunch. You could have told someone down here that Our Fako was having a rumble. I had two cartons of confectioners’ sugar get soaked, because ‘someone’ didn’t think to pick up the phone and let the local weatherman know there were Fako rains coming.”

Adamou considered what response would be best.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know ahead of time. I had half the launcher work crew stomp through here with muddy boots about a half hour before you arrived. They were all off-shift. Apparently the upper slope rail bed smoothing work was canceled for the morning due to a predicted eruption.”

Samson’s eyes flicked back and forth between them, and Adamou expected him to say something about the volcano. Instead, he asked, “Why were their boots muddy?”

Hadjara rolled her eyes. “Because the idiot builders all wanted to see what would happen. They’d all camped out at the highest elevation work site Ms. Pascaline permitted to remain staffed and watched with binoculars to see if there were any interesting mudslides or cracking of the cement footers for the rail line pylons.”

“Were there?” Samson asked.

“I don’t know. They were excited and happy, and chattering about Adamou’s microtremor dampener thing, so I guess it was fine. Ask him.” She pointed at Adamou. “He’s the volcanologist.”

Hadjara stomped off still muttering.

“It is a volcano. You weren’t joking.”

Adamou nodded.

“Shit,” Samson said. “We’re fucked.”

Adamou reluctantly agreed. “Yes, but not because of the volcano. Fako’s tame as volcanoes go. Now, it’s the quiet mountains who don’t do much who suddenly kill ten thousand people, black out the sky, and disrupt air travel for months. Our Fako grumbles, spits, and shakes from time to time, but he’s not planning to rip open the whole side of his mountain anytime soon. He prefers to vent sulfuric gases and give us occasional minor quakes. Our real problem is that you are trying to steal my girl.”


The door to their back room rattled open. Pascaline stalked in trailed by Maurie.

“Hey!” Maurie said. “That’s a Sadou Jeep out there. Fatima told me that they were out. How’d you get one?”

Pascaline looked at Samson, looked at Adamou, whirled, and walked back outside. Adamou, ignoring Maurie, jumped up and chased Pascaline out.

The sound of a car starting and tires squealing marked the rest of her exit. Adamou came back in, only a little damp, despite the now heavy rainfall pattering on the café’s aluminum roof.

Maurie dragged a chair over with no concern for the bamboo cane legs scraping over the high-gloss cement floor. She sat heavily across from Samson, hair braids dripping.

“So. You’re the TCG asshole who’s trying to steal Pascaline from us. Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t have Hadjara put cobra venom in your chocolate.”

“Hadjara would never stock snake venom,” Adamou protested. “And besides, Pascaline is my fiancée. I’m the one who gets to fight with him over this.”

Maurie rolled her eyes. “You might not even still be engaged. She just ran away rather than talk with you. That’s typical of her,” she added to Samson, “so you shouldn’t want her for TCG. She belongs right here at home, as our tech lead for the launcher. And don’t tell me about how you can pay her more over on Kilimanjaro and give her a bigger team to manage or some such horseshit. I’ve seen the full project details. Your man, Ethan, doesn’t have any good backups for us. Sure that Luxembourg fly-by-night may be about to pick up some of the initial supply runs, but your debris clearance timeline is a mess without us.” She poked a finger at Samson. “You need Pascaline to stay right here. So, you better stop trying to steal her. Right. Now.”

Adamou sat back down. “He’s not going to steal Pascaline.”

“No?” Maurie’s expression implied that she might be willing to murder him anyway.

“No,” Samson confirmed.

Hadjara silently deposited a coffee mug in front of Maurie’s seat along with a little tray with a pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar cubes. She topped off Samson’s mug and left. Adamou lifted a hand in protest at Hadjara’s retreating back. “I get no refill?”

Hadjara sniffed but did not bring him more coffee.

“She’s an ex-girlfriend, sort of,” Maurie explained. “Don’t mind them.”

“And now as the project’s land-use stakeholder he’s engaged in a tumultuous relationship with the project technical lead. I foresee no interpersonal risk factors with this at all,” Samson said, absolutely deadpan.

Maurie allowed him a reluctant smile. She nodded to concede the point. “Adamou, are you going to give Pascaline hell about missing the date? I’m pretty sure she was up all night trying to make a decision about the spacing for the pylons. The TCG design reps disagree. I was just going with the more conservative closer spacing, but she thinks even that recommendation might not be conservative enough. There was a mumble about your mountain’s microtremors again, but I didn’t understand anything else.”

“Oh good,” Samson said, “finally a problem I can do something about. Are you familiar with the magic feather theory of personnel management?”

Maurie turned an interesting shade of purple and developed a coughing fit.

Adamou snorted. “For the last year she’s been the divine embodiment of a luck-twisting snake spirit, and for most of my adulthood I’ve been the personification of a protective volcanic totem, but if you want to pretend we don’t get the connections between mysticism and group dynamics in complex project management…then sure, go ahead and explain ‘magic feather’ to us.”

Samson took a sip of coffee instead of speaking.

“I’d say he took that as a ‘yes,’” Maurie said.

“Ah.” Samson waggled his hand as if to wave away his earlier introduction. “I’ve got a wunderkind out of Dr. Ross’ R&D lab. One of her protégés.”

“Pascaline studied under her. But he’s got more recent experience, I suppose?” Adamou asked.

Samson’s lips quirked to begin to say something, and Maurie made a quick shushing gesture.

Shit. Adamou realized that Samson knew about Pascaline’s unfinished formal education. And I never actually told my uncle about it. But Hadjara probably will, if Samson mentions it directly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Maurie interrupted, “we’re all proud of Pascaline, and yeah, we know your uncle the chief who owns the mountain itself and the lower slope land has insisted on Pascaline’s degreed self’s involvement in the project in order to allow the Sadous to use the mountain.”

The woman was good. Adamou watched the realization of what Maurie had left out and growing understanding of how what she had said out loud related to it dawn on Samson’s face. Samson’s eyes focused on Adamou.

“I know,” Adamou said. He changed the subject. “Why do you think this guy you’ve got in mind would be able to be a ‘magic feather’ for Pascaline? She might just immediately fire him if they can’t work together easily. That would hardly boost her confidence.”

“They’ll work fine together,” Samson said. “They’ve done it before. They were lab partners in college for a full semester of freshman weed-out courses designed to push the lower-achieving students into less demanding degree paths. They got excellent grades together too.”

“Huh.” Maurie gave an approving nod. “We could use a Pascaline veteran. Someone who can argue with her without becoming infatuated would be a nice change.”

“Um.” Samson stared at his coffee and gave it an unnecessary swirl with the spoon.

“What do you mean, ‘um’?” Adamou said.

“Oh? Oh!” Maurie let out a quick burst of laughter.

Adamou’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh, this will be great!” She beamed at Samson. “Yes, absolutely. I need to meet Philip Chao.”

“You know his name?” Adamou asked.

Maurie stood up. “Well. You should be going now, don’t you think? Can’t let that airplane idle for too long or you’ll miss the transoceanic flight back around to…Where was it?” She checked her comm. “Yeah, Fatima sent a message that DeeDee said, ‘Haikou.’ Come on, Adamou, time to get our visitor going.”

Samson, eyes twinkling, wheeled out of the café and accepted the cover of carefully overlapped umbrellas held for him by Hadjara’s staff as he entered the Jeep.

Maurie invited herself along for the trip back to the Limbe airstrip, where Fatima had arranged for an aircraft to be refueled and waiting to hop Samson over to Yaoundé Nsimalen International for his connecting flight. This plane had a pristine-condition aisle-width wheelchair and a smooth flat-floored lift to take Samson from the tarmac to even level with the plane interior.

On the drive back up to Buea, Adamou poked Maurie. “He’s gone. He left without my Pascaline. Now spill.”

Maurie grinned. “Let’s wait and see if Samson can actually deliver Philip.”


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